News & Events
News
The Borrowed Axe
About 10 years ago, my family was invited to stay with some friends in a Lakehouse near Charlotte, NC. We were having a great time on the pontoon boats and jet skis.
One morning, I needed to stay back and get some work done while the family went out on the boat. A few hours later, just before I jumped on the jet ski to catch up with everyone, I had the thought, “I should add some gas.” So, I did, and took off after my family.
At the end of the day, my friend was driving the jet ski back and it started sputtering. Eventually, it wouldn’t drive anymore, and we had to tow it back. When I explained how I’d filled the tank with gas and pointed to the can I used, my friend’s face looked horrified as he said, “That’s the wrong fuel!” We told the owner and after taking it to the shop, he let us know it was ruined. I tried to pay for it, but the owner refused my offer leaving me with no way to make it right. I was mortified...
I remember my dad spending several hours religiously cleaning and repairing a lawnmower he’d borrowed. I asked him why he was doing it and he looked up and said, “John, you always leave things better than you found them.” My dad’s greasy hands and sweaty face, combined with the shocked appreciation of the man from whom we borrowed the lawnmower, made my dad’s words stick. So, ruining the jet ski left me nauseous.
In 2 King’s 6:1-7 there’s a story of a prophet who borrows an axe and then loses the axe head in the Jordan river. He was mortified. I know how he felt. Perhaps you do too.
Have you ever really messed up? You stepped on your friend’s phone and cracked the screen. Maybe you got in a car accident and totaled your parent’s car, or you borrowed your friend’s favorite sweatshirt and stained it. These situations are awful because of how helpless we feel under the weight of our failure.
That’s how the prophet felt staring at the ripples of water where the axe head plunked into the Jordan river. “What am I going to do? I can’t afford to replace it,” he said.
Then he turned to Elisha and begged for help. Elisha asks him, “Where did it fall?” He points and Elisha tosses some wood into the Jordan in that spot. Miraculously, the axe head floats back to the surface and is recovered by a deeply appreciative and relieved prophet.
This story seems strange until we see it in the light of our own mistakes. What do we do when we screw up? Lie about it? Try to make it right by paying for it? Dismissing it, and its consequences, the best we can? The world tries to tell us that there is no right and wrong, you can do whatever you think is right as long as you’re not hurting anyone. But we do hurt people, all the time, and usually because of things we say and do. And we know when we mess up too; we prove the “wrongness” of our actions when we try to lie to cover it up, or in the sick pit in our stomachs when we come clean.
The story of the axe head deals with the real heart of our guilt in a way that previews God’s ultimate solution. The axe head is our mistake, Elisha is Jesus, the wood is the cross, and the Jordan is the cleansing grace of salvation. The story of the lost axe head is a preview of the Gospel. God has blessed us, we mess it up, Jesus dies to pay for our mistakes, and we are restored to God through His grace.
The world tries to erase our guilt with a slight of hand, “live and let live.” And it doesn’t work.
The religious try to erase our guilt by doing more good works, but the damage is done.
Jesus actually erases our guilt with the expensive grace purchased through the cross.
You can’t just pretend your guilt doesn’t exist, because eventually you’ll need to give the axe back, and you won’t be able to hide it anymore, but praise Jesus for going to the cross to make a way of grace, that if we believe in Him, we can be truly free.
Westminster Christian School, located in Palmetto Bay, Florida, is a private, college-preparatory school for children from preschool through twelfth grade.