When the Wrath of God Comes to Bear

And man, I'm always encouraged when one is so excited for the preaching of the Word. Well, you know that 247 years ago, on this very day, July 2, 1776, it was on this day when Continental Congress officially voted for independence from Great Britain.

Now, that would be publicly known as on July 4, but many of the founding fathers thought July 2 would be the day, you know, that we celebrate our independence. But it'll actually be a couple of days away, July 4.

But we should not forget, on a day like today, it's even appropriate in the Lord's Day worship to remember the nation in which we live and to be grateful for the nation in which we live. None of you woke up this morning and were concerned about any kind of secret passage that you needed to take to church so that you could avoid detection.

You were not worried about needing to come in the cloak of darkness. You come today in the broad daylight and worship God openly. And we should not take these blessings lightly. We live in a land that has been tremendously blessed by our great and holy God.

We should be grateful for these blessings. We should love our country, and we should seek the benefit of our country, and we should seek revival for our country. And then also, as a Baptist church, we love the Bible.

We love God's Word. This is His book. This is His authoritative, sufficient, necessary, clear, inerrant, infallible, trustworthy, God-breathed Bible. And I hope that everyone listening to me here this morning is a daily Bible reader.

I encourage you, if you're not a daily Bible reader, figure out what habit it is in your life that either needs to be let go of, or what habit it is that needs to be formed so that you can be a person who takes advantage of the country in which you live in, and the freedoms that you have, and the blessings that you've been given, and read the Bible every day.

If you haven't read through the whole Bible, I encourage you to make that a priority or a commitment to do so over the next maybe year, two years, possibly even three years. But be a person who has read the entire counsel of the Word of God.

And what you'll notice when you read through the Bible, this will bring us to this morning's text. Taking a break from Ephesians, by the way. What you'll know, you'll come to know when you read through the Bible, is that sometimes you come upon interesting passages in the Bible.

You come upon passages that make us think to ourselves, okay, why is this in the Bible? Why did this event happen this way? What is it that I am supposed to think about this passage? What is it I'm supposed to learn from this passage?

When we turn to one of those passages this morning, I invite you to take your copy of God's Word and turn to 2 Kings 2. 2 Kings 2. We consider this morning one of those interesting passages and we'll talk about the prophet Elisha.

And I want to assure you, in case you think I have some sort of ulterior motive this morning, this has nothing to do with brother Jacob. It has nothing to do with the way my hair is receding. Nothing to do with that.

And you'll notice that in just a moment. Instead, I want us to consider very soberingly and seriously, why is this passage in the Bible? And what is it that we are to learn from such a passage? And so the title of this morning's sermon is simply this, when God's wrath comes to bear.

When God's wrath comes to bear. Let's stand this morning and please turn your eyes to verse 23. The he in our text is talking about Elisha. Elisha went up from there to Bethel and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, go up, you bald head.

Go up, you bald head. And he turned around and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she bears came out of the woods and tore 42 of the boys. There he went on to Mount Carmel and from there he returned to Samaria.

Let's pray. Father, what a passage to consider this morning on this day. Help us to understand the truth of this text. Help us to not make light of the truth contained therein. Help us to see what it is that we need to see from the text.

Oh God, may Your Holy Spirit be upon this place in a special way. Holy Spirit, may You bless us, strengthen us by Your Word, convict us, challenge us, quicken us, feed us. May we understand what it is that You have for Your church and why it is this passage is in the Bible, why it is this happened the way that it did.

Teach us, oh Lord. Feed us. May Christ be exalted. We pray it in His name.

Amen.

You may be seated. I'll give you a little bit of context. So by the time we get to 2 Kings, you understand that Israel has split in two. So you have King Saul and then you have King David. After David, you have King Solomon.

After Solomon, you have the kingdom split between Jeroboam and Rehoboam. You have the northern kingdom, the kingdom of Israel and the 10 tribes in the north. And then you have the kingdom of Judah and the two tribes in the south.

And so you have a splitting of the kingdom. And you have God sending His prophets. One of the more well-known prophets you remember is the prophet Elijah with a J. And then after the prophet Elijah, you have the prophet Elisha.

And we have during this time period a battle over worship. So think for just a moment. You probably remember this. You have the people worshiping a false god. And so you remember the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 18 versus the prophets of Baal.

And you have this great showdown where the prophets of Baal are cutting themselves and they're calling upon Baal. And Elijah mocks them. He's like, where's your God? Is He going to the bathroom? That's really in the Bible.

And obviously, Baal never answers. But Yahweh answers by fire. And they understand once again that Yahweh is the true God. And so you have this battle over false worship, worship of a false god. But something else you have happening during this time period is not only worshiping a false god, you also have the people of Israel worshiping the right God, Yahweh, in a false way.

So keep your place and turn over to your left to 1 Kings 12 for just a moment. I'll set a little bit of context for our story. So in 1 Kings chapter 12, you have the worship of the right God in the wrong way.

So you have Jeroboam, the king of Israel, in verse 25, now the kingdom is split here. And so Jeroboam comes up with this thing he believes is necessary. Verse 25, then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim.

And he lived there and he went out from there and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their Lord, to Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam, king of Judah.

So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, you have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And he set one in Bethel and the other he put in Dan.

Then this thing became a sin for the people went as far as Dan to be before one. So turn back to second Kings now. But here's what happens. We're in Bethel in our text, right? You see that? Verse 23, Elisha went up there from there to Bethel.

By the way, Bethel, Bethel in Hebrew means house of God. Elisha goes to Bethel. Bethel is the place where Jeroboam had set up one of these false idols to worship. Similar to what happened in Exodus where Aaron sets up the golden calf and says, here, here's Yahweh, worship Him.

And so now they're worshiping, as it were, the right God yet in the wrong way. I want to mention two brief things before we get into an outline. First, you need to understand that people get really upset when you tell them that how it is they are worshiping God is not right.

When you confront people on how it is they worship, and you begin to tell them, you're not worshiping right, I don't care if that's how your grandparents worshiped, I don't care if that's how you've always worshiped, I don't care if this is what makes you feel really good.

According to the Bible, the way that you're worshiping is wrong. When you tell people that, it's very offensive to them. The second comment to make here is this. It's basically guaranteed that these small boys learned this behavior that they have towards Elisha from their parents.

So verse 23, he went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys, now you think some small boys. I think in my mind, when immediately I read that, three, four, five, you know, a group of small boys, but it was a lot.

How do we know? Because apparently not all the boys were mauled to death, but 42 of them were. So there were at least 43 boys, right? This was a whole passel of boys. They say that one young boy is a good help.

You know, you're going out, you're doing work, and you get one boy, he's a good help. You get two boys, you wind up cutting your help in half, right, and then you get more than that, and you've just descended into chaos, and that's what happens.

But these boys come to Elisha, and they mock him. They mock the prophet. You understand, by making fun of his baldness, they're doing more than just mocking his appearance. We'll talk more about that later.

But the brief comment, it was brief, right, I was gonna make, is these boys most assuredly learned this behavior from their parents. You understand that when a child sees or hears their parent mock the things of God, it's only natural for that child then to also mock the things of God.

But you wanna know what the difference is? You don't see the adults out here in this scenario. The difference between parents and children is children haven't learned yet. Parents have learned how to be hypocrites.

Parents have learned how to mock God inwardly, but outwardly to present it one way. Children don't know that yet. So when children see the hypocrisy of their parents, when they see their parents behind closed doors mock the things of God, mock the church, mock the people of God, mock the Bible, when children see that, they're gonna mimic that behavior, except they don't know how to hold it in so well.

And so children will mock openly what parents mock sometimes secretly. So parents, let me just issue a counsel and warning. Our treatment of the ways of God, our treatment of the church, our treatment of the Bible, our treatment of the attributes of God, our treatment of evangelism, our treatment of the Gospel, our treatment of holiness, our treatment of the way that we listen during the sermon, our treatment of these things will inevitably impact our children.

So consider that. Now with that being said, I want to give you five observations from our text today. Why is this in the Bible? Why is this story, why did it happen the way that it did? By the way, this isn't parable, this isn't allegory, this is historical narrative.

This really happened.

Why?

What should we learn? Well, I have five observations and I hope this morning you'll take these seriously. This is very important. This is a message that we need in the church. It's a message our nation needs to hear.

It's a message that you need to meditate on even today after church and to consider. Now point number one is this. First observation, justice amazes us. Okay, observation number one, justice amazes us.

He went up from there to Bethel and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him saying, go up you bald head, go up you bald head. And he turned around and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of Yahweh.

Two she bears came out of the woods and tore at his mauled, ripped apart 42 of the boys. Now here's the reality friends. Every day we wake up and we breathe God's air. We walk upon God's earth. We eat God's food.

We spend God's money. We enjoy God's time. We are blessed by the riches of what theologians have referred to as common grace. That is, the grace of God that we have every day that we get so accustomed to in which the sun rises every day upon the just and the unjust and the rain falls upon the righteous and the unrighteous and the seasons change and we bask in the grace of God every day.

And what happens is then, we grow accustomed and presumptuous upon such grace. And it's no longer this grace that amazes us every day, but it's justice. So just consider this passage for a moment. What is your response to verse 24?

And Elisha turned around and he saw them. That is, he sees these small boys and he curses them in the name of the Lord. And all of a sudden, ferocious she bears, as though robbed of their cubs, come flying out of the woods and they rip to shreds.

Forty two of these boys. What is your response? It's shock. It's amazement. It's I'm putting my hand over my mouth. It's I'm not amazed at the grace of God. I'm amazed at the justice of God.

Why?

Because I've grown too presumptuous and accustomed to the grace that God shows me every day. Interestingly enough, this word for tor in our text, the Hebrew word for tor, it's used in two other passages about judgment.

One we read this morning, Genesis 7. Let's turn there. Genesis 7 and Numbers 16. Genesis 7 and Numbers 16. Genesis chapter 7. We heard this read in our, not accidentally by the way, but we heard this read.

And I'll just read verse 11. The Hebrew word for tor is used in verse 11 of Genesis chapter 7. In the 600 year of Noah's life, in the second month on the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the great deep, and here it is, burst forth.

And the windows of the heavens were opened. This Hebrew word has a connotation of opening up, right? Numbers 16. Flip over a couple more books there. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers 16. It's interesting that this same word is used in a few different passages of judgment.

But in Numbers 16, you will remember Korah's rebellion. And here's the judgment. I'm going to start in verse 25 for context. Then Moses rose, so Numbers 16, verse 25. Then Moses rose and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him.

And he spoke to the congregation saying, depart, please, from these tents of these wicked men and touch nothing of theirs, lest you be swept away with all their sins. So they got away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

And Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door of their tents, together with their wives, their sons, listen, and their little ones. And Moses said, hereby you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works and that it has not been of my own accord.

If these men die, as all men die, or if they are visited by the fate of all mankind, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord creates something new and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord.

And by the way, our word is in verse 31. And as soon as he had finished speaking all these words, the ground under them, and here it is, split apart. As soon as he finished speaking all these words, the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households and all the people who belong to Korah and all their goods.

Okay, listen to me, church. It's passages like this. It's passages like Genesis 7, number 16, 2 Kings 2. A flood wipes out men and women and babies. The ground opens up and swallows up alive men and women and children.

And bears come out of the woods and they maul 42 small boys. These passages on the justice of God tend to amaze us over and above grace. And here's a reason. We grow accustomed to grace, but we also tend to view mankind as morally neutral.

We tend to think of man as more highly than we ought. We tend to think of man as more noble than how the Bible describes him. When tragedy strikes, when a tornado destroys a town, when we see evidence of God's judgment upon our nation, these things shock us because we're so accustomed to the grace of God.

So when we read a passage like our text this morning, verse 24, and He turned around and when He saw them, He cursed them. By the way, this is not, the context of passage, this is not like you're driving down the road, right?

You've experienced this. You're driving down the road and some knucklehead cuts you off. And if you had it within your power, you wouldn't mind maybe if a she-bear would run out of the woods and jump in the cab with that man or woman.

That's unrighteous anger, usually. You're just mad because they cut you off. This is not Elisha. By the way, Elisha is a prophet known about his great, usually his great patience. He's shown great patience often in his ministry, but here he turns, almost seems on a whim, and curses these boys.

But this is not an indictment against Elisha. It's an indictment against God. It's an indictment against these boys. And so my question for just a moment is, what is your response to something like this?

Do you want me to tell you what one of your responses ought to be? Did you know that when you read a passage like this, one of your responses ought to be worship?

Worship.

Why?

Because God is worthy of worship, not in spite of his justice, but because of his justice. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. He is a just God. His judgments are true, and He must be worshiped for His justice.

And when we see evidences in our world today of the judgment of God, we ought to be like Jesus in Luke 13. We ought to preach repentance. That's what Jesus did, right? He preached repentance. Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

So the judgments we see in our world today are but birth pains of the judgment of God that is to come. So first observation, we are amazed at justice. Second observation, God's warnings must be taken seriously.

God's warnings must be taken seriously. We're going to go back to the Pentateuch again. Leviticus. Turn there. Leviticus 26. We want to read here warning. Leviticus 26. Very interesting how the Lord is faithful to His warnings.

Interesting is not the right word. It's praiseworthy, but it's interesting, I should say, what God promises here. Leviticus 26. And go down to verse 21. So God promises, if you will obey, here's the blessings.

If you disobey, here's the curses. And notice specifically what He says in verse 21 and 22. Then if you will walk contrary to Me and will not listen to Me, I will continue striking you sevenfold for your sins, and I will let loose the wild beast against you which shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number so that your roads shall be deserted.

Friends, God warned His people. If you do not obey Me, this is what will happen. And so what's happening now in our passage in 2 Kings is that these boys are fulfilling exactly what God promised would happen to a people who disobey Him.

And we love to sing songs about God's faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. And that's right and that's true and it's good. But included in God's faithfulness is not just His faithfulness to His promises of mercy.

We sing about His mercy and we should, but also included in God's faithfulness is His faithfulness to His wrath.

Have you, friends,.

Taken the warnings of God seriously? Children, consider this morning for a moment. Have you taken the warnings of God seriously? He not only promises mercy for those who fear Him, He promises His judgment on those who disobey.

Have you taken God's warnings seriously? That the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. That the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Have you taken God's warnings about the lake of fire seriously? That the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, here's the word again, the idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Have you considered this morning God's righteous indignation against sin and sinners, that He is angry with the wicked every day? Even children, even the sins of young people offend a high and holy God.

I'm going to just be frank with you for a moment. Most people in the Bible belt do not take these realities seriously. We've created a gospel inoculation, if you will. That is, we convince a young boy, a young girl to walk the aisle, to pray the prayer, Dear Jesus, dear Jesus, I know I'm a sinner, I know I'm a sinner.

Forgive me and come into my heart, come into my heart. And help me be a Christian, whatever. And then we tell that young boy or young girl, okay, come right here, little Johnny. We're going to put this date in your Bible, July 2nd, 2023.

You are saved. Don't you let that devil ever one second in your life make you doubt that salvation. And then a gospel preacher comes along. The gospel preacher says, you're living with your girlfriend.

The Bible says, if you don't repent and you continue in that, you are not an inheritor of the kingdom of God. And they say, no, no, no, no, preacher. Get behind me, Satan. You're not gonna try to twist the Bible with me because I know I'm saved because when I was 10 years old, I walked an aisle, I said a prayer, and the preacher told me I was saved.

And to never doubt it. And if I ever doubted it,.

It was Satan making me doubt it. Get away from me. And we don't take the warnings of God seriously. And so we hear these messages that judgment is coming, that Revelation 21, 8, the cowardly idolaters, we don't take idolatry seriously in the church, that these people are going to be cast into the lake of fire.

And we don't take them seriously because we say, I've already got my shot. There's no way I can catch hell because I've been inoculated, right? Like I have the shot and I'm not going there. And we've convinced ourselves of a lie.

And we're not taking the warnings of God in His Word seriously. Now, it's not my intention to come in here and scare you or anything like that. That's not my intention. But my intention is this, to preach the Word of God rightly in such a way that we'll do what the Bible says, which is to examine ourselves and to consider.

Friends, have you grown weak and immune, as it were, to the warnings of God? Do the warnings of God not stir anything within your soul this morning? Are you not thinking this morning that hell is a real place and there's real people that we see in the Bible that really go to hell, that God, He could even this morning, if He wanted to, open up the ground and cast you off into hell alive, just like He did Korah and his rebellion.

Are your sins any less wicked than the things that Korah did against God's servant Moses? Have we forgotten that hell is real, that it's eternal and the judgment of God is coming, and yet He graciously has given us warning after warning.

I'm pleading with us, friends, not to treat sin lightly, not to treat idolatry or disobedience to God as something trivial. God is holy, holy, holy. He will not have fellowship with your sin. And what amazing power and control God has over everything.

God, at a word, at a word, here come the bears out of the woods. Why? Because God is sovereign over the bears. God's sovereign over the ground. God, if He so desired, could drop a rock. You walk out this church building, God could drop a rock on your head, or a hailstone.

He could stop your heart from its next beat like that. And evangelicalism as a whole and the vast majority of Americans treat our high and holy, triune God far too cavalierly. As though He is obligated to put up with our sins.

Especially in the light that we're living right now. It's undeniable, if you're confused about what I'm saying, I'll talk to you after service, would love to. But it's undeniable that in this nation right now, we are living under God's judgment.

I mean, we consider the rampant absurdity that permeates the highest offices of power and institutions today. It is only by God's grace, I'll make this one political comment and then come back. It's only by God's grace that the Supreme Court is the state that it is today.

It's like, you look at the executive branch and the legislative branch and you're like, what incompetence and foolishness and absurdity. And then somehow the judicial branch, you look at it and you see the rulings that they've made in June.

They're not perfect, obviously, but you look at these things and you see that there's a modicum of rationality left. That's only by the common grace of God. But the point is we look at our nation today and we see the unchecked sexual immorality.

We see disobedient children. We see the unreserved killing of pre-born children. We see greed. We see false teachers having notoriety. We see false teaching permeating so many places and the list goes on and on.

What I'm saying to us is, these are all evidences of the judgment of God.

Upon our land.

God is judging our nation today.

And yet, even in light of this,.

So many are willing to ignore the warnings of God. It's like you're having chest pains, intense chest pains, and you just say, no, no, I'm not going to go. I'm not going to go to the doctor. I'm not going to go to the doctor.

I'm not going to go to the doctor. And then one day you pass away.

Why?

You ignored the warnings. And what I'm saying is, friends, we must take seriously the warnings of God. Third observation. God's patience has a stopping point. God's patience has a stopping point. We've looked at a lot of passages.

We're going to look at more. 2 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles 36, the end of 2 Chronicles. It's just an interesting passage to know and it's an interesting parallel in our day. 2 Chronicles 36, verse 15 and 16.

2 Chronicles 36, verse 15. The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. But, they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising His words.

Pause. They weren't despising the words of the prophets, right? They were despising whose words? God's words. So, they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising His words, and scoffing at His prophets.

Until the wrath of the Lord rose against His people, until there was no remedy. God had been so patient with Israel. He sent them prophet after prophet. He was not hiding from them. He was not hiding His will from them.

He was not hiding His word from them. He sent preachers upon the land. He was patient, but the people ignored them and they continued on in sin until one day God brought forth His judgment on His people.

Now, back up a little bit in history and think about these young boys. How patient God had been with them and their parents for years. I'm not sure how young these boys were, but they had made it this far and God had been patient with them and their parents for years until one day His patience stopped and He brought forth His judgment upon them.

God is patient. God is patient today with the sins of the world. But, His patience will not be forever. Think about today. How God has still, even though our nation is under judgment, think about how God has still blessed our land with Gospel preachers.

How is it that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, faithful Gospel preachers in America today? There are faithful churches in America today. What a blessing it is today that you have in your possession probably more than one, probably three, four, five, maybe more Bibles in your possession that you can read in your own language.

How good God has been to you. How good God has been to our nation. How patient God has been with the rebellion and sins of our nation and He has continually sent Gospel preaching men and faithful churches and evangelists and the Bible in our language and He has been so patient with us.

Will we heed such patience? Or will we presume upon it thinking that God's patience endures forever, not realizing that there will come a time in God's predetermined counsel when His patience will be no more and His wrath will come.

Consider 2 Peter. Let's turn there. 2 Peter 3. 2 Peter 3 and verse 9. 2 Peter 3 and verse 9. The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you. That's important.

Not wishing that any, I'm going to supply this here, of you should perish. But that all of you, that's the context. So is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, that all should reach repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief and then the heavens will pass away with a roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

So God is patient right now with the world so that all of His people, all of His elect will come to repentance. Today is a day, it is an age if you will, of the patience of God. But the text goes on to say that His judgment is going to come like a thief in the night.

That is, quickly and righteously upon sinners. And so, the greatest enemy to many people in the Bible Belt, many people in our nation today, the greatest enemy to many of them is simply tomorrow. Oh preacher, I hear what you're preaching.

And I agree with it. And there are things in my life that I need to get right. But there's just some more things that are coming up, and then I'll get right. I'm not going to change today, I'll get right tomorrow.

I'll get serious about following Christ tomorrow. I'll get serious about being the godly husband and father I need to be tomorrow. I'll get serious about the wife and mother I need to be tomorrow. You know what?

Tomorrow's Monday. That'll be a good day to start getting serious about prayer. I'll be serious about reading the Bible tomorrow. I'll be serious about my holiness and sanctification tomorrow. I'll care about the church tomorrow.

I'll think about theology tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

What if God's patience ends today? What if God's wrath comes to bear today? Then what is it that you're going to do at the judgment seat of Christ? Little ones, hear my voice on this as well. You think to yourself, when I get older, next year, five years, when I graduate, when I have a family of my own, I'll get serious about the things of Christ.

And I say to you, you have no guarantee of the patience of God tomorrow. You do have a guarantee of it right now in this moment. And it's today the day that you must not take for granted. Do not treat the day that you've been given lightly.

It is a day of patience. May all of us use it as a day to deal with our sin and our souls now. This day now, not a second longer. Fourthly, do not mock God's Word. Now we come back to our text. We consider He went up from there to Bethel.

And while He was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at Him saying, go up, you bald head, go up, you bald head. And He turned around and when He saw them, He cursed them in the name of Yahweh.

And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore 42 of the boys. Now we come to really, I think, the heart of the text. And that is, Elisha is a prophet of God. The problem is not that they called him a bald head, right?

The problem is that they're mocking Elisha. And Elisha is connected to the Word of God. Because Elisha, as a prophet of God, when he speaks to the people of God, he says, thus saith Yahweh. Thus saith the Lord.

Therefore, follow the logic. For the boys to mock Elisha was for the boys to mock the Word of God. And for the boys to mock the Word of God is for the boys to mock God. And Elisha has no qualms here about calling a curse upon these boys.

I mean, the narrative actually is pretty nonchalant about it, right? It's like, this happened, this happened, and then you get to v. 25. No reflection. It's just from there he went on to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.

This is because there is just and serious consequences for those of us who mock God's Word. Now listen carefully here, because initially you're gonna say, that's not me. But most of us have learned we live in Arkansas.