Oct 18 2020 - Elisha - God Does New Things

Lord, thank You for this opportunity to be before You, to worship You and give You praise. You love us deeply, and we ask that You would speak to our hearts. You are at work in our lives – intimately involved with us at this moment and every moment. Help us to recognize Your presence and know that is true.

Jeff jumped a little ahead in 2 Kings – and I’m going to go back to where Elisha starts – in the first few chapters, there are these miraculous works of power by Elisha. In Chapter 4 – there are 4 miracles – and these sound similar to those of his predecessor, Elijah. The focus of the miracles is God’s spectacular provision, protection, and resurrection.

I’ll look at a couple of these – and what do we do with these miracles becomes the question – how do they relate or apply to us today?

To understand this – we need some groundwork – and to do that – we need to understand the miracles in their – say it – context!

These miracles demonstrate that Elisha is God’s new man – His new prophet – that is why the miracles are so similar – He is replacing God’s prophet to the people. A couple of them are strange – one involving bears – you can go back and read that.

And this says more about Israel than it does about God. There was a pattern of rejecting God’s prophets for hundreds of years – and in doing that, they are rejecting God Himself. A word of caution – some preachers today claim to be God’s prophet – and they say, if you reject my word, you are rejecting God. I would say that is an indication of a problem.

Then, the prophets spoke to the people as the voice of God – but today, we have been given God’s word – DIRECTLY – through Jesus Christ and the Bible. The pastor’s job is to teach God’s word – which has been given to everyone – to help people learn to interpret God’s word for themselves. It is never one person who has God’s direct word for everyone else. We are all priests, the Bible says, - all ministers – all prophets! That is why I put so much emphasis on trying to help you understand God’s word better, to get into it yourself – and why I harp on context – so you can understand for yourself what it says.

It takes work, and we learn more when we put work in!

The other point – Yahweh has power over all the other gods – all the Baals that they were worshiping – and this contest is continuing with Elisha – and these miracles are addressing those other gods and demonstrating that Yahweh is powerful over all.

These are specific situations, happening to specific people at a specific place and time.

God is always doing new things – never repeating things in the same way – and there is a new work He is doing today – and it won’t be like the first reformation or the second – or the great awakening. If we try to squeeze these miracles into our situation – we will be disappointed because we don’t get the same results. OR – we feel like we don’t have enough faith or our Christian lives aren’t good enough for God to work like He did then.

When we are trying to remake what God did back then, we miss what God is doing now – and it causes us to miss the real work God is doing.

2 Kings 4:1 The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, "Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the LORD. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves." 2 Elisha replied to her, "How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?" "Your servant has nothing there at all," she said, "except a little olive oil."

Ding Ding Ding – this is a hyperlink to Elijah – the difference here, the widow is a follower of God. – Elijah’s widow was not.

3 Elisha said, "Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few. 4 Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side."

5 She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. 6 When all the jars were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another one." But he replied, "There is not a jar left." Then the oil stopped flowing. 7 She went and told the man of God, and he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left."

So there is a pattern here – the multiplying of the little.

With the widow and Elijah – flour and oil – 2 cakes everyday for the length of the drought.

Jumping to the end of the chapter:

2 Kings 4:42 Now a man came from Baal-shalishah, and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. And he said, "Give them to the people that they may eat." 43 His attendant said, "What, will I set this before a hundred men?" But he said, "Give them to the people that they may eat, for thus says the LORD, 'They shall eat and have some left over.'" 44 So he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the LORD.

And that, of course, is pretty much what Jesus did in feeding the 4000 and then the 5000 – taking a little and multiplying it.

I’m sure we have never seen a jar of oil never running out – but we have all experienced this in subtle ways- where God multiplied the little (emphasis on the little) for basic needs – in all of these stories.

It is not – if your retirement account goes up with the stock market – this has nothing to do with that. This is about God’s faithful provision for those in desperate need. God can work and provide in incredible ways – but it won’t be the exact same – but it has to do with incredible need where God enters in.

Second – remember, miracles were used to oppose idolatry – Baal and the gods of prosperity, fertility, and power.

We have similar gods – we call them different things – with -ism at the end – Materialism, consumerism – those are our lower g gods. We cannot use these miracles to support our materialistic lifestyle, this is not about satisfying those gods in our lives, but God providing for those in need.

We live in a land that has been blessed in many ways – prosperity in abundance. For that we should be grateful – but because of that blessing, we are susceptible to turning things and money into gods.

Deuteronomy made it clear – when you prosper – WATCH OUT! You will begin worshiping other gods.

Another caution – we are probably unable to identify these things in our own lives, because we live in it all the time – an example would be – if you have ever been on a mission trip to a poor country – what happens – God reveals their own sense of materialism and consumerism – and a deeper understanding of our ‘need’ in those areas.

It is difficult to live in a prosperous country and not be affected by these things. We need to be aware of this. How do we learn this? At times, the Bible seems to send mixed signals! In the Old Testament – there are blessings of God’s prosperity if you follow God.

Then you get to the gospels – and Jesus says – sell everything you have – give to the poor, follow Me – I don’t even have a home – I don’t even have a ROCK!

Paul tries to balance it out – to the rich – do not trust in riches, be generous to the poor. Yet – Paul, for most of his life lived like Jesus but at times had abundance.

What can we do? There are four things we can do – living in our context.

First – trust in God – not wealth.

A simple test – where do you get your security from? That tells you what you may be trusting in.

Second – be content – learn to be content with your current situation.

Third – focus on spiritual riches rather than physical riches. The focus of our Christian life should be His work.

Seek first His kingdom – and all these things will be added. Focus on that. Don’t worry about all these other things. God will work all these other areas.

Fourth – be concerned for the poor – not just giving money but caring for them. Make it a habit of your life.

I’m a church person – and our focus and tendency is on giving to the church – but the Bible speaks about giving to the poor. I acknowledge the difficulty. I know many of you are excellent examples of this – giving time and energy.

So what happens – Elisha is doing ministry all over the place – and this couple – older gentleman with a younger wife – make a place for Elisha.

Elisha wants to do something nice for this couple -

14 So he asked Gehazi, "What can I do for her?" Gehazi replied, "She has no son, and her husband is old." 15 Elisha told him, "Ask her to come here." So he did so and she came and stood in the doorway. 16 He said, "About this time next year you will be holding a son." She said, "No, my master! O prophet, do not lie to your servant!"

That is a strange response! But think about it – in our own lives – how many years of disappointment? 20? 30? Way beyond time.

Don’t get my hopes up! One translation renders it.

This is a common theme throughout the Bible – Abraham and Sarah, Hannah, Rachel – she would have known these stories -

17 The woman did conceive, and at the specified time the next year she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her. 18 The boy grew and one day he went out to see his father who was with the harvest workers. 19 He said to his father, "My head! My head!" His father told a servant, "Carry him to his mother." 20 So he picked him up and took him to his mother. He sat on her lap until noon and then died.

Think of the anguish, pain, bitterness that could be building up inside her. She decides she will go talk to Elisha:

27 When she came to the man of God to the hill, she caught hold of his feet. And Gehazi came near to push her away; but the man of God said, "Let her alone, for her soul is troubled within her; and the LORD has hidden it from me and has not told me." 28 Then she said, "Did I ask for a son from my lord? Did I not say, 'Do not deceive me'?"

She is probably looking back at the others – Rachel/Abraham/Hannah – look how well it went for them and it has not turned out that way for me. Sometimes we look at these miracles and they lead to tremendous disappointment with God. As young Christians, we develop an idealistic expectation of what our Christian experience should be.

Here is an example – if you memorize verses, pray, and have an accountability partner, you will overcome the most difficult temptations in your life. And you have victory for a time – but then, there are periods where you have failure – maybe worse than what you had before! And we feel that God has let us down, because we had an accountability partner and memorized the verses. You get married, you pray, you read your Bible, you go to church! That means marriage will be wonderful! You went to the seminar so you won’t have relationships conflicts! But sometimes that doesn’t happen! And it can go very badly for some Christians. We probably all know many.

You have children – you read the right books – if you do this, they will turn out loving Jesus, thinking the same way we do – and how does that go? Some don’t follow Jesus – some do. Some disappoint – they don’t think the way we think.

You join a church – you get involved in church ministry - and you think – these are all Christians, good people – so there will be no judgment – and we all have to deal with this disappointment with God because we experience things we don’t think should be experienced.

Elisha goes to her house and the son is raised from the dead.

Plenty of people lose sons or spouses that are not raised from the dead.

33 So he entered and shut the door behind them both and prayed to the LORD. 34 And he went up and lay on the child, and put his mouth on his mouth and his eyes on his eyes and his hands on his hands, and he stretched himself on him; and the flesh of the child became warm. 35 Then he returned and walked in the house once back and forth, and went up and stretched himself on him; and the lad sneezed seven times and the lad opened his eyes.

God often has a greater purpose than the miracle – we need to look for the greater purpose that God is doing inside of us – but also, a greater purpose in our world – that He wants to accomplish. Through our failings – He uses those to accomplish His greatest blessings.

Lord, thank You – Help us to understand and even, in one sense, to be okay with the knowledge and reality that maybe our faith and experience has not been what we thought it would be. This is common among all Your people throughout history – because You have something bigger and better than just fulfilling our expectations. When you do, we are grateful – even when we don’t see the miraculous and spectacular, we know you are working more and deeper in us.

Have a great week -