Exploring Episode #13: The Miracle of a Floating Axe Head

It's good to see you.
Welcome to another version of Bible Shorts with Bible Bob.
It's a place we try and give you a small Nuggets of the Bible truth with a little bit of humor, some stories.
And today we've got a pretty cool axe head story.
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Now, back to our originally scheduled story.
In the Bible today we're going to be in Second Kings, chapter 6, verses one through 7.
It's a phenomenal story that kind of kind of rocked my socks.
Let me sit down here for a minute so I don't fall in the water.
I'm going to read you the story from my Bible.
The story is called the Floating Axe Head.
It is phenomenal. And when you read it and you just kind of like, what's the point here? Until you go deep, (like where the axe head sunk to!)
When you God to give you a spiritual revelation He serves up a great miracle story!
After I read through the story the first time I didn't get it.
So anyway, let me read.

"The sons of the prophet said to Elisha, please notice that the place where we live under your supervision is too small for us. Please let us go to the Jordan where we can each get a log and build ourselves a place to live there. Go, he said.
Then one said, please come with your servants. "I'll go." He answered.
So he went with them, and when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees.
As one of them was cutting down a tree, the axe had fell into the water and he cried out,

"Oh my master, it was borrowed."
When the man of God asked where did it fall?
When he showed him the place, the man of God cut a piece of wood, threw it there and made the iron float.
And then he said, "Pick it up." So he reached out and picked it up."

That's all folks! End of story - no explanation!
So what was really going on here now?
If you're watching on YouTube, you can see that I have a hatchet in my hand.
And so and this guy's chopping wood, and all of a sudden the axe head just flies off and goes into the water.
So all of a sudden he says, "Oh no, my axe head, it was borrowed."
He now had a debt to pay because he had to pay back the borrowed axe head. Not only that.
He couldn't be prepared to be effective in the ministry of now building a bigger house where they could be learning more lessons.

The whole event was a disaster. So he turns to Elisha, and Elisha was an understudy of Elijah who was another prophet who did miracles. So Elisha's already seen miracles, been a part of miracles just before this happened.
There was a commander from the Syrian army who had leprosy.
Leprosy like a flesh-eating disease. Back then it was incurable.
The commander knew that Elisha could work miracles, so he goes to him looking to be healed. Elisha just sends word, "Go dip in the Jordan River seven times." The guy gets upset.
He's like, well, aren't the waters in Damascus much better than this Jordan River?
If you're watching our YouTube Channel, you can see the width of the Oak Creek behind me. It's not quite as wide as the Jordan which is about 50 to 75 feet at its widest.
It's muddy, there's a pure and an impure part, but that's a theological lesson for another time.
But all of a sudden, the guys that were the understudies of the the Syrian commanders says, you know what?
Why don't you just do what he told you to do?
The guy dips himself in the Jordan seven times.
His flesh is restored like that of a newborn baby.

That was the miracle Elisha was just a part of and now he's got a guy with a sunken axe head.
So what he does is he takes a stick and throws a a stick into the water and makes the iron float.
So now this dramatization, don't try this at home.
(I threw my axe head into the creek and it sank.) I had a string attached to it. I was prepared. So we get the axe head back.
What Elisha does, he throws a stick in, and tells the guy, "you pick it up."

So what's beautiful about this? Let me give you a little backdrop on. this story.
Elisha in Hebrew is Elisha, which means God is salvation.
Jordan in Hebrew is Yardin, which means descending.
The word descending carries several meanings; start with the physical.
The mouth of the river is on Mt Hermon which means sanctuary.
So from the sanctuary, the snow melts, the rains come, and further down the mountain it begins a river. Mt Hermon is about 9,200 feet.
At about the 1600 foot, the springs from the earth in the mountain meet the snow melt and the rains, and the mouth of the Jordan River starts at about 1600 feet above sea level.
So now this river goes, and I think the total distance is about 125 miles, but it meanders a little bit. So it's not quite like the crow flies.
Including the meandering, it might travel around 200 miles, but it's not that long of a distance until it reaches the Dead Sea. You will not find Dead Sea in the Bible. You will find the word Salt Sea.
It's named the Dead Sea because nothing grows there.
It is saltier than any ocean on earth. It's like 30% salty and it's the lowest place on the face of the earth.
The Jordan River is the lowest river on the place of the earth.
God starts from the sanctuary uses a river that is the lowest that you can go on earth.
And it's kind of like for us, we get rid of our selfishness.
And when you humble yourself, you go to a low place and God raises you up.
The Jordan River is a place of new beginnings.
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist there.
When reading the New Testament, you see John baptizing people. Jesus is John's cousin. Jesus is the one who made John leap in the womb when Mary and her sister Elizabeth visited each other.
While John's baptizing people, Jesus comes and John says to him, you should be baptizing me. Jesus says, "let it be so for now." He baptizes Him.

He's immersed in the water like the axe head, and then he comes up like the axe head was floating and all of a sudden a dove descends and the Holy Spirit comes upon Him.
The river is a metaphor for the flow of the Holy Spirit.
You have to come to the river. And what happens at the river, you get immersed. It's like a form of baptism.
But not only that, the stick that was thrown in is a form of the cross.

Elisha is a type of Christ who gives the cross to make the axe head, which would have had a debt attached to it.
He cancels the debt.
There's no debt.
And that's what he did on the cross.
Another interesting thing about the Jordan River is that three times the water dried up so people could walk across.
Now this here is kind of like it's a slow-moving oak Creek.
But when you have the water descending from 1600 feet above sea level to 1400 feet below sea level, you have a pretty fast flow. The Jordan is not slow moving like this creek.
Three times the water parted so people could cross.
What was on the other side was the promised land.
Joshua crossed over. They put 12 stones in the middle.
They crossed over to the promised land.

And for us to get to the promised land, we've got to partake of the stick that made the axe head float, which is the cross which canceled the debt.
So once the debt is canceled, we are free.
To go into the promised land.
So that's pretty much an exciting story.
I think it kind of blows me away.
It's amazing what you can learn from an axe head miracle story!
It just blew me away when I started studying that. Well folks, that's all we got for today.

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See ya

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