fainting prophet

The cross of the Cross: A Little Girl’s Faith and the Fainting Prophet 

Thus and thus said the (little) maid” (2 Ki. 5:4).

I’ve had enough of this; now, O Lord, take away my life” (1Ki. 19:4)

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation (Lu. 17:20)

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Why did ELijah faint?  For a lack of faith.  He had seen the ultimate "sign" (or "observation") and it drained him.  Why did the little maid speak "such and such?"  "I believe and therefore I have spoken."  "This is the victory that overcometh, even our faith."  She had lost everything. Like the first Beatitude, she should have been "poor in spirit," too dispirited to lift her head.  She was in no position to make plans or dream.  "Sufficient unto her every day, would have been the evil thereof."  Blessedness is not the same as enjoying life.  Rather it is the state of mind that "the Lord is at hand," for "thou art with me--Immanuel."  Hence, she did even have to rise to the occasion--she  simply spoke what was in her heart which landed like a thunderclap on Naaman.  "Out of the process of the heart, the mouth speaketh."  Like the cross bearers on the Day of Judgment, she will be surprised that she had done anything unusual.  A good tree would wonder why anyone would look for bad fruit.

Elijah was at the peak of his powers.  "Don't," Jesus warns his Apostles,  "dwell on your gifts, but rather on the gift of eternal life," common to all the saints, all of which in the end "are unprofitable servants."  If ever there  was an “observation” it was on Mount Carmel.  The fire fell at Elijah’s prayer, and the people shouted with excitement. But they did not form a shield around the prophet when he was threatened by Jezebel.  They went back to their old ways and left the prophet feeling isolated:  “I, even I only, am left” (1Ki. 19).  Because “a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign,” (Mt. 12:19).  Cain played the smartalec talking directly with God (the ultimate sign).  “An evil heart of unbelief” will find a way to “hold down the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1).  Note how the miracle that healed Naaman seems to have been lost on Gehazi who witnessed it.  Some trick perhaps.  Who knows?  Why are there so many lepers in Israel if Elisha has such powers?  Judas saw everything “Jesus did and taught,” and did not think it amounted to 30 pieces of silver.  The rich man claimed he would be in Abraham’s bosom with Lazarus had he been exposed to a miracle, a man raised from the dead.  Imagine that. A man named Lazarus had been raised from the dead.  When “Moses and the Prophets” were read, how was he to know how seriously he was to take what was said?  And who pays attention to a “still small voice", or a "small maid"?  Shouldn’t God yell if He was really serious?  If he saw a dead man come back to life, he would know God was for real, and the Scripture believable. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11).  This is said of Old Testament believers “who pleased God” with their “faith.”  John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah, expected a much more dramatic display of His Kingdom powers (Mt. 11), and the proofs Jesus pointed to could be found in the lives of Elijah and Elisha–where’s the Kingdom in all that?  Obviously, if Sodom would have repented where Capernaum would not, more proofs would not have helped.  John is told not to “be offended” by Jesus' underwhelming performance.  “The offense of the Cross” will never make sense.  The Kingdom of God was within, and the work of the Holy Spirit was the “still small voice,” (and "the little maid") and not the fires of Mount Carmel. That is the Kingdom of God. That for Judas, like for Gehazi, was “pie in the sky,” always beyond reach, always too little.  Too late he was to learn that a hewing prophet can both unmake and make a leper--for God's "word never comes back void."  Making a leper did not require faith (on Gehazi's part) even. They (Judas  and Gehazi) both had a life to live.  John, like Abel, died young.  “The kingdom and patience of Christ” is the patient kingdom, the exact opposite of politics.  Abel, under the altar, has been crying night and day “how long?”  What kind of a Kingdom is it that will always be barely visible, “offensively” so, visible enough to encourage the faithful, “evidence of things not seen.” Farmer Elisha left his farm to eat wild vegetables, and his powers did not keep the little maid from being enslaved.  Gehazi, like Judas and Ananias,  found this intolerable, and sought to cut deals on the side.  A prophet who can heal lepers should be able to create good vegetables.  What would it hurt?  And now this roundabout way of bringing Naaman to Elisha through this little maid.  The unprofitable servant would have seen all this and concluded that God was using humans as pawns:  "an hard man."  Elijah himself was too disappointed to go on.  Imagine Elisha trying to figure out how to fit in a believing Syrian general.  Where is all this going? What profit is there to being a Jew, when a little maid can worship with an enemy Gentile in Syria?  John was obviously shaken.  He had given everything, was filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb, and now seemed to have been set aside--like Moses, he had hoped for some sort of closure this side of the grave.  None.  They would have to die like this little maid, with nothing but their common faith to sustain them.  “This is as far as you go,” God told Moses, “Joshua will take over from here, and don’t argue.”  There are no Great Men in the Kingdom of God.  Only “unprofitable servants.” Everyone does no more than their duty. “Rejoice not over your powers,” Jesus told His disciples, “but that your names are written in Heaven.”  Those who labor in the heat of day get no more than those who come at the eleventh hour.  So why labor in the heat of the day.  How is this fair?

The fires on Mount Carmel did not restore the Kingdom of God. They made Jezebel worse. Israel was infested with Baal worshippers, and “the hewing prophet” was frustrated.  Chiefly, because the cause of God seemed stuck, and despite what he had just witnessed, he felt absolutely helpless.  “Elijah,” James said, “was frail like the rest of us,” and “the weight of the churches” made the “reed shaken by the wind” buckle. Then God called him down to where Moses said, “I exceedingly fear and tremble”: Mount Sinai where God delivered His Word verbatim and not in “divers manners.”  The ground shook then, and Elijah expected it to shake again.  The ground did shake and Elijah ran into the cave in fear.  That, now, was “observation.”  But God was not in the (three) observations.  Elijah was to learn that God was in that harmless small voice: the Word of God. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” The rich man wanted Abraham to send Lazarus back thundering from the grave.  The still small voice of “Moses and the Prophets,” Abraham said, is more powerful than that.  God will soon prove that when He draws His "bow at venture" in the simple words of His young saint, which landed like a thunderclap upon Naaman and soon set two kingdoms in a roil.  “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and truth.”  It is mustard seed faith that moves mountains.  “And faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.  The "day of small things" was so small that were it not for his servants, Naaman would have returned to Syrian in a rage.  He had been invited by Elisha himself only to be told to perform a simple ritual and all will be well.  "Am I God," the Israeli king had cried to underscore that he was being asked to move a mountain.  He knew how prophets were to act--Behadad's court would have been full of them.  None ever came up to him and said, "I think I can heal that."  And here, the prophets acts as if healing leprosy was a "give us our daily bread" routine.  Even God would not mix the big and the little.  "Is is it not a little one," Lot asks?  "One thing thou lackest," Jesus said.  "Will God be satisified with rivers of oil," the rich man asks in Malachi, "the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul"  (Mic. 6:7) This was a billionaire's offering.  "It hath been told thee," the prophet replied wearily, repeating the small things of "the cross."  A Syrian general did not bother with small things, and he expected to be treated according to his rank.  Had he gone back in a rage, the little maid would likely have suffered.  Were it not for humbler servants, he would have.  Why did they have more faith than he?  He obviously had more faith than the unhealed lepers around Elisha.  Elisha needed him to come back, and may have waited anxiously.  But he didn't leave his plow to deal in tricks.   The kingdom of God was going nowhere until men understood that God was in the Holy of Holies, unobserved.  Elisha did not want Syrians flock to him as a Shaman.  In the end, Naaman was to see that "the little maid's" role was equally great,  "or small."  The wind, the whale, the weed, the worm, and the wind again--Jonah was angriest at the worm which he likely never saw.  Men have long wondered at the size of the whale--but no one doubts that God could create a mite of a worm:  how hard can that be?  "Its easy enough to give the Sun a push," Hezekiah said.  "Let's see what happens when God tries to push it back."  

One of those 7000 who did not bow to Baal was farmer Elisha, who would rise to even greater heights than Elijah.  Obviously, the still small voice of the hewing prophets was bearing fruit.  To prove the point, God now displays His power in the form of a mustard seed.  The captive young girl would have had every reason to be “poor in spirit,” having been wrenched from everything that she held dear in life, and carted away by ruthless soldiers.  Where was the prophet of Smariah in time of need? Here’s a glimpse of Syrian war:  “You will set fire to their fortified places, kill their young men with the sword, dash their little children to the ground, and rip open their pregnant women” (2 Ki. 8).  Yet here she is acting like the Good Samaritan.  Her parents would have taught her her “Imanuels” (for thou art with me), and she leaves no doubt that God was with her.   She, like Elisha, was a Samaritan.  “Thus and thus said the girl,” Naaman told King Benhadad.  What she said caused the King of Israel to cry out, “Am I God”? Benhadad didn’t even mention that a “prophet” was to be involved in the cure of leprosy.  He was surrounded by prophets and their tricks.  Do you think he believed any of this?  If so, he had more faith than the king of Israel, who thought he was just trying to stir up another war.  Elisha was now to find genuine faith in this pagan Naaman who had done Israel so much hurt.  Soon Benhadad will complain that his army is rendered completely useless because he is checkmated at every turn.  Elisha, his servants tell him, has a fly on your wall (they say this almost tongue in cheek, and didn’t seem too troubled by it. These may well be more of the little maid's converts).  Most readers wonder if the fly on the wall was not “this Syrian,” Naaman.  Benhadad sends an army to kidnap the spy, the army is captured, fed and sent back.  “They came to raid no more,”  we read.  All because a powerful king formed policy on what a captive young girl said.  Her king back home probably said, "Tell her to be quiet up there before she gets us all killed."  “Am I God,” he cried in fear. This is how little “faith” existed in Israel.  He didn’t think there was “a prophet in Israel.”  The many lepers in Israel didn’t think there was a prophet in Israel.  This young girl’s words would not have moved them “not being mixed with faith in the listeners.” Yet here comes this pagan looking to be healed because of what the young girl said.  “I believe, and therefore I have spoken.”  Belief begats belief.  If they had taken a survey of who was the least of  “the things that are nought” in Israel, this girl would be on the list.  “A gift for the wife,” Naaman probably told his soldiers on the way back, “throw her in the back of the wagon.” But God had His eye on “this Syrian” and needed to get him back to “the hewing prophet.”  This now, if you pull all the strands together, is what faith the size of mustard seed can do.  The fires of Mount Carmel would never bring about Samaritan “fields white unto harvest.”  And the world would hardly consider their conversion worthy of “observation.”  Josephus barely acknowledges that there were even Christians in the Land.  But “of such is the kingdom of God.”  Elijah was obviously one of those “others who have labored” to prepare those Samaritan harvests.  He  didn’t see the still small voice at work and was despondent. He thought he had accomplished very little in his earthly life--which was drawing to a close.  He didn’t add up all the “days of small things.”  There were 7000 of such believers in Israel,  “the cup-bearers" on Judgment Day.  At the Judgment, the cross-bearers are surprised that what they did naturally amounted to “the patient kingdom of Christ.”  The sum of their “not being weary in well doing.” He was now at the end of his course, and he thought he had accomplished very little when so much depended on him.  For “by prophets was Israel preserved.”  As with John the Baptist, God did not add to what he already had to give him more faith.  He had “Moses and the prophets,” no more than the “little maid.”  He would have to die as he had lived, by faith, and not by signs.  Thus the kingdom of God was there if you “despise not the day of small things.”  The kingdom of God marches by faith.  There was no faith in the fires of Mt. Carmel.  A captive young girl, a believing Syrian, an additional leper (Gehazi) in Israel–-how was Elisha to make sense of all this?  By faith, like John in prison.  By not accusing God of being “a hard man,” when he asks you not to “be weary in well-doing.”   Lamech was already tired before the Flood when the earth was still young.  The fires on Mt. Carmel may seem like a shot in the arm of “the hands that hang down and the feeble knees.” They were not.  “Seven thousand,” God tells Elijah, stand with you.  “Unobservables.”  The little maid did no  more than what came naturally.  Why would a good tree be rewarded for bearing good fruit?  That is the surprise on the Day of Judgment.