Our Sermons

Bible Passage: 2 Kings 6:8-17
Pastor: Pastor Horton
Sermon Date:  August 4, 2024

“Ultimate Battle Simulator.”  Have you ever heard of that?  It’s a video game for your computer that allows you to line up various historical fighting forces against one another to see who would win.  Want to see Chinese archers vrs Roman soldiers?  You can do that.  Want to recreate the battle between 300 Spartans and countless Persians?  You can do that.  How about WWII GIs vrs Knights Templar?  You can do that.  Of course, the program also allows for fictional armies to take the field.  So you can program an army of zombies vrs. t-rex dinosaurs, or Jedi from Star Wars vrs. superheroes, or Chuck Norris vrs. 1000 chickens.  All to find out which fighting force is the best?  Which army is the most mighty?  What kind of warrior will win?

As Christians, we can often feel outnumbered and overwhelmed when standing out on that field of battle.  We often feel alone and afraid as the opposition lines up against us.  For we stare down sin, death, and the devil.  And they are sinister, dreadful, and deadly.  Yet today we are reminded in our reading that there is one who stands in on our behalf.  One who is a King over kings and whose army is made up of angelic hosts.  It is this leader and this Savior you have in Jesus.  And so, our prayer today, is “O Lord, Open our Eyes” and help us to see and appreciate our Savior.

This account in front of us this morning does not get often get the attention or recognition of familiar the Sunday school lessons like: David and Goliath or Daniel in the lion’s den, but this one may one day be in the running for one of your personal, top 10 or top 25 favorites.  During the time of the prophet Elisha, which places us somewhere around 850-800 before Christ., we are told the “king of Aram was waging war against Israel.”  This northeastern neighbor (now modern-day Syria) was lurking around trying to harm God’s people with a surprise attack.  But they kept failing and we’re told why.  The man of God kept giving the king of Israel confidential military information.  Every time this king of Aram, most likely Ben-Hadad II made plans, Elisha told the king of Israel, exactly where these enemies were camping.  And in this way, Israel was able to avoid these attacks and guard themselves against any surprise ambushes.

We know for a fact this caused extreme frustration and paranoia for the enemy king.  Verse 11, “The king of Aram was enraged because of this.  He summoned his officials and said to them, “Won’t you tell me who of us is for the king of Israel?”  Who in his most trusted inner circle was the rat?  Who was the spy and traitor?  But then “One of his officials said, “No, my lord the king.  It is Elisha, the prophet in Israel, who tells the king of Israel the words which you speak in your bedroom.”  Open your eyes, dear believers, and behold the God who leads you in life!  He is the living God who knows everything!  It was the living God at work who gave Israel insider information through his prophet.  The Lord knew even the words this enemy king spoke in his bedroom – from his grumbling under his breath after stubbing his toe to his prayers prayed to false gods who could not help because they did not exist.  All these things were as clear as day to your one true, living God.

This truth reminds me of what David writes about our God in Psalm 139: “O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.  You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.  You hem me in–behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.  Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”

What a God we have still today!  Nothing is hidden to him: not our quiet words, or our interior thoughts, nor the attitude of our hearts.  We don’t always have our eyes open to those things in our dealings with one another.  Some of us have learned to wear a mask or put on a smile and keep a stiff upper lip not to show others our hurt.  There’s a popular picture floating around online that says, “This is what depression looks like” and it includes pictures of happy, laughing people like Whitney Houston, Robin Williams, Kurt Cobain, and Chris Farley, as they hid tragic struggles.  The point being that whatever your heart is holding today – you have a God who knows and who understands and who comes to our aid.  What comfort for us!  He is fully aware of all that our enemies are up to out there and is fully aware of all that bothers us in here (our hearts).  Not a single thing can ever happen to us, not even one hair fall off of our heads, without the knowledge of God.  God knows and controls all things.  And there is no doubt the Lord cares for and protects His children.

All of these truths are on display before our open eyes as we are given some very comforting evidence in our reading.  Once the king of Aram is told that Elisha is being fed all his plans and information from God – he simply says in oh so many words, “Go get him!”  And Elisha is found in Dothan, a small city in northern Samaria.  So the king mobilizes a strong force to make sure this man of God has no possible escape.  When Elisha’s servant wakes up the next day, he realizes that they are completely surrounded.  And you can almost hear him take a big gulp of air in despair.  He is standing wide eyed and looking at the Aramean soldiers, the horses, the chariots, and he frantically cries out to Elisha: “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?”  

Ever been there?  Eyes wide open at the problems of the world?  Have you ever felt that way as trouble surrounds you on all sides?  Your health worsens, your investments tank, or your enemies seem to be getting the best of us.  There’s no escape.  What about when facing those adversaries of our soul: the serious hordes of sin we each stare down in our lives?  The devil stealthily maneuvering to target our weaknesses?  The gaping grave opening the earth at the end of our life?  How do we react?  Don’t we many times have our eyes entrenched on the landscape around us and fail to look up to the skies and to the help of the living God?

And you know how quickly we can turn our line of sight – not to the living God – but rather down into willful despair.  We throw up our hands and ask “what can possibly be done?”  We worry and fret and do so sometimes completely unnecessarily as God still moves and acts on our behalf.  But sometimes we instead look to ourselves and pridefully want to take matters into our own hands and what I can do.  We grow proud of our success, and our power, and our strength.  And that can lead us to foolishly go charging into that field of battle while apart from God we can do nothing.  He is our strength and our life our salvation and our all.  I pray we never forget this lesson Elisha’s servant was about to learn.

Did you catch the answer God’s prophet gives to this trembling servant?  “Don’t be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”  And Elisha placed this dire situation into God’s hands and prayed, “O LORD, open his eyes so he may see.”  Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”  Elisha knew why we call our God “the Lord of hosts.”  The Lord’s many, many powerful angels are at his beck and call.  Elisha prays for his servant’s eyes to be opened to this truth and what a miraculous sight!  With vision, similar to when Elisha watch Elijah taken into heaven, above those plains of certain death were hills full of angels who served the God of life!  It wasn’t Elisha and his servant but the enemies of the Almighty who were the ones that were surrounded!  Not a hair on Elisha’s head could be touched if God doesn’t allow it and now the servant understood that!  And what would be the outcome?  After opening his eyes, God shut the eyes of the armies of Aram with blindness so Elisha and his servant could leave unharmed.  Our God protects, and our God saves!

Are our eyes open to this truth?  We don’t need to visibly see God’s angels, but I pray that by faith we trust God’s promises.  I pray that with the confidence of faith we see that we are not alone, but that it is our God who sees and understands, and that he will work even those trying things out for our good.  I pray that we see that our God knows us and what we need even more than what we do.

After all, look at what God gave us in His Son.  God knows everything about us, even our secret sins, and still He sent Jesus to earth for us.  He sent Jesus to live a life of perfect trust to replace our sinful lives which are often filled with far too much self-reliance.  He sent His Son Jesus to take the punishment for both our worry and our pride on the cross.  Jesus suffered and He died for all the times we helplessly despair saying: “What shall we do?”  Jesus shed His own blood to wash those sinful times we think “I can handle this and don’t need you, God.”  Jesus won the ultimate battle for us.  The empty grave reminds us that all our worst enemies are not just surrounded, but they are soundly defeated!  Jesus turns to us as He does to His disciples in our Gospel this morning and says: “Take courage!  It is I.  Do not be afraid.”

What comfort and relief it is to have such a God!  He’s by our side upon the plain.  O Lord, open our eyes to see Jesus – and see his work in our lives – until we join those angels in heaven and rejoice in our salvation forever.  Amen.