2 Kings 2. Again, this is the second lesson
in Elisha, his life and miracles. And we're going to look at 2
Kings 2 verses 19-22. Just a short section for this evening. Now, Elijah had just gotten done
parting the Jordan in front of the prophets, the sons of the
prophets, and Elijah was taking from him. His mantle fell. Elisha
picked up the mantle and that was evidence of his being under
Elijah and in God's man for the time. sons of the prophets, they saw
that and they said that, it says in verse 15, the spirit of Elisha
does rest on Elisha and they came and met him and bowed themselves
to the ground before him. And so now he's over on the Jericho
side and he's, just finished his conversation with the 50
basically unbelieving men. They wanted to find Elijah's
body. And he said, Don't go, it's not there. And they just
kept on after him. And then Elijah finally yielded
and said, Go ahead. And then they looked three days
and didn't find it. And he said, I told you not to go. This is
where we pick up this evening's lesson in verse 19. And the men
of the city, that is Jericho, said unto Elijah, Behold, I pray
thee, The situation of this city is pleasant as my Lord sees,
but, but the water is not and the ground is barren. Elijah
said, bring me a new cruise and put salt therein and they brought
it to him. And he went forth unto the springs
of the water and cast the salt in there and said, thus saith
the Lord. I, the Lord, have healed these
waters. There shall not be from thence
any more death or barren land. So the waters were healed unto
this day according to the saying of Elisha, which he spake." Now,
on the surface, the first thing we have is the request. These
men gather around Elisha and they have a request. But notice
how it's worded. This is so typical of religion
of this day. Notice how it's worded. Behold, we pray thee, I pray
thee. What has that got to do with
your question? Just ask your question. Okay? Behold, I pray
thee. The situation of this city, it's
pleasant. Look at all the churches. Look
at all the parks. Look at all the stuff that we
have going for us. However, but, but, but, the water is not. Now that word
not means bad or evil. The city's pleasant, but the
water, and you know how long you can live without water, without
good water is bad or evil. And then they make this comment,
and the ground barren. Now that word barren means miscarry. So the margin reading is correct.
The ground is caused, because the water is bad, this causes
the ground to miscarry. What they're saying is this. We're fine. The city's pleasant.
We just have this little problem, this small problem. The Lord
cursed the city. You remember Jericho? This is
Jericho. The Lord said he cursed it after the walls came down.
He cursed the city. The water is bad and the ground
causes to miscarry. So to rephrase this in a little
bit more direct, The question is, our request to the man of
God, God is salvation. Our cattle, our wives, our children's
progeny, the fruit, the trees are all dying or will die. They miscarry. And I started
to research this a little bit more. The water is bad. There is some reason in it. The
women drank it. It miscarried. The cattle, the sheep, the birds,
the pets, the fruit. But isn't our city pleasant?
Isn't our city pleasant? That's today's religion. It says
it has the same mindset. It has the same mindset. We're
kind of sinful. but not too bad. He does good things for people.
He pays his taxes. He doesn't smoke and chew and
run around with those who do. You know, Henry used to say that.
All these different things, but they're missing. Water is life. And they can't even have any
offspring, flora, fauna, human, otherwise. Death is all around these people,
but we just have a happy false gospel thought. That's all. No, this calls for an absolute
God-given miracle for healing this city if God chooses to do
so. They came to him. They came to
Elijah. We won't, you know, we won't,
we're not going to let, this is our city, this is where mom
and dad were raised, etc, etc. But there's no gospel here. If God wills, I'll heal this place. You and
I are dying, we are extremely sinful, we're anti-God, anti-Christ,
We love quick, painless, man-made, man-centered religious fixes. And they wanted Elisha to do
something. Don't bring God into this thing. Just preach a generic
gospel. Just preach a gospel that says
God loves everybody and it's rest is up to you. Just preach
a cooperative, three-part, us, God and the Holy Spirit cooperating,
just do that. But here's what Elisha does.
He says, bring me a cruz, and that's like a little bowl, a
little crucible. Bring me a cruz, a new cruz,
I'm sorry. Bring me a new cruz and put salt
in it. And he went forth into the spring
waters and cast the salt in there and said, thus saith the Lord,
the Lord has healed these waters. There shall not be from thence
any more death or barren land. This is a miracle. The cruise, it's an empty vessel. It's like us. We're born this
way. We're born empty vessels. We're
not strong enough to remedy anything. We're void of anything good.
We need a sovereign miracle, an uncommon gospel to heal our
polluted waters. Let us bring a new cruise. And we are new creatures in Christ.
He didn't put new wine in old bottles. That's kind of a similar
picture out of the New Testament. We're new creatures in Christ,
used by our Master to show forth His discriminating and distinguishing
grace. And yet we're still just vessels.
Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Verse 7, 2 Corinthians 4 verse
7, but we have this treasure, this gospel, the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ, verse 6, but we have this treasure
in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and
not of us. So he takes this, he says, give
me this empty cruise, new cruise. All things are new. I'm not going
to use the, I'm not going to, I'm not going to reform the old
man. Give me this new. And then he says, give me salt.
And that's us as well. In a sense, we are the salt of
the earth. Are we not? And the earth is
preserved while we are in it. If it, if the, what did you say?
The days would be shortened if it weren't for the elect. This
thing would be done if it wasn't. There's still a lot that's got
to be saved. So we're kind of like this, salt. Also, salt kills. You know, you've heard the stories
of people that have been lost at sea, and they try to drink
salt water. They do very much that, they're
going to die. new cruise and salt, and then
puts the salt in the water? Why would you do that? Salt by
itself will kill, but it also preserves. It's a picture of
the gospel. So you're telling me that we
have to be new creatures, like this new cruise, and we have
to have salt applied. And as we understand the gospel
and receive the gospel and believe the gospel, we are salt. We take
on that characteristic of the gospel. And the gospel is also
likened to salt. It kills before it makes alive.
So you're saying we must die before we live? Yes, we should.
Yes, we have to. And that's the effect of the
true gospel preaching. It tears down before it builds up. The
flesh must be put down and the spirit must reign. The false gospel heals no one,
but the truth, when received like an empty vessel, will produce
life. Who ever heard of healing waters
with salt? And you know that only in Christ
Jesus do we have eternal life. Do we have eternal life. Well,
what's the result? Well, the result is, verses 21
and 22, he went forth and he cast the salt in there, the Lord
healed these waters, and so in verse 22, the waters were healed
to this day according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.
The first result is he says, Thus saith the Lord, only by
God through Christ and with His Holy Spirit can we be totally
healed. Elijah is just a mouthpiece. He's just the instrument. Like
any person who understands the gospel, when we share the gospel
with somebody, it's not us. It's the words, the truth that's
spoken. So that's why he said, it's not
me. It's not me. The Lord, thus saith
the Lord, I have healed these waters. The Lord has healed these
waters. He did not say I, Elisha, healed
them. No. Secondly, He did not say
I by my supposed free will healed them. No. He didn't say you and
I and God with all three cooperating together healed. No. No, never. He does all the work or does
no work. He saves by grace alone or does
not save at all. He saves by the blood of the
Lamb or does not heal anyone. The second result is there's
no more death. I have healed these waters, verse
21, there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land. So he took that which they said
was pleasant, their skewed vision, He took that which was unpleasant
and He made it pleasant. No more death. Either we are
totally cleansed or we still have some iniquity to pay for. Either Christ said it is finished
or He's a failure. We preach either a completed,
a finished or an absolute gospel or no gospel at all. No gospel
at all. It's not a partial healing, it's
a complete healing and it's all the Lord's work. And that's what
we stand on. We stand on the free and sovereign
grace and we're not going to compromise this. By God's grace,
we are not going to compromise this. Because that's how God saves
sinners and no other way. And you're going to hear that.
You're going to hear who God is and what He's done. We must
own up like these men didn't In verse 19, we must own up our
cities. It's nasty. Our city is polluted. Our hearts are polluted. That's what I mean. I'm using
the context here in verses 19, what they said, behold, our city
is pleasant. No. The city may be pleasant, but
we're talking spiritual, spiritual application. We must say, no.
I don't have any good in me, not any good at all. There's
none righteous, no, not one. There's none that doeth good,
says the Scriptures, Romans 3, no, not one. So that's what we
say. And we don't try to have the
mindset or however you want to phrase it, like religion does,
try to show all the supposed good and don't ever talk about
the Scriptures, the truth of the Scriptures. So we say, behold,
we just get right to them, the situation of this city, it's
not pleasant. And the water is nought and the
ground is barren. And the prophet, blessed be God, like Jonah, he
didn't want to go preach to those people. He was running. And he came back. And it could
be in this town, in this county. that there are those who are
like the Ninevites, who cannot discern the right hand from the
left hand. We must have compassion on them, because we are no better.
Who has made us to differ? It's only
by God's grace. So we own up to our hearts are
full of death and dying. No, it's not pleasant. And that
word pleasant is good. It's not good. There's none good,
no, not one. There's none good but God, the scripture says.
You're not good by nature. I am not good by nature. Our
children are not good by nature. So the only thing I can think of
is when we ask for mercy and grace, and puradventure, God
will be kind to us in spite of ourselves, like He was to these
people in 2 Kings. He could have just walked on
over, split the Jordan, walked on by, said, we need to find
them. No, you don't, and just kept on walking. But he stopped
and he gave them audience. We need to bear one another's
burdens. We need to bear one another's burdens in this vile,
sinful world. Friends, neighbors, whatever
you want to call them, if they don't understand the Gospel, they are
like us from birth. They're not good. But peradventure, this being
seen by the Holy Spirit, conviction, and confession, and humility,
and owning up to our sinner-hood, and just like I say, perventure,
Elisha would stop. Elisha would stop. Like old blind
Bartimaeus, he got the Lord's attention and he stopped. He
just said, be merciful to me, a sinner. Lord, have mercy on
me. And that's what we need to see.
We don't need to be playing games, because God knows, as Nathan
preached Sunday, He sees everything, knows everything, knows what's
in our mind, our hearts, our actions. We just need to be honest
and confess. And if He gives the heart of
confession, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins for
Christ's sake. Amen. Nathan, would you close
us?