WHBC
08/04/2024 - Bro. Charles Hunt
And took counsel with his servants, saying, 'In such and such a place shall be my camp.' And the man of God, sent unto the king of Israel, saying, 'But where, that thou pass not such a place? For there the Syrians are come down. And the king of Israel sent to the place, which the man of God told him, and warned him of, and saved himself there not once, nor twice. Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was troubled, sore-troubled. For this thing, he called his servants and sent unto them in East Texas language. We got a mole in the house, find out who it is.' Verse 12 says, 'One of his servants said, 'None, my Lord, O King, but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel. He telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speak in your bedroom.' And he said, 'Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him.' And it was told saying, 'Behold, he is in Dothan. Therefore, sent he, their horses and chariots, and a great host, and they came by night, compost the city about.' And when the servant of the Lord, the man of God, was risen early and gone forth, behold a host, compost the city, both with horses and chariots. And his servants said unto him, 'O last my master, how shall we do?' And he answered, 'Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.' And Elisha prayed and said, 'Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see, and the Lord opened the eyes of the young man.' And he saw, and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. And when they came down to him, Elisha prayed unto the Lord and said, 'Smite this people.' He prayed unto the Lord and said, 'Smite this people, I pray thee with blindness.' And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha. And Elisha said unto them, 'This is not the way, neither is this the city. Follow me, and I'll bring you to the man whom you seek.' But he led them to Samaria. He came to pass when they were coming to Samaria. Then Elisha said, 'Lord, open the eyes of these men.' And they may see, and the Lord opened their eyes, and they saw, and behold, they were in the midst of Samaria. And the king of Israel said unto Elijah, when he saw him, 'My Father, shall I smite them? Shall I smite them?' And he answered, 'Thou shalt not smite them. Wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive with the sword and with thy bow? Set bread and water before him that they may eat and drink and go to their master.' And he prepared great provision for them. And when they'd eaten, they'd drunk. He sent them away, and they went to their master. So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel. Father, thank you. This morning for your word, how precious it is to our hearts. God, as we look at the story here of Elisha, we see these three men that we're looking at today. Burn within our heart the lessons and the principles that you want us to gather from this scripture. We love you, and we exalt you. Look forward to what you're going to do in these next few moments in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you. You may be seated a number of years ago in Saturday's review. Norman Cousins wrote an article, and he reported a conversation that he had with Hindu priests in India. And incidentally, in India, Kamali is watching today, and they've had some big mudslides over there. It's been a horrible thing. Remember to pray for them there. But anyway, he was talking with this priest from Hindu priests from India. And he said, "My desire is to go to the United States of America and try to get converts." Well, immediately Cousins thought he's talking about coming to America. And he just took a grant that he wants to come to America to try to push Hinduism on Americans. And so he said something about that. And the guy said, "Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm a Christian. They call me a Hindu priest, but I'm a Christian. I want to go to America to teach Americans how to be Christians." Because he said, "From what I read in America, there's a lot of people talking about Christians, but they're not really being Christians." See, being a Christian is more than just sitting here on Sunday and praising the Lord and having a good time. Being a Christian leads here and goes out to the mission field. Being a Christian is living on Monday the principles that you talked about on Sunday. And when you don't live those principles, you become a fake. Now, there's reasons why you may be a fake. You may be a fake because you're lost as a goose and going to hell. If that is, you need to correct that. You could be just that way because you fall in the habits of this world. It's so easy to do. It's so easy to do. We're living in times where we've got a lot of weak, sissy Christians. And I'm to the point, I'm not saying we need to stand up against everything. I'm saying we need to stand up for something. We've got the solution. We've got the inerrant Word of God. We know the peace that passes the understanding. We've been delivered from darkness into marvelous light. And we need to be sharing that with other people. The prophet here speaks on behalf of God, and he puts a little feet on their faith. A lot of people profess to know Christ, but their lives don't match up with it. There's three characters here I want to look at quickly. Number one, there is the king of Syria. He learns a lesson here. And the king of Syria's lesson is that God sees everything. Not a thing you can hide from God. You can follow this preacher. Some of you have been thinking you've phoned me for years. You're wrong. I'm not that dumb. I didn't follow up a turnip truck last night a couple of months ago, but not last night. God sees everything. The king of Syria is planning all of these raids. And he's going to pounce on Israel and destroy them. And every time he sets it up, he gets it all set up. Suddenly Israel don't show up. And so he says, "Somebody is telling the king where we're going." And so he says, "I want to know who it is." And they say, "King, it's none of us." But there is this prophet named Elisha. And his God speaks to him. The enemy knew where they were going. Israel always knew, "Could I tell you something this morning?" The devil knows where you tied your goat up at. He knows where you can push you up buttons. Sometimes it's a husband or a wife. He knows just the right person you don't need to see. What you struggle with. He knows that number you don't want to see on that caller ID. Aren't you thankful for caller ID? Unless God, we never had anything like that when I was growing up. We were on an eight-party party line. That might help. Thank you. You see him throw that on the floor. The devil knows the temptation you're having to deal with. And he's out. Let me tell you guys, the devil's not playing with us. He's out to destroy you. He's out to steal your joy. He's out to do anything he can to make life rougher on you. To murder you. Obliterate you in your life. The Bible says, "The man of God sent into the King of Israel saying, "Go where? Don't pass such a place." For the Syrians come down. And the King of Israel sent to the place, which the man of God told him and warned you about, saved himself there, not once, nor twice. You see, God lets Elisha know what's fixing to happen to him. And the King of Syria has no idea. I want to tell you right up front, he's going after the wrong guy. He's going after Elisha. But Elisha's not the problem. God is the problem. God is telling Elisha. And then like having a nurse. Thank you. God does not Elisha know what's going to happen. Now listen to me. The responsibility of a person who has been given the truth. Our responsibility is to take that truth to those who don't have the truth. Elisha heard from God. But had he not gone and talked to the King and warned the King, the truth is useless. You have the truth about salvation. You have the truth about peace and joy, love. But I want to tell you, if you and I do not go and share that truth, we're just as much an enemy to the lost person as the devil is himself. Because we've been given the truth. We need to take that truth in danger. And there are people around us in danger. There are people around us on a crash course to destruction. You say, "Preacher, they're not going to listen to us." Well, they're sure they're not going to listen to you if you don't tell them anything. I mean, you don't have a shot in the world if you don't do that. The King of Syria was hacked off there. There's a spy in the house. They say, "No, it's nobody here. He's mad at Elijah." He says, "You go find him. Where is he at?" All he's over here in a place called Dothan. You go fetch him. You go get him here. I hear people all the time. Let me tell you, God knows what he's doing. God knows what he's doing. God knew what the King was planning and knew what he was plotting. He knew what he was doing. You're not going to sneak one over on God. Nobody else is either. You can fool me. You can fool your people. You can fool this church, but you're not going to fool God Almighty. He sees everything. You see people there. I have people say, "We're having a hard time paying our bills, but, preacher, we've been faithful to God in giving, and God's always seen us through." And then somebody will stand there. Some wonderful, intended nut. They say, "You mean you're giving money to the church when you need the money yourself?" See, the world doesn't understand what we're doing here. The world doesn't understand that you're not giving, you're investing. The world doesn't understand just to see these young, another young person over there saved this morning, baptized there. The world doesn't understand that. When the world's falling apart and you've got a piece that passes us understanding, the world says, "What do we're wrong with you, man?" He said, "Horses and chariots." Verse 14, 15 says, "They came by night, composted about. Dothan is not a logical place for the prophet to be. Dothan is flat. There's no trees. There's no valleys. There's no hills. There's no protect. I mean, it's just, it's flat right out there. There's no walls. It's easily accessible. But you know the best place you can be is not seeking out man's best, but God's best. Some of you in here got 15, 20 guns with ammunition enough for Fort Knox. You can have all that you want to, but if you out of the will of God, you're in a mess. Some of you got money stacked up and you've got everything taken care of, but I want to tell you something. If you're out of the will of God with that, you're in a mess. Some of you taking every vitamin, amen, just like I am. Everything you can just to keep going, but I want to tell you, if you're not in the will of God, that medicine's not going to help you at all. You need to be in the will of God before anything else happens there. Earthly protection is useless outside of the will of God. You can have a high-tech system, say an alarm system. You can have 58 airbags in your car. If you ain't in the will of God, you're in a mess. You can do all you can to protect yourself and your family, but if you're outside of the will of God, you're missing it. God of heaven, he sees everything. He knows everything. We think sometimes we can go in and lock our door and nobody knows anything we're doing. We think sometimes that as long as I don't think about it in my mind, God won't know. God knows everything. And when you understand that, it will change the places you go. It will change the language you use. It will change the actions that you perceive. God knows I'm accountable to God. The second character that is here, though, is the servant. And he learns a lesson that God is all-powerful. Amen? Do you know God's all-powerful? Have mercy. Look at verse 15. The servant of the man of God was risen early, goat went forth, host-compassed about the city, horses, cherries, his servant said, "Oh, Houston, we got a problem." He said, "We're going to catch all of them by surprise. We're going to go surround them in the night, and then we're going to attack them during the day." We don't know Elijah's helper's name, the servant. He wakes up, probably around 4.35. You have to go to the bathroom. Well, he's there. He always passes through the kitchen to see what time the clock says. He happens to see kind of a glow. He goes over to the windows and he looks out. "My soul, horses, chariots, soldiers, weapons on every hand." He runs and he wakes up a license. They don't have an army. They don't have any walls. They don't have no weapons. They don't have a defense. They don't have any way to fight. They don't have any protection. Whew! A lot of times we're like that servant of Elijah. We love the Lord. We praise the Lord. But the first little old conflict comes by, man. We're captivated by it. We lose sleep. We all got our trials and tribulations. Every one of us, you think you don't. You just lie and do yourself. One of mine is claustrophobia. After I had that first MRI years ago and one of them old ones used to be rounded like that. Just barely enough to get in and they closed that door. And you hear that lock. I'll tell you. I thought this ain't happening again. Lord, I'm going to try to get through it this time. I was in the middle of a thunderstorm in Beaumont, 18 Wheeler. I thought, "I'll be in the nature's river. Nobody'll find me forever." I worked on that. I was at the oncology the other day. Becky was there with me and the lady said, "Are you claustrophobic?" Before I could say, "He's very claustrophobic." I got in a little bobcat. I was driving around Friday night doing a little dirt working all. Went to click and go home. I couldn't get the bar raised. I thought, "Oh, here I have trapped in a bobcat. I mean, I can't move." Don't tell me you don't have no problems. But I'll tell you when you stack those problems outside our Lord Jesus Christ, they become very damn. They become very damn. Adrian Rogers talks about the guy who bragged that he had cut the tail off of a man-eating lion. And that said, "Well, that's good." Somebody said, "Why didn't you cut his hand off?" He said, "Somebody had already done that." All the Scripture we know, all the truth we know, all the faith we know goes flying right out of the window. At the time, anything comes up against us. Boy, we ought to be on our face before God. He answered, "Fear not, verse 16. For they that be with us are more than they that be with them." Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. There's more of us than there are them. Somewhere between verse 16 and verse 17. I know this servant had to say, "Say what?" "There ain't nobody here, Elijah, but me, you, and two old deacons that can't hardly even walk." And here's a whole compass all around us with soda. And Elijah said, "Open his eyes, Lord." And he did. Can you just imagine? Old 1 John 4 and 4 are the little children. You're from God. You've overcome the world. For greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. The Holy Spirit's greater than any problem we've got. He knows our address. He's got a direct home address for me. And I have direct access to him through prayer and through his word and through the Holy Spirit living inside of me. So don't tell me that some problem we've got in this world will make us back up against the wall. We've got all power that's been given to us. The enemy got all these horses and chariots, wood. It's been amazing. God sends chariots a fire. You do know what fire does to wood, don't you? I appreciate that second coming group that meets on Tuesday night. I decided I had a little extra time, so I thought I had all this thing groomed out here where the soccer field is going to be for the Academy and all. They come and dump two or three, dump truckloads of brush right in the middle of it. So I told Christian this week, take those old two befores that we're not using, cutting pieces, pile them on that thing. So Tuesday night I thought I'd just set that apart. I got a little diesel here. And in a minute, here come Keeland Hall over there and said, "Man, what's going on? It looks like a bus is on fire." He said, "No, it's behind the bus." And in a minute, I began to hear sirens. I look out and everybody from the, they're not worried about the second coming anymore. They're all outside in the yard looking at that fire. And before, I mean, I had to hurry to tell them, "Don't put that fire out." That fire truck had them hoses drawn. They were ready to sprinkle it. My goodness, open your eyes. There's more of us than there are of them. See, sometimes we just don't understand who's on our side. Sometimes we've just forgotten what our God has done, who our God is. The enemy's got all this. He's got horses and chariots of wood, so God sends horses and chariots of fire. The world's got weapons. God says, "I've got better weapons. I've got better weapons than the world's God." The Bible says when he saw it, he believed it. We don't have that option today. We can't see it to believe it. We've got to believe it in our faith. One of these days, the faith is going to become real and we'll see it. You say, "Preacher, I've got sickness. I do too." But what's that upside to great position? I've got a financial need. I do too. But what's that upside to somebody that owns a cattle on a thousand hills? In the hills, I might add. Say, "Preacher, I'm scared to death." What's that upside Jesus when he's conquered hell in the grave in death? No problem you have will overcome you when you stack it up next to Jesus. Get your eyes off the problem and put your eyes on Jesus. We live with our eyes fixed on a need and not the provider. There is a provider for everything we have. So the king of Syria learns something. He's learned that God sees everything. The helper of Elijah learns something. He learns that God's in control of everything. Now let me tell you, closing here, the king of Israel learns something. I don't have time to re-greet all this again. It is so good. It is so good. Look out there and here they come. They're coming in on nothing. All the chariots and all the coming in. Elijah said, "Lord, would you just smite them with blindness? Everyone I'm blind." Boys, who are y'all looking for? We're looking for a light shop. Well, he ain't here, but I can take you to him. [laughter] Can you picture Barney playing that? Is that goat with all that dynamite follows him? I mean, he's like the piper. He's got a whole army over here and he's carrying them from Dothin. And he ends up carrying them all the way to Samaria. And they're right there in the middle of Samaria. And God says, "Open their eyes." Oh my goodness, are we in a mess? We thought we was in Dothin. And here we are surrounded by the armies of Israel in Samaria. And the king says, "Shall we kill him? Let's kill him." He learned something. He learned the mercy of God. Mm-hmm. They didn't deserve that. You don't deserve it. I don't deserve that. That's the mercy of God. I don't understand all of it. I wouldn't presume to tell you that. You know, God's a merciful God. I think about old Jonah. He gets spit. You know, I believe in the literal Bible there. The Bible says that what the fish, great fish, spit him out of his mouth, owned to the shore. I mean, he's got a great fish couldn't get within 30 yards of the shore. So he's got to be flying 30 yards in the air to hit the beach. And he was, "All right, Lord, I'll go." It's season-in abouts. They're useless as a three-door and a submarine. We don't even like them. But I'll go. You repent, or God's going to destroy you. Repent, or God's going to destroy you. They all repent. Jonah says, "Is that clear about what I figured would happen?" Now, here I am. I hate these guys. They've all repented. The greatest revival in the history of mankind. And I'm mad about it. I don't know all about the mercy of God. I do know that God's son, Jesus, left heaven in all of his glory. I do know that he came to this earth, born in a manger. I do know that he lived and died on Calvary after he was literally beaten and crucified. That's the mercy of God. I do know that one of his last words on that cross was, "Father, forgive them." They don't know what they're doing. God opens their eyes. And he opens the king's eyes and he learns something. Now, you and I, this is just a self-examine time. I know y'all wouldn't do this. But I just want to confess for me, because I want God to use me. God don't use dirty vessels, so I'm going to confess right now. When I'm doing 85 mile an hour on Interstate 20, and somebody zooms by me like I'm sitting still, and I go up a couple of miles and there's a DPS officer with that guy pulled over. I will tell you, I rejoice. Huh? Huh? I got some witnesses here. Yeah. I can't tell you. Don't hate me now, but when the Yankees finally get knocked out of the playoffs, I rejoice. When the bad guy gets what he deserves, I rejoice. Hey man, we're like that? What about when we need mercy? What about when it's us? And we're crying out to God. We know we've disappointed God. God says, "I'm going to love you and give you mercy." God wants us to be a vessel of mercy. There's more going on in this church than you can shake a stick at. But if we fail to get outside of this church and reach those who are hurting, those who are lost, we've missed the whole plan. We can't become so busy with doing what we want to do, and what encourages us, that we forget there are people that are lost without Christ. Are you showing mercy? People who go out with this word and proclaim the truth. I know a lot of people who are proclaiming the truth, they just ain't got no mercy with it. They just mean. How are others seeing you? When Julius Caesar landed on the shores of Britain with his Roman legions, he took a bold and decisive step. He wanted to ensure the success of his military venture. So he ordered his men to go back to the cliff for where they had left the boats down in the Gulf there. And to go back to the cliff and look at those boats. As those men went back, they saw a picture greatly disturbed them. Every boat that they came with was on fire. He had sent fire to every boat, signaling that there's no defeat. There's no going back. Listen to me this morning church. We don't come too far. There's no going back. There's no going back. I tell you, greater is he that's in us. We're not going to quit. We need to stand up for the Word of God and for the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't care who it bothers. I don't care if they mock us. I don't care if they persecuted. It does not make any difference. We have an assignment. And it's not to build just things here that we enjoy is to reach this world with the Gospel. Lord today, would you have your way in life? They're both in this place. They need you. They tried everything in life that there is to try. Nothing has worked. And today they need you. God would today, you just speak to their heart, Lord Jesus, save their soul. And may they understand that they're a sinner. They cannot save themselves. No one else can save them. All they can do is come. Cry out to a loving Savior. Lord, we can be assured that the Word of God teaches is not your will any parish would all come to life. God, we can be assured that you're desiring them to be saved this morning. Would you let your Holy Spirit work? Maybe there is some here that just need a new pick-me-up and they let the cares of this world creeping in. It's so easy to do, God. It's so easy to do. God, today you would just speak to their heart and say, I want to move forward. I want to know that God sees everything and He's all-powerful and the mercy of God and to earth forever. Maybe there is some here who need a church home. Lord, you know every one of our needs. Would you just have your way in the precious name of Jesus? We pray.