Gourds and Grain
Devotions for Growing Christians
Gourds and Grain
2 Kings 4:38-44 - “When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, he said to his servant, "Put on the large pot and boil stew for the sons of the prophets." Then one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine and gathered from it his lap full of wild gourds, and came and sliced them into the pot of stew, for they did not know what they were.So they poured it out for the men to eat.
And it came about as they were eating of the stew, that they cried out and said, "O man of God, there is death in the pot!" And they were unable to eat. But he said, "Now bring meal." And he threw it into the pot, and he said, "Pour it out for the people that they may eat." Then there was no harm in the pot.
Now a man came from Baal-shalishah, and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. And he said, "Give them to the people that they may eat." And his attendant said, "What, shall I set this before a hundred men?" But he said, "Give them to the people that they may eat, for thus says the Lord, 'They shall eat and have some left over.'" So he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord.”
Try mentioning "the feeding of the 100" to a group of believers, and see how many odd stares you get! And when you say it was done through the multiplying of twenty loaves of bread, you're sure to get some raised eyebrows. People will think you don’t know your Bible - or you don’t know how to count! But you'll have the last laugh when you turn your friends to 2 Kings 4.
The early chapters of 2 Kings record the miracles that took place during the days of the prophet Elisha. The miracle mentioned above is only one of many in these chapters. As we read about the many and varied miracles, we're constantly reminded of the many wonderful miracles of our Lord Jesus. And like the miracles of Jesus, the miracles performed through Elisha were designed to teach us spiritual lessons. Just as no miracle of Christ was done in an arbitrary, random, or off-the-cuff manner, so no miracle at the time of Elisha was done without the sovereign control and design of God. All of the miracles of Elisha's day have spiritual lessons for the believer today.
The miracle of the “feeding of the 100” is closely associated with the wild gourds event that immediately precedes it, so we’ll study these two miracles together.
Background
Elisha lived in a day when the nation of Israel was walking away from the Lord. Many individuals in the southern kingdom of Judah continued to worship the Lord at the Temple in Jerusalem. However, the northern kingdom of Israel, where Elisha's ministry was centered, was almost completely given over to pagan worship and practices. When the united kingdom of Israel split apart in 931BC (1 Kings 12), and King Jeroboam I set up the golden calf idols in the northern kingdom, many of the godly people migrated south to be part of the kingdom of Judah, and to worship at God's Temple in Jerusalem.
Elijah's dramatic confrontation with the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel in the north (1 Kings 18) took place some time before Elisha's ministry. Unfortunately this great victory didn’t turn the nation back to the Lord. False prophets of pagan gods continued to roam freely in the northern kingdom. Although there were still some believers in the north who had "not bowed the knee to Baal," the number was relatively small (1 Kings 19:18).
Elisha and “the schools of the prophets” found their ministry in this setting. The schools of the prophets can best be described as the seminaries of that day. According to the Old Testament Law, religious instruction was the responsibility of the priests and the Levites. Most likely the schools of the prophets were instituted by the prophet Samuel (cf. 1 Samuel 19:20) to bring about reform, because the priesthood was increasingly corrupt. Because of the failure of the priests, God supplanted their ineffective teaching ministry with the services of the prophets. However, some of God's spokesmen were not from the schools of the prophets (cf. Amos 7:14), and some graduates of the schools were not called by God to be His spokesmen.
By the time of Elijah and Elisha, schools of the prophets were established in several locations. Three locations are named in 2 Kings: Bethel (2:3), Jericho (2:5), and Gilgal (4:38). The two miracles in our text took place at the Gilgal school.
To understand the spiritual lessons of these miracles, it’s important to realize that, very often in Scripture, physical items represent spiritual realities. Physical water, for example, frequently represents the spiritual "water of life" which every "thirsty" soul needs for salvation. (See John 7:37-39.)
In these two miracles, notice how flour (meal), bread and grain were used to bring relief to the unfortunate situation at Gilgal. Throughout God's Word, these substances often represent Christ, and the Scriptures that proclaim Him. For example, the Lord Jesus said that the physical manna that fed the Israeli people in the wilderness was a picture of Himself as the Bread of Life. (See John 6:22-59.) In our Lord's well-known quotation of Deuteronomy 8:3, the parallel between physical bread and the Word of God is quite clear: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." (See Matthew 4:4 and Luke 4:4.) And the “fine grain offering” of the Old Testament is a spiritual picture of the moral perfections of Jesus Christ, the sinless Sacrifice.
No Teaching
With the basic spiritual meaning of the flour, the grain and the bread established, let’s develop the spiritual lessons of the miracles. A famine was the setting (v38). No food was available! It doesn't take much insight to see that this pictures the spiritual condition of many groups of God's needy people. In fact, in many ways it describes Christianity today. People have a spiritual hunger, but there's a famine in the land! Although there may be all kinds of activity, in many churches that people are not being fed.
A spiritual famine exists. Underfed Christians are spiritually weak and listless. They're not excited about living out a Christian lifestyle. They're easily tempted to choose "food sources" that aren't nourishing- and may even be harmful to their spiritual health. It's a life-threatening situation!
False Teaching
The famine had not only overtaken the schools of the prophets, but there was an additional problem as well. Wild gourds had been gathered and mixed in with the food! How could the young prophets possibly help the people if they themselves were being poisoned by "death in the pot"? In the picture, the wild gourds represent false teaching that has been mixed in with healthful biblical teaching. Many Christian colleges and seminaries no longer offer a Christ-centered curriculum or biblically-focused programs of study. In fact, "gourds from wild vines" - secular sources - have been mixed into many courses.
In the area of the social sciences, for example, the "wild gourds" of humanistic psychology have been so thoroughly mixed in with biblical principles that Christian counseling today is very often more humanistic than biblical. The emphasis has shifted from a biblically balanced view of the reality of sin, judgment and eternal punishment, as well as personal responsibility for our actions. There’s now an emphasis on who else - or what else - is to blame for life's problems, and a de-emphasis on personal sin.
In the physical sciences, the "wild gourds" of the secular views on origins have been mixed in with the biblical teaching of creation. Theistic evolution and Christian "big bang" scenarios, as taught in many of today's “schools of the prophets,” have resulted in “death in the pot” for many prophets-in-training. The authority of Scripture has been compromised! No wonder the Lord's people are suffering from spiritual malnutrition or starvation - and even poisoning!
Before we look at the remedy for the situation, notice that the wild gourds were not added to intentionally poison the stew. Just as mistakes can be made in distinguishing between edible and poisonous mushrooms, so the wild gourds were added to the stew with good intentions. The gourds looked harmless. In the same way, a number of wild gourds have unintentionally been mixed in with the solid food of biblical teaching. Theistic evolution, for example, looks scientific. It doesn't look like poison - but its effects in the stew are devastating. The biblical teaching that death resulted from human sin is altered when the wild gourd of theistic evolution is mixed into biblical teaching.
As another example, consider “spiritual” concepts - such as the idea that we’re divine, and that we cannot really be fulfilled without becoming "born again to an altered state of consciousness”! These ideas may look harmless enough, but they’re actually wild gourds of new age thinking. We certainly are much more than mere physical beings, but we are not divine, as new age philosophy teaches. And we certainly do need to be born again, but not to a "higher state of cosmic consciousness.”
You might think that these pseudo-spiritual wild gourds would never get into the Christian stew, but a brief scan of what's on the website of many Christian publishers might convince you otherwise. Some so-called "Christian" books even promote techniques used in eastern religions as legitimate means to realize the "divine spark in each of us" and our "oneness with the rest of creation.”
The Remedy: Add Jesus, the Bread of Life!
The solution to the famine and the poisoned stew was to add flour to the poisoned stew (the first miracle), and wholesome nourishment - good bread and edifying grain (the second miracle).
The solution to the poisonous effects of any stew of bad theology or false teaching is to "add Jesus"! The more Jesus Christ fills our spiritual food, the more it will neutralize the deadly effects of the wild gourds. And how much better off we'll be if we're filling the stew with Christ rather than going on a witch hunt for wild gourds!
As we allow Jesus Christ, the true Bread of life, to supply nourishing food for our souls from His Word, famine and starvation won’t stunt our spiritual growth or impoverish our spiritual lives. Just as the prophets ate their fill of the bread and grain, so all that we need for spiritual growth and vitality is available in Jesus Christ and God's Word.
We've already seen that the flour or meal in the first miracle most likely represents Christ as the sinless Son of God. The bread of the first fruits and sheaves of grain of the second miracle most likely represent Christ as the living, resurrected Lord.
Under the Old Testament Law, during the Feast of First Fruits the sheaves of the first fruits were to be presented before the Lord. The Feast of First Fruits was celebrated on the 3rd day after Passover. Passover pictures Christ in His death (1 Corinthians 5:7), and the Feast of First Fruits pictures Christ in His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:20). What better spiritual picture could we have of God's solution to the problem of spiritual famine than we have in these two miracles?
As we learn more about the moral perfections and the love and the grace of our sinless Savior, and as we walk with Him as our living Lord, the hunger of our famished souls will be satisfied. And we’ll grow in Him - and grow more like Him!
The spiritual lessons of these ancient miracles give us the key to avoiding poisoned stew, and enjoying healthful nourishment. They also teach us that we can do something positive to alleviate the spiritual famine that surrounds us!
- Dave Reid