Today I'm going to be speaking about a passage in the Old Testament. We're going to start in 2 Kings chapter 13. 2 Kings chapter 13 is a story that comes at the very end of the ministry of Elisha the prophet. Elisha the prophet as you may recall, was the prophet of the Old Testament. He was one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament. He was the follower of Elijah, the more fiery, more exciting, more well-known prophet. But at the end of Elijah's life, Elisha accompanied him, and he asked the Lord through Elijah for a double portion of Elijah's spirit. And he was there at the very end as Elijah was taken up to heaven, and that is The ministry of Elisha became a longer ministry, something that had an even greater impact on the nation of Israel. So this comes at the very end of Elisha's ministry, and we're going to be looking at verses 14 through 21 today. It says, now Elisha was suffering from the illness from which he died. Jehoash, king of Israel, went down to see him and wept over him. My father, my father, he cried, the chariots and horsemen of Israel, Elisha said, go get a bow and some arrows, and he did so. Take the bow in your hands, he said to the king of Israel. When he had taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king's hands. Open the east window, he said, and he opened it. Shoot, Elisha said, and he shot. The Lord's arrow of victory. The arrow of victory over Aram, Elisha declared. You will completely destroy the Arameans at Aphek. Then he said, take the arrows, and the king took them. Elisha told him, strike the ground. He struck it three times and he stopped. The man of God was angry with him and said, you should have struck the ground five or six times. Then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times. Elisha died and was buried. Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. Once, while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders. So they threw the man's body into Elisha's tomb. When the body touched Elisha's bones, the man came to life and stood on his feet. So this is one of the stranger stories in the Old Testament, isn't it? This is one of those stories you read and you think, I don't know if I quite understand why this is here or what's going on. In fact, it seems sort of unfair. I mean, a little bit of background. We know that this king of Israel that comes, Jehoash, who comes and pours out all his sorrow on Elisha as he's dying, is actually not one of the better kings in Israel's history. He's showing up at Elisha's death and seems to be genuinely sad. But perhaps he's sad because of all of the military victories that Elisha had brought out through the Lord's power over the years, all of the things that Elisha had done for the military of Israel. And so it seems almost hypocritical for a king who didn't walk with God to show up and be so sorrowful over Elisha's death. And yet it shows you that Elisha had had an impact not only on the good people in Israel, but on the evil people. Elisha's ministry was something that spoke even to those who did not walk with God. There was a blessing that came through Elisha's ministry even on people who did not listen to, follow, change their lives based on Elisha's ministry. And that's what the king is here to mourn. It's kind of like when a president or a world leader shows up at the funeral of someone like Billy Graham. You know, there were people who showed up at the funeral of Billy Graham and wept along with everyone who were not people who had ever accepted the message that Billy Graham preached throughout his life. So here we have the same thing, Jehoash showing up at Elisha's bedside. And there's an interesting parallelism that he uses here. He says, my father, he calls him my father, which is just a, it's a term of respect in that culture. He's not, of course, saying he's actually his father. He's just speaking of all of the guidance Elisha's given. And then he says, the chariots and the horsemen of Israel. It's a kind of a weird phrase. In fact, it's a fragment. It doesn't seem to make any sense at all. By coincidence, or I think by design, it's the same thing that Elisha cried out when Elijah was being taken from him. You remember the story of them walking along and The chariots of fire come by and they take Elijah, and Elisha is crying out, and he's saying, no, the chariots and the horsemen of Israel, meaning, Elijah, you were worth more to Israel than all of its armies. If you can think of saying that about America today, that someone was worth more to America than all of its ships, its tanks, and its missiles, that's what he's saying. He's saying, I would rather have Elisha the prophet here than all of the military that we have. Of all the things that defend us from foreign powers, Elisha's connection with God was the greatest." This is a statement of genuine praise, I think. And I think it helps to understand this story to realize that whatever else is going on, this king recognizes he's losing something. And so it continues. Elisha said, get a bow and some arrows. And he did so. And this is one of these moments where you see the prophet. I don't know if prophets did this just for fun. I don't know if this was just their way to mess with people. He says, you know, I have a message from God for you, essentially. I can do this the easy way or the hard way, but let's be honest, the hard way is a lot more fun. So I'm going to make you go get a bow and some arrows. We're going to have this big dramatic moment. So I'm going to give you the details one by one, but I'm not going to explain it till the end. And he says, get a bow and some arrows. So he goes, he gets a bow and some arrows. He says, open the east window and shoot out. So he shoots an arrow. And here, Elisha begins to give him some clues to what's going on. That's the Lord's arrow of victory. You're going to defeat one of the powerful enemies that you're concerned about. That sounds like a good prophecy. This is good. This is going in a good direction. Then he says, take the arrows, and this is down in verse 18, and this is where it gets very strange. Take the arrows, and the king took them. Elisha told him, strike the ground. He struck it three times and stopped. All right, so to you and me, I think it feels very much like he did what Elisha told him to do. He said, shoot the arrow, go out, take some arrows, hit the ground, and he says, okay. smacks it a couple times, turns around, what next? And Elisha gets angry with him. And he begins to yell at him, and he says, why, why did you only strike it three times? You should have struck the ground five or six times. Then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now, you'll only defeat it three times. What a strange, what a strange thing to say. Why didn't he just tell him, you know, hit the ground multiple times? Why didn't he tell him, hit it five or six times? Something very strange going on. The title of my sermon today is Beat the Ground. And it's because Elisha did not, he gave him an instruction, which was go out and strike the ground. And he didn't say go out and strike it until you think it was enough. He didn't say go out and strike it until you'd feel awkward doing it anymore. He said just go out and strike the ground. In other words, strike it until I tell you to stop. He tells him to go out and to beat the ground outside. And like I think most of us would have, if we're being honest, he went out, he did just enough to feel like he'd kind of done it, and then he turned around to look for, okay, where's this going? What's the lesson here? Today I want to talk about faithfulness. I want to talk about the things that God gives us to do in life that don't seem to make sense to us at the time. The things that he says, go out and just start doing this thing that seems like nonsense, this thing that doesn't seem to make sense, and I'll let you know when you're done. I'm not going to explain to you the lesson up front. I'm not going to give you the details. I'm not going to tell you the reward of this faithfulness. I just want you to go out and be faithful. This king had it within three more strikes of his hand to defeat the greatest enemy of Israel at the time. And he was more focused on getting the lesson from Elisha than he was on doing what he'd been instructed to do. Sometimes we do the same thing, if we're being honest. We have the struggles, we go through the seasons of life that we know, well, God is trying to teach me something here. This is difficult, this is painful, this is hard. And I would really like to know what it is that God's going to teach me. So I shared a little bit of my testimony about starting law school. And I genuinely struggled at that time, praying and saying, God, I don't understand. I thought my whole life I had understood what you wanted me to do with my life. I had a clear path. And I thought I understood it. And I'd done it. And now I'm doing something completely different. And for me, it was almost a daily struggle when I first started praying for many months saying, God, if I'm missing the way and if there's something else, let this cup pass for me. I had the whole prayer down and I finally had to understand from the Lord that he wanted me to walk a path and he wasn't going to explain it. that my job was to do what he'd assigned me to do. Every one of us has had something like this in our lives. Maybe it's caregiving for someone in your family. Maybe it's raising a difficult teenager. Maybe it is a job that feels like a dead end. Maybe it is a ministry that feels very fruitless, but that you feel in your heart you do not have permission from the Lord to give up. Maybe it's something else. All of us have something in our lives that we say, this is difficult, dealing with an illness, dealing with something else. And you say, God, thank you, I've done the suffering, now can you just please explain this? I feel like I've done enough to get a little more explanation from you. And this story today, I hope, is something that reminds us that God gives us an assignment, he gives us a task, and he wants us to complete it with fervor, with vigor, to keep going even beyond where it doesn't make sense. Let's turn for a moment to Psalm 36. Psalm 36, one of the Psalms of David, and I'm going to start down in verse 5. Psalm 36 is one of these Psalms that gives soaring views of the character of God. And starting down in verse 5, it says, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies, your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. Oh Lord, you preserve both man and beast, how priceless is your unfailing love. For both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings, they feast on the abundance of your house. You give You give them drink from your river of delights, for with you is the fountain of life. In your light we see light. Continue your love, then, to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart." Notice that the core of this psalm is the word faithfulness. He talks about how God's faithfulness is to the skies, that it reaches up to the heavens. And then he says, in a confidence, David says, God, continue your righteousness to the upright in heart. In other words, be faithful to continue who you are. Faithfulness is something that is such a core of God's character. It runs throughout scripture. It's there in the story of Abraham. When God says to Abraham, I want to make a covenant with you, you may remember he cuts apart all the birds and all the animals and puts them out so that he and God can walk between them, which was the tradition of the day. We're going to walk together between these and make a covenant. And then God puts Abraham to sleep and God walks through the path on his own, to say to Abraham, I'm making a covenant with you that doesn't depend on what you do. I'm making a unilateral covenant with you that I'm going to keep regardless of what you do. I'm putting you to sleep because I don't want you making promises you can't keep. It's there in 1 Peter, excuse me, in the book of John, chapter 21, when Peter first comes to Jesus after he's denied him and they have sort of that awkward encounter on the beach. There's the fish fry on the beach and Peter says Jesus says, do you love me? And Peter says, yes, of course you know that I love you. And they have this back and forth three times. It says Peter was hurt the third time because basically what Jesus was saying was, no, you can't love me, Peter. You actually can't love me. And so don't worry, I love you. It doesn't matter that you've denied me. I've chosen you. It doesn't matter what you have done. faithfulness of God is something that many of the prophets talk about over and over again. They talk about God's faithfulness. They say, God, redeem us out of the hands of our enemies, not because of our righteousness, but because of your faithfulness. God's faithfulness is a core attribute of his character. Paul talks about it when he writes to Timothy and he says, if we deny him, if we are faithless, he will remain faithful because he cannot deny himself. In other words, that the that the central core of our faith is based on the faithfulness of God. What is faithfulness? What does it mean? Well, faithfulness is consistency. It's reliability. I think faithfulness is a mental toughness. It's a grit. It's a willing to keep going and to remain true to a commitment, even when the commitment itself no longer seems to make sense. Faithfulness sometimes can mean, if I had known all that I know now, I would not have made this commitment. I would not have agreed to this thing. But I will continue, I will push through the additional obstacles I've learned about because I'm remaining faithful to the initial commitment that I made. Faithfulness is a strict performance of a duty. It is to remain true to your word. Faithfulness testifies to our priorities. It places the thing that we have committed ourselves to over every obstacle that we faith. In short, faith gives, faithfulness gives our faith fullness. It is what makes our faith put into action. It encourages the embattled leader to see people who are faithful around him. It also is a stinging rebuke to fellow workers who are not diligently following through. You ever worked a job with people who didn't take the job as seriously as you did. Anybody ever? Yeah, I'm getting some nods. OK, good. So you've worked that job with someone or with a group of people. For me, it was Walmart. I worked at Walmart for a while. And I took it seriously. I thought, you know, I'm here. This is my commitment. And I went in every day and tried my hardest to be good at customer service and care about people. And I'm not saying everybody at Walmart is not like that. But there are plenty who are not. There are plenty of people who take a job and they're not happy to be there and they look for every opportunity to short the system. We've all been there. We've all had that opportunity. And sometimes people resent you for being committed. You ever had that experience? Someone resents you because you show up to your job every day and you just work hard. You do it to the Lord, not to men. You do it with all of your might, even when it's really bad, you put up with it because of your faithfulness. because you believe that that's what God has called you to do. And there are people who get upset about this because it's a rebuke to them. It's a statement that you can put up with it, you can rise above, and that they should be doing it too. You may never say that to them. You may never say, hey, why don't you work a little faster? Why don't you work a little harder? Why don't you smile at the customers a little bit more often? But they feel it. They sense it. They see it, and they're convicted by it. Faithfulness is a blessing to other people who are faithful. It is a rebuke to people who are not faithful. It is a dividing tool. It divides, it draws a line in the sand, and it puts people on each side. It says, are you going to remain faithful to what we've committed to here or not? The Proverbs have many things to say about this, and I've just picked a few that I will read to you. If you want to go with me to Proverbs 26.10, you can. Proverbs 26 is filled, actually, with really interesting statements about people basically not following through on their obligations, being unfaithful. And here's what verse 10 says, I like this one the most of all of these. Like an archer who wounds at random is he who hires a fool or any passerby. In other words, it's like shooting yourself in the foot to hire someone randomly, to hire someone who's just passing by. In other words, a faithless employee, a faithless worker is going to cause you pain randomly at the worst possible moment. Okay, again, we've probably all seen this in job settings. Do you know it's true in churches as well? There are churches that are wounded randomly by someone who becomes faithless, by somebody who walks out in the middle of an obligation, by someone who doesn't show up to what they'll say they show up to. It's true in other areas of our life. Proverbs 23, 26 to 28 tells the story of an adulterous woman, and here's what it says. Because I think this is a really interesting way to put it. Again, this is the writer of Proverbs. He says, My son, give me your heart and let your eyes keep to my ways. For a prostitute is a deep pit and a wayward wife is a narrow well. Like a bannet, she lies in wait and multiplies the unfaithful among men. I remember reading that when I was younger and not quite understanding what it was that she multiplies the unfaithful. It's not just that she's a snare. She multiplies unfaithfulness. Our culture multiplies unfaithfulness today. What we're obsessed with in television, in movies, what we see in the media, what is celebrated, what we see of celebrity marriages is a celebration of unfaithfulness. It is a celebration of the multiplication of unfaithfulness. It is people who did not guard their heart and their eyes. As it starts here, give me your heart and let your eyes keep to my ways. For the prostitute is like a deep pit. You're going to be walking along and someone who is unfaithful can be like a pit. They can ensnare you and they cause you to be unfaithful and multiply unfaithfulness in other people's lives. In other words, she is unfaithful. She causes you to be unfaithful. You will cause other people to be unfaithful. That is the pattern that is being laid out. This is also discussed in Proverbs chapter 6 verses 30 to 32. Proverbs chapter 6 verses 30 to 32. It says, men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he's starving. Yet if he's caught, he must pay sevenfold, though it costs him all the wealth of his house. But a man who commits adultery lacks judgment. Whoever does so destroys himself. Blows and disgrace are his lot, and his shame will never be wiped away. You ever heard in the news or known someone who committed a mistake like this? You might look at it and just go, okay, well they made a sinful, selfish mistake. But what scripture tells us is that person's judgment is corrupted by that mistake. It's more than just destroying their family. It's more than just making a decision that hurts their family. This type of decision causes, it poisons every other aspect of their life. Sometimes you'll read about politicians who pay off somebody to keep them quiet. In other words, the mistake begets other mistakes. The unfaithfulness seeps into every part of their lives. Part of what I think God's plan for marriage is, for us as believers, is marriage is something that fortifies your faithfulness. It strengthens the core of your faithfulness. It says, if I can remain faithful to someone else through every up and down in life, I can remain faithful to every other obligation. If walls could talk, If the shroud of confidentiality around Pastor Dean's office could be lifted for a moment and he could come up here and tell us some stories, I am quite certain that some of those stories would involve people telling him, I'm making this decision because I didn't know all that I should have known at the start. You don't understand. Things have changed. This person has changed. My life has changed. My needs have changed. And the answer to that is faithfulness is not about us getting the benefit of our bargain. Faithfulness is not a contract where we enforce what we were supposed to get in return for our obligations. I held up my end and this person, this group of people has not held up theirs. Faithfulness is a one way street. It's a commitment to other people and it's born out of love. It's born out of a love of someone else. I love you so much, I will be faithful to you no matter how bad it gets. That is what the marriage vow is. It's also a vow that we take in many other areas of our lives. Church is another setting where faithfulness is absolutely crucial. You're here today, so you're faithful. You're here today because you want to come and receive from the Lord, but you're also here today out of a sense of commitment, obligation. You'll sometimes hear people criticize it. Well, I don't want to just go to church and have a sense of going, just doing what I'm, going through the motions, doing my duty. Well, that's actually exactly how church starts. Yes, we receive from the Lord when we come and when we meet with him. We receive from others. Have you ever heard somebody say, well, I don't really need church. I don't really need church. I mean, listen, I know more about the Bible than most of my fellows. I am an experienced Christian. I don't need these things. I don't really get anything out of the services. I this, I that. I've certainly heard people say that. Growing up as a pastor's son, I watched a lot of people walk out of my father's church saying, you know, we just, we're going to do our own little Bible study at home. I don't really need this thing called church. We don't, you know, the children's ministry just isn't good enough. We're not getting enough out of this. We're not, we are not receiving enough. And often my, I'd hear my father at our home somewhere else pleading with someone saying, listen, you need to understand it's not about, it's not just about what you're getting from church. It's about your faithfulness, your commitment to God, your commitment to the church. And I can tell you that now, with years of hindsight, I have met some of those people again and their lives have been ruined by faithlessness. They thought it was one decision. They thought it was walking away from one commitment, but that faithlessness poisoned everything else in their lives. It caused their life to crumble. The faithfulness that God calls us to have is something that's selfless. It starts at least with selflessness. It starts with a sense of I'm doing what God called me to do. I'm doing what he gave me to do. I'm doing it out of sense of duty if I have to. But at the end, it yields for us to harvest of righteousness. We sow faithfulness, but a man reaps what he sows. We sow faithfulness and sometimes we look around and we say, goodness, I'm faithful to other people and I feel like they're not faithful to me. I've given and given and given to this job, this boss, this family, this church, this situation, and I receive nothing in return. But what we don't see, as Jesus said, the farmer sleeps and even though he doesn't see it, the seeds are growing. And what we reap is not from man, what we reap is from the Lord. We don't look to man for the reward of our faithfulness. In Genesis chapter 12, Abraham has this discussion with God. He's gone through the whole thing of rescuing Lot out of the hands of these kings, and he's gone and he's He's risked his whole fortune, all that he has, to fight several kings. And he's praying, and essentially he's praying, Lord, these kings are going to come back after me. They're going back, they're rebuilding their armies. I have started a war, and I'm just a nomad in the desert. I have some people with me, but this is it, that's all I have. And the Lord's response is, Abraham, I am your shield and your very great reward. Isaiah has the same argument with God where he says, everything I've spent my strength in vain and for nothing, but what is due me is in the Lord's hands and my reward is with my God. It is so easy for us to look around and be frustrated by the faithlessness of others. We see the multiplication of the faithless among men, and we say, well, gosh, I've given everything, and what am I here with? What am I here with in exchange? Think of Peter saying that to Jesus. You know, we left our valuable fishing industry to follow you. We left everything we had. And you know, he's right. They did. They left everything they had to follow Jesus. And Jesus says, essentially, don't worry about it. I'm your reward. I'm your reward. Today, we look back at Peter, and we think, man, you made the right choice, dropping the fishing boat for Jesus. To him at the time, it didn't feel that way. He was going around with someone who didn't have a place to sleep at night. He was going around with someone who was reviled and hated. And he was maybe thinking occasionally, maybe I should have stuck to fishing. Maybe this career change was a bad idea. Maybe I should have listened to my father and stayed in that boat. And instead, of course, today, I'm sure he doesn't have that regret. We don't look back at Peter and think, gosh, he would have been smart to stick with the fishing industry. Faithfulness reaps a harvest when we least expect it. I want to look at two other verses, Proverbs chapter 25 verse 13. We've looked at some of the negatives about faithfulness or of people who are unfaithful, but Proverbs 25 13 has a statement about what faithfulness gives to the person who sins. Verse 13, like the coolness of snow at harvest time, is a trustworthy messenger to those who send him. He refreshes the spirit of the one who sent him. I think there are so few ways that we can bless God. God gives us everything we have. If we give money back to God, we're only giving back to him from what he gave us. If we do something for the Lord that we feel sacrificial so often, it's just the bare minimum. And yet here's a verse that reminds us, God is refreshed by faithfulness. He's refreshed by people who follow through on their obligations. We said that faithfulness is a rebuke to those who aren't taking something as seriously as we are, but it is a blessing to the person who sends us. It's a blessing to the leader. It's a blessing to the person we're around. Think about how The faithfulness of Jesus Christ, the son, bless his father. Think about what Jesus went through, again, with nothing in return for himself, but he was faithful to the call of God. Think about how the father was blessed by what Jesus did. God is blessed by our faithfulness and he sees it. He sees the moments with your children, the moments with a family member who's difficult, the moments at your job when you continue to push through and you say, I just don't know what this is for. I don't know, there's no future in this. This is never gonna turn into anything, but you continue to be faithful. God sees that. He is blessed. It's like snow at harvest time. People are out working in the fields and they're sweating and they're working hard and the snow begins to fall and it cools everything off. That is the way that God feels when he sees you being faithful. It may feel like it doesn't matter to him, even just in that moment, he is blessed, he is honored. Another verse that stands out to me is Luke chapter 7, verses 1 through 10. This is a story you're probably familiar with from the life of Jesus, Luke 7, verses 1 through 10. This is the Roman centurion who comes to Jesus for the healing of his servant. So, starting in verse 1 of chapter 7 of Luke, When Jesus had finished saying all this in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. And there a centurion's servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. The centurion had heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him. This man deserves to have you do this because he loves our nation. He built our synagogue. So a little context, you might be wondering what that's about. I mean, the Romans and the Jews did not get along. They did not have a good relationship. The Romans were there typically to oppress the people. The centurions and the leaders of the army were known for extorting people, using their positions of power to extort money. And so this centurion wants Jesus to come and heal his servants. So he asks his friends who were leaders of the Jews, go to this man and tell him, tell him I'm one of the good ones. Tell him I'm one of the good guys. plead with him to come. And so they agree and they go and they say, listen, he's not a bad guy. He's not like the others. Come and heal his child. And it says Jesus goes, or the servant, Jesus goes with them. And in verse six it says, Jesus went, he was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him, Lord, don't trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. Notice the parallel, the leaders say, this man deserves to have you do this. And he sends and says, I don't deserve. to have you even under my roof, much less to come and do this for me. Don't trouble yourself, he says, but in verse seven, that's why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. In other words, I wasn't just sending them to use their influence with you. I was sending them because I don't think I deserve to even be in your presence. I myself am a man under authority with soldiers under me. I tell this one go, and he goes, and that one come, and he comes. I say to my servant, do this, and he does it. In other words, Jesus, I don't need you to come and be present so I can watch the miracle. I don't need you here so that if it's not enough of a miracle and I'm not satisfied, I can press you for more. He says, I just believe that if you say it, that the angels of creation, that the powers around you, that if the wind and the waves obey you, that sickness and illness will obey you as well. I believe completely that everything is faithfully committed to you. And so I'm sending, I'm coming to you and saying, please don't even bother coming here. Just say the word and I know it will be done. It will be done as surely as one of my soldiers will obey my orders. That's how confident I am in your power. Jesus is amazed at him in verse 9, and turning the crowds following him, He says, I tell you, I've not found such great faith even in Israel. And the men who were sent returned to the house and found the servant well. Jesus is amazed by this man's faith. This story reminds me of faithfulness because this centurion was faithful to God. And he was faithful and he asked Jesus for something, but he doesn't ask it in return. I think that's what we do so often with God. We say, God, listen, I need this thing from you. I need a favor. And I, you know, much like sometimes we do either explicitly or implied with people, we work out all the reasons we're entitled to this favor, all the reasons somebody owes us a favor. Maybe we aren't that blunt about it, but frequently we ask someone to do something and we know that there's sort of a give and take in a relationship. We come to God the same way and we say, God, you know, listen, I've been going to church faithfully for a very long time. I tithe, I do the 10%. Sometimes I give to a missionary. I help out with VBS every year, and that's a pain, Lord, that's a pain. That one should count for a lot. We go through all of the things, and we say, God, I just need this thing from you. I need this favor from you. Think about how different that is than the way the centurion approaches Jesus. He says, listen, I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to have you come under my roof. I don't deserve to have you waste your time on me. I don't even deserve to be in your presence to see you face to face, but what I'm asking you, because of your faithfulness, because of who you are, is to heal this man, because I know you have the power to do it." He asked God, based on his character, to give him this gift. And Jesus says, this is what faith looks like. This is what faith really is. It's the belief in God's character and in his faithfulness. I return to the story that we started with in 2 Kings chapter 13 because this is where we started and it's a funny story, it's a strange story. There's another thing that's underlying the whole story and that's Elisha. We go back to the very first verse. If you look at 2 Kings 13 and you go to verse 14. It says, now Elisha was suffering from the illness from which he died. It's easy to read that verse and pass right over it, but Elisha is the man who healed people. He's the one who ran around healing the sick, literally raising the dead. He's one of the few people in all of the Bible, other than Jesus, who ever raises someone to life. And it happens again, in fact, after he's dead. You see, at the very end of this, we're going to end with this crazy story of these people trying to bury a body, and there's raider bands coming, so they hide, they throw the body into Elisha's tomb, and they hide, and the man touches his bones, and he comes to life. This is the power of God moving through Elisha in life and in death. And yet, here is Elisha suffering from the illness from which he died. God moved through Elisha, but that doesn't mean that Elisha didn't have to experience the pain that God allowed him to heal others of. God still put Elisha through a time of suffering. Elisha had demonstrated faithfulness all through his life. He's the one who, he's out plowing in his fields when Elijah comes to him. And Elijah says, you should come and you're going to be anointed to serve the Lord. And then Elijah walks away and Elisha says, wait, I want to come with you. And Elijah's response is, listen, what have I done to you? I mean, I guess if you want to come, but really, I don't know what your problem is. And he says, OK, I'll be right back. And he runs off. He slaughters all of his oxen that produce money for his fields. He burns a sacrifice to the Lord, he feeds all his people, and then he says, I'm done. And he walks away and he follows Elijah. From the very beginning of his ministry, Elisha was a man of faithfulness. He was a man totally committed, I'm not looking back. Literally not, once I've put my hand to the plow, I'm not looking back. I'm not looking back at what I could have had, at the fields and the money that that produced for me. I'm gonna go follow this man, I'm gonna be faithful to the ministry the Lord has for me. And he put up with being attacked by kings who wanted to kill him, and he put up with everything. And here he is now at the end of his life, and anybody who could have been bitter, it could have been Elisha. God, I've done all these things for you. I've ministered faithfully. And yet here he is suffering from an illness and continuing to minister faithfully to a king who's come to see him, who's not even someone who typically listens to his advice. Elisha's faithfulness is a reminder to us to beat the ground. It's to take the sticks, it's to go out and say, Lord, if you said to hit the ground, I'm just gonna keep hitting it until this makes sense. I'm gonna keep hitting it until you speak and say that's enough. I'm gonna keep hitting it until you explain this for me. I'm gonna work until you come through with your blessing, with your miracle, with what you wanted to teach me. Because I don't deserve the answer from you. I don't deserve the deliverance from you. I'm here to be faithful. God has not called us to be popular, successful, wealthy, well-known. He's not called us to be comfortable. He's called us to be faithful. He hasn't called us to feel the reward of what we do. He's called us to be faithful. So what's the ground that you have been called to be today? Is it a job? Is it caregiving for someone? Is it remaining faithful to your family? Is it a ministry opportunity that seems to come with unusual constant difficulty? It doesn't seem to make sense right now. Certainly it's your church, certainly it's the people in your life, it's other believers. Whatever it is, my hope for you today and my prayer for you is that you'll be faithful. You'll ask God how you can be more and more committed to those things in your life that he's called you to do and that you will be blessed, that you will find that the blessing that comes from faithfulness is often a delayed gratification. So I'll pray as we close. God, I thank you for your faithfulness today, and I thank you for giving us the opportunity to bless you through faithfulness. I thank you that there is something even within our power to do that causes you to be blessed and refreshed. Lord, I pray today for each and every person here. There are people here with all sorts of difficulties, stresses, pains in their life, and I pray that you would bless their faithfulness. I pray that you'd bless them as they go about day to day, sometimes just fulfilling an obligation or doing a duty. I pray that you would help them to know that you are honored by their faithfulness. And God, we thank you for your faithfulness to us even when we are faithless. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.