to v. 14-21. Once again, 2 Kings 13, v. 14-21. Listen carefully, for this is the Word of the living God. Now when Elisha had fallen sick with the illness with which he was to die, Joash king of Israel went down to him and wept before him, crying, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. And Elisha said to him, Take a bow and arrows. So he took a bow and arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, draw the bow. And he drew it. And Elisha laid his hands on the king's hands. And he said, open the window eastward. And he opened it. Then Elisha said, shoot. And he shot. And he said, the Lord's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Syria, for you shall fight the Syrians in Aphek until you have made an end of them. And he said, take the arrows. And he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, Strike the ground with them. And he struck three times and stopped. Then the man of God was angry with him and said, You should have struck five or six times. Then you would have struck down Syria until you have made an end of it. But now you will strike down Syria only three times. So Elisha died and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. And as a man was being buried, behold, a marauding band was seen and the man was thrown into the grave of Elisha. And as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet. Thus far the reading of God's word. May he add his blessing to it. Let's ask the Lord for help in the ministry of the word tonight. Oh, Father God, we marvel at stories like this. We can't always make heads or tails about what it is your most Holy Spirit seeks to convey to us through them. We do pray that you would help your servant tonight to bring to light what that lesson is, because at the end of the day, Father, we don't simply want to hear stories for the sake of hearing stories or for the sake of being entertained, but we want to be sanctified through them. We want our eyes to be directed to Jesus. We want your spirits to work these truths within our hearts. And Father, we want to make a difference, not only a difference in this moment, but as we look back on our life at the end of our life, we want to say with Paul that we have fought the good fight and that we have finished the race. So Father, help us as we consider this text, and may you be glorified in it. We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Now, if you have your Bibles, I just want you to look at them for a moment in this chapter, because what's interesting about this section of Scripture is that there's actually four funerals that implicitly are recorded here. There is the funeral of Jehoahaz. We see him in verses 1 through 9. I'll get to him in a minute. And then there is the funeral or the life being recounted of Jehoash or Joash. It's the same name but put down different ways. And then we see the death of Elijah. And then we see the death of this unnamed Israelite soldier. Now, some weird things happened at the funeral of that unnamed Israelite soldier. Now, I've been around a little bit, especially as a minister. I've been to a lot of funerals and I've heard about a lot of shenanigans that have taken place at funerals. I heard the story, it's a true story, of a minister, and in the town where he served, there was these three brothers. And these three brothers had a business, and they were the most crooked business owners that you could ever imagine. They cheated people out of their money, they stole, they lied, they slandered. I mean, these guys were downright scoundrels. Well, one of the brothers died. And the two brothers came to this minister. They had never darkened the doorway of a church in their whole entire life. And certainly the brother who died had certainly not darkened the doorway of a church. But of course, they wanted to pull out all the stops for this funeral. And they wanted the name of their brother to be honored. So they came to this minister. This minister was very known in the area, very good reputation. And they said, Minister, we want you to do our brother's funeral. We want you to preside over it. But there is a catch. We want you to tell everyone that he was a saint. Oh, you want me to tell everyone that he is a saint? Well, of course, the minister had to wrestle through this in his conscience. He knew that if he didn't do this, that there would be deleterious effects. He knew that these men could make his life a living hell. And so he thought through it, and he prayed through it, and he came back to the men, and he said, I'll tell you what, I'll do that. And so the day of the funeral came, and the minister stood up, and he gave the eulogy. And he said, this man in this casket was a low-life mangy mutt. He was a scoundrel. He lied, and he cheated, and he stole, and he slandered. And he was a miserable man. But compared to his brothers, he was a saint. And I've told that story before. And that is a weird thing that you would see at a funeral. But nothing tops what happened at the funeral of this unnamed Israelite soldier. He dies, and his fellow soldiers are putting him in the grave, and a marauding band of Moabites came through, and they didn't have time to give him a proper burial, and they needed to get into the city gates, and so what they did is they just looked around. They saw a tomb. They didn't know whose tomb it was. It happened to be Elisha's tomb. They threw him into that tomb and then ran for the city gates. And lo and behold, as soon as this man's body hit the bones of Elisha, he came to life and stood on his feet." And you read that and you're just like, wait, it just stops there? He revived and stood on his feet? What happened next? I mean, can you imagine if after coming to his feet, he also saw the band of marauding Moabites and he said, I got to run for cover. So he runs into the very city of the people that threw him in the tomb and just shows up. Hey guys, what's going on? I mean, that would have been startling. But to really understand the lesson that the Holy Spirit intends to convey to us, we need to back up. So let me back up to that first funeral, that first funeral. And that is Jehoahaz in verses one through nine. I'm not going to read it, but basically this is a simple account of the life of Jehoahaz. And basically what we learn from Jehoahaz is that he was an evil king. He perpetuated the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. And he did not bring Israel to faithful worship of Yahweh. And the living testimony of that is that there were Asherah poles still in the land. Now, an Asherah pole is basically a shrine to other gods other than Yahweh. He tolerated them as king, which he was not supposed to do. He was supposed to enforce at the civil level, at the civic level, the exclusive worship of Yahweh. But he did not do that. He left his options open on the table. And as a result, the Lord's anger was kindled against Israel. And so what did he do? He sends Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, to ravage Israel. They do. They wipe out most of his army, just decimate it. He's left with a shell of the former army that he had before. But he cries out to the Lord, and he asks for mercy, and guess what the Lord does? The Lord shows compassion on him. The Lord sends a Deliverer. That's all it says in the Septuagint. It's the word for Savior. Sends a Deliverer. This Deliverer saves Israel from the oppression of Syria. Israel's once again living in security, but they still didn't learn the lesson. Jehoahaz still didn't turn Israel toward Yahweh, and then he dies. So that's what we see at this first funeral. And what we see is a cautionary tale. But then in verses 10 through 13, we see the account of a second funeral, and that is Jehoash or Joash. Again, it's just various mentions of the same name. It's just different spellings. So he takes over, and the author of 2 Kings is very brief in how it describes him. It basically sums up his kingship with the phrase, And he serves as another cautionary tale, be faithful to the Lord even if it is unpopular. And then Elisha, he dies after a life of 60 years of faithfulness to the Lord and being dead, yet his bones spoke life back into a dead man. And then the fourth funeral that we have is this unnamed soldier. But now I want to come back to Joash because this is where the action is. In verses 14 through 19, we see the curious case of the prophetic sign of the arrows and the bow. And this seems like a very strange account, so let me fill in the blanks for you here. First off, this is a flashback to when Joash was still alive, obviously. Elisha is still alive, Joash is still alive. Joash is up against a wall, because the enemies of Israel are encroaching upon Israel, they are threatening Israel, and Joash has inherited an army that is a fraction of its former self. And so in this flashback, we see this account where Joash comes to visit Elisha, who's basically on his deathbed. And we have to ask the question, what is Joash up to here? Why is he coming to see Elisha? What is he trying to accomplish? Now, we may think at first that he's simply visiting a faithful prophet and paying his respects. But I want you to notice two things that he does. Number one, he weeps over Elisha. And number two, he says this cryptic phrase, my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. Now, if you've been following along in the series on Elijah and Elisha, you know that the last time we heard that phrase was when Elijah was taken up by the chariots of Israel, the chariots of fire, and as Elisha was standing there watching him go up, He said, my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. So we may be led to believe that it sounds like Joash is a fan of Elisha and his God, Yahweh. But not so fast. You see, the previous account of Joash has told us that he was evil. He perpetuated the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. That means, among other things, he didn't pull down the Asherah poles. He allowed worship to other gods. And why would he do that? Why would Joash do that? It's very simple because Joash was a pragmatist. There were many rival claims of who the true God was in Israel. There was the God of the Syrians, the God of the Philistines, and every other claim to supreme deity. And the fact that Joash left up the Asherah was an indication. that he was willing to get behind whichever God would help him restore his kingdom. Notice I said his kingdom, not the theocratic kingdom of Israel. And so remember that under his father Jehoahaz, Ben-Hadad had decimated his army, Israel was in a tenuous place, and Joash needed help. And here's what we know about Elisha. For 60 years, he had faithfully called the people of Israel to covenant faithfulness to Yahweh alone. And in those 60 years, he has done many miracles. He's displayed the power of Yahweh. And so now here's what you have. You have Joash with his back against the wall politically. He needs any help he can get. So what does he do? He goes to Elisha to see what he can do for him. The tears he shed were crocodile tears. He was afraid. With Elisha gone, Elisha's on his deathbed. With Elisha gone, who would do the miraculous feats of deliverance? Who would save God's people? Who would intercede on their behalf before Yahweh? With Elisha gone, things were going to be grim. Now, notice that phrase that Joash uses when he sees sickly Elisha on his deathbed. He says, my father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. I do not believe that that is referring back to the incident when Elisha saw Elijah go up into the heavens. There is another place in 2 Kings 6 where we see the similar phrase, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. And it's that incident where Elisha is being hunted down by the king of Syria. Because somehow the king of Syria, when he's making his plans in his bedroom, his secret plans where he's going to go out and make raids, Somehow somebody's finding out and they're telling the king of Israel and the king of Israel is finding safe harbor before Assyria comes. And so he goes to his council and he's like, who's the mole? Who's the mole in my council? He's like, oh, no, it's none of us. None of us. We all checked out. We got our background checks. No, it's this prophet Elisha. The things you say in your bedroom, he hears, he knows, and he tells it to the king of Israel. He said, well, where is this prophet? Oh, he's in Dothan. And so he said, send everything, everything we have, all my men, all the horsepower, send them and kill them. So they come to Dothan, and they've surrounded the city. And Elisha's there, and who's with him but old faithful Gehazi or unfaithful Gehazi? And Gehazi is looking around, he looks out the window and he's like, Lord, we're going to die, OK? The armies of Syria are surrounding us. What are we going to do? And Elisha is like super calm. And what does he do? He says, Lord, open his eyes. And what does he see? The chariots and the horsemen of the angelic host. And what happens, do you recall? Well, the Lord, or Elisha, then requests, now that he's opened Gehazi's eyes, and so now Gehazi sees, oh, there's more that are for us than are for them. We're gonna be okay. Then, in a curious turn of events, Elisha prays to the Lord that he would blind the eyes of the Syrians, and so he does. And so here's this whole host of an army that's blinded, and Elisha goes up to them and he says, hey, where are you going? Because they're going every which way. He says, follow me. And so they follow him, they follow Elisha. And they follow him all the way back to Samaria. They come to the king of Israel, and it's like shooting fish in a barrel. The king's like, all right, well, dear prophet, should we kill them? He said, no, don't kill them. Would you kill captives that you take? No, no, no, no. Give them the most lavish banquet, okay? God opens their eyes, they have a lavish banquet, and he sends them off on their way. And the curious epilogue to that story is this. Syria no longer sent raids into Israel after that event. That's what Joash is after. That's what Joash is after. You see, Joash is not coming to Elisha because he wants to repent of his horrible job of being a king. He wants his own thing. He is a pragmatist. He wants his own kingdom. He wants his own safety. He wants his own security. And so he comes with a half-hearted repentance to Elisha, which to him is like a rabbit's foot. He's like a four-leaf clover. He's like your security blanket or your cup of coffee in the morning. Just to give you a little security to make you feel good about yourself. That's what I think is going on here. And that's what Joash wants. And so here's what Elisha does. He gives Joash a test of faithfulness. And this is where we come to this incident of the arrows. So it says, take a bow and arrows. So he took a bow and arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, draw the bow. And he drew it. And Elisha laid his hands. Can you imagine sickly Elisha with all the strength that he has left, raising his hands to put them on the hands of the king. And he said, open the window eastward. And he opened it. Then Elisha said, shoot. And he shot. Now I want you to notice this in verse 17. After he shot the arrow, this is what Elisha said. The Lord's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Syria, for you shall fight the Syrians in Aphek until you have made an end of them." Now, full stop. You need to understand how prophets work. Prophets not only give prophecies, some of which are unconditional, others of which are conditional. They also give what is called sign acts. And a sign act is meant to be a prophecy, and that's what this is, but it is not an unconditional prophecy. It is a prophecy that is predicated on the faithfulness of Joash. Elisha's giving him the answer key in this phrase. He shoots the arrow out the window, and then Elisha tells him, here's the hint. This arrow is the arrow of victory over Syria. Hint, hint. Think about that. This arrow is the arrow of victory. And Joash, you know, his eyes are glazing over. He doesn't know what's going on. But here comes the second half of the test. Then he says, now I want you to take those arrows and strike them on the ground. And so Joash did, but he only struck three times. And the prophet, the man of God, got angry and said, you should have struck five or six times because then you would have made a full defeat of them. Now people read that and they're like, how is he supposed to know that? I just showed you in verse 17. The arrow is the symbol of victory. So the kind of victory that you want is going to be demonstrated by the second half of the test. How many times are you going to strike it? And it's not so much the number, it's the enthusiasm and the vigor and the zeal that Elisha is looking for. But Joash didn't come with zeal because he had a half-hearted motive for coming in the first place. And so he only struck three times. And so the prophet, in his anger, told him, then you're only going to defeat Syria three times. And that's what happened. We read on later in the epilogue that after Elisha died and this strange thing happened with the man resurrecting, then Joash went to war with Ben-Hadad and he struck him down three times. So those are two funerals Jehoahaz, Joash, And then we know that Elisha at some point died. This is assumed. And then we have this fourth funeral, which have already named or already mentioned the unnamed Israelite who came to life when his corpse hit the bones of Elisha. Now, what do we do with this? Aren't you glad you're not a preacher? Like, how am I going to apply this? Well, I do have some application that I'd like to present before you tonight. Let me just give you a few points of application. Number one, how can we apply this? Beloved God calls us to full and enthusiastic obedience, not half-hearted pragmatism. Joash was out to protect his kingdom, not the theocratic kingdom of Yahweh, and it showed. I think sometimes we as Christians, we don't want to be seen as fanatics. And so we tone down our zeal for the Lord. I'm not talking about being mouthy. I'm not talking about being ostentatious. I'm not talking about being showy. I'm not talking about being, you know, the one that talks the most and has seen them. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about our zeal and our enthusiasm and making war with sin in our own hearts and our own minds. and in our own lives. Out of a desire, I think, to be quote-unquote balanced, we don't make war with sin. We don't set boundaries in our life like we should. And that is the wrong kind of balance. There should be no compromise with sin in our sanctification. We should pull out all the stops in our repentance. We shouldn't come to God as a good luck charm in one hand and a half-hearted repentance in the other hand. What does the prophet say? He has shown you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Sometimes you ever find yourself being like, God, just show me what to do when we know exactly what it is we need to do. The source of Israel's affliction was their unwillingness to put away their idols and serve Yahweh alone. They were leaving their options open to what other gods could do for them. How do we do the same thing? What loose ends do we leave hanging that pulls us back into our sinful ways? Do you know, sometimes the radical thing to do in our fight against sin and our striving, listen, for contentment and joy and peace in Christ. Sometimes the radical thing to do is not so radical. It's just normal. What did Mary do? Mary broke a box of expensive nard to anoint the Savior's feet. You know who thought that was crazy? Judas. Think about that for a second. If the Judas's of the world think you're crazy, you're probably doing the right thing. You're probably doing the right thing. What about Peter? He's on the boat, Jesus is walking on the water. And what does Peter say? Lord, if you command me to come out on the water, I will. And I'm sure the disciples are like, come on, Peter. You always got a one-up and like, just stop. Jesus is trying to tell us something. But the Lord was blessed by that. The Lord accepted that. The Lord called him to come out on the water. And it showed that Peter was devoted to the Lord. So we're not to come with a half-hearted obedience, a half-hearted repentance, seeking the face of the Lord with mixed motives, but we need to steal our mind and steal our heart to come with right motives, unlike Joash, to come to the Lord that he might change us. Secondly, don't depend on the faith of another, but stand on your own faith. What was Joash doing? I don't even know if Joash was a true believer, but he was giving some semblance of going to the right people at the right time. And you know, Joash didn't need to go to Elisha. You know what Joash needed to do? He needed to be the king that God called him to be. He needed to be faithful as that faithfulness was depicted in a description of what the kings were to be in the Pentateuch. But he was looking for other avenues. He was looking for rabbit's feet and four leaf clovers and good luck charms. Now, I want boys and girls, if I could have your attention. Right now, you're in a time in your life where you are moving through life off the coattails of your parents faith. And that's that's doing you well right now, but you need to understand. There needs to come a time when you stand on your own two feet of faith. Your faith needs to be your faith, not mommy and daddy's faith. You need to believe those things, not because mommy and daddy believes them, but because in your heart of hearts you believe that the only way to be brought nigh unto God is through repentance and faith in the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That must be your faith. Because when the trials come, when the waves crash down on your head, your parents can pray for you. Your parents can do all they can for you. But the only thing that's going to bring you through those breakers is your own personal faith that you experience for yourself, where you could say, I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. Your parents cannot taste for you. You must taste for yourself. Thirdly, Don't waste your trial by waiting to be magically taken out of it without learning the lesson God intended for it. Joash was going through the motions. I think of Joash as shoulda coulda woulda, shoulda coulda woulda. Beloved, every moment is a test of faith. God tells us that the arrows are meant to be a symbol of victory over our enemies. So also, our trials, which are kind of like arrows, right? Our trials are like arrows. Arrows from the enemy, arrows from dark providence. Our trials, like arrows, are meant to be a symbol of God's victory. If God puts you on a hard path, he has every intention of walking down that path with you. Joash cared too much about his own kingdom and not God's kingdom and God's purposes. So keep in mind that our trials are not meant to be wasted, nor, listen, nor are our trials meant to be merely endured. If you think of your trials of, I just got to close my eyes and grin and bear it and just white knuckle it alone, you're missing so much that God has to teach you. Every trial by God's grace, not that I've endured them or passed through them perfectly, because I haven't. But I can look back at every trial in my life and say, oh, I learned something about God through that. I learned something about myself through that, about my own sinful heart. I learned something about other people. I learned something about the mysterious ways of God's providence. And here's the life of wisdom. Wisdom doesn't go back to its folly like a dog to its bonnet. So whatever lessons you learn from those trials, the point is that you not have to relearn them the hard way, but that you learn it the right way. Fourthly, this point is very simply a question. What will your death do? What will your death do? I see in this historical miracle of the raised corpse a valuable lesson. You might call it a metaphorical lesson. You know, the deaths of Jehoahaz and Joash were just ho-hum at best. They were cautionary tales. They were the end of a life that did not inspire others to faithfulness, but stood as a cautionary tale. But Elisha's life was a life of faithfulness. And at the end of his life, he literally brought a guy back from the dead. I mean, think about that. I mean, at his funeral, somebody was raised to life. That's a picture of something. What is that a picture of? Well, let me ask this question. What will be said at your funeral? Every funeral I've been to, I've always been struck, especially as people stand up and talk about the people, it tells you much about the impact that that life had on other people's lives. And you know, sometimes I hear, in some funerals, impact that this person, this man or woman, had on other people's lives that does not echo into eternity. Like, you know, I learned how to work on a car from this guy. That's fine, that's great. You know, I learned how to save money. That's fine. But when I hear a testimony of a funeral that this man or this woman taught me how to follow Jesus, this man or this woman taught me how to be a churchman or a churchwoman, this man or this woman opened up for me, The kingdom of God, this man or this woman led me to faith in Jesus Christ. This man or this woman taught me how to evangelize. This man or this woman taught me how to endure trials. That, my friend, will echo into eternity. And so what will be said of you? What will be your legacy? What will people thank God for your life for? I think we see a metaphor in this, that your life should make a difference. We want others to be able to say, he or she finished well and I want to finish like that. God sends a deliverer to his people, not simply because he pities them, and not based on their full and perfect repentance, but based on his mercy and his grace and his covenant. It's interesting that in 1323, after the death of Elisha, that Syria comes against Israel again, and Israel was sorely afflicted by Syria. but it says that God came to their defense. Why? Because He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, Israel did not deserve it. They did not deserve to be taken out of this cycle that we see in the Judges again. The Lord saves them, and then they're doing well, and then they fall back into sin, and then they cry out to God for help, and God sends a deliverer, and they get back on their feet, and then the cycle just keeps going. Like, they didn't deserve it, and that's the point of grace. The point of grace is that we didn't deserve it. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. And that's the message of the Gospel for us tonight. While we were yet sinners, when we did not ask for it, We were blind in our trespasses, in our sins. Yea, verily, we were dead. And yet though being dead, God sent his son to undertake our death and then to rise from the grave so that we one day would rise again as well. And this is the message of the gospel. that God sends deliverers, the deliverer, Jesus Christ, to people who do not deserve it, people who do not ask for it, but it is available to people who desire it, through whom the Spirit of God has made alive. So let us remember the gospel tonight, beloved. Let us remember that Christ died for the ungodly. Let us remember that we did not deserve it. And let us out of gratitude serve the Lord with a full hearted enthusiasm and zeal that is fitting for servants of the Lord. Let us pray. Father God, we do thank you for your servant Elisha, and we do pray, Father, for all of us here in this place. We know that our death will not necessarily literally bring somebody back to life. That would certainly be a miracle. But we do want our life to count for something. I pray, Father, that we can live lives now that by the time we get to the end, we could say with the Apostle Paul, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. And when I close my eyes in death and I open them in the presence of the risen Christ, I will hear the words from his lips, well done, my good and faithful servant. That is our ardent cry tonight. Have mercy upon us for the many ways that we fail in this, but thank you for your mercy and grace despite our failures. For it is in Christ's name we pray.