You Have More

2 Kings 6:8-17

The servant was scared. Do you blame him? I’m not sure how I would have reacted if I had woken up early in the morning and gone outside and went, “Ah! There’s a whole big army out there with chariots and horsemen!” And there’s like, “No way we can get out of this!” I have a feeling I might have been a little bit upset, too. You, too? Should we have been? Hmm. As the account goes on, it becomes kind of clear that the answer is no. And I think that’s a good question. The answer is no. And in fact, as the account goes on, it becomes kind of clear that we have no reason to ever be afraid of the things of this earth. Whoa. Never be afraid? That’s kind of strong. Amen? Let’s walk through the text a little bit. See where this goes. There’s no time stamp on this text. We don’t know exactly when in Elisha’s ministry this happens. Remember, Elisha had succeeded Elijah. Elijah was an amazingly zealous, amazingly faithful, and from all human perspective, amazingly unsuccessful prophet of God by human terms. Where he was faithful, where God was faithful, so few of the Israelites seemed to come back to the true God. So sad. But God remained faithful, and God remained God, and God continued to love his people. And so Elisha was anointed to take over for Elijah. It’s kind of interesting when Elijah is about to be taken to heaven in the whirlwind. Elisha’s request is, “Let me inherit the double measure of your spirit.” Did you know that there are twice as many miracles of Elisha recorded as there were of Elijah? Did God bless Elisha with that double measure of Elijah’s spirit? Maybe. Put it on your bucket list for when you get to heaven. That bucket list is getting fuller and fuller, isn’t it? Won’t it be fun to find out those answers? You get the impression that this maybe happens later in Elisha’s ministry? Because Elisha has access to the king of Israel. So there’s got to have been some time when some respect is grown. Elisha also has a servant boy, probably one of the young men who’s in the school of the prophets, training to become a pastor. That’s what that school of the prophets really was. It was future pastors. And the way they did most of their training was they just followed the prophet around. And they served him in whatever way he needed to be served. Elisha did that with Elijah. There’s one passage where it says, “Elisha poured water over the hands of Elijah.” Ministry of service. We are all ministers of the gospel in the sense that God has called every one of us into the priesthood of all believers. Every time you serve in whatever way, you are doing valuable ministry. Even if it’s pouring the hand, pouring the water over the hands of the prophet. Elisha is given a conduit to God to warn the king of Israel over and over again where the king of Aram is trying to attack. Was the king of Aram trying to kidnap the king of Israel? Could be. Was the king of Aram trying to send raiding parties into Israel to loot, to take treasure, to take people captive? Could be. But whatever the case, God would tell Elisha over and over again, “This is where he’s going to be. Warn the king so that the king is on guard in that place.” And the Hebrew says this happened not once, not twice. In other words, this kept happening. It kept going on. And the king of Aram is rightly incensed. As I pointed out while reading the text, his heart stormed. He’s mad. One of you has to be a spy. One of you has to be on the side of the king of Israel. Otherwise, how does the king of Israel know? Oh, it’s not any of us. It’s this Elisha guy. Elisha tells the king of Israel what you say in your bedroom. You’re saying anything you say in private, the king of Israel can find out. How do they know that? How do they know it was Elisha who was God’s conduit? Don’t know. Is that part of God’s grace? To try to call some of those Aramians to faith by saying, “Listen to this Elisha guy.” Seems like a reasonable way to think about it. All right. Well, then the answer is clear. We got to take Elisha captive. Now, stop and think. God was able to warn the king of Israel through Elisha where the king of Aram is going to attack. Does God not have the same ability with Elisha himself? Yes. How foolish of the king of Aram. Amen. But isn’t that a picture of how we are as sinful human beings? How often we oh so foolishly, rebel against God. We owe so foolishly, fail, or refuse to listen to God. We foolishly focus our attention on the things of this world rather than the things of God and think that we can work it out ourselves like the king of Aram did. Okay. Off we go with a big fighting force. Horses. Chariots. A strong army. All to capture who? The preacher. Can you imagine? Can you imagine any foreign country sending an army in here to capture me? No. I don’t foresee it at all. But that’s exactly what they do. It’s almost comical, isn’t it? And they send this army in and they come in at night, surround the city of Dothan. Elisha’s servant boy gets up in the morning. And he’s afraid. But Elisha wasn’t. Don’t be afraid. He says to the servant boy, “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Are you kidding? They got a whole vast army out there with horses and chariots and soldiers. Oh, that’s all that you can see with your physical eyes. Lord, open up his eyes so he can really see. And God allowed that servant boy to get an oh-so-rare look into something that is oh-so-true. There is a force of angels who are out there. No, you can’t see them with your physical eyes. But they’re here inside the church with us today. They’re going with you on your way home this afternoon. Their job is to serve God. And part of their job serving God is to serve us. God, open his eyes. So that he can see. Wow. All of a sudden, the servant boy could see chariots of fire, horsemen of fire all around Elisha in the hills. Why does God picture them as horses and chariots of fire? Do we think that the angels literally have the form of Old Testament-style chariots and horses? I doubt it. But what was in front of Elisha and the servant boy? An army with horses and chariots. So what better way to picture the angels at that point than as chariots and horsemen of fire? I don’t know exactly what form the angels have. When Ezekiel describes the angels in Ezekiel chapter one, he talks about how they had four faces and how they moved without kind of moving. Because the bottom of them were like wheels intersecting wheels. What does that mean? And those wheels intersecting wheels had eyes all around them. And what exactly does that mean? And the reality of the matter is these are things that just go beyond our understanding. And that’s okay. We don’t have to understand it. But what we get to do is we get to rejoice in it. There is a spiritual warfare going on, my brothers and sisters, that is going on all the time. And it is the most important warfare, the most important battle that will ever be fought. It’s the battle for your soul. And make no mistake about it, the devil wants you to go to hell. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the world wants you to go to hell. And perhaps most scary of all, at least it is to me, our own sinful flesh wants us to go to hell. You want to know where the enemy is? Look in the mirror. And that warfare, that fight against you is going to go on every day of your life. Little Isaiah’s warfare has just begun. And it will go on. Should we be terrified? No. No. Because who fights alongside you and for you and on your behalf? Those angels are battling every day of your life. How exactly that battle ranges between the angels of God and the forces of evil, God has chosen not to tell us. I don’t know. But he’s told us that there’s a battle raging. But those angels are with you and they’re fighting for you. And if that weren’t enough, who else is with you always? Jesus is. Jesus, the almighty ruler of the heavens and the earth, the one who created the universe with just a word from his mouth, the one who created light and darkness, the one who made Adam and Eve out of the dust of the ground and breathed into the breath of life. He’s promised to be with you always. And oh, by the way, how does he feel about you? Oh, he loves you dearly. How do you know that? Because he chose to go to war for you. He came to this earth as a baby, lived life perfectly, went to the cross, shed his blood. Why? Because the only way this war could be won was for the blood of God to be shed on this earth. And the blood of God was shed on this earth. And the blood of God was shed for you and for me. And for me. How does the story go on? We only got a part of the text. The story goes on. Elijah goes out to meet them. Who are you looking for? Elijah. Oh, you’re in the wrong place. Follow me. I’ll show you where he is. And God strikes them with some kind of blindness, blinding. They apparently can see physically, but they can’t ‘see.” If you know what I mean. And then Elijah or Elisha, excuse me, leads them from Dothan to Samaria. Samaria was the capital city. And once they get inside Samaria, Elijah prays, “Yeah, Lord, open up their eyes.” And there they are inside the capital city of Samaria, surrounded most likely by the King of Israel’s soldiers. They’re dead meat. And the King of Israel kind of dorkily says, “So what should I do? Should I kill ’em? Should I kill ’em?” No. Don’t kill ’em. Give ’em a feast. Then send him on their way. And how does the account end? The King of Aram stopped raiding Israel. What a plan from God, huh? The same God who could do that is with you always. No, he’s not made the promise that nothing unhappy or unpleasant will come into your life. He just hasn’t promised that. In fact, he’s promised the opposite. He said, “We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” We will not be surprised at difficulty, challenge. In fact, we will expect it. But who is with you? That powerful force of holy angels. And if that weren’t enough, Jesus himself is with you always to the very end of the age. And if that’s the case, we can always say and always say with confidence, those who are with us are way more than those who are with them. Amen.