Thank you for directing your internet connection to this sermon audio page for Christ Orthodox Presbyterian Church. You can learn more about ChristOPC by visiting our website at www.christopcatl.org. ChristOPC meets for worship each Sunday at 11 a.m. and 5.30 p.m. 2nd Kings chapter 2 verses 19 through 25 here now the holy inspired and air word of our God now the men of the city it's the city of Jericho said to Elisha behold the situation of this city is pleasant as my Lord sees but the water is bad and the land is barren And he said, bring me a new bowl and put salt in it. So they brought it to him. Then he went to the spring of water and threw salt in it and said, thus says the Lord, I've healed this water from now on, neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it. So the water has been healed to this day, according to the word that Elisha has spoke. Then he went up from there to Bethel. And while he was going up on the way, young men came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, Go up, you bald head! Go up, you bald head! And he turned around, and when he had Seeing them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord, and two she bears came out of the woods and tore 42 of the boys. From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord endures forever." Now, in the words of one of our teenagers, that escalated quickly. Reading through passages like this one at least until you get to verse 22, things are going well. You find a blessing given to the people of Jericho and healing waters at a well that was once marked by death and the waters being declared bad. But within just a single verse, things take a fairly significant turn. We go to another city, the city of Bethel, and whereas in Jericho we have a petition of the Lord's prophet and a blessing from the Lord's prophet, here at Bethel we have the very opposite. Jeering at the Lord's prophet met with a curse at the Lord's prophet. And this particular paragraph in verses 23 through 25 has proven to be a little bit of a conundrum to people. Just the average Christian reading along through it might read this paragraph and just wonder what on earth is going on. Yes, we all believe what Paul says, that all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for reproof and for correction and for training in godliness. But then we approach passages like that and say, Paul, are you sure? Were you actually thinking about this one when you said those words? But then others, perhaps those of a more nefarious type, would read this and say, you know what, if this is the type of God that you serve, that would have 42 boys mauled to death by bears simply for making fun of somebody's bald head, then I want no part with your Christianity. There's a mix match, they're saying, or a mismatch between what the boys do and the response that is had from the curse from the Lord's prophets in tearing apart these 42 boys. They would look at this and say that the Bible, in the Old Testament in particular, has a terrible ethical problem. Justice is not met in this situation, they would say. And because of that, they would reject the Bible and reject the God of the Bible as well. Well, what are we to say about these verses? What are we to learn from them? And how is it that these verses in particular are profitable for training in our godliness? Well, I think what we find if we read verses 19 through 25 together, they do form a particular unit that calls us and drives us to answer a very important question. And that question is, how do you relate to the Lord's prophets? or pose the question a little bit differently in light of our confession of faith from a little while ago. How do you relate to the mediator that God has given between you and him? The mediator of God exhibits the offices of prophet and priest and king. And so really the question of this passage is how do you relate to God via his mediators. You see, what we find is that those who run to the Lord's prophet to find life, to them life is granted. But those who mock the Lord's prophet, who mock the one whom the Lord has sent to bring life, the result for them is not life, but death instead. See, really we see the two terms of the covenant in this passage, don't we? that those who come and who listen to the prophets of God, they receive the blessing of life. But those who come and mock the messenger of God, they receive the curse of death. And those will be our two points this evening as we consider this passage together. Blessing with God's prophets in verses 19 through 22. And then cursing from God's prophets in verses 23 through 25. Well first, blessing with God's prophet in verses 19 through 22. It's very significant that blessing here comes at the city of Jericho and a relationship that the people of that city are going to have with Elisha as the newly minted prophet of God. In fact, the entire point of this passage is to identify Elisha as the prophet of God. If we had taken the time to read all of 2 Kings chapter 2, then we would have found that there had been a transition of the prophetic mantle from Elisha, Elisha's mentor, to Elisha. And the way that this has happened is very significant in chapter 2, where it's happened through a geographical journey, where Elisha and Elisha together have traveled first to the city of Bethel. and then from Bethel to the city of Jericho. Then after they leave Jericho, Elisha takes off his mantle, his cloak, and slaps the waters of the Jordan River, and they part, and Elisha and Elisha pass into the wilderness together. While there, Elisha asked Elisha that he would be the heir of his prophetic office. Remember, Elijah says he actually doesn't have the authority to do that, but that if Elisha would see the chariots of God, then he would be ordained into the office of prophet. And he does, as those very chariots come and whisk Elijah up into the heavenly places, showing us that Elisha is now the prophet of Israel. Well, with now Elisha identified as the prophet of Israel, he goes on a reverse trajectory, a reverse journey from earlier on in the chapter. Whereas with Elijah, who went from Bethel to Jericho across the Jordan into the wilderness, now Elisha is going to, once again, slap the Jordan River with the cloak, the waters are going to part, and then he's going to go to Jericho, and then he is going to go to Bethel. And the question both at Jericho and then again at Bethel is the relationship with Elisha as the newly ordained prophet of God. And so when Jericho, or when Elisha goes to the city of Jericho, we find that the people of that city are going to run to the prophet of God to receive a blessing from God. Notice verse 19. Now the men of the city said to Elisha, And now to understand the significance of what is going on at Jericho, we need to remember what the city of Jericho was. And we read about it just a short while ago in Joshua chapter 6, didn't we? You see, Jericho was a fortified city among the Canaanites. In fact, one of the strongholds of the people of Canaan. It was located at a strategic position just inside the land across the Jordan River at an axis of roads. A fairly powerful city by all measures with its strong walls. And if we're reading in other passages of the Bible, we found not only is it a strong and powerful city among the Canaanites, but a well provided for one, as it is often called in other places of the Old Testament, the city of palms. If it's the city of palms, then it's a city that is marked by its drinking water. And at least up until Joshua chapter six, that drinking water would have been waters of life. And it's something that provided for the people of the city of Jericho. But also we need to remember that Jericho, while a strong and fortified city that had its wells that were profitable for their life up to a time, became a city associated not with life, but with curse. that it was indeed the very first city that was destroyed in the episode of the conquest into the land. It was the city devoted to the ban, devoted to destruction, where all the inhabitants of the city and all the things of the city were either destroyed by fire or brought into the presence of the Lord and His treasury. The city of Jericho, by worldly standards up to that point, was a secure place full of life. But from Joshua's day forward, it was to be a place marked by the curse of death. Joshua proclaimed a curse on the city, and the people of Israel took a vow concerning that curse, that its foundations would be laid by the death of the eldest, and its gates raised by the death of the youngest child. would then go unbuilt and uninhabited for a significant period of time. Until during the days of Elijah and the reign of Ahab, the terrible king of the northern kingdom of Israel, a man named Hiel, a citizen of the city of Bethel, takes it upon himself to go and to reconstruct the city of Jericho. And 1 Kings 16.34 recounts to us how Hiel does this at the cost of his children. But when we get to our particular passage here this evening, we find that the curse on the children has extended beyond the children of Heo himself. While the city has been rebuilt and it has, we could say that new city smell, it tells us that the city is pleasant here in our text. We learned that the water that was once the mark of prosperity and life for the city is bad. And then literally the land is barren. more than just talking about an unfruitful land that is not bearing a proper fruit, as if the vine is not bearing its fruit. This is meant to be an indication that the city is bereft of children. When Elisha is going to go and to redeem the curse from these waters, notice that as he heals the water, he doesn't say, now you can partake of the fruit of the ground. He says, neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it. From Joshua chapter 6 to 2 Kings chapter 2, the territory of Jericho was bereft of children. Because of the curse placed upon this city associated with the wicked Canaanites and the curse of Joshua in Joshua 6, 26 after it, this place has been associated with the death of children. And any who have experienced the death of a child or miscarriage from a child know the searing pain that this would cause upon any parent. And you can understand why the men of the city, the parents of the city, or the desirous parents of the city, we could say, now run to the prophet to find a resolution to this situation. But for this particular people, For the people of Israel now living in the city of Jericho, the situation was far more profound than the heartache of losing a child through miscarriage. See, we need to remember back to the promises that were given to the patriarchs. And one of those promises was that their children will be more numerous than the stars of the heavens and more numerous than the sands of the sea. You see, for the citizens of Jericho, the hardship was more than just losing a child through miscarriage. The hardship was that they were now losing out on the blessings of salvation to be found within the Abrahamic covenants, that the promises of the covenant they are witnessing or they're experiencing as they live in the city of Jericho are now no longer for them. And so they're left to ask themselves the question, do we have any inheritance among the people of Israel if all of our children are dead? And the answer would be no. And so how do they respond? Well, they respond by going to the only place where they can find hope. to the mediator of God's covenants. They run to the prophet that the Lord has sent to the people of Israel, and they run to him that they might find life. Behold, the situation is pleasant, but the water is bad. The land is bereft of children. Elisha, we need the word of life to come from God. If we don't have this life from God, then we have no hope. A people experiencing their own life, the curse of death and the curse of Jericho are now going to the Lord's prophet to have that curse reversed. And how does the Lord respond through his prophet Elisha to this people that are coming to him to find the very words of life? Well, they're not pushed off, they're not shoved away or ignored. No, instead, Elisha then works as the Lord's prophet life in the midst of this city of curse. Such that the place that was once devoted to destruction and dedicated to the death of children becomes a place where neither death nor miscarriage shall come from these waters ever again. And the waters that marked the death of the city of Jericho are now going to be the waters that mark the life of the city of Jericho. The way Elisha is going to do this has spawned a good many comments. He goes and he takes an unused bowl. He places some salt in it. He throws the salt into the springs of water. This has posed for many the question, how does salt, heal the water? Is there some sort of property of the salt? Is there some sort of thing going on in terms of the mineral content of the waters that are now making it drinkable? and able to sow life. We have to understand a little bit about how salt might function in the Bible in order to get to this. And I realized just yesterday that someone has written on that in recent days. Pastor Ken has. But salt is used in a number of ways in the Bible. Three primary ways it is used. in terms of ritual purification. It's used this way in Leviticus chapter 2 and Numbers 18 and Ezekiel 43. Salt is applied especially to the grain offering of the sacrifice. It is called the salt of the covenant. And as it's applied to that sacrifice, the sacrifices of the people of Israel then would have a particular type of flavor to it that marked it as a covenant meal. And most in the Reformed tradition are going to go down that way to think about this being a covenant of salt made with the city of Jericho. A positive picture to the salt being thrown into the water. The struggle with that common interpretation, which is probably common because we're Reformed and we like terms like covenant, is that the salt is never applied to water in any of those passages. It's always applied to the sacrifice. And so it doesn't really seem to fit. And by the way, we're also not at the tabernacle or at the, in this period, at the temple. And so it wouldn't be part of that sacrificial meal. Salt is also used in the Old Testament for flavor, as it's used in Job chapter six and verse six, just salting of meals that don't have any recourse or any flavor for themselves. And so that's kind of a neutral version of it. But salt is also used as an image for destruction and devastation. Whenever a city might be utterly destroyed in war, if the city is then salted, it is a way to show that nothing could ever rise up from that land ever again. Think of Sodom and Gomorrah as a territory, a place covered in salt, or Judges chapter 9 when Abimelech salts the city. It's an image of its destruction. So which use is in mind here? What I believe is going on is that Elisha is taking an image of destruction and reversing it as a sign of blessing. So even though the salt is applied to the water rather than specifically to the land or the city, even if you make the water salty, it doesn't have the power to make it drinkable or to sow life in the land. In fact, just a few months ago, during the heat of a Georgia summer, Kelly and I decided that we wanted to make some ice cream. And so we got out the barrel and the churner and put the cream and everything in it. And you place the ice around the barrel. And what do you place along with the ice? But loads and loads of rock salts. And we did so when we enjoyed some nice ice cream that afternoon. And as one does, I was instructed to go and to take care of this now bucket of salty water. And what do I do? But I go, I take the bucket of salty water and I cast it out into the yard. That to this very day now has a nice large brown spot of death that is associated with it. And I'll draw your attention to how when the men of the city go, they talk firstly about the land being barren. And while they're talking about it being bereft of children, it does draw our attention to the geography and to the land itself. And so if the water is made salty, then that in and of itself would have the capability of now sowing life in this barren place. And so what it seems like Elisha is doing is he's taking a sign that was once associated with death and destruction, and he's using it to show how the word of God is now going to flip that situation on its head. You see, this is a narrative of reversals, isn't it? Or a city that was once marked by death and curse is now going to be marked by life. And his placing of salt within the water, which by worldly standards would now make it undrinkable and only useful for sowing death, is the very image of how life is going to persist. This is a flipping of the script, if you will, where a place once marked by death and destruction through Elisha's axe is now gonna be marked by life. But where does the power of life come from for the city of Jericho? Has Elisha now functionally done some sort of magical act by taking salt in a new bowl, he's thrown it into the water and he's created a nice mixture or a potion where lo and behold, Good things can now come from it. Well, the salt in verse 20 is meant to be a sign of the word in verse 21. The salt in itself does not have the power to bring life. Instead, what does have the power to bring life is the word of the Lord's prophets. Notice what Elisha says as he throws the salt into the spring of water. He says, thus says the Lord. I have healed this water, and from now on, neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it. And notice how the narrator interprets this act for us. It says, so the water has been healed to this day according to the word that Elisha spoke. See, the psalter doesn't have any power in and of itself as the sign of what the Lord's prophet is doing through the life-giving Word of God. As Elisha spoke, thus saith the Lord. The waters that were the mark of death for the city of Jericho have now been the waters that mark its life no longer. shall death nor miscarriage come from it. No longer shall you lose your children from these waters. You do, Elisha is saying, have a participation in the promises of the patriarchs. Your children are part of those now numbered among the stars and of the sands. Life, life in the place of death is what comes when the people run to the Lord's prophet and plead for that life. And through the power of the Word of God, life is granted. But this passage isn't just about life, nor is this the only reversal that we see in our passage this evening. Because verses 23 through 25 are another flipping of the script, another reversal of previous things. Whereas Jericho was a reversal from death and curse to life and blessing. So Bethel is now going to be a reversal from blessing and life to cursing and death based on their relationship with the Lord's prophets. So in verse 23, Elisha, The prophet who just spoke life at Jericho makes his way to Bethel. And Bethel's an important city in the nation of Israel, isn't it? Remember Bethel, this was the place where Jacob witnessed the angels ascending and descending back in the book of Genesis. Bethel is the place that is named the house of God in Hebrew and Bethel was the place where the tabernacle of God was located for extended periods of time during the epoch of the judges. It was a place marked by God's presence and the promise of life. But something changed in 1 Kings chapter 12, where Jeroboam, the first king of the split kingdom of the north and the kingdom of Israel, repeating the sin of the golden calves in Exodus chapter 32, makes two golden calves and he situates one in the city of Bethel. And a city that was once known and marked for a place where God himself was to be worshiped has now become a place inundated with idolatry. A place where there is a false temple, a false god, false prophets, false priests, and false worship that is being partaken of. And even as it is a place that was once the house of God and now the house of idolatry, up to this point in time, this house of idolatry was also full of children, in contrast to the city of Jericho. We need only mark that 42 of this group that comes out to mock at Elisha are torn apart from these bears. What does that mean? Well, it means at least that the group was far larger than 42, doesn't it? You see the contrast? Jericho bereft of children. But here, the city of Bethel, the city of idolatry at this point in history, is now full of young people. But how does the city that is full of young people relate to the Lord's prophets? Well, they relate to him in an opposing way to the city of Jericho, don't they? Where this gaggle of people gather together and as Elisha is coming down into the city, this group of what I would translate as young men came out of the city and jeered at him, that is at Elisha. There's a number of things that can be said about this particular verse, but I do want to address one, the translation of small boys, as it is here in the ESV, and what exactly is being said here by the phraseology of the small boys, and what exactly does it mean? Because whenever I read small boys, the image that automatically jumps into my head is someone more of the age of four to seven. just past those toddler years where they're gaining their own voice and they're quite likely to go around and say things like, hey, look at that bald guy coming out of the city. Or as my own son did on our last trip to Costco, oh, look, that guy's really old and I'm trying to just quiet him down and prevent embarrassment from going on. But thankfully, the gentleman was exceedingly kind to us. When we read small boys, we tend to think in that sort of category. We're thinking of very young children who go around saying quite often inappropriate things. It's the first thing on their mind. They don't have the filter yet on their mouth. The tongue has yet to be tamed. Well, the phrase here actually doesn't tend to go in that direction at all. The term translated boys, while it can be in reference to children of that age, is most often in the book of Kings applied to not young children as we would call them, but rather something more along the lines of young men. In fact, it's a term used most frequently in the books of first and second Kings to apply to servants of people. So servants of a king or servants of a prophet or servants of the priest is the term that this is often applied. In fact, the other places where the exact phrase small boys occurs within 1st and 2nd Kings, it's actually a group that is quite clearly adults by our consideration. For example, in 1st Kings 11, 11, as Solomon's kingdom is beginning to be unraveled in light of the varieties of his sins, the Lord rises up an adversary, Hadad of the nation of Edom. And Hadad is called a? Small boy, the exact same phrase in the Hebrew. But this small boy is going around leading a rabble band against the nation of Israel. Is he four? Certainly not. He would have been old enough to be a military leader among the people. Solomon himself is called a young man whenever he rises to the throne at roughly the age of 30. David, whenever he is ordained to the office of a king, is called a young boy. You see, this term, at least in the Hebrew conception, can apply, yes, to young children, but anybody up even into their 30s. More aptly translated or identified as someone who's more like a young, unmarried man. See, this isn't a group of rabble-rising four-year-olds out coming and jostling at the prophets. No, these are most likely young men, probably in the upper teens or maybe even into their twenties or young thirties, who purposely gather together to make a point of mocking the Lord's prophets. They make a point to go out and to stand against the Lord's anointed representative. And those who stand against the Lord's anointed representative are those who are spiritually opposed to the Lord. 2 Chronicles chapter 36 describes the situation of the nation of Israel and Judah in this way, where it says, the Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. The prophets were an agent of God's love and compassion. And how do they respond to the Lord's love and compassion? But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord rose up against his people and there was no remedy. That's what the city of Bethel is doing here. They're mocking and scoffing and jeering at the Lord's prophet to such a point where there is going to be no remedy for this gang of young men gathering against Elisha. And to make the point quite focused, what they say against him is meant to be an utterance of utter humiliation in contrast to who Elisha is as the prophet of God. Go up, you bald heads. Go up, you bald heads. This is more than just a vague notion of baldness. Now, baldness in the Old Testament can be a mark of humility and of judgment, as it is in Isaiah chapter three, verse 24. And we even hear some of these types of things in our own culture today, for those of us who are, I guess we could say, more follically challenged. But something additional is being said here. You see, back earlier on in chapter two, When Elisha was identified as the prophet to continue the ministry of Elisha, it was marked by his receiving a cloak from his mentor. And that cloak from his mentor was a cloak of hair. And the way that cloak is described earlier on in second Kings, especially in chapter one is very, very interesting because Elijah is called the Lord of hair in first Kings chapter one. And so for these young men to go and to mock the Lord's prophet, calling him bald here, it's not just making fun of a shaved head, but rather it's to say, you call yourself a prophet? Do you really think you're the one who's continuing on the ministry of the great Elijah? Who do you think you are, Elisha? Certainly not the prophet of God, as they will themselves quite quickly learn. He is indeed the prophet of the Lord, because they have come in a spiritual antagonistic stance before the Lord's prophet and therefore before the Lord himself. Whereas the prophet brought the words of life to Jericho as they came to him to find life, so now he brings the words of death to the men of Bethel. And he turned around and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Do you see the question of the narrative? How do you relate to the Lord's prophets? for blessing and life were now for cursing and death. And as Elisha now curses this group or this gang of young men from Bethel, two bears, two she bears in particular, come out of the woods and tear 42 of them apart. The curse from the children leads to a curse on the children. And these bears, these wild carnivorous animals, come out of the forest to tear open those who would dare stand against the Lord's prophets. Now in our read, that sounds like a very, very strange thing to call out of the forest as a curse of God, but not so in the Old Testament. See, parts of the curse of death for the covenants would be being consumed by wild animals. The curse against Jeroboam the first false king of Israel that is reiterated throughout the rest of the kings of Israel is that their blood will be licked by the wild dogs and in Israel that's not the man's best friend and it will be consumed by the birds of prey. In Deuteronomy the application of the curse of the covenant is that due to their death their flesh would be consumed by the wild animals and perhaps most important here for our own passage are the words of the prophet Hosea who says on behalf of the Lord in Hosea 13.8 The Lord says there, I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs and I will tear open their breast and there I will devour them like a lion and as a wild beast would rip them open. You see when they come, when they jeer, they mock, they scoff at the Lord's prophet as though they are spitting in the face of the Lord himself. And it's because of that, that they earn the Lord's just judgment against them as the curse of the covenants is now applied to the city of Bethel. The city once known for the worship of God, now known for the curse of God against the people. And so let me close this evening by asking you the question, how do you relate to the Lord's prophets? How do you relate to the mediator of the Lord who has come into the world to save sinners? How do you relate to the prophet that has now come? See, it's interesting when we think about, especially reading the Gospel of John, when in the ministry of John the Baptist, the repeated question that keeps going about in the air of the people of Israel is not, are you the king? It's not, are you the priest? It's, are you the prophet? And you see that question is answered in John chapter four, with not John being prophets, but rather Jesus being the prophets. Where as he goes and he meets the Samaritan woman at the well and he offers her the waters of life and reveals to her everything that she has done that is wrong in her life, what does she say? Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. And as she comes to see that Jesus was the prophet that was to come into the world, the prophet like Moses and even greater to Moses, to her, he offers the life giving waters that would well up into her, in her, into eternal life. And as John, the gospel writer, continues into chapter five, is it not those who hear the voice of the Son of God that will have that eternal life? So when we're posing the question, how do you relate to the Lord's prophet? We're really asking the question of how do you relate to the prophet who has come into the world to save sinners? How do you relate to the one who has come in these last days to reveal the fullness of time that he has come to accomplish and to win your salvation? How do you relate to the prophet who has come and in his ministry was mocked and jeered at by the people of Israel? How do you relate to the prophet that went to the city of Jerusalem, which is known as antagonistic to the Lord's prophet? It's not the city who loves the prophets, but the city that kills the prophets. How do you relate to the prophets that was mocked, jeered and scoffed at by the people of Israel? How do you relate to the one that the world sees as utterly foolish as he would go to the cross to die and to gain our victory? How do you relate to him? How do you relate to the one who came not with the wisdom of the world, but with the wisdom and word of God? the prophets who reveals the way of life through his own death on the cross. And how do you know how you relate to the Lord's prophets? Well, you listen to him. The way you listen to the word, the Lord's prophet is really a revelation of your own heart and how you relate to the Lord's prophet. In fact, in Deuteronomy chapter 18 verse 19, the Lord himself there says, who will not, whoever will not listen to my words that the prophets shall speak in my name, I Myself will require it." That's their life of Him. To know that you relate to the Lord's prophet properly. You listen to the Word of the Lord. You rest in the reality that this prophet has come into the world to save sinners. Indeed, he has, as he was mocked and jeered in our stead and placed upon the cross as a penalty for our sins. And you rest upon You rest upon the reality that He has given the fullness of His words, the fullness of His revelation, and the promise that are given to His church. that if you rest upon him as your mediator, you will be brought to the waters of life in the new heavens and the new earth. That you will drink not the curse of death, but rather the waters of life in the heavenly places that flow from even the throne of God himself. And they water the trees of life whose food is for eating and whose leaves are for healing. And you come to him and you drink and then you never thirst again. You see this prophet is one to whom you come and you taste and you see that the Lord is good. You come and you drink an eternal life with him. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that you have sent Christ, our prophet, into the world to save sinners, that even as he was mocked and jeered at and bore the curse for us, he is also the one who gives us the waters of eternal life and the life-giving waters that well up inside of us through him. Lord, cause us to listen and to relate to him, our prophet. We pray this in his name, amen.