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 19, 1989.
About this sermon
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.
Sermon transcript
Tonight we’ll begin our scripture reading in 1 Corinthians 10 and then we’ll back up into 2 Kings and consider the first seven verses of 2 Kings 6. This is 1 Corinthians 10 verses 1 through 4. Hear the word of God. For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ. Now from 2 Kings chapter 6 verses 1 through 7.
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.
What strength, Lord, we derive from your word. If we are left without your word, We then die in our hunger and by our thirst. But with your word, Lord, we are trained with respect to our satisfaction. That by and with that word, we are educated in the ways of life and Lord built up in that knowledge that our life is found in you we pray our God not merely for ourselves but for your people everywhere in this community throughout the world where the word is received with faith, where it is laid up in the heart, where it is practiced in the life. And we are beseeching you, our God, that your blessing may attend your word wonderfully, so that we even would see of that harvest which you are gathering for yourself, a harvest that is gathered through servants who proclaim the word and do so faithfully. Lord we pray that your word as it is effectual for us may also be effectual for the many and that the voice of your people may be one in acknowledging your greatness and in acknowledging the power and the significance and sufficiency of the scriptures.
We pray this through Christ. Amen. I hope I have enough water tonight. Well, here we are with our second message on the floating accent. We considered last week the liberal approach to this passage. We reviewed their approach quite extensively. But tonight we want to turn our attention to the general conservative approach to a passage like this. The liberals got theirs last week. Tonight the conservatives are on the block. Often, we who are reformed or evangelical or at a disadvantage when it comes to the interpretation of a text of Scripture, specifically a text like this one before us.
I remember my discussion with Dr. Richard Gaffin as I was saying goodbye to Calvary OPC, Glenside, Pennsylvania, upon graduation and upon leaving that congregation. I was given as a gift by that church a large commentary on the Gospel of John. It was a weighty tome, many, many, many pages long. It was also the latest conservative work on that gospel, obviously one of the most extensive written by someone from within the conservative and evangelical circle. Dr. Gaffin’s remarks still ring in my ears.
He said to me apologetically, it’s not very good. Unfortunately, that has been the situation for a very, very long time. Conservative scholars, hard at work, producing an extraordinary number of books, even an extraordinary number of commentaries, but most of them are not very good. Now there are many reasons for this, and we cannot deal with them all tonight. However, let me offer to you some explanation. Some conservative writers, when writing commentaries on scripture, books of the Bible, conceive of their task very narrowly.
And it’s important that you understand just the sort of limitations they put upon themselves, or the tradition, and I would judge it a classical tradition, out of which they write. They understand their responsibility, and this is an admirable assessment of their responsibility. They understand their responsibility to be this.
Namely, to set before their readers a plain analysis of the grammatical and historical considerations of a specific text. That’s the narrow focus. A plain analysis of the grammatical and the historical considerations of a specific text. In other words, they focus upon the factuality of any given textual setting. The historical factuality of any given textual setting. It’s simple historical law.
Their approach, then, along these lines means that when they come to the person of Elisha, they are pushing the fact that, after all, there was a historical figure, a prophet by the name of Elisha, who did, after all, live. He lived during the ninth century B.C. He prophesied to the northern kingdom of Israel. He performed many signs. the signs for the purpose of establishing the fact that he was a man of God. One of those signs which he did then perform was that of the floating ax head of first, rather second Kings six.
At the same time, given this historical interest, They have been quick to emphasize the grammatical elements of the specific text in view, so that the passage might be read along the plain line of the meaning of the words in their syntactical relationships.
Therefore, a text presenting itself as narrative is to be read as a historical piece, but at the same time straightforward grammatical features of the text itself provide the commentator with a mountain of detailed work that then focuses him in his exegetical task. If you have tried to work through some commentaries, maybe you are familiar with the features of which I am speaking. The endless attention given to grammatical detail, the mountain of work that seems necessary grammatically in order to come to conclusions about what the text is saying. Now, of course, it wouldn’t do us any good for me to stand up here this evening and simply offer to you a criticism of the so-called grammatical historical method of exegesis.
Since, after all, that method arose out of the Reformation and it has been traced to such exegetes as Calvin himself. We do observe in this approach to interpretation some very remarkable and marvelous things. For instance, it is a marvelous check against mysticism. It is a marvelous check against liberal excess.
Away, says the grammatical historical exegete, away from those flights of fancy. into the arbitrary and subjective approaches to interpretation, away from unwarranted allegorizing, away from the denial of that plain force and obvious statement of certain texts. What a wonderfully simple and apparently foolproof method of exegesis. Just stick to the facts. Historically, grammatically, just stick to the facts.
But so pat has this approach been, so pat has this approach been, that the mood among Reformed scholars over the last so many years has been why, in heaven’s name, write another commentary? Hasn’t it all been said already? Why bother? The historical facts haven’t changed, we believe them, we assert them, there they are, plain for everyone to see. What new facts can we learn from analyzing the grammar one more time? Why bother? It’s there. It’s been done by the best. The historical facts of any text are such and such The grammar is thus and so, so why spend your time merely rehashing or reasserting what is already known, what has already been said, what is blatantly obvious to anyone with a nickel’s worth of brain? How many commentaries have been produced from reformed scholars in the last century.
Well you can think of Hendrickson’s commentaries, don’t you? William Hendrickson? But obviously William Hendrickson is not in the same class as some of the names that some of the personages, some of the scholars that work with me. I can name one substantive commentary on a book of scripture in this century. You know the one I’m referring to?
John Murray’s commentary on Romans. We have another, and we may be able to find some popular treatments, but you know, there’s Hendrickson’s great commentary on the Book of Revelation, Morgan Conquers, you know that, you’re familiar with it. There’s Stonehouse’s treatments of the Gospels, but they’re not, his treatments are not written in commentary form.
So there you are. Why write another commentary? The grammatical historical method leading us there in this position. So what are we left with generally in the conservative world as far as commentaries are concerned? Well, here is an example for you. Are you ready for this example of how in the conservative commentary second King six verses one through seven might be approached. The text of the commentary reads like this. This story seems to assume, I’m going to read in entirety what the man has to say about the passage.
This story seems to assume that we understand that the sons of the prophets lived in a common building. The place is often identified with Gilgal on the erroneous assumption that Gilgal is the one near Jericho. Possibly it was the school at Jericho. Verse 4 mentions the trees. such as willow, tamarisk, acacia, pine, used for light and not heavy timber. Verse 5, axe, literally iron, but obviously an axe. It was borrowed. Hebrew, it was asked or begged, suggesting that the sons of the prophets did not have funds to purchase such things.
Kyle says, The object of the miracle was similar to that of the stater in the fish’s mouth from Matthew 17, verse 27. That’s it. Now, we have given to us in this some interesting information. But with the possible exception of that last statement with regard to Kyle and his assessment of the miracle, Is there anything here that is especially helpful for us in understanding the redemptive historical significance of the story of the floating accent? I would judge that there is nothing whatsoever. So here is our predicament. No reformed commentaries. It’s all been said. What we have left for us are commentary along this line, at this level.
Did you find what I just read especially helping you? As best as you could follow. It is the general bankruptcy of this approach to the text, and I might add its hopelessly boring style that has led to an awakening of what we could call a doctrinal or a biblical theological approach to the text. Now, if you are concerned as to why your preacher does not preach along the lines of what you may have heard formerly in your church experience, But the question has been raised in your own mind as to why your pastor does not approach things along predictable lines in his preaching and in his exegesis. It is precisely along these lines that understanding of my approach and my method is to begin.
We are faced with an exegetical dead end. We are faced with the bankruptcy of current exegetical methods. And in place of substantive work with the text, what the Church is now being given is a series of psychologisms and moralisms. And the church for a hundred years now, having been satisfied with such as that, is having a very difficult time understanding what constitutes proper and appropriate exegesis and proper and appropriate preaching of texts. It is then the general bankruptcy of this approach that we have been looking at, and I add, along with it, its hopelessly boring style that has led to an awakening of what we call a doctrinal or a biblical theological approach to the text. And with that, the possibility once more of the Reformed community speaking substantively about a book of the Bible.
An effort has been made in the direction of this doctrinal and biblical theological approach to the text earlier in this century by the Dutchman S. G. de Graaf and his classic four-volume work on the biblical narrative entitled Promise and Deliverance.
In that four-volume work, The graph is determined to do at least three things. First of all, he is determined to alert his readership to the wider textual considerations of any particular passage, and thus to take his readers beyond the narrow, grammatical, historical features of that particular text.
For example, when he treats 2 Kings 6, 1 through 7, he endeavors to place it in the wider context of 2 Kings 5. As that passage builds then to a consideration of the opening verses of that sixth chapter, the entirety then looked upon as a unit. By approaching things in this way, he helps us to see the sweep of the entire section, and enables us then to get a handle on how, in fact, this entire section is integrated. His approach, then, is as structural as it is historical, looking at the broad sweep of the text. His approach is as much literary as it is grammatical, and he will not be satisfied with anything less than that. That is why In the preaching from this pulpit, there is such an attention given to structural matters, to literary features, as well as to the historical and to the grammatical.
But this first point then leads us to the second feature of de Grasse’s approach. Recognition of a unitary theme for a portion of Scripture enables him to make doctrinal assertions, biblical theological assertions, about that portion of Scripture. For example, this particular portion he has given the title, Accepted as a Gift, that 2 Kings 5, through 2 Kings 6 verse 7, accepted as a gift. And then he presents the main thought of this particular portion of scripture as this. What the Lord gives us can only be accepted as a gift.
He then develops the story in chapter 5, the story about the leper Naaman, in keeping with this theme. Thus, the impropriety of Naaman’s attempt to offer Elisha money when he has been cured of his disease, and the impropriety of Gehazi trying to take the money from Naaman after Naaman was healed. The story of the lost axe head also serves the overarching theme. After all, the axe had been graciously lent to one of the sons of the prophets.
The retrieval of the lost axe head is an even more gracious activity by God, one no less than God, whereby this son of the prophets is taught then to possess all things with a different spirit a spirit that has been informed by the gracious activity of God.
The impossibility of retrieval of that accent accents the lostness of all things to us. We are witnessing, then, in this miracle of God’s grace, a literal sanctifying of all aspects of our lives. And the pattern of grace exhibited here is precisely what we observe throughout the sweep and entirety of God’s self-revelation. Namely, that grace summarily exhibited for us in Jesus Christ, his Son. And because this is so, the doctrinal approach to the text that the graph suggests to us is always an approach that insists upon the centrality of the person of Christ for any proper interpretation of any text anywhere in Scripture. And that is what makes psychologizing and moralizing so reprehensible.
So in the end, it cannot proclaim to you grace, and it cannot proclaim to you Christ. The Apostle Paul reads the story of the children of Israel in the wilderness. He reads the story about the rock from which came the water, and he sees there Christ. The rock was Christ. And any exegesis of that passage from the Old Testament, any appropriation of that text, that leads out Christ, has not seen that text appropriately.
Now, you can respond. And you can say that it’s only legitimate for us to call rocks Christ, when in fact we are told to do so by some other text in Scripture. But you see, Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10, is giving you the pattern of proper exegesis, which is now to be applied uniformly with regard to all Scripture, so that you are not in the light when in fact you exclude Christ from your consideration.
In the end, if I am going to preach to you properly, the intent of the closing accent, I’m going to have to tell you about Jesus Christ. I’m going to have to teach something about Him. So is it enough for me simply to recount for you the historical details? Is it enough for me simply to review for you the grammar of the particular passage? Get serious! Was he ever enough?
No. The inability of the Church to do this, the unwillingness of the Church to do this in her present time, leads us even at swan cross, feeling upon us not only faced with exegetical bankruptcy, we are faced with spiritual malnutrition. Our God intended us to be fed with Christ. We are meant to feast upon Him. And the Pope that is unwilling to declare that to you and provide that for you is not worthy of the name of the Pope. This brings us to the third feature of de Graaf’s approach.
You see, he’s not going to allow things to operate on a bare historical and grammatical level. He’s not going to allow things to operate in a form that is devoid of a proper theological or doctrinal assessment of a particular passage. And in conclusion, he refuses to allow any text to operate in a purely objective way. Don’t misunderstand me. Don’t misunderstand me. I’ll repeat the statement and then I’ll endeavor to explain it. He refuses to allow any text to operate on a purely objective level. Now, this isn’t to deny its historicity, this is not to deny its objectivity.
But you see what is happening amongst Reformed and Conservative people. Their tendency, increasingly, is to assume the distance between themselves and the text. I lived here 1920, 1940, 1900. I lived here. Jesus lived there, then. There is an unbridgeable historical pattern between me and him. The only way we can overcome that chasm is to invoke the tried-and-true methodology of what we call application. So therefore we demand of scripture that it accommodate itself to us in our circumstance, in order to be meaningful and relevant.
You think only liberals are saying this? Wake up. This is what conservatives are saying. And that’s why conservatives are functional liberals. That’s why conservatives are modernists, because they believe in the primacy of the modern era. That’s where we start. It’s not the approach you search for at all, and it’s specifically against this sort of thing that the graph conveys. You are not to look at any test as a purely objective vein. No text can be looked upon as a purely objective event.
Let me tell you something. How did the Jewish father look at the Passover? I’m not talking about the Jewish father that actually experienced it. I’m talking about the Jewish father that lived 600 years after the event. You know what he said to his family on the night in which the Passover was celebrated?
He said, this is what the Lord did for me when he brought me out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and that you won’t even bear it then. And then the dad says, oh yes I was. If you grasp the whole, if you look at how opportune and appropriate, and a proper and appropriate approach to Scripture, you know exactly what that father is saying. Likewise, you know exactly what Paul is saying when he says, I am crucified with Christ. I am crucified with Christ. When Christ was raised, I was raised.
Listen, you are in a tent. No reading of it on a purely objective level is going to be appropriate. You have to learn how to see yourself in the text. You are not a spectator to it, you are a participant in it. This is your life, this is your history, this is your story. That’s why you read the Bible. You may be strangers and sojourners in the world, but let me tell you, you’re not strangers within the contents of God’s self-revelation through the powers of the Spirit.
You are at home in the Word. So the graph tells us that he will have none of us moralizing or psychologizing or sociologizing of the text. Any kind of operation that places him at a distance from it, rather according to him, we are participants in the drama of redemption. So what are we going to do with the man who lost his accent? You are that man. You are that man.
It won’t be until you see Christ there, and it won’t be until you see yourself there, that you understand Christ. And that’s why proper interpretation of the Gospels is so very hard work. You have to fight against it. until it gives up its creations to you, and you see your Savior once portrayed, and herself so marvelous and gracious indeed. Then you understand. Then you understand. So, we’ve made our start. Last week, the liberals. This week, the conservatives. Next week, the answer. Amen.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.