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In 2 Kings 2, a new era had dawned. The man that we know as Elisha had taken up the mantle of his mentor in order to continue Elijah's prophetic work. However, the people would reject and disrespect Elisha, and in doing so, they were actually disrespecting God. In today's study, we'll see God's surprising response.

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Elisha and the bears. You know, if tabloids had been around second Kings two, there's a lot of ways that could have described this particular set of events. What would a tabloid have to say? Something along the lines of bald man. You know, bald man unleashes army of bears on unsuspecting youth. Something like that, right? Bald, angry, grumpy man. Bald, angry, grumpy prophet unleashes army of bears to take out small children. That's what the tabloids would say. Now, in a chapter that already earlier, at the start of the chapter, involved God calling up a prophet into heaven in a whirlwind with a chariot of fire, what happened at the start of chapter 15 to Elijah? It's amazing. It's startling. And yet I remember reading chapter 15 going, wow, this is fascinating as a kid, that Elijah. And you get a little bit further and you're like, what? What is up with the bears? What is up with bears? So how do you interpret, when we come to the end of the text there, where Elisha calls out these bears to maul the use of the city, how do you interpret that? What does it make you think of Elisha, and what does it make you think of God? What is going on in this text? Well, again, when I was younger, my sense was that, if anything, this text depicted the sin of Elisha. He was called to be God's man, but he was kind of a temperamental fellow. He had trouble keeping hold of his emotions or what have you. It seemed like an overreaction. I mean, we've all been mocked. We've all been teenagers once. We've all been the object of mockery from others. It seems like an overreaction, you know, to call bears out to mole children who are mocking you here. As a side note, the comments that here go up, you bald head. I can't deny over the years, I've become a little sensitive.

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I don't know why, but I've become a little sensitive. Just imagine if myself or Rodney or someone.

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Was to react to mockery about baldness in our receding hairlines by calling out bears. Well, I promise you, this Gulfport would be full of bears. But that would be temperamental. That wouldn't be appropriate. Roddy works with the youth. That's not going to happen. So why Elisha? Why Elisha? What in the world's going on here? Well, let's return to this text. Let's return to verses 15 through 18, see the overall context of what's going on, and then try to learn what was going on in the latter verses. So let's reread verses 15 through 18. Verse 15. Now, when the sons of the prophets who were from Jericho saw Elisha, they said, the Spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha. Then they came to meet him, and they bowed to the ground before him. And they said to him, look, now there are 50 strong men with your servants. Please let them go up and search for your master, lest perhaps the Spirit of the Lord has taken him up and has cast him upon some mountain or in some. Some valley. And he said, you shall not. You shall not send anyone. But when they urged him until he was ashamed, it sounds like they just wouldn't let this go. We got to find this Elijah. He says, all right, send them. And Therefore they sent 50 men, and they searched for three days, but did not find him. Surprise, surprise, they did not find him. Verse 18. And when they came back to Elisha, for he had stayed in Jericho, notice he didn't go out with the search party, because he knew what had happened. When they went back to him, for he had stayed in Jericho, he said to them, did I not tell you? Did I not say to you, do not go? All right. Earlier in chapter two, something miraculous had gone down as Elijah came to the culmination, the end of his ministry. God sent this chariot of fire to take him up into heaven. Now, Elijah's ministry had been fraught with ups and downs. Elijah's ministry had had moments of what you would call tremendous success. You remember, we often talk about the time he went up to the top of Mount Carmel there, and one guy, one prophet of the one true God, face off against 800 prophets of Baal and Asherah, of Ahab and Jezebel. One faithful servant, one faithful prophet went up there. And they had this contest by which the prophets of BAAL and Asherah would attempt to light their sacrifice, and then Elijah would try to attempt to light his sacrifice, all through petitioning their gods. Well, we know that there is no gods of BAAL and Asherah. We know that the false prophets sat there and acted falsely and sung and danced and cut themselves and bled out trying to get their imaginary pretend Gods to do something. And nothing happened. To the point that Elijah, one hour goes to them and says, hey, you're not trying hard enough. Maybe your God's sleepy. Maybe you really have to rouse him. And so they tried even harder and nothing happened. Of course, Elijah, as we know the story plays out. The minute that they're all done and nothing has happened, their sacrifice remains unlit. Elijah just goes up to his, and he just has to say a word. And fire comes down from heaven. And Scripture says the fire didn't just light the sacrifice, it eviscerated it. It says there was nothing left, not even the dust. Elijah had a lot of moments that were marvelous and wonderful. Great success. Things went tremendously for him. At the same, Elijah had a lot of lows and a lot of valleys. There was a lot of times, Elijah's ministry, where things didn't go well. There's a lot of times in Elijah's ministry where he was anxious about what's happening. Why is God doing this? What's happening in the world around me? Why isn't he doing what I think he ought to do with his people? Right after that moment, right after that time with the lighting of the two sacrifices, as we remember, Elijah might have thought that at this point, everything's going to go fine. Everyone saw the lighting of the sacrifice. Everyone saw, there is a God in heaven. It's a God, Jehovah, the God of their fathers. Everyone saw it. Therefore, everything's going to change. But nothing changed. The people continued to be the people they were. Jezebel only got angrier against. Elijah sends out assassins to try to kill him. The assassins pursue him in the wilderness. He goes 40 days, and he's just beside himself to the point he ends up crying, weeping under a sycamore tree, weeping under a broom tree. He can't figure out what's happening. Then he goes even further. And of course, God meets him. God meets him at Sinai. He meets him at Sinai, and God speaks to him. He brings about this whirlwind, this fire, this lightning, this storm, the earthquake, all these different signs to demonstrate his own power in front of Elijah. But then, after demonstrating his power, he whispers to Elijah in what Scripture calls a still, small voice. And he reminds Elijah that he's still with him, that despite how things look, despite that things don't look like they've gone very well, despite the fact that Elijah thinks he's alone, that he's the only one left, despite what Elijah might think, that God's in charge and things are actually unfolding entirely according to plan. And God says, you're not even alone. You think you're alone. You're not. There's 7,000 that haven't bent the knee to Baal. That was a very small minority within the greater whole. And nevertheless, God says, my plan is unfolding just as it should. So Elijah had peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys. And that's true of all of us in our Christian walk. If it was true of Elijah, it's going to be true of you and I. With that said, the culmination of Elijah's ministry is what? Well, we read about it. Start of Second Kings, chapter two. The culmination is God has said, I've utilized my servant for the purposes in which I have placed him. My servant was fashioned by my hand. My will was. He was placed exactly where I wanted him when I wanted him, and he did exactly what I wanted him to do. Well done, good and faithful servant. It's time to go home. And when God was ready, he took him home. And he took him home in this chariot of fire that lifts him up to the sky. At the start of chapter two, well, here in verses 15 through 18, it happens right after that's occurred. Elijah has gone up into heaven. Now, as he's gone up to heaven, something came down. Do you know what it was? Elijah goes up to heaven, but something comes down. What came down was this Elijah's mantle. Elijah's mantle came down. And what was the mantle? Well, in a sense, it was a cloak. It was literally something he wore, but it was the cloak that he was accustomed to wearing when he performed all his prophetic miracles. In a sense, it was a symbol of his authority. So Elijah goes up, his mantle comes down. Who gets his mantle? Elisha. Elisha gets his mantle. And the significance of getting Elijah's mantle is that Elisha now had Elijah's job. So in any case, verse 15, some of the people in the local town, they say, oh, what's going on? Elijah's gone. But he can't really be gone. I mean, something happened, sure, but he's got to be here somewhere. Let's send out a search party. You know, the apb. Let's go find him. We'll look in peaks and valleys, we'll look, whatever. And so they do so. And of course, nothing happens. And Elisha knew nothing would happen because he saw the nature of Elijah's departure to begin with. All right, let's look at verses 19 through 22. Then the men of the city said to Elisha, Please notice the situation of the city is pleasant, as my lord sees. But the water is bad and the ground is barren. And he said, bring me a new bowl and put salt in it. So they brought it to him. Then he went out to the source of the water, and he cast in the salt there. And he said, thus saith the Lord, I have healed this water, and from it there shall be no more death or barrenness. He's reversing the curse here. And I'll get to that in a moment. So the water remained healed to this day, according to the word of Elisha, which he spoke. I'll ask you a question. Some of you enjoy plays in theater and the like. Rod, you've been to a lot of plays over time. I know the family steeped in that. Many of us have been to different plays. Now, there's a few occasions where I've gone to see plays that had named stars. Right. You know, people will go, I know that guy I once saw how to Succeed in Business without Even Trying, which is actually one of my favorite plays, with the Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio as the star. I saw Robert Goulet in the man of La Mancha, and so forth. Now, when you go to these plays with the star in place, you go in expecting to see who the star. Even if it's Robert Goulet. You say to yourself, I am here to see the star. What you don't want to hear is when you take in your seat and the lights dim and the announcement goes, tonight the part of Sancho Panza. Tonight, the part of whoever will be played by, you know, Pee Wee Herman, something like that. He said, no, no. Boo. You're not excited about that. Why? You're not there for the understudy. Well, guess what? The individuals of this town were not there for the understudy either. You see, they had a problem. The problem was this, that the water was bad. You can have the most beautiful place in the world, but if you can't get fresh, clean, drinkable water to that place, it doesn't matter how beautiful it is. You can't sustain life if you can't get water there. Well, back then, they didn't have trucks to Aquafina and other stuff rolling in to bring you the water. Either the water was good or it wasn't. And the prophets here in Jericho, they said, our water is bad. The city is nice enough. I mean, it got obliterated back in the time of Joshua. But, you know, after some ups and downs, the city is now back. So to Speak. And yet we still seem cursed because the water itself is bad. But that Elijah guy. We know what Elijah is capable of. All the miracles Elijah's done. Boy, that. That Elijah. I sure hope Elijah will help us out. Well, then Elijah's taken up to heaven, probably roughly the same time they were going to go approach him in order to see if he would help them out. So Elijah goes up to heaven, they go up to Elisha, and they go. You seem to be filling the role of Elijah, but would you mind if we looked for Elijah first? Just. Just to make sure that he's not just hiding out in the valley or whatnot? And Elisha, he's got the mantle. Literally the mantle Elijah wore. He's got it. It should be commonly understood that he is now God's man. But maybe it was his baldness, maybe it was. He was just different from Elijah. We don't really know in some way, shape or form that guy. That guy's not Elijah. You know, we're getting the understudy. What we really need is the star of the show, especially if we're going to get a miracle. A miracle. No one has ever said this Elisha guy can do miracles, but we know Elijah can. So that seems to be the nature of their concern. Whatever the case is, when they realize that Elijah's not coming back, they sent out the 50 guys. They look for three days. When they realize he's apparently gone, they say, all right. In verses 18 through 21, they say, all right, Elisha, I guess you'll do. So they identify the problem. They say the problem is this, that the water in their town Jericho has dried up. It's gone bad. It's deadly. Some theologians trace back the condition of the water there to the curse that Joshua entered on the city after its destruction. Back in Joshua 6, remember, after Jericho, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. Right after that destruction, a curse was placed on the city, if anyone should ever rebuild it, and that curse was manifest. If you read through the book of first Kings, you'll see that there was times when people gave up their lives in order to try to build the city. With that said here, the idea is that the curse. The city has sort of been rebuilt, and yet the curse must still remain because the city is uninhabitable without any water. So the prophets, these guys go to Elisha and they say, well, maybe you can help us out here. Maybe you can help reverse curse of what happened back in Joshua 6. Some theologians think that's what's going on here. Whatever the case is reversing the curse is part and parcel what the whole Bible is all about. And so here God tells Elisha that indeed we will do this. Thus saith the Lord, this is what's going to happen. They bring salt to go ahead and put at the head of the water stream itself. So what does salt do? Has a lot of agents. Salt does a number of different things. What's one of the principal things that salt does? It purifies. Salt is used to purify. So salt is added to the water not to make it more salty tasting, but rather as a purification agent. So that's what we see here. After the salt is added, the waters then are healed. And this had the net effect of doing two things. Number one, it helped the individuals who needed good drinking water. But God had an even larger overall purpose in doing this with Elisha. And the purpose was this, to demonstrate that that was his man. If the people were so entranced by Elijah because all the miracles and things that he had done, well, God was willing to validate the ministry of Elisha, his successor, by enabling him to do miracles like Elijah did, like his Master did. So this we have the first miracle that Elisha does. And it's an important life giving miracle that only gave life to the individuals, but also validated that this guy, this guy, this grumpy guy, maybe bald guy, whatever, this guy who the other people didn't think too high of, he was God's man. And God validated he was God's man through utilizing him to reverse this particular curse on the water stream. All right, let's now look at verse 23, because in verse 23 we see that although God had validated this is my man, in the case of this rowdy bunch of youths, some would doubt that and cast aspersions upon him. So let's look at verse 23, verse 23. Then he went up from there to Bethel. As he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him and said to him, go up you bald head. Go up you bald head. Remember, in Hebrew literature to repeat something is to do what. It's to emphasize if they thought this was a sick burn to begin with, repeating it really was to stick it to Elisha. Now I don't know if you're aware of this, we'll keep this among us ourselves. But teenagers can be a rowdy bunch of I've had teenagers, I've been a teenager, it's been a while. But teenagers can be a rowdy bunch. Sometimes things come out of their mouths that are very helpful and wonderful. And you stand back and go, aw, what great kids you are. And there's other times the teenagers say some things and go, oh, dear heavens, when are you going to grow up? Well, in this case, the kids, the youth, the children here had not grown up. Now, some translations will render this as children or something that gives you the idea that this like a bunch of 5, 6, 7, 8 year old small kids wandering up and calling them baldy. But that's not necessarily how this term is interpreted. You can interpret this word that we'll call youths here to be an age group of roughly between 7 and 20. It's probably a mixture of different ages at the least. Now, what are these youngsters doing? Whatever age they're at, what are they doing at this time? Well, it looks like they're just sitting by the dock of the bay, wasting time. It looks like they're just sitting back, kind of waiting. And what happens? All of a sudden, this bald guy starts walking past. Now, I don't know about you, but when I was young, insults generally germinated by. You take one look at someone, you assess one characteristic of someone, and that becomes the nature of the insult. You're too short. You know, hey, shorty. Things along those lines. Well, here is baldy. Go up, you bald head. Go up, you bald head. You have these youths, they cast out this mockery, this insult. Now, is that just harmless? Well, apparently not. Based on what is going to take place here, apparently there was something more significant going on. Now, before we look at the reaction, the response that God will bring about, not Elisha, that God will bring about to this circumstances, to these youths, let's just examine that phrase, go up, you bald head, which I never thought I'd do exegesis in a phrase quite like that. But here's the exegesis. Go up, you bald head. Notice there's two things. It's not just calling him bald. All right? Hey, baldy. Right. That would be simple. Go up, you bald head. We have to understand the insult by first asking, what in the world is go up me? Well, on the one hand, he was going up to Bethel. In that context, they didn't really think of things as through north and south and east and west as much as they thought about altitudes going up and down. Now, Jericho was down. How do we know that? Jericho is about 800ft below sea level. Jericho is way, way, way, way down. Bethel is considerably higher. So in this case, go up might simply mean you're traveling To Bethel. Go up. Keep on your way. Keep walking. Go to Bethel. Go up, you bald head. That might be it, but there's something else some theologians have commented on, and I personally, I'll tell you, I don't know what to make of this. There's some who look at this text and they say, go up, you bald head. And they interpret the words go up to be seen in light of what happened earlier to Elijah at the start of the chapter. Now, what happened to Elijah, not Elisha. What happened to Elijah at the start of the chapter? Where did he go up? He went up to heaven in a whirlwind. So you have two guys, two prophets. God had called Elisha to accompany Elijah. You got two men standing there, right? God takes one of them. One of them takes him to heaven, a chariot of fire. What does that say about the other guy? He didn't take. Some people think that the nature of the insult was to say this. Elijah got taken to heaven because he was worthy. Elijah got taken to heaven because he was God's man. Who are you? Go up, you bald head. Go up. Follow your Master. May God call you into such an estate if you're worthy of such a state. Go up, you bald head. Right. Some believe that might be the case. I'm not entirely sure. But I would have to say the fact that they utilize the term go up to begin with opens up the possibility. All right, let's now look at the response so far. If we just stopped at that point, the story itself would not have any real resonance, but it's going to have some resonance here in just a moment. Let's look at our final verses. Verses 24 and 25, verse 24. And so he turned around and looked at them. That's foreboding, right? That tells us something's going on. Most of the time, kids are mocking. What do you tell people if you're getting mocked? You're going down to the streets and someone says something. Just keep walking, you know, keep walking. Don't engage, don't engage. Let's just go forward. Elisha doesn't do that. He stops and he turns around and Scripture says he looks at them right about that moment. What would you do if you're one of the youths, probably would have been wise to get on out of there. That's not what will happen. Verse 24 says this. He turned around and he looked at them, and then he pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord, which is an important component here. And then two female bears some translations Say she bears. But two female bears came out of the woods and mauled or tore 42 of the ewes. Then. Then he went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria. What is going on here? What is happening? Again up to this point, we can sort of understand what has taken place, but here the story takes a turn. That's fascinating and interesting, and we probably need to extract the right lesson if we're ever going to understand this in our own devot years to come. When you study this passage, what is going on here? Well, here we see in verse 24 that Elisha hears the response, but he hears it, I think, not necessarily as an insult, just at himself. You know, the prophets and apostles had people hating on them all the time. Moses had people hating them all the time. Everyone hated Moses. The time which Moses was alive, he was one of the most despised mans on the planet. Everyone hated Moses at that time. Now we revere him. They didn't like him back then. There was all sorts of antagonism thrown at Moses all the time, even by his own brother and sister. One time, remember how Miriam's hand got turned? Leprous. Why? Because she was questioning and mocking why God favors my brother. Who is he that he's so great? Who is he that he's so special? Moses, Elisha. Elisha, Paul, Peter, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel. These various individuals were often thought of poorly by others and mocked. And with that said, there's not too many incidents where you see them immediately speak into reality the nature of their revenge, despite all the antagonism they had received. So what's going on here? Well, Again, in verse 24, it says that he turned around and he looked to them and he pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. The name of the Lord is significant here because of this, because it's not so much this text is not so much about Elisha himself. Whether he was great or he was worthy, or whether they should have been mocking him or not. That's irrelevant. The point here is that this was God's man and God's office. It was the mantle that God had put upon this individual, individual Elisha. And when people, even children, were mocking Elisha, what they were doing was mocking the God who had put Elisha in this particular estate. So we see here that Elisha's job, his office, was greater than he, the one who was holding it. And that's true of many jobs in the world around us. You know, there's kings and magistrates and rulers and judges and the like in the world around us, and usually that office we revere more than the individuals who hold it. In fact, that happens a lot. Why? It's because the office is important irrespective of the individual in it. So we honor the office, not because of the man. Sometimes it's in spite of the man, but we honor the office. Well, we see here in this particular case that that's what's going on. If you think of Peter, Peter at the time that Peter was an apostle, especially early on, was really rough around the edges. He said all sorts of things wrong. He had to get rebuked by Jesus. He messed things up. He made a lot of mistakes. He was as fallen as the rest of us. Nevertheless, the office to which God had called him a disciple and apostle transcended the man, Peter himself. It was true of David. David was a sinner. He was a wretched sinner. Look what David did. Read through the stories of Bathsheba and Uriah and the like and realize that David had done messed up. However, his office transcended the man. Elisha here as a man is nothing. He was fallen, he was bald. He was subject to critique. As an individual, however, his office transcended the man. And when. When the youths were mocking Elisha, they were mocking the God who sent Elisha, Bethel. You must understand, Bethel was a city that was known as the bastion of idolatry in its age. So these youths and the like were steeped in an idolatrous culture. And the nature of Jehovah, Yahweh, the God of Israel, was not commonly understood or appreciated at that time. Whatever the case is, they run down the man. But running down the man was not really the issue that caused God to bring about the bears. It was the namesake of God himself. So that's why verse 24 says he turned around and looked at him and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Now, what was the nature of the curse? Well, the nature of the curse we see spelled out that there's a couple of bears that come out. Now, there's a lot of curses that go on in the Bible. Very few of them, if any others, involve bears being sent to attack one's adversaries. So what do you make of the bears? What do you make of the bears? Well, here's how this is generally understood. And it's understood in a way that I think we can relate to when we think of the animal kingdom, when we think of all the animals out there, what specific animal and what specific gender of that animal is most known for protecting their young. Female bear. What is it saying? Is it better to encounter such and such rather than a mother bear robbed of her cubs? Female bears are known and notorious in our day and in that day for the proprietary nature by which they watched over their cubs. So what happens here? It's not simply the bears are sent. It's female bears are sent. Female bears which typify protection, protection to the utmost extreme that it can be known in the animal kingdom was typified here. Why? Because what was going on here was God saying, this is my man. This is my man. By way of. Just a quick summary here. As we've said, this is an interesting text. It's not one that I'd ever heard a sermon about. It's not one that we often consider. But it tells us a couple important things about God that are helpful for us. Number one is that God does have a plan. When he took Elijah, he inserted Elisha. When he took Moses, he gave people Joshua. The Book of Joshua opens with these words. Moses, my servant, is dead. That's how the Book of Joshua starts. And the idea is this, that Moses was not central to God's plan. Elijah was not central to God's plan. They were utilized in God's plan, but they were not central. God's plan does not hinge on any one individual. God's very willing and able to insert different individuals to accomplish his ends without missing a beat. And that's what happened in the case of Moses and Joshua. That's what happened in the case of Elijah and Elisha. That's what happens in the case of guys like Paul and Timothy. God is in the business of raising up individuals. And we who are older would do well to disciple young individuals because in due time they will serve the church. In due time, they will be the means by which God continues to do his work. Beyond that, we see here that God does protect his namesake. Whether it's the church of the New Testament, whether it's the office of the prophets in the Old Testament, God protects his namesake. God will validate through miracles in the Old Testament, through other means in the present. But God will validate and vindicate his glory, his name, his role, and also his instruments, even when they're falling individuals like Elisha. Let's pray.