I like that song. That's one
of my favorites. Hey, Cora, how's Dave doing?
He's good. Okay. He came out of the kiln,
but otherwise he's good. Is he eating? Is the food going
in all right? He's doing great. Great, glad to hear that. 2 Kings chapter 6, we're going
to read the first seven verses. The title of my message tonight
is, Swimming Iron. Swimming Iron. And the sons of the prophets
said unto Elisha, Behold now, the place where we dwell with
thee is too straight for us. Let us go, we pray thee, unto
Jordan, and take thence every man a beam, and let us make a
place there where we may dwell. And he answered, said, Go ye.
And one said, Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants. And he said, I will go. So he
went with them, and when they came to the Jordan, they cut
down wood. But as one was felling a beam,
The axe head fell into the water, and he cried and said, Alas,
master, for it is borrowed. And the man of God said, Where
fell it? And he showed him the place. And he cut down a stick
and cast it in thither, and the iron did swim. Therefore said
he, Take it up to thee. And he put out his hand and took
it up." Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, Blessed
be thy name. Holy be thy name. Glorious in
your person and in your judgments. We praise you for who you are
and we thank you that we have been given the privilege through
God-given faith to recognize who you are, to know you, to know even Jesus Christ whom
thou hast sent. We don't deserve anything from
you but wrath, for we are sinners all. Yet you and your goodness and
your kindness and your long-suffering chose us in Christ before the
world began. predestinated us to be conformed
to the image of Your Son, justified us, called us, glorified us,
saved us by Your grace, gave us a new heart and a new
mind, and made us a new creature. We thank You for life that is
hid in Jesus Christ. We're thankful that you don't
let us fool with that, but you have given it to us so we would
understand and know who you are and that you are working all
things together for our good. Father, we praise you and thank
you for that. We thank you, Father, that in
your word we're continually reminded of what we are, of our great
need our utter dependence upon you. We are thankful, Father,
that you have provided all things necessary for us. From old eternity till the day
when this world ends and time is no more, our course has been
set. What a thing to think of these
things that are too high for us and too noble and too holy. We can only bow our heads in
thanksgiving and praise and say to you be glory and honor and
power and majesty. Father, we pray for those of
our company who are sick and going through trials. Thou knowest. We will remember especially Dave
as he's recovering from this infection and he's doing so well.
We pray you'd continue to minister him and Clara Continue to pray for Henry, Wayne,
and Laverne, Robert, and Jenny, and Ralph. We ask Lord your help
for them. We know that thou art God and
we are thankful that they know that thou art God. Bless us all
to remember each other and call each other's names out to heaven. And help us, Lord, tonight, as
we consider these things, to be found worshiping Jesus Christ,
who is worthy of all praise and honor. It's in His name we pray. Amen. Now this is the record of another
miracle at the hand of the prophet Elisha. He's called the prophet
of miracles because he did so many and we'll see many more
before we end studying his life. Now a miracle is a miracle because
the elements of it cannot be reproduced or accomplished by
natural means. That's what a miracle is. A miracle
is something that there is no rational, humanly logical explanation
for as to how it took place. Here in this text, an iron axe
head is said to swim. There is no simple explanation
for this save that it is a miracle. I've dropped iron in the water
and heavy things in the water. I've never seen one of them float
to the top or swim away. I've never seen that. If we had
seen such a thing, we would have stood with our mouths agape and
our countenance askance. But miracles are not for explaining.
They are about awe. They are about stopping men in
their tracks in order to confront them with their own inability
and turn their eyes to God. Miracles are not happenstance. They do not pop up willy-nilly.
and do not rely on circumstance and are not a way of fixing something. They are ordained and they fall
within the realm of God's providential dealing with His people to show
forth the glories of His person and the purpose of His salvation,
the salvation of His elect. And all the elements that surround
the losing and the recovering of this axe head took place for
the loss and recovery of the axe head. That's what it was
all about. It was lost and recovered because God meant for it to be
lost. God meant for it to be recovered. The axe head was lost
so that it would be found. Wherein how it was lost was ordained
so that the manner of its recovery could only be attributed to a
supernatural power of God. and qualified as a miracle from
God. That's why all this took place.
The story runs thus. After the departure of Leprous
Gehazi, and perhaps because of it, the number of students in
the Prophet School began to grow. Now the School of the Prophets
was not a seminary. It was a place, usually the prophet's
house, where young men gathered to be taught by the prophet and
instructed in the things of God. It was not a factory to create
prophets or to manufacture prophets. It was the school of the prophet,
the prophet's school. And you came there to learn from
him. One cannot talk to be a prophet
any more than one can be taught to be a preacher. Among these
young men, one was ordained to be a prophet. It was an appointment
made for him prior to the foundation of the world. Our Lord said to
Jeremiah the prophet in chapter 1 and verse 4, Then came the
word of the Lord to me, saying, Behold, I formed thee in the
belly, or before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. And
before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee,
made you holy, set you apart, and I ordained thee a prophet
unto the nations, as long before he was born. If you're a preacher or a prophet,
No training will make you so. And you don't go to school to
be a preacher. And you didn't go to school to
be a prophet. If one of these young men had
attended the instruction at the feet of the prophet, it would
serve him in understanding, but would have nothing to do with
his calling. God calls men, appoints men,
puts men in the gospel, entrusts men with the gospel, simply because
He will. No man, prophet or preacher,
would ever say that he's qualified for the job, because no man is. No man is. At this time, the
school had outgrown its facilities. So one of the students approaches
Elijah and seeks his approval to move the school to Jordan,
where there is an abundance of trees, and there to build a school
large enough to house the growing number of students. And this
is indicated by the words used in the original language. The
word dwell is normally interpreted where we sit. where we sit. This indicates the practice of
sitting at the feet of the prophet and learning from him. And the
word with thee suggests that Elijah was one who sat with them
and taught them. It also shows us the respect
and reverence that these young men had for this prophet. When
they asked him, they didn't say, let's go do this. They said,
we pray thee. We pray Thee. And that is a plea
that indicates that these young men would not do this without
the clear approval of Elijah. And not only did they seek his
approval, they also made it clear that they didn't want to go without
his presence. They wanted him to be with them when they went.
That's what it says in verse 3, Be content, I pray Thee, and
go with Thy servants. And he answered and said, I will
go. When our Lord was sending Moses, to take the people out
of Egypt into the promised land. Moses had a request for the Lord. In Exodus chapter 33, in verse
12, it says, And Moses said unto the Lord, See, thou sayest unto
me, Bring up this people, and thou hast not let me know whom
thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee
by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Now therefore
I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now
thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy
sight, and consider that this nation is thy people. And God
said, My presence will go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
And Moses said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, Carry
me not up thence. If you ain't going with me, don't
make me go. Don't make me go." And that's
the same sentiment of these young men who were set at the feet
of Elisha. Another thing that is clear is
that these young men were of one accord and one mind, and
equally involved in this endeavor, for it said, every man take a
bean. Every man take a beam. So the prophet and his students
went to Jordan and started logging according to verse four. So they
went with them and when they came to Jordan, they cut down
wood. And as one young student was
felling a tree, the ax head was loosed from the handle and fell
into the murky depths of the Jordan. The young man was beside
himself with anxiety because the axe was not his. He said
it was borrowed. But one rendering of that phrase
is, ah master, it is salt. It is salt, suggesting that he
had looked for it, but could not find it. The prophet asked
him where it fell, and when he was shown the location, the prophet
instructed the student to cut off a limb and cast it in the
water where the axe had fallen. Then, in matter-of-fact language,
we are told, the iron did swim. The iron did swim. And this matter-of-fact
language continues in verse 7 as the young man was told to pick
it up, take it to himself. And he did as he was told. And this story ends in verse
7. And it ends without a record of fanfare. or shock and awe. And I think that the lack of
the hyperbolic language does not discount the probability
of amazement and wonder, but rather suggests that these are
believers. These young men knew the source
of the recovery because Elijah had been used of the Lord for
several miracles up to this point. And the story ends there. The commentaries I read dealt
with the story well and accounted that it was a miracle, it was
a wonder, and according to who you read, placed emphasis on
this or that aspect of the story. And I didn't read one, I read
about nine. I read about nine different commentaries
on it. But what I didn't find in my
search for help was a clear presentation of Christ and Him crucified. And I mulled over this for the
last several weeks. I'd read it and think about it,
and read it again and think about it, going back several times
and reading the account, looking for what I knew was there. A typification of Christ and
His work in the salvation of sinners. I know it's there. I
know it's there. Now I have been accused over
the years of over-typifying. I've had several old preachers
tell me, you just find Christ everywhere. Yeah, I hope so.
I keep trying. But I've been accused of over-typifying
for Christ in every passage of Scripture. And to this accusation
I confess that I'm guilty and I can't seem to help myself.
I do, however, have it on sound authority that this pursuit is
reasonable and worthwhile and is the job of the man whom God
has put into the ministry. Our Lord said that this book
was about Him. He said, You search the Scriptures
for anything in them that you think you find eternal life.
They are they which testify of Me. They testify of Me. Over in Luke chapter 24, you're
familiar with this because I've read it so many times from this
pulpit, but let's turn there anyway. In Luke chapter 4, our
Lord is talking to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. He is
holding their eyes so they can't know who He is. He's told them,
ought not Christ to have suffered these things and entered into
glory? And their hearts were burning within them, because
they said that later, did not our hearts burn within them?
Something was going on, this man that was speaking to them.
And he says in verse 26 of chapter 24, Ought not Christ, who hath
suffered these things, and enter into his glory? And beginning
at Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, beginning
at Moses, and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all
the Scriptures the things concerning himself. And they do nigh unto
the village where they went, and he made as though he would
go after them, and they bid him to stay with them. Then over
in verse 44, our Lord speaks again. He said, These are the
words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that
all things must be fulfilled, which are written in the law
of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning
me. Then opened he their understanding,
that they might understand. the Scriptures. When do you understand
the Scriptures? When are your eyes opened to
understanding? When? When you see Christ in
every line of this book. Your eyes have begun to be open. Our Lord said these words. The only book He had was the
Old Testament. The Gospels were not written
until almost 70 years after our Lord returned to glory. The first
epistle, probably around 42 AD. What did he have? He had the
Old Testament. He said, that book, from Moses to Malachi,
that's about me. And then he opened their eyes
so they could understand the Scriptures. And in this passage
of Scripture that we've read tonight, are words and phrases
and employment of specific language tools that declare the gospel
and the miracle of salvation. First, there's a picture of the
church. It is expanding and in need of a larger place to meet
and be taught. And note that this occurs out
of necessity, not out of church planting. They did not say to
the prophet, let's build a big old building and invent ways
to fill it up. We can have parachute Sunday
and fill a pew night and banana pew night, whoever brings the
biggest bunch. We can have a lot of ways. We can put, I remember
one church in Western Salem many years ago put a $5 bill under
one of the seats in the church bus. And people piled on that
church bus every Sunday morning to go to Sunday school. So hopefully
they did get the $5 bill, the $5 bill. Jerry Falwell advertised one
time a huge summer deal up in Virginia, and he advertised it
in a full-page ad in the Winston-Salem Journal, and that's a pretty
big cost. That wasn't in Virginia, that
was in the Winston-Salem Journal. And he advertised it as the biggest
Sunday school since Pentecost. That's how it was advertised.
The only problem with that, they didn't have Sunday school at
Pentecost. They didn't have Sunday school
until the 1700s in the United States, and it was invented not
to teach children the Bible, but the only man in town that
was educated was the preacher, and he invented it to teach the
kids who worked in the mines on Sunday, when they didn't work
in the mines, math and English and how to read and write and
cipher, and that's what he did. The word taught by the prophet
here, is important and resulted in more young men
showing up to here. That's what happened when they
were at Gilgal. And it is the Lord that adds
to the church daily then that should be saved. Barney used
to say, if I ever had to start a church, and he started one
in Winston-Salem on Acadia Avenue. It didn't last long because Rob
Barnett was so mean. People couldn't stand to be around
him. And he certainly could never be a pastor because he just was
railing everybody all the time. And you just can't do that because
the job of a pastor according to Scripture is to comfort the
people of God with the gospel. But Barnard used to say, if I
ever start another one, he said, I'm going to build a building
and I'm going to put one pew right there. He said, as soon
as that one fills up, I'll put another one behind it. Put another one behind it. The
reason they had to go to Jordan to build a new place for them
to meet was that God had added so many young men to the church
to hear the prophets speak. Another aspect of the church
is that these young men as well as the prophet were of one mind
and one heart to build a place where they could all gather and
be taught the Word of God. The church is where you will
find the prophet, the prophet. The church is where you will
find him. The Lord Jesus Christ will be found in his church. That's pictured by Zacchaeus
climbing up that tree. That tree was a picture of the
church. It's a picture of the church. If you're going to see
Christ, that's where you're going to see him. When John saw Christ
revealed on the Isle of Patmos in the first chapter of Revelation,
the first thing he saw was the church. He said, Behold, I saw
seven candlesticks, and in the midst of the candlesticks stood
one. The Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord
said that where two or three are gathering in His name, that
He would be in the midst of them. If you're going to find Christ,
you're not going to find Him out in the wilderness. You're
not going to find Him in the cathedral of nature. You're going
to find Him in a church that preaches the gospel. That's where
you're going to find Christ. If I was you, I'd be about to
be in there. That's where I want to be. That's where I want to
be. Then there are the words that
are spoken in this chapter. Words. Communications from God. And in this passage we have the
Jordan. That's there. We have trees. We have iron. We have a fall. We have something lost. We have
something found. And then we have a dead thing
being made alive. I can stop right there and y'all
go home and have a good time tonight. Couldn't you just look
through there and see what I'm talking about? You know where I'm going
with this. And we'll look at them to see
these words as they apply to the gospel, and it's not going
to take a stretch of your imagination. And we'll do it in no particular
chronology, but rather in terms of the story of salvation. First,
we have the description of the axe head. It's iron. It's iron. Where does iron come
from? It comes from the earth. comes
from the earth though it is found in many environments and materials
it is found in the earth in the dirt and to go from the elements
of the ferrite it must be taken from the earth and formed by
skilled hands to eventuate into the product of iron. This speaks
of man. Man was formed from the elements
of the earth and then he was a human being. He was dirt before
that. That's what our history is. Go
on that website on there, heritage.com and see if it takes you back
to dirt. If it don't, it don't take you back far enough. Because
that's where we came from and that's where we're going to return.
And iron is also used in language to metaphorically describe things
like hardness and coldness and obstinacy and intractability. These are all elements of the
character and the psychology and the psychopathy of a rebellious
humanity. Hard. Cold. obstinate, intractable. Iron also comes to its singularity
in a forge, formed by fire and heat. And humanity came to be
what it was in the fires of judgment against sin in the Garden of
Eden. And finally, iron is inanimate. It's without life. It's not a
living thing. It's not a living thing. Neither
are you, as you are born into this world. you're dead and trespasses
in sin. Secondly, the iron axe head was
lost. How was it lost? It was lost
in a fall. Wasn't it? It was lost in a fall. So was all humanity lost in the
fall of Adam. Thirdly, the iron fell where?
Into the Jordan. Symbolic of death. And man, when
he fell dead, or when he fell, he died spiritually, began to
die physically, and is described as dead in trespasses and sin. That's what man is. He's described
as a carcass, a dead thing, without life, without hope in this world.
If you're without life, what are you? You're dead. You're
like that little child, that little female child, representative
of the church in Ezekiel 16, that on the trip, because she
was too much of a burden, a woman was a burden back then, they
just had to be taken care of, they were considered as property,
not very useful property for the most part, they kept the
boy children on the trips, but on a long trip, the girl children
were just cast out into the field. Still connected to the umbilical
cord, neither wrapped, nor swaddled, nor washed with water, kept out
and left to die. And that's a picture of humanity. We're still connected by an umbilical
cord to Adam, our father, when we are born. We are cast aside
and nobody cares about our person. We are thrown out in the field
to die because nobody can help us and we're not of any use to
the company. We're of no value whatsoever.
But it says that Jesus Christ came by, that God came by on
the scene and that poor little girl who was left to die was
now dead. And He walked by and said, It's
the time of love. When I saw you in your blood,
I said, Live. And she lived. He said it twice. I said unto thee, Live. We are
spiritually dead. And it takes God to walk by our
rotting, hated, despised and not cared for carcass and cry
out to us, LIVE! And He does it by the Gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Also the iron was lost. It was lost in a fall and it
was lost. It is true. It is a true thing.
And I found this to be true and I know this will strike a chord
with you. That the value of a thing grows
exponentially when it cannot be found. Have you ever noticed
that? If you go looking for something
and you can't find it, the longer it takes, the more value it has
to you. The more value. I remember one
time Deb was coming back from somewhere and Deb dropped an
earring, or reached up and couldn't find an earring. And she bothered
about that thing until she found it. It took on a whole new value,
didn't it? Just because you couldn't put
your hands on it. This thing was lost. And this
young man, to this young man who was holding the half of the
axe when the head flew off into the Jordan, this thing became
of extreme value to him. Alas, Master! The last master
I've searched and I've served. There arises an urgency when
we lose something and cannot find it. I've told this story
many times. It still makes me feel exactly
the same way I felt when it happened. That's how important it was to
me back when we were After Josh was born, he was about
two years old, and I was studying, and I had that old black wood
stove, and I didn't know how to use a wood stove much. I always
either got it too hot or not hot enough, and I was sitting
by the, back when that front room was a porch, and we had
a sliding glass door there, and I'd got it too hot in there,
and it was probably in the fall or maybe early winter, and I
had the stove on, and so I cracked that door. that door on that
sliding door. And I had my desk, and I worked
on a little school desk back then, and I was too big for it,
and it was too small for me, but I put it there in front of
where I'd crack the door, and I was working on a message. Well,
sometimes I get over-involved in things like that, and I just,
you know, my mind locks in, and I don't see or hear anything.
Somehow, my little two-year-old son walked right by me. And he had to walk right by me.
He had to kind of squeeze behind me to get out that door. and
I didn't see him. I didn't know. Then I forgot who discovered
and said, where's Josh? I don't know whether it was Debbie
or me. I can't remember. Well, I don't know. And we looked
all around the house and he wasn't there. And then we began to value
him far greater than we had when we thought he was in the house
And we began to worry, and there was an urgency, and we ran up
and down Big Cove Road, screaming his name, Josh, Josh, Josh, behind
the church, underneath the church, everywhere, Josh, Josh, two years
old. Our boy is gone. And I ran across
the road, and there he was, down at the bottom of the hill, throwing
rocks in the creek, two years old. I wanted to tan his hide,
but I couldn't. I was so happy to see him. I'll tell you, in that moment,
I never valued my son more than that moment. Why? Because he was lost, and I couldn't
find him. That's this piece of iron. It's
lost. It's lost. We sense the urgency in the words
of our Lord as He said He would leave the ninety and nine and
go out in the wilderness and search for His lost sheep until
He found it. The one who lost the iron knew
the approximate area in which it had fallen. He knew that it
was enwrapped in the dark death at the bottom of the Jordan.
The young man called out to the prophet for help. He could not
find it or retrieve it himself. And if it was to be found, he
knew that God Himself must somehow find this thing. How often have
mothers and fathers cried out in despair for God to find and
recover their child, their lost child, who was in death and sin. And they do so because they know
they can't retrieve it. They can't save him. They can't find him. The prophet
goes to the place where the iron was lost. He does a thing that
cannot be discerned by human logic. He doesn't drag the river
with grappling hooks, that's what we'd do, or reroute the
river, or simply call on the iron to come up out of the deep.
He cuts down a stick. He cuts down a stick, or what's
that got to do with anything? He cuts down a stick. But the
word stick here, everywhere else in Scripture is actually translated
tree. Cut down a tree. Cuts down a
tree. How often our Lord is referred
to as a tree in the Scripture. In Genesis 3.24, He's the tree
of life, whose way is kept by that altar at the east of Eden. where Cain and Abel offered up
their offerings. God put it there with that flaming
sword, His shekinah glory between the two cherubim, to guard and
keep the way of the tree of life, is what it says. Christ is the
way. Over in Psalm, One, most people
who look at this psalm automatically try to straighten out people's
life, but this psalm, like every other psalm, is a messianic psalm,
and it's first and foremost about the Lord Jesus Christ, the first
psalm. Verse 3, it says, Blessed is
the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. I don't
know but one man that has ever done that. Nor standeth in the
way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But
his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth
he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree,
planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit
in due season. His leaf also shall not wither,
and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." That's the language
applied to Jesus Christ throughout the Scripture. In Revelation
22, it speaks of Him being the tree of life. with twelve manner
of fruits that feed the nations. And then as He was walking up
Golgotha's hill, and the women of Israel with their children
were weeping and moaning as they looked at His bloody carcass
walking up that hill naked and ripped to shreds with the cat
of nine tails. They were weeping and crying
out. And He looked at them and He says, Don't weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your
children. For if they have done this in
a green tree, what shall they do in the dry? What shall they
do in the dry? He was a tree declared to be
so. And was He not cut down? Did not Isaiah say in the 53rd
chapter, He was cut off? And for the sins of my people
was He stricken? Also, Daniel said, Messiah in
chapter 9 shall be cut off, but not for Himself. Could this tree
not also represent our Lord's cross or His crucifixion? Where
was the tree cast? was cast into the Jordan, into the death that the Jordan
represents, and that by the prophet's word himself. Did our Lord not
by Himself enter into death and die in the room instead of His
people? Did He not die their death? And the result is sweetly declared.
The iron did swim. The word swim gives this inanimate,
hard, cold, lifeless thing characteristics of animation and life. It swims. It doesn't float. It doesn't
simply rise. It swims. And I looked it up,
that's the first definition of this word in the Hebrew. Float
is way down the line is definition. And the tense of the verb is
an active tense. An active tense, I believe it's
the participle voice. Swimming is activity. Leaving
activity. The language declares that the
iron lives. What a thing that Christ and
Him crucified gives life to dead sinners. Life to dead sinners. And finally, the one to whom
the lost iron was so important is told, take it up to thee. And he took it up. The saved
sinner is given to the church that he might be used for what
he was made. Think of the widow of Nain. As they carried her
son down to be buried, the Lord touched the bier upon which he
laid, and the boy woke up, and He gave him to his mother, it
says. He returned him to his mother.
Jerusalem, which above is the mother of us all, saith the Scripture. To the family of Lazarus, our
Lord said, after He had awakened him from the dead, Loose him
and let him go. He's free now. He's free now. And that's what the church does.
Turn people loose and lets them go. To Jarius, after he had raised
his daughter, said, Give her something to eat. And that's
what the church does. He gives the child of God something
to eat. Him who is raised from the dead.
He turns him loose, gives him something to eat, and returns
him to his mother. Take it up to thee. And he took
it up. Swimming iron. Lost, saved sinner. To God be the glory. Father bless
us. Try understanding. We pray in
Christ's name. Amen.