Sometimes, preaching doesn't always go the way the preacher wants it to go. When preparing sermons, much thought and sweat go into putting words together, just so. Laboring to make the biblical story perspicuous. Threading the needle between OT and NT. Magnifying Christ in all the scriptures. A daunting challenge each week. The Church wants to see Jesus. Preachers want to answer that call! Some Sundays, I'll have to admit, the preaching doesn't quite get around on the ball, and so the hoped for homer turns into a dribble down the first base line. That was Sunday. However, when I came back to Sunday's dud this morning with the mind to reload for another "at bat" next Lord's Day, I realized that some sermons are better read than said. Thinking that's the case with yesterday (although you may politely disagree) I post a written version of the sermon hoping that it will be everything I hoped it would be, "read" rather than "said." Imperfectly, but sincerely yours, in Christ, Cameron.
New Life Presbyterian Church
Rev. Cameron Smith
Sunday, May 11, 2025.
Elisha: To Jericho, Life
Sermon #2 of 7
2 Kings 2:15-22; Matthew 4:1-11
Let’s go back to the Jordan River. To the eastern shore, Transjordan, on the plains of Moab. Joshua, whose name means “the Lord is salvation,” was “ordained” there by Moses to lead Israel across the Jordan into the Promised Land. Moses himself did not go with them, but was taken up by God, never to be seen again. Joshua crossed miraculously as the waters parted and they walked across on dry land.
They came to Jericho and marched around the Canaanite city seven times and sounded the shofar, and the walls came tumbling down, and everyone in the city, save Rahab and her family, became casualties at the outset of this holy campaign. Just as Adam and Eve had been cast out of the Garden of Eden after the Fall— so the inhabitants of the Promised Land were cast out.
The Land was supposed to be holy. This renewed “Garden” was to be stewarded by God’s people, a “kingdom of priests,” to be a light to the nations— but that did not happen. Israel, over time, became just like the inhabitants of the Land that they had driven out in the first place.
In the books of Kings, we find more of the same. Therefore, in the middle of the story –straddling 1 and 2 Kings– of Israel and Judah’s kings, Elijah appears. No introduction. No background. He is the “John the Baptist” of his day, and the message is the same: “Repent! You brood of vipers.” He challenged King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel just as John the Baptist would challenge Herod Antipas. Nevertheless, the sins of the people in the Land would eventually lead to a Reverse Exile. Elijah would identify another prophet, one greater than himself, to come to lead a new conquest. It would be Elisha, whose name, like Joshua, means “God is salvation.”
Returning to the east side of the Jordan, Transjordan, the Plains of Moab, just as happens with Moses as Joshua looks on, Elijah is taken away by God, never to be seen again, and Elisha will re-cross the Jordan, miraculously on dry ground, and with the people of God now represented by the company of prophets, to begin another conquest.
The mission, as it was with Joshua, is to retake the Promised Land. However, this conquest will be different. This conquest will not be about casting out the population. It will be about reaching and transforming the hearts of the population.
Elisha, like Joshua, will “attack” Jericho first. But this time, to bring life, not death. 1 Kings 2:19 says, “Now the men of the city said to Elisha, ‘Behold, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord sees, but the water is bad, and the land is unfruitful.’” There was death in the water.
Therefore Elisha, mercifully and graciously, with a new bowl and some salt, he pours it into the spring (2:21-22) — “Thus says the LORD, I have healed this water; from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.” And thus, the water has been healed to this day, according to the word that Elisha spoke.
Indeed, when you visit the ancient ruins of Jericho, known as Tel es-Sultan, that spring is still gushing up with fresh water. It is called “Elisha’s Spring.” In fact, the city’s water plant is still located at the base of this ancient mound.
Speaking of that ancient mound of Jericho. When I first visited that place in 2020, you can’t help but notice the bold, barren mountain that backdrops Tel es-Sultan. There is a tram recently built that saves visitors the circuitous snake path up to a monastery there carved into the mountainside. The name of the mountain is the Quarantal. It means “the Mount of the Forty.” This was, I was told, the place where Jesus came after his baptism to be tempted in this wilderness for forty days. The monastery was built over the cave where the Lord fasted and prayed for the duration of his temptation in the wilderness.
I was puzzled because the account we read from Matthew 4 doesn’t say Jesus went to Jericho. It just says he “was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” I had never in all my years as a Christian, heard that Jesus came to Jericho after his baptism. I confess, I thought it was a local tourist bait when I first heard it. However, this is where the Fifth Gospel of geography enriched my understanding of the Scriptures. (This, incidentally, is why I love traveling to and leading groups around the Holy Land.) Tradition, local memory, and good theology testify that Jesus had to come to Jericho when he “crossed Jordan.”
Jericho is within sight of the banks of the Jordan where Joshua brought the People through the waters. Joshua then came from there to Jericho to begin a conquest of the Land. A conquest that brought death.
Jericho was the same city where Elisha came too when he crossed Jordan to begin his conquest. This time, a conquest that brought life. In the remaining sermons in this series, we will witness this “conquest," that is, Elisha exercising a ministry of Jesus-like love— healing, feeding, including the excluded and raising the dead. Elisha re-entered the Promised Land in the middle of decay and decline. He encountered a holy people who had lost their way. That he came the way he did was and is evidence that God cared. God saw. God heard. And God acted through his prophet.
Nevertheless, Elisha’s human ministry— even as it was supernaturally endowed with the word and power of God, working incredible, nature denying miracles— was not enough to reverse the course. The darkness in the human heart is as strong as death. And death can only be overcome by the power and presence of God. Nonetheless, Elisha’s ministry still stands to us a foretaste and preview of what God will need to do. Of what God will do.
This is where we come back to Jesus— whose name, like Joshua and Elisha, means “the Lord is salvation.” Like Elisha, Jesus comes in the middle of the story, in this case, in the middle of human history— in the center of that crease of time we call BC and AD. Jesus goes to John the Baptist to be baptized— to assume the mission— to lead a new Exodus and entry from the Jordan into the Promised Land. John, like Elijah and Moses before him, will decrease. Jesus will go where Joshua and Elisha went before him— to Jericho.
And as we read in Matthew 4, Jesus would be tempted by the devil three times. Jesus, armed with the Word of God and an unwavering fidelity, overcame temptation, and remained faithful as the wilderness generation of Moses had not. As the generation that had entered the Promised Land with Joshua had not. As the generation of Elijah and Elisha and the kings of Israel and Judah had not. Jesus came to Jericho not to bring death. And he came not to heal the water, but to heal the human heart and lead the way from death into life.
My friends, this is why we “church” on Sunday mornings. Let us remember, and contemplate, and engage this Story in our hearts. Because, “the Lord is salvation.” At long last, in Jesus Christ, God loves us.
Amen.
Elisha Springs at Tel-es-Sultan, Jericho, with the ruins of the old city in the backdrop.
