Last summer I went to Michigan to preach a funeral. My brother-in-law’s mom had died, and my brother-in-law called me right as I was getting ready to leave Louisville to come to Tennessee, asking me if I would preach her funeral. I agreed, and so instead of coming home, I just turned around on I-65 and headed north. After getting turned around and getting on my way, however, I began to feel anxious. I mean, I knew a lot of my sister’s in-laws but actually didn’t know her mother-in-law that well, and now I was expected to preach her funeral. I thought about the irony that I would know her less than anyone in the room, and I was the one who was supposed to talk about her.
As feelings of anxiety would creep over me, I assured myself that the most important thing was that I preach the gospel, and I know that message well. After all, that’s why they were asking me to preach. They could have found a number of people who knew Martha better than me, but I had gotten the call so that I might preach the gospel. Nonetheless, I wanted to be able to say something about her life, some characteristics she displayed that were worth modeling, something like that. But I wasn’t sure what would be the most natural way of finding out these things. So I just prayed, and when I arrived at the house I sat down with the family and anxiously sat through a few conversations about my family, theirs, the weather, and a number of other things you typically discuss when making small talk.
But as the evening wore on, something glorious happened. My brother-in-law’s family began telling stories. They laughed about how Martha hated going over bridges but told stories of how she suffered through it to see her grandkids’ sporting events because she refused to miss any of them. They joked about when she would give the kids money for certain accomplishments while trying to keep it from their parents. They even told stories about how she’d be the first one to some event her kids or grandkids were in just because she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss it. And these kinds of stories went on for over an hour. So, when they finally got around to asking me if there was anything I needed to know about Martha, I said, “No, I think I’ve already got a pretty good picture of what she was about.”
You see, sometimes people don’t have to say, “Here’s what so and so is like” for you to get a good picture of who they are; you just need to hear stories of what they’ve done in their lives. For out of the heart the mouth speaks, and no doubt out of our hearts our hands and feet move. Stories about what someone has done and said gives us perhaps the clearest glimpse of what they’ve about, who they are.
Thankfully, then, when we come to 2 Kings 2:1-8:6, we find that these chapters are full of stories. Some stories stretch out over an entire chapter while others take up only a few verses. And all of them involve Elisha in some sense. In fact, in a book where Israel’s history is told through its kings (1-2 Kings) these chapters do not trace the reign of any king, and hardly a king is present in these stories. It’s as if the author forgot what he was doing and got caught up on something else. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Nor, perhaps surprisingly, do I think the author’s intention is to tell us a whole lot about Elisha here. Yes, he is mentioned throughout these episodes, but I think his role is as that of a supporting actor. I think the main character we’re to see in these stories is God. That is, these are stories about what God has done in Israel’s history. Yes, they are about what God did though Elisha, but they are about what God did through Elisha. Therefore, as we walk through these six-plus chapters this morning, I want to show you what I think these stories tell us about our God.
The first is that God himself is our greatest need.
Chapter 2 begins with Elijah getting ready to be taken to heaven by the Lord. And the scene is an interesting one. Elisha is following him, and not looking forward to his leaving. In fact, Elijah says to him, “Do you know that today the LORD will take your master from over you?” and Elisha responds, “Yes, I know it; keep quiet” (2:3). This is not something Elisha is delighted about, and it’s not something that he wants to talk about. In fact, he doesn’t want Elijah to get out of his sight. So, every once in a while on their journey when Elijah tells him to stay behind, Elisha responds by telling him, “I will not leave.”
This episode is repeated a few times with Elisha saying he doesn’t want to talk about Elijah leaving and proclaiming his refusal to stay behind when finally Elijah takes his cloak, touches the Jordan, and the water separates. Then, he asks Elisha what he wants when Elijah leaves. Elisha answers that he wants “a double portion” of the Elijah’s spirit on him. Interestingly, Elijah answers that this will happen as long as Elijah witnesses him being taken away. Then, about that time “chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven” (2:11), and Elisha saw it but then saw Elisha no more. Then, when Elisha comes back, he takes Elijah’s cloak, strikes the Jordan, and the water separates, just as it had done for Elijah. Thus, those prophets who had watched this event unfold conclude, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elijah” and they come and bow down before Elisha (2:15). Then, they run off to find Elijah’s body, though Elisha tells them not to, and when they are unsuccessful, Elisha gives them somewhat of an I-told-you-so, and so we have the transition from Elijah to Elisha.
But what does the author want us to see in this text? Well, in order to understand that, I think we need to consider anxiety of this time. At this time in Israel’s history, this was a kingdom full of Baal worship, and those in charge had led out in this. But Elijah had stood on the side of those who were faithful to Yahweh. He had stood between them and any threat from those following Baal. And he had done it quite well, killing multitudes of Baal prophets after the showdown on Mt. Carmel. No doubt the people thought, “We’re fine as long as Elijah is with us.” But now Elijah was about to be gone. What was their hope? Who would protect them? Who would fight their battles?
Well, it seems that they get their answer when Elisha returns and performs the same miracle as Elijah, parting the Jordan. Perhaps we feel a sense of relief for them when we read this, thinking, “Whew, Elisha can now be their savior.” But I don’t think that is the thought we’re supposed to have. Look specifically at what Elisha says before striking the Jordan. He says, “Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” (2:14). That is, he wanted the onlookers to know that the issue wasn’t that Elisha was now here to replace Elijah but that Elijah’s God was still present, now allowing his Spirit to rest on Elisha as he had with Elijah. That is, we’re supposed to see that God’s power was not limited to Elijah. Elijah was never to be the permanent solution for Israel’s struggles. God was to be their continual hope.
And this is a good reminder to us that our greatest need is not any certain individual but God himself. This means, then, that the greatest thing we can do for others is to point them to Christ. And though that sounds obvious and perhaps like a cliché, we all no doubt face the temptation to want others to exalt us. There can be a temptation to want people to exalt you more than for people to exalt Christ. Even in Christian circles, we can long not just for Christ to be exalted but for us to be known and exalted as the one who exalts Christ. But you and I are not everyone’s greatest need. Christ is. So, we must constantly point them to his sufficiency, to what he has done, to a relationship with him.
Dale Ralph Davis has noted that when John Calvin died he did not want any kind of special celebration. He didn’t even want a tombstone. Therefore, after he was buried, some students came to visit his gravesite, but it couldn’t be identified among the fresh graves.1 This man had the status so many of us are tempted to chase, but he knew at the end of the day, you do man no favor to focus their attention on you when what they so desperately need is the God you serve.
On Monday, I was reading this week’s sermon text and praying through the prayer list from Sunday night in my living room when Michael walked downstairs. He and I were the only ones awake, and so he sat there on the couch for a few minutes in silence. Then, he asked me what I was doing. I told him. He sat in silence. Then, after doing a bit of math, he suggested that I pray through one-seventh of the prayer list so that I could pray through it every day before getting a new one on Sunday. I told him that was a good idea and praised him for his math skills. Then, there was more silence. Finally, he stood up, walked over and picked up another Bible from a nearby end table, and started reading. I directed him to the passage I was reading, and he sat there quietly reading the Bible as I did. And as he did, my heart rejoiced because I thought to myself, “As important of a role as I play in his life right now, he will need that book more, and he will need the God who has revealed himself in that book more than he needs me.” And I prayed, “God, please, let him adore Christ more than he adores me. Let him trust Christ’s words more than he trusts mine. Let him be willing to obey Christ even should I ever desire something different for him.”
You see, someday, I’ll be gone. It could happen soon, I don’t know. But I do know that my children need something more deeply than they need anyone in the world. They need Christ, to know him and love him. And if they have him, they will have what they most desperately need. I think that’s what this first episode in our text teaches us. The people needed God. He had been their constant. He graciously uses different people through whom he works. He had used Elijah, and now he was going to use Elisha. But he was the constant. I can point to most every significant point of growth in my own life and identify it with the people who were around me in those moments. But the constant with each of them is that they pointed me to Christ. Now, many of those people are no longer major factors in my life, but the God they loved and served is, and I’m thankful that they were wise enough to know not to point me to them but to the God they served, the God who is my greatest need and yours.
Therefore, the first thing we see in the text concerning our God is that he is our greatest need. And we quickly see why that is in 2:19-25, for there we see that God is the one who redeems and who judges.
One key reminder of why God is our greatest need is found in 2:19-25. These verses remind us that God is the one who redeems and judges. First, we see God’s redemption. In verses 19-22 we read of a story that takes place in Jericho. There, the water was bad. It’s hard to discern from the text itself whether it was producing things like miscarriage or just making it hard on the land (there are some translation issues here). Either way, when Elisha gets word of it, he throws salt in the water, and all is well. We read, “Thus says the Lord, I have healed this water; from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it” (2:21).
That’s a pretty simple story, but what we might forget is that this city had been cursed. Remember a few weeks back when we made reference to the fact that Joshua had cursed anyone who rebuilt the city and then read that someone had rebuilt it at the cost of his firstborn and youngest sons? Is this a key for this story? Perhaps not. But it is a reminder to us of the fact that God redeems even those things which were at one time under his curse. And we rejoice in that, for we all were born into this world by our very nature children of wrath.
The second story, then is one where Elisha goes to Bethel, some boys come out and yell, “God up, you baldhead!”, and he calls bears out of the woods to maul them. It’s an odd story to say the least. And it perhaps feels a bit like a testy old man abusing his power a bit. Is Elisha really that sensitive about his hairline?
Well, it might help to note that these boys were probably among those who were worshippers of Baal, and by yelling “Go up, you baldhead,” they were probably telling Elisha that he was not wanted in the area. That is, they were rejecting Elisha and the God he worshipped. Therefore, I think this is quite similar to Elijah having the prophets killed on Mt. Carmel. It is a reminder that God will judge those who will not bow the knee to him.
Therefore, we are reminded at the end of chapter 2 that our God is the one who redeems and who judges. And that ultimately is the reason why he is our greatest need. For the greatest need we have is redemption and the greatest tragedy anyone faces is being judged in their sins. Therefore, my prayer for those who do not know Christ here is that they might bow to him today and flee from the wrath to come. And for those who do know Christ, brothers and sisters, my prayer is that we might live our lives making clear that our greatest obsession in life is the one who has redeemed us from sin and death.
So, we’re reminded from this first chapter in our text that God is our greatest need and are reminded why we need him so desperately – he is the one who redeems and judges. But there are two other aspects of God’s ways that I want us to see in the remaining chapters. And the first is that God delights in lavishing his grace upon his people.
The rest of these chapters tell again and again of ways that God lavishes grace on people. Bob noted the imagery last week of God’s blessing being symbolized in the oil used to consecrate Aaron, how it ran down his beard and onto his clothes. That is, God didn’t symbolize his blessing with a teaspoon of oil poured on Aaron so that it left a portion of his hair damp. He dumped it on him. That’s the same picture of God’s grace we see in these remaining chapters.
First, in chapter 3 we read that Mesha, king of Moab decides that he doesn’t want to provide anymore lambs or oil for the king of Israel, so he decides to revolt. Therefore, Jehoram, king of Israel, gets Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and the king of Edom, and they go off to make war with him. The problem is, they make a long march and come to a place where there is no water for them or their animals. It looks like it’s going to be a bad ending for these men before they even have a chance to draw their swords. But then they make contact with Elisha, and though he tells Jehoram that he would do nothing for him (as he is among those worshipping Baal), he will help for Jehoshaphat’s sake. So, he says, “You shall not see wind or rain, but that streambed shall be filled with water, so that you shall drink, you, your livestock, and your animals” (3:17). But then he continues, “This is a light thing in the sight of the LORD. He will also give the Moabites into your hand” (3:18). And sure enough, they go and defeat the Moabites until the king of Moab sacrifices his own son, and then wrath comes upon the Israelites so that they leave (v. 27 could mean either wrath came upon Israel so that their anger led them to turn away or that wrath came against them in the form of the Moabite army – either is a possible understanding of this verse).
But do you see the point? Elisha says, it’s too light a thing for God to just give you water. He wants to do more. He’ll also let you defeat the Moabites. And that continues. In 4:1-7, a lady is about to lose her sons to slavery. She owes money, her husband has died and she can’t pay it, and the creditor is threatening to take her sons as his slaves. So, she asks Elisha to help. He takes the only thing she has – a jar of oil – and has her gather many more vessels, pouring the oil into each vessel. Miraculously, all the vessels fill up, and only then does the oil run out. So, Elisha says to her, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your sons can live on the rest” (4:7). Therefore, God not only spares her sons but provides for her a resource by which to make a living. He is doing more than she even asked.
And this continues. In 4:42-44, a man brings Elisha some loaves of barley as an offering to him, and Elisha multiplies it so that a hundred men eat and have leftovers. In 6:1-7, God graciously allows Elisha to recover a man’s axe head that he had borrowed and then lost it in a pool of water but making the axe head float. In 6:8-23, the Lord surrounds Israel with some sort of angelic soldiers and allows Elisha to lead the Syrians away from their attack on Israel. Even here, the Lord could simply have led the Syrians away (as he ultimately did), but he also showed his constant protection by opening the eyes of Elisha’s servant to see the Lord’s constant protection (6:15-17). And, finally, in 8:1-6, Elisha warns a lady about a famine coming so that she is able to leave, and when she comes back the Lord orchestrates it so that the king is just happens to be asking Elisha’s servant about what Elisha had done for her when that very woman walks in. Thus, the king is moved to give her everything back that she had left. Was it not enough that he let her avoid the famine? Apparently not. God also wanted to restore to her everything she’d left behind.
Over and over in this text, we read of the Lord delighting in pouring out his grace. Sometimes doing things that seem so trivial, like recovering a borrowed axe head that was lost, and sometimes doing things above and beyond what was requested – like giving water and allowing victory over the Moabites, sparing the woman’s sons and providing them a source of continual income, or sparing the woman from the famine and deciding to restore everything she’d left behind.
This is the God we serve. But don’t we sometimes live with the idea that God is stingy? Do we not sometimes pray as if we’re trying to wrestle something from the Lord’s hands? Don’t we sometimes think that God finds little if any delight in blessing us? We even treat his forgiveness at times as if he would rather withhold it from us, don’t we? Well, that is not the picture of God from the Scriptures.
This is a God who pursues you with mercy and goodness. He is a God who says, “It is too little for me to do only what you ask, I will do more.” He is a God who withholds no good thing from you. And what’s more, he wants you to know that you don’t earn his gifts. In chapter 5, the Lord decides to heal Naaman of leprosy. Now, Naaman was most undeserving. Even when Elisha sent word to him telling him how to be healed (by washing in the Jordan seven times), he was actually angry, thinking he deserved something better. Nonetheless, he ultimately was talked into it by his servant, and he was indeed healed. Then, the story gets interesting, however. Naaman wants to give a present for the blessing he’s received, but Elisha refuses. But Elisha’s servant sees a time to capitalize, so he runs on ahead and says, on second thought, they would like a talent of silver and some garments. But when Elisa found out about it, he said that Gehazi would now have leprosy, and he did.
Now, why would God do that? It’s because he wanted Naaman (and us) to know that his grace is not dependent on anything we can do or give. You see, so many times the reason we believe that God wants to withhold good things from us is because we’re convinced we don’t deserve it. Well, the reality is, we’re right in saying we don’t deserve it. We’ve not merited anything ourselves but judgment. You’ve deserved nothing good that you’ve gotten from God, and you never will. But Christ lived for us, died for us, was raised for us, and intercedes at the right hand of God for us. That’s why we receive good from God’s hands. We gain from his reward.
So, remove from your mind some vision you may hold of a stingy God who withholds good from you because you don’t deserve it and pray that God will allow you to behold him for who he is – a God who graciously gives good gifts to those who do not deserve his goodness but who are united with one who deserves everything good – Jesus, the Christ.
Our God is one who cares about the recovery of lost axe heads that you’ve borrowed, who cares about the immediate and long term need you have, who hears your requests and says, “That is too light a thing; I will do more.” That is our God. Most of all, he is a God who delights in forgiving your sins and remembering them no more, a God who refuses to see you as good and rather declares you perfectly righteous in his Son. That is our God.
Yet, lest we think that 2 Kings 2:1-8:6 simply provides us of happy scenes that do not seem to gel with our lives which are often full of tragedy, this section also reminds us that we live in a world of great tragedy.
Two texts we’ve failed to look at in our section are 4:8-37 and 6:24-7:20, and both of these texts tell the story of great suffering. The first concerns the Shunammite woman who decides that she wants to be good to Elisha. She feeds him when he comes through town and even sets up a small room for him on the roof. So, Elisha decides he wants the bless her. The problem is, she seems to have everything she needs. But there is one thing she doesn’t have – a son. So, Elisha tells her she’ll conceive, and she bears a son.
It’s a great story. The problem is, when the child grows up, he ends up dying. Now, I’ve never gone through that, and I can’t imagine the heartache of having a child that you’ve grown to know and love and walk through life with dying. What a tragedy. So, she sets out and finds Elisha, who ultimately comes back to the house and raises the child from the dead.
Now, we might be tempted to say, “See, he raised him. This isn’t a tragedy.” But to say such a thing seems to suggest that we do not think this story is real. Haven’t you gone through great tragedy that turned out okay? The ending did not mean that there wasn’t great suffering. Walking through seven miscarriages before finally conceiving and giving birth to a healthy child doesn’t all of the sudden make the pain you felt for years somehow not real. Getting married doesn’t somehow make the loneliness and heartache you may have battled for years not real. It is real. But the tragedy gets even worse in this second story.
In 6:24-7:20, we read that the king of Syria laid siege to Samaria so that the people inside can get nothing. So, they begin starving. Even terrible things that hardly would have been recognized as food begin selling for outrageous amount of money as the people grow more and more desperate. And, it seems from the story that Elisha’s word to the king had probably been something like, “Wait for the Lord’s deliverance. He will deliver.” But one day the king is walking around the city when a lady cries out that she has a complaint. The king asks what it is, and he was not prepared for the answer. The lady goes on to say that she and another lady had grown so hungry that they’d agreed to boil their sons and eat them. So, the first lady had boiled her son, and they’d eaten him. But now that it was time for the other lady’s son to be boiled and eaten, she’d hidden him. Talk about a desperate and tragic scene. It almost makes me sick at my stomach even to retell that story. And the king obviously felt the same way because when he gets news of this, he decides that he’s had enough. He’s tired of waiting, and Elisha is going to pay for it with his life.
The only problem is, Elisha knows he’s coming and bars the door. The king nor his servants can touch him. However, Elijah bears good news. Tomorrow, the siege would be over. Sure enough, a few lepers from Samaria decide that they might as well die at the hands of the Syrians rather than starving to death, so they head out to their camp. But when they get there, the Syrians had gone. The Lord had made it so that they had thought they heard an army coming and convinced themselves that the Israelites had hired an army to come and take them out. So, they’d fled. The lepers then come back to Israel, tell the people, and they go out and plunder goods from the Syrians’ camp. All is well.
But it’s hard to miss that things got so bad that a woman had decided that it was best to boil and eat her son. And don’t tell her that this wasn’t a great tragedy because the Syrians had miraculously fled. It was tragic.
And so we have great tragedy in our own lives, as we dwell in a fallen world. But what we need to realize is that the greatest tragedy is that we’re not mere spectators in this world of sin and death. Just like the mom in this story who was more indignant that her neighbor had lied than that she had boiled and eaten her own son, so we are often blinded to our own sins in the midst of this world.
So, how do we respond to great tragedy in our lives, even tragedy which we’ve contributed to with our own sin. I think the answer is that we remember the previous point, namely, that God is one who delights in lavishing his grace upon us. And the reason God can lavish his grace on us is because Christ has lived, died, and been raised for us. You see, there was another group of individuals who witnessed a great tragedy a number of years ago. They were following a man they thought was the Christ, when he was taken by Roman authorities and crucified on a cross. A mother had to watch her son beaten and suffocate in his own blood, publicly exposed and mocked before all. If his followers had the courage to stop it, they no doubt would have tried. But they didn’t, so they just fled away. It was a terrible scene. But what they didn’t understand was that this tragedy was means God was using to bring them forgiveness. Jesus was dying to pay for the sins of those who believe in him. He was actually bearing the penalty for sin so that his followers wouldn’t have to. He was bearing God’s wrath for us. And on the third day after he died, God gloriously raised him from the dead so that we might believe in him, have forgiveness of our sins, and be raised one day never to die. That is the God we serve, one who has demonstrated his love to us in such a clear way that it cannot be doubted.
So, turn to him. Run to him this morning. He is your greatest need. He is your redeemer. He delights in withholding no good gift from you and even taking your mistakes and outright sins and working them for your good. So, do not allow that which you do not understand to drive you from him but to lead you to fall down before him. Lament to him, ache before him, and trust him. Let this Easter Sunday in which we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord be a clear reminder of what cannot be doubted – God loves you more than anyone loves you. He demonstrated that in sending your own son. And though you might not understand why certain tragedies have happened in life, perhaps it is hidden from you, you can know that the God who spared not his Son for you loves you. Run to him this morning. Fall before him this morning, and cling to him as if he is your greatest need and freely gives himself to you – for he is and he does. Amen.