“More Are With Us…” 2 Kings 6.8–23, Proper 9 Pentecost 4C, July ‘19

1.                Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word this morning is taken from 2 Kings 6:8-23, (READ TEXT), it’s entitled, “More are with Us…”  dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                The successor to Elijah, a prophet named Elisha, had a problem at the beginning of his ministry. His predecessor, Elijah, had cut a mighty commanding figure for the Lord. Elijah spoke out so boldly! The Lord had done such great miracles through him! He turned out to be a very hard act to follow, as it were. 

3.                On the day Elijah was taken into heaven alive—one of only two people in Scripture who didn’t die—other prophets ran up to Elisha. They didn’t want to talk about him. Rather, they wanted to ask about Elijah. They kept saying, “Do you know that today the Lord will take your master from over you?” After the Lord took Elijah into heaven in a fiery chariot, some of these same prophets went to Elisha and suggested forming a search party, in case the chariot had simply taken Elijah out of sight and dropped him off somewhere. Maybe Elijah was gone, but their interest in him had not waned. Elijah still caught the imagination of many faithful people and fired their aspirations. The Lord had taken Elijah to heaven and thus off the scene, though, among other things, so that Elisha could get on with his assigned work. 

4.                People at the time would have had difficulty believing this, but in so many ways Elisha turned out even better than Elijah. On the day Elijah was taken up, Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. The Lord granted it. Eventually the Lord did twice as many miracles through Elisha as he had done through Elijah. This was the greatest collection of personal miracles—miracles done one-on-one or in a small group— anywhere in the Old Testament. Not only were Elisha’s miracles more numerous than Elijah’s, his miracles were also better. While the miracles of both prophets contained elements of blessing and curse, in Elijah’s miracles, curse had been more prominent. On the other hand, blessing stood out in Elisha’s miracles.

5.                 In our text from 2 Kings 6, the king of Syria grew frustrated that the king of Israel seemed to know about top secret Syrian military maneuvers. The Syrian king began wondering whether a spy had infiltrated his innermost circle, but he learned that in Israel the king needed no spy. He had Elisha, a mighty prophet who could report the most closely- guarded secrets. The Syrian king determined to get this prophet, so he sent his army after Elisha under cover of darkness. When day broke, Elisha’s servant came running to warn of the danger. There was no place to hide. He and Elisha were surrounded. No problem, replied Elisha. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them,” he told his servant. When the servant looked a second time, the Lord opened his eyes to see the heavenly army of angels surrounding Elisha, with fiery horses and chariots.

6.                Still today, the battle is on for the hearts and minds of men. It’s not fought with conventional weapons of war. The dangers we can see are often quite scary, but there is much more than meets the eye.  A few years ago, a lot of  money was spent trying to convince the electorate of one state to approve a gambling casino for a small community with a sluggish economy. Who do you suppose paid for all these ads? Not the economically-distressed community! There certainly was more than met the eye in this case, especially considering that the casino would devote itself to increasing greed and convincing people to try to get something for comparatively nothing. On the whole, the gambling industry tempts people to take the money they could use for constructive purposes and throw it away. There is more than meets the eye, that’s for sure. As St. Paul put it, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).  Solomon in Proverbs 13:11-13 (NLT) says, “¹¹ Wealth from get-rich-quick schemes quickly disappears; wealth from hard work grows over time.  ¹² Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.”

7.                The community and the casino form only one example. The battle for the hearts and minds of men is on in every aspect of life: social, economic, intellectual, moral, ethical. These are all arenas for spiritual struggle! Luther wrote in the Large Catechism, “If you could see how many knives, darts, and arrows are every moment aimed at you [Ephesians 6:16], you would be glad to come to the Sacrament as often as possible.”1 If what we see in this wicked world seems scary, consider the forces that go unseen. 1 Large Catechism V 82 (Concordia, 440).

8.                But, as Elisha’s servant learned when his eyes were opened, there are more of us than there are of them. Today, open your eyes of faith and see what God has on your side.  He has a mighty army of angels, doing his bidding and surrounding you with protection. Even in heavenly terms, such a force comes at a cost. This one was paid for with the holy, precious blood and the innocent suffering and death of Christ, who is God himself. He has the power to make any of Elisha’s miracles look puny by comparison, and he has packed into his Word the very divine power that raised Christ from the dead. He comes to you now with this same Word, to fight for you. 

9.                The Word of Jesus has the power to save you for all eternity, but it also speaks to you about what is going on all around you. It tells you that—despite the dangers, problems, and threats in this world—you can feel at home here. This remains our Father’s world, and he is for us. As Scripture says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). Angels aside, whenever you are with the Lord, you are always in the majority. He’s on your side on account of the crucified and risen Christ. 

10.             Therefore, it is in no way throwing in the towel and admitting defeat when we say to God, “Your will be done.” No, for us as believers in Christ these words constitute a victory cry. God’s good and gracious will is done among us when he “breaks and hinders every evil counsel and will that would not let us hallow the name of God nor let His kingdom come, such as the will of the devil, the world, and our flesh” and when he “strengthens and keeps us steadfast in His Word and in faith until we die.”2 The battle for the hearts and minds of men is on, all right, and Christ engages us in it every time we pray the prayer he taught. 2 Small Catechism, Third Petition (Concordia, 334).

11.             There are more of us than there are of them.  We can have freedom from the fearsome forces arrayed against us. As the text goes on to explain, we can also freely show generosity to the people who would oppose us. Elisha did, knowing that the Lord was protecting him. He went out and met the Syrian army. Elisha prayed that the Lord would strike all these soldiers blind, which God did. Ironic, isn’t it? The Lord had enabled the prophet’s servant to see supernatural realities, but now he blinded the Syrian troops to natural things right in front of them.

12.             Elisha proceeded to lead the Syrian soldiers haplessly into the capital city of Israel, Samaria. Once they were there, the Lord opened their eyes again. You can imagine their reaction: first disorientation and shock, followed by recognition of where they were, and then fear over being surrounded by their enemy. They had nowhere to go. The Israelite king, a son of wicked King Ahab, was thrilled with this unexpected military coup. Gleefully rubbing his hands together, he asked, “Shall I strike them down? Shall I strike them down?”

13.             Elisha said no. These Syrians weren’t the king’s prisoners. They were the Lord’s, for the Lord had captured them. His prophet Elisha gave orders that they be given something to eat and sent home. The king did just that. Once again, only the Lord could protect those who were surrounded, and he did. See what I mean about blessing standing out more than curse in the miracle activity of Elisha?

14.             The Lord works similarly in your life and mine. He shows us how desperate our situation is in this world. He exposes our vulnerability. More than that, by his law he accuses us of our sin, solemnly pronouncing that the sinning soul shall die. His law comes to us through the impact of events in our lives and through our own consciences as well as by his Word. But, he does not aim to leave us in despair and death. The prophet Isaiah called it God’s “alien work” when he terrifies. He wants to console and quicken. The Lord kills in order to make alive. He afflicts the comfortable so he can comfort the afflicted. As he had brought comfort to Elisha’s frightened servant, next he gave it to the terrified Syrian army. Those who had seen Elijah in action might have expected the prophet to tell the king, “Yes, kill them all.” But through Elisha, the Lord showed mercy.

15.             In the New Testament an angel told the father of John the Baptizer that his son John would go forth in the spirit and power of Elijah in preparing the way for the coming Christ. (See Luke 1:17.) When Jesus came, it was in the spirit of mercy. Christ came, if you will, in the spirit of Elisha, though he is greater than Elisha. Jesus preached the law to people, as John had done. Still, the great theme of his work amounts to blessing, not curse. For Jesus is the promised Seed of the woman who would roll back the curse that impended over the whole world ever since the fall into sin. In Christ we, too, can say, “I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the LORD” (Psalm 118:17). We can recount his deeds even to people who have been our spiritual opponents, trusting all the while in the Lord and his might.

16.             The Maker of heaven and earth is powerful beyond our imagination, of course. He commands vast angel armies, to say nothing of his own might. There is no consolation for us in such great divine power unless God shows us the smiling face of his blessing and his love, as he showed it to Elisha’s servant and also to the Syrians. No one appreciates his love and blessing for what they are unless they are seen against the black backdrop of sin, danger, and death in this world. In Christ God has given us sinners freedom—freedom from and freedom for. With the protection of our mighty Lord, we have freedom from the fearsome forces, and freedom for generosity to the people who would oppose us.

17.             Thank God that when he opened our eyes, enemies that we once were, he did not show mercy on us for a moment and send us back. Instead, the One who died and rose for us now stays with us, fighting for us through his Word. With Jesus, we stay safe for all eternity.  The peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting.  Amen.

“Hear the Word of the Lord,” 1 Kings 22.1–23, Proper 8, Pentecost 3C, ‘19

1.                Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.  The message from God’s Word today comes from 1 Kings 22:1-23 (READ TEXT).  It’s entitled, “Hear the Word of the Lord,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                What kind of a role reversal was this? A prophet of the Lord by the name of Micaiah was telling wicked King Ahab of Israel to go ahead and do what he wanted to do, with the Lord’s blessing! Needless to say, prophets of the Most High God weren’t in the habit of telling wicked kings to fulfill their hearts’ desires. Another topsy-turvy thing came when the king responded to Micaiah. King Ahab admonished the prophet to tell him nothing but God’s own truth. Wicked kings generally did not want to hear God’s own truth from the prophets.

3.                Really, this role reversal only seemed to take place. Micaiah was being sarcastic when he told King Ahab to do what he wanted, as must have been evident from his tone of voice. As a prophet, Micaiah was saying what the Lord told him to say, complete with the proper tone. Ahab, for his part, was simply being insulting. He knew that he got God’s true Word from Micaiah every time, whether or not he wanted to hear it. Furthermore, this time he knew Micaiah could say more. He was curious to hear it all. The entire episode had begun when Ahab wanted to take Ramoth-gilead back from Syria. Ramoth-gilead used to be Israelite territory back when the kingdom was still united, all twelve tribes together. Ahab wanted to annex it to his ten-tribe Northern Kingdom. 

4.                In preparation for the battle to re-take Ramoth-gilead, Ahab appealed for help to the king of the Southern Kingdom, Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat was a godly king. It was possible, even probable, that he would refuse to become involved in a plan hatched by wicked Ahab. Somewhat surprisingly, though, Jehoshaphat committed his troops and horses to the effort. Now Ahab was riding high. With Jehoshaphat’s help, how could his plan fail? Some 400 prophets were quite willing to assure Ahab that the Lord would grant him a smashing victory at Ramoth-gilead. The king had grown cocky to the point of overconfidence. 

5.                Yet there remained one prophet Ahab did not bother to ask: Micaiah. Micaiah brought the true message of the Lord, unlike the many prophets who turned out to have a lying spirit in this case. Ahab complained that Micaiah never said anything good about him. He was always prophesying things that wicked Ahab did not want to hear. It could well have been that Micaiah was languishing in jail at the time because he had not said good and pleasing things to and about the king in the past. 

6.                The world often blames the messenger. It blames preachers. In fact, it blames Christians, period. For we tell a wicked world that no one escapes God’s judgment. We tell an irresponsible world that the Creator of all things has not stopped holding people responsible. We say to a smug and self-assured world, “I don’t belong to me. You don’t belong to you.”

7.                These are things that people in authority often do not want to hear. For example, it can strike legislators and other government officials as inconvenient and politically incorrect, to say the least, to hear that in God’s creative design marriage was, is, and should be the union of a man and a woman. But there are other power structures, perhaps less formal but certainly no less real, where the words and actions of Christians will not necessarily find a welcome. When someone stands up to peer pressure and does the right thing, at any age, those who have chosen to go along with the group will chafe with discomfort and sometimes seethe with resentment. Even within the Church it can become necessary to cling to God’s Word when others seem to have forgotten it. Yes, even in the Church the supposed “good of the organization” can rank higher in peoples’ minds than what the Lord says. Like the apostles of old and in all sorts of settings, then, we say that we have to obey God instead of men. That is something the world will not want to hear.

8.                The old, sinful nature in us Christians does not want to hear it either. The sinful nature does not want to hear anything God says, whether he speaks in curse or blessing, judgment or forgiveness, whether he is giving us bad news or good. Not surprisingly, when the time comes to step forward and be counted for Christ, our old Adam backpedals furiously. If he takes a stand at all, he would rather stick with the comfortable words from the four hundred lying prophets than with the words from the one who tells God’s own truth. When Ahab did this, it spelled disaster, and it still will. This is why, despite the protests of the world outside us and the sinful nature within us, we desperately need God’s Word. No less than the world around us, we need to hear the Word of the Lord.  Only he can help us. 

9.                There was someone in the text who realized this. Jehoshaphat, the godly king of Judah, wanted very much to hear what the Lord said. Although it may have seemed he was tossing a bucket of water on the flames of Ahab’s ambition, Jehoshaphat insisted on consulting the prophet Micaiah about the venture at Ramoth-gilead. God’s people always want to hear his Word. Jesus said, “Whoever is from God hears the words of God” (John 8:47). 

10.             “God’s Word cannot be without God’s people, and conversely, God’s people cannot be without God’s Word.” (1 AE 41:150).   That is, God’s Word will always touch human hearts. Inherent in it lies all the creative power of the Creator God. It never returns void. It always creates a people for the Lord, and these people will in turn cling to his Word. 

11.             God’s people go back to his Word again and again. It remains our very source of life.  For God’s Word not only shows us our sin; it also shows us our Savior. Truthful and effective as God’s Word is in pointing out our iniquity and the ways we do not deserve his love, so truthful and effective it remains when it directs us to the crucified and risen Christ and the forgiveness of our sins on account of him.

12.             On account of Christ, God has a much better word for us than Micaiah had for Ahab in the text. For God did not send his Son to condemn but to save. Jesus was like a lightning rod for God’s wrath against sin and sinners. He took your condemnation and mine, as our Substitute. When he rose from the dead it was to proclaim not only his victory but also ours—our victory in him. For he died under the weight of our sin, and he lived to tell the tale.

13.             One word from this crucified and risen Lord changes everything. It is very significant that on the first Easter, Jesus came right into the Upper Room where his disciples were.  These men had abandoned him and even denied him. At the moment, they weren’t capable of standing up to anyone. Any word from Jesus that they remembered now struck them as cold comfort. Yet when the risen Lord stood in their midst—obviously alive and well, yet still bearing the marks of the crucifixion—his word for them was “peace.” He said it not once but twice. A word from the crucified and risen Christ changed everything. his Word remains that powerful.  We need to hear the powerful Word of this powerful Lord.

14.             A man bought a very sophisticated barometer at a store that specialized in weather instruments. He brought it home and took it out of its box. To his surprise, it was showing a pressure reading that was so low, it could only be produced by a hurricane. Convinced he had a defective barometer, he boxed it back up and walked out to his car. Determined as he was to return the barometer, the man failed to notice that it had started to rain. He drove to the store where he had purchased the barometer, but he found it closed, all the windows boarded up. He drove back home and tried to telephone the store, but all he got was an answering machine. Then he phoned the Better Business Bureau, with the same result. Finally, after trying a number of other places, the man called the police to ask why he could not reach a live person anywhere downtown in the middle of the day. The police operator replied that everyone must be at home—because of the hurricane!

15.             The man who bought the barometer had his mind set on the one thing he wanted to hear: that his barometer was broken. Maybe then he could get a new barometer or a refund. He was wrong, though. The barometer had been right all along.  We need to stay focused on God’s Word. No less than the world around us, we need to hear the Word of the Lord. His Word is right and powerful, right in everything it says.  After all, it comes from him. Moreover, we need this message of peace and life that brings God’s peace and life.

16.             As for what we in our sin might want to hear, we never lack for people out who will tell us things such things. Like Ahab with his four hundred prophets, we can find their words very agreeable. Such words call for no penitence on our part. They demand no change. They set us up for no potentially undesirable situations. Then, too, they also bring no lasting peace and convey no eternal forgiveness. Remember the message of Micaiah and the lesson of the barometer: hear the Word of the Lord. Fix and focus on it.  This remains the way not only for individual Christians to be strong in the Lord but also for the Church to draw strength from the rock of our salvation. We need his Word no less than the wicked world around us. Hear the Word of the Lord.

17.             Suppose you were suddenly hauled up into court. Imagine how you would feel if the judge read charge after charge against you, and suppose that the charges were valid. You know so, and everyone else knows too. But then suppose that the judge summarily were to pronounce you not guilty of each and every charge, one after another. How much that pardoning word from the judge would mean to you! Of course, you would delight in his pardoning word because it says you are not guilty and free to go. You would also value the fact that the pardoning word comes from none other than the judge. For unlike others in the courtroom, the judge’s word really counts. One word from him changes everything. When he says you are not guilty, you must be treated as not guilty by the court and all its officers. They must let you go.

18.             Here is the most important reason to cling to God’s Word. It pronounces you not guilty on account of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Therefore, hear the Word of the Lord.  Now the peace that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.