Today we
have a collection of stories about Elisha, and I’ll not kid you today. Some of these stories feel a bit weird. The stories are enigmatic and unusual. So if you read this passage today and felt as
though you missed something or if you felt like the meaning of the stories is
just out of your reach, that’s okay.
These stories are easy to hear, hard to understand, and even more
difficult to feel as though they have been mastered. But let’s try to at least get some
understanding from them. I can’t promise
to have mastered them today, but I think we can learn something from them.
The Widow and the Oil
Let’s
begin with the story of the widow with a debt.
Clearly this is a supernatural story as the jar of oil never runs out
until the woman has plenty of oil to sell and bring her family out of
debt. From this story we can gain
several interesting thoughts.
First,
this story flies in the face of physics.
Physics has a law that states the conservation of matter and the
conservation of energy. It is impossible
for mankind to create new matter. We can
take matter and alter its chemical form, change its nuclear construction, and
thus change the appearance of the matter.
We can even take matter, change its form, and release (or consume)
energy in the process. But in the end
when we add up the total matter and the total energy the beginning value and ending
value must be in balance.
However,
this story indicates that the woman had some small amount of oil and then miraculously
she had more oil. It isn’t that she had
some hidden stash of oil – if she did she would have just sold it in the first
place and not had the problem with the debt.
So first things first – this is a story that flies in the face of
science. It is a story that can only be
believed if one believes that God is capable of working outside the natural
laws of physics that God put in place when He created the universe. From my perspective this just makes sense, but
I am admittedly a bit biased.
Second, we
can learn that God is capable of using what we have to provide for our
needs. God doesn’t need for us to win
the lottery. He doesn’t need for us to
meet a rich member of the family. God
can meet our needs with what we have and what He has given to us. Life proves this – especially in today’s
economy. How many people in this world
are struggling to make ends meet? Yet,
they continue to do it. How many people
throughout history spent most of their life wondering how they would put food
on the table and a roof over their head?
Yet they have managed. God can
meet our needs and God can get us through life.
It may not be easy and it may not be luxurious. But God can do it if we are willing to work
with Him.
The Shunammite
We will
continue with the story of the Shunammite woman. There are three very important aspects to
this story. First, the woman and her
husband were wealthy. Second, Elisha has
no trouble interacting with them in spite of their obvious wealth. Third, the Shunammite woman knows how to be
gracious amidst her status in life.
This story
goes to prove that God does not consider wealth a sin. When looking at sinful behavior, God
considers how we use our wealth and how we treat others with respect to our
wealth. But having wealth is no sin in
and of itself. The woman is gracious to
Elisha in spite of her wealth. Not only
is she gracious, but she is doubly blessed through her graciousness.
She is
first blessed by having a son in spite of the advanced age of her husband. But not only is a son born to her, later in
life she gets to experience the power of God over death. Because of her ability to be generous in the
midst of the vast temptation into sin that her wealth offered her, she was able
to see a physical manifestation of the absolute physics-defying power of
God. If God can defy physics by making
oil out of nothing, is it any harder to believe that God can restore life to a
life that He created in the first place?
Spiritual Food
The last
story we have is the story of the “death in the pot” and the “miraculous
stretching of food.” In both cases we
find Elisha able to provide for the needs of the people through the power of
God. Elisha demonstrates that God is
able to take “death in a pot” and through His Word turn it into something that
is life-giving. This is absolutely a
foreshadowing of God’s ability to taking a bunch of sinful human beings and
through His Spirit turn us into life-bringing disciples of His Son!
Elisha demonstrates
again that there is always enough to go around in God. Regardless of our need and regardless of how
many people come to believe in Him, there is always enough God to go around. In many ways, this story foreshadows the
feedings of the 5,000 and 4,000 as told to us by the Gospel writers.
Foreshadowing Christ
As I
conclude this passage, I am struck by the comparisons with Elisha to Jesus in
this chapter. Let’s look at this a
little more deeply and expand it a bit:
- Elisha was preceded by Elijah; Jesus was preceded by John the Baptizer.
- Elisha raised a young child of a community leader from death to life; Jesus raised several people from death to life. Among them was a young girl to a community leader named Jairus.
- Elisha stretched food to feed more than it should; Jesus has the feeding of the 5,000 and the feeding of the 4,000.
- Elisha is not afraid to mingle and minister with women and men; Jesus also thinks it valuable to make disciples of both women and men.
Is there
any wonder that when the Jews looked for the Messiah to come, they looked for
Elijah to precede Him?
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