More than good stories
In two weeks I'll be preaching a series of eight sermons drawn from the stories of Elijah and Elisha in Kings. The Elijah and Elisha narratives are located in the last few chapters of 1st Kings and first few chapters of 2nd Kings. In context they provide a rather dramatic break from the usual pattern. Much of what we find in these two books (actually 1st and 2nd Kings are one book in the Hebrew scriptures) follows a very predictable pattern. "King _______ reigned for 14 years in Israel. His mother's name was ________ and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Then he slept with his fathers and was buried." With such a pattern the writer(s) of Kings goes through the lineage of all the various kings of Israel and Judah. One of the good cues to identifying something important in scripture is to look for where a pattern breaks down. The pattern breaks down between 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 13. This long body of material is devoted to the ministry of two o