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CHAPTER 2

Elijah, Daniel, Nehemiah, Paul

Exponents of Impoverishment and Empowerment,

CHRIST: Exemplar of going below the Nadir

and above the  Zenith, with Prepared Purpose

HUMAN  CASES

Elijah was much alone in his critical three years, except for the home of a widow, and even at that, he was on the spot to do  a miracle when her only son died during his extended visit.  He had  to show the mercy of God in this amazing act of sacrifice by the widow, taking him in, by raising that son, so soon from vitality reduced to corpse,  from the dead. Lonely deeds in an isolated place,  far from his people, were to be his lot. When he had done all this, and overthrown by faith through the direct action of God, as in I Kings 17, the Queen was swearing by her own life, that she would have his, since in accord with the rules, and laws, he had caused the idolatrous priests who, by their perfidy were ruining the theocratic nation, to be slain. This was done when their WORKS showed they were bogus, and his own confirmed that God was indeed with him, a splendid reformer, and by no means he "who troubles Israel," as sneeringly and provocatively termed by the irate King, when they met.

Elijah, having shown the truth in open experimental test to all,  and  carried out what was required (Deuteronomy 13:3-5). Under his juniper tree, as he sped away from the regal mind for murder, he felt no better than his fathers, and told God so. God however spiritually picked up the exhausted, hunted prophet, who had been singularly loyal to Him, sent him on his way to a mount,  where he  appeared to him, directed him in detail,  and showed him what was the residue of his mission. From  impoverishment, to the axe near his very neck, with anger and curses anointing his very life, now manifest in public actions singular, now hidden away, now suddenly challenged, the prophet went to the empowerment that met the challenge. Here were the miraculous necessities included, since the test was for GOD to show WHO was the TRUE God by what He did! The test for the nation was in this concluded; but by no means was it concluded for the suffering Elijah.

It had not been a light thing, since God had already shown Israel over much time, the power and majesty, the protection and the purification  needed for man if he is to  live, not as an imperious midget, not as a superstitious relic of reason, nor as a moral nihilist,  but in terms of the One who gave him the life he so misused.

Daniel similarly had been very alone. Plucked from his land by an imperial thrust, invasive forces like those of Hitler conquering  his land and doing what they would with the young, in his case, making talented ones cadets for public service back in Babylon,  from which the army had come, Daniel  was without much in the way of cultural support. Mercifully for him, God had given him  three friends, an inestimable advantage, but for all that, his was a leadership role, and he  met  cultural  demands with faithful  methods, to keep  to the  word and  will and  way of the Lord,  avoiding  all corruption. When the time of testing came,  their lives  being threatened by those who included them with all the philosophers and wise types, they prayed,  and  to Daniel came the answer. Here as always, was the differentiation. It is not in word only, but in power; it is not in quiet places only, but in public demonstration that the call came,  and the zealous and obedient Christian in our own day, will not try to half duty, by obeying in private and slumping in public. In all things must one seek to adorn the testimony of Christ. Life is not partial, but total, and in totality must one serve.

Thus the answer to the king's challenge, namely the MEANING of a dream he had had, the content of which he chose not to divulge, being given by God to Daniel, at his own lips it was given to the King, with careful acknowledgement of its source, lest any false impression of personal grandeur should foolishly be permitted to arise. 

Tuse King, understandably weary of his magicians and astrologers, fortune tellers and wise people,  had asked for a PRACTICAL  OUTCOME.  It had been impossible to give except from the all-knowing mind of God, in whom Daniel's trust had not been hidden; and thus when this was required and given, that same true and living God was  glorified, His presence exhibited and His testimony a pointer of no mean force. In this, the case was very like that of Elijah. This being so, and there being no other option, each of them asked God  for the PRACTICAL  ANSWER,  and to each it was given.

So far from this being a case of imagination, in such episodes, Daniel at length predicted the death date of the Messiah, accurately,  and so it was fulfilled (cf. Christ the Citadel Ch. 2). In  all of this, though with a few friends,  and some favourable to him, DANIEL'S commerce was with God, his weakness was before man, and his power was from above. It must be categorically realised that though the Lord may chasten, or even chastise Christians, rebuke them,  exhort them, refine them, use them like Job in extraordinary ways, YET if you simply abide in Him and His words abide in you (John 15:7), without your being the least degree perfect, but merely wholly devoted to Him and in all seeking Him, your cover for sin, your enablement for service,   there is simply NO LIMIT to what the Lord can do, and will do as He pleases. 

It is as in Psalm 57:2: "I will cry out to God Most High, to God who performs all things for me..., " and again, as in Psalm 62:11:

"God has spoken once, twice have I heard this, that power belongs to God.

Also to you,  Lord, belongs mercy."

David found this out, and so was not found out. God delivered him for his regal role, which he caused to be assigned in that foreign kingdom, to Daniel, paralleling the case with Joseph; and vast and repeated was the deliverance needed. AMOUNT is not problem to God; indeed He can and  sometimes does perform things beyond what we have even THOUGHT, far less asked for! (Ephesians 3:20)

Returning to Daniel,  we note that although repeatedly in confrontation or performance-requirement mode with the alien authorities to whom he had been forcibly transferred, he was never allowed to have no answer, no not if it were to know a dream he had not been told, or to escape from lions, his time not having come and work remaining for him!

In fact, whether it was to be his lot to interpret doom for a king or to meet enemies with faith and assurance,  trusting in God to deal with them, as He did, Daniel  was granted what was needed in this alien kingdom to which he had been brought  captive, just like Joseph to Egypt so much earlier. In this, the Lord continually gave more information about the course of history to come in this world, including the advent of the Messiah and the date of His death (Christ the Citadel Ch. 3), thus bringing through his obedience, a wealth of wonder for the people of the Lord, for generations to  come, even to this day!

The impoverishment of being reduced almost to nothing, the empowerment of being enabled to achieve what only God could so, in answer to believing prayer, the repeated danger of immediate death: all was there. It was with Daniel, indeed, not unlike what occurred in a later part of the history of Israel, with Nehemiah. Trickery, duress, treachery: these  surrounded him often enough, like buzzing bees, with targets not for honey.

Let us then  look at Nehemiah, in an epoch following Daniel, one of rebuilding the ruins resulting from the sins which in their own time, and earlier, had led to Daniel's captivity, and rise, and prophetic ministry in an  alien land.

Nehemiah once more provides illustration of zeal with knowledte. Impoverished in heart, this man, the King's cup bearer following the exile in which Daniel had participated, had mourned in blackness of heart, for the state of the ruined Jerusalem. God through Daniel had predicted that it would be raised again, and that to it the Messiah would come at the date indicated; and Jeremiah had foretold that the exile would last 70 years. All this was in place, but the walls were not built and the place was vulnerable to utter ruin. When would God act ? Was it not time ? Nehemiah fasted and prayed and sorrowed and lamented and sought and besieged, if it were possible, the very gates of heaven in anguish and godly desire. He was  to be heard, as was Daniel  before him.

Ezra had already rebuilt the temple, but how nasty as now, were the enemies,  willing to be deceitful, foxy, propagandists,  always seeking to destroy Israel,  even  while, by regal authority, it was ordered to be given its temple again. Now Nehemiah was troubled for the partly restored place and the King saw it, as he might in one so sensitively placed as his cup bearer, a guardian of the royal palate, and hence serving as one doubtless in a position of great trust. To Nehemiah, it had been made clear how desperate was the situation: "The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire."

Long das he fasted and  prayed, short was the time for the outcome. It all happened in one day. At that time, following Nehemiah's fasting and prayaer, the King noticed his condition and asked him about it. "May the King live forever!" he responded, "Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire ?" He was authorised to go.

To the city he went, at night examining its ruins, to the people he went, exhorting and challenging, to God he went, praying and he acted with the people, moving in vast programs of seeking, to the builders he went, as plots arose from subtle and cunning enemies, made the  arduous seem all but futile. Instead, encouraged, the people then famously began to use a weapon and a bugle,   as well as a building tool, trebly equipped! Was there a test ? then in the Lord's work, in the Lord's name, let it be met. What is it for ? contemplation!

Thus, when the cultural standards were in danger of ruin, and a false ecumenism was arising then, as now, he challenged them vigorously and ensured that the realities of spiritual life were not sunk in useless gestures to corruptive and corrosive forces (Ch. 13). In much of this, in leadership and exhortation, in challenge and chiding, with fearless face and God-confirmed heart, he was impoverished, set apart. Indeed, quite literally,  he paid for much, not using the governor's allowance from the people. Ýet he was enriched with a faithful fervour, not a simpering substitute or an inane and fatuous frenzy.

The case of Paul, the apostle, much later,  was not unlike this. Called from a high post in Judaism,  persecuting Jewish Christians the way many Arabs Moslems now often persecute Jewish unbelievers (themselves also alien from Christ, which in that case makes two parties without Him, at war! in an insoluble situation, till the Lord moves to the heart of Israel ONCE MORE, as foretold in Zechariah 12:10ff.), Paul in his first flight was a director of dread. Whips, prison, these were the implements of his war on Christians. When convicted of his crimes against the people of God, not by a court, by in conscience by God, and in heart with redeeming vision and illumination, he soon left the scene. This however was not before he was in such strife from militant unbelievers in Damascus, that for escape from death, he had to be let down from the wall in a basket! Alone to Arabia he went for 3 years, to pray, contemplate,  seek,  be organised by the Lord, he at last went to Jerusalem to meet some there, and later he took the Gospel to Europe and proclaimed it in Rome.

How often he was alone in spirit, as when as prisoner on his way to Rome, he had to warn the shippers NOT to take the course they did anyway, and then praying,  tell them about the coming wreck and how to escape with their lives. In this GOD first told him,  as He did Daniel;  and again and  again, as in Acts 13,  16, you see the Lord appearing to him,  motioning him to this or to that understanding, action,  resolution,  work, adventure in faith. In shipwrecks, in tumults as in Ephesus, onsets as in Jerusalem, he was impoverished to the point of always joining either the dust or the ocean, but in all this, he was made to join those who are "more than conquerors". Of these things, you see much in I Corinthians 4, II Corinthians 4.

In fact, when he went on one occasion  to what was then called Asia, now Asia Minor, he was looking for a companion in (spiritual) arms, one Titus, and could not find him, and this with the burden of the churches he had founded, to consider and to pray for, as he sought when it would be best and  godly, seeking to find and conceive when to revisit, was a heavy burden. Nor was this  alll. Further, he had the need of pure doctrine and personal holiness in his many ventures. With such labours of heart, and finding his companion  with all this to consider and to execute,  he became so overwhelmed temporarily, as in II Corinthians 1, that he despaired even of life!

By no means, for all his triumphs, the all-conquering hero, Paul so evidently relied on the Lord that he could say, in a way which harmonised with his way of living entirely, 

"For me to live is Christ,  and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).

In the case in view, he was delivered, declaring of the Lord, that despite his desperate concerns, He found out his troubles, and

"delivered us from so great a death."

He added this:

"and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us."

In such ways did and does the Lord move.

In prison, Paul much appreciated one who stayed with him (II Timothy 4:11), the physician Luke, and at last few stayed with him personally, presumably terrified by the imperial wrath of godless Nero, by whom he was probably executed at last (II Timothy 4:16).

Yet he was happy to be poured out like a drink offering in favour of those whom like a nurse, in another sense, he cherished and nurtured (Philippians 1:7, 2:17, cf. I Thessalonians 2:7); thus empowered in action, he was strengthened in heart, declaring this when in danger of execution:

"But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that the message might be preached fully through me, and that all the Gentiles might hear. Also I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.

"And the Lord will deliver me from every devil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom..."

THE DIVINE

When we come  to Jesus the Christ, what in others,  had been illustrative of the Lord's working, using what was reduced to make what would increase, selecting what was nothing to make much, impoverishing in scope but not in heart, that He might be glorified in spirit, without contest of egotism, we find now the  centrality. It is He, this Christ, the Lord's Christ (as in Psalm 2, 72, 110, Isaiah 49-55), who is the original and Lord of it all. It is He,  who not merely wrought to help, but formed and provided the judicial and dynamic basis for any test to be met, triumph of grace to be performed. It is He who now becomes central to  view, as in prophecy central in preview. Here is the original, and Creator of all. When therefore He became man, His reduction was to poverty, though in eternity all riches are His,  all that the Father has being His (John 16:15).

This is  emphasised in Philippians 2 where it is taken to the ultimate point; for all concerning Him is ultimate in reality. Though He took the form of a man for service most  special, sacrificial and all but obliterative, as you see in the cry of Matthew 27:46, foretold in Psalm 22:  "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!",  yet bearing all, He took all and sin with it. This sense of being forsaken, was not only prophesied of Him, but was a necessity of human experience,  since sin snatches the heart away as in Isaiah 59:1-3, and He was bearing the sin of the race sovereignly, sufficiently,  selectively, covering all who would believe and so receive what He offered (Romans 8:32).

Delivered up for their offences, He would provide for them all things, as Paul declares.\

From His riches, through this  ultimate form of poverty, He thus provided a ransom for as many as would receive Him and hence accept what was sufficient for all, offered to all but transferred only to some, who took Him as He is.

Born not to riches, but likened rather to  a "root out of dry ground," He was degraded, detested, despised,  rejected by the authorities, and to Him who is their God, many gave scorn and thorn alike. Yet with Him, it was not only a love which was shown in impoverishment for God, not this alone, but a vicarious fating, a nefarious excursion in appearance, a tragic  triumph of innocence; for not only was He numbered with crucified transgressors (Isaiah 53,Matthew  26), but actually even set amid them physically, one being killed with Him, on each side! Here what others had been given to show in spirit, He did in fact, not to impress or reach or preach, not this alone, but to cancel debt, make righteousness, His own,  freely available without credit: for it is A GIFT - as in Romans 5:15, 17.A gift it is, BY GRACE (as in Ephesians 2), and a gift  BY GRACE, thus both in substance and in conveyance. It is by this, without works, that we are saved, and by whom  other than the Saviour of illimitable savour; since it is HE  who is the Saviour, and ONLY GOD who has this position (Isaiah 43:10-11). Thus both by and in God comes the salvation which no man can provide at all (Psalms 49, 71).

Alone on the  Cross, except for the superficial reviling of bigots who understood less than nothing concerning Him, impoverished to the point of nakedness, having people even make sport about who would get His very clothes! He SHOWED the life of the Lord.It was not here some remote wonder, but a present help. It is there, and its application is here. He has it; He exhibited it. It was His, and it is His, this eternal life (I John 1:1-4), and as Barrister, it is He who not only charges no fees, none whatsoever, but makes of HIMSELF the payment to satisfy justice; so that you neither have to pay Him as agent, nor the court as criminal. The  reason is clear: for sin is crime against God, His own laws - and so HE was vicariously among wrongdoers: He was exposed  in sacrificial death, but saved by grace through faith, and such eminently is  displayed in the episode of the believing criminal by His side.

Thus, the whole thing, Ephesians 2:8 declares, is not of ourselves, but of God. What is not ? being saved by grace  through faith, this it is which is not of ourselves but of God, who alone does these things.

When God allowed His only begotten Son to be impoverished, then, He did it on profound scale; and when He raised Him, long before the generic time when we who are Christians abiding in Him,  will be raised, He performed an empowerment grand indeed.

What is grander than being dead, cut off, wrongly accused, heartlessly condemned, nailed to death, and  doing it all obediently to save sinners, and THEN being raised by God unilaterally, without human aid, from the dead so that He even moved out of the tomb, as later (Acts 12), Peter was to move out of prison by direct, divine means.

There is no limit with God, no limit to His power; and those who serve Him must not muse on how to escape penalties by devious devices, but rather with all boldness, now as always (to quote from Paul - Philippians 1:20), with Paul rather say:

"According to my earnest expectation and my hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed,
but with all boldness as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body,
whether by life or by death."