Committed Down To My Bones Series

Scripture: 2 Kings 13:20-21

Theme: Victorious Life

Title: Committed down to My Bones

This story focuses on the life of Elisha – a man who was completely surrendered to the LORD and who wanted to receive all that the LORD would give him.

INTRO:

Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Most of us have been to a few funerals and we have on occasion seen some interesting things happen at them.

+There is a famous story of a man proposing to his future wife at her mother’s funeral. The young man seeing the woman he loved having to deal with so much loss and feeling alone, he leaned over to her and asked her to marry him. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with two very different emotions; the loss of her mother and the joy of being engaged.

Now, that doesn’t happen at every funeral, does it?

+Then there is the story of a man named Tim who died at the early age of 40. Everyone was more than surprised to see that instead of having a casket at the front of the church, Tim had chosen instead to be laid out on a bed in his pajamas.

Now, again, that is something you don’t see very often.

+And of course, there have been other odd things that have happen at funerals.

-People being so upset that they punched the person lying in the casket or someone in the funeral party.

-Funeral homes losing both the body and the casket or else putting the wrong person in the wrong casket.

-People trying to walk around an open grave only to fall into the open grave. That has happened to not only family members, pall bearers but ministers and funeral directors.

In our passage this morning, we read about something unusual happening during a funeral.

Everything was going quite well. The body of the dead man had been washed and wrapped in a cloth. At that time, wooden caskets were not used. People were washed, wrapped in strips of cloth and placed either in the ground or in some type of tomb.

While the man’s friends and family were carrying his body to be buried they suddenly heard a renegade army of Moabites coming towards them. The funeral party didn’t know what to do.

+They didn’t have any weapons to protect themselves.

+They were too far away from their intended burial site.

They had to find a hiding place, or they would either be killed or taken as hostages and/or sold as slaves.

This was not how things were supposed to happen. No one goes to a funeral to be captured or killed by a renegade army.

At that time tombs and places where people were buried were marked with the color white. The opening of a tomb was whitewashed or there was some type of white cloth displayed. When people saw the color white, they would treat the area with respect.

Quickly, those leading the funeral party and carrying the body had to make a quick decision. Do they continue with the funeral or put the body somewhere and come back later and finish the job?

They decided that their lives were more valuable than their dead friend. Seeing a whitewashed tomb nearby they quickly moved the stone and just threw the body of their friend inside.

No, it’s right here where it where gets interesting.

Their dead friend, having touched the bones of the Prophet Elisha was brought back to life.

If you had been filming all of this with your phone, you would see these people running away. But are they running away from the Moabites hot on their heels or are they running away from their friend who is doing his best to run with all these strips of cloths on them?

This had to look like a scene from The Return of the Mummy.

There is nowhere else in scripture that we read about how the bones of a dead man brought someone back to life.

Elisha had been dead for at least five years. That is the shortest amount of time that it takes a body to decompose to mere bones.

Now, there has been a great deal of speculation on why God used this dead prophet’s bones to do this miracle. Speculation that is just that – one person’s reason is no better than another person’s reason.

The Bible is just quiet on the matter.

What the Bible is not quiet on is who the bones belonged to – the man that went by the name of Elisha.

I thought this morning we might just take a moment and reflect on this man’s life – for it is a life that has a lot to say to all of us this morning.