Zeal 1981

I'd like to start off today with a passage in 2 Kings, chapter 13, verses 14 through 19. Now, when Elisha had fallen sick, with the illness of which he was to die, Joash, king of Israel, went down to him and wept before him, crying, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. And Elisha said to him, Take a bow and arrows.

So he took a bow and arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, Draw the bow. And he drew it.

And Elisha laid his hands upon the king's hands. And he said, Open the window eastward. And he opened it.

Then Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And he said, The Lord's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Syria.

For you shall fight the Syrians at Apek until you have made an end of them. And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them.

And he said to the king of Israel, Strike the ground with them. And he struck three times and stopped. Then the man of God was angry with him and said, You should have struck five or six times.

Then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it. But now you shall only strike down Syria three times. Now that doesn't seem fair.

I mean, poor Joash didn't know what was coming off. He didn't know what the results were going to be, striking the ground with these arrows. Because if he had known, he would have hit the ground 50 times.

That's just the point. Joash, by hitting the ground three times and quitting, indicates an apathetic spirit. Okay, if you say so, I'll do it, you know.

And this apathetic spirit was soon to become not only the downfall of Joash, but of the nation, the entire northern kingdom. You can go to a ballgame with an apathetic spirit. And you can sit down and watch your TV or go to a show with eyelids that are heavy.

And in most places still today, you can hold your job for quite a while with an apathetic spirit and get away with it. But there's one place you'll never go with an apathetic spirit. You will never enter the presence of God.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that has clean hands and a pure heart. Clean hands, that doesn't just mean where those hands have been. But it means where they are now.

We're talking about an attitude. Hands that are unmixed. Hands that are no longer on the take, but are given over to God.

To be used by him. Hands that grab those arrows at God's command and strike the earth with it until the whole earth begins to shake. So, what did Jesus find when he came to the religious church-type people of his day, when he was here in flesh and blood? Did he find clean hands and a pure heart? Apathy everywhere he turned.

From Matthew 11. To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children in the marketplace calling to their playmates. We piped to you and you did not dance.

We wailed and you did not mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking and they say, he has a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, behold a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.

Instead of repenting at the preaching of John the Baptist, these people simply put him down as a weirdo, a demon possessed man and paid no attention. And instead of repenting at the call of the Messiah, they put him down and dismissed him as a drunkard and a glutton and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you.

How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not. I called to you, you did not answer. I stretched out my hand to you and you yawned and pushed it away.

A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. At a time for the banquet, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, come for all is now ready. But they all alike began to make excuses.

The thing that broke his heart was this apathy. Centuries in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, the Messiah arrives, opens the eyes of the blind, makes the lame to run, cleanses the lepers, gives hearing to the deaf, raises the dead. And who cares? Israel was putting itself under judgment, not by means of flagrant sins, but by this unbelievable apathy.

Then he began to appraise the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Tyre and Sidon, those Gentile cities, those worldly cities.

Now these people weren't apathetic when it came to making money. Or when it came to the latest piece of soap opera gossip spreading around the village. Or when it came to haggling with some farmer in the marketplace over the price of a chicken.

But when incarnate mercy comes walking down the street, invites them to the Father's banquet table, calls them out of their walking death into a life that will fulfill them in God's purpose, they can't even keep their eyes open. Have times change. Walk into any church, including this one.

People are gathered in the name of the King of Kings. The Spirit of the Living God is in their midst. The promise is that what these people bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and what they loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

The Messiah himself gives them his body to eat and his blood to drink. Now you think at such an awesome occasion the walls would shake with songs of praise and thanksgiving and joy. And that somewhere in the crowd there might be a person here and there bathing their soul in tears of repentance.

But what do we see? Apathy. So how do we move from apathy to zeal? How do we get to the place where we approach the presence of God and the mercy God shows to us and the work God calls us to do with zeal? Now when Elisha had fallen sick, with the illness of which he was to die, Joash the king of Israel went down to him and wept before him, crying, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. Joash is weeping, like just about anybody will weep, when it suddenly dawns on them that somebody they need very much is about to die.

My father, my father, the chariots of Israel are coming to take you into another world. And then what will become of me? Elisha represents zeal. Joash represents apathy.

Now Joash the king, dull as he was, managed to survive down through the years on the strength of Elisha's zeal. But now we've got a problem. Elisha's going to die.

And when you die, Elisha, you take your zeal with you and I'm going to sink. What's going to happen to me? And Elisha answers, you don't have to sink, Joash. I'll give you my zeal.

And Elisha said, take the bow and arrows. So he took the bow and arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, draw the bow.

And he drew it and Elisha laid his hands upon the king's hands. And he said, open the window eastward. And he opened it.

Then Elisha said, shoot. And he shot. And he said, the Lord's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Syria.

For you shall fight the Syrians at Apec until you have made an end of them. Elisha, in doing this, is trying to convey, to pass on his zeal to this king of Israel, this dull man. Take the bow and arrows.

So he does. He does everything he's told to do, but he does it with apathy, with his body, but not with his heart. Elisha's about to die, only has hours to live, perhaps.

And somehow he's trying to stir up this man who's responsible for the nation of Israel, the king, to get a little fire in him. Some zeal. Come on, let's move, Joash.

What's the matter with you? Take the bow and arrows. Now draw the bow. Then we have a laying on of hands.

Elisha takes his hands and puts them on top of those dead fish hands of the king. Open the window eastward. Shoot.

And then, with all the strength Elisha can muster in his dying body, he shouts, the Lord's arrow of victory. Now you think that by this time, Joash would have caught on, got into this thing, would have said, amen. Praise God.

God's name is going to give us victory. Joash remains, like we so often remain, a dead fish. Okay, we're going to try one more time, Joash.

This is the last shot. And he said, take the arrows. And he took them.

And he said to the king of Israel, strike the ground with them. And he struck three times and stopped. Then the man of God was angry with him and said, you should have struck the ground five or six times.

Then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it. But now you will strike down Syria only three times. If Joash had received the zeal that Elisha was trying to give to him, and had taken those arrows and begun to crack the ground with them, then when Elisha died, the zeal that burned in his heart would have continued in Joash.

Let me say that again. If Joash had received this zeal, had had enough sense to grab the arrows and bang on the ground over and over and over again, then as the physical lamp of Elisha goes out, the flame of zeal would pass from Elisha to Joash, just as it had passed from Elijah to Elisha. But it didn't.

Now, the question we need to ask ourselves is this. If we have managed to survive in faith down to this moment, have we done this by means of a flame of zeal burning in our own hearts? Or have we been carried by some Elijah or Elisha down through these years, sustained by his zeal or her zeal? If God should choose to take Elisha from us, would we keep on going, burning with zeal, driven on to fulfill God's purpose? Or would we, like Joash, win a few more victories and then sink forever into our own apathy? It all hinges on what we do with those arrows. Whether we will receive the zeal God is trying to pass from Elisha to us, and hit the ground with those arrows until the earth begins to shake.

Now, the spirit of Elisha, like the spirit of Elijah, is the spirit that prepares the way for the Messiah, that cries in the wilderness of this world, Make straight the way of the Lord! Prepare the way of the Lord! Come out of your apathy! Come out of your dullness! Take those arrows and strike the ground with some zeal! For instance, if Elisha tells us, Worship God! We can worship God with our dead fish hands, and our tired minds, and our dull voices, and then say, well, at least I went to church. Or, we can really worship God. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who puts something into it.

When Elisha tells us to pray, we can take the arrows and tap the ground three times and quit. Or, we can take the arrows and smash the ground until the earth begins to shake. In other words, we can go through the motions of prayer.

Or, we can bear our souls before the living God, and cry out from the depths of our heart, in our need, for His forgiveness and His life, for ourselves and for others. We can put something into it. When Jesus commands us to love one another, we can smile, shake hands, perhaps even give each other a hug, but manage to keep each other at a safe distance, and make sure that our grudges are still well maintained.

Or, we can put something into it, and we can begin to accept one another really, and really forgive one another from our hearts, and really honor one another, without exception, everybody, and really serve one another. When the Spirit of Jesus tells us, go out there beyond the walls of your fellowship, and make disciples of all nations, again, we can take the arrows and tickle the ground, like Joe Ashtead, or we can get out there and do it. Open our mouths and say what needs to be said.

Stick our necks out and run some risks. One thing's for sure. The zeal that's going to get us through to the end is not the zeal that we reflect off a brother or sister.

But the zeal that burns in our own heart. Don't misunderstand me. We do need brothers and sisters desperately, and we don't know that clearly enough among us here.

We need each other. We need the body. We need to be together, and be together like this, one day in seven.

I believe that. The people who don't take that seriously are missing out. And I believe that most of us need to be together in somebody's place for a Bible study, here, somewhere, through the week, to get renewed and refreshed.

Ah! You never take zeal from the body. Rather, you bring zeal to the body. I just didn't get anything out of the service today.

What did you put in? And, if we are not bringing to the body a burning flame of zeal, bringing it to the body, not from the body, if we're not bringing a flame of zeal to the body, and adding that to the flame that God creates there, then we're functioning in the body as parasites instead of as members. It all comes down to attitude. Our attitude.

When Elisha says to us, Take the arrows, and strike the ground. God help us to push aside our apathy, grab the arrows, and strike the ground, until the earth shakes. Let's take some time of silence.

We just ask, Lord God, that, by your mercy, whatever thing stands in the way of our grasping what you're saying to us, individually and corporately, might somehow, by the mighty rushing wind of your Spirit, be blown out of the way so we can hear and see.