Jump Start # 1504

2 Kings 6:5 “But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water; and he cried out and said, ‘Alas, my master! For it was borrowed.’”

  Sandwiched between Naaman’s miraculous healing from leprosy and the Syrian plot to capture Elisha is a rather odd story about a floating axe head. Elisha seems to have been teaching young prophets. Their living quarters were too cramped. They wanted to spread out and so they went down to the Jordan River to cut some timber so they could build a more spacious place to live. Elisha was with them. As one of these young prophets was chopping away, the axe head flew off and sank into the Jordan River.

I could see that happening. It sounds funny. It is definitely something that I could see happening to me. The axe head sunk and so did the spirit of the young prophet. He cried out to Elisha. He proclaimed that it was borrowed. Elisha cuts a stick and throws it into the water about where the axe head sank. The iron axe head floated and the young prophet was able to retrieve it.

The fact that this story is in our Bibles is interesting. Aside from Elisha and these young prophets, no one else was there to witness this. This miracle doesn’t seem to really point to a principle or a message of God. The fact that Elisha could make the axe float makes us remember that later on Jesus would save a sinking Peter who walked on the water. I don’t see a connection between the two miracles. One doesn’t point to the other.

The young prophet using the axe seemed upset when it flew off into the water. He seemed more upset that it wasn’t his. He declared that it was “borrowed.” He did not take care of something that had been loaned to him. This young prophet didn’t deliberately throw the axe into the river. He wasn’t carelessly playing around and lost it by neglect. It just seemed to come off. And now, it was lost. It belonged to someone else.

He was hurting because he hadn’t taken good care of what was someone’s property. What would he say? He didn’t mean for it to happen, yet it did. He would return with a story and not the axe. He would be apologetic but he had no where to point fingers but at himself. The axe was lost.

What Elisha did saved the young prophet from a lot of apologizing and feeling sorry for what he had done. He rescued him from embarrassment and shame.

Can we stand in the shadow of this young prophet and learn some lessons?

We too, have lost things that were loaned to us. You might be thinking about library books or tools from the neighbor. That might be true. I have a deeper thought in mind.

• Haven’t we lost or more accurately, wasted a day that was given to us by the Lord. Time is precious. We each have the same amount every day. Those who seem to do so much do not have 30 hours in a day. They have the same amount as the rest of us. I wonder how many hours have been wasted doing “nothing.” There has been times when I have been so busy that I wished I had a bank of time that so that I could withdraw a few hours. You can’t do that. I suppose some have wasted a lifetime doing nothing. Sure they had jobs and even raised a family, but they didn’t do much. They didn’t make a difference for anyone. They never left any positive footprints for others to follow in. Their days were spent on doing what they wanted to do. They did what made them happy.

• I suppose we could say the same thing about money. Most of us have wasted money on things that we didn’t need. Buyer’s remorse is a very true feeling that comes after one regrets buying something.

The one talent man illustrates one who wasted what was given to him. He didn’t lose it, but neither did he do anything positive with it. He dug a hole and buried the talent. His master was furious with him. He called him, lazy, worthless and wicked. Powerful words. Something was given to him and he didn’t do anything with it.

• The greatest thing given to us is our souls. It is even greater than our bodies or our life here. Those will end, our soul doesn’t. We haven’t done anything to earn our soul. It is a gift of the Lord. It is what makes us in His image. It is what distinguishes us from the animal world. Solomon as he described death, said, “the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Ecc 12:7). Our souls are a gift from God.

Fewer things are more wasted than our souls. God wants us to honor Him through our souls. We do this as we worship Him and praise Him. We do this as we obey Him. We do this as we do His will. We do this as we are busy in His work. Souls are lost by sin. Souls are ruined by sin. God never paints a pretty picture of sin. He uses words such as abomination to describe the terrible consequences of sin in our hearts.

Souls lost. That’s why Jesus came. He came to seek and save that which was lost. Elisha was able to raise that axe head out of the water by the power of God. Jesus is able to redeem our lost souls through His death and resurrection. We are raised up through water, baptism, for the remission of sins.

This story of Elisha is a future picture of what Jesus did for us. He saved us. He rescued us. We were gone. We were lost in the mire and muck of sin. We were sunk. Nothing could be done for us. Jesus redeemed us. We were brought back to usefulness because of the sacrifice of Jesus.

Is this why this story about a lost axe head is in our Bibles? I’m not sure about that, but one certainly can’t miss the similarities. It’s a wonderful reminder of what our Lord has done.

I once was lost, but now I’m found—not just the words of a hymn, but the story of our lives.

Thanks be to God, for His indescribable gift!

Roger