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How to Raise the Dead | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello and welcome back. You are listening to Reformed
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  Thinking. I am thrilled to have you with
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  us today because we are opening up a file that, well, quite
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  frankly, it scares me a little bit.
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  We are looking at a topic that sits right at the edge of what
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  humans can comprehend, and certainly at the edge of what we
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  can do. It's good to be here, and you're
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  right to feel a little bit of, you know, trepidation.
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  The text we have in front of us today isn't some light
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  devotional. It's not a list of tips for a
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  happier life. It is.
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  Well, it's a demolition of human ability.
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  It really is. We are going back to the
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  archives of church history to look at a man who needs very
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  little introduction, but whose work is often more quoted than
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  actually read. We're talking about Charles
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  Haddon Spurgeon. The Prince of Creatures.
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  Exactly. But we aren't looking at a
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  sermon about the Psalms or, you know, defense of Calvinism in
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  the abstract. We are looking at a very
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  specific chapter from his book The Soul Winner and the chapters
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  titled How to Raise the Dead. How to raise the dead?
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  I mean, it sounds like something out of a fantasy novel or or
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  maybe a very dark medical textbook.
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  But for Spurgeon, this was the central task of the Christian
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  life. He's taking us through a
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  narrative in the Old Testament to Kings chapter 4, where the
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  prophet Elijah raises the son of the Shinamite woman back to
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  life. And just to set the stage for
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  you, if you're listening and maybe joining us for the first
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  time here, Reformed thinking, we don't just skim the surface.
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  We really want to get to the root of things.
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  We want to understand not just what the Bible says, but how it
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  applies to the way we think about God and ourselves and the
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  world. So we're taking this text by
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  Spurgeon, which is basically a manual on how to teach and share
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  the faith, and we were stripping it down to the studs.
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  And the structure of this whole deep dive is going to be vital.
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  We aren't talking about how to be a better public speaker.
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  We're not talking about how to be a more charismatic leader.
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  We are talking about the doctrine of regeneration.
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  We're talking about how a soul that is spiritually dead gets
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  brought to life. And Spurgeon uses this miracle
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  of Elisha as a perfect step by step diagram of that reality.
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  It really is a mission briefing, isn't it?
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  And I think we need to clarify that mission right now.
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  If you're listening to this and you teach a Sunday school class,
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  or you're a parent, or you know you just have a neighbor you
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  care about, your default setting is probably Education.
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  That's the default. Right.
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  You want to teach them the right things.
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  You want to correct their behavior.
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  You want to make them into nice people.
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  That is definitely the default. We operate on the assumption
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  that people are basically OK, they just lack a bit of
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  information, or maybe they're a little bit sick and they need
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  some medicine. But Spurgeon stops us right at
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  the door, he says. If that is your mindset, you
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  have already failed. The mission isn't improvement.
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  The mission is resurrection. Which raises the stakes
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  considerably. I mean we are moving from self
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  help to life and death. We are moving from the possible
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  to the utterly impossible. That's the crux of it.
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  You can teach a child to sit still.
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  You can, with some effort, teach a man to stop swearing, but you
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  cannot give a dead soul breath. And yet that is the charge given
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  to the Church. And I have to say, looking ahead
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  at our outline for this, this whole deep dive, there is a
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  moment coming at the end that I'm really excited about.
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  It involves a sneeze. Theology of a sneeze.
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  It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?
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  But I genuinely believe it's one of the most encouraging insights
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  Spurgeon ever penned. OK.
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  So we will get there, but we have to start where the story
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  starts. We need to do a diagnosis.
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  Segment 1 is all about the patient, so take us back to 2
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  Kings 4. What's the context here?
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  What's going on? All right, so the narrative
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  centers on a woman from a town called Shunam.
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  The Bible calls her a great woman, which, you know, likely
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  means she was wealthy or influential in her community.
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  And she recognizes Elisha as a holy man, a prophet of God, and
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  she goes way out of her way to care for him.
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  She doesn't just offer him a meal when he passes through.
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  She persuades her husband to build a physical addition to
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  their home, a prophet's chamber. She builds him an apartment.
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  Essentially, yes. She furnishes it.
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  She puts in a bed, a table, a stool, and a Candlestick.
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  She creates a space for the Word of God, embodied in the Prophet,
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  to dwell in her house. That's some serious hospitality.
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  It is, and in response to this, God grants her a son.
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  This is a big deal because she had been barren.
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  Her husband was old. So this boy is a miracle.
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  He's a child of promise. You can just imagine the
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  attachment there. This boy isn't just a son.
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  He is the proof of God's favor on her life.
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  But then the unthinkable happens.
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  The boy is out in the fields with his father.
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  Yeah, it's harvest time. Right, so it's likely hot.
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  The Middle Eastern sun is just beating down.
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  The boy suddenly grabs his head and cries out.
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  My head. My head.
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  Oh no. The father, you know, perhaps
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  thinking it's just heat stroke or dehydration, tells a servant
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  to carry him back to his mother. And the text is just
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  devastatingly simple. It says he sat on her knees till
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  noon and then he died. Wow, just like that, it's every
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  parent's worst nightmare. The miracle child is gone.
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  And what she does next is so telling.
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  She takes the body up to the prophet's room and lays him on
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  the prophet's bed. And this is where Spurgeon steps
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  in. He holds up his hand and says,
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  look at this boy. Because this boy, he says,
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  represents every single person we are trying to reach with the
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  gospel. So if I'm a Sunday school
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  teacher, the kids in my class, they're the boy?
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  Yes, If I'm a pastor, the people in the pews are the boy.
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  Exactly. And this is where the diagnosis
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  becomes controversial, certainly in our modern culture, but it's
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  standard historic reformed theology.
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  Spurgeon looks at the patient and he says the child is dead.
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  Not sleeping, No. Not in a coma.
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  Not spiritually challenged or morally confused.
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  Dead. Spurgeon is absolutely
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  relentless on this point, he says, and I'm quoting here, the
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  boys and girls in your classes are as surely as grown up people
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  dead in trespasses and sins. That's the doctrine of total
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  depravity, right? There, that's it.
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  And we need to be clear about what that means.
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  It doesn't mean they are as evil as they could possibly be, you
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  know, they aren't all serial killers in training, but it
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  means they are utterly devoid of spiritual life.
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  There is no pulse towards God. They are cold.
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  They are unresp responsive. OK, but that seems harsh.
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  I mean it's one thing to say that about a hardened criminal,
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  but we look at children and they seem so full of life.
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  They run, they play, they laugh. It's hard to look at a laughing
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  6 year old and say spiritually dead.
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  That feels wrong somehow. It's completely
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  counterintuitive, and that's why we need revelation, right?
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  The Bible has to tell us the state of the heart because our
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  eyes can deceive us. The natural man does not accept
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  the things of the Spirit of God, Paul says.
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  They are foolishness to him. And here's the key part he
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  cannot understand. Them cannot not, will not.
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  Cannot. That inability is the rigor
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  mortis of the soul. There is no capacity there to
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  respond to God. And Spurgeon argues that if you
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  don't start with this diagnosis, everything else you do is
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  pointless. It changes everything about how
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  you approach them. How so?
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  I mean explain that. Well, if I think someone is just
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  sleeping, I might try to wake them up with a loud noise.
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  I might shake them. I might play some music.
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  My methods are based on the idea that they have the ability to
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  respond if I'm just persuasive enough.
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  But if they're a corpse. Then shouting does nothing.
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  Playing music does nothing. This is why Spurgeon insists
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  that we must start here. He says if we don't realize the
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  total ruin of the Sinner, we cannot be a blessing to them.
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  Wow. Cannot be a blessing.
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  That's a strong statement. Think about the implications of
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  that. If you walk into a ministry
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  setting thinking these are basically good people who just
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  need a little Polish, you are fundamentally unable to help
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  them in the way they most need help.
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  You're offering vitamins to a cadaver.
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  You're giving swimming lessons to a stone.
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  You cannot educate A corpse into life.
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  That's the bottom line. Precisely.
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  You can put makeup on a corpse. You can dress it in a nice suit.
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  You can prop it up in a Pew. That is what morality without
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  regeneration looks like. It is a painted corpse, but it
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  isn't life. So the goal then isn't just
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  improvement, it's it has to be resurrection.
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  That's the mission. Spurgeon says resurrection,
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  then, is our aim. To Raise the dead is our
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  mission. And notice what that immediately
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  does to the teacher or the preacher or the parent.
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  It strips you of all pride. What do you mean by that?
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  Because you can't do it if the goal is teach them the 10
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  commandments. Well, I can do that.
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  I have the skill. I can make a worksheet.
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  If the goal is make them sit quietly, I can enforce that.
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  But if the goal is give them spiritual life, I am completely
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  and utterly helpless. I am shut out from my own
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  resources it. Forces you to look up.
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  It forces you to your knees. It forces you to realize that if
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  God Himself does not show up in power, then absolutely nothing
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  of eternal worth is going to happen.
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  It turns ministry from a profession into a desperate act
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  of dependence. We are shut up to the power of
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  God. OK, so we have the diagnosis,
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  spiritual deaths. We have the goal, resurrection.
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  Now. The story in 2 Kings gives us
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  this fascinating example of how not to do this.
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  Before Elisha gets it right, there's a failed attempt.
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  Which brings us to segment 2, the failed experiment.
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  This is one of those details in the Bible that just makes you
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  pause and think, Mother, she gets on a donkey.
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  She rides to Elijah at Mount Carmel.
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  She's desperate. She grabs his feet.
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  Elijah realizes the boy is dead, but instead of going himself
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  immediately, he turns to a servant, Ghazi.
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  Ghazi, now he's a character that usually serves as a warning in
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  Scripture, isn't. He is.
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  He's often the foil to the prophet and Elijah hands Ghazi
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  his staff. You know, his symbol of office
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  is authority and gives him very specific instructions.
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  He says gird up your loans. Run.
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  If you meet any man, don't bless him.
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  If any man blesses you, don't answer.
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  Go and lay my staff on the face the child.
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  OK, now let's play devil's advocate for a second here.
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  This sounds like a solid plan on the surface.
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  We've seen God work through objects before.
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  Moses had a staff. Elijah had a mantle.
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  If the prophet's staff, infused with God's power, touches the
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  boy, surely that power will flow.
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  That is the logical expectation. You expect the cinematic moment.
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  The servant runs in, breathless. He places the ancient wood on
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  the cold forehead. The music swells.
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  The boy gasps. But that is not what happens.
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  The text is brutally dry. It is.
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  It says Gehazi laid the staff on the face of the child, but there
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  was neither voice nor hearing. Nothing.
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  Silence. The boy is just as dead as he
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  was before. So why what went wrong?
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  Was the staff defective? Was the magic gone?
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  This is where Spurgeon offers, I think, a brilliant insight.
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  He calls the staff truth extraneous to ourselves.
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  Truth extraneous to ourselves. OK, let's unpack that.
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  What does that mean? Think of the staff as official
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  doctrine. It is the truth.
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  It belongs to the Prophet. It is straight, it is rigid.
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  It is correct. But it is detached.
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  It has no life of its own. It's just a piece of wood.
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  When Gehazi lays it on the child, he is applying an
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  impersonal truth to a personal tragedy.
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  So this is what Spurgeon calls Gehazi ministry.
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  Yes, and this is a warning that should make every pastor and
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  every teacher tremble. Gahazi ministry is when you
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  deliver the message, but you are not involved in it.
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  You're just a Courier. You drop off the package.
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  It's the mailman approach to ministry.
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  Hey, I delivered a letter. It's not my fault if they don't
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  read it. Right.
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  Or it's the teacher who reads the curriculum word for word,
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  but has no heart for the students.
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  Imagine Gahazi. He walks in.
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  He's probably tired from running, maybe a little annoyed,
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  right? The Prophet sent me on this
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  errand, yeah. Maybe.
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  He checks his appearance. He walks over to the bed.
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  He places the stick. He waits a moment.
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  Nothing happens. He shrugs, picks up the stick
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  and leaves. There is no agony, There are no
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  tears. There is 0 personal investment.
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  It's just transactional. It's mechanical.
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  It is professional, and Spurgeon argues that you can teach the
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  most orthodox biblical Westminster Confession approved
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  theology, but if you lay it on a sinner's heart with a cold and
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  different hand, it will be like wood on flesh.
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  It might be true, but it won't be life giving.
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  You know, I wonder if Gehazi even thought it would work.
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  Spurgeon mentioned something about his belief, or lack
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  thereof. He does.
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  It's a key detail. When Gehazi reports back to
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  Elijah, he says the child is not awaked.
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  He used the word await. He thought the boy was sleeping.
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  He. Completely missed the diagnosis.
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  And because he missed the diagnosis because he didn't
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  realize the boy was actually dead, he didn't have the
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  urgency. He didn't have the desperation.
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  A low view of sin. Thinking people are just
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  sleeping or mistaken inevitably leads to cold, detached
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  ministry. If you don't think they're truly
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  drowning, you won't dive in, you'll just toss a stick from
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  the shore. So the staff fails, the
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  impersonal method fails, the remote work ministry fails.
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  Elisha realizes this. He knows he can't delegate this
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  miracle. He has to go himself.
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  And this leads us to segment 3, The Secret of power.
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  Because when Elisha walks into that room, everything changes.
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  He arrives at the house, he sees the commotion, he sees the
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  failure of his servant, and the text says He went in therefore,
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  and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord.
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  He shuts the door. He shuts the door.
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  Why is that detail the simple closing of a door?
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  It's so critical here. Privacy Solitude.
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  Spurgeon has this saying. Every true pulpit is set up in
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  heaven. He means the real work.
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  The work that has any power is done before you ever stand in
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  front of people. It's done in secret, behind the
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  closed door. Shutting the door upon them,
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  Twain so just him and the dead boy.
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  He individualizes the case. This is crucial.
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  We often pray in these huge generalities.
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  Lord save the world. Lord bless the youth group.
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  But Elijah locks himself in with this specific boy.
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  He is alone with the problem and with God, Spurgeon says.
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  We need to take specific sinners to God in private.
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  We need to name them. We need to look at their
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  specific condition, their specific death.
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  It's about. Intimacy isn't it?
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  It's cutting out all the distractions.
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  You're not performing for the grieving mother.
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  You're not trying to teach Ghazi a lesson.
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  It's just you, the corpse, and God.
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  And notice the nature of the prayer.
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  Scorchin describes it so vividly.
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  He doesn't say Elisha said a nice prayer.
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  He describes it as bombarding heaven.
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  Violent prayer. Kingdom violence, and this is a
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  very reformed idea. Prayer isn't just quiet
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  meditation. It is not just informing God of
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  the situation. Lord, in case you didn't get the
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  memo, the boy is dead. God knows prayer is laying hold
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  of God's promises. It is wrestling like Jacob with
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  the Angel. It is refusing to let go.
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  Spurgeon references Martin Luther in this section, right.
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  Yes, he does. He quotes Luther's famous cry of
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  Vici. I have conquered.
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  Luther was known to pray with a boldness that almost sounds
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  irreverent to our modern polite ears.
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  He would take God's promises and throw them down on the table, so
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  to speak, and say, You promised this, I am holding you to it.
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  That is what Elisha is doing behind that closed door.
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  He is battling for the soul of this child.
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  There's another symbol in this room that Spurgeon highlights.
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  And I think it's just it's so heavy, the bed.
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  The prophet's bed. The text says the dead child was
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  laid on Elisha's bed. Think about that for a moment.
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  The bed is the place of rest. It's where you go to recharge,
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  to find peace, to sleep. But here the place of rest has
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  been invaded by death. That's a powerful image.
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  Spurgeon says this is exactly how we must carry lost souls.
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  We must take them to our rest. They must become our midnight
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  anxieties. If you are a parent praying for
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  a wayward child or a pastor grieving over a cold hearted
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  flock, you know this feeling. You can't sleep because they are
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  on your heart. They're literally on your bed,
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  spiritually speaking. That goes against so much modern
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  advice about, you know, boundaries and self-care.
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  We're told to compartmentalize, leave work at work.
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  Don't carry that burden home. And there is wisdom and not
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  burning out. Of course, Spurgeon isn't
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  advocating for wrecking your health, but he would argue that
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  true soul winning requires a burden.
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  You have to carry the weight of their death if you want to see
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  them live. If you can sleep soundly while
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  your neighbors are perishing, you might be kahazi.
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  Elisha allowed the tragedy to invade his personal sanctuary.
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  That is the cost of power. So Elisha has prayed.
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  He shut the door. The atmosphere in that room was
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  being credibly heavy. But he doesn't stop with prayer.
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  He moves to action. And the action he takes is,
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  well, it's strange. Which brings us to segment 4,
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  the incarnational method. It's one of the strangest
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  miracles in scripture. I mean, if you walked in on this
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  scene, you would probably be horrified.
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  Elisha climbs up on the bed. He lies on top of the dead body.
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  Face to face. The text is incredibly specific.
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  He puts his mouth on the child's mouth, his eyes on the child's
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  eyes, his hands on the child's hands.
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  Total contact, total contact. There is no space between them.
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  OK so why? I mean God is sovereign.
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  He could have just sent a lightning bolt get a whisper to
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  word from across the the room. Why this uncomfortable physical
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  up close overlaying? Spurgeon calls this the
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  incarnational method. It answers the why God uses
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  human instruments to convey his life, and the mechanism is
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  sympathy. And by sympathy, you don't just
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  mean pity or feeling sorry for him.
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  No, not at all. It's sympathy in the almost in
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  the sense of physics, like resonance, transfer of energy.
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  Think about the physical reality.
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  Elisha is a living man He's warm.
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  The body is cold. By stretching himself over the
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  corpse, Elisha is physically transferring his own body heat
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  into the cold clay. He is sharing his life, Spurgeon
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  says We must feel the chill of the sinner's death.
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  You. Have to get close enough to get
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  cold. Exactly.
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  You can't stand at a safe distance and shout instructions.
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  That's the staff method. That's what the hazy did.
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  You have to get down into the death with them.
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  You have to feel the terror of their lost condition as if it
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  were your own. You have to shudder at the
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  judgement they're facing. You have to feel the coldness of
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  their heart against your own warm heart.
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  If you don't feel a chill, you can't transfer the warmth.
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  That's it, and there's a beautiful detail about the fit
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  here that Spurgeon picks up on. Elisha is a grown man.
• 17:47
  The boy is a child. Right logic would say a big
• 17:50
  object has to curl up to fit a small object it has to contract.
• 17:54
  But the the text says Elisha stretched himself upon the
• 17:57
  child. He's stretched.
• 17:59
  That's weird. It is weird, but Spurgeon turns
• 18:02
  this into a brilliant insight on teaching.
• 18:04
  He says it takes more ability for a wise man to reach a child
• 18:07
  than to speak to a peer. It requires your ripest powers
• 18:10
  to be simple. Oh, that is so true.
• 18:13
  It is easy to use jargon. It is easy to sound smart in a
• 18:17
  lecture hall with people who already know the terms, but it
• 18:20
  is incredibly hard to explain something like the Trinity to a
• 18:24
  six year old without committing heresy or just completely
• 18:28
  confusing them. That is the stretching.
• 18:30
  You have to stretch your patience.
• 18:32
  You have to stretch your vocabulary to make it
• 18:34
  accessible. You have to stretch your empathy
• 18:36
  to come down to their level. Look at the contact points
• 18:39
  again, eyes upon eyes. That means you have to see the
• 18:41
  world the way they see it. You have to try to understand
• 18:43
  their perspective, their fears, their small joys.
• 18:46
  Mouth upon mouth. You have to speak their
• 18:48
  language. You have to use illustrations
• 18:50
  they understand. You have to, in a sense, breathe
• 18:53
  your message into them in a way they can receive it.
• 18:55
  But hands upon hands. You have to understand their
• 18:57
  struggles. What are they trying to grasp?
• 18:59
  What temptations are they facing?
• 19:01
  You have to align your whole being with theirs.
• 19:03
  It is adaptation for the sake of salvation.
• 19:06
  It's Paul saying I have become all things to all men, that I
• 19:10
  might by all means save some. It's the gospel in miniature,
• 19:13
  really. Christ stretched himself out on
• 19:16
  the cross. He became man to save man.
• 19:18
  Exactly. Elisha is a type of Christ here,
• 19:22
  and as teachers or parents or friends, we follow that pattern.
• 19:25
  We Incarnate the truth. We don't just speak it from a
• 19:27
  distance, we embody it up close. Virgin has a quote in the in
• 19:31
  this section that I have highlighted in bold red in my
• 19:33
  notes. It is so intense, he says.
• 19:37
  I've often rammed my soul into the gun and fired my heart at
• 19:40
  the congregation. It's such a violent image, isn't
• 19:42
  it? Rammed my soul into the gun.
• 19:44
  It sounds painful. It implies that the preacher
• 19:46
  himself is the projectile. A lecturer fires information.
• 19:50
  Here are the facts. Take them or leave them.
• 19:53
  But a preacher, a true soul winner, fires himself.
• 19:57
  He pours his own emotion, his own conviction, his own very
• 20:00
  life into the message. He is the ammunition.
• 20:03
  And that explains why true ministry, this kind of ministry,
• 20:06
  is so unbelievably exhausting. Yes, if Elijah had just waved A
• 20:11
  wand, he wouldn't be tired. But he lay on a corpse.
• 20:15
  He gave his own warmth. He breathed his own breath.
• 20:18
  When you do that, virtue goes out of you, as it did with
• 20:20
  Jesus. If you finish a sermon or a
• 20:23
  Sunday school lesson and you are full of energy and ready to go
• 20:25
  run a marathon, you might have just been holding the staff.
• 20:29
  But if you are drained, if you feel like you've left a piece of
• 20:32
  yourself in that room, he might have been raising the dead.
• 20:35
  OK, so Elijah has stretched himself out, he has poured his
• 20:38
  life into this boy, he has transferred the warmth, and then
• 20:42
  something happens. But it's not the full miracle
• 20:45
  yet. And this brings us to Segment 5,
• 20:48
  perseverance. Right, the text says, the flesh
• 20:50
  of the child waxed warm. The body got warm.
• 20:53
  But notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say he woke up.
• 20:56
  It doesn't say he sat up or opened his eyes.
• 20:58
  He was just a warm corpse. I mean, honestly, in most modern
• 21:02
  churches, we would call that a massive victory.
• 21:04
  We'd stop right there. We would say, look, he's warm,
• 21:06
  he's emotional. He felt something during the
• 21:08
  worship song success. We would tweet about it
• 21:11
  immediately. Great move of the spirit today.
• 21:13
  Hashtag blessed. But Spurgeon warns us here, and
• 21:16
  it's a huge warning. Warmth is not life.
• 21:20
  This is such a critical distinction, especially in our
• 21:23
  culture that values experience and emotion so highly.
• 21:27
  Emotion is not regeneration. Tears are not salvation.
• 21:31
  Interest is not conversion. The danger, Spurgeon points out,
• 21:35
  is stopping too soon. We get satisfied with the
• 21:38
  symptoms of life rather than life itself.
• 21:41
  Yes, we see a student crying during a sad story about a
• 21:44
  missionary and we think, oh, they're saved.
• 21:47
  We see someone asking a few thoughtful questions after a
• 21:49
  service and we think job done, but if you stop there, the body
• 21:52
  just goes cold again. A corpse can be warmed by a fire
• 21:56
  or by another body, but take the heat source away and it returns
• 21:58
  to the temperature of the room. Warmth without life eventually
• 22:02
  fades back into death. That is a chilling thought.
• 22:05
  It is so look at what Elijah does.
• 22:07
  He doesn't high 5 himself. He doesn't open the door and
• 22:09
  tell the mother good news. We're making progress.
• 22:11
  He's warm. What does he do?
• 22:12
  He gets up and the text says he walked in the house to and fro.
• 22:16
  He's pacing. He is restless.
• 22:18
  Spurgeon calls this holy restlessness.
• 22:19
  He can't sit. He can't relax.
• 22:21
  He is agitated. This is the travail of the soul
• 22:24
  winner. It's like a woman in labor.
• 22:26
  He is groaning for the birth of this soul.
• 22:29
  Why the pacing though? Is it just anxiety?
• 22:32
  Is he worried it's not working? I think it's the anxiety of
• 22:34
  love. It's the tension of the almost
• 22:38
  He knows he is close, but death still has a grip.
• 22:42
  Spurgeon connects this to the Holy Spirit's intercession in
• 22:45
  Romans 8. The groanings which cannot be
• 22:47
  uttered. If you are a teacher and you see
• 22:50
  a student showing interest, showing that warmth, that
• 22:52
  shouldn't make you relax. It should make you pace.
• 22:54
  It should make you double down in prayer because the battle is
• 22:57
  at its peak. This is the moment when the soul
• 23:00
  hangs in the balance. You don't stop pedaling when
• 23:02
  you're halfway up the hill, you push harder.
• 23:04
  Exactly. So he paces, he gathers his
• 23:07
  strength, he agonizes in prayer again, and then he goes back.
• 23:11
  To the bed. He tries again.
• 23:12
  He stretches himself upon the child again.
• 23:15
  The lesson here is perseverance. What worked once is good to do
• 23:18
  again. He doesn't try a new technique.
• 23:20
  He doesn't say, well, the incarnational method only got me
• 23:23
  warmth. Let me try laser show or some
• 23:25
  smoke machines. No, he goes back to the basics.
• 23:28
  Prayer, contact, sympathy. He does it until the job is
• 23:32
  done. He refuses to let that warmth
• 23:34
  turn back into a chill. And then finally we get to the
• 23:39
  climax, the moment we've been building towards segment 6, The
• 23:43
  sneeze. The sneeze.
• 23:45
  The text says the child sneezed 7 times and the child opened his
• 23:48
  eyes. It's such a bizarre detail,
• 23:50
  isn't it? Of all the ways to signal a
• 23:52
  world altering miracle, a sneeze 7 of them.
• 23:56
  Why not a hymn? Why not a shout of Hallelujah?
• 23:58
  Why not have him sit up and recite the Shema?
• 24:00
  As Persian just loves this, he finds the humor in it, but he
• 24:03
  also drills down into the theology of it because the
• 24:05
  sneeze. Let's be honest, it's not
• 24:07
  dignified. It's messy, it's inarticulate,
• 24:09
  it's an unmusical, convulsive sound, but it is an absolutely
• 24:12
  sure sign of life. Yeah, dead men don't sneeze.
• 24:15
  That is the point. That is the entire point, and
• 24:18
  Spurgeon applies this so beautifully to the new convert.
• 24:21
  We often have these incredibly high expectations.
• 24:24
  We want new believers to sound like 40 year old Saints.
• 24:27
  We want them to articulate the gospel with perfect clarity.
• 24:30
  We want them to be doctors of divinity the moment they're born
• 24:34
  again. We want a.
• 24:34
  Polished speech of perfect testimony ready for YouTube.
• 24:38
  We want the cinema version, OK? But Spurgeon says no.
• 24:42
  Real life often starts with a sneeze.
• 24:44
  It starts with a messy, awkward, inarticulate noise that proves
• 24:48
  the lungs are working again. He interprets the sneeze as a
• 24:51
  clearing of the head. Yes, he says.
• 24:53
  The sneeze clears the passages of death.
• 24:56
  It represents the first violent expulsion of the old blockage,
• 24:59
  the old sickness. If there is a sense of sin,
• 25:01
  that's the head clearing and a look to Christ.
• 25:03
  That's the opening of the eyes. That is enough.
• 25:06
  That is life. It might be clumsy.
• 25:08
  It might be very clumsy. Their first prayer might be God
• 25:10
  help me, I'm a total mess. That's a sneeze.
• 25:13
  It's not poetry, it's not a theological treatise, but it is
• 25:16
  life. The theology of a sneeze.
• 25:18
  I think that is so freeing for parents especially, and for
• 25:21
  teachers. We watch our kids for these big
• 25:24
  dramatic moments, and we might be missing the little sneezes
• 25:26
  all along. We despise the day of small
• 25:29
  beginnings, don't we? But Elijah didn't, and you have
• 25:31
  to contrast him with Gehazi again.
• 25:33
  If Gehazi had been there, he might have said, EW, he sneezed.
• 25:36
  That's gross, or that's not very holy sounding.
• 25:40
  But the Prophet rejoiced. Why?
• 25:42
  Because the Prophet knew what death looked like.
• 25:45
  He knew that silence and coldness were the enemy.
• 25:47
  So he celebrated the first awkward noise of life.
• 25:51
  And after the sneeze, the eyes open.
• 25:53
  The child sees and Spursion has this tender line where he says
• 25:56
  any eye that God opens is a beautiful eye to the teacher.
• 26:00
  The joy of seeing spiritual perception return to a blind
• 26:02
  soul. There's nothing like it.
• 26:04
  It is the reward for the pacing. It is the reward for feeling the
• 26:07
  coldness. It is the reward for all the
• 26:09
  stretching. The corpse becomes a sun again.
• 26:11
  And the mother gets her child back.
• 26:13
  That is the end result of regeneration.
• 26:15
  It restores the broken relationship.
• 26:17
  Now we are nearing the end of our time, but we cannot leave
• 26:20
  without hitting the final segment.
• 26:22
  Because Spurgeon, true to form, doesn't just give us a happy
• 26:25
  ending and send us on our way. He pivots to a warning, a very
• 26:29
  solemn check of the heart. Segment 7.
• 26:32
  The warning. He turns the spotlight from the
• 26:35
  child and from Elisha back to the one who's reading back to
• 26:38
  the teacher. And he asked the question, is
• 26:42
  there a Gehazi listening? And we talked about Gehazi
• 26:44
  earlier as the detached servant, but here the definition gets
• 26:48
  much, much darker. It does.
• 26:50
  A gehazi, in this final context is a teacher, a preacher or a
• 26:54
  parent who carries the staff. They have the Bible, they know
• 26:57
  the right words, they have the external form of religion, but
• 27:00
  they are dead themselves. A dead soul trying to raise a
• 27:02
  dead soul. Persian says it is a spiritual
• 27:04
  impossibility and he uses this chilling image.
• 27:07
  He says 1 corpse cannot warm another.
• 27:10
  Wow. He uses the analogy of a
• 27:12
  frostbitten mother. Imagine a mother out in a
• 27:14
  Blizzard, freezing to death, holding her baby and trying to
• 27:16
  keep it warm against her chest. She can't do it.
• 27:18
  She has no heat to give. She will only make the child
• 27:21
  freeze faster. That is a terrifying image for
• 27:24
  anyone in a position of spiritual leadership.
• 27:27
  It's meant to be. He is saying that if you are
• 27:30
  spiritually cold, if you don't know the Lord yourself, or if
• 27:34
  you're a believer who has let your own fire go out, you cannot
• 27:38
  be an instrument of grace. You can educate, yes.
• 27:41
  You can make people more moral, yes.
• 27:43
  You can build a big church or a big youth group, yes.
• 27:46
  But you cannot be a channel of life.
• 27:48
  You cannot give what you do not possess.
• 27:51
  Right. You can lay the staff, you can
• 27:52
  run the programs, you can do all the external things perfectly,
• 27:55
  but the child will not wake up. So the call here is really to
• 27:59
  look in the mirror before we try to fix anyone else, before we
• 28:02
  try to raise anyone else's kids. It is the ultimate priority.
• 28:05
  Before you try to save your Sunday school class, ask
• 28:08
  yourself, do I have the life? Am I Elisha, warm with the love
• 28:12
  of God? Or am I Ghazi just holding a
• 28:14
  wooden stick? It's a call to be born again
• 28:16
  yourself, or if you are a believer, it is a call to return
• 28:20
  to the source of heat. You must stay near the fire if
• 28:22
  you want to book any warmth to the cold.
• 28:24
  It's a sobering place to land, but a very necessary one.
• 28:28
  We can't just assume that because we're in the ministry or
• 28:31
  doing Christian things that we are effective instruments.
• 28:35
  Amen. The instrument must be tempered,
• 28:37
  the vessel must be clean. The teacher must be alive.
• 28:41
  So we've covered a massive amount of ground today.
• 28:43
  Let's try to synthesize this. If we were to write down the
• 28:47
  Elisha method or maybe the Spurgeon method of resurrection,
• 28:51
  what are the key takeaways? I think it boils down to 5 or 6
• 28:56
  key movements. First, realize the condition.
• 28:59
  Don't lie to yourself. The problem is death, not sleep.
• 29:02
  If you get the diagnosis wrong, the cure will fail.
• 29:04
  OK. That's number one. 2nd reject
• 29:06
  the impersonal. Don't be a Ghazi.
• 29:08
  Don't just rely on the staff of dry doctrine or delegated duty.
• 29:11
  Get involved personally. 3rd Prioritize privacy.
• 29:14
  Shut the door. The real battle is 1 in secret
• 29:16
  prayer, not in public performance.
• 29:18
  The secret? Work.
• 29:19
  Got it. 4th adapt with sympathy. You have to stretch yourself,
• 29:22
  Incarnate the message. Feel the cold to transfer the
• 29:25
  warmth. 5th persevere. Don't stop at warmth.
• 29:30
  Don't settle for emotion. Pace the floor until there's
• 29:33
  actual life. Don't give up too early.
• 29:35
  And finally, watch for the sneeze.
• 29:38
  Learn to celebrate the first clumsy, awkward signs of grace.
• 29:41
  That is a powerful road map. It really reframes the whole
• 29:44
  task of evangelism and teaching. It takes the pressure off being
• 29:48
  smart or being charismatic and puts the pressure back on being
• 29:51
  faithful and being prayerful. It reminds us that salvation is
• 29:54
  of the Lord. He uses us, He stretches us, but
• 29:57
  ultimately he is the one who calls the dead to life.
• 29:59
  We are just the vessel. We're the warmth, but He's the
• 30:02
  fire. I want to leave you, the
• 30:03
  listener, with this final thought to chew on as you go
• 30:06
  about your week. We live in an age that loves
• 30:09
  high production value. We love the staff, the polished
• 30:12
  video, the perfect lighting, the viral testimony.
• 30:15
  We want the cinema version of Christianity.
• 30:18
  But Spurgeon suggests that the greatest miracle might just be a
• 30:21
  sneeze, the first clumsy, inarticulate breath of a soul
• 30:25
  waking up to God. So my question to you is this.
• 30:28
  Are you watching for the sneezes?
• 30:30
  Or are you missing the miracle because you were too busy
• 30:33
  looking for a polished speech? Are you willing to get close
• 30:36
  enough to the dead? Close enough to feel the chill
• 30:39
  so that you can be there to hear that first messy breath of life.
• 30:43
  And remember, the power to raise the dead does not lie in the
• 30:45
  prophet, nor in the prayer, but in the God who hears the prayer.
• 30:49
  May His sovereign grace be upon you and your laborers this week.
• 30:52
  Thanks for listening to this deep dive into reformed
• 30:54
  thinking. We will see you next time.