A
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2. Kings, iv. 26.
And she answered, It is well.
Short words, soon spoken; but to have a suitableness of heart to them is one of the highest attainments of faith. To be sure, “It is well;” we think so, when all things go according to our wish; when there is nothing in Providence that crosses our desires, that thwarts our designs, that sinks our hopes, or awakens our fears; Submission is easy work then; but to have all things seemingly against us, to have God smiting in the tenderest part, unravelling all our schemes, contradicting our desires, and standing aloof from our very prayers; how do our souls behave then? This is the true touchstone of our sincerity and submission; “Here,” as it is said, Rev. xiii. 10, “is the patience and faith of the saints;” this shews what they are made of, what they are within; but instances there are many in the book of God, wherein we find this sweet frame prevailing, as Abraham, Job, David, and the Shulamite in my text, than whose story we meet with few things in Providence more affecting. If you look back a little, you may see what were her circumstances, and those of her family. She was a “great woman,” says verse 8, and that she was a “good woman,” the whole context shews, her husband and she wanted but one thing to make them as happy as the vanity and uncertainty of all human affairs would admit of. They had enough of the world, and they seem to have had the enjoyment of it; for when Elisha, to requite her kindness, asks; “What shall be done for thee? Wouldst thou be spoken for to the king? &c.” she answers, “No, I dwell among mine own people,” “I seek nothing greater than what I have:” only (as Gehazie learned from her) they wanted a child to comfort them now, and to inherit what they had when they were gone. God in a miraculous way, gives this request. This child grows up, and was no doubt the delight of its parents. Just at the time of life when children are most engaging, before they are capable of doing any great thing to grieve their parents, God lays his hand suddenly upon him and takes him away. The dearest comforts are but short lived, and the dearer they are when living, the deeper they cut when they are removed. Many of you can judge what the loss of a son, an only son, must be, and when there is no hope of a Seth instead of Abel. But, behold, “he taketh away, and who shall hinder him?” Well: What does the mother do now? One would think all her hope is cut off, and all her comfort dried up: No, it is far otherwise. The same power that gave him could also raise him; in faith of this, she lays him upon the prophet’s bed, and makes all the haste to him she could. She concealing what had happened (as it is probable) from her husband, he objects to her going to the prophet, ver. 23, “Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day? It is neither new-moon nor Sabbath.” And she said, “It shall be well.” Faith sets aside every obstacle: “It shall be well: the end will be peace;” “God is with me, and he will make all things work together for good.” Commentators, in general, make very light of this, and her answer to Elisha’s message in my text. Some suppose she has a reserve in her breast, when Gehazi asks after her family, that this “well” only refers to her husband and herself. Others think it is but a transition to something farther, which she was in haste to say; as if she had said, “All is well do not hinder me, I have urgent business with your master Elisha, and cannot stay to talk farther with you upon any matters.” This is the sense which most annotators incline to, which, I confess, I the more wonder at, because all agree, that the apostle’s words in part refer to this story, Heb. xi. 35. “Women received their dead raised to life again.” How they received them is there specified; namely, by or “through faith.” Faith, not as some carry it, in the prophet, but in the persons who had their dead restored to them; or else there would have been no need to make mention of any by name. Now wherein this woman’s faith appeared, my text and context make manifest. Here was a dependance upon God’s promise, an abiding by that, God had promised her a son; a son, not to lose him but to have comfort in him; and, as if she had said, “As for God, his work is perfect, he does not use to raise his people’s expectations for nothing; to give and immediately take away again. My son is dead, but God, all sufficient liveth; why should I mourn as though I had no hope? As for God’s power and faithfulness there is no abatement in them.” Therefore, she makes no preparation for his burial tells her husband nothing of his death, but seeks to God by the prophet, and expects help from him, See how she expresses herself: “Is it well with thee?” (and says Gehazzi,) “Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child?” and she answered, “It is well”. Here is the greatest submission in the greatest distress: Her son, her only son, the son of all her love, the son of her old age, he is taken away with a stroke, and yet all is well. There is nothing amiss in the dispensation; had she been to choose it, it is well; she has nothing to object. Here are submission and faith both discovered in their sweet exercise; submission to what God hath done; faith in what he is able to do, and in what she believed he would do: “By faith women received their dead raised to life again;” so that the words, thus explained, afford us this plain and useful observation.
Observ. Faith in God’s promise and power will bring a man to submit to the sorest and most trying dispensations of his Providence; or thus,
Faith where it is in exercise, will teach a Christian to say of all God does, “It is well.”
In discoursing on this proposition, I will endeavour to show what submission is, or how and in what sense we are to understand the expression in my text, “It is well.”
This “well” dost not suppose there is nothing in providential dispensations, which to flesh and sense appears evil. Submission quiets under an affliction, but it does not take away our sense and feeling of the affliction. The apostle speaks what is every believer’s experience, Heb. xii. 11. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.” Whatever be spoken of the good of it, it presents itself unto us with a very different face; it is matter of present grief and sorrow to them that are chastised; nor are we blamed for our feeling and sense of it. Our blessed Lord himself wept at the grave of his dear friend, John xi. 35. And at the approach of his last sufferings, “his soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” Matt. xxvi. 38. “yet he was led as a lamb to the slaughter; he opened not his mouth”: there was patience and quiet submission under all his sorrows, while nature had some vent; for groans are sometimes an easement to our grief. Thus it is said of the good woman, “that her soul was bitter within her,” ver. 27. Elisha saw her agony in her looks, though he knew not the cause of it; and yet “All is well.” When Job lost his substance and his children, and was smitten in his body with sore boils; when Heman, and when the church in the Lamentations were deprived of the consolations from God, when the Comforter, who would relieve their souls, was far from them; when David also was cursed by Shimei, and turned out of doors by his own son; can you think that in all these there was no feeling? Had there been none, there could have been no profit by any of the dispensations. Unless we realize our trials indeed, what are we the better for them? This would be to despise the chastening of the Lord, to be above correction, to be smitten and not grieve, is one of God’s sorest judgments, and always argues a soul ripe for ruin: this “well” does not suppose us insensible of the evil of afflicting.