Word of Salvation – Vol. 30 No. 14 – April 1985
The Prophet And The New Earth
Sermon by Rev. Dr. K. V. Warren on 2Kings 2:19-22
Scripture Reading: Gen.3:14-19; Rev.21:1-5
Singing: 14:1; 37:1,2,3; 129:1,2,4; 251; 377:1,4; 469:3
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
How can anyone, with a handful of salt, change poisonous and polluted water, water that kills, into good water; good to drink, and good for the land.
Do you think, boys and girls, that you can do that, by throwing in a handful of salt?
Of course not! None of us can do that. Not even a magician can do that. You put salt into water and then try and drink it. Most of us know what it tastes like, to get a mouthful of salt water, when swimming off the beach!
Now the prophet in the story we read, Elisha, is he a magician? Is he a miracle man?
No he is not, he definitely is not a magician, but even so, he does a very marvellous thing, don’t you think?
He makes bad water good, by throwing in some salt. But it isn’t the salt that does the trick. What’s more: this isn’t a trick. It is a real miracle, a gift from God!
No, the salt does not do it; the text says that the Word of God does the miracle; not the salt, it’s the Word of the Lord that brings healthy water. That’s what the text is about.
THE WORD OF THE LORD, SPOKEN BY ELISHA, BRINGS HEALING TO JERICHO.
Please note: it’s Jericho, the city of Jericho.
Now, I think that alone already makes the story very special. It’s not Jerusalem, it’s not Samaria, but Jericho.
That’s the first point we will look at: The tragedy of Jericho. Yes, there is something tragic about that city. For this we must go back into history, hundreds of years.
Who doesn’t know the story of Jericho? The people of Israel marching around the city, day after day, till the walls came tumbling down!
Joshua and the Israelites, did not even have to fight for the city; the Lord gave it to them. The walls crashed down, and they could just march in. It was the Lord who brought judgment on that city. It was the anger of God burning against Jericho, because of all their sins.
Then Joshua and the army burnt the city; they razed it to the ground. And Joshua put a curse on it all; surely the Lord must have told him to do that: Joshua 6:26,
“At that time Joshua pronounced this solemn oath: Cursed before the Lord is the man who undertakes to rebuild this city, Jericho; at the cost of his firstborn son will he lay its foundations; at the cost of his youngest will he set up its gates.”
Later in the Old Testament we read that people again lived in Jericho, but it was not a walled city, no wall around it, no protection. The foundations, the walls, the gates, were not to be rebuilt; Jericho had to remain a telling illustration of how the anger of God had burnt against the wickedness of man.
Now we must make a jump of hundreds of years and we come to the time of one of the most evil kings in the history of Israel: Ahab.
The Bible says that Ahab did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him.
And note now what happens in the time of King Ahab: (1Kings 16:34):
“In Ahab’s time, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundations at the cost of his firstborn son Abiram, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub, in accordance with the word spoken by Joshua son of Nun.”
Now it’s not unlikely at all that it was king Ahab himself who commissioned the builder Hiel to turn Jericho into a walled city. That would make it much stronger; maybe to keep the Moabites from penetrating to the West of the river Jordan, Two sons; dead.
What a tragic consequence, in the family of Hiel!
And not so very many years after that, this same city of Jericho is mentioned again, in our text.
The well, out of which people drew their water, for drinking, also for the animals, and for growing the vegetables, the corn, the wheat, had poisonous water, it brought disease and death,
Now, the men of the city wanted to try out this new prophet of God, maybe he could help. And they told him that the water was bad, and the land unproductive. Very likely the meaning is that the water also caused miscarriages, both amongst the people and the cattle.
And we wonder, congregation, whether there was still something of the curse of Joshua lingering. Was there, maybe, in that bad water, still an illustration of the anger of God against the evil of the Canaanites, hundreds of years earlier?
In any case, that evil water is certainly a picture of the curse of Genesis 3; where Adam and Eve fell into sin; where paradise became a wilderness:
‘Cursed’, said the Lord, ‘cursed is the ground because of you.’
That poisonous well, producing bad water, bringing death and destruction, is certainly a picture of the world without God. It IS the world without God. The garden of Eden has become a nightmare!
And wherever there is death and destruction;
wherever there is pollution and barrenness;
wherever there is miscarriage and disease;
and human despair and hopelessness;
all that is a grim reminder of the curse of sin!
The tragedy of Jericho is even with us today.
It is repeated over and over again, in many different forms.
The same principle behind Jericho’s plight is everywhere!
It’s at the basis of all the things we know.
The continuous fighting in the Middle East,
the hopelessness of it all;
the falling value of the dollar, rising bank rates,
unemployment; the agony of earthquakes;
aboriginal hopelessness; political scandal and blackmail;
polluted rivers and filth in the air we breathe;
racial tensions in more than a dozen countries;
heroin addiction; heart attacks; breast cancer;
climbing divorce rates; fights in the family home;
pain, depression, loneliness.
Congregation, all these things, with which we are so very familiar, are basically no different from that foul spring of water at Jericho, thousands of years ago.
It is all the CURSE OF SIN!
And what now..?
Where from here..?
As our SECOND point we must see: the action of the prophet Elisha. Or we may just as well say: the solution of the Lord; the answer of God.
Bring me a new bowl, says Elisha, and salt.
He throws the salt into the water:
“This is what the Lord says: ‘I have healed this water, (the LORD, mind you; the LORD has healed. it), I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death or make the land unproductive.”
And so it happened!
What a delight! What a joy!
Things start to grow again, the fruit is ripening, healthy babies are being born. The little calves skip in the paddocks, and we see the woolly lambs snuggle up to their mothers.
Marvellous!
The people of Jericho must have said to one another: Hey, this man is really a prophet. He is a man of God.
That of course was an important reaction, that at the beginning of his work, the people saw Elisha as a man filled with the Spirit and the power of God. As a prophet, Elisha was to be busy for many years, and would play a major role in all kinds of events.
The miracle must have really helped for people to see and accept the prophet as a man of God.
But there is of course more than that: behind the prophet’s actions the people were to see GOD! This miracle surely made them realize again that God was alive! That God was still a God of salvation!
It was not the salt and the new bowl; that was not the cause of the miracle.
These things were symbolic of cleansing, of newness. There’s a picture here of preserving from corruption; of renewal.
But… salt and a new bowl have no significance in themselves; only when connected with the Word of God.
It was the WORD OF THE LORD which caused the miracle to happen. The Lord said: I have healed this water; no more death, but life.
We surely may fit it all into what we read a few chapters further on – in 2Kings 13:23a:
“But the Lord was gracious to them and had compassion and showed concern for them because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
These Israelites were engulfed by paganism. Evil and disobedience all around. But the WORD OF GOD was still spoken!
Because of the promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!
While spiritual darkness is falling over the people of God, the word of the Lord still has power.
The Lord is not silenced!
There, around that well near Jericho, the men of the city standing around in amazement, open-mouthed, there Elisha acts as a forerunner of that great prophet, promised by Moses, a long time ago. Elisha was a forerunner of Jesus Christ, Who was in truth the Word of God.
There, in that new and sweet water, there is an exciting and refreshing foretaste of the blessings of the Messianic Age.
Nature itself is purified from the effect of evil.
Yes, congregation, let us marvel at how the Word of the Lord conquers the power of death!
And we may think of those beautiful words in Isaiah 35, that lovely picture:
“The desert and the parched land will be glad;
the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus it will burst into bloom,
it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.”
Paul refers to the very same breathtaking truth in Romans 8:21:
‘The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
We read about it also in the Book of Revelation, earlier in the service, about the new heaven and the new earth:
“God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
There, near Jericho and the water that could now be drunk, there we begin to hear already the first strains, the opening bars of the glorious symphony of the Gospel of Christ.
There we see already, in a little way, what the cross and the open grave will do to this earth.
Congregation, what a MOTIVATION for us to keep on going, in the face of at times overwhelming odds.
What a reason for quiet confidence and true joy, even though the walls of our Western civilization are beginning to crumble around us.
For, despite all the pessimism, the gloom, the despair in this world, the well at Jericho reminds us of what our Lord is saying:
‘Behold, I will make all things new.’
Yes indeed, through Christ, Who IS the Word, all THINGS NEW!
What a motivation for God’s people to already NOW raise signs of that coming newness:
to build a Christian school, where the Word of God speaks of real life;
to speak a Christian political word;
to let that same Word speak with authority in the home, the family, your work, the church.
No, we do not have to be Elisha, we could not even be Elisha, but all of us must let that glorious Word of the Lord do its work! In your own life; that’s closest to home.
Don’t rebel against that Word of God; that Word which speaks of Jesus the King. Let the healing power of that Word make you into a beautiful person.
And then: in your home, your marriage, your family.
Is there tension; indifference; lack of love; selfishness?
Also in our homes we must listen to the words of the One who said:
Behold, I make all things new.’
Just as the LORD healed the water of the Jericho well, so He wants to go on healing our homes, our marriage, our life as a single person.
For the Lord is the Lord of ALL of life!
And then there’s the whole world around us.
That world too needs to hear the healing Word of the Lord.
What a privilege that the Lord calls all his people, young and old, to bring healing in His Name. Healing to this poisoned, death-dealing, sin-sick society.
What a task, to speak the Words of Life, in the darkness all around.
Oh surely, God is good, God is gracious!
In Jesus Name, you and I may boldly be the salt of the earth, bringing life and healing. For in Christ we are more than conquerors, already now.
Of course WE cannot bring in the Kingdom. The LORD Himself will do that. And one day He will do it fully – all things new!
How could we do better than say: Come, Lord Jesus!
Amen