40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 2:1-22 (Episode 322)

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Elisha refuses to leave the side of Elijah. People tell Elisha that his mentor is going away, and Elisha says he knows this. Elijah is taken by God in a whirlwind and a chariot of fire. And Elisha ends up with the cloak of the prophet of fire. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS National Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate  

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast to check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there make sure you go to the events page and check out the here we still stand national conference that's in october october 13th through 15th sunny san diego california chad will be there i'll be there a whole bunch of other people will be there tickets are on sale right now you don't want to miss it three days all in the same place hanging out eating listening to talks eating lots of food it's going to be a good time so don't uh don't miss that there's a

link in the show notes, or just go to 1517.org and go to the events page, find that event. You can get all the information and register. Chad, we are in 2 Kings chapter 2. We're going to get to, you know, kind of the most famous thing about the prophet Elijah. I mean, this is, as we've said, other than John the Baptist, who's, we're a ways off from that. So up to this point, we're dealing with the guy who is sort of the representative of the prophets this is the guy who on the mount of transfiguration appears with jesus he is um sort of and you could correct me if i'm wrong but because moses is viewed as giver of the law but it seems that post elijah when people think of the prophet they think of elijah oh yeah yeah for sure uh he kind of

becomes the paradigmatic figure then i mean he is in many ways a um a replica of moses you know moses moses kind of sets the standard for a lot of people though he's the the prototypical prophet he's also the prototypical king he's never called a king of course you know but many of the kings and other leaders are somehow somewhat patterned after him and you could almost you could make the case too that he's sort of the prototypical priest in the sense that You know, he's the one who receives the Torah. He's the one who goes to the top of the mountain, the peak of the mountain being like the Holy of Holies. He's the one who goes into the tabernacle.

So Moses kind of sets a standard or provides a paradigm for prophet, priest, and king. But then Elijah comes along, who's not a kingly figure and who's not a priestly figure, but he's certainly the prophetic figure. so he kind of becomes then that that paradigmatic prophet which is of course why when you get to john the baptist he comes in the spirit and power of elijah i think we talked about that either last episode or the or the episode before so yeah this is it's kind of a big deal his life has been a big deal and uh well it seems that departure will be too yeah it seems like one of the reasons that in the in the mind of going forward in the mind of the people of israel that he's like the prophet part of the reason that is the case is what we're going to discuss

today because what happens today set does set him apart from basically everybody yeah the uh the only parallel rule that we have well i guess you could say there's one and a half parallels to this maybe uh the one part would be uh would be enoch because when enoch is back in genesis 5 when enoch is taken. That verb in Hebrew is lakach. And that same verb will be used here in reference to Elijah's departure. So Enoch didn't die. Elijah didn't die. They were both taken by God. And then the half of the one and a half parallels would be Moses. Now Moses did die, but he had unusual, I guess, burial, we could say, in that God buried him. God took the shovel, god buried him or put him in a tomb where he put him anyway nobody knows uh so he moses had an

unusual departure from from this life as well but yeah i mean besides those that one and a half example that's it and went to you to jesus of course when he ascends after his after his crucifixion and resurrection uh but yeah very uh very unusual departure and then uh and unusual unusual also in the sense of his uh his successor yeah you know there's not really there is the moses joshua pattern um that we'll talk about a little bit in just in just a second but you don't really have any kind of elijah to elisha uh master disciple pattern until you get to the new testament when you have jesus and his and his disciples so there's just there's so many things It sets him apart as an individual, but also him and he and Elijah apart also as a pair.

So let's jump in. This is 2 Kings chapter 2. We're told right at the beginning what's going to happen. It's going to be a few verses before we actually get to that event. but right away we're told now when the lord was about to take elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind elijah and elijah were on their way to to gilgal so uh yeah he's gonna be literally in hebrew it is uh caused to ascend so god will cause him to allah to to go up that's about to happen he's going to go to heaven and we're told also the means by which this is going to happen now when

we get to the actual event, it's a slightly different description of what goes down. But here it's referred to as a whirlwind. I did a quick search this morning on Logos to see where else whirlwind occurs in connection with God's appearance or God's activity in some way. And there's several places. The one that's probably most obvious to us is Job. God answers Job from the whirlwind so there's of course when you have a when you have a god appearance at the often in the old testament there's always or not always but almost always some sort of you know natural phenomenon that's happening you got you got a storm you got fire you got lightning you got clouds you got wind you have all that kind of you know this pyrotechnics going on and sometimes what

happens is a whirlwind. So God spoke to Job out of a whirlwind. Isaiah 29 mentions that God's visitation will be accompanied by thunder, earthquake, tempest, flame, and whirlwind. Jeremiah talks about the whirlwind of the Lord coming. And another significant parallel to this is in the first chapter of Ezekiel, when he's going to see the glory of the Lord appear, he sees a stormy wind out of the north, and the glory is coming to him. And that stormy wind is the same word here in Hebrew as whirlwind. So not unusual, in other words, for a divine manifestation on earth, a theophany to be accompanied by a whirlwind. So that's how he's going to get up. So this is about to happen. And Elijah and Elisha are on their way from

Gilgal. So we're going to have three different places, place names mentioned in these opening verses, Gilgal, Bethel, and Jericho. Jordan will come in there too, but like as far as cities go, Gilgal, Bethel, and Jericho. I think probably part of what's happening here is all three of these are connected to the early stages of Joshua's conquest. There's sort of a reversal happening here. So the northern kingdom has been canonized. They've devolved into idolatrous rebellion, and Elijah and Elisha are, as it were, going to reenact the entrance into the promised land under Joshua. But to do that, they have to go backwards, as it were. So they're going back to these places connected with the early chapters of Joshua. And one of those is Gilgal. Gilgal was

the main camp from which Israel was launching those initial attacks against Jericho and the other places. Verse two says, Elijah said to Elisha, please stay here for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel. And Elisha responds, as the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you. That's a little bit odd. You can check the commentaries on this, various speculations as to why Elijah would say that to Elisha. So why is he telling him, hey, just stay here. Don't go with me i'm i'm going i'm going somewhere else uh you know maybe he's maybe he's testing him that's kind of the explanation that makes most sense to me he's gonna like see how committed elijah is to sticking with him i don't know if you have another another idea as to what

maybe his motivation is in saying this uh not not really it seems that uh i mean this is prefaced with like okay this thing is about to happen yeah i don't you don't know if elijah has told elijah that this thing is going to happen is this just in the text because this is so famous in the mind of people who are typically reading this that they know that this is going to happen at some point it seems that elijah is telling us like elijah like hey i'm he knows that he's going away i would say it does seem that and i think for elijah i don't know if it's as much of a test it could be just a straight up test but it could just be that like hey i'm going to go do business with the lord and uh you stay here and elisha's like uh no i'm not i'm not

gonna i'm not gonna leave you like period no matter what and uh you know so god's gonna be like well you cannot leave him but i am gonna take him right so yeah yeah you can you can stick as close as you want but it's not gonna prevent me from taking him so yeah yeah but i don't i don't know if there's like okay my final act is going to be like to figure out your loyalty to me or anything i think it's probably more this uh elijah knows that god is going to do something involving him and it's going to be involving just elijah and uh but you'll see that it's a good thing that elijah comes because uh you know he's got he's got some mantle to pick up yeah the passing on of the mantle yeah so that's the way that's the way this this whole conversation starts out elijah

says nope not going anywhere so they go down to uh go to bethel so uh verse three says that when they get to bethel that this group that are called the the sons of the prophets that they came out to elisha and said to him do you know that today the lord will take away your master from over you and he said basically yeah i know shut up yes i know keep quiet that's the uh that's the more polite translation there but yeah he's basically telling yes i know i just don't don't talk about it i know i know what's happening here just i i am not in need of your your information i know more than you do yeah it seems it seems like maybe they know something's going on i don't know if they think that he's going to go die or or what like it doesn't seem

that elisha knows the details of this right no it doesn't uh and i'm you wonder even how much elijah knew you know like he he knew obviously that something's about to happen but he knew how it was going to happen yeah it was going to be a partial surprise partial surprise to him so So evidently, you know, the general word is out that Elijah's days or hours are numbered. So Elijah knows this. Elisha knows this. Whoever this group is, the sons of the prophets, they know this as well. But it remains to be seen exactly how this is going to go down.

Who are the sons of the prophets? Who knows? We're not really told. There's all kinds of, you know, there's some ideas out there. Robert Alter in his translation slash commentary thinks that they, he calls them acolyte prophets, meaning

they're kind of the modern equivalent of seminarians. They're like in training, which, you know, very much a possibility. Other people explain what these like prophetic guilds, like groups of prophets that live together. We've already encountered groups of prophets before. Those were hidden

in the caves by the servant of the king. So evidently, some of these prophets did kind of live together in these groups. But they're the ones who come out and say that. Now, I need to point out something in the Hebrew here that you can't see in translation, and I'll hint at why I think it's important.

We may or may not get to this in this episode, but it involves Elisha and the bears and the young boys who mock him. But twice, so this is verse 3, we're going to encounter this same expression in verse 5. So, reading from the ESV, it says, do you know that today the Lord will take away your master from over you? Now, in Hebrew, you would translate that literally as from over your head, not just from over you, but from over your head. Now, the same thing is going to be said verbatim in verse 5, which leads me to wonder,

to suspect that part of what's going to happen here at the at the end of this chapter when the boys come out or the young men or however you want to translate that in hebrew and mock him is there's a possibility that they're not mocking him because of a literal baldness but because he's lost the head covering he's lost the covering over his head that being his master that being elijah again i'm not committed to that 100 but at least it's a possibility contextually because of what happens here of when he loses when he loses elijah who is known as uh he's called in uh the previous chapter a lord of hair a man of hair a hairy a hairy man so we'll talk more about that episode when we get to the end of the chapter so verse four elijah said to him this is kind of the

same thing again. Elisha, please stay here for the Lord has sent me to Jericho. So we told him that before, and we'll see what Elisha says this time. Basically the same thing. As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you. So they came to Jericho. So we go from Gilgal to Bethel, and now we're at Jericho. Jericho, of course, being the first city that was conquered after Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River. So they come to Jericho, and once more we encounter this group called the Sons of the Prophets there at Jericho. They come up to Elisha, same thing.

Do you know that today the Lord will take away your master from over you, literally from over your head? And he answered, yeah, I know, shut up. Yes, I know, keep quiet. so this is uh uh obviously kind of the same thing repeated twice i mentioned uh i believe it was at the end of first kings that there is this threefold pattern we often encounter not only in the bible but in other literature as well where the first two occasions where something happens are basically replicas one of another they're very similar or parallel or exact language is used in those in

those first two and in the third that's where things diverge there's a swerve in the in the third one same thing's going to happen here so the same uh elijah says the same thing elisha responds the same way we have the same sons of the prophets same the same questions elisha responds to them in in the same way so basically two different places same things happening there then you get to verse six and we encounter what's going to be, what's going to be different. So verse six says that Elijah spoke to Elisha, please stay here for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.

And Elisha says the same thing as before, as the Lord lives. And as you yourself live, I will not leave you. So the two of them went on together. And now we're going to see where things begin to change. You got 50 men of the sons of the prophets that go, but they just stay at a distance. They don't come up to Elisha and ask him that same question again or make that same statement again. They're at a distance and they're watching him to see what will happen. Now what happens is they both, that is Elijah and Elisha, both go down to the Jordan

River and they're standing there at the Jordan. Now verse 8 says that Elijah took up his cloak and he rolled it up and he struck the water and the water was parted to the one side into the other until the two of them could go over on on dry ground there's a number of things here that are uh that are worthy of note um first of all this this cloak business we're going to hear more about that that in a minute we've actually encountered elijah's cloak twice so he used the when he was on Mount Sinai after he'd fled from Jezebel and you know he had the the those appearances of the wind and the fire and whatnot and then that quote quote unquote still small voice he used that cloak to to cover himself and then it's the same cloak that he threw upon

Elisha back in first Kings 19 when he was plowing with oxen and he called him to to follow him so So the cloak seems to be the emblem of his office, I guess, maybe is the way that we would say that. In fact, if you're interested in this, check out Zechariah 13, verse 4, where there's once more reference to a cloak that is worn by prophets. So there's a possibility that, hey, this was kind of the insignia, if you will, of prophets. They had a special kind of cloak. Certainly in Elijah's case, this cloak becomes connected. it's the emblem of his vocation as prophet. So he uses the cloak in a way similar to the way that Moses used his staff. Moses struck the water in the Nile and turned it into blood. In fact,

that same verb for struck is used here in this verse. Moses struck the Nile, Elijah strikes the jordan river and most of course the clearest parallel here is two occasions one in exodus one in joshua where the red sea is parted and they walk across on dry ground same noun in hebrew that's used here and then when joshua and the israelites get the jordan river and once more as a bookend to the crossing of the red sea the jordan river is parted so that the israelites under Joshua are able to cross again on dry ground. I love this example because I think it illustrates so well the way the scriptures work. I'm sure I've quoted Mark Twain before to this effect, that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. So there's a rhythm to

history. So is this a repetition of what happened at the Red Sea and in Jordan? No, it's a rhyme of that. So different people, different situation, but the same kind of thing is happening. Parting of the Red Sea, parting of the Jordan, and now the Jordan is parted once more. So when you look at what's happening in that bigger narrative context of the scriptures, what seems to be transpiring is this. I mentioned before the Elijah and Elisha are leaving the northern kingdom, which has become canonized, and they are going in reverse back to the days of joshua so they're actually going to the other side to the transjordan to where joshua and the israelites were camped before the conquest so this is a reversal of the narrative they're going back

to where back to to the pre-conquest days as it were elijah elijah is going back to where moses left on the transjordan side and he's also going back to where joshua took over the leadership of Moses, just like Elisha is going to take over the leadership after the ascension of Elijah. And then what's Elisha going to do after that? We'll see in a second, but he's going to cross back over the Jordan in the same way that he crossed it under Elijah, and he's going to, as it were, be the new Joshua who proceeds into the promised land and begins his spiritual a conquest, we might say, through preaching and miracle working in the land, just like Joshua had when he led the conquest against the Canaanites. So that's kind of the big picture of what's

happening here. That, I think, is helpful for understanding a lot of the details that are just left out. I mean, the Bible doesn't tell us all that. It expects us to see how this one piece of the story fits within the broader mosaic of the scriptures. so uh that's verse eight verse nine says when they had crossed elijah said to elisha ask what i shall do for you before i am taken from you so this is this is a a change of focus right before he's like hey stay here stay here i gotta go i gotta go now he's saying what do you want? Ask of me what I shall do for you. And Elisha responds, let me, let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.

I think what's being implied here is this. So Elijah has become the father of Elisha. In fact, he's going to call him father when he sees him ascending into heaven. when when when a father was departing this life he left to his firstborn son twice double the inheritance of the other sons so this seems to be elijah asking basically for an inheritance he's asking for a double portion of elijah's spirit so that when his father when his spiritual father is gone he's going to be able to carry forward the work that elijah had been doing as well I actually think that there's a—this might sound like a pretty audacious request, right? Where you're like, double portion of your spirit.

That's what I want. I want to be, like, twice as awesome as you. That's what I want to be. I actually don't think it's that. I think there's some humility there. I think this is actually Elisha saying—because he's talking about the spirit. This is like the anointing, all this kind of stuff, right? I think what Elisha is saying is that I'm going to need much more help than you did.

I think this is Elisha's way of saying that he's not him. Yeah, I fully agree. Elisha is acknowledging, hey, I'm no Elijah. I'm going to need a lot. I don't have what you have. I don't have what you have. So I'm going to need a double portion of your spirit to even have a chance of continuing the work that you did.

i do like elijah's response though yeah yeah he says uh well that's pretty hard to ask right you've asked for a hard thing uh but yet if you see me as i am being taken from you it shall be so for you but if you don't see me it shall not be so that's pretty good motivation to stick close would you yeah i think so that's it right there yeah so yeah you you want to be you want to be a prophet you want to be a seer well then see me okay keep your eyes keep your eyes on me and uh it's a hard thing but we'll see if we can make that i'll tell you what all you gotta do is stay close because it's gonna be hard to miss yeah yeah yeah it's not gonna be like you close your eyes for a half a second and miss this it's gonna be uh the most memorable thing

no doubt that ever happened to Elijah, to Elisha. Yeah, this isn't one of those things where it's like, pay close attention. It's going to happen quick. You might miss it. If you're around, you're going to see it. Definitely going to see this.

So, verse 11 says they went on, talked. I wonder what they were talking about. Some last-minute advice. Went on and talked and behold, here we are, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them.

And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and he cried, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. And he saw him no more. Stop there just for a second. So chariots of fire and horses of fire. it's such an appropriate ending really for elijah's time in this world because he was the prophet of fire yeah he called down fire and mont carmel uh he called down fire upon the soldiers

that the king sent to to take him and uh now once more we have fire cherry a chariot of fire and uh and horses of fire so there's only one other place in uh in the old testament where we have reference to a chariot of fire, and it's a great, it's a great parallel here. It's just a few chapters ahead at 2 Kings chapter 6, and it has to do with, with Elisha, and this is when he's got a servant, and the servant's afraid because they're surrounded by, you know, by all these enemies, and Elisha prays, and here's what he says. He says, oh Lord, please open my servant's eyes that he may see. So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. So these are,

this is the celestial army. This is the army of God, which is veiled to sight, but is very much present there. You think of all of the angelic armies that are ready to fight. And so they use the image of horses and chariots that this army has ready to ready to do battle on on behalf of the Lord and they come up and they of course take take Elijah with them and this is what I mentioned earlier where you you the whirlwind mentioned here too but you didn't have beforehand the chariots of fire and the horses of fire so this is a new element that comes into into what's happening. And Elisha cries out, my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. Now, just like there was only one other reference to the chariot of fire, there's only one other

reference to this kind of phraseology. And once more, it occurs in reference to Elisha. It's from uh it's from second kings chapter six i believe and this is when a king says this but in reference to elisha himself it's right before his death so it seems as if what's being said here when he says my father my father the chariot of israel and its horsemen is that these things are spoken in what's called apposition so that when he says father and when he says chariots of israel and its horsemen And he is, as it were, equating Elijah with this chariot. He's saying, you, Father, you're like a one-man army. You're God's spokesman.

You're his voice on earth. So you're fighting his battles, as it were, on earth. And so you are like his chariot. And now you, my Father, this chariot, are being taken up into heaven. And he sees him no more. so he responds by uh tearing his clothes he takes hold of his clothes tore them in two pieces typical sign of hebrew mourning grieving over the loss of someone that you love but then he takes up the cloak of elijah that had fallen from him and he goes back and he stands at

the bank of the jordan so he grabs this mantle he grabs this cloak the one that elijah had used to depart the waters and now elijah goes up there and uh he strikes the water and i love this he says where is the lord the god of elijah he's like all right here's the god where you at here's your chance to uh to demonstrate to me that i have received a double portion of the spirit of elijah and that i am his true successor and that you're with me as you are with him so where are you he calls him the god of elijah i feel like if this goes i feel like if this goes a different way he just elisha just goes home i would yeah i'd be like well i guess uh i guess the lord has somebody else in mind i guess that's that yeah so this i think this is a pretty pivotal moment

for elisha to continue on yeah you know if when he when he strikes the water in the jordan and it parts it's like he knows yeah it's on but if he strikes the water he just has a wet cloak Yeah, it's time to go back to the plow, go back to farming. But, of course, when he struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over. So he sees his master departing with the chariots of Israel, the chariots of fire and the horses of fire and the whirlwind. He cries out. He takes up the mantle. He receives a double portion of the spirit. And so Elijah, one of two people that we're told about in the history of humanity, parts his life without dying. So Enoch and Elijah.

And Elisha then is the one who will take over. And this is a great parallel to something that we touched on a couple of other times, and that is to John the Baptist and Jesus of the Jordan River. so john the baptist is the elijah the one who comes in the spirit and power of elijah and what happens to the jordan river well john baptizes jesus and uh jesus then as it were takes over where john leaves off john prepared the way and jesus takes it from there and so in that way jesus is the elijah figure who will uh continue what elijah had what elijah had begun The next section begins with verse 15, and this is kind of an odd section. So we've heard about the sons of the prophets.

They were watching all of this from a distance. We don't know how much they saw. I mean, they are at a distance. They were at Jericho opposite him, and we're told that they said, in verse 15, the spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha. So they know that much. They know that he has received the spirit from his master. they go to meet him and they bow to the ground and they propose this strange thing they say

look there are with your servants 50 strong men so please let them go and seek your master it could be it may be that the spirit of the lord has caught him up and cast him on some mountain or into some valley and he said that is elisha says no you shall not send but they kept urging him until he was ashamed like it just wouldn't wouldn't let up and so finally he's like okay go send so they send these 50 guys and they look for him for three days look for him all over the place can't find him of course we already knew that was a foregone conclusion so they come back while elisha was still staying at jericho and he said to them more or less i told you so yeah Did I not say to you, don't go.

So maybe what's happening here is that the sons of the prophets, they know Elijah has been taken, but they think maybe, you know, the spirit has placed him here or there. I mean, we did we do we did encounter this kind of language earlier. remember when the servant of the king uh when when he was supposed to bring elijah to the king he's like what happens if the spirit just picks you up and takes you somewhere else then then what am i going to do so uh maybe this has happened before and maybe the sons of the prophets knew about that and so they're thinking well you know the spirit just dropped him off someplace else uh whatever it is the course the search is is fruitless because they're not going to find him in a valley or in a mountain he's been taken up to uh to heaven itself verse 19 says that

the men of the city said to elisha that is the men of jericho behold the situation this city is pleasant so i guess meaning it you know it's a pretty good place pretty good place to be and jericho is uh i was there in february it's a pretty not pretty nice place i mean it's uh you got it's the city of palm trees uh famous for that uh plenty of water down there but they say to him the waters bad and the land is unfruitful. So whatever had happened, the water in the city of Jericho had gone bad or was bad or whatever happened to it, it was causing the land to be unfruitful. So this is a chance for Elisha to do kind of the same thing that Moses did. So you may remember when Moses and the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, one of the first things they

encountered was at a place called Marah, which means bitter. And they encountered bitter waters. And so what did Moses do? He sweetened the waters. He threw a branch or some kind of wood into the waters. And by means of that, he made these bitter waters to be sweet. Well, similar here, you've got bad water. And so you're going to have an opportunity for this prophet to perform a moses kind of moses kind of miracle and he does he doesn't say hey bring me a branch he says ironically bring me some salt now when i want to make water good i usually don't pour salt inside it that's not not the typical way that you want to sweeten improve your water situation well as long as you've got a new bowl uh the salt will work yeah all right yeah so

bring me a new, don't bring me any of your old stuff. I don't want to see your old Tupperware here. I want a brand new bowl. So go to Walmart, give me a new bowl, the Walmart Jericho. Give me a new bowl and bring me some salt in it. So they do, they bring it to him. And then he goes to the spring of water, this spring of water where the water become bad, and he throws the salt in it. And he says, Thus says the Lord, I have healed this water, and from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it. So this must have been some pretty bad water. Evidently, judging by what Elisha says, the water wasn't just like it tasted bad. It was unhealthy to the extreme, to the point where it was actually killing people or causing pregnant women to miscarry.

Yeah, they got like a real Flint, Michigan cranked up situation here. Yeah, this was a Flint, Jericho spring situation. So he says that the water will be healed, and that's what happened. The water was healed to this day, according to the word that Elisha spoke. Kind of an interesting flip side of this. When I read this this morning, my mind went to Ezekiel 47, where you sort of have the reverse. Ezekiel 47 is a vision of the end time temple

and the river that flows from the side of the temple down to the sea of salt. And I don't remember how English translations render that, but it says something like, you know, when the water from the temple entered into the Dead Sea or the sea of salt, it made them fresh. Now, literally in Hebrew, it's heal them. and that's the same verb that's used here so it's just the reverse though we have water

and salt put in it and then the salt heals the water in ezekiel you have water from god and it enters the salt the salt water and it heals that and and makes it fresh but either way you got the same thing happening you have as we have repeatedly in scriptures you have the word joined to an element right so elijah just doesn't walk up to the spring and say be healed yeah that he says bring me water i mean bring me a bowl bring me salt and then he speaks the word and puts the salt in and then healing results yeah god has like been showing you that there was going to be some earthly thing that he was going to use as the vehicle to deliver the miracle from my from the beginning right this is the way it's always been and so uh it's almost like and you know

this is having a certain sacramental view but it's almost like from the first for the opening pages of scripture um it's certainly post-fall that god was like i'm going to institute baptism in the lord's supper and i'm going to set up a pattern of using regular created things to deliver promises and miracles. I mean, the forgiveness of sins and regeneration and all this stuff is indeed a miracle, but he sets that up over and over

and over again so that you ought not think that baptism or the Lord's Supper are out of the ordinary when he institutes sort of the final two things that the church is going to use. Yeah, he has readied us really from like you say from the beginning, you look in

Genesis 2. you got a tree of life how do you get how do you get life from god eat yeah that's how you get it so uh over and over that's that's a pattern that god sets up yes he uses his word but his word is married to this element whatever that might be whether it's food in this case salt or water or bread and wine whatever it is god likes to package his word in something that you can touch something that's tangible, something you can see or that you can eat or that you can drink. So yeah, by the time you get to the New Testament

and we have baptism and Lord's Supper, you're like, oh yeah, of course. That's just the way God is always working. Shouldn't hit you as strange. Well, that's it, Chad. We are out of time. Next week, we'll get into everyone's favorite story where two bears versus 42 young men.

See how that shakes out. Are you going to wear your t-shirt? I've got to find it. Your special t-shirt? I do. I have a Respect Your Elders t-shirt with two bears on it. It's good. I don't think that's what that passage is about, but it's a funny shirt nonetheless. But we will get into that text and then hear more about Elisha going forward. So I'll see you next week.

All right. See you then. I'll see you next time.