(It gets a little confusing at the end of the passage. “Jehoram became king in his place in the
second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, because Ahaziah
had no son.” These are two men named
Jehoram, the one who became king in place of Ahaziah is a son of Ahab while the
second, the king of Judah is a son of Jehoshaphat.) Ahaziah sends to the god Baal-zebub, god of
Ekron to determine if he will live after a fall. Elijah gets a word from the Lord that the
king has sent out messengers to the god and that he has a word for the king, he
will not live and God knows what he is up to sending messengers to another
god. When told what the man looked like
who intercepted the messengers, that he wore a hair shirt and leather belt, the
king knows it is Elijah, just as anyone with a description of John the Baptist
would be able to immediately identify him.
The first two groups of fifty soldiers the king sends to bring Elijah to
him meet with an untimely demise when the prophet calls down fire from the sky
(he’s quite good at fire) and the third pleads for his life and the life of his
men. In the end, Elijah goes, delivers
the message in person and his prophecy proves true. With all the proof that Elijah was a man of
God, why did the king not repent and turn to the Lord?
If we are salt and light, we are obedient to the call of God
in our lives. We are doing what we are
supposed to do. Salt and light are
states of being, but if the properties of saltiness and light are hidden, then
they are “wasted.” Light was the first
thing created, brought into being by fiat, and without some light, we cannot
see and properly live. Salt, likewise,
is essential to human life, not just an enhancer. For the world to know the Lord, we need to be
salt and light, it is part of the reason you have received the revelation of
truth, that you may share it with others.
All this is wonderful but the analogies are preceded by another truth, “Blessed
are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil
against you falsely on my account.” We will
be treated like the prophets who were shamefully ignored and ill-treated by the
nation when they revealed God’s judgment against the leaders and the
people. Being salt and light is what we are
intended to be but they will not win the world’s admiration. We are not to worry ourselves with that,
however, we are called to obedience to the one who gave us life.
We are no longer simply bodies living in this world. If we are redeemed, we are the temple of God,
the place where He dwells. If He is to
dwell in us, we should take great care of His abode. When the temple was consecrated, the shekinah
glory was manifest to all because they had done all in accord with His will
concerning its construction but also its hallowing. We are to treat our bodies with exactly that
same level of care. That requires
obedience to all He commands. The result
of that is that the Spirit dwells in us, we are changed into His likeness, and
others can see that glory. Paul says, “all
things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or
death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ's, and
Christ is God's.” What would change if
we believed all things are ours?
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