Grace and Mercy; The Floating Axe Head. 2 Kings 6:1-6

Anyone who pays attention to current events is deeply aware of the fact that at any given moment something could happen that would plunge us back into the deep, dark ages. The economy could collapse, we could face another terrorist attack that would be even greater than that of 9/11 and wipe out the electrical structure of the US, or half of it, and what this would do to us and the world at large would be unimaginable. So we live from moment to moment with the realization of the fact that everything that we know and love and appreciate could disappear at a moment’s notice. Beyond those thoughts for the new year we also face the fact that there is a world-wide global recession, if not depression, and that even though we are blessed to live where we are there are those who are facing various challenges. One thing we know is that in the devil’s world we do not get by without facing adversity, without coming face to face with numerous challenges and disappointments that hit us, usually without any expectation on a day to day basis. So how are we to face life in the midst of this kind of uncertainty and chaos that reigns around us.

In times of uncertainty and chaos people often grasp at just anything in order to try to give some kind of meaning and hope to life; some sense of security. Often, unfortunately, down through the ages does not take the form of trusting in the God of the Bible. Instead the human heart is set against God and in negative volition the primary and majority response to crises in life is to leap in one of two directions. One direction leaps towards superstition, mysticism, some sort of false religion, putting hopes for stability and happiness in something that God created—some sort of false god, false religious system, or some false philosophical system. On the other hand, there are those who become so embittered because they face disappointments and challenges and heartaches in life that they reject the very idea of a personal God because of their personal pain. They just think that if there is a God He is just a big meany in the sky who is out to get them and make their personal life miserable. So they reject the idea that there is a personal God and take the position of extreme agnosticism or atheism and are left with no hope whatsoever ever, only despair and despondency. Sadly, because they don’t want to live that way, they leap into some sort of pseudo-optimism just trying to get some sort of meaning and hope and value to their life. We live in a world where numerous people take one or the other option.

But that is nothing new. This kind of thing has been going on ever since the fall of Adam. Fallen man seeks to find meaning and hope in life anywhere other than in the God of the Bible. This was a challenge that was faced by the northern kingdom of Israel in the 9^th century BC and was specifically the focus of the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. In the ministry of Elisha we have seen a number of these kinds of uncertain, chaotic situations in the lives of individuals in the northern kingdom of Israel. We have seen the mention of bad water that needed to be purified—2 Kings 2:17. We have seen that the northern kingdom was involved in a war with Moab that was only marginally successful—2 Kings 3. We have seen the individual impact of the poor economy in the northern kingdom in terms of the poverty of the widow in 2 Kings 4:1-7 who was left with a load of debt by her husband. We have seen the barren Shunamite woman who was married but had gone many years unable to have a child, and then the miraculous provision of a child in 2 Kings 4:8-37. There has been the mention of famine in the land—2 Kings 4:38ff. Along with that a second war, the war with Syria—2 Kings 5:2 and 6:8ff. So the northern kingdom is facing uncertainty. If we lived at that time we would be facing economic, famine, the threat of war on a day to day basis, raids that came in from Syria on a periodic basis. So there was just as much uncertainty in the world of the northern kingdom in the 9^th century BC as there is today. Sometimes we think that our times are somewhat unique, and they are only in terms of the technology and the luxuries that most of us have, but the core problems and issues of life never change and the people of that time faced the same problems.

And they came up with the same kinds of solutions that people come up with today. They want to reject the provision of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They want to reject His grace and don’t want to rely on a day to basis on the provision of God. Instead of worshipping God they take the same alternatives that human beings have taken for the last 6000 years, and option # 1 is to reject God, to be bitter towards God, to blame God for everything, and option # 2 is to substitute something for God, something within the creation, and to worship that as the source of happiness in life. That was primarily the way in which they were handling the situation at this particular time in Israel’s history.

It is in the middle of this, looking at one provision of God after another in the last few chapters that we come to one of the strangest little episodes in all of the Scripture. It fits within the scope of a number of miracles performed by Elisha. There is something about this particular miracle that strikes us as a little different: it doesn’t involve a person. The other miracles all seem to be related to an individual. This miracle seems to be not of the same category and we wonder why it is in the Bible. This passage is here for a reason. God the Holy Spirit doesn’t waste words or waste stories. If we are informed about this story then it must be important; there must be something of significance here that goes beyond just reaffirming a simple, general, superficial principle about the power of God and His control over creation. So we have to stop and resist the temptation to simply interpret this as a somewhat general or superficial principle because we know from our understanding of Scripture that there is nothing in Scripture that is just there by chance. We believe that God the Holy Spirit oversaw the writing of Scripture so that every detail is not only preserved or recorded for us without error but that there is a reason this episode is given in Scripture. One thing we ought to recognize at the very beginning is that these miracles, the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, just as the miracles our Lord performed are not just performed in order to show that God can do these things. Neither are they performed out of the necessary goodness or the heart of the one who performs the miracle. Jesus didn’t heal everybody. The reason there are miracles in Scripture is to authenticate the message of the one who is performing the miracles. The miracles provide credentials for them but they are also structured in such a way as to teach something specific about God. They are, as it were, visual training aids for us to understand aspects about the person and character of God. The episodes that we have in chapter two through chapter eleven of 2 Kings are all woven together in a tapestry of divine revelation in order to reveal something to us and to teach something to us about God and His purpose and plan.

This event takes place at the Jordan River, not far from Jericho, so it probably the group called the sons of the prophets that are located there in Jericho. Those in Jericho were very close to the Jordan and they needed to build a new home for themselves because they had outgrown their former home and it wouldn’t make sense for them to build a new home in Bethel or Gilgal, they would be too far away. They were probably living in Jericho.

2 Kings 6:1 ^NASB “Now the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, ‘Behold now, the place before you where we are living is too limited for us.’” The sons of the prophets were a group of primarily men and their families who were associated with the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. It had started under Elijah but had grown under the ministry of Elisha. They were trained by Elisha, were involved in various ministries in the northern kingdom, and were being trained for future ministry under the tutelage and mentorship of Elisha. The problem that they face is that they have outgrown their living quarters and they need a larger dwelling place. So they go to Elisha to get permission to build a new dwelling place.

2 Kings 6:2 ^NASB “ ‘Please let us go to the Jordan and each of us take from there a beam, and let us make a place there for ourselves where we may live.’ So he said, ‘Go.’ [3] Then one said, ‘Please be willing to go with your servants.’ And he answered, ‘I shall go.’ [4] So he went with them; and when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees. [5] But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water; and he cried out and said, ‘Alas, my master! For it was borrowed.’” There is no mention of an exe head in the Hebrew, it just says “the iron.” The man cried out in despair. This is important, he has this axe head and he wants to build a house and without it they really can’t get a lot done. Why doesn’t he say, “Oh, I can’t get the job done.” He says, “Master, it was a borrowed axe head.” The emphasis is on property, property ownership and respect for private property; it is not on getting the job done. He is concerned about the fact that he can’t get this axe head back to the owner. At this time in history iron is rare and precious.

At the time of Samuel the Philistines were dominating the Israelites and we are told there were no blacksmiths in the land because the Philistines would not allow them to function and operate in Israel. They were exercising an early form of arms control. Because the Philistines had iron weapons they had the more advanced technology and didn’t want the Israelites to have that same technology so that it would be easier for them to dominate and control the Israelites. That is always the purpose of any kind of weapon control: so that somebody in power can more easily control and dominate somebody else. If those people they want to dominate have access to the same technology that they have access to then it is not so easy to dominate and control them. So we should always remember that whenever we hear policies related to restricting gun ownership, restrictive international treaties, the possession of various kinds of weapons, it is always related to one group wanting to dominate control another group. That has always been true throughout history.

Iron was a rare commodity and very expensive at this time. When this axe head flew off and sank in water this man’s bank account evaporated! He is looking at a life of indentured servitude. Exodus chapter 22 shows a very heightened sense of the importance of private ownership of property in Israel. Exodus 22:14 ^NASB “If a man borrows {anything} from his neighbor, and it is injured or dies while its owner is not with it, he shall make full restitution.” 2 Kings 6:6 ^NASB “Then the man of God said, ‘Where did it fall?’ And when he showed him the place, he cut off a stick and threw {it} in there, and made the iron float.” There is no indication of its significance, its meaning, we are just told about this floating axe head. We have to stop and think about this, it doesn’t just happen in isolation. Context is extremely important whenever we are studying any passage of Scripture. We have to take this literally because here is nothing ion the passage that would indicate he is talking in a non-literal manner. We have to recognize that this happened historically in just the way it is described. That does not mean that the passage does not have some sort of symbolic meaning because many things that happened in the Old Testament like this were designed to teach a spiritual truth and the things that happened, happened for a reason, to teach and illustrate a spiritual reality.

So we have to think about what has been going on in the previous chapters, and then what has been going on in the history of Israel: the context of 2 Kings and the broader context of Israel’s history. In Leviticus chapter twenty-six God made some promises to the nation Israel. God made some promises to the nation Israel. If they obeyed Him then He would do certain good things for them—give them economic prosperity, success in whatever they did, have military success. But starting in verse 14 God begins to outline five different stages/cycles of discipline or punishment that he would take the nation through if they are disobedient. Disobedience primarily relates to idolatry, violating the Mosaic covenant and worshipping other gods. They include military defeat, economic collapse, drought, famine, rationing of food, etc. All of this shows that the northern kingdom was going through an intense stage of divine discipline. The reason for it was because under the Omri kings—Omri, his son Ahab, Ahaziah and Jehoram—the nation has been under idolatry. The more extreme the discipline of God became the more people seemed to react to God and to blame God for all their problems and to question God’s goodness and mercy and grace. It is no different today.

When we come to a passage like this, an episode like this, we have to fit this within the context of 2 Kings now. The northern kingdom is under divine discipline, they have rejected God, and now it is time for them to learn that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God of grace and mercy. And that is what we have been seeing in all of these different episodes, that God’s grace is sufficient. So when we come to the floating axe head the first thing we have to say is that this has something to do with teaching about the grace and mercy of God. The second thing we have to realize is that this is part of a polemic against Baal. Two words characterize all of these episodes from 1 Kings 17 all the way through the life of Elisha: polemic and apologetics. Polemic: according to the Oxford English Dictionary a polemic is a strong verbal or written attack. Webster’s: it is an attack against the opinions or principles of another; an aggressive attack or refutation of the opinions or principles of another. This is standard operating procedure throughout the Old Testament. God is constantly showing that He is superior to the false human viewpoint systems of the world around us. He has been doing this since 1 Kings 18 with Elijah on Mount Carmel showing the Yahweh is the true God, the living God, the God of fire, not Baal the god of lightning; it is Yahweh who provides life and gives Elijah the ability to raise the widow’s son from the dead; all of these different episodes are designed to refute the pagan belief system that is dominating the culture, and to defend the truth of God’s revelation in the Mosaic law. That is called apologetics. The word “apologetics” simply means to give a well-reasoned answer for what we believe. It doesn’t mean to apologize. So there are these two things going on constantly in these passages, a demonstration that all of the idolatrous religions that dominated the northern kingdom were false and that what God said was true. He was showing the Baal couldn’t provide what he was supposed to provide. What was seen in Baal worship was the deification of nature, the worship of success at the expense of human life and attributing meaning and value in life to something other than God.

This episode of the floating axe head really focuses on those same things that we have been seeing all the way through in these other passages.

· It is a reminder that God is in control. Even though this accident has occurred and this valuable axe head has been lost in the water God in His sovereignty exercises mercy. He is concerned about the problems of this individual son of the prophets; this individual who is now facing economic catastrophe. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is concerned about the details of the problems in the life of each individual.

· There are a couple of things going on here that are related to a symbolic significance. One is the symbolic representation of restoration. Restoration is what occurs when failure or loss has taken place. There needs to be a restoration. Israel is represented by the axe head. Israel was one time usable by God when they were in obedience and on positive volition, but now they are not usable. They have been lost to divine service but God can restore them to service. That has to take place through a spiritual cleansing. Water again and again in the Old Testament represents that process of spiritual cleansing that takes place in order for service to take place in the temple. This axe head has been washed or cleansed in the water as it is now restored to usefulness, and so there is a picture here of restoration that is possible but only through cleansing.

· There is the idea of resurrection. That which has been lost represents death and then it is brought back to usefulness, which pictures the fact that God and God alone can restore life.

· It is a picture of regeneration, that God is the one who can regenerate the spiritually dead human being who is not usable to God. God can give him new life and that new life comes through the water and the blood. Titus 3:5.

· So there is this symbolism in the axe head—something that was valuable then lost, rendering them unable to go forward in their operation, and God is the one who restores it. It recognizes the legitimacy of the concern of the individual who is concerned about the fact that he can’t pay the price, but it is God who provides the solution and restores him.

Illustrations