SEEING THE UNSEEABLE
TEXT: ll Kings 6:8-18
II Kings 6:8 18 – “Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, 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, Beware that thou pass not such a place; for thither 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 sore troubled for this thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not shew me which of us is for the king of Israel?” “And one of his servants said, None, my lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.” “And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.” “Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host: and they came by night, and compassed the city about.” “And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, 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, I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.”
l. INTRODUCTION – ELISHA
-Elisha, the prophet with the double portion. The double anointing. He was a man who was visionary in his filling of the prophetic office. He was a man who could see further than others. He was a spiritual man, he was a godly man, and he was a praying man.
-His request of Elijah was so farfetched that it seemed preposterous. “Give me a double portion of your success, of your ministry, of the anointing of God that has touched your life.” But what Elisha was really asking for was a fulfillment of the ministry that had taken him from the fields.
-When the mantle fell on Elisha’s shoulders it became a sign and a sealing of his adoption. The adopted son always has allotted to him the double portion that belonged to the first-born.
-All the while that Elijah was sitting beneath the juniper tree contemplating the weakened state of Israel, God was working on Elisha, preparing him to carry forward the work of Elijah with a vengeance. While some are talking about the collapse of the church and about the lukewarm state of which she rests, God is preparing some “Elisha’s” to carry on the work.
-God always has his hidden servants, quite well known to Him, who are ready and capable of submitting to the will and work of God.
-There was Elisha, carefully watching the ministry of Elijah among the people. He listened to his instruction. He submitted to the role of the servant because he knew that his whole future depended upon it. He heard the old prophet pray. He heard the old prophet rail against sin and preach repentance. All the while it was preparing his heart for a tremendous work of God.
-From those early moments, Elisha began, with the help of God, to see the unseeable. He began to develop those spiritual gifts to become visionary.
-History has always had it’s men who could see beyond the ordinary. History has had men who could look at the ordinary and see the hidden treasures, the sparkling potential that lay hidden within an object.
James Watt and his steam engine.
John Fitch and his steamboat.
Eli Whitney and his cotton gin.
George Stephenson and his locomotive.
Samuel Colt and his revolver.
Rene Laennec and his stethoscope.
George Westinghouse and his air brake.
Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone.
Thomas Edison and his light bulb.
The Wright Brothers and their airplane.
-All of these men contributed to the world in a material sense, because they saw something out of the ordinary, they saw beyond, they saw the unseeable. Yet in the spiritual world there are other men who made so strides in the Gospel because they could see beyond the obstacles.
ll. THE STORY BEHIND THE TEXT
-Jehoram was now the king of Israel and one who was ungodly and far from God. During his reign, there was a Syrian king by the name of Benhadad who began to threaten Israel despite an earlier alliance and receiving and favor from the Israelites.
-The spiritual lesson here is that one can never make worldly alliances or make concessions with the enemy of the soul. He is never satisfied, he constantly is endeavoring to destroy the man of God.
-So Benhadad began to try to attack Israel at here weak portions in the territory. But there was a man of God who was still in touch with God. During this time, God would reveal to Elisha the setting of the Syrians. He would convey this information to King Jehoram.
-Jehoram would respond by sending out scouts to the valleys where the ambush would lay. He would send troops to the place pointed out and perhaps a small skirmish might occur, but the Syrians were never able to fulfill their wicked plans.
-In verse 10, there is an Aramaic play on words, “not once, nor twice.” This event with God revealing the battle plan to Elisha happened numerous times. Thus, Israel was safe.
-Benhadad became enraged at this niche in his plans. The first thing that he suspected was treachery among his troops. He suspected that somewhere among the Syrians was a spy who was delivering the information to the Israelite armies. How otherwise could the king of Israel know of his intentions over and over again?
-Finally one of his men told him that there was not a spy in the camp, just a man in touch with God on the other side. How this Syrian man knew this, we do not know. Elisha’s miraculous gifts however had come to the attention of the Syrians through the cure of Namaan’s leprosy. The possibility even exists that Namaan could have been the one who revealed this to Benhadad.
-Once this knowledge came to Benhadad, he sent out some spies to find out where Elisha was. The report came back that Elisha was hidden down in Dothan. Dothan was the place where Joseph had been sold by his brothers.
-So Benhadad ordered a night march to take the prophet by surprise and capture or kill him. The host of an army surrounded the small city so that Elisha could not escape.
-Early in the morning, Elisha’s servant arose (not Gehazi who had died with leprosy in the previous chapter) and went out and found the huge Syrian army surrounding the city. He burst back into the house with his heart in his throat and cried out to Elisha about the fearful thing he had discovered outside.
A. Fear Not ! ! !
-All of the fear of the young man came bursting through. Elisha calmly told the young man to “Fear Not.”
-Have you ever noticed in the Word of God that some of the most preposterous (possibly stupid) things are said in emergent conditions. A huge army on the outside waiting to come in and annihilate everything in sight. These burly soldiers who enjoy their job and want to divide up the spoil are waiting outside. They want to hurt somebody and the old prophet says “fear not.”
(I adapted this from a Patrick McManus tale.) I don’t know about you but I have a worry box. I have this theory that people possess a certain capacity for worry, no more, no less. It’s as though a person has this little box that he feels compelled to keep filled with worries. When one worry disappears, he immediately replaces it with another worry, so the box is always full. He is never short of worries. If a new crop of worries comes in, the person sorts through the box for lesser worries and kicks them out, until he has enough room for the new worries. The lesser worries just lie around on the floor, until there is room in the box for them again, and then they are put back in. Their welcomed by the worries that have been in the box all the time: “Hi guys! Good to have you back. Boy, you should have seen the duds that just left. And they had the nerve to call themselves worries!”
I have a very large worry box. My wife is one of the major suppliers of worries.
“What did you do with the checkbook?” She asks me. The CHECKBOOK! Is that monster loose again? I imagine at that very moment an escaped convict is picking it up off the sidewalk. Maybe he will forge my name and deplete our checking account of every last penny and after he has exhausted all our funds buying dope, he will come to our house, because the address is on checks, and he and I will grapple with each other and he will pull a knife and . . . . . !
“Oh,” Teresa will say, “here’s the checkbook in my lab coat pocket. Silly me! Now what’s wrong with you?” “Nothing,” I say, booting out that worry out of my worry box, at least until the next time she asks, “What did you do with that checkbook?”
Her telephone technique is specifically designed to worry me too. The phone rings. She picks it up. “Hello . . . . Yes. . . . . . .NO!!!! [Me: One of the kids has done something bad.] Oh my!! How bad? [Me: It’s real bad. Otherwise the police wouldn’t be calling.] You just never expect these things to happen to you. [Me: I do.] When can we see him?” [Me: Only during visiting hours, when he will be wearing a full body cast.]
“So what is it now?” I ask, steeling myself to deal with the horrible emergency. “Dollar Bill’s Garage. Larry said that he fixed the car’s oil leak with a thirty-five-cent part. What’s funny is that to install it, he had to totally disassemble the car. Isn’t that amazing, just a thirty-five-cent part? How lucky can you get. By the way, Larry wants to talk to you about something when he has a chance.” Larry the Mechanic wants to talk to me? I know what he wants. He wants my house in exchange for totally disassembling my car, that’s what he wants. We’re about to join the ranks of the homeless.
You see from this example that the old worry about the kid is immediately replaced by a new worry about becoming homeless. I used to pity the homeless; now I am one. And so on. The worry box is wonderfully efficient and always is kept exactly full.
Worry even has a way of invading my sleep time. It’s late. The lights are out. The ceiling fan is running with that calming BAP, BAP, BAP, BAP. The air conditioner is humming quietly. I am entering that delightful land of nod, when my wife suddenly brings from my peaceful slumber with, “Was that you?” “Nope probably the dishwasher.” “I mean the snuffling.” “I don’t think so,” I answer, trying to recall the characteristics of a snuffle. She says, “Oh well, go to sleep, it was probably just my imagination.” Yeah, but maybe not. Maybe something did snuffle. Maybe it was a bird outside in the tree by the window that snuffled, but birds don’t snuffle they chirp. Squirrels are too small to snuffle. Something would have to be pretty big to snuffle. Actually the only animal that I know that makes a true snuffle is an alligator. There is an alligator which has gotten out of the pond across the road from my house. It being hot and all, he can’t seem to get enough to eat, and now has gotten into my bedroom and is snuffling under the bed waiting to attack me when I finally go to sleep.
Now notice something. It is an interesting part of my worry theory. Up to the point that Teresa mentions snuffles, my worry box is neatly layered with worries about my children, work, money, illness, poverty, pestilence, environment, war, the checkbook, famine, each patiently waiting for it’s turn for my attention. But the instant the snuffle is mentioned, and it’s source is identified as ALLIGATORS, all those other worries are blasted right out of the box by sudden inflation of the snuffle worry. War, poverty, pestilence–why, they couldn’t even be shoehorned back into my worry box, it’s packed so tight with snuffle.
As with most of my worries, the snuffle turned out to be nothing.
-But I continue to fear and worry and fret. Now I know that it is unproductive and negative and can make bad things happen to your blood pressure, your heart, and other sorts of maladies, but somebody has GOT to worry.
-And the devil loves it!!! He can’t wait to report back and tell everybody that he had me in the tree for about five years.
-But there are Scriptures upon Scriptures that tell us that God has everything in control.
Exodus 14:13 – “And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.”
Psalm 27:3 – “Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.”
Isaiah 41:10 14 – “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” “Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded: they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish.” “Thou shalt seek them, and shalt not find them, even them that contended with thee: they that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought.” “For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.” “Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.”
Acts 18:9 10 – “Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace:” “For I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city.”
Rom 8:31 – “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”
Rom 8:35 39 – “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” “As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,” “Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I John 4:4 – “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.”
B. The Praying Prophet
-It was then that the old prophet began to pray. If the prophet’s servant was to be reassured then he had to be able see something. “Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.” That he may see the unseeable.
Psalm 121:1 2 – “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” “My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.”
-That same prayer has to come alive in my life. I must seek revelation. I must seek after God. I must earnestly covet the greatest gifts. The equipping gifts of the Spirit help us:
See beyond the enemy.
See beyond the evil one.
See beyond all of the hindrances.
See beyond all of the limitations.
To See Beyond OURSELVES.
-A vision of the invisible provokes courage. It causes men and churches to become dreamers. The man who sees the invisible is never content. He finally sees something where he is at the present moment.
-“Lord, I pray that you open MY eyes.”
-A grain of faith outweighs the resources of any earthly kingdom. In the Book there are a host of men who trusted in the weapons of God. It is there that their whole strength is discovered.
-No matter how large the obstacles were, they looked until they found the advantage:
Moses defying the might of Egypt.
Gideon and his little rag tag army charging the vast army of Midianites.
Elijah in his loneliness challenging the priests of Baal.
Daniel disregarding the king’s princes, nobles, and his lions in Babylon.
Peter and John scornfully resisting the browbeating magistrates.
-It was simply their belief in the unseen forces which made them what they were. Faith indeed is the substance of what we cannot see, but once faith sees the unseeable it becomes energized.
-When there is one man standing in the middle of ten men who are silent in their worship and ten who are lukewarm, the man of faith is in the majority.
-Too many times we preach and we hear of the struggles of a walk with God more than we do about the helps of the Christian walk. There may be many things against us, but there are far more things for us.
-The man who lives in two worlds, that one he is confined to by a human body, and the other one that he soars out of by the work of the Spirit, is the man who has the advantage.
-Ten thousand men with chariots, horses, and swords are the facts. They are stubborn facts to calculate and to measure.
-The facts are:
There is a tumor in your body.
Not enough money to pay the bills.
Not enough talent to win this city.
Not enough commitment to reach this world.
Not enough time to make a difference.
Not enough. . . . . Not enough. . . . . . Not enough. . . . .
-But then the unseeable becomes seeable.
2 Corinthians 5:7 – “For we walk by faith, not by sight:”
-There is no circumstance so dark and no condition so extreme that God cannot touch it.
-God has the capacity to see the unseeable. That is why He called His disciples:
Peter, the bully. . . . . had something unseeable that was useful.
James and John, full of ambition and position. . . . . had something unseeable that was useful.
-The unseeable was:
What caused the disciples to cast their nets one more time.
What caused the widow woman to reach down into the barrel one last time.
lll. CONCLUSION
-I CONCLUDED THIS MESSAGE WITH SOME VERY PERSONAL ACCOUNTS OF THOSE WHOM GOD HAD BROUGHT THROUGH SOME VERY DIFFICULT SITUATIONS. YOU MAY FIND SOME IN YOUR OWN LIFE OR THE CHURCHES YOU HAVE SERVED FOR NOTABLE EXAMPLES ALSO.
Philip Harrelson
barnabas14@yahoo.com
