8/8/10 - Elisha 6 - 2 Kings 3:11-12

GOD'S WORD IS SUPERNATURAL

When going through a sermon series on the prophet Elisha, it’s expected that we will talk about some pretty amazing stories. Because almost every story about Elisha includes an incredible miracle that the Lord performed through him - some of which are one-of-a-kind events in the pages of Scripture. And the account we have in 2 Kings 3 this morning is no exception. It is a story that speaks of the supernatural; it retells events that could not have possibly happened in this world without the power of God’s Word behind them. God’s Word itself is supernatural, isn’t it? It can defy the basic laws of nature. It is able to make a sinner into a saint. It is so powerful and enduring that not even Satan himself can stop it. God’s Word works beyond the natural way of doing things. It is supernatural. And the story of Elisha in 2 Kings 3 shows us how God’s Word is supernatural in two different ways: 1) God’s Word creates things that are not there; 2) God’s Word produces Christians in the bleakest of situations.
The first way God’s Word is supernatural is easy to see in this story because it is obvious how his Word created something that was not there. You’ve just heard the story a few minutes ago: As the king of Judah and the king of Israel and the king of Edom are traveling through the desert with their entire consolidated army, they run out of water. The king of Israel complains, the king of Edom is speechless (it was his desert, after all, in the middle of which they ran out of water), and the king of Judah asked for a prophet of the Lord. When they find Elisha (who was conveniently in the middle of the desert at that time) and after he sends for a harpist (who was also conveniently in the middle of the desert at the time) this Word of the Lord was given to these three kings: “Make this valley full of ditches. For this is what the LORD says: You will see neither wind nor rain, yet this valley will be filled with water, and you, your cattle and your other animals will drink. This is an easy thing in the eyes of the LORD” (2 Kings 3:16-18). And sure enough, the very next morning water started to flow from the direction of Edom and the desert floor where they were camped was flooded. And why was it flooded? Because God said the word and it came to be. There were no rivers in the area and they weren’t in a flood plain; there wasn’t even any wind and not a single drop of rain fell from the sky; the Lord simply created water where there was none with a single word.
Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Nothing like that ever really happened in Scripture since then. Sure, the Lord certainly manipulated water and commanded it to do what he wanted it to do throughout his life on this earth, but other than The Creation itself and possibly the water from the rock during the time of Moses, the Lord has never created water where it was not, except here. You would never imagine waking up in the morning, looking to the north, and seeing torrents of water rushing over the dry ground and into the city of Montrose or wherever you live - especially when there had been no rain, no snow melt, no dam breaking, no reasonable explanation whatsoever! But that’s exactly what God did during the time of Elisha because God’s Word is supernatural. God’s Word supersedes any restraint or restriction that sinful human beings are limited by in this world. And it doesn’t even take a lot of effort for him to do those kinds of things! Whatever supernatural thing he accomplishes “is an easy thing in the eyes of the LORD.”
But although this event of flooding the desert floor with water is an incredible act of the power of God’s Word, it is not the only supernatural act of God’s Word in the story. Something happened earlier in the middle of the desert that strikes me as even more amazing than a miraculous flow of water coming from Edom. But it’s described in our story with just half a sentence and so it’s easy to miss. In fact, I didn’t really catch it - it didn’t really strike me - until this past week. And this supernatural act of God’s Word has to do with God’s Word producing Christians in the bleakest of situations. I’m going to read verses 11-12 again, and I want to see if you notice the supernatural effects of God’s Word within these few sentences.
But Jehoshaphat asked, "Is there no prophet of the LORD here that we may inquire of the LORD through him?" An officer of the king of Israel answered, "Elisha son of Shaphat is here. He used to pour water on the hands of Elijah." Jehoshaphat said, "The word of the LORD is with him." So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat and the king of Edom went down to him.
Did you catch the amazing act of God’s Word in these two short verses? Allow me to narrow your focus, if you would, with a question: Did you notice who it was that answered the king of Judah? The person who knew Elisha was the prophet of the Lord, who knew where Elisha was at that very moment, and whom Elisha had trained under? It was an officer of the king of Israel! An officer of the king of Israel knew and believed all these things about God’s prophet! Now if it had been an officer of the king of Judah, someone under King Jehoshaphat, that wouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Because Jehoshaphat was a good king, a godly king. “In everything he walked in the ways of his father Asa,” Scripture says, “and did not stray from them; he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD” (1 Kings 22:43). And so it could rightly be assumed that most of Jehoshaphat’s subjects and especially his high ranking officers knew who the Lord’s prophet was. But for a high ranking officer of the king of Israel to know who Elisha was and to apparently believe in God’s power through him? That’s a little unexpected! Because the king of Israel at that time was a man named Joram. “He did evil in the eyes of the LORD… he clung to the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat which he had caused Israel to commit; he did not turn away from them” (2 Kings 3:2,3). Those sins that Joram continued in were worshiping false gods at the two high places Jeroboam had set up half a century before. Joram was not a good king. He was not a godly king. And his brother Ahaziah who ruled before him hadn’t been any better. “He served and worshiped Baal and provoked the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger, just as his father had done” (1 Kings 22:53). Ahaziah even died by the hands of the Lord according to a direct prophesy by the prophet Elijah because Ahaziah had consulted a false god instead of the Lord himself.
But no matter how bad Ahaziah and Joram were, their father was the worst of all. Their father was King Ahab. Their mother: Jezebel. Ahab and Jezebel were perhaps the most notorious king and queen in the entire history of the Israelite nation. They were the ones who murdered Naboth and stole his vineyard. They were the ones who hunted down and killed the prophets of the Lord so that Elijah thought he was the only one left. They were the ones who challenged the prophet Elijah to a duel on top of Mt. Carmel - the place where God rained down fire from heaven on the altar Elijah had set up. Ahab and Jezebel were wicked people and they both died bloody and horrible deaths at the word of the Lord. But to be honest, the northern kingdom of Israel - as opposed to the southern kingdom of Judah - never had a good king. Ever! Every single king that reigned over that northern part of the Promised Land was an unbeliever. According to the pages of Scripture not one of those kings died as a believer in the true God and, in fact, most of them were vehemently opposed to anything the true God wanted.
So the fact that an officer of the king of Israel not only knew where Elisha was and not only believed in what Elisha could do but was also bold enough to admit that - that is something supernatural! God’s Word had somehow survived in that northern territory all those years; it had reached the ears of one of the officers of an ungodly ruler; and it had actually produced a Christian in one of the bleakest of situations. How did that officer ever hear the true words of God in the first place? How was he able to maintain his faith while serving under such spiritually depraved kings? What was going to happen to him now that he not only acknowledged that he knew where Elisha was but implied that he trusted that God could fix their problem through this prophet? God’s Word is supernatural. It works in places that seem to be devoid of the gospel. It works at times when everything seems to be against it. It works in hearts that, frankly, never deserved the chance.
Have you ever thought of your faith in your Savior as being just as a supernatural act of God just like it was for the officer of the king of Israel? Now I wouldn’t say that we live in a country that was exactly like the northern kingdom of Israel during Elisha’s time, and we haven’t really had national leaders that have physically persecuted true teachers of Scripture, but we do have quite a bit against us. We are inundated with unscriptural ecumenism in this country - which is a joining together of religions despite what they teach; we are surrounded by thousands of people and entire church bodies who claim to be Christians but really are not; we are tempted with countless other material blessings in this life that try to take the place of the one true God. And let’s not forget the most damaging obstacles to our faith: our own sinful nature. Something we were born with, conceived with! Something deep down inside of us that automatically hates God, something that produces sinful thoughts and sinful actions and sinful words at an alarming rate, something that immediately excludes us from God’s family and something that makes us spiritually incapable of doing anything about it. Our sinful nature puts us into the same category that the officer of the king of Israel was in before he was brought to faith in his Savior: hopeless, helpless, clueless, without knowledge that anything was wrong and without the ability to fix the problem even if we knew!
But then just as it did to the officer of the king of Israel, the Word of God hit our hearts. Whether you heard it, whether you read it, whether you were baptized with it, God’s Word grabbed your spiritually rotted heart and turned it, converted it by reviving it with his love and grace and forgiveness. He convinced you that he was a human being just like you, that he died on the cross to take your impending punishment, that he rose from the grave to make way for your own resurrection, that he lives in a heaven that you too will one day call your home, that he has secured your salvation by everything he has done and you don’t have to do anything for it. God’s Word has convinced your heart that this is true! Doesn’t that strike you as supernatural! It certainly isn’t natural! It certainly isn’t natural for you as an educated, alert, independently-thinking, rational, reasonable, and logical human being to believe such a thing! Is it? Or are you in the habit of falling for legends about a God who takes the form of a real human man so that he can live among us for a while? Do you usually assume that a person can raise himself from the dead after being brutally and undeniably executed three days earlier? Is it typical for you to back things that you cannot prove or trust in things that you cannot explain or fully except things that you cannot understand? The Word of your God is supernatural. It has to be! For you to actually believe what the Bible says about your salvation and forgiveness and eternal life, God’s Word can be nothing less than supernatural!
And that’s what’s so cool about this story in 2 kings 3. Yes, there was an impressive flood of water in the middle of the desert pronounced by the Word of the Lord. Yes, the Moabites were surprisingly handed over to these three kings by the promise of the Word of the Lord. But it was the Word of the Lord doing supernatural things in the heart of the officer of the king of Israel that was most impressive. That was the greatest miracle of all! It was the most important miracle in the story. Because that was the only miracle that had eternal implications.
And the Lord has accomplished the same miracle in your heart. He has taken you from his enemy and made you into a friend. He has transformed you from a slave of your sinful nature to a servant of the Spirit. His life and death and resurrection has made it possible that you, a condemned criminal, are now his child and an heir of the inheritance of eternal life. Do not take this supernatural act of God for granted! It may not be as visually remarkable as some of those great miracles during the time of Elisha. It may not be as outwardly awe-inspiring as some of the things Jesus himself did during the few years he was on this earth. But the faith that the Lord placed in your heart through his Word is just as incredible. He shouldn’t have done it but he did. He didn’t have to do it but he did. We didn’t even want him to do as unbelievers! But he did. And this mind-blowing miracle happens every day throughout the world wherever the Word is heard or read or taught. Thank the Lord that you are one of those who have been a recipient of this supernatural act of God’s power and mercy. You would not be sitting here right now, you would not be a Christian, you would not have the sure hope of heaven without it.
Amen.

“You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” - 1 Cor. 6:11