Blessedness
of the
Unoffended
Table of Contents
1. Offended with God?
2. Elisha Offended?
3. John Offended?
4. Offense vs. Confidence
5. The Heavenly Way
Blessedness
of the
Unoffended
by T. Austin-Sparks
Transcribed from a message given by T. Austin-Sparks in 1959. The
spoken form has been retained verbatim.
Reading: 2 Kings 2:1-15
1 And it
came to pass, when the LORD would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.
2 And
Elijah said unto Elisha, “Tarry here, I pray thee; for the LORD hath sent me to
Bethel.” And Elisha said unto him, “As the LORD liveth,
and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” So
they went down to Bethel.
3 And the
sons of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to Elisha, and said unto
him, “Knowest thou that the LORD will take away thy
master from thy head today?” And he said, “Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.”
4 And
Elijah said unto him, “Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee; for the LORD hath sent
me to Jericho.” And he said, ”As the LORD liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I
will not leave thee.” So they came to Jericho.
5 And the
sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came to Elisha, and said unto him, “Knowest thou that the LORD will take away thy master from
thy head today?” And he answered, “Yea, I know it; hold ye
your peace.”
6 And
Elijah said unto him, “Tarry, I pray thee, here; for the LORD hath sent me to
Jordan.” And he said, “As the LORD liveth, and as thy
soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” And they two
went on.
7 And
fifty men of the sons of the prophets went, and stood to view afar off: and
they two stood by Jordan.
8 And
Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they
were divided hither and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground.
9 And it
came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, “Ask what
I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee.” And Elisha said, “I
pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.”
10 And he
said, “Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am
taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.”
11 And it
came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a
chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah
went up by a whirlwind into heaven.
12 And
Elisha saw it, and he cried, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and
the horsemen thereof.” And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes,
and rent them in two pieces.
13 He
took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood
by the bank of Jordan;
14 And he
took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, “Where
is the LORD God of Elijah?” and when he also had smitten the waters, they
parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over.
15 And
when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said , “The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.” And they
came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.
Turn to the gospel by Matthew, chapter 11 and verse 2:
“When John heard in the prison the works of the Christ, he sent by
his disciples, And said unto him, Art thou
he that cometh, or look we for another? Jesus answered and said unto them,
Go your way and tell John those things which ye do hear and see: The
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the
lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor
have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall find
none occasion of stumbling in me.”
In the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 10 at verse 35:
“Cast not away therefore your boldness, which hath great
recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, having
done the will of God, ye may receive the promise.”
To revert to the old version of Matthew 11:6: “Blessed is he who
shall not be offended in me.” The blessedness of the
unoffended. You will know that the word there ‘offend’ or ‘offended’ so
frequently used in different connections in the New Testament, just means ‘a
stumbling block’. Literally: “Blessed is he who will not find Me to be a stumbling block” or “who will not stumble at Me”.
It is changed into the word ‘boldness’ in the Revised and we shall see why in a
moment or two.
Offended
with God?
The first thing then to take note of is that the word of God does
take account of the possibility of our being offended with Him. It does not say
anywhere that that possibility should never arise and will never arise. The
Lord has no where said that we shall never have any
occasion for being offended with Him. He HAS indicated that there will be
PLENTY of opportunity for so stumbling at Him, falling over Him, coming down
because of Him - if you like: crashing because of Him. There will be plenty of
occasion or opportunity for doing so. He has never said that it will never be
so. It is as well for us to recognize that.
Temptation is never sin. We all are tempted in this as in many
other ways. And as you know, temptation is only another word for trial, so it
is translated in some places “trial”. And there’s nothing wrong with trials,
with being tried, if you like, with being tempted. And there will always be
plenty of opportunity for being tempted to be offended with the Lord.
The Lord sent no word of rebuke to poor John the Baptist in the
prison when he was perilously near to being offended with the Lord because of
his situation. The Lord was not hard on John because of his question. He might,
had He been another, have said, “But John, did you not point Me
out as the Lamb of God? Did you not proclaim Me as the
One, the Messiah? Haven’t you preached about Me to
multitudes? Have you not made the strongest declarations and affirmations as to
what you believed about Me? And here you’re
asking a fundamental question about Me. John, what’s gone wrong with you?” No, nothing like that. The Lord knows our frame, that we are
dust. And the Lord, I’m saying, takes account of this ever present possibility,
in our weakness, of being offended with Him. But he does attach to this matter
a particular blessedness if we don’t crash over the Stumbling Block of His ways
with us, “AND blessed
is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me”. There’s
the possibility, then as to the reasons for the possibility.
Elisha
Offended?
I read that old story of Elijah and Elisha for one purpose only,
just to get at one thing which is so common in our experience. It’s no new
thought, it has often been mentioned here, but note it
again. It’s a strange story that, isn’t it? The strange behaviour of
Elijah. It DID seem that Elijah was trying to put off Elisha, if you like: to
reject him. Again and again he said, “You stay here, the Lord has sent me
to so and so. You stay here.” On the face of it, it looked as though he was
being rejected, put aside, not wanted; just not wanted. And Elisha, had he been
what some of us are and said, “Oh well, if you don’t want me then, alright!
I’ll stay here. I’ll not go any further. It’s quite evident that you have no
place for me any more, no room for me, I don’t count…
Alright, well, sorry but…” You see that’s breached, that’s being
offended. Doesn’t it often look like that with the Lord? So often the ways of
the Lord with us COULD be interpreted in that manner, the Lord doesn’t seem to want us,
He has no longer any interest in us, indeed He is relegating us to the place of
the rejected. It seems that He is prepared to go on without us. We are
not wanted – that’s what it amounts to - we are not wanted, the Lord doesn’t
want us! Have you ever interpreted His ways like that? That’s a form of offendedness or stumbling at the Lord isn’t it? A coming
down by the strangeness of the Lord’s SEEMING willingness
to do without us, to go on without us, to set us aside.
Of course that’s not all the story of Elijah and Elisha or Elisha
and Elijah, we’ll look at it again in a moment, but there’s one way which we
can be offended with the Lord: His seeming either loss or lack of interest in
us and concern, REAL
CONCERN, to have
us. But, if we knew the truth about Elijah, he was far more concerned to
have Elisha than he was to get rid of him. But he wanted him on certain terms,
on the terms of a man who had demonstrated that nothing else mattered in life
than fellowship with His Lord. From that, he was not going to be put off, even
by the Lord Himself. If you like to translate the thing into relationship with
the Lord, it would amount to this: “Lord, You may feel that You
can do without me but I can’t do without You and I’m not going to. You started
this business and You’ve just got to go on with it
till the end, I’m not going to let go.” May it not be that that is something of
very great importance to the Lord in relationship of a servant who is going to
be useful to Him? He’s proved that his Lord is after all his life; he can’t be
shaken off. Think about that.
John
Offended?
You have John the Baptist, here he is in prison. How utter John
has been for the Lord! How he has poured himself out in the interests of Christ!
How devoted: “Behold the Lamb of God! Behold the Lamb of God! He it is of Whom I said, There cometh one after me, the latches of whose
shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He must increase, I must decrease.” Here is
devotion; devotion to his own abnegation, and now he is in prison. He is in
prison, his ministry is cut off, his popularity is suspended if not ended, and
in prison. The Lord seems to be doing nothing about it. Nothing
about it? I think there’s something in this, that when the Lord sent
reply to John, told him of all the wonderful things that He was doing, in
healing all manner of sicknesses, even to the raising of the dead; did He
anticipate that if He’d stopped there John would have said “Yes, but why
doesn’t He do something for me? I’m the lone one, doing it for everybody, but
not for me! A lot of people are getting His blessing and good, but I am left
out!” How easy it is to be offended when we seem to be just THE one
person who is overlooked. And just at that point, because perhaps the Lord
anticipated that that is how John might have reacted, said, “And blessed is he
that is not offended in Me” - covered Himself and perhaps helped John over His
difficult style; the seeming indifference of the Lord, and the seeming
favoritism or precedent, or selectiveness of the Lord - that He’s blessing
here, there, and this one, that - but He leaves me out; forgets me.
Offense
vs. Confidence
Or when you come to the letter to the Hebrews: “Cast not away your
confidence which hath great recompense of reward” - I might stay with that word
“confidence” just for a moment as you see it’s translated in the Revised
Version ‘boldness’ because it’s the same word as is used of Peter and John in
Acts 4 when they stood before the rulers, charged with filling all Jerusalem
with their doctrine and they knew, they knew very well what kind of a place
Jerusalem was, what they had done in Jerusalem to the Lord Jesus - the Spirit
was there, for their destruction. But they stood before those self-same rulers
and it says about the rulers, “When they beheld the boldness of Peter and John”
that word ‘boldness’ is the same word here as in the Authorized ‘confidence’
and Revised ‘boldness’. What was it? Their forthrightness! Their
unreservedness! Their absence of uncertainty! Here they are, they’re not
wavering, they’re not, as we say, speaking with their tongue in their cheek as
to what will happen to them if they are not very careful of what they say;
being politic, diplomatic, carefully choosing their words lest they cause offence,
or being very careful because they’re not so sure of their ground. The word
here ‘confidence’ or ‘boldness’ is this; none of that!
They’ve got both their feet solidly down. They are speaking with
assurance and confidence, they are forthright, they are
not reserving anything. And to the Hebrews the word is “Cast not away your
downright forthrightness, your certainty, your assurance, your confidence; cast
it not away, it hath great recompense of reward”. Now you see that you have to
read the whole of this letter to the Hebrews in the light of that phrase alone,
that clause alone. The whole context of this letter is over against much that
was gnawing at the confidence of these Christians. There was, as we recently
pointed out, the persecution. The writer reminds them of their early days when,
at their beginnings, they suffered so great a contradiction,
they suffered greatly at the beginning for their faith. Then they were
confident, bold, assured, but the sufferings had increased, persecution, the
activities of the Judaizers to undermine their
confidence and faith in the Lord Jesus, the long delayed return of the Lord
which they had been taught to expect at any time… all eating at their
confidence.
These are some of the reasons for being offended, and you can add
what you like to them - probably find something in the Word of God which
corresponds to anything that you like to add - there are plenty of grounds and
reasons for being offended if you’re going to be! But, the divine recompense:
“And blessed is he that shall not be made to stumble or who shall not stumble, be offended, in Me.” I ask you, was Elisha
justified in the end in sticking to it? Forgive me, that sounds
vulgar, was he justified in sticking to it, shall we say, to the bitter end? No
bitter end of course!
Of course Elisha had somehow a shrewd idea of what was going to
happen, “I know it” he said, “I know it, I know it, hold your peace!” But the
point is that Elisha was not going to let go without getting something out of
this for God; getting something out of this for God! He was the Lord’s servant,
he was Elijah’s servant, he had got to carry on the testimony - great weight of
responsibility was going to rest upon him - because of that, for that very
reason, he was taken this testing way. COULD he, could he be put off? Could he be put off? And Elisha teaches
us a lesson, oh, that we might learn it and be of the same spirit; to hold on:
“Cast not away your confidence which hath great recompense of reward!” Elisha
found that to be true and came into it.
This letter to the Hebrews lifts into view something very great at
the end of the times of testing, doesn’t it? “Wherefore receiving a kingdom
which CANNOT be shaken… ”RECEIVING a kingdom
which cannot be shaken! And, what you and I perhaps crave for, as much as
anything in these days, is something that is substantial and unshakeable and
sure and certain - the Rock. We are shaken, we’re thrown about,
everything is like that - often do wonder where we are, “Receiving a kingdom
which cannot be shaken. Let us hold fast, let us hold fast the beginning of our
confidence, firm unto the end. Cast not away your confidence.”
The
Heavenly Way
Of course we ought never to speak of things in the letter to the
Hebrews without seeing the full context, reminding ourselves of it: the almost
infinite difficulty of humans as we are, living a heavenly life, and walking a
heavenly way on this earth. It is so utterly contrary to our nature. There is NOTHING in us by
nature that helps us to walk a heavenly way, to have everything on a heavenly
basis. Nothing at all, everything is against that: to come down to earth, to
have what we can see, what is tangible, what is present. Our whole soul life
wants it NOW and wants it in our hands; wants it as we can see it! Oh, this Heavenly
Way of the letter to the Hebrews… the HEAVENLY way, partners in a Heavenly calling… it is unspeakably difficult
to nature, it is contrary to nature, and we find all the way along, almost
every day that this difficulty arises in some form or another.
But, with all that, we agree in our heart of hearts that the
Heavenly IS the real and it is the ONLY object worth living for. We’ve got enough in our spiritual
experience to know that the Heavenly is after all the only thing for which to
live. “Cast not away your confidence which hath GREAT recompense of
reward… you have need of patience that having done the will of God you may
receive the Promise.”