2 Kings 6-7 are a series of examples about Spiritual sight. We can think of the old saying “Out of sight, out of mind.” But in these cases we learn that we are never out of GOD’s sight, nor out of His Mind. But it is very easy for us to forget about and neglect Him.

Story A: 2 Kings 6:1-7

In the first story, Elisha is with the other prophets and their followers. The followers complain that there’s no room for all of them to live together where they are. They recommend moving camp to the Jordan where “many hands (will) make light work”, as the saying goes. They will help each other build homes and they’ll quickly have a comfortable camp. Elisha agrees to let them go and they say they want him to join them. Elisha has never been alone before. He left his family farm to join Elijah, then he’d had an assistant when he continued Elijah’s ministry until Gehazi sinned and became a leper. So now he agrees to go with the prophets and disciples to their new camp.

As they are cutting trees and building shelters one of their ax heads falls into the river. The man cries out to Elisha because he had borrowed the ax. This might seem silly to us but this is a matter of survival for these people. The ax is a means of cutting wood for shelter, for warmth and for food. It is a necessity for life. And the word for “borrowed” has the sense he has begged the giver to loan it to him because he is too poor to have one of his own or certainly to get one, if he can find one, as a replacement. Loss of that ax is endangering his friend’s life and his own.

When the man shows Elisha where the ax head had disappeared in the water, Elisha breaks off a branch, tosses it in the river at that spot, and the iron ax head floats to the surface. As it floats, Elisha tells the man that the man must grab the ax head from the water himself.

The language emphasizes that only the ax head fell in, so there is no handle to float or drag it to the surface. Also, Scripture emphasizes it is a very heavy piece of iron. Again, it could not have floated on its own.

So what’s the point? “Neither a borrower nor a lender be?”

No. The ax head was lost out of sight. It was gone forever until a piece of wood, a branch, goes where it’s needed. And the intervention of that branch raised the ax head. This is an actual, historic event. But it also has symbolic significance.

How can a piece of wood raise a lost piece of iron? The same way wood is used to raise us from the dead.

JESUS says He is the Vine and we are the branches. Just as He uses the cross to raise us from the dead, Elisha uses a branch from the living tree or vine to save the ax head. The branch represents a Believer who sacrifices everything to rescue the lost. But JESUS is also referred to as the Branch as well as the Root of David. The lost can be recovered no other way. The branch goes where the lost is and seeks them out at the point of the need. The old ways (the old handle) won’t work. Only the new can save. And there is action required. The one in need must reach out and act in order to experience the blessing.

We may be busy about life and suddenly a circumstance occurs where we realize we are lost. Like that ax head we are lost in sin, out of sight where only GOD can rescue us. Through His death and sacrifice, JESUS reaches us through Believers He sends to us. They meet us at the point of our need and share the Gospel with us. Like the olive branch in the mouth of the dove that returned to Noah in the ark as the waters of the flood began to recede that message is a sign of new Life. But we must take hold of it when it is offered. And how much more precious do you think that saved life was in the eyes of the one who received it?

We are never out of GOD’s sight or out of His Mind. When He acts to bring us back to Himself, including through Believers, we must take the opportunity, whether to accept Salvation and new life, forgiveness, counsel, or assistance.

Naaman is a mighty warrior. And in the eyes of a king, there is no one as valuable (except perhaps a wife who gives him sons) as a mighty warrior. So with every victory the mighty Naaman wins for the King of Syria, the more valuable he is in the king’s eyes and the more he is rewarded with wealth and respect. Naaman is a mighty man, but he has leprosy, the most dreaded of all diseases. All it takes is one little spot of leprosy, and you are considered the walking dead. And because of such a spot, all Naaman’s power and all Naaman’s wealth and prestige are worthless now.

On one of his raids into Israel on behalf of the King of Syria, Naaman captures a little Israeli girl and gives her to his wife as a slave to be her maid. This little, nameless Jewish girl sees all of the false prophets of Syria praying to all of their idols for the healing of her master. And small and young as she was, she knows that it is useless. She has the faith in her heart that only the true GOD of her people, the GOD of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, can heal her master. Forgetting all bitterness at being a slave, she tells her mistress, “For all of their praying, I wish they would ask the prayers of the Elisha, Prophet of Israel! Then my master would be healed!” The wife tells her husband Naaman and Naaman, desperate to be healed, tells his master, the King of Syria.

The king, not wanting to lose such a valiant warrior to leprosy, writes a letter to the King of Israel. He assumes that any prophet with such power is easily at hand of the King of Israel as he had all of his prophets for his idols close at hand. He sends Naaman with great riches and gifts to pay for the healing.

The Syrian king thinks he’s only asking a little favor. What he doesn’t realize is that the kings of Israel are no less idolatrous than he is.

So when the King of Israel gets a surprise visit from a leprous warrior with a letter from another king, asking for the impossible, the King of Israel panics. He assumes the King of Syria is trying to pick a fight. He screams and tears his robes in mourning and terror. He thinks he will be attacked and killed because of this trick request. The simple fact that even a child knows does not cross his mind: he has the means to heal by the power of GOD through the prophet Elishah.

Elisha, the great Prophet of Israel, hears about the King of Israel’s panic and sends him a message: “What are you panicking and tearing your robes about? Send him to me and I’ll show him the power GOD gives to His prophets of His people, Israel!” So the King of Israel is only too happy to send Naaman to Elisha and be rid of him.

Naaman arrives at Elisha’s door with all of his pomp and grandeur of the King of Syria’s mightiest chariots, with a staff of soldiers riding with him, and wagon loads of gold and clothes as gifts. But Elisha won’t even come out to see him! Instead, Elisha’s assistant, Gehazi, relays a message from Elisha “Go dip yourself in the Jordan river seven times and you’ll be healed!” That’s it. Seven little dips. Not even a good Baptist dunking, just dips. A little thing to ask.

Naaman is outraged! Here he has put aside his pride to come to a people he conquered, to some backwoods water hole, to ask for help from some foreign prophet of an unknown god, and he says to go dip your toes and you’ll be healed?! He wanted the whole TV evangelist special! Where are the spotlights? The shouting in unknown languages? The waving of hands? That’s what he was expecting. A man of his stature should have spectacle and a spectacular healing! Literally! And if he was to “dip” himself in water, it would be in the mighty rivers of Syria, not in some foreign mud pit of a river!

But calmer heads prevailed. The “little people” in his entourage calmed him down. “Sir, if the prophet had asked you to do some exhausting thing, you’d have done it gladly. Why not just do the little thing as quickly as you would do the great?” So Naaman gives in, dips himself in the Jordan river seven times as told…and is healed! His skin becomes as fresh as his soul at the realization that the GOD of Israel is the True GOD.

Healed, Naaman returns to Elisha to thank him and give him the riches he has brought from Syria, but no matter how much he tries to force Elisha to take them, Elisha refuses. But Elisha does grant Naaman’s request to take enough soil with him from Israel to form an altar of it in Syria where he would worship the GOD of Israel rather than the idols of that country. And while it’s on his mind he asks in advance for forgiveness. His master, the King of Syria, leans on Naaman’s arm when the king worships the idol Rimmon. Naaman asks forgiveness for the appearance that it is he who is bowing to the idol when he is only trying to keep his master from falling, which would mean Naaman’s death. Elisha tells him to go in peace, and he takes the dirt to worship on and leaves.

However, after Naaman leaves, Gehazi, the assistant to Elisha, runs after him to claim some treasure for himself. We remember in previous chapters that Elisha had sent Gehazi ahead with Elisha’s walking stick in order to raise a dead boy to life while Elisha was on the way. But it didn’t work. Perhaps we’re seeing the reason why here. Gehazi had a spot of evil in his heart. A small spot, perhaps, but big enough to keep GOD from using him for a miracle. And now that spot is growing into greed. Gehazi thinks it’s just a little thing. He won’t ask for all of the treasure, just a little gold and a few changes of clothing. Just a little. And Naaman has no problem giving it to him. In fact, he forces him to take twice as much gold as he asked for and sends servants to carry it back to Elisha’s house with Gehazi. But Gehazi realizes he has done wrong. He takes the clothes and gold from them and sends them away as he sneaks into the house and hides the gold and clothing. (We should remember here an incident that happened in the time of Moses. When the people of Israel had been forbidden from taking the spoil of enemies they’d conquered one of them took some and died for it.)

Think of how sin stops our thinking. Wouldn’t Elisha notice new clothes on Gehazi? Where would Gehazi spend the gold without Elisha knowing? And who could think to hide anything from a prophet of GOD?

Sure enough, Elisha asks Gehazi where he went and the dark spot in Gehazi’s heart grows still further from greed to lies. Think how heartbroken Elisha must have been after having such a close relationship with Elijah while serving Elijah as Gehazi served him now, only to be betrayed. Elisha’s response to Gehazi’s lie is very revealing. He says that he saw Gehazi clearly, though so far away, with his prophetic vision, as Naaman turned from his chariot to see what Gehazi wanted. It was a little moment in time, a moment when everything could have changed and Gehazi could have changed his mind and run home. A time when he could have confessed what he had done to Elisha instead of deciding to go ahead and seek payment for what GOD had done. What’s more, Elisha refers to Gehazi being paid much more than what he was actually given. Why? Because that’s what was growing in Gehazi’s heart. Now that he had this, he was imagining all of the riches…slaves and land…that he could somehow get in the same way. Now the sin had grown into lust for more and more, and along with the lust, unrealistic ambitions.

Elisha is no longer the comforting figure he once was but the Prophet of GOD calling down the judgment of GOD for Gehazi’s attempt to take credit for the work of GOD. The leprosy that Naaman had was now on Gehazi. No longer just a spot, but a covering of decayed flesh that made him a pariah, the walking dead, a zombie of white.

What little thing are we harboring in our heart? What little power are we keeping from growing to good? We have the ability to share a word, a testimony, of the power of GOD. We each have the power to give in to the dark spot in our soul or to shine a spot of light, no matter how small, into the life of another person. That little light that you let shine, as the children’s song says, can be the spot that shines on a seed. And that seed can grow to a tree. And that tree can grow to the glory of GOD to give greater testimony to the work of JESUS in the world than we ever imagined, with seeds to grow in the future light.
Or we can allow a dark spot of sin to fester in our souls and grow to blind our souls.
Little things mean a lot. Which will we heed?
Naaman did the little thing that led to great healing and the greatest gift of all, a relationship with the LORD GOD we have come to know in Jesus Christ.
And it all started with a little girl.

I know the older folks hearing “Holy Helpfulness” will be tempted to insert the word “Batman” at the end of the phrase. But the distinction of holy helpfulness is important. Throughout the Bible, holiness always results in helpfulness. But not all helpfulness is holy, or even helpful. In this chapter we see several examples of the differences.

Back in the days of EliSHa, there were prophets throughout the 12 tribes of Israel and Judah. And one of these prophets died. Being holy men prophets were usually poor and this man was no exception. But he left behind a wife and children. The wife is terrified her children would be sold off into slavery by those her husband and she owed money. So, desperate, she begs EliSHa for help, since he’s the leader of the prophets and the only authority figure she knows. And knowing, as we know from previous chapters, that EliSHa can be tough, she begs for help not for her own sake, but for her godly husband’s sake and for the sake of her boys.

EliSHa can’t help fast enough. He asks her what he can do but immediately starts making suggestions himself, asking what she has in the house she might be able to sell. She explains that she only has a small bottle of oil. This would be a bottle like you’d put on the table to pour olive oil on salads, or even smaller, like a perfume bottle.

Oil was extremely important in Israel in these days (and still is throughout the area). And, as with olive oil today, it could range in quality and cost. It was used, depending on the type, from anointing the body, to cooking, to healing lotion. And the value could vary widely.

EliSHa tells the woman to go around to all of her neighbors and borrow pots…big, empty pots…the bigger the better. And to borrow as many as she possibly can. Then she is to lock herself and her sons in the house and fill up all of the pots with the oil from her small bottle!

This woman wasted no time. She didn’t stop to ask how that could be, she didn’t stop for anything. In fact Scripture jumps right over her borrowing the pots to show her in her house filling pots. As quickly as she filled one a son would bring another until she finally called to bring another but is told by her son they’re all full.

Now the widow has a house full of pots full of oil! But what can she do with it? Even with all that oil was used for she could never use all that oil. Asking EliSHa, she’s told part B of the plan: sell all of the oil and she and her sons will have enough to live on for the rest of their lives. According to Hebrew scholars there’s a play on the words here where it says the quality of this oil is so good that the money the widow makes off of it will be enough for the widow and her sons to live on until the dead are raised!

Throughout the Bible, oil is used to symbolize blessing. Blessings from GOD, and blessings of life. And we have seen that it is used in various amounts and qualities. That can be applied to helpfulness, too.

Anyone can be helpful, even nonbelievers. There is common grace, like common sense. GOD lets rain fall on the just and the unjust. Good and evil both benefit from certain blessings in life. And nonbelievers give to some charities as Christians do. The difference is the source.

The widow had to borrow the pots to fill from neighbors but using what she had from GOD she was able to make what others had exponentially more valuable to them and to herself. She had only a tiny bit of blessing, but the more blessing she poured out the more came until there was nothing…or no one…left to fill. The Hebrew says that when there were no more pots to fill the oil in the little bottle literally stood still.

In the next story, EliSHa is the recipient of the helpfulness. He makes regular rounds throughout the towns and whenever he passes through the town of Shunem he’s fed by a prominent woman in the community and her husband. This is the town where the beautiful virgin, Abishag, who kept King David warm when he was shivering from old age and too old to have sex many years earlier was from. Some say this woman was a relative of Abishag.

EliSHa stopped off by the home of this woman and her husband that they built him a fully furnished little room on the roof where he could rest and refresh himself after they fed him on future visits. When he has his servant, Gehazi, ask if EliSHa can repay them for their trouble by putting an influential word in with someone in power, the woman says that she’s surrounded by family and needs nothing. (Even as Believers we are told by the Apostle Paul that our helpfulness should start at home. First to our immediate family, then our family of other Christians, then others.) EliSHa is stumped but is determined to find some way to bless this woman. Gehazi suggests that she’s childless and her husband is old, so EliSHa promises her she’ll be holding her son by that time next year. She tells him not to get her hopes up or phrase it that way. She’s suspicious that there’s a “gotcha” in the blessing. She thinks the son may be in her arms, but dead. (Some people will be suspicious when you try to help. They may have been hurt by those who said they’d help in the past. Help anyway.) It all happens, just as EliSHa had prophesied.

However, years later, the woman’s worst fears are confirmed and the child dies. Notice that she doesn’t confirm the death to her husband or even EliSHa’s servant until she can get to EliSHa the responsible one. (We all need help from time to time. Rather than crying to. those who couldn’t help, the woman only told the person who could. Notice, too, that she knew where to find him and rushed to get there.)

EliSHa first sends Gehazi ahead to see if he can raise the child from the dead using EliSHah’s walking stick. But it didn’t work. EliSHa had to go himself. And even then he had to literally lay his body on the dead boy’s body. He totally identified with the boy, making himself ceremonially unclean. He invested himself. (It’s easy, and good, to drop a check in the mail to a charity. But there are people you meet every day who need your help. Invest yourself, personally, into other lives.) The boy is raised from the dead and returned to his mother.

Moving on, EliSHa comes to a town where there’s famine and a group of fellow prophets have gathered. He sends one of them off to gather food and the helpful fellow gathers from the forest and prepares them all a soup…of poison mushrooms! (The person trying to help meant well. But his ineptness nearly killed those he was trying to help. You’re not called to drive your neighbor shopping if you don’t know how to drive. When you help others, help them with what you know, what you’re good at doing. Meaning well is not enough.) EliSHa throws flour in the pot and the poison is removed.

In the final story, a man brings EliSHa the best food around. It’s only enough to feed at most a few people but EliSHa insists not only on feeding others before helping himself but feeding all of them! Gehazi protests there isn’t enough but EliSHa insists that the LORD has promised to multiply it and, sure enough, the food, like the oil in the first story, is increased until every man, like every pot of oil, was full.

JESUS warns us to always count the cost and know what will be expected of us. That goes for helping others, too. But we must always make sure we’re not serving others out of our own need to be needed, sense of importance, or other agenda. It must always be the natural byproduct of the love of GOD pouring out of you. If you try to help others by pumping from your own strength you’ll exhaust yourself and frustrate yourself and those you’re trying to help. But if you lead them to the waterfall of GOD’s Love flowing through you so they can meet Him for themselves, the Living Water direct from JESUS will sustain them when you’re gone.

True Christians will always have the GOD-given desire and ability to help others around them: family, fellow Christians, and others in Christ’s Name. But in order to be truly helpful it must be done GOD’s way, in His Power, not ours.

There are times in life when the godly must work together with the ungodly. It’s a fact of life that in order to help anyone in the world and do good you must deal with those who are not good. That’s what I call dancing with the devil. And it’s what this chapter is about.

Evil King Ahab of Israel is dead. He had been ruling in Samaria in charge of most of the tribes that GOD had taken away from King David’s tribe, Judah. And in place of evil Ahab, his evil son Jehoram became king of those tribes of Israel, still ruling from Samaria.

The name Jehoram is interesting because even though his father and mother were idol worshippers, his name means “The GOD of Israel is Exalted.” And since he stopped worshipping the idol Baal, he may have renamed himself. “Baal” means “Lord” or “Master.” So by being named “The GOD of Israel is Exalted”, his name was a kind of slap at Baal and Baal worshippers, saying “Israel’s GOD is Greater than Baal.” However, despite his name, he still worshipped and encouraged the people of Israel to worship other idols on high places. This was a political decision because otherwise the people would have returned to Jerusalem to worship. As King of Israel, he couldn’t allow that because of fear the people would leave his kingdom and return to join with the tribe of Judah and their good king Jehoshaphat.

King Jehoshaphat wasn’t a jealous king like Jehoram. In fact he had helped Jehoram’s father, Ahab, fight a battle. And when Jehoram asks Jehoshaphat to help him fight a common enemy, Jehoshaphat agrees with exactly the same words he had used with Jehoram’s father when agreeing to help him.

Why? Because the Moabites were a common enemy of all 12 tribes of Israel, Jehoram’s tribes and Jehoshaphat’s tribes. The Moabites were the descendants of the incest between Lot and his oldest daughter. His daughter had thought after seeing Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed that her father was the only living male and that she had to repopulate the earth. So she got him drunk and had sex with him.

Jehoshaphat saw it was necessary to “dance with the devil” of evil Ahab in order to protect his own people of Judah from the evil Moabites.

They sneak up on the Moabites from behind, through the wilderness, and on the way pick up a third king, with his army of Edom. (These were estranged cousins, descended from Esau, the brother of their ancestor Jacob or Israel.)

But on the way to attack Moab the three armies run out of water. Jehoram immediately panics, but godly Jehoshaphat again asks as he had asked Jehoram’s father many years earlier if there were any prophets of the LORD. Notice that it isn’t Jehoram who answers but one of his servants. The servant tells them about EliSHa who had once acted as assistant to EliJah (washing his hands for ritual cleansing) and who is now a might prophet himself. There’s even a play on the theme of EliSHa having plenty of access to what they need: water. (We will see a similar situation soon when a captive girl will tell the foreign commander Naaman about EliSHah who could heal him of leprosy. And EliSHah using river water to do it.) But that is later. For now the three kings go to Elisha.

Other kings would have EliSHa brought to them. But as we will see with the three wise men who will one day search for Baby JESUS, these three are desperate. In this case for water. And in the case of JESUS for living water of salvation though they don’t know it yet. Though only Jehoshaphat could qualify as being wise because he followed the True GOD, the others were wise enough not to delay by negotiating with Elisha.

Now, we know from meeting EliSHa in earlier chapters that he has something of an attitude problem. He tells Jehoram (and Edom) to go ask their false prophets for help. But desperate Jehoram begs, saying that he recognizes it’s the LORD who is handing them over to Moab (knowing without water they’re doomed). EliSHa says if it were not for Jehoshaphat that he would not help them at all. He wouldn’t even look at them.

Why? EliSHa recognizes (from the LORD) that he must “dance with the devils” of Jehoram and Edom in order to help the godly Jehoshaphat destroy the Moabites. And here’s the key: it is for the glory of GOD.

There’s a difference between dealing with evil in order to benefit oneself and dealing with evil to benefit others and for the Glory of GOD (which is always tied to helping others for good). That’s what JESUS meant by telling us that we must be “in the world but not of the world”, and “wise as serpents but innocent as doves.” It’s the reason He tells the parable of the shrewd servant who, about to be fired, get discounts for others his current boss requires payment from to get them to hire him after he is fired. And why GOD later uses the enemies of Israel to discipline them, and then punishes those enemies for thinking they did it themselves or for their own glory.

We are to deal with the world and the evil people in it as we deal with power tools: carefully. Otherwise we will do more harm than good, including to our own souls. This is why it’s so difficult for Christians to be in politics. They must dance with the devil, being careful not to get the devil’s footprints on their shoes. Or worse, find themselves wearing his.

So Elisha agrees to help the three kings, for the glory of GOD and for Jehoshaphat’s sake. First, though, he tells them to get him a musician! What’s that about?! Do you need dance music to dance with the devil?!

In a way, yes. You might remember that when King Saul had been overcome by evil spirits, David playing music would soothe his fits. You might also know the often misquoted “Music has charms to soothe the savage breast” (not “beast”) from a poem by William Congreve. There is some truth to this, that music can calm the nerves and bring a more peaceful attitude. It’s why dentists pump in music while you’re in the dentist’s chair. EliSHa got himself so worked up with anger that, righteous though it was, he still needed to be calm to appropriately hear and relay a message from GOD.

That message was that GOD would not only fill the land with water, that was nothing. But to show His Glory, He would also hand the Moabites over to them. And they were not only to destroy the Moabites, but to decimate their land as well.

So, without using rain, the LORD had water flow. The Moabites have armed every possible male and march out to fight the three armies. They mistake the miraculous river of water reflecting the sun to be blood and rush towards the camps of the three kings, thinking they’ve destroyed each other and there’s nothing to do but take the riches off their dead enemies.

How could they think water was blood? Because there had been no rain, they knew there was no river there, and there they see this huge body of red liquid. (From the color of the sand and reflected sun.) And of course the LORD may have affected their vision.

When they reach the camps of Israel they were shocked to see Israel was not only very much alive, but in pursuit of them! The Moabites tried to break through the ranks of the armies of Edom, thinking them weaker than Israel or Judah, but they failed and were slaughtered.

As a last resort, the King of Moab thought he would do what he had heard would satisfy the gods…some say the god of Israel and Judah. Jewish scholars say he had heard the story of Abraham offering his son, Isaac on an altar. And not understanding Scripture he thought it was human sacrifice. So he kills his own son, the one who was to have taken his place as king, and offers him as a burnt sacrifice.

Whether it was to his own idols or a mistaken idea of the true GOD, the Israelites are so sickened by the action of the Moabite king they return home. Some scholars say because the Israelites felt guilty for their own idolatry.

Are we dancing with the devil? If so, are we dancing to his tune of selfishness and personal agenda? Or are we dancing circles around him, praising GOD and helping others to escape his grasp and dance into the arms of Christ?

In Romeo and Juliet, as the young lovers are trying to pull themselves away from each other, Juliet says:”Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Later song writers describe it as “It hurts so good.” And if you have cared about anyone, you know that feeling. Sending a child off to college is heartbreaking, yet you know the joy of being proud of their accomplishment and that in reuniting you will have a more mature relationship than ever. The same for their getting married. If you are married you remember that last sweet parting before the wedding day, feeling how horribly wrong it was yet knowing in a few hours you would be united in a way sweeter than you could imagine. And if you care for a Soldier, you know the bittersweetness of that departure that hurts sending them away but is sweetened by the knowledge it’s their last deployment. And the reunion will be spectacular.

EliSHa (hereafter referred to as S) was assistant in ministry to EliJah (hereafter referred to as J). GOD had picked S out to help J after J had complained about doing ministry alone, just the way GOD had provided Aaron to help Moses when Moses complained about being unfit to lead the people out of Israel.

In the very first verse of the chapter we are hit between the eyes with the same shock S was hit with in a message from: GOD. GOD is about to miraculously take J into Heaven!

This was to be a sweet but sorrowful parting. Over time, S had grown to respect who J was as a man, not just a leader. J had become a mentor, and a friend as well as a teacher and spiritual leader. He had become like a father. To hear that his father figure was being taken away was sorrowful to S.

That’s why as whole crowds of fellow prophets can’t wait to tell S that J is going to be taken away, S tells them that he knows, to be quiet. It’s like they’re rubbing salt in the wound of his broken heart.

But knowing what a great blessing this was for his father figure, a sign that J really was a great man of GOD, made it very sweet as well. S was heartbroken for himself but overjoyed for J.

J keeps telling his assistant not to follow him further. He knows how much it will hurt S to see him go. But S won’t be put off. No matter how many times J tells him to not follow, S can’t be persuaded, like a toddler grabbing his father’s leg, unwilling to let him leave.

When they come to the Jordan river, J snaps the river with the jacket he had around himself and the river splits so that the two of them can cross on dry land as 50 of the other prophets see them do it.

Notice the parallels to Moses again with the Red Sea. And also with the people coming into the promised land when the waters split to let them pass through.

After crossing the Jordan J brings up the topic neither of them want to mention. He asks his assistant how can he bless him before he leaves. S says something shocking but touching: He asks for twice the spiritual power from GOD that J had. He could have asked for wealth or prestige or long life. But S only asks to follow in J’s footsteps but to be even more effective in ministry.

J says this can only happen if S sees him being taken away. Jewish scholars say this is because J couldn’t give S more blessing than he had in him, but since GOD would be supernaturally increasing his power as he was being taken away, S could have the increase as well.

As they are still talking, a chariot made of fire with horses made of fire come between them and a tornado takes J (Elijah) off into Heaven. S (EliSHah) shouts out in shock and grief and joy “Papa! Papa!” as Elijah his father figure is being taken to heaven by the chariot of their mutual patriarch and ancestor, Israel (Jacob).

Alone, now, EliSHa takes the jacket that had fallen off of Elijah as he was being carried away. Returning home the way they came, he calls on GOD to answer him as he had answered Elijah and whips the water of the Jordan river and it divides, Jewish scholars say, twice as much as it had for Elijah. And the 50 prophets who had seen the two of them pass over see EliSHa return alone.

They realize that he has been given at least as much power as Elijah had and ask to go search if the Spirit had dropped Elijah somewhere. This sounds silly until we realize in Acts that, as with Phillip after he baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, the Spirit did occasionally physically carry the prophets and apostles from one spot to another, like an invisible hand moving chess pieces. Though Elisha knows Elijah was carried off to heaven the other prophets pester him so much he lets them search though as he told them they could find no trace of Elijah.

We see more evidence of EliSHa having the same if not more power than Elijah had when he is able to miraculously purify poison water and call the judgment of GOD down on evil children.

This is a controversial verse because we don’t like to hear that what just seem to be some teasing boys who mock EliSHa’s baldness get eaten by bears for it. But Scripture emphasizes that he stared at them the way JESUS stared at the rich young ruler who asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. Staring at the young man, JESUS could see into his heart just as EliSHa could see into the hearts of this gang of young men. JESUS loved what He saw but EliSHa saw these boys would never stop being evil and cursed them so bears ate most of them.

We can see many parallels to JESUS and His disciples in Elijah and EliSHa.
In Mark 10 where we read that incident of JESUS looking into the heart of that young man we read of many sweet sorrows.

Divorce, though sorrow, can be made sweet with reconciliation with GOD if not with the one divorcing us or from whom we’re divorced.

Children sorrowful to be kept from JESUS are overjoyed to be with Him, called into His arms.

The rich man who thought he had something sweet in riches was told by JESUS the real joy was in parting with those riches and helping others. And that the ultimate riches are to part with all the world says you need and find the sweetness of the Kingdom of GOD by following Christ. He tells James and John the sweetness of being parted from the desire for power.

Throughout the Gospels JESUS told the apostles before the crucifixion that He was about to be taken from them. But He said it would be a sweet sorrow. They wouldn’t see Him for a little while but unless He went away and became glorified in Resurrection He couldn’t send the Holy Spirit. But when He was resurrected and they realized they could have eternal life and have His Spirit with them always, their joy would be unimaginable.

And after JESUS ascended to the Father, the disciples returned to Jerusalem rejoicing. JESUS was gone from their sight but now they knew He was GOD, that He would be with them always, and that they would be reunited with Him forever either after their own death or His return.

JESUS calls us to the same sort of sweet sorrow as EliSHa and the disciples felt. In losing what and whom we love in one sense we find them restored in ways and a sweetness we can’t understand.

In your loss, look to Christ as your gain. And look to that tomorrow where in our fullness with Him, we will never part or sorrow again.

As we open 2 Kings we find it continues 1 Kings. (Surprise!) Remember that the people of GOD have been split up as punishment from GOD since entering the Promised Land. The tribe of Judah that King David had belonged to is in Jerusalem with one king. The people and kings of Judah are mostly godfearing. But most of the rest of the 12 tribes have broken off. They’re called Israel and have their own king ruling from Samaria. The Kings of Israel were mostly evil idol worshippers and incited their people to be

The latest evil king in Israel is Ahaziah. He’s evil as his father was and when he is dying from a fall he orders his servants to go to foreign prophets of the idol he worships instead of the true GOD to ask whether he will live or die. (Actually, of course, he’s asking if they can keep him from dying.)

But GOD sends the true prophet Elijah to give the servants a message. Because the king has ignored the One True GOD of Israel (in this case meaning all 12 tribes, including Judah), the king will die. GOD through Elijah is saying “Don’t bother asking foreigners. You’ve got the real GOD right here in your backyard. But because you ignored Me, the answer to your question is: You’re a dead man.”

The terrified messengers run back to the king who chides them for coming back too soon. And when he learns why and the message from Elijah he sends 50 soldiers to drag Elijah back.

Ahaziah knows Elijah. He doesn’t wear fancy robes like the false prophets. He lives a life of poverty, depending on GOD for everything and making his own clothing from animal hides. So when the servants describe the man who gave them the message, the king knows who it is: Elijah, the same prophet who condemned his parents for their idol worship. Ahaziah worships the same false gods his father and mother did. And just as his father and mother, King Ahab & Queen Jezebel had done, foolish Ahaziah wants to kill Elijah for telling the truth.

When we hear about Elijah wearing animal skins it should remind us of two things. First is Adam and Eve. When they realized they were naked GOD provided them with animal skins to cover themselves. They had tried plants but GOD showed sin always requires the shedding of blood to cover it. By wearing animal skins, Elijah acknowledged dependance on GOD. And that death was required to cover his shame. And this would be his message to others about the mercy and judgment of GOD, Who covers our shame but at the cost of life.

John the Baptist would dress like Elijah many years later. He will give the same message of death covering shame. And he would point to JESUS Christ, calling Him the Lamb of GOD Whose death would cover the shame of the world.

When 50 soldiers sent to bring Elijah back find him on a mountain, he refuses to come down. When they called up “Man of GOD”, were they mocking him as Roman soldiers would one day mock Christ as King of the Jews? Perhaps. But the fact that there were 50 of them but none chose to go after him but called him to them suggests they were afraid of him. He answers ironically and perhaps sarcastically that if what they say is true, then may fire come down from Heaven and destroy them. And it does. This same thing happens to another 50 soldiers. And when the third set begs for their life, the same angel who had sent Elijah to the messengers of the king now tells him to go along with these soldiers. Elijah does, tells Ahaziah he’s going to die because he went to foreigner idols instead of the True GOD there in Israel, and Ahaziah dies.

Why does it matter that this idiot asks advice of a foreign idol instead of the true GOD so available to him? Because millions of us do the same. We go looking for fulfillment and satisfaction by putting foreign substances into our bodies. Or we look for some mystical foreign religion to give us answers that are in a Bible as close as our bookshelf, trunk upstairs, online. Or in a Bible-believing church on the corner. Until recently as people commited sin in hotel rooms with all the answers they longed for in a Bible beside their pillows in the drawer.

JESUS is the True GOD as close as our breath. We can call out to Him at any time. He is the manifestation of the One, True GOD that Elijah served and his animal skins and the clothes and message of John the Baptist told about.
Will we call out to the True GOD Who gives Life and promises to be with us always? Or are we choosing to ignore Him and thereby serve Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies and decay?

Sometimes bad news is good news because it gets your attention. You might get a health scare from your doctor that has you take steps to prevent sickness and delay death. You might be told by your wife that she’s unhappy for something you didn’t realize was wrong so you can make amends. But in order to have these benefits you must dig past the bad news to find the good beneath.

That is a lesson taught in today’s Scripture. As punishment, GOD had split the kingdom. Jehoshaphat was king of Judah, the tribe of the descendants of David. He ruled from Jerusalem, as David had. And Judah was usually obedient and their kings usually god-fearing. King Ahab ruled most of the rest of the tribes of Israel (called Israel) from a palace in Samaria. Ahab, his wife Jezebel and most of Israel were evil, dedicated to idolatry.

The Syrians had been at peace with Ahab and Israel for three years. And Jehoshaphat had come for a peaceful visit to Ahab. But Ahab wasn’t happy with peace and knew he couldn’t win a war against Judah. So Ahab decides to pick a fight with Syria over a town he doesn’t really need or care about and had basically abandoned to them.

Ahab asks Jehoshaphat if he’ll come along to fight Syria and Jehoshaphat says he’ll do whatever Ahab wants but recommends consulting one of the prophets of the LORD first. Note that Jehoshaphat emphasizes “today”…don’t go on past information and don’t delay in asking the LORD until the situation changes. Ask right away.

So Ahab calls together all of his prophets, about 400 of them! Interestingly, Elijah isn’t one of them. Elijah had already killed nearly the same number of false prophets earlier as GOD had tried to get Ahab, Jezebel and Israel to repent. And it seems to be on the assumption that Ahab has changed that Jehoshaphat has made peace with him. He had no doubt heard about Ahab’s repentance when Ahab was given the bad news GOD was going to kill Ahab for his sins. So now he assumes Ahab’s prophets will give a true word from GOD.

What Jehoshaphat couldn’t have known, though, is that Ahab’s death is still imminent. Because of Ahab’s repentance GOD would delay the disaster He was going to bring on Israel because of their idolatry (that idolatry being from the evil examples of Ahab and Jezebel). But Ahab was still going to die.

All 400 prophets predict victory for Ahab but something seems wrong to Jehoshaphat. He recognizes that these are false prophets not really speaking from GOD and asks Ahab if there isn’t another prophet, and he emphasizes prophet of the LORD, that can be consulted.

Notice that godly people can usually sense ungodly intentions. You’ve probably all heard that the way FBI agents are trained to detect counterfeit money is to be allowed to handle genuine money so much that counterfeits become obvious to them. That’s what’s happening here. Jehoshaphat knows godliness so well that he is correctly not getting that vibe off of these prophets.

Ahab acknowledges there is another prophet, Micaiah, but Ahab hates him because he only prophesies doom and gloom for Ahab. Jehoshaphat is shocked and tells Ahab not to talk like that. It’s especially inappropriate coming from the king.

Why? Jehoshaphat realized what Ahab should have learned when he repented. Bad news is good when it causes us to change for the better. When Ahab was told he and Israel were about to be punished, that bad news had a good result: he repented. So when Micaiah prophesied evil, that was a good thing. It showed how Ahab was sinning and needed to change.

This is essential in leadership. Leaders must give everyone in the organization the right to speak truth to power, to tell the truth, even if that is bad news, and not suffer for it. Only then can improvement happen.

Jehoshaphat saw that, but Ahab didn’t. He didn’t have enough experience with godliness to distinguish the counterfeit false prophets whom he should have killed for their good news from the genuine prophet though his prophesies predicted bad news.

There they all were, the two kings on their thrones and in their regal splendor sitting in the gate of Samaria. Hundreds of false prophets were in front of them, dancing around, shouting the same thing: “Go to war with Syria! You will have victory!” So when the messenger fetches Micaiah, he warns Micaiah to prophesy success as all the other prophets have done. But Micaiah responds that he will only do that if GOD tells him to do that.

Micaiah appears before Ahab and Ahab asks him the same question he has asked all the other prophets. And to Ahab’s shock, Micaiah gives him the same answer everyone else has: “Go ahead up! GOD will give you victory!” But now Ahab is the one to be wary. Just as Jehoshaphat could tell the false prophets from the true, Ahab could tell sarcasm in Micaiah’s voice. The irony is that Ahab orders Micaiah to be honest, but when he is, Ahab complains that he is only given bad news. And he is.

Micaiah explains how bleak the future is: sure devastation for Ahab’s armies and death for Ahab. Yet Jehoshaphat goes along with Ahab to war anyway. Why?

Several reasons. First, because Jehoshaphat had seen Micaiah change his mind when giving the prophecy. But also, and related to that, for the same reason we have trouble with this part of the chapter: Micaiah’s description of what had gone on in Heaven.

Micaiah describes a scene very similar to the first chapter of Job. GOD is holding court in Heaven and all spirits are before Him. Now we know from other Scripture that GOD does not lie. And He does not tempt. But the bad news is that GOD does allow others to lie and others to tempt. GOD allows Satan, simply an evil angel and nowhere as powerful as GOD, to do that which GOD in His goodness does not do. This, too, would be evil but for the fact that GOD uses it for good. Evil is the sharp blade used to perform life-saving surgery rather than kill. It is the fire that can destroy but is controlled to warm and save lives. And this is very difficult for Jehoshaphat, as with us, to hear or accept.

GOD allows a spirit to volunteer to lie to Ahab through all the false prophets.
It may be why Micaiah lied at first, too.
Jewish scholars add another twist in saying this spirit who volunteered to lie to Ahab and bring him to his death is the spirit of Naboth, the innocent neighbor Ahab and Jezebel murdered so Ahab could have his garden.

Micaiah sticks to the truth in spite of a false prophet accusing him of lying about his vision of the LORD commissioning the lying spirit. And Micaiah predicts how this false prophet will die.

Ahab has Micaiah put into prison for telling the very truth Ahab demanded. He tells the guard to keep Micaiah in prison until he, Ahab, returns safely from war. Micaiah says that if Ahab returns safely that he, Micaiah, should be put to death for being a false prophet (which is what should have happened to the 400 other prophets).

Ahab is doomed and goes to war. In battle, Ahab disguises himself so the Syrian armies won’t know he’s king but persuades Jehoshaphat to wear Jehoshaphat’s normal regal wear. Jehoshaphat has no problem with this because he is an honorable king and thinks he’s in an honorable battle.

The Syrians (influenced by GOD’s decision) have only one target: Ahab. No one but Ahab is to be harmed. Seeing Jehoshaphat as the only king on the battlefield they mistake him for Ahab and chase him until he shouts out. We don’t know what he shouts but it convinces the Syrian soldiers he’s not Ahab. Some scholars say it was a prayer to the true GOD and, knowing what an idolator Ahab was, the soldiers knew that wasn’t him. The bad news of Ahab’s idolatry was a blessing to Jehoshaphat in trouble.

A soldier killed Ahab by accidentally shooting an arrow not even aiming at anything. But GOD guided the arrow to Ahab through an opening in his armor. Knowing he was mortally wounded he had his men lead his chariot off the battlefield so that even his death was ignoble. And when his blood was washed out of the chariot it was in the very spot, as GOD had prophesied, where Naboth had been murdered.

Bad news can be good news if we allow it to change us. And the evil of others in the Hand of GOD can be used for good. But only if we’re willing to heed the warning. That was true for Ahab and Jehoshaphat and it is true for us. The bad news is that we are going to die, and because of our past we’re doomed to damnation after death. But if we heed that bad news we can hear the Good News that Christ calls us from that doom to eternal Life.

We’ve already seen in past chapters what a weak-willed man King Ahab of Israel is. (Remember that the tribe of Judah had been split off from the rest of Israel. Ahab and Jezebel were ruling Israel from Samaria while Judah was being ruled by a different king from Jerusalem).

Part of Ahab’s weakness is deferring to his wife, Jezebel. So when he wants a piece of land next to the palace grounds, but the man who owns it won’t sell it, Ahab pouts on his bed like a child and won’t eat. Jezebel asks what’s wrong and Ahab whines that he couldn’t get what he wanted so Jezebel says that she will take care of it. As queen she had no authority whatsoever so she had to forge orders in the king’s name and under his stamp of approval to have the man who would not sell the land trapped by liars and murdered.
You should be remembering that this is similar to how David acted by having Uriah the Hittite murdered so David could have Uriah’s wife Bathsheba.

The owner of the land had done nothing wrong. He rightly treasured the inheritance he’d gotten from his father and would pass to his children. But Ahab and Jezebel sold themselves out to sin when they couldn’t buy what they wanted. That phrase “sold himself to sin” is literally used several times throughout the chapter.

And it’s not only Ahab and Jezebel who sin. As David had accomplices in killing Uriah, Jezebel had accomplices in having innocent Naboth killed. The leaders she sent commands to in Ahab’s name never questioned being asked to do something plainly wrong. And they never hesitated in murdering an innocent man or using plainly “worthless” men to do it. This should remind you of the religious leaders in Jerusalem who got worthless Judas to sell his soul to the devil for 30 pieces of silver to betray JESUS. These so-called leaders had an innocent man murdered by selling their souls for free for fear of the king.

When word gets back to the palace that the mission is accomplished and the owner of the field Ahab wants is dead Jezebel tells the still pouting Ahab to go and lay claim to the land. And the way she words it has the same cynical tone of the coroner in the Wizard of Os when he says the wicked old witch is “not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.” But no one wicked is dead here. Yet. Only the innocent Naboth.

Ahab obeys his wife, as usual, and is still in the murdered man’s land claiming it when Elijah arrives, sent by GOD. We remember that Elijah had been used by GOD earlier to give the people of Israel, including Ahab and Jezebel, a second chance. GOD had used Elijah to show by miracles that only the GOD of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the true GOD. And Elijah was used to kill the false prophets. Now this same Elijah, probably with a broken heart, was here to tell Ahab GOD had seen what had been done and that dogs would lick Ahab’s blood where the blood of the murdered Nahab had been spilled by stoning under false charges. And the effects of all the idolatry and evil-heartedness of Ahab and Jezebel perverting Israel will bring disaster.

Like the Garden of Eden, where Adam was held responsible for the disobedience of Eve, Ahab was held responsible for what Jezebel had done, literally in his name. And the people were responsible for selling themselves out to sin simply because they feared those who ordered it.

Maybe that second chance did have some effect, though. Ahab repents and mourns so much that GOD says He will not bring the disaster on Israel in Ahab’s lifetime for him to see and feel guilty, since he already did. As we will see in the next chapter, however, the prophecy of his early death and its circumstances will still occur. Selling ourselves to sin always has consequences. And Scripture says that Ahab, encouraged by equally if not more evil Jezebel, sold themselves and Israel into more sin than anyone.

The name of the murdered man, Naboth, literally means fruitful. And it was because the land was so fruitful as well as so close that Ahab wanted it for himself. There are echoes here of a parable JESUS taught about unworthy vineyard workers who had the vineyard owner’s son killed so there would be no one but them for the landowner to give the land.

It is the very fruitfulness of the Life of JESUS that made others jealous of Him and hate Him. And the same will be true of followers of JESUS. Scripture says
the wages of sin is death. We need to work at sin, to willingly sell ourselves to it, to work for it, spend time and money on it. Sin is costly. But the free gift of GOD is eternal Life. That very freedom is a frustration to sinners, though.

The workers in the vineyard had to work to get the produce of the ground, and pay others to work it, if the true Owner’s Son was killed when they could have eaten of it and been paid for it while the Master’s Son lived. Ahab could have had the produce of the land for free, if he’d asked Naboth for it, but craved the one thing he couldn’t have, the land itself. Then he ended up paying for it anyway with purchase and then with his life.

Scripture says JESUS purchased our freedom on the cross. He paid the wages of our sin, having none of His own, with His Life. And He rose in eternal life to show He is true Owner in every sense now. Eternal Life is free for us because He paid for it with His own Life. And His words on the Cross included “It is finished.” “Transaction complete.” “Bought and paid for.” When the Bible says JESUS ever lives to make intercession for us it doesn’t mean He’s literally praying forever. He is our receipt to show forever we are paid for. Just as the Holy Spirit in Believers is the “Purchased” label on our souls showing we were bought by Christ.

What or whom are we selling ourselves out to rather than freely giving ourselves to Christ who freely gave Himself for us? Whose receipt do we have on our souls? Bought by Christ or sold out by our selfishness as slaves to Satan?

They say that “Nature abhors a vacuum”; that is, nature will fill what’s empty with something. Although confusing Nature for GOD, the principle is otherwise a valid one. Something empty will usually be filled, somehow. A lack of action becomes a sort of action of itself. By not filling the void with good it will be filled with lesser good or downright evil. Refusing to speak against the voice of evil will allow the evil to be heard and obeyed. And in today’s example, lack of leadership leads not only to a lack of leadership credibility but loss to the very people being led.

King Ben-Hadad of Syria is a bully. After taking over the surrounding countryside he sends word to King Ahab of Israel that he’s about to take over Israel, too. He sends messengers to Ahab and says ” I claim the best of whatever you’ve got, including your wives.”

We’ve already seen earlier that Ahab is a lousy king. He’s weak-willed and his wife Jezebel is really in charge. So when Ben-Hadad “calls him out” to “fight like a man”, he certainly can’t defer to her. So instead he defers to Ben-Hadad and says “Okay! Have it your way!”

But bullies are never satisfied when you give in to them. Ahab’s lack of leadership just encourages Ben-Hadad more. So he says, “Not only do I claim the best you have, but I don’t trust you to choose it. So my soldiers will come and take whatever you like the best.”

Notice the difference. At first, Ben-Hadad just claimed the victor’s spoils of what has market value. But now he’s sending soldiers to take what’s sentimentally valuable. Now it’s not excess riches but what Ahab and the Israelites love most that Ben-Hadad is after, purely out of cruelty.

And even then Ahab refuses to act. Instead of leading, his advisors and even the people he’s supposed to be leading tell him what to do. So he does what he’s told (not making a decision of his own) and repeats to Ben-Hadad what the people said to him. “No, enough is enough.”

Ben-Hadad the bully threatens to overwhelm Israel with a great army and Ahab, feeling emoldened by his people treating him as a leader gets cocky and says “Not so fast. Don’t act like you’ve won when you haven’t even started.” Not a smart reply to a stronger army.

Ben-Hadad, who may have just been making threats before, gets this message when he’s drunk and calls his armies to prepare to attack.

Meanwhile, a prophet comes to tell Ahab that the LORD is going to give Israel the victory. And the same huge army that opposes him will be his by the end of the day. Why? To show Ahab himself that GOD is real and that GOD is the true Leader of Israel.

We remember that Ahab is an idol worshipper. Elijah defeated and killed the false prophets to bring Israel back to GOD. Ahab had been given a second chance to choose GOD and now GOD was giving him a reason to make that decision.

But Ahab still didn’t decide to call on GOD when Ben-Hadad threatened him. Now GOD is about to give a miracle to convince him (and Israel). But Ahab is still full of indecision, asking who will do the fighting and who will summon the troops? It must have been quite a shock when GOD says the army will be an army of servants and that Ahab himself would launch the attack!

Ahab gathers the servants, as he was told, and they were less than 300 men so he added his own army of 7000 soldiers. And they all march against Ben-Hadad who’s still in a drunken haze with the other kings he conquered. When word comes back to him that they’re under attack he says to take everyone in the army of Israel as prisoners, even if they come in peace.

But as indecisive as Ahab is, the servants of the Israelite army aren’t. They begin killing Ben-Hadad’s soldiers as soon as they’re confronted. The servants send Ben-Hadad’s army running before the official Israelite army behind the servants even gets a chance at them. And the emboldened Ahab continues the battle until he wins victory for Israel. But it isn’t over yet. Ben-Hadad escapes.

A prophet tells Ahab not to rest but prepare for Ben-Hadad to lead the Syrians against Israel again in the Spring. And sure enough, after some rest, Ben-Hadad’s counselors convince him it was only the Israeli god of the high places that defeated them and since the god of the low places is probably weaker, if Syria attacks Israel in the plains, Syria will win.

GOD hears this, of course, and sets about to prove to Syria that He is GOD Almighty, on high and below, in Heaven and on earth and in charge of those under the earth.

Ben-Hadad replaces the former kings in his army with military commanders and builds an army as huge as the last one, then goes out to fight Israel in the lowlands. The Israelite army goes out, tiny as their numbers are, to face the overwhelming armies of the Syrians. A prophet tells Ahab not to worry. GOD is about to teach Ben-Hadad and his armies a lesson that He is the One, True GOD.

True to His Word, GOD led Israel to rout the Syrian armies again. But just as they had the opportunity to defeat them and kill Ben-Hadad, the indecisive Ahab lets himself make a treaty with them so he must let them live to bother Israel again. A prophet warns Ahab that because he didn’t have the leadership to be decisive GOD has decided to let Ahab die earlier than he would have in place of Ben-Hadad and the Israelites will suffer because the Syrians were spared.

We are told, indirectly here and throughout Scripture, to be decisive. When we know Scripture and prayerfully consult GOD and godly counselors we have the best means to “let our yes be yes and our no be no” as JESUS will later say. We will be hot or cold not putridly neutral. We will avoid what James will describe as being tossed about by every wind of doctrine.
We will avoid the leadership vacuum.

Let us learn from Ahab’s frustration at the prophesy and anger about his impending death. Lack of leadership is disastrous. As Christians we are to follow Christ and disciple others to follow. They can only follow if we lead.

Have you ever seen a video or movie where it’s run backwards so that things fall up, people and animals run in reverse and you giggle at the absurdity of it? That’s what’s going on here in this chapter. It’s like Opposite Land where things are happening in reverse to what should be and it seems absurd.

First we have a statement that shocked the original hearers. A king whined to his queen like a child. This is the reverse of the usual relationship where the king was in charge and the queen, usually one of many women the king had in a harem, would need permission to approach or speak to the king. Ahab and Jezebel were almost comical if their sins were not so severe and their effects so horrible. He is that silly little man, the kind that calls his wife “Mommy”, and she is the devil in a dress, lording over him and his kingdom in his place. Opposites.

In this case Ahab is telling Jezebel how Elijah had personally killed all of her prophets, those dedicated against the true GOD but who were idol worshipers and encouraged the most disgusting sins imaginable, both sexual and in the murdering of babies. He hands his power to her and she is the one who sends a message to Elijah that by the power of those idols she will make sure he is as dead as those prophets by the next day. Instead of trusting her idols to avenge themselves, Jezebel does the opposite and threatens to kill Elijah herself.

So what’s the problem? Elijah had just killed nearly 500 false prophets who could have easily made a human sacrifice of him. He had stood up to Ahab. So he must have simply shrugged off this threat, right? Not at all! He runs like a rabbit being chased by a hunting dog and hides.

Now GOD had hidden Elijah before, for three years, as Ahab and Jezebel were trying to kill him when GOD used Elijah to stop the rain in judgment for their idolatry. But this is the opposite of that. This was Elijah hiding himself. It’s like the mirror image of the previous event.

And Elijah is acting like Obadiah whom he had once sent to challenge Ahab to come out to meet Elijah. Now, like Obadiah, Elijah was terrified. And when Elijah hides himself, he complains to GOD the way Obadiah complained to him that he had done so much for GOD it was unfair for him to die. But instead of asking or trusting GOD to protect him, Elijah just asks to die in his sleep rather than being caught and killed…probably tortured to death…by Jezebel.

But GOD doesn’t let Elijah die. Instead He has an angel wake him up and feed him. There are several subtle but significant points here.

First is that Scripture emphasizes the kind of tree Elijah rested under, the rethem. This is significant because Psalm 120 sounds as if it could have been written by Elijah, someone living among godless people who hate the godly without cause. The Psalm says these people will be punished with arrows made by being hardened over coals from the same type of tree Elijah is sleeping under. What’s more, the angel who wakes Elijah up and feeds him feeds Elijah with cakes baked on the same kind of coals made from burnt rethem tree which Elijah’s sleeping under.

Second, this may be a theophany, a pre-incarnate vision of JESUS before He was born in flesh. This is significant because we read in John that after His resurrection JESUS appeared on a beach cooking breakfast of bread baked on coals, just as this heavenly being is baking bread on coals for Elijah.

Backwards. When GOD had sent Elijah into hiding He had birds feed Elijah bread and meat. But now the exhausted and depressed Elijah is fed baked bread, possibly from the Hand of GOD.

Whenever you hear this chapter preached it will always be about being sure to rest and refresh yourself. And that could be seen here. They’ll talk about burn out after Elijah had challenged the prophets. And the need to refresh yourself for ministry. But there’s more than that here.

After being refreshed with rest, food, and water, Elijah keeps running and hides in a cave in what’s called the Mountain of GOD. It’s as close as he can get to literally climbing into GOD’s Lap for protection. He sleeps some more but GOD abruptly wakes him up asking “What are you doing here, Elijah?” The opposite of when GOD had hidden him before challenging the prophets. Then it was GOD who told Elijah to hide, as always making us co-workers with Him. Birds and heavenly beings may bring food but we’re still required to take and eat, as JESUS will tell the apostles at the Last Supper. But now Elijah is hiding rather than trusting, the opposite of what he should be doing after being used and refreshed by GOD. And as his justification he almost accuses GOD. As Obadiah had done to him, he complains to GOD that he’s the only godly person left and it’s unfair for Jezebel to want to kill him.

In response, GOD tells Elijah to go to the top of the mountain to see His Glory pass by. We remember a similar incident with Moses. Moses had asked to see GOD’s glory but had only seen as much as any human could see and live. This was more than he’d seen when he and the LORD spoke face to face, because the fulness of GOD’s face would kill him. Now it’s the opposite and it’s GOD Who invites Elijah to get a better glimpse of Him.

Yet that, too, is the reverse of what’s expected. GOD’s not revealed in the windstorm, earthquake or fire He brings. And then there’s silence. Suddenly we read that Elijah is no longer on the mountain top but back in the cave and hears a “still, small voice.” The Hebrew has the sense of the silence being so profound the silence itself seemed to speak. When Elijah goes to the mouth of the cave to see what is being said, GOD asks him again, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

So Elijah now realizes he needs to trust GOD and get about GOD’s business again, right? No. The opposite. He whines again about how good he has been and it’s not fair for Jezebel to want to kill him.

And GOD’s response to Elijah is to go back the way he came. He puts Elijah in reverse. And He explains to Elijah that He will appoint EliSHa to follow him and eventually take his place as prophet.
But first Elijah has work to do, anointing two new kings. And by the way, GOD adds, as if to say “Don’t be so full of yourself”, there are 700 others who are just as faithful as he, Elijah, is.

Hebrew scholars say that GOD appointed Elisha for Elijah as He had appointed Aaron for Moses because Moses and Elijah both complained. In Elijah’s case it was because he, a man, was too critical of GOD’s people. GOD had intentionally used Elijah to bring a drought, end it, demonstrate GOD’s power over idols and kill idol worshipers. All of this to soften the hearts of His people and bring them back to Him. Instead Elijah, after all the miracles GOD had shown him, still hardened his attitude against the people he’s supposed to bless.

We see this when Elijah goes through the motions of calling EliSHa. EliSHa has a servant attitude and is plowing his father’s field. Scripture emphasizes EliSHa’s humility by emphasizing he was behind all the others. Elijah just walks up, throws his cloak over EliSHa and walks away. The opposite of the usual process of calling a disciple. It’s EliSHa who says he’ll follow as soon as he says goodbye to his family. But interestingly we don’t read that he does. Instead he kills the oxen and offers the meat, burnt over the yokes they worked under, as a meal for the people nearby. It was a sign that he was giving up the tools of the trade of a farmer and going into service for the LORD with Elijah.

But for his part Elijah seems as if he couldn’t care less and simply says something to the effect of “Why should I care?” when EliSHa says he’ll follow soon.

Opposites. Reverse. Running backwards. Yes, Elijah should have rested after the confrontation with the prophets. And yes we need rest, too. But that’s a stretch of application. This passage says just the opposite of that, really. That when Elijah wanted to flee he should have run back to the fight not back into hiding. And he had to run backwards and retrace his steps to get back on track with the will of GOD.

Fight or flight. Which are we doing today? What challenge are we running from when we should be running to, instead, in the power of Christ? GOD forbid that we should ever hear GOD, as gentle though it may be, ask “What are you doing here?”