2 Kings 4:33-36

He went therefore, and shut the door upon them twain.

The staff and the sacrifice

The story of the Shunammite and her son is one of the most charming idyls in the Bible. It abounds in the most beautiful touches of nature; and though the mould in which it is cast is peculiarly Eastern, its simple pathos appeals to the universal human heart. But passing from the simple, obvious instruction which the narrative bears upon the surface of it, I wish to use the significant incidents connected with the child’s restoration as an acted parable. Looking at the incidents of the miracle of Shunem in this light, they seem to me to afford admirable illustrations of the two prevailing methods of doing good, both on a large scale, as affecting the highest interests of the whole human race; and on a small scale, as affecting the spiritual and temporal interests of individuals. The one method of doing good, which may be called the impersonal, is illustrated by Gehazi putting the staff of the prophet upon the face of the dead child; the other, or personal method, is illustrated by the prophet stretching himself upon the dead body, and by his own exertions and sacrifices restoring the life that had fled.

I. The impersonal method. His action was impersonal; it was wrought by another, by a mere servant; it did not proceed from a true knowledge of the case, and it did not contain the requisite amount of faith. For these reasons it did not succeed. Death would not release his prey at the bidding of such a feeble and inadequate instrumentality. Elisha himself did not manifest any surprise when Gehazi returned from his fruitless errand, and told him, saying, “The child is not awaked.” Having adopted the measure as a human precaution, and not at the instigation of God’s Spirit, he could not count upon success; and therefore there was no revulsion of feeling, no shock to his faith. He knew by the result that he had committed an error in judgment. It will be lawful, in the first place, to apply this incident to the mode of salvation that existed in the time of Elisha--the method of imparting life to the dead body of humanity by the dispensations previous to the gospel. These modes were all impersonal. God Himself did not come into closest contact with men, did not identify Himself with their interests, did not assume their nature or tabernacle with them. As Elisha sent his servant to restore the dead child, so He sent His prophets and priests and godly men, and spoke to mankind at sundry times and in divers manners. He sent His servants with His commission, and gave them His staff, the red of His power. He entered into covenant with Israel, and gave them laws and institutions for their guidance and blessing. But the result of all His impersonal dealings with the human race before the appearance of the Saviour, was like the result of Gehazi’s laying the prophet’s staff upon the face of the dead child. Some good indeed was done. The decay of religion was prevented; the process of spiritual decomposition was arrested; the possibilities of restoration were conserved; and the body of humanity was kept at least from sinking into a deeper spiritual death, and yielding to the dissolving forces which were assailing it in the world. But no spiritual life was enkindled; the sleep of death was not broken; mankind, dead in trespasses and sins, heard no voice, and felt no touch potent enough to break the spell that bound it down in spiritual torpor and coldness. Scripture itself tells us of the insufficiency of all the means and appliances that were used under the old dispensations to quicken mankind into newness of life. It tells us that “the law made nothing perfect”; that it could not effect the restoration which it proclaimed “in that it was weak through the flesh”; that it had only “a shadow of good things to come.” The law may induce a man actually to refuse the offers and allurements of evil, but it cannot grapple with the sin of the heart, and order aright the government of that invisible kingdom within where Satan wages his most successful war. Its terrors and its blessings have no effect in that inner world where we have to do, not with the realities, but with the ideal forms of sin--where there are none of the restraints and mitigations that hinder the full power of evil in the world without; where ambition is uniformly successful, and pleasure leaves no stains or stings behind; arid vice, instead of being clothed in rags and fed on the beggar’s dole, is clothed in purple and fares sumptuously every day. “If,” says the apostle, “there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” But such is the inherent corruption of human nature, that no law, however holy or however sanctioned, could reach and cure the disease. The laying of it as a standard of righteousness before a soul dead in trespasses and sins, is as useless as was the laying of the prophet’s staff on the dead child’s face. It only shows the deadness of the soul all the more. And if this be the case with the great impersonal method for the salvation of the whole race and of the whole of human nature from all the evil effects of sin, we find that it is very strikingly the case with every individual attempt to overcome the individual evils of sin in particular persons. Much of the exercise of benevolence in these days is impersonal. Many try to do good by means of others. They send their servant, as the prophet sent Gehazi, to heal some clamant evil by the aid of their staff; by the help of something that is useful to them, but not indispensable; something that belongs to them, but is not a part of themselves; something that they can spare without inconvenience. The staff that they use represents their money, their help, whatever shape it assumes; and their Gehazi is the missionary or minister, the society or collector, whom they use in distributing their help. Thus they themselves never come into contact with the evil they seek to redress. We need not wonder that so many of our efforts to remove the evil of the world should be so unsuccessful. Its dead, cold form remains pulseless and motionless under the pitying heavens. There is no answering thrill of life, no voice to break the awful stillness.

II. But there is a more excellent way--the personal method of doing good, as illustrated by Elisha stretching himself upon the dead body of the child. And how significant is all this of the Divine method of restoring the dead body of humanity through the life and death of Christ. Does not the stretching of the prophet upon the dead child--each member of his own body being applied to the corresponding member of the lifeless corpse, and by this sympathetic contact imparting his own vitality to it, and ultimately raising it to life--figure forth in the most beautiful and suggestive manner the incarnation of Cod, by which He brought His infinitude within the limitations of human nature and human existence, touching it at every sympathetic point, and so raised it from a death in sin to newness of life in Himself? What does each joyful Christmas morning proclaim? Is it not the wonderful fact that the Eternal God incarnated Himself in the body of a little child; was born in Bethlehem, lay as a helpless babe on a mother’s breast, grew in wisdom as in stature, and lived in humble dependence upon and submission to earthly parents in a human home in Nazareth? Does it not tell us that God in Christ was united to us by blood-relationship; knew all “the things of a man”; filled all the moulds of our conduct, and passed along all the lines of our experience? Does it not powerfully proclaim to us the one only method of salvation, to which all other methods, by their weakness and failure, pointed, and for which all other methods prepared the way--the personal method of God assuming the very nature that had sinned and suffered, and in that nature bringing back life and holiness and happiness and all that man had lost? And consider the awful cost of this personal method of salvation. The connection between them was only an outward one. But Jesus became bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. In the first creation God stood aloof at an immeasurable altitude above the creation when He summoned it into existence. But in the new creation He identified Himself with the work of His hands. He came into contact with sin and impurity that others might be cleansed and healed. The same remarks that are applicable to the great salvation of Jesus Christ, are applicable to every individual effort we make in the track and in the power of that salvation to redress the evil of the world. Among the many great lessons which the incarnation of the Son of God is designed to teach us, this lesson is assuredly not the least important--that if it was necessary for Christ to take human nature upon Himself in order to redeem it, so it is necessary for us to become incarnate as it were in the nature we wish to benefit. The servant, in this respect, cannot he greater than his Lord. We must, like Elisha, take the evil that we would remove to our own room; we must lay it upon our own bed; we must bear it upon our own heart; we must identify ourselves with it as far as we possibly can. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)

Salvation by personal contact

The steamer Ganges, bound for Colombo, Ceylon, had a unique experience in the Red Sea. The captain observed a vessel which was flying signals of distress, when about two hundred and thirty miles from Perim, the nearest harbour. The skipper of the Ganges undertook the task of towing the helpless steamer Fernfield into port. Before he reached the port, however, the connecting hawser snapped. Determined to get her into the port of repair, the captain ran his vessel alongside of the Fernfield--a most difficult operation on the high sea--and lashed her to his steamer, and so escorted her into Perim, the novel sight of the two vessels coming in abreast excited no little attention there. The salvage was very great, as the disabled vessel had a rich cargo of tea, cocoa, cocoanut-oil, and cinnamon. In winning souls personal contact is always the surest method. A long-range hawser is always likely to break. If we lash ourselves with cords of friendship and sympathy to the man or woman we want to save, we can always bring them into port. There is no salvage ever awarded in the admiralty courts of earth equal to the treasures which God grants to the saviour of an immortal soul. (L. A. Banks, D. D.)

The Church and her quickening ministry

The living Church has not yet stretched herself, Elisha like, upon the dead body whose quickening she prays for. She must grope her way into the alleys and byways of the city, and up the broken staircase, and into the bare room, and beside the loathsome sufferers. She must go down into the pit with the miner; into the tent with the soldier; into the forecastle with the sailor; into the shop with the merchant; into the factory with the operator; into the field with the peasant, and into the workshop with the mechanic. Like the atmosphere, she must press with equal force on all the surfaces of society; like the sea, flow into every nook of the shoreline of humanity; and like the sun, shine on things foul and low as well as fair and high, if she is ever to accomplish that for which she has been commissioned by her glorified Head.

And prayed unto the Lord.--

The relation of prayer to secondary causes

Shunem, a small village in the town of Issachar, lying between Samaria and Carmel, at the base of Mount Tabor, was the scene of this miracle. The resurrection of this woman’s son may be looked upon in two aspects, as illustrating the reward of kindness, and the power of prayer. But the point which the incident before us presses on our attention is, The relation of prayer to secondary causes or to means.

I. That prayer does not supersede the necessity of means. We do not say that God never answers prayer without the employment of means. He has done so, as in the case of Elijah, when he prayed for rain. A diseased man may pray earnestly for health, yet he has no right to expect an answer to his prayer if he neglects the Divine conditions on which health is given. A poor man may pray earnestly for an amelioration of his secular distress, and for an increase of his comforts, yet his prayers will be fruitless if he neglect the ordinary means by which temporary advantages are obtained; the ignorant man may pray earnestly for knowledge, yet his prayers will go for nothing unless he attends to the settled terms on which intelligence is conferred. The sin-convicted man may pray earnestly to be saved from his sins and their attendant perils, but he will find hell even in praying unless he employs the right means to deliver himself from “the law of sin and death.” The Church may pray earnestly for the extension of truth, for the conversion of the world, yet, all will be waste breath unless it employs the divinely established means for the purpose. The God of order carries on His government both in the material and moral department of His universe by certain laws, conditions, or means; and these, as a rule, He will not interfere with, even in answers to the prayer of His own loyal and loving children. This fact serves at least two purposes.

1. It serves to reveal the wisdom of the Divine benevolence. We can conceive of benevolence communicating mercies in abundance, but doing so in such a way as would neutralise their value to the recipient, and prove an inconvenience to others. The kindness of earthly parents often proves, through the want of wisdom in this direction, an incalculable evil to the children in years to come. Thus it is not with Divine benevolence; that is ever exercised with Infinite discretion. The fact serves--

2. To explain the inefficaciousness of modern prayer. Prayer is not a positive, but a moral institution;--its foundation is not on written rules, but deep down in the constitution of the imperishable soul. We remark from this marvellous incident--

II. That prayer may sometimes suggest the most effective means. It is by no means improbable that the method Elisha now adopted in bringing his own living body in contact with the dead child had a natural adaptation to the end intended. There is nothing absurd in the idea of his imparting life and health by contact. Perhaps the life of the child was not so far gone, as not to be resuscitated by the vital magnetism of the prophet’s frame. Be this, however, as it may, the placing of his body in contact with that of the child, it is not unnatural to suppose was suggested to his mind by his prayer. It was after his prayer that he did it. If prayer is answered in this way, it follows--

1. That the sceptical assertion that answers to prayer imply an alteration in the Divine plan is without foundation. We grant that the universe is governed by secondary conditions, but we deny that prayer necessarily implies an interference with these conditions;--it rather implies a right attention to them. Its design, and tendency, are to induce and enable the soul to act rightly in relation to God’s ordinances, both in the material and mental departments of nature. If prayer is answered in this way, it follows--

2. That we should always engage in prayer with a determination to carry into practical effect whatever impression we receive in our devotions. For in this way the real answer to our prayer may come. To allow the practical impression to pass away is to neutralise our prayer. We remark from this marvellous incident--

III. That prayer always gives efficacy to the means. The means which the prophet employed succeeded. The child was raised to life and presented to his mother. Whether there was a natural adaptation in the means he employed or not, the result must be ascribed to the interposition of Divine power. It was obtained by the prophet’s prayer. (Homilist.)