Israel #9 Jehoram. 2 Kings 3:1-9:25 Reigned 12 years.

1 Kings 3-4 Five of Elisha’s miracles.

Elisha Miracle #4 2 Kings 3 Filling the valley with water and deceiving the Moabites to think it is a valley of blood. A sad thing occurred when a desperate King of Moab offered his oldest son who was to reign after him as a burnt offering.

Elisha Miracle #5 2 Kings 4 Widow’s oil multiplied during the drought, only limited by the number of vessels that she brought to be filled. Life Lesson: Apparently she could have found many, many more vessels and they would have been filled with oil but she wasn’t thinking about maximizing the oil. She was satisfied with the vessels that she filled, and then the miraculous oil supply stopped. Isn’t that the way it is with our spiritual blessings. If you ask, the Lord will fill your vessel (you) with innumerable, limitless, spiritual blessings. Ask, seek, knock and it will be given to you. Luke 6:38: Jesus teaches a principle of reciprocity, stating that giving to others results in a return that is “pressed down, shaken together, and running over”, echoing ancient market practices where merchants compacted grain inside a measure to maximize the amount poured into a buyer’s garment. Ephesians 3:²⁰ Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us.” Don’t be satisfied with just a minimal amount of spiritual blessings, with just going to church or saying a prayer now and then or singing praise and worship one day a week. There are so many more spiritual blessings that you can have if you ask for the.

Elisha Miracle #6 Shunemite woman given a child, as a reward for her hospitality to Elisha, giving him a place to stay, but he dies later and Elisha raised him from the dead 2 Kings 4 We see signs of weakness in Gehazi, Elisha’s servant, b/c he would not raise the child. Elisha had to come and stretch out on the child to raise him from the dead. Life Lesson: This woman was blessed for her hospitality. Often the New Testament speaks of Christian hospitality. The Bible commands and encourages hospitality as an active expression of love for strangers, fellow believers, and those in need. Hebrews 13:2 (ESV): Encourages showing hospitality to strangers, noting that some have entertained angels unaware. 1 Peter 4:9 (ESV): Advises believers to show hospitality to one another without complaining. Romans 12:13 (ESV): Calls for contributing to the needs of the saints and pursuing hospitality. When is the last time you invited someone to a meal in your home, someone who doesn’t have the resources to repay you by inviting you to their home.

Elisha Miracle #7 Poisonous stew made edible 2 Kings 4. Be careful what herbs and plants you put in your stew!

Elisha Miracle #8 Barley loaves multiplied 2 Kings 4 to feed 100 prophets. An Old Testament multiplying of the loaves.

Elisha Miracle #9 Healing Naaman’s leprosy. 2 Kings 5.
Naaman was captain of the army of the king of Aram (Syria). He had leprosy. A captive Israelite girl suggested he go to the prophet in Israel. Elisha told Naaman to dip in the River Jordan 7 times to be healed. Naaman was furious, expecting Elisha to just wave his hand and cure him; and weren’t the rivers in Damascus better than the Jordan? His servants encouraged him to just humbly do what Elisha said, and he did and was healed. Naaman makes a great confession: “Behold now, I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel”. Naaman offered Elisha a reward but he refused it. Naaman asked Elisha for permission to bow in the house of Rimmon his master when he returns to Syria (apparently a duty he has to perform) and Elisha grants him permission, which seems unusual. Some suggest that Elisha is not really giving permission but Others note that Elisha does not explicitly grant a formal “permission” to sin, but instead leaves Naaman in God’s hands to work out his new faith amidst a complicated pagan culture. Either way, we wish we knew how Naaman’s spiritual life went after he returned to Syria. Did he tell the king about his healing? Did he try to convert other Syrians to the one true God of Israel? Were any of his servants who were with him and encouraged him to do what Elisha said ever converted to Yahweh after seeing the miracle?

Life Lesson: Jesus said, Matthew 18:⁴ Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” The first step to becoming a child of God is humility. It is acknowledging that you can’t be saved by your works or your goodness. Naaman was not humble at first. Once he humbled himself, he was ready to do what Elisha said whether it made sense to him or not, whether it appealed to his prideful way of how he thought Elisha should have healed him. Then he dipped 7 times and was healed. This is a lesson about humility and trusting God’s word. There is a lot of discussion about water baptism in the conversion process in the New Testament. Is it essential to salvation? Does it have to be immersion? Can babies be baptized? I think the New Testament is pretty clear about that. The Greek word for “baptism” is to dip, immerse, submerge. Someone could argue, “what difference does it make if Naaman got sprinkled with water or immersed?” It makes a difference b/c Elisha told him to “dip” in the Jordan. It wasn’t the water that saved him or the amount of water (dipping as opposed to sprinkling). It was humbly obeying the word of God. It isn’t the water of baptism or the amount of water (immersion not sprinkling) that saves us, it is obeying the command, Acts 2:38 “Repent and be baptized (immersed) for the remission of sins”. It certainly appears in Acts 2:38 that baptism comes before receiving the remission of sins (being saved) and other New Testament passages bear that out also. Baptism was for believers: Mark 16:6 “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved”. Babies can’t believe. Babies do not inherit Adam’s sin as the Catholics and others taught, so babies don’t need to be baptized to get rid of Adam’s sin to begin with. Nor are there any babies baptized in the New Testament. I’m not saying that baptism is just a test of our humility, of our willingness to, like Naaman, obey the commands on how to be saved. It is more than that. It is a beautiful burial in water to be raised born again with new spiritual life, just as Jesus was buried and raised (Romans 6:1-6). It is not a “work” but an act of faith (Colossians 2:12). Naaman said that Elisha could have just come out and made a big public cleansing of his leprosy without the dipping, and that is true. Jesus and the apostles could have preached salvation by grace through faith without any water baptism at all, but they didn’t. They included baptism as an essential part of saving faith.

Elisha Miracle #10: 2 Kings 5 Gehazi struck with leprosy.
Elisha’s servant, Gehazi, caught up with Naaman, lied to him about 2 men just arriving who needed silver and clothes, and Naaman gave that to Gehazi. Elisha found out what Gehazi did, and gave Naaman’s leprosy to Gehazi. A great lesson on the danger of doing God’s work for money, which is what most televangelists do today. Greed can corrupt any good ministry, and often does.

Elisha Miracle #11 Lost axe head floats 2 Kings 6. When a prophet was clearing trees a borrowed axe head fell in the water. Elisha made it float and they recovered it.

Elisha Miracle #12 Syrian army blinded 2 Kings 6.Elisha warned Jehoram about Ben-hadad’s plans to kill him on several occasions and saved Jehoram’s life. Benhadad sent his army to Dothan to kill Elisha, surrounding the city. Elisha’s servant was very afraid. Elisha prayed for God to open his eyes to be able to see the Lord’s army of chariots of fire and horses in the mountains. Elisha then struck the Syrian army blind. He carried them into Samaria, and opened their eyes, but told Jehoram not to kill them. They fed them and sent them back to Syria. The marauding bands of Arameans did not come to Israel again after that.

Elisha Miracle #13: Besieged Samaria’s salvation predicted 2 Kings 7. Later, Benhadad besieged Samaria during a famine. A donkey’s head sold for 80 shekels of silver and a pint of dove’s dung sold for 5 shekels. 2 women were arguing b/c one broke their agreement to eat one of their babies on one day and the other the next. Jehoram blamed Elisha for all this (6:31), and sent to kill him. Elisha predicted that by the next day flour and barley would be very inexpensive in Samaria and the city would be spared. He also said that the royal officer, who doubted Elisha’s prediction, would die and not eat of the food. Meanwhile, 4 lepers, who normally lived outside the city on scraps, were desperate and decided to go into the Syrian camp, either to be spared or to die.
God caused the Syrians to hear a sound of chariots of a great army and they fled, leaving food and everything. The lepers came into the camp and found the army gone, and started feasting on the food. But then they felt guilty, and decided to tell the people in Samaria. Jehoram thought it was a trap and that the Syrian army was just hiding. They checked it out and saw that what the lepers said was true. The people went out and plundered the camp, trampling the royal officer in the process just as Elisha had predicted.

Life Lessons: Don’t ever doubt what God can do. You might even hear someone predict or expect God to do some great thing and you scoff b/c it just seems irrational or unbelievable. With God, all things are possible. As William Carey, the father of modern Protestant missions, said, “Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God”. Also, something the 4 lepers said to one another when they entered the deserted Syrian camp and found all the food they left: “We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news, but we are keeping silent; if we wait until morning light, punishment will overtake us. Now therefore come, let us go and tell the king’s household.” I kinda feel that way about the church today. We continuously feed on the word of God with Bible classes, small groups, and sermons. But there are millions of people out there in the world starving for the word of God, for a Bible in their own language, for children’s Bible story books. Organizations like Eastern European Missions (and others) are like the 4 lepers trying to share our rich resources here in the US with those starving people. Or maybe its the clean water that we take for granted in the US, that we waste often, that we continuously water our lawns, that we fill and refill our pools at our homes, etc. But in many foreign countries, people walk miles to get dirty water that animals also infiltrate b/c that’s all they can find. They continuously have water borne diseases and any of their children die young. How concerned are we about that? We don’t have to quit enjoying our seemingly abundant endless supply of water, but we can send money to organizations like Healing Hands (out of Nashville) who drill wells for clean water in Africa, literally saving people’s lives. But churches spend 80% of the money they collect on staff and buildings instead of using most of that money to print Bible, drill wells, and feed the poor.