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Episode 625: In this episode, we dive into a fascinating story from 2 Kings that features the prophet Elisha and a miraculous event that occurs even after his death. We discuss the context of the passage, noting that Elisha was in his final illness and reflecting on the significance of his relationship with King Jehoash of Israel. Despite Jehoash being a bad king who did evil in the sight of the Lord, he recognizes Elisha's prophetic power and seeks his guidance. This leads us to a deeper discussion about the symbolism of the bow and arrows in the story, where Elisha instructs Jehoash to strike the ground with arrows as a sign of victory over their enemies.
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You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Everybody, it's Friday Friday. Thank goodness, It's Friday Friday. Thank god, It's Friday Friday. Right, it's it's what day is it, Chris? It's the day that we fry the day did you ever grow up not? Did you grew up in a culture where people were like dominantly Catholic, where there's no meat on Fridays. I grew up in a pagan culture early in my life and then yeah, yeah, yeah, and then became Christians. I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. Everybody's Italian. Everybody's Italian, right, especially back then, and uh and so it was a dominantly Catholic culture and it was no meat on Fridays. Everywhere. It was all fish. So anyway, all that's say McDonald's. They would have science that's say fish fries on Friday, and they would do the fr I Friday and then they would do fr Y Friday. What a good idea? Yeah, Okay, anyway, there you go. Well today, Chris, we have a big one. It is not everybody's favorite segment. It is not No, this is a guess the word. I'm going to give you clues. Are you indicating it's people a segment that people don't like. No, the segment that everybody loves is make Chrissy, Well that makes Jeff mad. If you want to know, is that we're not doing what made Chris mad this week. Okay, we're doing a guess the word. I couldn't figure out why you were downing this segment. It's similar to taboo, and we like this segment, just not on Friday. And I was just that's so funny. I was just mentioning to Jeff that I think the last I'm not even kidding, probably ten times that we played this game, I was the reader and you're the guesser, right right, So for some reason, I'm finally the guesser. Yes, So I'm looking forward to it. So if you're watching, hopefully we'll put on the screen the words that Jeff cannot say. Yes. Okay, So it's like taboo, yep, and I'm going to try to help get you to do it. Okay. Each one is worth ten thousand points. Ten thousand Yes. When did you become the arbiter of points just now, Okay, you took over. Yep, you surped you you surped my point given generosity ten thousands pretty generous. I am pretty sure I gave you like seven million. Couple feels. Hey, do you want to go with ten thousand? That's fine, yes, okay. Usually it looks like a diamond. Sometimes it looks like a dragon or something else, and you get it to go up in the air. Kids would use a rope and they would get it up in the air. Looks like a diamond, has an arrow. No, no, no, no, no, it looks like a diamond. Little kids wild play with it on on. Days that are blowing, windy days. Yeah, there you go. Kite. I couldn't say. I couldn't say fly, wind, string, sky or tail. Wow, all the things about a kite used for me. Off of a diamond. When you said it looked like a diamond, you should have said. It was shaped shape of a diamond. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I was like, I was like, what looks like a diamond, because kites alongs like diamonds. Okay, it's a region or a place. Oh okay, yes, it's not the desert. You go into it. Usually there's tribes that live in jungle. There you go, jungle. Nice, very good. I couldn't say trees, animals, rainforests, plants are tropical. Okay. It was a hard one. That is hard. Okay, nice. Uh here's a place on the on a college campus that you would go to study. Library. There you library, awesome books, read, borrow, quiet, and shelves. So it wasn't allowed to say, Okay, okay, it's a hard one. Elon Musk is building them and we're all going to own one in a few years. Robots, robot, yep, that's right, that's awesome. I wasn't allowed to say machine, future, technology, program or artificial Okay. This is a tough one. Oh man. When it blows up it wipes out cities at a bomb bo No, no, no, it's a natural occurrence. Like uh yeah, there you go, volcano, good job. I couldn't say lava erupt mountain, magma or fire. Wow. Hey, so what's that fifty thousand points? Yeah? Good job? There go. Do we share them? I mean you're the one who. Got these are so yours? Just you did all the work, wow, Chris, you did all the work? All right? Well, what is it seven million to fifty thousand. That's pretty good that you welcome. Yeah, I'm gaining ground, gaining ground. Okay, there's there's plenty of games in the future. There's plenty of future recordings. As long as do the points expire? Are they like Delta miles? I never expired? Yeah, maybe so I had. I did lose a ticket over the first of the year. Yeah, where you had a free. Yeah, companion ticket, any ticket? Yeah. So hey, I don't know about you, but I felt like that segment had a lot of life. Oh yeah, yeah, it was it exciting. Yeah, and speak heights in jungles and libraries and robots and volcanoes. Well, speaking of having life, this next story is about a man who comes back to life. Oh yeaow. Yeah, there's other things involved in the story. But that's part of it. Okay. And that was your if you're a long time if you're a new listener, one of mine and Chris's goals is to have a really terrible transitions out of the goofy game section into the part where we're reading about. And I think I've done a fine job. So this is eight hundred BC. Okay. And Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were written about the same time. Oh wow, isn't that interesting. Yeah, that's really that's a really cool little factoid. It was in the margins of the Life Application Study Bible. So here's what it says. We're in Second Kings, chapter thirteen. We're gonna read. Verse fourteen says when Elisha was in his last illness, King Jehoash of Israel visited him and wept over him. My father, my father, I see the chariots and chariots of Israel, he cried. Elisha told him get a bow and some arrows, and the king did as he was told. And Elia told him, put your hand on the bow, and Elisha laid his own hands on the king's hands. Then he commanded open that eastern window, and he opened it, and then he said shoot, So he shot an arrow. Elisha proclaimed, this is the Lord's arrow, an arrow of victory over Aram, for you will completely conquer the Aramans of Aphex. Then he said, now pick up the other arrows and strike them against the ground. So the king picked them up and struck the ground three times. But the Man of God was angry with him. You should have struck the ground five or six times, he exclaimed, then you would have beaten Aram until it was entirely destroyed. Now you will be victorious only three times. And then Elisha died and was buried. Groups of Mobiit raiders used to invade the land each spring, and once, when some Israelites were burying a man, they spied a band of these raiders, and so they hastily threw the corpse into the tomb of Elishah and fled. But as soon as the body touched Elishah's bones, the dead man revived and jumped to his feet. Zeekes. King Hazael of Aram had oppressed Israel during the entire reign of King Jehoah ass But the Lord was gracious and merciful to the people of Israel, and they were not totally destroyed. He pitied them because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and to this day he still has not completely destroyed them or banished them from his presence. King Hazael of Aram died and his son Ben Haydad became the next king. Am I, reading to verse twenty five, then joho Ash, the son of Jehoah, has recaptured from Ben Haydad, son of Jehesel the towns that had been taken. Jehoash's father, Jehoah has Wow Jehoash defeated Ben Haydad on three occasions, and he recovered the Israelite towns Wow Jehoash and Jehoah Has Jehoahs jeho Ash the son of Jehoahs. And they only had to say it like three times. It's crazy. That's why I'm happy you're the reader. I think that's why sometimes people get bogged down reading the Bible is the names are heard. I agree the hard the track was so I here's what I would say, skip them. Yeah, just what do you do? You say that guy that guy and that guy was the son of that guy. And people love it in the audience because because you know, obviously it's not as a thing of disrespect, it's it's an acknowledgment that it's sometimes those things are difficult. These names are very unfamiliar. Yeah. So if you're so, if you're reading through it and you're like, okay, so then that guy I said to that guy, then people start gett Then. I don't do it all the time, but I do it as as a way to say like, hey, it's okay, Yeah, it's okay. Even preachers have a hard time because because you know that that's that's pretty crazy. And again it's it's it's truly no different than today. If we were to go down the line and record incredible details of history of all the names, the modern name you know, the modern day names today, if you were to go back in time to eight hundred BC and they were to read the futuristic names, they'd be like, what kind of names are these? No, I'm talking about like the really funky names of the world. Oh, I mean, I guess zar Ba is a last name. It's pretty funky. But yeah, but still I think that people you know back then would find them just as confusing. I think, so yeah, so uh, I know one guy, he just uses the first letter, so say king h oh, that's fair. Right, So if it gets to the hard ones, you just you can't say, I'm all, that's really fair, so that that can be hard whatever, But don't let the names bog you down. The stories are pretty incredible. Dude, A guy came back to life when they threw a body in a. Dude, let's talk about this for a second. Okay, so let's skip the whole bone arrow thing. We'll come back to that. But so I made a reference a long time ago when Elijah, so this would have been what four or five weeks ago, when Elijah was anointing Elisha to take over his ministry, and he said, what do you want? And Elijah said, what I want is to have a double portion of your blessings and power in your ministry. And so he said, okay, you're going to have it. Actually he said, if you can, if you see me when when when I passed from this earth, he says, then you'll have it. And if you don't, then you won't. But he did he saw so so anyway, I'm not necessarily sure that what I'm about to say is a direct correlation to that, but it's just fun to talk about. So if you google, well not google, but you know research, and if you say how many major miracles did Elijah do in his ministry, it is eight major miracles. And you say how many miracles did major miracles did Elisha accomplish before he died? The answer is actually fifteen, So it's one short of exactly double of Elisha's major miracles. And then he gets buried, and then here this after he's buried, it says, the bones, the bones, right, It's like, so it could be that maybe it's been a while, it might have even been decaying for a while. And so it ends up happening is long after Elisha's death. These guys are burying somebody. They look over and they see tomb raiders, they see grave robbers, and they're scared. So they're like, oh my goodness, let's hurry up and just throw this body in here and let's get out of here for own safety. And they just throw this body into Elisha's tomb. And this dead body, you know, we don't know much about him, but he hits the tomb of Elijah and hits his bones and then comes back to life. And guess what, that's miracle number sixteen. Baby. Yeah, there you go. Right, So it's exactly double the amount of miracles, which I think is just so cool. What a surprise. By the way, Yes, you're rattling around. You wake up, got all these bones all around, he says. He jumped up. I jump up too, dude. Yeah, no, kidding freaking out. Which, by the way, is pretty crazy. We just did Easter planning yesterday and we were talking about different things revolving on Easter and Palm Sunday and the Passover and different things like that. And one of the conversations that we had was what's his name Lazarus who came back to life? Lazarus has been dead for four days? Yeah, right, and so the question is was he in heaven? That's the question. Was Lazarus in heaven? Do you think he was? I think he was in Abraham's Boosom, yeah, Paradise. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So but either way he had to come back. Yeah right, and so and so John Christ has a funny bit on that. Have you ever seen it? No where? He says, he goes, he goes, think about it, and he goes. The story of the story of Lazarus is is Jesus comes along. Elazarus is dead for four days. Jesus brings back to life, and Jesus looks like the hero and he was. He goes, it was great. He goes everything was great, except for for Lazarus. He goes, He've been dead four days. He's in heaven. He's up in his mansion, you know, and he's like, oh man, this is great. He's like, no more pain. He had a bum leg that was restored you know, and he goes, man, this is really great. He goes and all of a sudden, Lazarus gets a knock. After four days, he's like Lazarus, He's like yeah, and he's like, so we have to talk to you. We don't normally do this, and he's like, yeah, what's going on. He goes, we got to send you back. He goes to the Middle East when there's no air conditioning, and he's like, are you kidding? This is really funny, right, So John Chris does this thing, it's just so funny. Well, well here's this here's this guy. You know, he's been dead for who you know, long enough for him to be buried, and he gets thrown on Elisha's bones and he comes back to life. What was that? Funny? Guy? So funny? Isn't that funny? Yeah, it's that's funny. It's funny. Didn't even think about it. But it does highlight the fact that even though the people of Israel, the kings of this, this miracle really serves God's purposes in that, you know, word gets out on this one. Yeah right, this guy's going to go how in the world no pagan god ever raised anybody from the dead like this, right, that that's not that's not a thing, it's it never shows up anywhere, so that would have gotten their attention. And then it's a reminder that Elisha represented God's word, the true the word of the true God, right, the one true God. Even in his death, he still represents that that influence is still there, right, just as a subtle reminder, not so subtle reminder to the kings. But they didn't pay attention, right, the people of Israel didn't pay attention to him. So let's talk about this arrow thing. Yeah, yeah, So, and first of all, I love how the scripture story begins because it says Elisha was in his last days of z illness, King u joho ash A Israel visited him and wept over him. My father, my father, you know. In other words, this is like a spiritual father to Elisha. It wasn't his literal father, right, you mean Joosh, Yeah, Josh was weeping over Elisha and said, my father, my father. But but it wasn't his biological fathers what I'm trying to say, right, it was just it was just it was a father figure, right, And so so in other words, he loves Elisha, right, which by the way, was a testament to him being raised in the temple, wasn't it. No, not Jehosh. Oh, my king's right, and this was a bad king. Yeah, yeah, you were talking about Joe Ash. This is Jehosh. See, this is why I know beginning of our So see, listeners, even the. Best of us do it on sometimes some occasions. These names the best, that's right, that's right. So these names sometimes can be confusing. So you have to be paying attention to you in the King of Israel or the King of Judah. King of Judah is Joe Ash. The King of Israel is Jehosh. Good gravy. Yeah, okay, Joe Ash was a bad king. Okay, yeah, okay. As a matter of fact, it says in King's thirteen it says, but he did what was evil in the Lord's sight. He refused to turn from the sins that jerebo I'm son a neeback. Okay. Number one, that changes my understanding of this passage when you're read it. He's just showing respect because he needs help because I got confused. Yeah. And then number two, Yeah, let's talk about that. So he's showing respect. He's showing respect because he needs help, right, because he wants to Arab is coming to defeat me. And Elisha is consistently acknowledged by the kings of Israel as being a powerful godly man, but more like a good luck charm is what they're how they're trying to. So you think, do you think joho Ash thanks for that again the Bible. But if you think joho Ash was a person who often consulted Elishah's advice, you think he looked at him as like almost like somebody on a staff that helped him. Yeah. So the note here for this for verse fourteen says Elisha was highly regarded for his prophetic powers and miracles on Israel's behalf. Jehoish called him the Chariots and Chariot series of Israel. Right, this is what he's calling. This recalls the title Elishah was had given to Elijah. Jehosh feared Elisha's death because he ascribed the nation's well being to Elisha rather than than God. That's what it was. So it revealed his lack of spiritual understanding. So I think this is interesting. It says Elisha was in his last illness, not his first or his tenth in his last illness. So, and it's forty three years between the last time Elisha was mentioned in this time. Yeah, I read that. Did you read that note? Yeah? Yeah, So I hadn't contemplated that. I don't think I even doesn't an old man. Yeah, And forty three years between now and the last time he's mentioned in the Bible. That doesn't mean he wasn't doing things. He wasn't serving God. Jehosh recognized me still being a prophet and a man of God, a powerful man of God. But just his actions aren't being recorded at this point, and he's kind of he's in his later years, he's coming towards his last illness. And there's something about that that, you know, all of us want miracles. We love this life so much, we love all these things. We all want miracles. But even Elisha comes to his last time a man of miracles. And the Bible says it's appointed, and a man wants to die. We all have an appointment, right, So the goal isn't to never die in this physical body. The goal is be prepared for this death, because you're going to live for fraternity somewhere, right. And so even Elisha struggled and it wasn't his first illness. And so if you're a person who's struggling with illness or whatever, you know, a perspective would be, I don't have any right to demand anything from God. But what we do know is that Elisha walked with God until his very last breath. Right walking with God is preparing for eternity, accepting the fact that I think sometimes illness and when you're I just had a conversation with a guy who's struggling with cancer right now, and this last week we talked at length, and he said, you know, prior to my cancer, I just lived life and everything was about life. It was about now and me and my kids, and we got to get the Disney and we got to do this thing. We got to buy the house, and we gotta pay the bills. He said. He was in ministry, serving you, mystry, but his life really was just about this life. He said, I got faced with cancer and he said, now it's about I want my kids to go to heaven with me. I want my grandkids to go to heaven with me. Someday I want he said, it's still all about family, but with a totally different perspective. Right, and he said, I do it. Now. It looks like he's going into remission and things are better for him. I think he's going to live for quite some time. He has goals, you know, he's in his sixties. He has goals for into his seventies. We were talking about those. But when you get an eternal perspective, your priorities are different. I don't think Elisha has any. It's interesting Elisha needed the cross the river when he was young. He snapped. He literally takes his cloak, spins it around, snaps it on the water, and walks across on dry land. Yeah. Right. He raised people from the dead and even while he was alive. Right, But he had no expectation that somehow God owed him the ability to never have a disease or never have a sickness. Right, he faced it to sake all of us. Right, And so it's okay. I'm not saying give up. I'm not saying any of those things. I'm just saying there's a peace in saying okay, this life is only temporary. Paul says, we're just pilgrims traveling through this life. But it's not home. These bodies are just temporary tense. These are not where we actually live, right, They just carry us. And so preparing for eternity I think is incredibly important. And if Elisha didn't get any special treatment on this, why would I expect it or why would I get mad at God? Instead, I just understand, Hey, this life comes to an end someday. I want to be prepared for it and go on to the next I think I mentioned this on a podcast a few weeks ago, but my dad is going to be eighty seven tomorrow and I think he's come into his last days. My brothers are gathering around right now as matter of fact. But my dad at Christmas time mentioned he said, you know, nobody knows how long you have, especially when you're at my age. And he said, you know, it really puts into perspective. They all the preparations you make up to this point. Yeah, And man a life, the kind of peace somebody can have going into the end of life knowing that they have spent a lifetime of following God and trusting him preparing something to that. And it makes it There's such a difference, isn't it When somebody passes, you know, like you just said, you just said the sentence that you think your dad is going to pass. Yeah, and it's there's something there's there's it's a radical difference between that kind of piece, approaching it with that kind of piece as opposed to the opposite what you're. Talking about, right, I mean, we're going to miss him, We're going to grieve, we shed tears, to struggle, but knowing that we grieve, but not as those who have no hope. So you have Elisha, who's a guy who's all in all the time, right, But the last words of Elisha are he's a little tick that jeho ash right because he's like, come on, dude. Which which, by the way, we haven't talked about the area yet. Yeah, and that's that's a good word. I wanted to get in this word too. So it's very common for Elishah to have done something symbolic and saying like, hey, here's a prophecy, right, here's a prediction right about what God says. And so he decided to use a visual aid and said, hey, let me help you shoot this air out the eastern window because that's where it was. It was in the east, right, the east, which is really great. So anyway, so he says, shoot it to the east. He shoots it, and he goes, Okay, that's that's an arrow of victory. This is what this is going to mean. You're going to win. And then he says, okay, now take the arrows and then destroy them on the ground. He says, strike right. But if you look into it, it's it's it's what he's meaning is destroy the rest of the arrows, right, smash them, smash them. And so he said, he hits it three times, and and so you know what that is to me, It's like, if God's going to ask you to do something, then do it right. Don't just hit it three times? Smash him right, smash if he's if he says smash him, don't stop until you smash him. Well, keep doing it until God says stop right right, just keep going. So he says, he says, strike him on the ground. So so, so what did you. Do is is tap tap? Yeah, So he goes boo boo boom. He hits the three times and he goes man. Alicia says, I'm angry because if you would have continued to do it, then you would have had full victory. You would defeated them until they were gone, he said, but you didn't. So therefore God's going to give you three because he asked you to do something and it was symbolic, and you do a symbolic You just shot the arrow, right, You did that well with me. But it does say that Elisa's hands were on his hands, right, and so and so the boat for the bow. So he asked him to do something by himself, smash the arrows. He only did three. I can almost visually see it where he says smash the arrows and he takes him and he goes. He looks back like, okay, now what you know and he's like, dude, you know he didn't say. It's like it's some kind of a formula or something. Yeah, it's almost like it's almost like, no, I asked you to do something, do it with your whole heart. And so it just seems to me that that's the indication. It's like you didn't complete what I asked you to do when I said strike him on the ground. I'm asking you to destroy the rest of the euros, and you didn't do it, and so therefore, you know, anyway, I just I think there's a sermon. Go all in with God. That's what is. Go all in with God. Just just give it all that you have, go after it. Whatever God says to you, go after that until God tells you to do something else, and just don't go halfway. We get timid about spiritual things and get super excited about driving a golf ball, right right, we get we get really timid about doing you know, about sharing our faith with our neighbor, but we get super excited about whatever our hobby is. And what's happening here is, here's a king's He comes looking to Elisha for for wisdom and guidance, but then he goes halfway instead of instead of being enthusiatic because he's hoping for good luck, charm, God, just do amazing things and do a miracle. And instead it's very clear that symbolic let me hold your hands, let me help you draw the ball back. And he drew it all all the way back, and he flung that arrow far because it went all the way out the window and shoots out right. So this is an all in, old man, all in helping him pull back this bow, fling that arrow. The kind of power behind that is what he's wanting from johoesh to do on his own right is bring that kind of power, bring that kind of enthusiasm, and he goes tap tap tap. It's like, come on, okay, you're gonna win three battles. Man. If you destroyed those arrows, if you'd beat it five six times, God would have just wiped out your enemies. Instead, you're gonna have some victories in a little bit of peace, but it's not gonna be what you really wanted. And so you know you're gonna have some blessings as you follow God. But when you go all in, that's when you're gonna really drive back the enemy in your life and the life of the family and all the people who were lying on you. Yeah, and he didn't go all in. That's yeah. Well, hey, that looks like it's our time. It's a good place to end it. And hopefully we will see you on Monday on the Bible Gush