I would encourage you all to open up your copy of God's Word to 2 Kings 2, as we do continue in the book of 2 Kings. 2 Kings. Last week you will remember that, no it wasn't last week, it was a week before that, we saw the translation of Elijah bodily into heaven in the midst of a whirlwind and the transferring of his mantle from him to the man whom God had appointed to be his successor, Elisha. And now we are going to see two miracles that are connected. Now, I feel like I should stop and say, before any of this, I would have preached exactly the same sermon I'm about to preach to you, even if I had a full head of lustrous hair, the same kind that I was born with. But we're going to hear here a tale of two cities. We're going to see a miracle of mercy followed by a miracle of judgment. And we can learn a lot from them. Now, normally, I don't say this, but I do want the children to be paying particular attention because a group of children are major characters in this particular story. So take note of what happens to them. And we'll see if we can't avoid that for you as well. But in any event, let us turn our attention now to the word of God. But before we do so, let's ask him to bless the preaching of his word to our lives. God, our gracious Father, Lord, your word is full of good lessons for us. Sometimes those lessons are easy to receive, but sometimes they go against our nature, our sinful nature, certainly. They step on our toes. They tell us things we don't want to hear. They bring out truths about our natural, sinful inclinations that offend us. And I pray, Lord, this day that we would not be offended, but that we would be humbled beneath your word, that we would take these lessons to heart, that we would understand you are a good and gracious God who gives mercy to those who don't deserve it. But you are also a just God, a perfectly just God, who will give those who refuse your mercy what they deserve. And I pray now, Lord, that you would help me also to open up this word and to exposit it fully before your people. Let me hold back nothing that might help. And I pray, Lord, that as we are reminded that the watchman who does not warn people of evil approaching, that blood will be on his hands. I pray, Lord, that I would not be that kind of watchman, that I would warn people, young and old, about the danger that exists, the evil that approaches, so that they might be warned and flee. And I pray this in Jesus' holy name, amen. Second Kings, chapter two, verses 19 through 25. I do remind you, this is the word of the Lord. Then the men of the city said to Elisha, please notice the situation of the city is pleasant as my Lord sees, but the water is bad and the ground barren. And he said, bring me a new bowl and put salt in it. So they brought it to him. Then he went out to the source of the water and cast in the salt there and said, thus says the Lord, I've healed this water, from it there shall be no more death or barrenness. So the water remains healed to this day according to the word of Elisha, which he spoke. Then he went up from there to Bethel. And as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him and said to him, go up, you bald head. Go up, you bald head. So he turned around and looked at them and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of the youths. Then he went from there to Mount Carmel. And from there, he returned to Samaria. Well, we remember that Elisha had gone from Gilgal to Bethel to Jericho, and Elisha had accompanied him, and then they had both crossed the Jordan. The Jordan had parted, they had walked across on dry land, and then Elisha had been taken up in a whirlwind to heaven. and the mantle of Elijah had been given to Elisha. And he had returned now to Jericho, this place where there was a school of the sons of the prophets, a theological seminary, so to speak. Remember that at this point in time, the Northern Kingdom Israel has apostatized. They had embraced false religion. They were embraced not only this false syncretistic religion that weaved in the various beliefs of the Canaanites and used golden calves to represent God as idols to be bowed down before, but also we remember that they had gone after the gods of the surrounding nations. We had a king who had applied essentially to Balzibul for his, the Lord of the Flies for prophecy and for help and so on. Things are not going well in the Northern Kingdom, but now he returns to Jericho, this nation, or this city rather, just on the other side of the Jordan River, and he is met with a delegation from the city. The men of the city, not the sons of the prophets, came to Elisha, and they point out their need. They describe their city. They say it's a nice location. It's a pleasant place, but it is barren. The land does not produce a good harvest. In fact, the Hebrew word is closer to, it throws off its young. In other words, the crops don't produce new crops, and the animals, they don't seem to have children. It's a land that should be rich, but instead is full of barrenness and death. Jericho was dependent, and is to this day, for water on a spring called Ein Es Sultan, the only spring near Jericho. It begins rather near the foot of the mound of the old city. The cities in those days were built, generally speaking, on defensive mounds. That way you could see your enemies coming, and they would have to climb up to you, and so on. Because of that, they're called tells. So Tel Aviv, for instance, is the mound of Aviv, or Abib, actually. In any event, this water that they needed was supplied by this spring, which is today called the Spring of Elisha, and it was bad. Now, why was it bad? Well, there's tons of ways we can speculate about this. We don't know exactly. any water samples from the ancient city of Jericho that we could test. It could have been brackish. In other words, there could have been too many salty chemicals within the earth. It is close, after all, to the Dead Sea, and as a result, it could be that there was just too much sodium chloride and that it was killing the plants. and making the animals sick. It could have been radioactive. We sometimes, when we think about radioactivity, we often think entirely of man-made radioactivity from nuclear fission. But rocks, many rocks, are by themselves inherently radioactive. They're decaying, and as groundwater flows through the strata that contain this radiation, they pick it up. and they give it to people. That would explain certainly the miscarriages of the animals and the failure of the green things to flourish and so on. Radioactivity could have been killing them. Or it could have been contaminated with something else. I even had one commentator go into a long biological explanation of all the different things that could have, all the different biological contaminants that could have affected it and so on. I'm not going to spend the rest of my day talking, speculating though about, or your sermon, speculating about that. But something, something in the water at Jericho was not conducive to life. In fact, it was producing death. It didn't even taste right. The people knew what the problem was, and they knew what they needed. They needed clean, clear, fresh water from the spring. So what does Elisha do? He answers them by saying, give me a new, that is a previously unused bowl, which is a symbol of purity, filled with salt. And salt is a symbol of cleansing and purification and preservation. You remember Jesus Christ calls us to be salt and light within our society. We're supposed to be illuminating the world with the gospel. We're also supposed to be preserving it. We're supposed to have a preservative function. So he calls for these two things, and then he goes to the source of the spring, and he ceremonially pours the salt into the water. And the spring at that moment is healed by the Lord, that is, miraculously purified. Now, the purification that took place there was not the result of some sort of natural chemical reaction triggered by the salt. Elisha was not an ancient chemist, and after doing some tests he said, And yes, sodium chloride will fix the problem and poured it in. Especially if the water was brackish, it would have only made the problem worse. This was a miracle done by the Lord. And Elisha at no point makes a pretense of saying, yes, I've done this. I have healed your water. Matthew Henry puts it well when he says this. He is but the instrument, that is Elisha is but the instrument, the channel through which God is pleased to convey this healing virtue. By doing them this kindness, with a thus saith the Lord, they would be made the more willing hereafter. to receive from him a reproof, admonition, or command with the same preface. If in God's name he can help them, in God's name let him teach and rule them. You see what Henry is pointing out there, that by this miracle he has proven that he is God's messenger. When he says, thus saith the Lord, and the water is healed. When he says, thus saith the Lord, don't commit adultery. People are going to understand that the Lord is the source of both things. It's very important when we remember about those people who sat down the Word of God. The apostles were empowered to do miracles so they could show that, yes, when we speak for the Lord, we are telling you the truth in the same way that when we say, arise and be healed, And it happens, it's the power of the Lord. And so when we speak on his behalf, we're not making this up. The power of the Lord manifested in Elisha showed that he also had the spirit of the Lord and the ability to speak for him, dwelling within him. So very different from the modern day prophets who make, you know, they make these prophecies that don't come to pass. They say, you are healed, and then the person dies of their affliction a little while later. They don't show that they have the right to say these things. by showing his power. So the salt is a representative of preservation from corruption as well. And it's used by Elisha in this case as a symbol of divine cleansing. The Lord told him, you know, you do this thing in order to teach the people a lesson. And we see that with, as with all true miracles, it's immediate and it's permanent. The author of Second Kings says, to this day, the water remains healed. It's still good. After that, he returns to retracing his earlier steps with Elisha. Elisha returns to Bethel. Now, Bethel, unlike Jericho, was one of the centers of false worship for the Kingdom of Israel. One of Jeroboam's golden calves was actually located there. And no doubt, the people of Bethel, who had had this golden calf in their midst for so long, were actually, at this point, proud of it. They were proud of their role in the false religion of their particular nation. And they hated and detested those who told them that what they were doing was wrong. After a city has long been involved in a particular sin, they become absolutely proud of it. So for instance, You cannot run for mayor in San Francisco without making the LGBTQIA++++ agenda a major point in your campaign. In fact, they were doing the primary process. Don't bother running as a Republican, obviously, but the Democrats, they were saying, well, he doesn't know enough drag queens to be your mayor. How that ever became a criteria for good governance. I know more drag queens than you do. It's an absurdity, but what's happened is they have been so long steeped in that particular sin that it's become a matter of absolute pride for them. And if you ever want to stir up the hatred of an unbelieving people, tell them that what they're doing is detestable to the Lord, and call them to repent of it, and they will hate you. They will either hate you or the word of the Lord will work and they will turn from their particular sin. Now, you will remember that there was another, I hope you will remember, that there was another school of the prophets in Bethel and it was very likely that the town people or the city folk of Bethel, while stopping short of actually killing those prophets, routinely jeered at them and made fun of the sons of the prophets so that their children had imbibed that same kind of utter contempt for the prophets of the Lord that their parents had. So calling a prophet or a son of a prophet names and mocking them would have been second nature to these children. They had learned it from their parents. So it shouldn't surprise you that a group of na'ar, that's the Hebrew word, that is adolescent boys, young lads we would say, came out of the city and began making fun of Elisha as he was passing. Like most kids who want to hurt feelings, and you don't have to be a sociologist to understand or a psychologist to understand how this works, they would seize upon something that was different, something negative, some negative aspect. And he is a young man at this point in time. He would live 50 years more, so we know he was probably about, yeah, he was somewhere in his 20s or his 30s at this point. But he was a young man with a bald head. And so they call him baldy, hoping to wound his vanity. The baldness is incidental, though. That's something that's important. It's the person that they're disrespecting. It's the office that they are disrespecting. It's the fact that he's the prophet of the Lord that makes them the target of their making fun. Had the king of Israel, had he been bald as a coot, as the old saying goes, and had he come by, the kids would not have come out and made fun of him. Perish the thought. But they will make fun of Elisha and his lack of hair because he was somebody that they naturally detested. Had he been short, they would have been saying, go up, you shorty, or something like that. Midget. Is your name Bildad because of your shoe height? Anyway. That's a Job joke, incidentally, if you look it up. Now, whenever I have been made fun of by children as a Christian or a pastor, and I have to tell you, it happens. It does. It's inevitably been the fruit of a society and parents who have nothing but contempt for the Lord and his ministers. And I want to tell you that, Christians, there is a lesson here. If you want to raise children who treat the servants of the Lord with respect, then you have to as well. And I must make this point, you have to not just in public. It's very easy, isn't it, on Sunday, surrounded by the entire church, to say, oh, great pastor, great sermon, great everything about the man of God who is serving in that particular congregation. But if the usual meal that's served at home on Sunday afternoon is roast pastor, don't be surprised if your kids grow up disrespecting the officers of the church. I have seen this. Pastors, we talk, and we know whose families are speaking ill of us in their own homes. Do you know how we can tell? By the way that the children treat us. The way that they've imbibed that natural disrespect for the person that the parents don't, they're smart enough, savvy enough not to express it in public, but the kids don't know that. Anyway, it's interesting what they say, isn't it? Go up, you bald head. What do they mean by that? Well, that was also intended to wound. As Elijah had gone up into heaven, they are saying, go up too. Leave us. We'll be better off when there are no more God-fearing people around. Get away from us. These kids are typical, I hate to use a modern example, but it's typical of the internet generation, the TikTok generation, just saying, flippantly, kill yourself. I can't even imagine how often. We were pretty awful as kids. I was an awful kid. But I don't remember saying on a regular basis, kill yourself to people. But we've become a very desensitized people. But in any event, these kids are typical examples of a nation that, to quote 2 Chronicles 36, 16, mocked the messengers of God, despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets. That's the beginning of the verse. But here I want you to take note of the end of 2 Chronicles 36, 16. But the verse goes on to say this, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy. You can mock the Lord and his servants for so long. But eventually, his patience comes to an end. That's something to remember. When you mock the messengers of the Lord, understand this, you are mocking the Lord. You can't mock his servants without mocking him as well. And the Lord was not going to allow this lack of respect to stand anymore. Then he allowed it when the soldiers came to a, you know, they came simply to collect Elijah. Man of God, come down, the king's calling for you. Well, if I am a man of God, i.e., if I do deserve the respect you're not according to me, let fire fall from the heavens and consume you. And it did. Remember the first two sets of fifties that were sent out to collect him? They were both burned up. That's the last chapter. So the prophet, speaking in the name of God, not acting out of personal hurt, this is not Elisha being vindictive, he pronounces a curse on them. And at that very moment, two female bears come out of the woods and they maul these disrespectful young men. And how do we know that he was speaking in the name of the Lord? Because Elisha is not some sort of wizard, okay? He doesn't have a staff. He doesn't, you know, cast spells or things like that. When the waters of Jericho were healed, it wasn't Elisha who healed it. or healed them, it was the Lord who did it. When the bears miraculously show up and they ignore Elisha, but attack the children, it was the Lord's judgment falling upon them, just as surely as it was the Lord who caused fire to fall upon the soldiers sent to arrest Elijah. One commentator says this, the prophet must be justified for he did it by divine impulse. Had the curse come from any bad principle, God would not have said amen to it. We may think it would have been better to have called for two rods for the correction of these children than two bears for the destruction of them. But Elisha knew by the spirit the bad character of these children. He knew what a generation of vipers those were and what mischievous enemies they would be to God's prophets if they should live to be men who began so early to be abusive to them. Now, I must tell you, when we get to this point in the narrative and we read about the she bears mauling the 42 young boys, we get very upset. That is, the world particularly gets very upset. When you have soldiers who, we need to note, have always generally been young men as well, when we see them being burned up by God because of their lack of reverence for the Lord and his servants, people say, well, okay, but they were soldiers. But you subtract a few years or so, and you have adolescent boys, and suddenly there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. How could God have done this to pre-teens? Have you lived with pre-teens? Well, moving on. But do you not understand, one wants to say, There were children in Jericho, there were children in Ai, and in Amalek, and Sodom, and Gomorrah, and countless other cities that the Lord either destroyed or had put to the sword. What we will not face is that all of us are born into this world under God's wrath and curse. Somehow we want to suspend God's wrath and curse. We want to suspend the effects of original sin from our children and also from grandma, because grandma is so nice, isn't she? Even if she doesn't believe a word, she's just wonderful. But That's not the teaching of the word. It's not that the curse of original sin is held in escrow and then transferred to our account at an arbitrary age. We are born into this world dead in our sins and trespasses. Don't take my word for it. Let's go looking in the word of God. Let's go to Romans chapter three. And specifically, I just want you to see how universal this is in the declarations that are made. As it is written, there is none righteous. No, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good. No, not one. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. and a more apt description in the last sentence of a toddler, I have never seen. There is no fear of God before their eyes. But we understand that now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. That is a universal declaration, the entire world. Search all you want and you will not find an age requirement in those verses. Paul goes on to confirm this a couple chapters later in Romans 5, starting in verse 12, where he says, therefore, just as through one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus spread to all men, because all sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, sin, sorry, nevertheless, death reigned, and death is the consequence of sin, from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned, according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come. Who are those who had not sinned after the likeness of Adam? And we remember Adam sinned willingly. One of the things that Paul points out is that the woman, Eve, was deceived by the devil and took the fruit of the tree. Adam, however, was not deceived. He knew that what he was doing in taking the fruit was a deliberate act of sin. All right, so who are those who have not had a chance to sin deliberately but over whom death still reigns? And the answer is infants. The very fact that men die indicates the curse has been communicated to all people. So yes, we are born into this world with original sin already upon us. People will not accept it, but it's true. We are all born dead in sins and trespasses, all of us born under God's wrath and his curse and in need of his gracious forgiveness. Young and old, we are all in need of repentance. we are all in need of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus had to point that out at numerous times during his ministry, that all men need to repent, all women, all children, we all need to repent. In Luke 13, 1, we read this example. There were present at that season some who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. They were coming up to one of the feasts and they were attacked by Pilate. This would have included a caravan made up of men and women and children. And Jesus answered and said to them, do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Repent or perish is the word of God. You have set before you by God constantly two paths, life and death. And the Lord counsels you, therefore choose life. Now, here I want you to see the contrast, the great contrast between the men of Jericho who had treated Elisha with respect and they had come to him with their problem precisely because they believed that he could help them. And then after they had listened to him and seen the power of God at work, then one would hope that their hearts would continue to be open to the teaching of the word of God in their midst, having seen it work like that. Now, what application can we make to what happened in Jericho? They had polluted springs. We have to ask, doesn't our society today suffer from polluted wells? Are we not drinking corruption that's killing us? And the wells of our society, our media, everything that feeds into and floods this world these days is stained with corruption. We have so many different sources, literature, drama, entertainment, the internet, pornography, political groups, and so on. Just aberrant, foul philosophies. And they're not just producing a moral barrenness in the land, they're producing actual barrenness. Have you looked at our birth rates? We are a people who are literally dying out because we're not having children. We are becoming a barren nation. Barrenness throughout the Word of God is seen as a sign of judgment. We see it as, you know, the bizarre thing is we've entirely disconnected sex from having kids within our own age. And we see kids as some sort of curse. That's actually how they're spoken of in the media, whereas what the word of God tells us is that children are a blessing. The fruit of the womb is a reward. They're a good thing. They're our future. If we want to have a nation going on, then we have to have children. And now, in this period of time, they understood that very well because they knew that if they didn't have kids, who was going to support them? Who would take care of them in their old age if they didn't? I mean, for a widow to not have sons who would support her, this was the worst catastrophe that could happen to us. But we've forgotten that who is going to support us when we're elderly and there are no children? Robots. Have you seen how AI works at McDonald's? Do you really want them taking care of you in your old age? He put four diapers on me last night, and they were all backwards. I mean, it's a ridiculous supposition, but we won't be able to support ourselves as a society. This is one of the judgments that we're calling upon ourselves amongst many others. Well, a commentator by the name of Dilde put it this way. He said, the only answer to such moral pollution is to treat the source. Humanity's sinful condition must be dealt with first. Elisha purified the springs of Jericho with salt. Jesus said that we who follow him are to be the salt of the earth. The influence of our lives in the midst of a polluted society is to lead the lost to Jesus, the only Savior. He alone can save sinners, stop the decay, and heal the springs of this crooked and perverse generation at the source. We learn that from the example of Jericho. What do we learn from the example of Bethel? That's my second application. You will be held accountable if you choose to turn away from the mercy and the word of the Lord. You will be held accountable for every wicked word you speak, for instance, young and old. put it, no, I'm sorry, this is Matthew Henry, he put it well when he said, God must be glorified as a righteous God that hates sin and will reckon for it, even in little children. Let the wicked, wretched brood make our flesh tremble for fear of God. Let little children be afraid of speaking wicked words, for God notices what they say. Are you kids aware of that? that the Lord sees and every wicked word that you speak is something that if you do not repent of and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness, you will be held accountable for someday. Let little children be afraid, therefore speaking wicked words. For God notices. Let them not mock any of the defects in mind or body, but pity them rather. Do not make fun of bald people, or short people, or people who speak poorly, or those kind of things, but pity them. especially let them know that it is at their peril if they jeer God's people or ministers and scoff at any for well-doing. Let parents that would have comfort in their children train them up well and do their utmost betimes to drive out the foolishness that is bound up in their hearts. For as Bishop Hall says, in vain do we look for good from those children whose education we have neglected and in vain do we grieve for those miscarriages which our care might have prevented. And by that they mean children who grow up to be wayward and prodigal. Well, is there hope for, you know, the kid raised in Bethel? And the answer is yes. I speak of you. I speak of you? I speak to you. I'm sorry, I just came from driving many, many hours. But I speak to you as one of those wicked little mockers of God and his people. And had it not been for God's intervention in my life, something far worse than two she bears mauling me would have occurred. I would have spent an eternity in hell. That was the way that I was headed. And there were several times in my life where the Lord could have taken my life easily and sent me to final judgment, but he didn't. I want to give you another example, not from my life, but from the lives of seven young men. And it goes back to 1882. D.L. Moody, the great evangelist, had gone to England, and he had been doing revival meetings throughout the country. And he had been met with not a great deal a great reception, actually, amongst the common people. But the upper classes, they had nothing but disdain for him as a general rule. So he announced that he was going to do a revival in the Cambridge area, particularly towards Cambridge students. And people said, oh no, you're going to go to these mocking young men and bring them the gospel. And they tried to persuade him, don't do this, but he did it anyway. So he and Iris Sankey, who was a great singer and hymnist, went. Sankey opened up as he normally did, and he sang. And the wicked young men in the front laughed, and they clapped their hands after every hymn and said, encore, encore, as though it was some sort of dance hall performance or something like that. Sankey, it was said, was near tears when he was finished with his repertoire. And then D.L. Moody stood up to speak. Now, D.L. Moody was a common man from the Midwest, and he had a very strong Midwestern accent. And he did not say Daniel, although he was preaching from the Book of Daniel. He said, Daniel, Daniel. And so the men in the front row began every time he said, Daniel, would say, Daniel, Daniel, and then all dissolve into laughter. He was barely able to get his sermon out as a result. Well, later on, some of the kinder, gentler, more Christian young men in the college were so absolutely appalled at the performance of their brethren that they brought them together and they said, you brought great disrespect upon this institution. Now these Americans are going to go back and say, Englishmen are all a bunch of unwashed Philistines. And how's that going to look? Aren't we supposed to be the older brothers, the better men? Now you go and apologize. And a man by the name of Gerald Lander, who had been the loudest in his mockery, was picked to go and talk to D.L. Moody. He went to his hotel, and a servant, a bellboy, arrived at D.L. Moody's door and said, there's a Mr. Gerald Lander who wants to speak to you. And Lander came in very sheepishly, holding his hat. And he explained that he was there to apologize, and he was sorry for his behavior, which had been reprehensible, his mockery, and so on. And D.L. Moody responded graciously, preaching the gospel. to this young man, and then urging him to share his words with the other men that he had come to represent in his apology. And Gerald Lander's life was changed dramatically in those events. He went on to become part of what were called the Cambridge Seven. The Cambridge Seven were a group of missionaries who, these were men from aristocratic families who had such prospects in the world ahead of them, and yet they went on instead to evangelize China. These were some of the leading evangelists in opening up that nation to the gospel, a beginning that has resulted obviously in millions of conversions. There are more Christians in China now than there are communists, not a little bit due to the efforts of these men who were once mockers of the gospel. The gospel can change hearts in ways that we cannot even conceive of. It can take a terrible man who would just mock and go on to hell and judgment like Gerald Lander, And it can make him into a star in the firmament, a profitable tool, an Elisha in his own time, preaching the word of God and converting souls. Remember that. There is hope. While there is breath, yet in your lives, children, there is hope. Turn to the Lord, repent and believe, and be useful in the kingdom. Let's go before him now. God, our Father, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for the assurance it gives us. We thank you for the examples that we have. We have set before us two choices, mercy or judgment. I do pray, Lord, that we would always choose life, choose mercy. Help us to turn away from the pollution of our society, knowing that nothing, nothing good comes from it, that it produces only barrenness and death. Help us instead to strive to be light and salt in the world, to follow the instructions of Christ, and to do everything that we can to help to advance the kingdom in this world till that day when the kingdom comes. And everything, O Lord, is set right with the return of Jesus. We pray this in His holy name.