Yes, Elisha inquired of the exact spot the axhead fell in the water and put the wood in right at that spot. Isn’t this an odd solution? Throwing a stick into the water? Why, a stick is not a magnet, it can’t draw iron to it. It makes no sense.
And yet miraculously in this situation, the stick “made the iron float.” That which was sunk and lost was found and raised so that they could “lift it out.” This was good news because now they could return the ax to its rightful owner.
We can learn many things from this story, but we must see each little story in the Bible as pointing to the one big story in the Bible.
So we can see that the borrowed axhead was sunk and lost at the bottom of the Jordan. We can see the hopelessness of the one who had borrowed it. We can see the solution: a simple stick, a tree that was “cut down,” put in at the same spot the axhead was lost. And we can see the effects of throwing that stick in the water: it found and raised that which was sunk and lost. Though a stick is not, in and of itself, a magnet, yet God used it to raise the axhead up, so that it could be lifted out and so it could be returned to its rightful owner.
Can you see it? Here is what the Holy Spirit wants to teach us from this passage: not merely that God is concerned about lost axheads, but that He is concerned about lost people. He saw you in your sin, sunk to the murky depths of pornography and impurity, lost in the waters of sexual immorality, hopeless of ever surfacing.
And He cares! He cares so much that He sent His Son to be cut down and die on a stick. He put the cross right into the midst of all the waters of your sin. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24 ESV).
Question 6. In 1 Peter 2:24, what word does Peter use in place of the cross?
A cross is not typically something that would draw anyone, just like a stick is not supposed to bring an axhead to it; but oh turn and look at that cross. Just look! You’ll see that your sins were put on Jesus, and Jesus the Lamb of God took them away from you (John 1:29). Now you are considered “the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). God views you as sinless, holy, unblemished, pure, spotless, as perfect as God Himself (Matthew 5:48) all because Jesus became sin for you.
And why did God put His cross right in the waters of your sin? Because He wants you to see it and be drawn to Him. He wants you to look at the cross and experience the power of it, being drawn up and out of your sin by it. “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.” John 12:32-33 NIV
Oh, my friend, if you want to be free from impurity then look to the cross and let it draw you. Let His love lift you out of the waters of sexual impurity and return you to God. Let this cross profoundly affect your heart, your desires, your passions!
Question 7. Did you see the gospel in this story today? If so, write how you were like the “axhead” and how the cross found you and raised you.
Log in / create an account to enroll or continue where you left off.
“God’s grace can raise the stony iron heart which has sunk into the mud of this world, and raise our naturally worldly minds to things above” (Matthew Henry Commentary on the Whole Bible).