Hope From the Word

Announcer: God leaves nothing to chance. Everything is planned to the smallest detail. Here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: We see here just some examples of God not being involved in random chance. God being intelligent at what he does and having a purpose and calling us to follow him, whatever that purpose is in our lives.

Even when it appears to be illogical, sometimes doesn't make sense, sometimes seems a little silly. Don't often know what's going to come.

Announcer: Welcome once again to Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann from Calvary Chapel of Marlton. Whether you're reading scriptures like Second Kings or today's newspaper, one thing is for sure: people have a bad habit of turning their backs on God and trying to do things their own way.

And whether you're talking about 3,000 years ago or yesterday, every time they do, the results are disastrous. It was back in the 1960s when a prominent national newspaper boldly proclaimed "God is dead." It wasn't meant to imply that God had actually died, just that he couldn't be found anywhere in society.

Would you agree that not much has changed since then? Today we'll be in Second Kings chapter 3. We'll consider a question asked back then and still asked today: where is God? Here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: I found it's better to pray when you first get up because in the middle of the day, you try to set aside some time to pray and you can't do it because there are so many things going on. Your mind is in a million things. Got to do this, got to do that, the phone calls and whatever.

I think my phone system must be able to read my mind. As soon as I sit down with my Bible, it starts ringing. It's hard to do that, but in the morning when times are quiet, before the phones start to ring, you can maybe get in tune with God a little better. Maybe that's this guy's problem. Maybe he just needs to clear out the flutter in his brain so that God can speak to him.

The hand of the Lord comes upon Elijah here and he said, "This is what the Lord says: 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. He will also hand Moab over to you. You will overthrow every fortified city and every major town. You will cut down every good tree, stop up all the springs, and ruin every good field with stones."

He says, "You are going to have a total victory. This is what the Lord says." But the first thing you have to do is you have to step out in faith. You want some water? You need water? You need to have some kind of container to put it in. You don't have any jugs with you? No problem. You're going to start by digging ditches.

Now, they have no water here. It says in the previous few verses earlier, after a roundabout march of seven days, the army had no more water for themselves or for the animals with them. It says, by the way, where were they? They were in the desert. Okay, so let's think about this now. They're in the desert. They've been marching for seven days and they've used up all their water. Now they are told to dig ditches and God's going to fill them up with water.

Now, do you think it would take a little bit of faith to believe that if you dig a ditch, God's going to fill it up with water in the middle of the desert? I think so. Do you think it would take even more faith if you were the king, for you as the king to tell all the troops that they should dig ditches, that God's going to fill them up with water?

You're going out on a limb here because if God doesn't deliver, you're going to really look foolish as the king telling everybody to dig these ditches that remain empty if God doesn't deliver. Now, I think it's a harder thing. It's one thing to step out in faith and dig a ditch. It's a harder thing to get someone else to dig a ditch for you.

It's a harder thing when you're the king telling the army and it's a real hard thing when you're in the desert telling all these dry, parched out, starving, thirsty guys that they have to dig. He could have had a lynching on his hands or a mutiny or whatever. Go back here, but God is telling him, "I'm going to take care of the water, but you're going to step out in faith. You're going to have to prepare some container to put it in. You're going to have to believe that I'm going to give it to you."

When they went out and collected the manna every day, they had to believe that they were going to get it the next day because they weren't allowed to collect enough for two days. Some of them didn't believe they were going to get it the next day. They thought, "We might not get any tomorrow. We better get extra today." And what happened? The extra stuff got full of maggots. There's always somebody that won't follow directions.

They had to step out in faith and say, "God says I'm going to do something, but first you're going to do a little something here to step out in faith." It wasn't some crazy thing. It wasn't some uncalled for thing. It wasn't some outrageous thing. They weren't going to have to jump off a tall building or try to fly through the air with the greatest of ease or anything like that. They simply had to dig some ditches that God could fill with water.

He says, "Hey, this is an easy thing in the eyes of the Lord. It's easy." Want some water? No problem. He made water come out of a rock. He can make it come out of the ground and fill the ditches or out of a nearby stream. Somebody has suggested that there was a flash flood up in the nearby mountains and the water ran down and filled up the ditches. If they didn't have the ditches, it would have just passed on by.

However God did it is irrelevant. The fact remains that they had water the next day and it's an easy thing for God. He's even going to hand over Moab. He will also hand Moab over to you. It's going to be a complete victory.

How complete? Well, you're going to overthrow every fortified city and every major town. Not just the unfortified cities, not just the minor towns. You're going to overthrow every city, every fortified city. The walls are going to come down. You're going to break through. You're going to go through the gates, climb over them, whatever. You're going to overthrow every fortified city and every major town.

And while you're at it, you're going to cut down every good tree, stop up all the springs, and ruin all the good fields with stones. You know why they did that, right? Put a lot of stones in the field? That's so when the Moabites would be running their lawnmower through the field there, they'd hit the stones and ruin the blades.

No, the stones make the fields harder to plow, harder to farm. You're going to have a total victory over these guys. Remember, the Moabites started it. They weren't minding their own business. They got into it. They started it. They're now going to pay the price.

So where does that leave us? The next morning, about the time for offering the sacrifice, there it was: water flowing from the direction of Edom, and the land was filled with water. They get up in the morning, water everywhere. Water in the ditches, water for their cattle or their animals, water for the people. Plenty of water to drink. Enough water for everybody. More than what they needed. Plenty of it.

Now, God used a miracle here to provide for their needs. And one of the things he did with this water was give them something to drink. But he also used the water to fool the Moabites. Read the next verse. Now all the Moabites had heard that the kings had come to fight against them. So every man, young and old, who could bear arms was called up and stationed on the border. The Moabites put out the call. The civil defense sirens went off and all the Moabites went down there to the border carrying all their weapons.

When they got up early in the morning, the sun was shining on the water. To the Moabites across the way, the water looked red, like blood. Must have just been the angle or whatever. It was like a rainbow or something, but it just looked like blood. "That's blood!" they said. "Those kings must have fought and slaughtered each other. Now to the plunder, Moab!"

Now look, they knew that the king of Edom was paying tribute to Israel. So, he wasn't particularly a friend of theirs. And they knew the northern and southern kingdoms really didn't get along. So they hear these three guys are coming at them. They're thinking these three guys don't even like each other to begin with, and they couldn't contain their hatred of each other. They fought with each other last night. They killed each other. They helped us out. Isn't this great? Man, we are in fat city here. Man, this was terrific.

God faked them out. They thought they were looking at blood. They were just looking at water. They didn't know it. They ran on down there and boy, were they in for a surprise. Hello, surprise.

But when the Moabites came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and fought them until they fled. And the Israelites invaded the land and slaughtered the Moabites. They destroyed the towns and each man threw a stone on every good field until it was covered.

They stopped up all the springs and cut down every good tree. Only Kir Hareseth was left with its stones in place, but men armed with slings surrounded it and attacked it as well. So it all came true. The Israelites rose up and fought them. The Moabites fled. The Israelites invaded their land, wiped out the Moabites.

They destroyed the towns, covered the fields with stones, stopped up the springs, cut down the trees. Hey, you guys brought this on yourselves. You came at us. And just this one town was left, and they surrounded that with slings and attacked it also.

Now the king of Moab was desperate. He was losing. His troops were getting wiped out, slaughtered. When the king of Moab saw that the battle had gone against him, he took with him 700 swordsmen to break through to the king of Edom, but they failed.

I'm not sure why he was trying to get through to the king of Edom, whether he was trying to kill him or whether he was trying to win him over. I mean, I think you can have your cake and eat it too here. It could have been either way. He might have been trying to kill him, but also maybe knowing that Edom was paying tribute to Israel and knowing that he was paying tribute to Israel, I think maybe the king of Moab thought, "If I could reach the king of Edom, maybe I could convince him to become on my side."

"If I could convince him to defect and become on my side because I don't want to pay tribute to Israel, surely he doesn't want to pay tribute to Israel. So if we could get together here, we could both fight Israel. We have a better chance of winning." So he took with him 700 swordsmen to try to break through, but they did not succeed.

Then he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great. They withdrew and returned to their own land. This guy was so desperate that he offered up his own son who would have been the prince, I guess, next in line to the throne. He took his own son up on the city wall and killed him and offered him as a sacrifice to his fake god in the hopes that his god would respect that or honor that sacrifice and give him the victory here.

It didn't work, but Israel had a great victory that day nonetheless. At some point, they withdrew and returned to their own land. The fury against them was great. They did what they needed to do. They pushed them back. They slaughtered a lot of them. They wiped out all these towns and the cities. They apparently didn't wipe out everybody. At some point, Israel pulled back and returned to their own land, and Moab was finished off, at least for a while.

Imagine what would have happened if they had not gone to God at all. Imagine what would have happened if the king of Israel had not called Jehoshaphat to go with him. I don't know why they didn't call on God sooner, but it was Jehoshaphat who said, "Is there a prophet of the Lord here? Let's ask him."

Imagine if the king of Israel had just gone off and done this himself. Would he have called upon the Lord anyway? Would there have been a prophet to ask? Would he have been able to find one? Would anyone have cared? Would he have won the battle in that case? Maybe it was God's will that they would go into together just so that it could happen this way.

The wife of a man from the company of the prophets, continuing here in chapter 4, the wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, "Your servant, my husband, is dead. And you know that he revered the Lord. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves."

Elisha replied to her, "How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?" "Your servant has nothing there at all," she said, "except a little oil." This prophet here, one of the prophets died and left behind a wife and two sons. And apparently, he still owed on his mortgage.

This wife called out to Elisha and said, "Look, my husband's in debt, and you know he revered the Lord. You know he was a good guy. You know he loved the Lord. He was a sincere prophet. But he had some debt. He died. He left me with the debt, and now the creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves. I'm going to lose my sons."

This would have been indentured servants, by the way. The law allowed for indentured servitude only for a period of years, at which point everybody had to be set free. They could have served as servants for some period of time until the Year of Jubilee.

But she's desperate because here she is, a widow, no husband, the bills are piling up. Every day she gets the mail, there's more bills there. She doesn't know what to do. Here's her boys and her creditor is calling that he's going to take the boys away.

Elisha says, "Well, how can I help you? Tell me what you have in your house." And she says, "I don't have anything except a little oil." Hey, today it's 110 bucks a barrel, so... Elisha said, "Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars, different kinds of oil. Don't ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars and as each is filled, put it to one side."

She left him and afterward shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another one." But he replied, "There is not a jar left." Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God and he said, "Go sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left."

So he said to her, "Look, how can I help you? What do you have there?" And she said, "I just have this little bit of oil." And I guess it was at that point that God spoke to him and said what kind of a miracle God wanted to do. He said, "Okay, well here's what you're going to do. You're going to go get all the empty jars you can get. Not just a few. Get a lot of empty jars. Get every single empty jar you can get your hands on. Go to every neighbor, every relative, knock on every door. Get every jar you can get."

"I want you to fill your house up with empty jars here. And then go inside, close the door, just you and your sons, and start pouring that oil into the empty jars." Now, she only had a little bit of oil, but it kept flowing. And as they set the full jar aside, they'd pour another one and pour another one, pour another one. It kept flowing.

She did exactly what he told her to do. She got every empty jar in that town. Every mayonnaise jar, every empty soda bottle, everything she could get her hands on, she got it all. She went in her house, shut the door behind her, and she and her sons were the only ones that witnessed this miracle happening before their very own eyes.

Think back to Elijah when he was living with the poor widow after he had spent that time by the brook and he went down to the poor widow. She only had a little bit of flour and it lasted that whole time of the famine. Here's Elisha doing a similar kind of miracle.

She's filling them all and I'm not certain if she knows while she's doing it, "What's he going to have me do? Am I building a rocket engine here with this oil? Are we going to invent the first motorcar here?" When she asked her son, "Okay, bring the next jar," he says, "That's it, Mom. We used everyone. We filled every jar with oil."

Then she went down and told Elisha, and that's when he said, "Okay, now here's what you're going to do. You're going to sell all that oil. You're going to pay your debts. And what you have left over, that's going to be for your living expenses. You'll be debt-free here." And no doubt that's what she did.

This whole thing, this miracle, this required faith also, just like digging the ditches. They had to dig the ditches because God was going to act, and so there was some faith required. God's going to do something, you dig the ditch and wait on God. And by the way, the bigger the ditch, the more water you're going to get.

So here, she had to go around, get every empty jar. "Excuse me, can I borrow any empty jars you have?" "Well, what are you doing?" "Well, I can't really tell you." "Well, how many do you need?" "Well, I need a lot. It's for my kid's science fair project. I need more. Can you bring me more? I'll give it back to you later on." She, I guess, gave them back the jars, or who knows, maybe she went back with some of the proceeds and paid them for the jars.

But she required faith also. She had to go collect all these jars wondering, "What are people thinking? Is this really going to work? What is he going to have me do with this stuff? My boys are going to be taken as slaves, and he's got me collecting jars. Is this guy crazy? And what, how is that related to my problem?"

But God wanted to work through her in this very simple way, and he wanted her to do this very simple thing, this act of faith. He's going to work, you get ready. What an odd thing it was. She never would have guessed it in a million years. If you had interviewed her before this happened and said, "Do you think God's going to do a miracle?" she probably would have said, "I doubt it."

But if you told her, "Hey, I think God's going to do a miracle. What do you think he's going to do?" she never would have guessed in a million years. "Well, he's going to have me collect all the jars in Marlton. And then he's going to have me fill them up with oil from this little jar that I have here which is almost empty."

She never would have guessed, but she was obedient to follow God when it didn't make sense, when it was irrational, illogical, when it appeared foolish. She followed God. She was obedient, just like they were digging trenches. If the Moabites were looking down on Israel digging trenches, they would have been saying, "What are they doing down there digging trenches? There's no water. It's in the desert. What fools are they?"

And yet God worked. Someone looks at what you're doing because you're walking with the Lord and Lord's convicted you of something and you're living your life a certain way or you're doing something in a certain way because that's the way God led you to do it and then somebody's making fun of you, giving you a hard time, or saying, "What a fool. How silly that is. Why would you do that? That's crazy."

"Believe in design, intelligent design? Believe there's design in the human cell? That's crazy." Why, there's only six billion chemicals lined up in perfect order in your DNA. Only six billion. Everybody knows they probably just got that way just by random chance. There's only six billion of them. That's not very many.

We see here just some examples of God not being involved in random chance. God being intelligent at what he does and having a purpose and calling us to follow him, whatever that purpose is in our lives. Even when it appears to be illogical, sometimes doesn't make sense, sometimes seems a little silly.

Don't often know what's going to come. The guys that were digging the trenches, they knew they were going to get water the next day. This woman getting the jar, she did not know why she was getting the jars. Maybe she guessed, "Well, if I'm getting jars, he's probably going to give me something for the jars. Ooh, I hope it's Kool-Aid."

She didn't know what was going to happen exactly, but she knew that this is what the prophet told her. So she was going to do it. She did it and she was blessed because of it.

Announcer: You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in Pastor Bill Luebkemann's study of Second Kings. If you'd like to hear this message again, you have several options: visit our website at ccmarlton.org, download the Hope FM app to your smartphone or tablet, or look for us wherever you find your podcasts.

If you've been thinking about visiting Calvary Chapel of Marlton, where Bill serves as pastor, we'd love to have you. Our service times are on Sunday mornings at 10:00. We also meet midweek on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. You can also livestream from home whenever you visit our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton.

For more information, go to ccmarlton.org. We hope to see you soon. Before the day is done, we'd like to connect with you. Share a praise report, prayer request, or what you're learning from this series. You can easily email us from our website, ccmarlton.org, or just call us at 856-983-1662.

There's more to come from Bill's study of Second Kings, and we'll have that for you next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel of Marlton.