Elisha - Pt 2

O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. (Psalm 104:24-30 ESV). For those of you who have known me for any time at all, you know that I am not a picky eater with one absolute exception. I never eat tuna. That has caused all sorts of issues through the years. Some folks can’t understand my aversion to such a staple. Without going into any detail, suffice it to say I would need to be in dire need of food before I would eat any form of that fish. Things were a bit different in the day of Elisha. You and I rarely go a day without food; however, it was not so for the people of Israel. Food was something they never took for granted. The food they ate was the food they raised. Famines were a common feature of life for all ancient peoples. In light of this, it is not surprising that Israel saw the provision of food as a tangible means of God’s loving presence. Our reading today celebrates that provision and blessing. In today’s passage, Elisha makes a meal, a sacrificial meal, before he runs off to minister to Elijah. Elisha feeds “the people” the meat of two oxen. Later in the cycle he removes a deadly poison from a stew and multiplies loaves. As we study the life and ministry of Elisha, it is easy to see how his character and works resemble many of the features of the ministry of our Lord. The story of the man from Baal-shalishah is very similar to the feeding of the 5,000 or the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. The famine that existed in the preceding story of the poisonous pottage is still in effect in this event (cf. 2 Kings 4:38-41). There the emphasis was on the flour which nullified the poisonous pottage, a picture of the Lord Jesus and His Word, the only antidote to the various poisons of the world. As the disciples were to learn from the feeding of the five thousand, so here we have a group of prophets gathered together around Elisha because it was to these men that God had given the responsibility of carrying His Word to an idolatrous nation. This was a difficult, if not impossible task apart from the divine enablement of God. They would face personal hardships, persecutions, times of want, and many other difficulties for which only God was adequate. In this text, they were called on to believe God and trust Him for all their needs and responsibilities. It was another example of how trusting the Lord never disappoints. He will not fail to provide all we need.