2 Kings 2:19-22 And the men of the city said to Elisha, Behold, I pray you, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord sees… Elisha began his work as a leader of the church of his time by a deed of mercy. Elisha made no claim that he had healed the waters himself, and he did not pretend that there was any power in the salt to work the change. He was simply God's minister, and the salt was used simply as a symbol of God's presence in the cleansing of the fountain. We have in this cleansing of the fountain suggested to us: that a man's surroundings may be very pleasant, and his temporal circumstances such as to cause the envy of his neighbours, and yet his life may be embittered and his career utterly despoiled because of some malady of the spirit that takes away his peace, and ruins his happiness. Elisha assumed that it would be useless to change the water in the stream, for the evil fountain left unchanged would continue to pour forth its poisoned waters. So he went to the spring, and cast in the healing salt at the fountain-h cad. We are reminded of the words of Jesus where He declares that "A good man, out of the good treasure of heart, bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil mare out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh." And again our Saviour says, "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies": and He adds, "These are the things which defile a man." The poisonous stream of conduct is poured forth because the heart is evil. It is one of Aristotle's axioms that the goodness or badness of anything is determined from its principle: hence it is that we call that a good tree that hath a good root, that a good house that hath a good foundation, that good money that is made of good metal, that good cloth that is made of good wool; but a good man is not so called because he has good hands, a good head, good words, a good voice, and all the lineaments of his body similar and composed, as it were, in a geometrical symmetry, but because he has a good heart, good affections, good principles of grace, whereby all his faculties, both of body and of soul, are always in a readiness to do that which is right. Plutarch tells us that Apollodorus dreamed one night that the Scythians took him and tortured him, and as they were putting him to death in the boiling cauldron, his heart said unto him, "It is I that have brought thee to this sorrow; I am the cause of all the mischief that hath befallen thee." And it is certainly true that the heart of man is the forge and the anvil where all the actions of his life are hammered out. You must give your whole heart to God. and obey Him in every way, or else all pretensions to religion are hypocrisy. The secret of Christianity's great power in the world is in this transformation of the heart. Elisha made sure that the water in the stream would be clean and pure, by cleansing the fountain. Christ makes sure that the new life of the man who truly comes to Him shall be good, by cleansing the heart. (L. A. Banks, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren. |
    |