David's Sermons - 2 Kings 4 - Eyes, Hands, Mouth

Eyes, Hands, Mouth

2 Kings 4v18-22, 32-38

And when the child was grown, it fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers.
And he said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad, Carry him to his mother.
And when he had taken him, and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon, and then died.
And she went up, and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door upon him, and went out.
And she called unto her husband, and said, Send me, I pray thee, one of the young men, and one of the asses, that I may run to the man of God, and come again.

And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead, and laid upon his bed.
He went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the LORD.
And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm.
Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.
And he called Gehazi, and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son.
Then she went in, and fell at his feet, and bowed herself to the ground, and took up her son, and went out.
And Elisha came again to Gilgal: and there was a dearth in the land; and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him: and he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage for the sons of the prophets.

Chapter 4 here presents a beautiful picture of salvation. It contains four miracles by Elisha:

He gives a widow in debt an large supply of oil to pay off her debt

He raises the Shunammite's son from the dead

He purifies a bowl of stew which is poisoned

He feeds 100 people with 20 small loaves

Jesus paid the debt that we owed and could not pay

He raises us from the dead to new life

He purifies our hearts from the poison of sin. This is not just a one-off event, but the start of a continuing process.

He feeds us spiritual bread which helps us grow

I want to concentrate on the verses in the text. Elisha lay on top of the boy, touching his eyes, hands and mouth. Likewise, our eyes, hands and mouths are touched at salvation. We're going to look at each of these and what they mean in our Christian lives.

Eyes

The eyes speak of separation. When we're driving along the road we need to keep our eyes straight ahead. Looking down at the radio, at the person next to us or at the hills to the side causes us to start veering off the road. We need to keep our spiritual eyes fixed on Jesus, not being distracted by the things around us.

Hands

Hands speak of service. Two men had burned hands. One hid them with gloves, the other wa quite open about his. Talking about it one day the one with the gloves admitted he had burned his hands in a robbery which went wrong. Whenever he saw his hands now, they reminded him of his past sin. The other man said he burned his hands saving his child from a fire, and he was happy whenever he looked at them now.

Mouth

The mouth speaks of our witness. There's a story about a forest fire. The firemen were walking through the forest after the faire had been put out and found a body. The body was charred but had not been killed by fire, but by a fall. It was wearing a diving suit. They reckoned one of the planes had scooped up water to douse the fire and picked up the diver as well, dropping him on the forest from a great height.

This story is not true, but you may have heard it as true. It's amazing how quickly stories spread and change.