ELISHA'S MINISTRY – DEATH IN THE POT – THE POISONOUS POT OF STEW 2 Kings 4 v 38-41
SERIES – MESSAGES ON ELISHA – HIS LIFE AND MINISTRY Number 12
2Kings 4 v 38 [[When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, he said to his servant, “Put on the large pot and boil stew for the sons of the prophets.” 2Kings 4:39 Then one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine and gathered from it, his lap full of wild gourds, and came and sliced them into the pot of stew, for they did not know what they were. 2Kings 4:40 They poured it out for the men to eat, and it came about as they were eating of the stew, that they cried out and said, “O man of God, there is death in the pot,” and they were unable to eat. 2Kings 4:41 He said, “Now bring meal,” and he threw it into the pot, and he said, “Pour it out for the people that they may eat.” Then there was no harm in the pot.]]
2Kings 4 v 38 When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, he said to his servant, “Put on the large pot and boil stew for the sons of the prophets.”
Elisha did his journeys in a circuit – possible a yearly circuit - and had arrived at Gilgal, actually back at Gilgal. Gilgal was the place where Elisha’s ministry began right back in 2 v 1. It was the historic place after crossing the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land, the place of circumcision where all the reproach of Egypt was taken away. This was the place of separation. Symbolically, that was important, for Elisha was separated TO the Lord, but the people of the land had separated themselves FROM the Lord. Separation is a biblical principle that Christians today don’t know too much of. I think we are all guilty of failing this principle of holiness. I say “holiness” because separation is sanctification, and sanctification is the holiness of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification means “to set aside” or “set apart” and how many of us are set aside for God?
This verse tells us there was a famine in the land. Israel was controlled by physical conditions from the Lord, and famines were usually the mark of God’s displeasure with His people. When they sinned, He sent a drought of them with famine following, and/or He sent enemies into their land, or their crops got blight and disease. We have confirmation of that in a stern message to Israel before entering the land, delivered through Moses to all the people. For several chapters in Deuteronomy God’s conditions were spelled out to the nation in blessings and curses, and I have made two selections – (a). Deuteronomy 28 v 20 [[The LORD will send upon you curses, confusion, and rebuke in all you undertake to do until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds because you have forsaken Me. Deut 28:21 The LORD will make the pestilence cling to you until He has consumed you from the land where you are entering to possess it. Deut 28:22 The LORD will smite you with consumption and with fever and with inflammation and with fiery heat and with the sword and with blight and with mildew, and they shall pursue you until you perish. Deut 28:23 The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you, iron. Deut 28:24 The LORD will make the rain of your land powder and dust. From heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. Deut 28:25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies.]]
What a terrible set of conditions we have just read. To disobey God is a serious thing. To keep disobeying God is a fatal thing. The second selection is just as terrible. These were given as warnings. God’s warnings are His graciousness. Warnings are meant to convict us to return to God in a godly fear. Did Israel heed the warnings? We know they did not. Those in the bible study know over and over again Israel rejected God and went from bad to worse. That is our nation Australia now. Every new law the Government enacts seems worse than the previous one. Here is the second warning for Israel -
(b). The second one is this - Deuteronomy 32 v 20 [[Then He said, ‘I will hide My face from them. I will see what their end shall be, for they are a perverse generation, sons in whom is no faithfulness. Deut 32:21 They have made Me jealous with what is not God. They have provoked Me to anger with their idols so I will make them jealous with those who are not a people. I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation, Deut 32:22 for a fire is kindled in My anger and burns to the lowest part of Sheol, and consumes the earth with its yield, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. Deut 32:23 I will heap misfortunes on them. I will use My arrows on them. Deut 32:24 They shall be wasted by famine and consumed by plague and bitter destruction. The teeth of beasts I will send upon them with the venom of crawling things of the dust. Deut 32:25 Outside, the sword shall bereave and inside, terror - both for the young man and virgin, the nursling with the man of grey hair.]]
Samaria was godless and the land was full of idols. The southern kingdom of Judah was bad generally, but Samaria was like a putrid sore. Very few remained faithful to God. In Elijah’s time there were 7 000 faithful ones, and probably it was not much different in Elisha’s time. Famines in the land were God’s rod of correction. Hundreds of years later Jesus said - Matthew 5 v 45 [[in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.]] That we see today in nature, but Deuteronomy sets out the covenant conditions for Israel when it was an autonomous nation not under Gentile rule, and should have belonged to God.
Elisha suffered along with the unrighteous. Our country is going wrong, very badly wrong, and the decisions of wickedness being made, affect the righteous as well as the unrighteousness. God’s people in Australia are not exempt from the ills of society, or from the evil decisions of governments, but the difference is, God has given tools by which we are held in His hand, and walk with assurance and peace in difficulty, and above all, in confidence, because we know what lies ahead. We are citizens of the world, but our citizenship is in heaven.
Upon Elisha’s return we are told the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, that is, they were receiving instruction from the master. It is a thing most wonderful when we can sit before a person to teach us about God. It was something I treasured when I used to hitchhike to conferences when I was a teenager, just to take in the joy of God’s word. It was a thing most wonderful when Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to Him. Martha could have done that too, but she was running around filling her life with activity, doing her duty. It was time for a food break and Elisha ordered a large pot be put on the fire for a stew to be made for the sons of the prophets. It needed to be a large pot because there were about 100 of them. I assume they had some meat because I think a stew has to have meat. Maybe not. It could have been difficult to have had meat in that time of bad famine.
2Kings 4 v 39 Then one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine and gathered from it, his lap full of wild gourds, and came and sliced them into the pot of stew, for they did not know what they were.
The group was reduced to foraging and gathered what they could in a communal effort. This one man in this verse was truly helpful, and I feel he went out to do his best for everyone and for His God. His intentions would never be faulted. What he saw was a fruitful vine with gourds on it. Gourds are like squash and pumpkins, and calabash, and in some eastern and African countries, some gourds are made into vessels to hold water or food or for carrying things. It was a wild pumpkin or melon-looking plant that was gathered in all probability. Some are like those small ornamental pumpkins with lumps and bumps on them. Commentators call these gourds colocynths so I looked up that word - Citrullus colocynthis, commonly known as the colocynth, bitter apple, bitter cucumber, desert gourd, egusi, or vine of Sodom, is a desert viny plant native to the Mediterranean Basin. It resembles a common watermelon vine but bears small, hard fruits with a bitter pulp.
The gatherer did well and brought back a whole lap full of them. His lap full ? as many as he could carry in the sinus, or large fold, of his outer garment, or shawl. lap full—The hyke, or large cloak, is thrown loosely over the left shoulder and fastened under the right arm, so as to form a lap or apron. They were sliced for the stew in the pot and no one was the wiser.
2Kings 4 v 40 They poured it out for the men to eat, and it came about as they were eating of the stew, that they cried out and said, “O man of God, there is death in the pot,” and they were unable to eat.
Well, each man got his portion and started eating but before too long, the realisation dawned on them – the stew had been poisoned. What horror when they knew what they were doing and they all cried out. It was a death pot! It had become a pot of death. They could no longer eat of it. How did they know it contained death? I think it must have contained a bitter taste, and bitterness is often associated with danger in the botanical world, and always associated with death and sin.
Was this man who gathered the gourds at fault? Is he to be condemned? Answers are No and No. There is such a thing as intention and mistake. We all make mistakes while having a good intention. God does not condemn us for that. It is when the intention and motive is imperfect and even outright evil, that God will hold the person accountable. Bad intentions never bring about good results. The Lord knows the thoughts and intents of the heart and sometimes we need to be ashamed. We have a gracious God, and never once in this account is the man criticised. If things veer off course for us, we can make quick, wrong judgements and then the blame game starts. “It was his fault who gathered the gourds!” “Elisha must shoulder the blame because he was in charge!” Did anyone think that of the man who collected the gourds? These following verses I have chosen do have relevance to our story -
Luke 6 v 37 [[Do not judge and you will not be judged, and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Pardon, and you will be pardoned. John 7 v 24 Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”
Romans 14 v 10 But you, why do you judge your brother, or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God, Rom 14:11 for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” Romans 14:12 Each one of us then shall give account of himself to God. Rom 14:13 Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this - not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother’s way.
Hebrews 4 v 12 The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.]]
Death was in the bitterness of that stew. Death comes about through sin, and sin produces bitterness. Can I make an application here? Much in this world is a pot of death, and people are eating the stew from it. That stew pot is sin, and people partake of sin like they do food. The trouble is that they can’t detect the poison, and they can not tell what the contents are doing to them, that is, the soul that sins, shall surely die. They hunger after that pot and line up to partake of it. “There is death in the pot,” you might warn them, but they love the wild gourds in that stew so much, they don’t want to listen to you. The death pots of the world are everywhere, and people just love to eat of them, for sin has a charm, then an addiction, then a vice-like hold. On the other hand, if a Christian might come upon that pot and start to partake of its contents, then straight away there should be the cry, “O man of God, there is death in the pot!” and that person wants to stop eating immediately. It is the Holy Spirit who cries out to you about the death of sin. Sin to the unsaved is a delight, but to the Christian, it is a poison and needs to be avoided. To the unsaved sin paints his dark soul darker so he can hide in darkness from God. To the Christian, sin clouds the light like a cataract and he and she must turn immediately from it.
2Kings 4 v 41 He said, “Now bring meal,” and he threw it into the pot, and he said, “Pour it out for the people that they may eat.” Then there was no harm in the pot.
We come to the solution. Praise God He has the solution for death in the pot that has poisoned every one of us. Please note that the stew was not thrown away. It was healed. It was restored, made whole. Thank God He did not throw us away, but healed us spiritually through the blood of Christ. It was just so easy to throw the pot of death away and start again. God did not throw us poisoned people away, but sent His Son to die for us that we might be made into new creations in Jesus Christ, made into a beautiful stew in the Saviour’s pot.
There is a fungus, an Amanita in fact (Amanita virosa) known as “the destroying angel”. It looks beautiful, all white as in clean and pure, but it is deadly and countless people have died from eating it. It starts with dehydration, then begins to attack the liver killing it, then moves to the kidneys. Satan came to Eve as a destroying angel, but in his form as the angel of light. He is the fallen angel but appears as an angel of light, just like the fungus. What he offers is poisonous and deadly. Today people are gathering the destroying angel for their sinful pots of stew.
Elisha called for some meal. 4 v 41 He said, “Now bring meal,” and he threw it into the pot, and he said, “Pour it out for the people that they may eat.” I had to look this up to see exactly what meal is. The most common grains from which meal and flour are processed are wheat, rye, oats, etc. Generally, the terms flour and meal are regularly used interchangeably. There is a distinction between the two.
Meal is the entire grain such as wheat, rye, etc, crushed and ground to a particular size. In this way, with powdered wheat or rye you can make 'wholemeal bread'. Flour then, is filtered wheat or rye, or whatever grain you have, produced from the meal. In short, we can say flour is the ultimate result of meal.
There was nothing magical about the meal, in the same way that there was nothing magical about the bronze snake Moses erected on the pole. It had no special properties such as removing, or neutralising the poison. It was simply God’s instruction to perform the miracle, with meal being the agent. This world looks for portents and fixes and gimmickry but that is not God’s way. His ways are perfect, and as Creator of the universe anything is at His disposal. Elisha had a double portion of the Spirit and was in touch with the Lord. That made all the difference.
It might have taken faith to have resumed eating from the restored pot. It meant trust in Elisha which is trust in Elisha’s God. You will not trust a man who has not proven himself.
As I have hinted earlier, this can be a picture of a worthless sinner, all overwhelmed by poison, fit only to be condemned and rejected, but the Lord did not throw sinners away, but worked an internal miracle of salvation to make the person a wholesome member of God’s excellent pot, and fit for heaven. The gourd is the poison of sin. The stew is the sinner. The meal is the living water of John that makes whole, the water of life.
ronaldf@aapt.net.au
