This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Life of Elisha” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, March 26, 1989.
About this sermon
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.
Sermon transcript
the book of Exodus and then we will move to 2 Kings. We are in Exodus 15 verses 22 through 26. Exodus 15 verses 22 through 26. Hear the word of God. Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore it was named Marah. So the people grumbled at Moses, saying, What shall we drink? Then he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, and he threw it into the waters, and the waters became sweet.
There he made for them a statute and regulation, and there he tested them, and he said, If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians, for I, the Lord, am your healer.”
Then if you turn over to 2 Kings chapter 6, Now the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, Behold now, the place before you where we are living is too limited for us, please let us go to the Jordan And each of us take from there a beam, and let us make a place there for ourselves where we may live.”
So he said, go. Then one said, please be willing to go with your servants. And he answered, I shall go. So he went with them, and when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees. And as one was selling a beam, the axe head fell into the water. And he cried out and said, Alas, my master, for it was borrowed. Then the man of God said, Where did it fall? And when he showed him the place, he cut off a stick and threw it in there and made the iron float. And he said, Take it up for yourself. So he put out his hand and took it. Pray together.
Our Father, we thank you that you have given to your church those who have responsibility to oversee the proclamation of the word. And not only so, to oversee the boundaries of the life of your people. So Lord, you give to your church not only those servants of your word who minister in your name, they having been given that calling of minister of the gospel, but also those to whom is committed rule in your church that order might prevail and decency may in fact be the order of the day. We thank you, our God, for your provision. We ask you that the eldership may be increasingly strengthened among your people. We pray, our God, that the eldership may be strengthened here. But in every respect, our God, may there be that attention to the word so that those who are given the responsibility of rule may rule aright. that they might oversee then the lives of your people, but also the proclamation of the word. And be insistent that that proclamation be correct, honest, forthright, always presenting the work and the claims of Jesus Christ. This we pray through Christ. Amen.
Well, here you are, the last in this present series on the floating axehead. Tonight entitled, The Floating Axehead and the Reformed Faith. The Floating Axehead and the Reformed Faith. I am taken back a week in time to a conversation that I had with Dan Knox. he had just had an encounter with an evangelical presentation, and he was trying to present the Reformed faith to a group of people against the background of that evangelical presentation.
And as he went to bed that night, he was thinking about the presentation of the Reformed faith to these people, and he said he dreamt about the floating accents. and decided that trying to convince people of the Reformed faith is like trying to float accents, and thus the application of the text, of course.
Well, we have considered the liberal approach to this text, and we have considered the conservative approach to this text. We could caricature each in these words. The liberal approach to the text with the words, what do I care about the facts? What does it matter whether access flowed or not? particular exposition of one liberal scholar who suggested that the meaning of this text was that Elisha is a compassionate man, and you ought to be compassionate too. He went on to deal with the conservative approach, and I guess the conservative approach could be caricatured with these words. give me the facts, just the facts. The liberal says forget the facts, the conservative says give me the facts, just the facts.
And along these lines then there is a particular concentration on the historical detail and the grammatical details of the text in view. But we have suggested, following S. G. DeGraff, the author of the four volumes, Promise and Deliverance, that the Reformed faith moves us in a direction that is uncomfortable with both of these approaches. And we noted last week three features that play a prominent role in the Reformed perspective.
First of all, the graph wishes us to keep in mind, in view, the wider context of any specific passage. The wider context of any specific passage. That means that we are going to have to take into consideration the broader historical structure and the broader literary aspects of any particular text to which we come. Therefore, a text is more than a collection of isolated atoms. There is the atomistic approach to Bible interpretation. It sees the text as that there are no holes in the pearls. The pearls can’t be strung. Nothing hangs together. All you do is look at a particular text, and you take it apart in terms of the particular aspects of the grammar and the historical detail of that passage.
And that is to suffice. That is to suffice. A text is therefore, according to the graph, part of an integrated whole. We are to grasp hold of the general flow that is operative within a particular biblical writing. This leads us to the second feature of a reformed approach to interpretation, and this second feature is intricately related to the first. From the Reformed approach, there is the necessity for making doctrinal assertions, doctrinal decisions, doctrinal declarations. Of course, this should make sense to us who are of the Reformed faith.
For are we not sensitive to the large, even the largest doctrinal parameters of any given particular text of Scripture? Are we not alert to the whole counsel of God? Do we not look at a particular text in light of the whole counsel of God? Haven’t we prided ourselves even?
Because our approach to the text has been in the interest of proclaiming the whole counsel of God. We are concerned then with seeing a particular text in the light of the outworking of God’s eternal decree. We are concerned with seeing a particular text within the flow of and the progression of the history of salvation, the story of salvation. God’s counsel, his decrees, this history of salvation. Are they not essentially, at their very heart, Christ-centered? Christ-centered. Therefore, Reformed interpretation is supremely and essentially Christological. Christological. insisting upon the centrality of Christ. Did not Jesus claim as much?
You remember the conclusion of John chapter 5? He’s arguing there with the Pharisees and describes. They think that eternal life is found in the Scriptures. They read the Scriptures in order to discover where eternal life is to be found. But Jesus tells them, if you read Moses, you have read of me, for Moses wrote about me.” John 5, verse 46. But it’s not just Moses, it’s David, it’s Isaiah, it’s Micah, it’s Solomon. Whomever you will, they write about Christ.
So that’s the second feature. The third feature suggested to us from a consideration of the graph is this. We refuse to allow any text to operate on a purely objective level. Now, hang with me here. We refuse to allow any text to operate on a purely objective level. Now, that is not to dismiss that objective level. That is to affirm it. and to insist upon the historical foundation of any particular text that we might consider. But we cannot be satisfied with that mere objective reading of the text.
We of the Reformed faith believe in what we call the covenant, that bond established by God for fellowship of himself with his own, with his people. The covenant charter is the Bible, and we who are of the covenant do not view ourselves as spectators of that covenant, nor of that charter document. Rather, we are participants in the covenant, and we are participants within the charter document, the Bible. Therefore, the Reformed faith is not content simply to read things on a purely objective level. It must also consider things from the perspective of the subjective, our own participation in what is being described.
You are in the text. You are in the Bible. The Bible is about you. Okay. Those are just some of the principles that should be guiding us as we form the people and our approach to the scriptures. Now with these things in mind, we turn to 2 Kings 6, 1-7. Oh boy. Are you ready for a sleigh ride? Okay. Second Kings 6, 1 through 7, and the floating asset.
Now let’s look at the text, first of all, in terms of particular aspects that we find in it. It seems to me that we can identify at least two movements within the text if we look at it. The first is that which pertains to the movement of the Sons of the Prophets, presumably from Gilgal, and very likely the city limits proper to the outskirts, eastward towards the Jordan and its banks. There is that aspect of the text. The movement of the Sons of the Prophets presumably from Gilgal proper to the outskirts down to the banks of the Jordan eastward from the city. There is also this aspect to the text as well.
The incident with which the story concludes, the one that has focused our attention here for the last three weeks, the incident of the borrowed axe and the lost axe head, and of course its recovery. Let’s start then with the move of the Sons of the Prophets, and as we analyze that we might have then opportunity to draw into view the significance of that axe head, that floated The move of the Sons of the Prophets demonstrates the growing alienation of this group within Israel, the kingdom itself.
The Sons of the Prophets are a group unto themselves. They have been increasingly alienated and so identified to the point now that they are indicative of a faithful remnant. A faithful remnant within the land. As such, These Sons of the Prophets lay claim to the Prophets. Now it has been suggested that we are to understand the Sons of the Prophets as Prophets themselves. I’m not going to debate that point tonight. It seems, however, that what is particularly clear, these Sons of the Prophets are laying claim to the Prophets and to the Prophet’s message. As sons, we can say that these sons of the prophets are the heirs of the prophets.
Is not a son properly the heir? What does it mean to call Jesus the son of man? He is heir of the dominion of man. What does it mean to call him son of God? He is heir of the dominion of God. What does it mean to call these particular people the sons of the prophets?
As sons of the prophets, they are laying claim to the prophets, to the prophets’ message, and as such, they are the heirs of the prophets. They are the inheritors that are in view with respect to the prophets and the prophets’ message. These sons of the prophets, then, are those to whom the prophets direct their message about the imperatives. As sons They are the ones to whom the prophets leave the inheritance. But note the posture of the prophets, so as to understand the specific inheritance in view.
What is the position of the prophets now in Israel, in the kingdom of Israel? these prophets stand over against the nation. In the prophets themselves, then, we perceive a separation that has been affected within Israel. All Israel is not Israel, and the division that is occurring is speaking to us of a division between true Israel and false or apostate Israel. The sons of the prophets stand with the prophets. As the prophets stand over against Israel as a whole, so now the sons of the prophets stand over against Israel as a whole.
And as the sons of the prophets then stand over against Israel as a whole, and with the prophets, they lay claim to the prophets’ reward. But what is the prophets’ reward? What is the prophets’ estate to which these sons lay claim? this estate for the profit.
This profit’s reward becomes clear to us as we look at the wider context in which this passage appears. Turn back to 2 Kings 4 verses 42 through 44 for some insight. Remember the story? The man from Baal, Shelah-shah, brings to them the firstfruits of the harvest, the twenty loaves of barley, fresh ears of grain.
In his sack he gives them to the Prophet and those who are with him. And here the Prophet and the sons of the Prophet are viewed as virtually dependent upon the provision of others. They are viewed as seemingly destitute, dependent on others for provisions that are brought to them. They even function in this passage like priests. And the man that comes to them from Baal, Shalashah, is bringing to them those provisions as if they were the priests, as if he were bringing those provisions to the temple of God. that the Prophet and the sons of the Prophet in this passage are viewed as dependent, and ultimately dependent upon the provision of God, because you know that the gift that is given is multiplied.
The gift then from this man that comes to them from Baal Shiloshah is the occasion for instruction with regard to a greater provision, yes. a provision that is transcendent, an eternal provision, a provision that comes to the Prophet and to the sons of the Prophet from heaven, by which the Prophet and the sons of the Prophet are to be satisfied. The supernatural provision, then, in that passage.
But if this is not clear to us as yet, it will become clear to us from the story of Elisha and Nin, 2 Kings 5. We move on to the next tale that is told about the Prophet. And this story in 2 Kings 5 ends with the recounting of those events surrounding Gehazi, a son of the Prophet, a servant to Elisha, After Gehazi tries to extort earthly reward from Naaman, you remember how it ends, he goes and tries to take the money, he does take the money, and because of that he is cursed. And when he is cursed, he is told by the prophet Elisha, verse 26, this is no time to be receiving money or clothes or olive yards or vineyards or sheep or oxen or male or female servants. You see what’s being said by the prophet to one of the sons of the prophets. The prophet himself is a sojourner. He is a pilgrim. He recognizes a time in which he is set. His condition, though in the promised land, is like unto Abraham’s.
This is no time for the accumulation of property, for the accumulation of wealth. even though in the land of promise this prophet is looking beyond it to something greater, and that in keeping with the character of those who are the children of faith as it is expressed in Hebrews 11.
The movement of the sons of the prophets then in 2 Kings 6 underscores this What’s happening when these sons of the prophets leave the territories that are theirs within Gilgal? They’re giving up the family plot. They’re surrendering and inheritance within Israel, what we would consider an unsinkable thing, an inheritance given to them, bequeathed to them. They are surrendering because they recognize the times and the circumstances in which they live. They have become, they have made themselves to be, pilgrims in lieu of a greater inheritance. What would it mean for a Jew to give up the family plot? They make their plea to Elisha, come with us, they say.
And in this they are giving expression to what they perceive to be that unbreakable bond that exists between them as sons and this prophet to whom they have been joined. All of this is pointing forward to the even greater relationship that should be sustained between Christ, the last and the great prophet, and those who are his, those who are called by his name, those who are his sons. Heirs of the inheritance that is His. All of this speaks of the Church, her character, and her destiny. The Pilgrim Savior, bounded to a Pilgrim people, and the greater, more glorious inheritance than anything that can be bequeathed in this world is kept in view.
But there is a danger. There is, after all, as we are told from 2 Kings 6, the swelling of the numbers of the sons There is the land as yet. It may not be the family plot, but it is a piece of ground down by the Jordan. There is the timber, the trees to be felled, the homes that are being built from the timber that is cut. There are the things that are sacrificed There are the familial plots that are surrendered, but there are other things and there are other plots to be gained, seemingly.
And even though these sons of the prophets are on the move and turning their back on some things, oh, how easily their hearts can be set on those things that they presently gain. How easily. the church too can become the acquisitor the possessor the church can become that which grasps and holds on to this plot of ground here for all of its worth So it is the borrowed acts and the lost and the recovered acts that again preach in order to set things in order. Now you’re sitting there and you’re saying to yourself, what? The borrowed acts The lost and recovered accent is saying all that? Come on, that’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?
Well, in order to understand this, we’re going to have to place this particular story in the company of three other stories that occur in Scripture. One of them we’ve read tonight. The first is about Marah and the bitter waters at Marah in Exodus 15. There you have it. You know that story well. Exodus 15. But if you back up a few chapters in 2 Kings, you find two other stories that are very much like the story you find here. There is the one that occurs at the end of 2 Kings 2. It’s the story about Jericho. and the waters of barrenness at Jericho. Remember that story? And how, with a cup of salt, Elisha healed the barren waters at Jericho?
And then there is also the story At the end of 2 Kings 4, verses 38-41, it’s the story about Gilgal and the poisonous pot of stew. Well, we all remember the exclamation of the man, there’s death in the pot. Alright, you’ve got that story too. In each of these stories, a miracle occurs. in which something is added to the water or to the stew, and by way of this miracle, then the problem that is in view is resolved. The bitterness is removed, the barrenness is removed, the death is removed. You see the pattern. But there’s something else to all of these stories that you must keep in mind. You see, in each one of the stories, there is a correspondence between what is true of the water, or the stew, and the people that are eating it. You see, at Mara, it wasn’t just the water that was bitter, it was the people who were bitter. At Jericho, it wasn’t simply the water that was barren, not producing any fruitfulness within the territory of Jericho, the people were barren. There were no birds. There were no birds.
And when we get to 2 Kings 4, it’s not just that there’s death in the heart. You see, the point of that story is to tell these sons of the prophets, who are liable to be proud in themselves, hey, there’s death in you. Despite your relationship to the prophets, despite what you might think of yourself, there’s death in you. All right, you’re with me so far. I’m the sleigh rider.
But you ask, what possible correspondence is there between the sons of the prophets in 2 Kings 6? and the waters that are spoken of here. What possible correspondence is there between the water and the man, the sons, the people? It’s true in every other instance, but how does it match up here? Well, you see, the waters has stolen the asset. The waters have requisitioned the asset. The waters have taken possession of the asset. And they aren’t going to give it back. They aren’t going to give it back.
You see what’s happening? Atmara, bitter water, bitter people. At Jericho, barren water, barren people. At Gilgal, deadly stew and a dead people. And now at the Jordan. Grasping, devouring, possessing water. And grasping, devouring, possessing The waters must be healed. The people themselves must be healed. And what healing can there be? Where might it be found?
There was a tree shown to Moses at Mar. We know that that tree was the cross. The cross when applied to the waters at Marah, healed the waters, reflective of a healing that is effected by the cross for those who belong to God. And now, once more, there is a tree, and that tree is applied by Elisha to these waters And this tree, no less than that tree at Morrow, is the cross, and the objective is the cure of a people who, like that water, will in fact take and not surrender.
Take and not give back. Covet and continually seek to acquire. and never give up what is accumulated of the things of this world. The borrowed acts speaks itself of the sojourning character of the people of God, they don’t even own an axe. The recovery of the axehead is an eloquent sermon about the nature of possessions in this world. Not to be stored up, not to be even stolen through an acquisitive covetousness. You see, the ax head is recovered in order to be returned, given back.
It is of the earth. It belongs here. The land, the new home, wonderful as it would be, as far away as it would be from the strain and stress of things that the sons of the prophets had experienced in Gilgal, even the swelling of the numbers of the sons of prophets, all of that must be transcended. All of that must be penetrated by an eye that is trained to see the eternal possession an eye that is cured, a heart that itself is repossessed by the cross of Christ, not wedded to or bounded by the things of this creation. So. The floating accent. Recovered to be returned. One’s heart not set upon ends of this earth. Not possessive or covetous. But living As pilgrim people, we, sons of God, for an inheritance that is above.
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