Elisha’s Final Miracle & the Power of Wholehearted Faith | 2 Kings 13:14-25

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in

practical ways. Everybody, it's Friday Friday. Thank goodness, It's Friday Friday.

Thank god, It's Friday Friday.

Right, it's it's what day is it, Chris?

It's the day that we fry the day did you

ever grow up not? Did you grew up in a

culture where people were like dominantly Catholic, where there's no

meat on Fridays.

I grew up in a pagan culture early in my

life and then yeah, yeah, yeah, and then became Christians.

I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. Everybody's Italian. Everybody's Italian, right,

especially back then, and uh and so it was a

dominantly Catholic culture and it was no meat on Fridays. Everywhere.

It was all fish. So anyway, all that's say McDonald's.

They would have science that's say fish fries on Friday,

and they would do the fr I Friday and then

they would do fr Y Friday.

What a good idea? Yeah, Okay, anyway, there you go.

Well today, Chris, we have a big one. It is

not everybody's favorite segment. It is not No, this is

a guess the word. I'm going to give you clues.

Are you indicating it's people a segment that people don't like.

No, the segment that everybody loves is make Chrissy, Well

that makes Jeff mad. If you want to know, is

that we're not doing what made Chris mad this week. Okay,

we're doing a guess the word.

I couldn't figure out why you were downing this segment.

It's similar to taboo, and we like this segment, just

not on Friday.

And I was just that's so funny. I was just

mentioning to Jeff that I think the last I'm not

even kidding, probably ten times that we played this game,

I was the reader and you're the guesser, right right,

So for some reason, I'm finally the guesser. Yes, So

I'm looking forward to it. So if you're watching, hopefully

we'll put on the screen the words that Jeff cannot say.

Yes. Okay, So it's like taboo, yep, and I'm going

to try to help get you to do it. Okay.

Each one is worth ten thousand points.

Ten thousand Yes. When did you become the arbiter of

points just now, Okay, you took over. Yep, you surped

you you surped my point given generosity ten thousands pretty generous.

I am pretty sure I gave you like seven million.

Couple feels. Hey, do you want to go with ten thousand?

That's fine, yes, okay. Usually it looks like a diamond.

Sometimes it looks like a dragon or something else, and

you get it to go up in the air. Kids

would use a rope and they would get it up

in the air. Looks like a diamond, has an arrow. No, no, no, no, no,

it looks like a diamond. Little kids wild play with

it on on.

Days that are blowing, windy days.

Yeah, there you go. Kite. I couldn't say. I couldn't

say fly, wind, string, sky or tail. Wow, all the

things about a kite used for me.

Off of a diamond. When you said it looked like

a diamond, you should have said.

It was shaped shape of a diamond.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I was like, I was like,

what looks like a diamond, because kites alongs like diamonds.

Okay, it's a region or a place. Oh okay, yes,

it's not the desert. You go into it. Usually there's

tribes that live in jungle. There you go, jungle. Nice,

very good. I couldn't say trees, animals, rainforests, plants are tropical.

Okay.

It was a hard one.

That is hard. Okay, nice.

Uh here's a place on the on a college campus

that you would go to study.

Library.

There you library, awesome books, read, borrow, quiet, and shelves.

So it wasn't allowed to say, Okay, okay, it's a

hard one. Elon Musk is building them and we're all

going to own one in a few years. Robots, robot, yep,

that's right, that's awesome. I wasn't allowed to say machine, future, technology,

program or artificial Okay. This is a tough one. Oh man.

When it blows up it wipes out cities at a

bomb bo No, no, no, it's a natural occurrence. Like

uh yeah, there you go, volcano, good job. I couldn't

say lava erupt mountain, magma or fire.

Wow.

Hey, so what's that fifty thousand points?

Yeah? Good job?

There go. Do we share them? I mean you're the

one who.

Got these are so yours?

Just you did all the work, wow, Chris, you did

all the work? All right? Well, what is it seven

million to fifty thousand.

That's pretty good that you welcome.

Yeah, I'm gaining ground, gaining ground.

Okay, there's there's plenty of games in the future. There's

plenty of future recordings.

As long as do the points expire? Are they like

Delta miles? I never expired?

Yeah, maybe so I had. I did lose a ticket

over the first of the year.

Yeah, where you had a free.

Yeah, companion ticket, any ticket? Yeah. So hey, I don't

know about you, but I felt like that segment had

a lot of life.

Oh yeah, yeah, it was it exciting. Yeah, and speak

heights in jungles and libraries and robots and volcanoes.

Well, speaking of having life, this next story is about

a man who comes back to life.

Oh yeaow.

Yeah, there's other things involved in the story.

But that's part of it. Okay. And that was your

if you're a long time if you're a new listener,

one of mine and Chris's goals is to have a

really terrible transitions out of the goofy game section into

the part where we're reading about.

And I think I've done a fine job.

So this is eight hundred BC.

Okay.

And Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were written about the same time.

Oh wow, isn't that interesting. Yeah, that's really that's a

really cool little factoid. It was in the margins of

the Life Application Study Bible. So here's what it says.

We're in Second Kings, chapter thirteen. We're gonna read. Verse

fourteen says when Elisha was in his last illness, King

Jehoash of Israel visited him and wept over him. My father,

my father, I see the chariots and chariots of Israel,

he cried. Elisha told him get a bow and some arrows,

and the king did as he was told. And Elia

told him, put your hand on the bow, and Elisha

laid his own hands on the king's hands. Then he

commanded open that eastern window, and he opened it, and

then he said shoot, So he shot an arrow. Elisha proclaimed,

this is the Lord's arrow, an arrow of victory over Aram,

for you will completely conquer the Aramans of Aphex. Then

he said, now pick up the other arrows and strike

them against the ground. So the king picked them up

and struck the ground three times. But the Man of

God was angry with him. You should have struck the

ground five or six times, he exclaimed, then you would

have beaten Aram until it was entirely destroyed. Now you

will be victorious only three times. And then Elisha died

and was buried. Groups of Mobiit raiders used to invade

the land each spring, and once, when some Israelites were

burying a man, they spied a band of these raiders,

and so they hastily threw the corpse into the tomb

of Elishah and fled. But as soon as the body

touched Elishah's bones, the dead man revived and jumped to

his feet.

Zeekes.

King Hazael of Aram had oppressed Israel during the entire

reign of King Jehoah ass But the Lord was gracious

and merciful to the people of Israel, and they were

not totally destroyed. He pitied them because of his covenant

with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and to this day he

still has not completely destroyed them or banished them from

his presence. King Hazael of Aram died and his son

Ben Haydad became the next king. Am I, reading to

verse twenty five, then joho Ash, the son of Jehoah,

has recaptured from Ben Haydad, son of Jehesel the towns

that had been taken. Jehoash's father, Jehoah has Wow Jehoash

defeated Ben Haydad on three occasions, and he recovered the

Israelite towns Wow Jehoash and Jehoah Has Jehoahs jeho Ash

the son of Jehoahs. And they only had to say

it like three times.

It's crazy. That's why I'm happy you're the reader.

I think that's why sometimes people get bogged down reading

the Bible is the names are heard. I agree the

hard the track was so I here's what I would say,

skip them. Yeah, just what do you do? You say

that guy that guy and that guy was the son

of that guy.

And people love it in the audience because because you know,

obviously it's not as a thing of disrespect, it's it's

an acknowledgment that it's sometimes those things are difficult.

These names are very unfamiliar.

Yeah. So if you're so, if you're reading through it

and you're like, okay, so then that guy I said

to that guy, then people start gett Then. I don't

do it all the time, but I do it as

as a way to say like, hey, it's okay, Yeah,

it's okay. Even preachers have a hard time because because

you know that that's that's pretty crazy. And again it's

it's it's truly no different than today. If we were

to go down the line and record incredible details of

history of all the names, the modern name you know,

the modern day names today, if you were to go

back in time to eight hundred BC and they were

to read the futuristic names, they'd be like, what kind

of names are these? No, I'm talking about like the

really funky names of the world. Oh, I mean, I

guess zar Ba is a last name. It's pretty funky.

But yeah, but still I think that people you know

back then would find them just as confusing.

I think, so yeah, so uh, I know one guy,

he just uses the first letter, so say king h oh,

that's fair. Right, So if it gets to the hard ones,

you just you can't say, I'm all, that's really fair,

so that that can be hard whatever, But don't let

the names bog you down. The stories are pretty incredible. Dude,

A guy came back to life when they threw a

body in a.

Dude, let's talk about this for a second. Okay, so

let's skip the whole bone arrow thing. We'll come back

to that. But so I made a reference a long

time ago when Elijah, so this would have been what

four or five weeks ago, when Elijah was anointing Elisha

to take over his ministry, and he said, what do

you want? And Elijah said, what I want is to

have a double portion of your blessings and power in

your ministry. And so he said, okay, you're going to

have it. Actually he said, if you can, if you

see me when when when I passed from this earth,

he says, then you'll have it. And if you don't,

then you won't. But he did he saw so so anyway,

I'm not necessarily sure that what I'm about to say

is a direct correlation to that, but it's just fun

to talk about. So if you google, well not google,

but you know research, and if you say how many

major miracles did Elijah do in his ministry, it is

eight major miracles. And you say how many miracles did

major miracles did Elisha accomplish before he died? The answer

is actually fifteen, So it's one short of exactly double

of Elisha's major miracles. And then he gets buried, and

then here this after he's buried, it says, the bones,

the bones, right, It's like, so it could be that

maybe it's been a while, it might have even been

decaying for a while. And so it ends up happening

is long after Elisha's death. These guys are burying somebody.

They look over and they see tomb raiders, they see

grave robbers, and they're scared. So they're like, oh my goodness,

let's hurry up and just throw this body in here

and let's get out of here for own safety. And

they just throw this body into Elisha's tomb. And this

dead body, you know, we don't know much about him,

but he hits the tomb of Elijah and hits his

bones and then comes back to life. And guess what,

that's miracle number sixteen. Baby.

Yeah, there you go.

Right, So it's exactly double the amount of miracles, which

I think is just so cool.

What a surprise. By the way, Yes, you're rattling around.

You wake up, got all these bones all around, he says.

He jumped up. I jump up too, dude. Yeah, no,

kidding freaking out.

Which, by the way, is pretty crazy. We just did

Easter planning yesterday and we were talking about different things

revolving on Easter and Palm Sunday and the Passover and

different things like that. And one of the conversations that

we had was what's his name Lazarus who came back

to life? Lazarus has been dead for four days? Yeah, right,

and so the question is was he in heaven? That's

the question. Was Lazarus in heaven? Do you think he was?

I think he was in Abraham's Boosom, yeah, Paradise.

Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So but either way he had

to come back. Yeah right, and so and so John

Christ has a funny bit on that. Have you ever

seen it?

No where?

He says, he goes, he goes, think about it, and

he goes. The story of the story of Lazarus is

is Jesus comes along. Elazarus is dead for four days.

Jesus brings back to life, and Jesus looks like the

hero and he was. He goes, it was great. He

goes everything was great, except for for Lazarus. He goes,

He've been dead four days. He's in heaven. He's up

in his mansion, you know, and he's like, oh man,

this is great. He's like, no more pain. He had

a bum leg that was restored you know, and he goes, man,

this is really great. He goes and all of a sudden,

Lazarus gets a knock. After four days, he's like Lazarus,

He's like yeah, and he's like, so we have to

talk to you. We don't normally do this, and he's like, yeah,

what's going on. He goes, we got to send you back.

He goes to the Middle East when there's no air conditioning,

and he's like, are you kidding? This is really funny, right,

So John Chris does this thing, it's just so funny. Well,

well here's this here's this guy. You know, he's been

dead for who you know, long enough for him to

be buried, and he gets thrown on Elisha's bones and

he comes back to life.

What was that? Funny? Guy? So funny?

Isn't that funny?

Yeah, it's that's funny.

It's funny. Didn't even think about it.

But it does highlight the fact that even though the

people of Israel, the kings of this, this miracle really

serves God's purposes in that, you know, word gets out

on this one. Yeah right, this guy's going to go

how in the world no pagan god ever raised anybody

from the dead like this, right, that that's not that's

not a thing, it's it never shows up anywhere, so

that would have gotten their attention. And then it's a

reminder that Elisha represented God's word, the true the word

of the true God, right, the one true God. Even

in his death, he still represents that that influence is

still there, right, just as a subtle reminder, not so

subtle reminder to the kings. But they didn't pay attention, right,

the people of Israel didn't pay attention to him.

So let's talk about this arrow thing. Yeah, yeah, So,

and first of all, I love how the scripture story

begins because it says Elisha was in his last days

of z illness, King u joho ash A Israel visited

him and wept over him. My father, my father, you know.

In other words, this is like a spiritual father to Elisha.

It wasn't his literal father, right, you mean Joosh, Yeah,

Josh was weeping over Elisha and said, my father, my father.

But but it wasn't his biological fathers what I'm trying

to say, right, it was just it was just it

was a father figure, right, And so so in other words,

he loves Elisha, right, which by the way, was a

testament to him being raised in the temple, wasn't it.

No, not Jehosh. Oh, my king's right, and this was

a bad king. Yeah, yeah, you were talking about Joe Ash.

This is Jehosh.

See, this is why I know beginning of our So see, listeners,

even the.

Best of us do it on sometimes some occasions. These

names the best, that's right, that's right. So these names

sometimes can be confusing. So you have to be paying

attention to you in the King of Israel or the

King of Judah. King of Judah is Joe Ash. The

King of Israel is Jehosh.

Good gravy.

Yeah, okay, Joe Ash was a bad king. Okay, yeah, okay.

As a matter of fact, it says in King's thirteen

it says, but he did what was evil in the

Lord's sight. He refused to turn from the sins that

jerebo I'm son a neeback.

Okay. Number one, that changes my understanding of this passage

when you're read it.

He's just showing respect because he needs help because I

got confused. Yeah.

And then number two, Yeah, let's talk about that. So

he's showing respect. He's showing respect because he needs help, right,

because he wants to Arab is coming to defeat me.

And Elisha is consistently acknowledged by the kings of Israel

as being a powerful godly man, but more like a

good luck charm is what they're how they're trying to.

So you think, do you think joho Ash thanks for

that again the Bible. But if you think joho Ash

was a person who often consulted Elishah's advice, you think

he looked at him as like almost like somebody on

a staff that helped him.

Yeah. So the note here for this for verse fourteen

says Elisha was highly regarded for his prophetic powers and

miracles on Israel's behalf. Jehoish called him the Chariots and

Chariot series of Israel. Right, this is what he's calling.

This recalls the title Elishah was had given to Elijah.

Jehosh feared Elisha's death because he ascribed the nation's well

being to Elisha rather than than God. That's what it was.

So it revealed his lack of spiritual understanding. So I

think this is interesting. It says Elisha was in his

last illness, not his first or his tenth in his

last illness. So, and it's forty three years between the

last time Elisha was mentioned in this time.

Yeah, I read that.

Did you read that note? Yeah? Yeah, So I hadn't

contemplated that.

I don't think I even doesn't an old man.

Yeah, And forty three years between now and the last

time he's mentioned in the Bible. That doesn't mean he

wasn't doing things. He wasn't serving God. Jehosh recognized me

still being a prophet and a man of God, a

powerful man of God. But just his actions aren't being

recorded at this point, and he's kind of he's in

his later years, he's coming towards his last illness. And

there's something about that that, you know, all of us

want miracles. We love this life so much, we love

all these things. We all want miracles. But even Elisha

comes to his last time a man of miracles. And

the Bible says it's appointed, and a man wants to die.

We all have an appointment, right, So the goal isn't

to never die in this physical body. The goal is

be prepared for this death, because you're going to live

for fraternity somewhere, right. And so even Elisha struggled and

it wasn't his first illness. And so if you're a

person who's struggling with illness or whatever, you know, a

perspective would be, I don't have any right to demand

anything from God. But what we do know is that

Elisha walked with God until his very last breath. Right

walking with God is preparing for eternity, accepting the fact

that I think sometimes illness and when you're I just

had a conversation with a guy who's struggling with cancer

right now, and this last week we talked at length,

and he said, you know, prior to my cancer, I

just lived life and everything was about life. It was

about now and me and my kids, and we got

to get the Disney and we got to do this thing.

We got to buy the house, and we gotta pay

the bills. He said. He was in ministry, serving you, mystry,

but his life really was just about this life. He said,

I got faced with cancer and he said, now it's

about I want my kids to go to heaven with me.

I want my grandkids to go to heaven with me.

Someday I want he said, it's still all about family,

but with a totally different perspective. Right, and he said,

I do it. Now. It looks like he's going into

remission and things are better for him. I think he's

going to live for quite some time. He has goals,

you know, he's in his sixties. He has goals for

into his seventies. We were talking about those. But when

you get an eternal perspective, your priorities are different. I

don't think Elisha has any. It's interesting Elisha needed the

cross the river when he was young. He snapped. He

literally takes his cloak, spins it around, snaps it on

the water, and walks across on dry land.

Yeah. Right.

He raised people from the dead and even while he

was alive. Right, But he had no expectation that somehow

God owed him the ability to never have a disease

or never have a sickness. Right, he faced it to

sake all of us. Right, And so it's okay. I'm

not saying give up. I'm not saying any of those things.

I'm just saying there's a peace in saying okay, this

life is only temporary. Paul says, we're just pilgrims traveling

through this life. But it's not home. These bodies are

just temporary tense. These are not where we actually live, right,

They just carry us. And so preparing for eternity I

think is incredibly important. And if Elisha didn't get any

special treatment on this, why would I expect it or

why would I get mad at God? Instead, I just understand, Hey,

this life comes to an end someday. I want to

be prepared for it and go on to the next

I think I mentioned this on a podcast a few

weeks ago, but my dad is going to be eighty

seven tomorrow and I think he's come into his last days.

My brothers are gathering around right now as matter of fact.

But my dad at Christmas time mentioned he said, you know,

nobody knows how long you have, especially when you're at

my age. And he said, you know, it really puts

into perspective. They all the preparations you make up to

this point. Yeah, And man a life, the kind of

peace somebody can have going into the end of life

knowing that they have spent a lifetime of following God

and trusting him preparing something to that.

And it makes it There's such a difference, isn't it

When somebody passes, you know, like you just said, you

just said the sentence that you think your dad is

going to pass. Yeah, and it's there's something there's there's

it's a radical difference between that kind of piece, approaching

it with that kind of piece as opposed to the

opposite what you're.

Talking about, right, I mean, we're going to miss him,

We're going to grieve, we shed tears, to struggle, but

knowing that we grieve, but not as those who have

no hope. So you have Elisha, who's a guy who's

all in all the time, right, But the last words

of Elisha are he's a little tick that jeho ash

right because he's like, come on, dude.

Which which, by the way, we haven't talked about the

area yet. Yeah, and that's that's a good word. I

wanted to get in this word too. So it's very

common for Elishah to have done something symbolic and saying like, hey,

here's a prophecy, right, here's a prediction right about what

God says. And so he decided to use a visual

aid and said, hey, let me help you shoot this

air out the eastern window because that's where it was.

It was in the east, right, the east, which is

really great. So anyway, so he says, shoot it to

the east. He shoots it, and he goes, Okay, that's

that's an arrow of victory. This is what this is

going to mean. You're going to win. And then he says, okay,

now take the arrows and then destroy them on the ground.

He says, strike right. But if you look into it,

it's it's it's what he's meaning is destroy the rest

of the arrows, right, smash them, smash them. And so

he said, he hits it three times, and and so

you know what that is to me, It's like, if

God's going to ask you to do something, then do

it right. Don't just hit it three times? Smash him right,

smash if he's if he says smash him, don't stop

until you smash him.

Well, keep doing it until God says stop right right,

just keep going.

So he says, he says, strike him on the ground.

So so, so what did you.

Do is is tap tap?

Yeah, So he goes boo boo boom. He hits the

three times and he goes man. Alicia says, I'm angry

because if you would have continued to do it, then

you would have had full victory. You would defeated them

until they were gone, he said, but you didn't. So

therefore God's going to give you three because he asked

you to do something and it was symbolic, and you

do a symbolic You just shot the arrow, right, You

did that well with me. But it does say that

Elisa's hands were on his hands, right, and so and

so the boat for the bow. So he asked him

to do something by himself, smash the arrows. He only

did three. I can almost visually see it where he

says smash the arrows and he takes him and he goes.

He looks back like, okay, now what you know and

he's like, dude, you know he didn't say.

It's like it's some kind of a formula or something.

Yeah, it's almost like it's almost like, no, I asked

you to do something, do it with your whole heart.

And so it just seems to me that that's the indication.

It's like you didn't complete what I asked you to

do when I said strike him on the ground. I'm

asking you to destroy the rest of the euros, and

you didn't do it, and so therefore, you know, anyway,

I just I think there's a sermon.

Go all in with God. That's what is. Go all

in with God. Just just give it all that you have,

go after it. Whatever God says to you, go after

that until God tells you to do something else, and

just don't go halfway. We get timid about spiritual things

and get super excited about driving a golf ball, right right,

we get we get really timid about doing you know,

about sharing our faith with our neighbor, but we get

super excited about whatever our hobby is. And what's happening

here is, here's a king's He comes looking to Elisha

for for wisdom and guidance, but then he goes halfway

instead of instead of being enthusiatic because he's hoping for

good luck, charm, God, just do amazing things and do

a miracle. And instead it's very clear that symbolic let

me hold your hands, let me help you draw the

ball back. And he drew it all all the way back,

and he flung that arrow far because it went all

the way out the window and shoots out right. So

this is an all in, old man, all in helping

him pull back this bow, fling that arrow. The kind

of power behind that is what he's wanting from johoesh

to do on his own right is bring that kind

of power, bring that kind of enthusiasm, and he goes

tap tap tap. It's like, come on, okay, you're gonna

win three battles. Man. If you destroyed those arrows, if

you'd beat it five six times, God would have just

wiped out your enemies. Instead, you're gonna have some victories

in a little bit of peace, but it's not gonna

be what you really wanted. And so you know you're

gonna have some blessings as you follow God. But when

you go all in, that's when you're gonna really drive

back the enemy in your life and the life of

the family and all the people who were lying on you. Yeah,

and he didn't go all in. That's yeah.

Well, hey, that looks like it's our time. It's a

good place to end it. And hopefully we will see

you on Monday on the Bible Gush