40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 4:18-44 (Episode 325)

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

The Shunammite woman's son dies but God is in the business of resurrection. A man makes a deadly stew that Elisha cleanses. And Elisha feeds 100 men with 20 loaves of bread previewing one of Jesus' most famous miracles. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS National Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

This episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament was the last show that Chad Bird and I recorded before the tragic death of his 21-year-old son, Luke. Luke was studying abroad with the Naval Academy in Chile and was killed in a hiking accident. And while this episode was recorded before these events, you will hear us talk about the death of a son. You will hear us talk about this son being resurrected by the word of a prophet you will hear us talk about the promise of resurrection that promise applies to you me chad and certainly applies to his son luke i don't know the next time that we will record the show will continue chad will be back but please know that there might be a pause in episodes and we will return when chad feels that he is ready to

return. Until then, I want to leave you with the words that Chad wrote, and then we will get into the show. On Saturday morning, our son, Luke Gabriel Bird, was killed in a hiking accident in Chile. He was 21 years old. As a midshipman in the United States Naval Academy, he was studying abroad at the Chilean Military Academy this year. Luke is a baptized child of our Heavenly Father, beloved and forgiven in Jesus. We know that he is with the Lord, who is the resurrection and the life. That is our confidence and our consolation.

Even as we sit here with broken hearts and numb souls, I have never known such pain. Pray for us, our family and friends, Luke's fellow midshipmen, and all who grieve the passing of this phenomenally gifted young man, who daily inspired me, for he didn't know how to give anything less than 100%. Luke was everything a father would want in a son, and so much more.

He was and remains a gift of God to us all. 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 and check out all the podcasts that are living over there while you're over there make sure you check out the events page because the here we still stand national event is coming up october 13th through the 15th you want to be a part of that you want to come hang out with chad hang out with me hang out with a whole bunch of other people great teaching great music awesome fellowship spectacular food good time all the way around so you can click a link in the show notes or just go over to the site

and get registered for that. Chad, last week, Elisha is roaming around. He runs into a widow. He decides he's going to make a little bit of oil into a booming oil industry. So that was nice. This woman's able to sustain herself. He also gets a little house built for him

by a friendly couple who says, this prophet doesn't seem to have a place to stay when he's passing through town. let's just build a little room on our roof and we'll just give him a little apartment up there and so he's got that and then you know elijah wants to wants to not pay him back but show him how grateful he is for this so he asked his servant let's find out what they need and it turns out this woman cannot have children or has no children and so elijah says let's take care of that and she was a little nervous about this sort of promise from the prophet yeah she's uh in verse

verse 16 she says no my lord oh man of god do not lie to your servants it's like don't don't be teasing me here uh if this is going to happen then uh make it happen but don't don't make promises that you can't keep this is a uh typically called annunciation scene and there's several of these in the scriptures of course uh besides the one that we usually associate with the annunciation where the angel appears to mary but you can think of the the messenger of the lord lord appearing to the parents of Samson, or probably the most famous one from the book of Genesis is when the Lord and two messengers show up at the tent of Abraham and Sarah and say, you're going to have a son after all these years of waiting, and that son is going to be Isaac. So when you look at all

the Annunciation scenes in Scripture, this one falls into that category, but this one is different in a couple of different ways. First of all, most of the time, in fact, I guess all the time in these other Annunciation scenes, the promised child is going to grow up to be, you know, someone who's a significant part of the biblical narrative. Isaac, of course, is significant, and Samson is significant, and needless to say, Jesus is significant. But this particular child, we're never really told anything about, about him besides the, the account that immediately follows this where, where he dies and then is brought back to life. So that, that sets it apart. Now, to me, the more interesting thing that sets us apart is that in these other, in these other

scenes, it's either the Lord himself or his messenger that shows up and says, Hey, you're going to have a baby now here. Who is it? It's, it's just a man, but he's not just a man. He's the man of God. He's God's spokesman. He's God's representative. He's God's prophet. So with Elisha saying this to her, it elevates him even higher with regard to his significance. So the messenger of the Lord who made these previous announcements, his place is now filled by Elisha. And I think that also underscores something that the more that we spend time in elisha's life uh we've always seen so far when what is coming up i'm seeing more and more parallels between between him and jesus but there's there's there's of course there's

parallels between jesus and the other prophets with moses and elijah and and what whatnot but when you look at what elisha did and how elisha is described like we're going to see i think it's later in this chapter where you have people bringing grain offerings to elisha you're supposed to take that to the temple and yet they bring it to to elisha so like he is representing so much um that corresponds to to who jesus is and what jesus accomplished that anyway i'm just seeing more and more of how he is this uh not just a prefigurement of christ but uh one of the more important prefigurements that we have in the old testament yeah i mean certainly up to this point yeah this is a message of a son that you know if you have a woman who can't bear children and she's

going to bear a child this is a yeah this is usually coming straight from god i mean samson abraham samuel you know like all of this stuff and yeah no i think it probably tells you something about the lack of religious fidelity in the land that people are like what's the representative well it's not the priest it's not you know we're not going to the temple over here like if you want to if you're talking about Yahweh you're talking about Elisha at this time yeah I think that's probably one of the reasons he stands out the way that he does things were so bad that if you if you want to hear from God if you want to be in God's presence uh then Elisha is basically your option yeah he is the one he's the one that you go to so uh anyway uh i i mentioned at the end of the

last episode i wanted to say a little bit more about that just want to accent uh those uh uniquenesses of this scene and then we're told in verse 17 that uh what he promised came true the woman conceived she bore a son about that time the following year as elisha had said to her so that's all great um but then we go immediately from this scene of of promise fulfilled and and the mother rejoicing in this great gift to her family, to where it feels like what God now gave, he just turns right around and takes away. Because verse 18 tells us that when the child had grown, he went out one day to his father among the reapers. So harvest time. And he comes to his dad and he says, my head, my head. So evidently some sort of intense headache hit him. So he

goes complains to his dad about his his pain his dad says to the servants take him to carry him take him to to his mom so they they pick the kid up which tells you he's in bad shape if he can't even basically walk so they pick him up brought him to his mother and well this this this part of the verse just tears you up this is this is one of those times when the bible describes things in in such a way that it just it's hard not to just you feel the whole scene so what it says is he lifted him up brought him to his mother and the child sat on her lap till noon and then he died so just a just a heartbreaking scene picturing this this poor mother who didn't have any children who thought probably she never was going to have any children and then

lo and behold she's given this fantastic promise by the prophet the promise is fulfilled she no doubt is just overjoyed with this gift from god and now this happens you can just kind of picture her there sitting holding her holding her boy as he fades and fades and then finally passes away in in her arms so just a terribly moving scene verse 21 says that she you can tell that she She's thinking, she's, I don't know if she's planning it is the right word, but she knows what she must do because verse 21 says that she went up and she laid her boy on the bed of the man of God and then shut the door behind him and went out. Now, needless to say, this is not normal activity for someone who's in a state of grief.

She knows what she's going to do. And so the first step is not laying the child on her bed, but she takes the child and places him on the bed of Elisha himself, closes the door. Then verse 22 says she called her husband and doesn't even tell him really what happened. She says, send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys that I may quickly go to the man of God and then come back again. and her husband is so clueless as to as to what's going on here he says why would you go to the prophet today it's neither the new moon nor the sabbath so this guy is either slow-witted or i don't know what's going on with him but he doesn't ask about the boy uh doesn't you know draw the line between a and b and realize maybe that's why she's going is because something

has happened to the child, but just seems to be completely clueless as to what her motivation might be. You know what's interesting is that, this is just something recently that I've started to pick up on. Whether you're talking about the Old Testament or the New Testament,

if somebody's sick, somebody's injured, you know, in the Old Testament maybe you want to go find a prophet to tell you what to do so that you don't die. Or in the New Testament, You know, in the life of Jesus, you have people come to him desperate because their child is sick or or, you know, they're sick or whatever it is. And you see this happen, you know, when in David's life, David's praying for his son while he's ill and then he dies.

It's over. You see this when Jesus engaged with Mary, Martha, with Lazarus. And they're like, you know, your your friend is ill. you should come and take care of that and Jesus waits and then he shows up and Lazarus is already dead and what they say is if you had only been here sooner my brother wouldn't have died

so they have this faith that you can prevent someone from dying but after they died it's over and I think that this is pretty consistent throughout scripture where you know

you believe the prophet or who or jesus or whoever it is might be able to stop you from dying or help you recover but once death has come like this is sort of a final thing and it seems that maybe this father is in that situation too and this and this woman is an outlier from scripture where uh he's like what are we doing here like it's why are you going to bring him like it's oh it's over and uh it's actually a strange thing in scripture for to have someone who doesn't believe that death means it's over i mean even mary and martha who saw jesus do a lot of things and who obviously believe you could i mean you could tell by their testament they believe they think hey if you'd been here

sooner it wouldn't be over but you're here now it is over yeah that is a great point and she she is an outlier because i can't think of i was thinking while you were talking and i can't i can't think of another instance in scripture where you have something like this no no like people don't come to jesus with with dead people not really yeah and they don't come to other you know prophets and stuff with dead people um it's it's one of the things that makes resurrection like so like so astounding like i think we're sort of used to thinking about it because the resurrection of christ is such a you know it's like a the moment in for the for a christian uh but if you before that that that was not a thing that people thought was going to happen yeah even martha i mean she

she obviously believes in the resurrection you know she says of course i i believe that he will be raised on the last day yeah and and and in voicing that she wasn't voicing anything that was unusual because that was the basic belief of of jews in the first century that yes there would be a general resurrection at the end at the end of the world uh so she said yeah of course i believe in the resurrection i know that my brother will be raised in the last day like all of us will so it's shocking is when jesus turns and says uh well you're looking you're looking at the resurrection i am the resurrection that's right yeah how about how about you get a preview of that resurrection right now yeah how about we bring the the future into the present and that's

that's what's going to happen here uh happen here as well yeah so so so saying that like this is a a remarkable woman so we are uh do well to remark upon her because this is uh this is a kind of strange thing to do i mean it's a it's a huge move of faith obviously but also uh different for for the testimony of scripture yeah yeah and you got to admire her uh her zeal too as we'll see as the the story goes on where she will, uh, she's not going to be satisfied with anything, but Elisha himself coming to, to take care of, of the situation. So when her husband asked her this question, why today? It's not, it's not the new moon. It's not the Sabbath, which then presumably would have been the time that they had some kind of interaction with, with the prophet.

So it's neither of those. So why are you going? And she doesn't even answer his question. she she doesn't explain why she in fact her response is one word she says shalom which could be i mean yeah i can be translated peace uh but it's also just kind of a a greeting so i i would translate this something like uh see ya or bye or adios i'm i'm out of here i'm i'm not gonna i'm not gonna stand here and answer your stupid questions yeah maybe maybe this is where peace came from you know like if you're if you're leaving someone and you know they're like see you later and you're like peace and that's what she's doing here she's just like peace i'm out peace i am out of here i'm uh i'm on my way so she uh she saddles a donkey and she says to her servant

urge the animal on do not slacken the pace for me unless i unless i tell you so give that give that donkey a slap on the rump get him going because uh i've got i've got a place to be so she sets out and she comes to the man of god at mount carmel of course anytime we hear mount carmel we uh at least my mind goes back to to elijah of course that was that was the place where the power of god was was displayed well my mind actually goes two places he goes to that and than I remember when I was on Mount Carmel back in February. Yes, beautiful, beautiful mountainous place. But anyway, that's where she knows to find him. So she heads that way, probably at a lope. And we're told that the man of God, this is this ongoing refrain of who Elisha is,

this man who speaks God's words, who represents God, who has the holiness of God, all of these divine characteristics that are that are possessed by him all kind of a incarnational even language so jesus is the man of god but here we have uh elisha described in some of the language so the man of god he sees her coming sees her galloping up so he says to to gehazi his servant the guy that we met uh in the last episode look there's a shunammite so run at once to meet her and say to her three questions. Is it well with you? And each of these wells are shalom. Is it shalom with you? Shalom with your husband? Shalom with the child? And when he gets to her, she answers him the exact same way that she answered her husband. She says, shalom. So it's shalom all over this

narrative. So it's kind of hard to know how to translate it. But every time this comes up, that's the Hebrew behind it. So she says to her husband when she's leaving, shalom. and then to these three questions that the servant uh poses to her she just answers with one one word shalom everything's good she's not so she's not going to engage her husband in conversation answer his stupid questions she's not going to engage the servant of elisha either because as i said earlier she is not going to be satisfied until she speaks to the prophet himself so verse 27 says when she came to the mountain to the man of god the first thing she does is she catches hold of his feet. So picture her, she prostrates herself, she grabs a hold of him. Now Gehazi

doesn't like this. He kind of liked the disciples when they were, you know, trying to keep people from bringing little children to Jesus. He comes and tries to push her away. But the man of God, in a very Jesus-like statement, says, leave her alone. She is in bitter distress, and the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me, which I think is a great reminder of the fact that the prophets didn't know everything. I mean, there were a lot of things that Elisha knew, and we're going to see some examples, especially in the next chapter, where Gehazi goes off to do something he shouldn't do, and Elisha knows about it. So he's aware of many things, but it's not like he's omniscient or something. The only things he knows are those things that God has revealed to him.

yeah well he says here well it seems like elisha is basically saying i could tell that there's something's up uh this woman is in in great distress i don't know what it is though god has not told me what it is so i'm gonna find out here yeah i mean it was it's obvious from the way that she was acting that she was in she was in great distress so he could recognize that but what it was, he didn't know. Her first words are not even a description of what happened, but they're sort of a, I don't know if accusation is the right word or not, but she says to him, did I ask my Lord for a son? With the obvious, you know, answer being no, I didn't. Did I not say, do not deceive me? And that's all she says. Did I ask my Lord for a son? Did I not say,

do not deceive me so this course harkens back to the earlier conversation with which we began this episode where elisha makes a promise to her and she basically says don't be lying to me don't don't be don't be leading me on with with something as as wonderful as this promises so she she references back to that basically saying listen i didn't ask for this son you you out came out of your way and promised this child to me with the implication being elisha can read easily read between the lines or maybe the lord reveals it to him now whatever he realizes what's happened that something has happened to something has happened to the boy so his response verse 29 is to turn to his servant gehazi and tells him to uh to in hebrew

to gird up your loins, tie up your garment is the way ESV has it. In other words, you need to run. So that long flowing robe that you're wearing is going to be in the way. So tie it up, gird up your loins, turn your robe into a pair of shorts and take my staff in your hand and go. If you meet anyone, do not greet him. And if anyone greets you, do not reply and lay my staff on the face of the child. So this is a, I'm not quite sure what to make of this. I suppose the prophet thinks his staff is kind of like the staff of Moses. Is that the idea here? I mean, Moses' staff was able to do miraculous things because God had invested with power. So is this the way that this prophet views his staff? That if Gehazi has it in his hand and he places it on

the child that God is going to work through the staff to bring life into the child? Maybe. We'll see in a second, but it doesn't work. Maybe Elisha's just like, I'm too old to run. I'm going to give my staff to this guy.

He's going to run. I'm not going to be able to get there very fast. But either way, I do like the... I like this whole thing. One, I like the response of the mother. which is sort of, hey, this is on you because I didn't ask you for this thing.

So it reminds me of, like, you know, Elisha's obviously not God, but he's the representative of God that she has. You know, it reminds me of ways that people sometimes interact with Jesus, where they sort of corner him with something he's done or something he's said to get something from him. and the way that David will pray in the Psalms and this kind of stuff. And in this way, she is very much talking to God, even though it's Elisha. Like I said, it's the way to speak to God that she knows, that she has available.

And, yeah, it's basically making a demand here and an accusation that you, I mean, the way, you might as well translate this, you better fix this. Yeah, that's right. you created the situation right yeah and it was a great situation but now look what's happened so you gave me the child god through you gave me this child and now you need to make sure that i get my child back yeah it's it's an incredible faith that uh that she has here so uh uh he says that to gehazi tells him gird your loins take my staff and then we have this very uh close language to what we see in the Gospels, where when Jesus sends out, for instance, the 70 disciples,

he says, you know, don't take this, don't take that, you know, don't take an extra pair of shoes, don't take your backpack or extra food or anything like that. And he adds, don't be chit-chatting with people along the way. If you run into somebody on the trail, then don't stop and visit with them and i was i was i was actually thinking back to uh this same time last year my my son and i were hiking through the smokies and uh anytime that we met somebody on the trail we stopped and talked with them it's just like it's something you don't think about if these days because of course we fly or drive everywhere you know but if if you're walking everywhere you go especially if there's not a whole lot of people then if when you encounter somebody

you usually stop and you visit for a while i mean we'd stop and talk with somebody for it might be two minutes it might be five minutes but you know we just say where you're from how long you've been out here blah blah blah and i'm sure these kinds of things happen uh when people were going back and forth on on roads you gotta take the opportunity to get a break yes that's right that's it's that's part of it right it's kind of nice just to stop maybe sit down send the shade for a minute uh chit chat with whoever and elijah none of that none of that just go run that's why you're girding up your loins anyway you don't need to gird up your loins to walk but you do to run so that's the instructions verse 30 says the mother of the child says to uh says to elijah as the lord

lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you. Now, I love this, because I did not realize until I was looking over this, I think it was a couple weeks ago, that this is what she says there. As you live, and as the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you. that is verbatim what Elisha said to Elisha three times back in second Kings chapter two. Yeah. Yeah. So when Elijah was like, Hey, you stay here. Uh, you know, the Lord has sent me somewhere else every single time. These are the words that Elisha said to Elijah. I ain't going nowhere as, as, as the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I am not leaving your side. so in a in a of course the woman didn't know that that he said that but in in a very elijah kind of

move she says i'm gonna stick with you in the same way that you stuck with with with elijah i am not leaving leaving not leaving your side so kind of a cool parallel there with uh the earlier episode and it seemed to work yeah it's convincing he got it he got a double portion of the spirit uh he got the prophetic mantle and so she knows that if she sticks close to the prophet good things are going to happen with her as well so he gets up and follows her now Gehazi the servant he's he's on ahead of them he's running on ahead and he gets to where the house is and he takes the staff and he does just like the prophet said he laid the staff on the face of the child but and this is another cool parallel here there was no sound or sign of life

so uh i was i was doing a little comparison here and if you take these hebrew expressions so literally it is uh no voice ain't coal so no voice is or no answer you could translate that way too, but no voice coming from the child. And then Ein Kashev, which should be translated like no notice or something like that. Those two of those expressions are used back when Elijah had his showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. When we read that there was no voice, no answer, no notice from Baal. Now, the reason that's cool is because that means that Baal was basically in the same position as this boy is. Baal was dead.

No life. So a lifeless God, just like you have a lifeless boy here as well. So they could have cried out all day to Baal, but there's no answer coming from him. He's basically a dead deity. There's no life. No answer can be coming from him,

just like no sound, no sign of life coming from this child. So after that, he returned to meet him. That is, so he leaves the child, he goes back to where Elisha and the mother are, and he says the child has not awakened. So, it's kind of like, I suppose, another parallel with the Gospels. When Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration, he comes back down as a crowd, and there's a father who's been trying to get the disciples to heal his boy, but they couldn't do it. The only way this is going to happen is if Jesus himself is there.

It's going to be the same here with this boy. So what does Elisha do? Verse 32 says that he came into the house, and he saw the child lying dead on his bed. So he goes in, he shuts the door behind the two of them, and the first thing that he does is he begins to pray. And after that, he got up, and he laid down on the child, and he put his mouth on his mouth. his eyes on his eyes, his hands on his hands. And as he stretched himself upon him, the flesh of the child became warm. And then he gets up, walks around the house, and he went back,

and then he stretched himself upon the child again. And this time, the child sneezed seven times and then opened his eyes. Now, this is weird. And that's what I was about to say. I'm picturing all this as I'm reading it. He's positioning himself just perfectly over this boy, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, hands on his hands. And you get the impression that what's happening here is that, first of all, he prays, and then he does this. The what's going on is God is maybe transferring his life to the life of the child or working through his life to give life to this boy.

I mean, the whole bodily posture that he takes here, he wants to make sure that his body corresponds to this boy's body so much so that from the life of his hands, now there is life in his hands. The life in his eyes, now there's life in the boy's eyes. So it's such an incarnational kind of thing that it's through this body of this man of God that life is going to come into this dead boy. So it's such a perfect picture of how our life is completely through the life of the body of Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, but it's just a beautiful correspondence there between his. So it's not kind of a life in the abstract. It's a bodily life that is now given to us

so that we actually have life in our bodies as well. Same thing that Elisha does here for the child is the same thing that happens to us. And I don't know, no idea why he sneezed seven times. Not sure about the meaning of that or the symbolism of that. Just know it was seven. It was seven times. definitely seven very biblical now six was not eight but it had to be had to be seven the perfect amount of sneezing for this kid yeah that usually happens to me a lot of times too but it's only

because uh i have bad allergies that's right i will often sneeze seven times in a row so sort of a two-stage uh uh coming to life so first of all his flesh warms and then uh secondly he uh he opens his eyes and has this this sneezing fit it corresponds in that way to the great chapter in ezekiel where he had the valley dry bones because first of all what happens is they you know they start coming together all the bones and and the and the flesh and skin but there's no breath in them right so you have bodies but you don't have any breath and so they prophesize to the breath and then the breath the spirit enters into them and then they're they're alive kind of the same thing here you got a two stage of two step of two step of coming to to to life so after that happens

he uh he summons his servant he says to her call the mother he calls her she comes in he says pick up your son and she came and fell at his feet once more bowing to the ground and then she picked up her son and uh and went out such a such an amazing story a lot of parallels as as you probably remember from back in, uh, first Kings 17, when, when Elijah raised the widow's son, several of the, the, uh, the language is similar. The actions are, are similar. So this is an Elijah type miracle, but, uh, it also has its unique, unique features to it. And it's what we see in this miracle and what we're going to see in, uh, some of the other miracles that are, they're coming up, coming up as well, is if you want to step back from it and say, okay, what's the big picture

here? Well, the big picture is that in a land that is rife with idolatry and with idolatry, death, and with that, as we'll also see, famine, in all of this terrible darkness and sin and death and loss and pain, where do you find life? Where do you find healing? Where do you find hope? Where you find the word in the presence of God? Well, it's in Elisha. So it's an ongoing reminder of, as we mentioned a couple episodes ago, of the insanity of idolatry. Here's God in this prophet offering everything that people need, and yet they turn their back and they look for it in those places where God has not promised it to be found. And that takes us through that part of the chapter the chapter is going to end with uh some purification of food so pick it up at 38 elijah

leaves there he goes to gilgal where there was famine in the land so this is this famine that is mentioned here is going to basically stretch from where we are now which is in chapter four all the way to chapter eight so the famine will be mentioned again when we get to uh we get to second kings chapter eight so there's famine in the land uh he's with the sons of the prophets again they're sitting before him and he says to a servant to get a pot get a large pot and to boil some stew for for the sons of the prophets so we're going to make a meal one of these guys evidently did not know what he was doing he he goes out into the field to gather herbs and he finds this wild vine and it's got all these wild gourds on it and he doesn't know what they

are he just sees gourds and so he cuts them picks them up and then he puts them into the pot of stew not knowing what they were now uh boys and girls if you don't know what something is and you find in the field it's always a good idea not to eat it i mean this is it's kind of basic knowledge here but this guy either because it was desperation or maybe he just was uh not thinking things through or whatever it was he decides he's gonna put some uh unidentified wild gourds in his in his pot well they pour some out for these guys to eat and while they're eating the stew they cry out oh man of god there is death in the pot i don't know if that was because it actually was dangerous

what he was eating or because it just tasted so terrible. I don't know. We've probably all taken a bite of something at some point and wanted to exclaim there's death in the pot. Something died in that pot, man. Something died in that pot, yeah.

And no, I am not referring to anything my wife has ever cooked. I'm talking about when I've got some meals at some restaurants before. So they couldn't eat it, obviously. So what do you do in this situation? Well, of course, if you're Elisha, you know exactly what to do.

Just throw some flour in there. Yeah, of course. Bring some flour. So they brought him some flour and he threw it into the pot. And then he said, pour out some for the men that they may eat. And then there was no harm in the pot. So another great example of where do you go when you have death? Well, you go to the prophet.

Where do you go when your sons are about to be sold into slavery? You go to the prophet. Where do you go when there's death in the pot? You go to the prophet. He knows exactly what to do. And then we have one more miracle at the end that's going to be very familiar to anyone who knows the stories of the Gospels. We're told that a man from a place called Baal Shalasha, he brought to Elisha bread. the firstfruits. So this would have been, that same Hebrew phrase is used in, I think it's

Leviticus 23, to describe the offerings that are brought at Pentecost. So the second major feast of the Israelite year. So he brings this offering, the bread of the firstfruits, 20 loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. And Elisha said, give it to the men that they may eat but his servant said how can i set this before a hundred men so he repeated give them to the men that they may eat for thus says the lord they shall eat and have some left yeah i like elijah being like did i stutter did you not hear what i said i said give them to the men that they may eat so he said it before them and they ate and they had some left according to according to the word of the lord yeah i think

that this is maybe a miracle that you know if you're not overly familiar with the bible even if you're pretty familiar with the bible i guess you know you're not you might not connect everybody i mean everybody that's ever spent like five seconds in church knows that jesus feeds five thousand people you know five loaves two fish you know he also feeds four thousand people with you know seven loaves this whole thing five thousand for sure uh lesser known miracle though is elisha setting this up so but you know you know who did know about this all those people that jesus fed yes they know about this for sure right yeah yeah for jesus to do that i mean there is a statement being made about like who he is to do it not once but but twice it's probably one of the one of the

reasons that all four gospel writers record the feeding of the 5 000 yeah because there's such an obvious parallel here with what uh with what elisha did you know you have uh you have a little bit of food you have a whole lot of people you even have a servant in an andrew-like fashion saying how can i set this before 100 men right yeah he should he should have been thinking about this before he said that is what he should have been and of course what does jesus do he comes in and says hey remember when uh when elijah fed like a hundred guys with like 20 loaves of bread yeah but to feed 5 000 people with five loaves of bread yeah yeah you you think that was great hold my beer yeah we're gonna we're gonna feed 5 000 just just men not even counting the women and

yeah children and i mean obviously that's what that's the other correlation is that And even in the language of men, it could tell you how many people it was, but it doesn't. It tells you it's men. It's this many men. And obviously here it's talking about men. And I think that there's a line trying to be drawn. Like this miracle is like this miracle, just greater. Yeah, and in case for some reason you didn't catch the significance of the feeding of the 5,000,

Jesus says, well, you know what? I'm going to also feed 4,000. I'm going to do this twice So you can make the connection to Elijah Pretty great And that takes us through the end of Chapter 4

Now a lot of good stuff coming up in chapter 5 Because we get to hear about Naaman and his skin disease And all the good Baptism stuff We're about to talk about some baptism Next episode Well alright Chad

We will have to wait because we are out of time so make sure you go to 1517 make sure you register for the conference and make sure you tune in next week for Naaman and his leprosy Chad I'll see you then alright see you then Thank you.