Sermons on 2 Kings
1. The Portrait of a _________________ King.
2. The Religious ____________________ and Wicked _________________ of King Ahaz.
3. Behold Jesus Christ, the _________________ King and Good ______________.
Three Old Testament stories converge here to shed light on the floating axe head, held together by De Graaf’s three-point approach and the movement of the sons of the prophets. The tree that sweetens bitter water in Exodus 15 is the same tree Christ hung on.
Conservative commentary has grown thin, a gap answered here by De Graaf’s grammatical-historical method as a corrective. Read that way, the floating axe head becomes a mirror: we are the ones who have lost it.
A borrowed axe head sinking in the Jordan sets up a direct challenge to liberal commentators who explain away Scripture’s miracles. Robinson’s approach comes in for direct criticism, and the plain claim stands: biblical miracles are supernatural, not embarrassments to be managed.
Gehazi’s resentment of Elisha, and of the Gentile Naaman, drives a close reading of a single chapter’s ending. The irony of verse 27 gets lingered over, setting Gehazi’s duplicity directly against Elisha’s own Godlikeness.
Naaman’s request and Elisha’s answer get worked through in careful positive-and-negative pairs, first in verses 15-16 and then in 17-19. What emerges is a portrait of gratitude still working out its own boundaries.
Naaman’s pride and nationalism run headlong into Israel’s own weakness and the plain power of the Word, the collision read through Luke 4:27 as much as 2 Kings. Seven washings later, healing comes only through the same humility that got him there.
A famine at Gilgal and a firstfruit offering set up the case that the feeding miracles of both testaments point to Pentecost. The Word of God is the church’s own end-time provision, foreshadowed in twenty loaves that somehow feed a hundred men.
Elisha’s circuit back to Gilgal recalls the double portion of the Spirit promised in chapter 2, with two competing readings of the strange famine story that follows worked through in turn. Whatever the details, the point stands the same: only the Spirit gives life.
Setting 1 Kings 17:17-24 beside 2 Kings 4:8-37, Gehazi stands for old-covenant bondage and Elisha for new-covenant liberty. The child raised in both stories points past itself to resurrection through Christ.