2 Kings 6:1-7 KJV And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, Behold now, the place where we dwell with thee is too strait for us. [2] Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, and let us make us a place there, where we may dwell. And he answered, Go ye. [3] And one said, Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants. And he answered, I will go. [4] So he went with them. And when they came to Jordan, they cut down wood. [5] But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water: and he cried, and said, Alas, master! for it was borrowed. [6] And the man of God said, Where fell it? And he shewed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim. [7] Therefore said he, Take it up to thee. And he put out his hand, and took it.
I. INTRODUCTION -- A LOST AXE HEAD
-Here is a very simple story that contains an incredible miracle. The basic gist of it is laid out that there were some of the young men who determined to build a new house because the old one was too small.
-They set out with each of the young men getting an assignment of having to gather up a beam so that a house could be built. It was not long into the enterprise before a borrowed axe head ends up in the bed of the river.
-Through this story, there are some important lessons to be drawn from the text.
II. LESSONS FROM THE LOST AXE HEAD
-There are some lessons that pour out of this story.
A. The Tool Needed Most Was Lost.
-The axe is flying and the blade is biting deep into the tree. The tree trembles and then it falls to the ground. He passes on to the next tree and starts to take it down but in the midst of it the axe head comes off and sinks in the river.
• How is the building to be finished?
• How is the rest of the wood going to be gotten?
• What are we going to do?
-At one sudden stroke, everything collapses. Everything comes to a grinding halt and a crisis appears.
-There are such crisis events that will take place in the life of every saint of God and every church of God. None are immune from it. . . If you track the lives of the greatest of God’s saints and the greatest of any church, somewhere in its history, there will be a record of a lost axe head.
-It happens in various ways to churches.
• It can be the death of strong stalwart of the church.
• It can take place when one of its leaders backslides.
• It can take place when Truth is not carefully passed to the following generation.
• It can take place when the people get into squabbles and disunity prevails.
• It can take place when complacency gets a chokehold on the church.
• It can take place when sin enters and it is allowed to go on without rebuke.
• It can take place when the priorities of its members get out of sync.
-If there are a lot of ways that the axe head is lost in churches, the same holds true for individuals. If we are willing to admit it, all of us at some point in our lives have come to the place where we lost the axe head.
• It may have come when responsibilities overwhelmed us.
• It may have taken place when sickness prevailed in our body.
• It may have occurred when we took our offenses and let them take over our best intentions.
• It may have happened when we took to watching others instead of God.
• It may have been that we got a little weary in well-doing.
-But for whatever reason, the axe head was lost. This lost axe head shut down our vision, choked out our spiritual dreams, it stifled our prayers, choked our faith, it literally shut down every bit of the productive fruit that had been growing in our lives.
-I have been there more than once or twice. . . but I am determined to have a breakthrough in 2010. We can’t look back!
-When you have lost your axe head, you are much more susceptible to listening to the voice of the enemy. Discouragement gives him an open road into your soul. It is in the middle of weeping over the axe head that despairing voices are the loudest. . .
• “We are never going to get this thing done.”
• “There is too much work and not enough resources.”
• “What we needed most has been lost.”
-In an atmosphere like that it is hard, in fact almost impossible for our faith to prevail. It is an atmosphere like this that will test your thinking. The fact is that the highest challenge to our thinking is our feelings.
-How a man feels about his situation, his set of circumstances, and his lot in life will determine what happens in the end.
John Maxwell—If you are willing to change your thinking, you can change your feelings. If you change your feelings, you can change your actions. Changing your actions can change your life.
B. We Can Show More Strength Than Skill.
-God’s carpenters sometimes show more strength than skill. We all have witnessed it, in fact we have probably been guilty of it. . . the axe head is lost and we just keep on firing away with the axe handle.
-We can put a lot of confidence in our flesh or in the human wisdom of the heart and leave no room for God to work in the middle of the dilemma.
-There are times that churches and individuals get so caught up in using their own energy and their own sincerity to compensate for the lack of the supernatural anointing.
-But there are no substitutes for the lost axe head. Furthermore, there are no substitutes for a church on fire!
• No substitutes for answered prayer!
• No substitutes for people receiving the Holy Ghost!
• No substitutes for liberty in worship!
• No substitutes for a fired-up youth group!
• No substitutes for fasting that prevails!
• No substitutes for having a passion for the Word!
• No substitutes for desire for revival!
C. We Did Not Lose It on Purpose.
-People don’t purposely lose their greatest assets. The thing most valuable to these young men at this point in their project was the axe. They were on their way to do something noble and important but in the process of it all, they lost what they needed most.
-The vast majority of saints and churches that lose their axe heads do not do it purposely or with evil intent. . . it just happened that way. It happened while they were doing the best they could with the situation that presented itself to them. . . they were thrown a pitch and they had to swing at it. Life is like this all the time. . . You don’t get the choice of pitches thrown to you, you can only react to what has taken place.
-For most of us, we don’t just decide to thrown in the towel. . . it is just through the course of living and the crosses we wrestle and the burdens that weigh us down that steals our joy.
D. We Will Recover It Where We Lost It.
-Certainly there are some aspects of our lives that we don’t ever need to return to again but that axe head at the bottom of the river could only be recovered where it was lost.
-If you have lost something over the years, go back to where you lost it and pick it back up again! God still has more work for you to do.
Philip Harrelson
January 10, 2010
