Divine Omnipotence plus Grace equals Sufficiency. 2 Kings 4:1-27

In chapter two there is the anointing of Elisha’s ministry, the beginning of his ministry, and as we go through these chapters from chapter two down through chapter thirteen we will see a number of things occur in his ministry. These are things that seem odd or unusual to us at times, and other things that just seem like they are just historical narrative. If we are reading this and are not familiar with the significance of these events it is very easy to think that this is just something that happened all those years ago and it is hard to see how this has real significance or relevance to us today. In Paul’s mind in 2 Timothy 3:16, 17 the focus is really more on the Old Testament—“All scripture is profitable…” All Scripture has application for today and much of it is important for us because it teaches us about the character of God, about His person. As we see His dealings with Israel in the Old Testament they parallel His dealings with us in the New Testament. There are differences, of course, because there are differences of dispensation and as believers today we have different spiritual assets than they had in the Old Testament. Also, much of what we see in the Old Testament is designed to set up certain patterns. We see through these patterns that are repeated over and over again, and then we see these patterns depicted again in the New Testament, so we can learn many different things, many different principles about God in those patterns.

What we see in 2 Kings chapter three is the transition from the ministry of Elijah to Elisha. In many ways Elisha’s ministry is very similar to Elijah’s but there are also some distinct and important differences. Elijah had approximately six or seven miracles whereas Elisha has, depending on what we attribute a miracle to be, how we define it, anywhere from fifteen to eighteen different miracles. There is a difference in the orientation of Elijah’s ministry. He is mostly out of the land, out of the spotlight. He is down by the brook Cherith which is in the land but he is isolated there; then he is in Zarephath which is in the land of the Phoenicians; later he will go down to Mount Horeb, and so he is mostly out of the land and he has a ministry where he is directly confronting Ahab with divine judgment because of idolatry. When we come to Elisha the ministry is more oriented to restoration and the blessing and grace provision of God. Elisha’s ministry is almost always in the land of Israel and therefore it is always oriented towards this ministry of blessing.

Another pattern to develop as we go through this is the parallels between Elijah and Elisha as a foreshadowing of the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. We are all familiar with the fact that there is a clear scriptural pattern that is drawn between Elijah in the Old Testament and John the Baptist. Elisha is not isolated as Elijah was, he has around him a community of believers, the sons of the prophets. He focuses more on blessing, he has various miracles that are very similar to those that Jesus performs, and in many ways Elisha’s ministry is a forerunner and a pattern of what the Lord Jesus Christ would do when He came.

Elijah and Elisha stand at the center of the history of Israel, between Moses in approximately 1400 BC and the Lord Jesus Christ who comes and whose ministry is approximately AD 30. As we look at the ministries of Elijah and Elisha there is this explosion of the miraculous that is distinct from the period before them. There are a few miracles that occur between Moses and Elijah and there are a few that occur after Elisha, but there is just this explosion of miraculous activity during their two ministries and they stand at a critical juncture in the history of Israel. So these two prophets have a unique and vital role in the history of God’s revelation of Himself to Israel and to us. Elijah’s ministry ended in 2 Kings 2; Elisha’s ministry begins at that point and extends until his death in 2 Kings 13. Together their ministries are to the northern kingdom of Israel and they cover a period of approximately sixty years during one of the most spiritually dark periods in the history of Israel, and one of the periods of political chaos as well as economic depression. It is a time of increasing paganism where paganism controlled the leadership of the nation and paganism controlled the culture of the northern kingdom. During this time the believers in the northern kingdom not only had to endure, along with everybody else, the economic judgment of God on the northern kingdom, but they also had to handle the pressure of living in a pagan culture that constantly sought to push them and force them to conform to the pagan worship of the Baals and the Asherim. Beyond that there was the political pressure of persecution where there was Jezebel’s hit squads going out trying to identify the believers and then executing them. So it is a time of both divine discipline of having the endure plus the external pressures from the pagan culture as well as persecution.

This has a lot of application for us as we go through these chapters because in a similar way in our nation we are facing economic decline and possibly economic disaster. We need to prepare for circumstances that indeed may be much worse than what is going on right now. We have government policies that continue to devalue the dollar, continue to multiply at an unbelievable rate the debt of the nation—a violation of establishment principles—and we continue to have all manner of corruption, both in the private sector as well as the public sector. We also see the increasing pressure from a pagan culture around us to conform to the relativistic secular ideals that are promoted through education, through the media, through films, through television, through peer pressure; all of these things are there and parents raising children today have a job that is a thousand times more difficult than when they were growing up because the country is much more overtly pagan than it was even twenty or thirty years ago. So we have the pressure from a pagan relativistic, postmodern worldview where multiculturalism and relativism has become so embedded within the thought structure of the institutions of our nation that people in leadership can no longer look accurately at the things that are going on; it may be politically incorrect to do so.

There are a lot of parallels between Elijah and Elisha and our own times and that is why the doctrines that are covered in these chapters are critical for us, and they all wrap around two or three major doctrines, but then within each different episode, each different miracle that we see, we will identify certain other important doctrines that we must also explore.

To get into this chapter we must address four things. First we have to summarize what happens in these chapters. We need to understand these events in light of the Mosaic covenant themes of blessing and cursing. Only then can we properly interpret them and not end up with just a bunch of interesting little stories and narratives. Third, we also need to understand these events in light of what God is doing specifically through the Elijah-Elisha ministries during that time in history. Then we need to see these events in light of their typology as they foreshadow key doctrines and events in the life of John the Baptist and Jesus.

Starting at 2 Kings 2:13, 14 we will go through the sixteen miracles of Elisha. These miracles are not just done in order to satisfy certain needs. That is a mistake that many people make when they come to the miracles of Jesus. Every single miracle in the life of Jesus was for a purpose—to teach people about God, His Word, and about His provision for us. The same thing is true about the miracles and the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. The first miracle we see in the ministry of Elisha is the parting of the Jordan river as he comes back from the time when the transition occurs between Elijah and Elisha and Elijah is taken in the whirlwind to heaven. The key players in this first miracle are Elijah who has just departed, Elisha, and the sons of the prophets from Jericho. When Elijah was taken to heaven Elisha tore his clothes indicating his grief. He takes up the mantle of Elijah which was a symbol of his divine authority as a prophet and as he headed back and as he crossed the Jordan he took the mantle of Elijah and put it in the water of the Jordan. The Jordan then split, God separated the waters, and he crossed over the Jordan on dry land. This was to demonstrate that Elisha had the same power, the same Spirit of God upon him that Elijah had had.

Notice, too, it was a water miracle. As we go through these miracles we notice that most of them had to do with water, oil, grain, and they almost all have something to do with life. Why? Because God is continuing to demonstrate through these miracles that He, Yahweh the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is the sovereign God of the universe; He is the God of life, the one who supplies that which is needed for life—water, oil, grain. It is not Baal, the false god of the Phoenicians. God is demonstrating to the nation through these miracles, just as He had done through Elijah, that Baal and the Asherim are impotent and can’t do anything; it is He who supplies all that is needed for life. So there is this contrast being set up here between the death culture of the fertility religion and the life that only God can provide. Remember that when Moses gave his parting sermon, the book of Deuteronomy, he ended it by saying: “Choose you this day death or life.” These are the options God sets before every single human being. What we see in all of these sixteen miracles that occur in Elisha’s ministry is this emphasis on life, that God gives life whereas the pagan culture of the northern kingdom of Israel is a culture of death. We have to decide if we are going to choose the path of obedience to God which leads to life or the path of assimilation to the culture which is the path of death. 2 Kings 2:13, 14 shows that Elisha has the same power of God, the life-giving Yahweh, and he is going to be the new prophetic leader in the northern kingdom.

The second miracle that occurs is in the same chapter, vv. 19-22, when he came to Jericho and the city came to him and said that the water was bad. The water was bitter and the ground was barren, a picture of death, the judgment of God upon the land and upon the water. It is death, and so they come to Elisha who puts salt in the water and says, v. 21, “Thus says the LORD, ‘I have purified these waters; there shall not be from there death or unfruitfulness any longer.’” Death and barrenness is the result of sin and disobedience. Now there is going to be life, the water is now purified. Again, this is a water miracle.

Then there is another little event. There are three of these judgment curses in this section and because they do involve the action of God’s power and are not just things that circumstantially happen. It is still something that indicates a miracle, something of divine intervention that has occurred. As we have seen, when Elisha left Jericho he went up to Bethel and there were the bunch of juvenile delinquents that came out—obviously a large number because not all of them were mauled by the bears, just 42—to ridicule Elisha because they don’t respect his authority and that he has the authority of Elijah. Elisha pronounces a curse on them, v. 24, and two female bears maul them. That is a sign of judgment, that disobedience to God brings death and judgment; in contrast these other miracles emphasize obedience to God who brings life and blessing. That is the third miracle.

The fourth miracle in chapter three is the defeat of Moab. In that event Elisha is sought out for his counsel because as they circled around the southern part of the Dead Sea and all of the dried up desert area they ran out of water. The waters came down and filled the trenches. Water comes at the command of God. He provides the water, and not only that, when the Moabite army arose the next morning and looked at the Israelite army and because of the refraction of the light to the water it appeared to be blood. This was a miracle that God provided so that it looked like blood and cause them to think the three kings had fallen out with each other, the armies had slaughtered each other, and now they are going to take advantage of the situation, charge in and destroy the Israelites. But they are taken by surprise because God has deceived them, and they get slaughtered by the armies of Judah, Israel and Edom. God had provided a life for the armies of Israel but He did not give them a total victory because it was not His will for them to take possession of Moab.

In chapter four is the fifth miracle, the oil provided for the widow. The key people here are Elisha, the woman’s dead husband who is one of the sons of the prophets and a faithful believer, his widow, his two children and their creditor. The husband was a faithful believer but he had some debts and now the creditor is coming to put pressure on the widow to pay up. If she didn’t pay up the children would be made slaves. The widow is destitute and has absolutely nothing except one jar of oil. She comes to Elisha as the representative of God to provide a solution to her problem. Elisha tells her to gather all her containers, every one she could find, put them in her house, close the door, and then to start filling those containers with the oil from the pot that she had. She began to do that. God, of course, miraculously multiplied the oil and she filled up every single container until there were no more containers that could be found. Elisha then told her to sell off enough for her to pay the debt and to keep the remainder in order to provide for the finances of her family. This was a miracle from God showing once again that God’s grace is sufficient. He can solve the problems; His resources are infinite. The emphasis is on blessing for those who are trusting in God, and that there is life in the land even when the people of God are surrounded by judgment on the rank paganism that is there. There is this life versus death theme: life from God and death in paganism.

The next episode in chapter four describes the Shunamite woman, vv. 8-37. Briefly, the key people here are Elisha, his servant Gehazi, the Shunamite woman, her husband and her son. At the beginning we see this woman who lives in the Jezreel Valley and who sees Elisha coming back and forth before her house on a periodic basis and so she tells her husband that they should honor the prophet of God. 2 Kings 4:10 ^NASB “Please, let us make a little walled upper chamber and let us set a bed for him there, and a table and a chair and a lampstand; and it shall be, when he comes to us, {that} he can turn in there.” In return for this and for her devotion to God and her grace orientation Elisha told her that in about a year she would have a child. She and her husband are older, like Abraham and Sarah, and it is not possible for them to have children. Again this depicts God giving life where there is death. God is the source of life. And so the child is born and lives for some years and then suddenly becomes ill and dies. Now the woman reacts and becomes somewhat angry and bitter towards Elisha.

2 Kin 4:27, 28 ^NASB “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.’ Then she said, ‘Did I ask for a son from my lord? Did I not say, ‘Do not deceive me’?’” So Elisha sends Gehazi to heal the child but that doesn’t work and so Elisha comes and lies down upon the child, prays to God, and the child then is brought back to life, vv. 34, 35. Again, this emphasizes that God is the solution to our problems, His grace is magnificent and sufficient, and He has the power and the ability to solve all of our problems. That was the sixth miracle.

The seventh is the poisoned pot, 4:38-41. During the same famine that was going on all of this time the prophet comes to Gilgal where he sees the sons of the prophets. So the key players are Elisha and the sons of the prophets. They are sitting there and to make a meal they go out into the fields to get vegetables to put into the stew, along with some gourds from a wild vine which poisons the stew. They cry out to Elisha that there is death ion the pot. He puts some flour into the pot and says to serve it to the people so that they may eat, so now it is going to provide for many. It is like the feeding of the five thousand that we see in Jesus’ ministry. Again God’s grace is sufficient, it is through trusting in God that there is life rather than death.

Then the eighth miracle is in the last few verses of the chapter which is the multiplying of the loaves and the grain. 2 Kings 4:42-44 ^NASB “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.’ 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.’’ So he set {it} before them, and they ate and had {some} left over, according to the word of the LORD.” Again, God is the source of life, His grace is abundant and free, and there is death apart from God.

In chapter five we have the healing of Naaman, a Gentile, showing that God’s blessing isn’t just limited to Israel. Elisha hears about what has happened and he comes and tells Naaman to go wash in the Jordan seven times and he would be healed. The man thinks this is silly and stupid at first, gets mad at Elisha and prepares to go home but his servant comes and tells him to simmer down and trust in God. Naaman does and he washes in the Jordan seven times and is healed. He returns to Elisha and praises God. 2 Kings 5:15 ^NASB “When he returned to the man of God with all his company, and came and stood before him, he said, ‘Behold now, I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel; so please take a present from your servant now’.” He tries to give a gift but Elisha won’t take anything.

The tenth miracle is the floating axe head. Elisha makes the axe head float as the workers are preparing a place down by the Jordan. The axe head that they have borrowed flies off the handle and sinks in the water and Elisha throws a stick in the water so that the iron will float. Again, these miracles confirm who Elisha is. If they had lost the borrowed axe head there would have been some penalty and it again shows that God’s grace is sufficient, He handles all of our problems.

The eleventh miracle deals with what we might call the divine espionage. The Syrians are constantly in battle with the northern kingdom of Israel. The king of Syria keeps getting outwitted by the king of Israel who seems to know his every move. He begins to blame those in his periphery that they are selling out to the enemy, that there is a spy among them. They say no it is just this prophet Elisha who knows your every move because God tells him. You can’t avoid the omniscience of God. The king of Syria is now really angry with Elisha so he sends his whole army after Elisha. Elisha is down in a small village in Israel with Gehazi. Gehazi goes out in the morning and sees that the city is surrounded by this army. They have a capture order for Elisha, so Gehazi comes back panicky. Elisha prays to God the he will open his eyes, pull back the curtain, as it were, between physical, material earth so that Gehazi can see the myriads of angels which stands between Elisha and the Syrian army—recognizing that the battle is the Lord’s, it is not out battle, and that we need to trust in Him and He is the one who gives us the victory.

The next episode is when they capture a couple of the Syrians and rather than kill them or put them in prison the king of Israel asks Elisha what he should do with them. Elisha says not to kill them but to put water and food before them that they may eat and drink and go to their master. In other words, deal with them in grace and kindness, give them that which promotes life rather than death, and the result is that they go home and this particular action by the Syrians against them is shut down.

Then in verse 24 there is another military action against the northern kingdom. 2 Kings 6:25 ^NASB “There was a great famine in Samaria; and behold, they besieged it, until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty {shekels} of silver, and a fourth of a kab of dove’s dung for five {shekels} of silver.” That is a lot for just a donkey’s head to cook and make soup. That would be like two or three month’s wages just top make a donkey head soup. The circumstances were really tough. Not only that but there is another situation where one woman comes who had entered into a bargain with a neighbor lady and said, We are starving to death. We will cook your son for dinner today and cook mine for dinner tomorrow. The neighbor lady killed her son but when it came time for the first lady’s turn she wouldn’t give up her son. It was really tough in the northern kingdom under divine discipline. The king went to Elisha wanting to know what the solution would be. God was going to provide the answer. This is the thirteenth episode.

2 Kings 7:1 ^NASB Then Elisha said, “Listen to the word of the LORD; thus says the LORD, ‘Tomorrow about this time a measure of fine flour will be {sold} for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.’” In other words, there is going to be abundance tomorrow. What happens during the night is similar to what happens to the king of Assyria later on. Suddenly there is panic in the camp of the Syrian army and they all flee leaving everything behind—all of their food and provisions—as they run back to Syria because they thought they heard the rumblings of an army. A couple of lepers who are out begging by the gate of the city decide they are going to die if they stay there and if they go into the city they are going to be killed, so they decide to surrender to the Syrians and maybe we can get food from them. They are the ones who discover the empty camp. Again, a wonderful example of God providing escape for Israel; life rather than death. God is the source, His grace is more than sufficient.

Then we come to another episode with the Shunamite woman. This is the fourteenth miracle where her land is restored to her. Elisha tells her to leave Israel during this time of famine and she lived among the Philistines for seven years. When she returned she found that all of her land and property had been confiscated and she went to the king. When the king found out who she was and that Elisha had raised her son from the dead, so he restores all of her land to her.

The fifteenth miracle involves the episode with Hazael in the latter part of chapter eight, vv. 7-15. Ben-hadad is about to die so he sends his second in command, Hazael, to seek out Elisha to find out if he is really going to die. Hazael goes to meet Elisha and Elisha says, You are going to be the next king, and he begins to weep. He is weeping because God has revealed to Elisha that Hazael is going to terribly persecute the northern kingdom, attack them, and hundreds will be killed in the violence and famine that will come because of Hazael. Hazel returns and tells Ben-hadad that he is going to live and then killed him.

The last miracle is after Elisha dies in chapter thirteen. A man who is dead is thrown in to the grave with him and because of Elisha’s dead bones there a miracle occurs and the man comes back to life. Once again, God gives life where there is death.

What is taught in all of this is the doctrine of grace. Notice the emphasis on providing the resources of life—rain, water, oil. God’s grace is more than sufficient. He is the source of life.

Deuteronomy 30:15 ^NASB “See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; [16] in that I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the LORD your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it.” What is the key to life and good? It is following the Lord. [17] “But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, [18] I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong {your} days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. [19] I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, [20] by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”

What was happening with Elijah and Elisha was the outworking of that principle. Elisha is demonstrating through all of these miracles, these visual training aids, that God is the source of life. He is still the source of life. This is the background for understanding the key message we will come across in the first three chapters of the Gospel of John.

John 3:16 ^NASB “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” The choice is death or life; our way or God’s way. [17] “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. [18] He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. [19] This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. [20] John 3:20 For everyone who does [practices] evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. [21] But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

John 3:36 ^NASB “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” The message is clear from Genesis to Revelation: choose life or choose death. The path of life is to obey God. The path to life is only through the Lord Jesus Christ, both in terms of salvation and then in terms of living out the Christian life. Those who fail in disobedience follow the path of death, judgment and discipline. The only way to survive, whatever the circumstances may be, is to recognize the sufficiency of God’s grace. He will provide the answer for everything; He can give from His abundant resources all that is necessary for life today just as he did in the Old Testament. It might not be as overtly miraculous but He will still sustain us.

Illustrations