Miraculous Purification and Feeding

2 Kings 4:38-44
    38 And Elisha returned to Gilgal, and there was a famine in the land. Now the sons of the prophets were sitting before him; and he said to his servant, "Put on the large pot, and boil stew for the sons of the prophets." 39 So one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered from it a lapful of wild gourds, and came and sliced them into the pot of stew, though they did not know what they were. 40 Then they served it to the men to eat. Now it happened, as they were eating the stew, that they cried out and said, "Man of God, there is death in the pot!" And they could not eat it.  41 So he said, "Then bring some flour." And he put it into the pot, and said, "Serve it to the people, that they may eat." And there was nothing harmful in the pot.
    42 Then a man came from Baal Shalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley bread, and newly ripened grain in his knapsack. And he said, "Give it to the people, that they may eat."  43 But his servant said, "What? Shall I set this before one hundred men?"  He said again, "Give it to the people, that they may eat; for thus says the LORD: They shall eat and have some left over.'" 44 So he set it before them; and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the LORD.

Elisha continued to demonstrate the power and authority of the LORD in these two incidents.  First he made a stew in the midst of a famine for the prophets gathered around him.  One of them foraged for ingredients and wound up poisoning the batch of stew, but Elisha added ordinary flour and it was purified from the poisonous gourds.  The flour had no particular healing or chemical properties to neutralize the poison, but it was a way to demonstrate God’s watchcare over His people, especially these messengers of His word.  Then we have the feeding of the hundred with only twenty loaves of bread.  The LORD commanded that they should distribute it, even though it was not enough, just as in Matthew 14:13–21; 15:32–39, where Jesus the LORD fed five thousand and three thousand on two different occasions, with a perfect amount left over, enough for the disciples as well as those God fed.  Here Elisha lays the pattern for those future direct miracles as an intermediary, not in the Lord’s own bodily presence.  We find that the lesson to take away is that the LORD has power and ability to meet the needs of His saints in want, and can do anything with the created world and it’s governing laws to do so, even if He remakes them in the form of a miraculous work to do so.  He purified the stew and can purify what might ordinarily harm His messengers, such as with Paul and the viper on his hand from the sticks (Acts 28:3-6).  He also meets our needs as Matthew 6:32-33 reminds us.  We can rely on God’s provision and purifying protection in our sanctification as we follow Him.  This does not mean that we will be spared from harm or death as a blanket promise, for many prophets and disciples have suffered greatly and died as scripture shows us repeatedly.  But for the most part, we can rely on God’s provision of grace to feed and clothe us.