Now the "in my name" is the important part there, and as we look at these prophets we see that they are completely submitted and obedient to God. They are completely in His will, desiring to show God to the people above anything else in their life. It’s like it becomes their sole purpose once they are called. So it seems like when they ask, like the early disciples in Acts, that God really does come through on this promise. Will he for us?
The other principle today’s passages address is the value of apprenticeship in our spiritual lives. One of the reasons Elisha could so successfully take over for Elijah is because he spent time watching and learning from a more mature prophet. He completely devoted his life to being a disciple. When Elisha took over he had seen God work so much through Elijah, that he had faith that God would act for Him as well, especially since it was confirmed that a double portion of Elijah’s spirit rested on him when he saw Elijah get taken up to heaven. I. God’s miracles are always performed through apprentices.
We saw last week that Elisha did a very practical miracle when he put salt in the water at God’s prompting and it purified the water – very practical. And the first miracle we look at today is along the same lines. Before we read this text I want to just point something out to you. The water miracle happened at Jericho, the poison stew miracle that we’re about to read happened at Gilgal, which is basically a suburb of Jericho. Now you may recall that when Joshua supernaturally defeated Jericho, the Lord told him to completely destroy it and inspired Joshua to put a curse on Jericho, that if anyone tried to rebuild it they will lose their firstborn son.
Clearly, Jericho was rebuilt, and even expanded now to include Gilgal, and isn’t it interesting that the water was causing miscarriages, and many of the plants growing nearby were poisonous. Apparently the curse was still in effect. But Elisha, representing God’s grace, brings healing amidst the curse. My friends the whole world lives under a curse even now, we see God declare the curse in the book of Genesis, and he sent Jesus to provide healing from the curse. So here we really have a precursor of God’s grace that was to fully come in Jesus, to bring healing in the midst of a curse.
Let’s pick up the story at the end of chapter 4 starting in verse 38…
There’s poison in the stew, it’s an accident, they don’t want to eat it, but they also don’t want to waste it because there’s a famine. Does God want people to die? Where is this loving God? Well, when there are people submitted to God he likes to use them to show His power. Go home and try this.
I’m sure there are some poisonous plants or mushrooms around here. Go cook something up with these poisonous things. Then when you serve it, throw some flour in there and see what happens.
No don’t go do that. The point is that God does not want any to perish. If we go and do dumb things on purpose, he will allow the consequences, but when there is an accident or something bad is happening that we didn’t cause like say even a natural disaster, when there are people of God around who are truly seeking Him and his will, they can ask for miracles and often God does come through even today, when he really has to. But if we aren’t seeking Him and asking Him, why should he be obligated to do something more for us? Is sacrificing his son not more than enough?
There are two main reasons He will come through though. Most people are not saved and He wants them to be, because he doesn’t want anyone to perish. And seeing a miracle in a desperate situation is a great way to get people to believe and submit to God.
Secondly, he loves us, and he wants us to have abundant life, not just for our own sake, but so that we can experience life with Him, which is the only abundant life there is. And so we can pass this on to others. He heals the stew like he healed the water, and then he does something that we see Jesus do twice, he feeds a large group of people with only a tiny bit of food. And there were leftovers. Now this is only 100 people, likely Elisha’s disciples, Jesus feeds many more with even less food.
These are practical miracles that really didn’t need to be done, but God did them anyway because the people were seeking Him (they were all prophets in training) and at least one of them asked. Jesus said feed the hungry, we know this is His will, so it makes sense that when people truly are hungry (which by the way in our culture is often not the case or is the case by choice because a person would rather drink distilled grains than eat real food). But, II. God’s miracles are always practical
If a person is legitimately hungry why would God not do a miracle to feed them if that is His will and someone asks him to do it? Now because we are so prosperous here, it might not look like a miracle to us, but when those starving people somewhere see a bag of rice fall from a helicopter over their village, it sure is a miracle to them.
We purchased a fresh water well for a village in Rwanda. Many of their children are dying from poison water. This well just looks like something man can easily do, but for those parents of those children, it is a miracle that they could not have done themselves.
Ok let’s move to the next one. Read 2 Kings 5:1-16. Does God always destroy enemies in the Old Testament? Apparently not. Aram often conducted raids against Israel and Namaan’s wife’s servant girl was actually a kidnapped Israelite. Namaan is the commander of the army that fought against Israel. He has leprosy and ironically the only hope of healing he had came from Israel.
Let me first point out this girl, talk about a great example of what a Christian should look like. These people had just invaded the land of Israel, they took this girl from her family and made her a slave, yet she has compassion for this man and wishes he would go see Elisha for healing. Stop there for a minute, that sure looks like loving your enemies to me, and look at the end result that we will see in a moment.
Why did Elisha say yes to this? We see it partly in verse 8, “Send him to me, then he will know there is a true prophet here in Israel”. That would accomplish perhaps two things, the Arameans and the leader of their military might not be so aggressive toward Israel, and there may be an opportunity for salvation.
But it’s not just for the Arameans, because Israel’s own King was not even seeking God. This little slave girl who was basically taken hostage, had more faith than the king of Israel. God put this girl in a seemingly awful situation, much like the story of Joseph, and she remained faithful, and her faith had a huge impact. Has God ever put you in a difficult situation that you didn’t want to be in? Always try to use those situations to remain faithful and glorify God, because often they are opportunities that we tend to miss because we are busy worrying or focussing on self-pity. Two things Jesus strongly suggests we don’t do because they are the opposite of faith.
Now let’s look at the actual healing. Elisha could have bowed before Namaan and laid his hands on him and said, O great powerful leader, you are healed. But no, Elisha wouldn’t even see him or talk to him. Instead he sends his servant to give Namaan orders about what to do. This infuriates Namaan who is used to getting respect, and his pride would cause him to want to even turn away and forego healing. “Do you know who I am, I expect you to heal me the way I deserve. Our rivers are better than yours”.
Fortunately he had some people around him that talked some sense into him, and notice that they did it by saying “you would do the hard thing for this, why won’t you do the easy thing?” Doesn’t this sound so familiar? How many people allow their pride to get in the way of obedience to God and even accepting salvation? Many would rather work for their salvation when Jesus has offered it as a free gift because they think that’s the way it should be. Yes he requires a response from us, but it is obedience for our own good because he is God and knows better than we do. But so many won’t humble themselves.
Elisha knew that if this was going to be done in God’s way that Namaan’s pride had to be squashed. Obedience to God and even admitting we are sinners in need of salvation has to begin with humility, putting ourselves under God, not using him as our fairy Godfather. He doesn’t promise to answer those kind of prayers. III. God’s miracles Are Always Designed to Humble People & Glorify Him
Now Namaan obeys, because when you obey a prophet speaking God’s word, you are obeying God, and he is completely healed. Because of how it happened he knows that it could only have been God that did it, not the man Elisha. And look how he responds, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel”, and the first thing he does is offer a gift. Because of this little slave girl, he is saved and physically healed.
But notice he’s offering the gift to Elisha, so he refuses to accept it and gives the praise back to God. God’s favour can not be purchased, can not be won by good works, only by acknowledging him and worshipping him in humility. Just a little about your financial giving. Are you giving to this specific church, to my salary, to a specific cause? Yes it goes to those things, but I hope you know in your heart that when you give, it is to God, make sure you check your motives in your giving, that your agenda is not in there.
We know that Namaan gets it now because he asks for pardon when he has to go worship the god Rimmon with his master. Because death would likely be the penalty if he didn’t. But he himself will never again worship another God.
I may be stretching things a bit here, but I wonder if that speaks to us being tolerant of other religions without be influenced by them. Because normally in the OT God would have commanded that he go and destroy the temple of Rimmon, and probably also the people who worship there. The point is, we can be better witnesses through loving and accepting others who don’t share our beliefs, while holding true to and living what we believe.
Alright lots there, but we could go on all day. Let’s look at the final miracle in chapter 6:1-7. So simple, so practical. Doesn’t this show that God is always there and that even though this miracle is sandwiched between two much greater miracles, God cares about the little things too.
This reminds me of several times when I have been looking for something and I can’t find it. I get more and more frustrated, I look harder, get madder, start blaming others. But inevitably if I step back, calm down, and pray, the next thing I know, I or someone else easily finds it. It doesn’t always work that way but most of the time it does.
The same with when I am trying to do something like fixing something or changing a light fixture. It never seems to go right, I get frustrated, and until I slow down and pray, it doesn’t go well. Moral of the story is, why don’t we pray before we do something. It not only engages God, but it also puts us in a better state of mind. How often we forget this even when it’s a small thing. Say a quick but intentional prayer before you proceed, because above all God wants a relationship with you, he wants to hang out with you, invite him along even when you’re trying to unplug the toilet.
One other little thing that we could gloss over in this passage is when he says it was a borrowed axe. Why would the Bible bother to mention that? In fact why is this seemingly insignificant miracle even mentioned? This is why I love the Bible and can’t get enough of it, it always brings new revelations that are useful for us. There are many things in this little passage.
Elisha’s prophet school, let’s call it a seminary for our purposes, was flourishing. God has blessed this, and what a great sign when a new generation of devoted disciples is coming up. I spoke about this a few weeks ago.
It is growing so fast that they need to build a new facility. Unlike the seminaries of today, they don’t hold capital campaigns for building projects. They go out and build it themselves from scratch.
There were no hardware stores and iron tools were precious and scarce especially for a bunch of poor seminary students. Now if the law of borrowed animals from Exodus 22 applied to borrowed tools, that poor student would have to reimburse the owner of the axe for the lost axehead. That could upset the budget for weeks and they might not eat. Not only that, it would mean someone else has to carry the burden because this person could no longer work.
To me this shows the great compassion of the Lord, but also how important integrity is. This student was extremely bothered by this, he cries out with exclamation that it was borrowed! He’s afraid of having to replace it, but also no doubt upset that he ruined something that didn’t belong to him. He comes clean with Elisha rather than trying to hide it, and God blesses his attitude and honesty.
But there are a couple other spiritual principles here. One is that whatever we have is really borrowed. In 1 Corinthians 4:7 Paul asked, “And what do you have that you did not receive?” And John the Baptist said in John 3:27, “A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven.” Everything is a gift from God and we are merely stewards who will give an account for what we did even with the little gifts we receive from Him.
Secondly, the student lost this tool while he was serving the Lord. We can lose something valuable when serving the Lord. But here we see that if we are faithful in our service, the Lord will provide sometimes even miraculously. Moses lost his patience and meekness while providing water for his people. David lost his self-control when he was being kind to a neighbour, and Nabal’s wife had to intervene. We need to walk carefully when we serve the Lord, because the enemy likes to attack God’s servants most.
The good news is that the Lord can recover what is lost and put us back to work. That’s kind of what revival is. He can restore us and make us efficient and fruitful in his Kingdom once again. Have you lost your zeal, your desire to serve God? Do you want to serve him a certain way, but he is not providing the resources to do it, because he wants you to serve another way? In this story he restores the axehead, but maybe in our lives he won’t because he wants us to serve another way, and we don’t see that he is actually providing for that. But we want to serve our way.
When I started taking part-time seminary courses while staying at my old job, God intervened and started taking things away. My health, emotional well-being, and ultimately the health and satisfaction of my job environment. But after a couple years, when I finally decided to follow him the way he wanted me too, he began providing in miraculous ways, including physical healing and finances.
I said it before, God is incredibly practical. But this is why it’s so important to discern his will in your life. Because when we are in that sweet spot I spoke of weeks ago, using our borrowed gifts and abilities to serve him the way he wants, he intervenes. That is what it means to ask for things in His name. If he says do it, if it’s his will and not our own agenda, he promises to provide what we need to get it done if we ask. Final point, IV. God’s miracles are always a sign of obedience and prayer
We will not see miracles unless we step out in faith to do what he tells us to do. He will heal bodies, he will save people, he will make poisonous things not hurt us, he will provide financially, and so and so on when we seek Him and seek to do His will without reservation. In fact he greatly desires to show his power through us when we step out into situations where we have to become weak and can’t possibly accomplish it on our own.
God says preach a long, repetitive twelve week series about doing Christianity and church my way, and I will baptise twenty people through your congregation. There was about 15 minutes of that whole series about baptism, and here we are 4 months into the year and he has baptised 14 people already. I didn’t do anything except preach what he told me to and follow the dream he gave me in the fall. Frankly, I’ll be honest with you, some of those sermons were extremely difficult for me, and I found myself getting bored of the series, I thought it was too long.
But the week it ended we have now seen three miraculous Sundays in a row. Don’t tell me 11 people coming up for healing prayer all at once, 16 people standing in response to an invitation to commit their lives to Christ, and seeing seven baptisms in this church aren’t miracles. When was the last time you saw that? To me that’s more of a miracle than seeing a plane crash without anybody getting injured. Because it is all clearly God’s revealed will in His word.
These stories in the Bible, specifically here with these miracles that Elisha is performing, remind us that God wants to bless our obedience. Remember Elisha walked away from a lucrative family business without question to follow God, and what we are seeing, is God’s response to His response. And that needs to also be our response if we want to continue to see God do supernatural things.
