A Dearth In The Land

It was a time of straitness, a time of pressure,  a time when things were anything but easy. 

And all such times are perilous times.  

A time of pressure, time of adversity, time of difficulty, time of straitness, when things are hard... that is a perilous time in this sense: 

That we are very often found governed by the necessity of the time, and we yield to the pressure of circumstances and do something or try to do something.

We've been occupied with Abraham on our Thursday evenings; the situation was a very difficult one for Abraham. Indeed, humanly impossible, and he yielded to the pressure of circumstances, or of what seemed to be a necessity. 

He took action... and we know the terrible result of that in Ishmael. 

We have quite a number of such instances in the Bible, and perhaps the most outstanding of all, it is a comfort to know that our Lord Jesus did not escape this temptation for there is no doubt that the temptation of the devil in the wilderness to Him was to act under the pressure of necessity. 

And He hungered...after forty days and forty nights fasting, and the devil came and said: "Command these stones that they become bread; if you don't you'll die; it's necessary for you to do something! Your circumstances demand that you do something."

It's always a perilous time to be under pressure, duress, and a time of adversity. 

This was a time of dearth, and so they must do something and they go out to do it. 

And you see what happened; it's a part of the whole story - it's only a part - it leads on to the very blessed sequel.

But the next feature: this inadvertent wrong, mistake. As they gathered, one gathered this wild vine, and it says that, "They knew it not". 

Under pressure doing something and inadvertently making a mistake, which involves in real peril of a threat to the whole life itself.

Out there in that world, the curse was lurking secretly... for all wild things and poisonous things came from that initial curse, when God said "Cursed shall be the ground because of you". 

The curse was lurking, as it always is; that curse which has in it the very element of death - it's about, it's there - we are not always able to detect, to identify. 

It is in the world, it is everywhere; the deadly thing... just waiting for them, shall we put it like this: to act like this, indiscriminately, or by sheer force of seeming necessity, for their very life. A trap waiting!

Do you notice that this inadvertent error, mistake, not only involved the one who gathered the vine; it involved all those who were in relation with the testimony. 

The enemy is very subtle. If he can only drive just one child of God, one servant of God, along this line and entangle him or her, he knows that this is a communal pot, that it's not an isolated thing - he has got others in view - and they were all involved in this mistake.

The result: the touch of death. Evidently they drew out and tasted, and detected that there was something poisonous: the touch of death, Of course, that is the point of this whole story, and of all these stories, you see death in some form or another abounding - the work of the curse.

But then the end. And this is where this message turns from being one that is sombre, and perhaps not very helpful, although enlightening; where it turns to become, I think, tremendously helpful. 

When, discerning their mistake, recognizing that they had become involved in something evil quite unintentionally - they did it under pressure, under seeming necessity - they made a mistake. 

And I suggest, dear friends, that there are not many of us here today, who, looking back over our lives, are unable to see more than one occasion when it was like that with us: we were driven, we were harassed, perhaps distraught, pressed out of measure; we felt that we must do something, and we did something on that ground. And we regret it to this day. 

What it involved us in, and others too... well, it's a very real-to-life story, this is. But that is not the message. It may be a warning; it may be enlightening, but the message comes at the end.

They cried out: "O man of God, there is death in the pot" and he said, "Then, bring meal". And he cast it in the pot. They drew out, and there was no evil. 

What's the message? I hope I'm not reading something into this, but if the rest of the story is true to principle, I think its issue is true. 

I have to go back to the book of Leviticus for the real clue to this issue and I will find it in the second chapter - those chapters dealing with the various offerings to be brought to the Lord by His people, all of which, as you know, are related to the one thing: Life - Life with God.

~T. Austin Sparks~