Victory Over The Enemy

VICTORY OVER THE ENEMY

II Kings 6:1-12

INTRO.- ILL.- Dunblane, Scotland. Dunblane is a small tranquil town at the foot of the Scottish highlands, but it was anything but tranquil on Wednesday, March 13, 1996.

A former Boy Scout leader named Thomas Hamilton armed with four handguns killed or wounded all but one of the 29 kindergarten children playing in the school gym and killed their teacher.

I think he actually killed 16 children, one teacher and then killed himself. Also, twelve other children and two other teachers were wounded.

At 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, March 13, 1996, teacher Gwenne Mayor, 45, was supervising 29 lively youngsters as they ran around the gym and took turns scrambling up the climbing bars. That’s the moment Thomas Hamilton appeared in the doorway and opened fire on them.

Elsewhere in the school, children heard a noise like firecrackers and jumped up from their desks and ran to the windows to see what was going on. Teachers ordered them under their desks. And the principal dialed the police.

School board member, Gerry McDermott said, "Just now, to most people, this is a nightmare. But they will not wake from it."

Five-year old Stewart Weir will never forget the man with the guns. He ran and escaped with only a bullet-grazed leg. His father Robert said, "Stewart said he thought the gunman was shooting at him. He got hit in the leg, so he took a run and just hid with another wee girl. It is lucky the man turned the gun on himself before he got the rest of the kids."

Paramedic, John McEwan told the newspaper reporters, "I can only describe what I saw...as a medieval vision of hell."

"There were little bodies in piles, dotted around the room, and items of children’s clothing like shoes and pumps around the floor."

It was said that Thomas Hamilton, the gunman, was nurturing a grudge. The Boy Scouts expelled him in 1974 for what the association called "unstable and possibly improper behavior following a scout camp."

One 14 year-old boy said that he felt uncomfortable in Hamilton’s presence. He said, "He used to walk me down from the boy’s club and try to invite himself into my house."

Local counselors knew Hamilton as a troublemaker with a grudge. A TROUBLEMAKER WITH A GRUDGE. What a horrible combination!

One newspaper called that incident, "THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS." And it was.

Why did this happen? In a word, SATAN!

John 8:44 Jesus said to the Jewish leaders, "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning..." The devil is a murderer!

I John 3:12 "Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother..."

The evil one called Satan caused Cain to murder his brother. And Satan is behind every murder that has ever been committed! Actually, the devil is behind ALL the evil that men do!

In our text of II Kings 6 the devil is at work in the King of Aram (or Syria). He is fighting against God’s people and God’s man of the hour, the prophet Elisha.

Elisha is the successor to the flamboyant prophet Elijah. Elisha may not have been as flashy as Elijah was but he got the job done.

By experiencing victory over the King of Aram, he essentially experienced victory over Satan. The big question is: How did Elisha experience victory?

PROP.- Let’s consider what Elisha did, what he knew, and what he saw in order to overcome the enemy.

1- He did the impossible

2- He knew the unknowable

3- He saw the invisible

4- He accomplished the unthinkable

I. HE DID THE IMPOSSIBLE

In verses 1-6, the company of prophets wanted to build a place to live. We could say that they were a bunch of seminary students and Elisha was their professor.

The Living Bible reads this way: "One the seminary students came to Elisha, ‘As you can see, our dormitory is too small. Tell us, as our president, whether we can build a new one down beside the Jordan River, where there are plenty of logs."

As one of the prophets was cutting down trees, the iron axhead fell into the water. He cried out, "It was borrowed!" As in, "Oh no! That’s not mine. It was borrowed!"

ILL.- A rabbi asked a wealthy Jew for a loan of a few dollars. The Jew looked up innocently and asked, "Rabbi, didn’t you say yesterday in your sermon that to loan money on interest is the same as killing a person?"

"What?" the rabbi asked in surprise. "I do not intend to borrow on interest. I merely want a loan."

"Oh, is that it?" the rich Jew retorted. "Then the case is even worse, for in that event I would be killing myself."