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Colin Smith: Thank you, Lord. My foolish mistake here might have led to complete and utter disaster, but you stepped in and by your power you saved us from the worst effects of my folly.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I'm Steve Hiller, glad you're listening today. And Colin, I think this message might be one that a lot of us can relate to. I mean, who amongst us has not made some sort of foolish mistake in our lives and we need to see God step in and intervene in some way?

Colin Smith: I think it's wonderful, Steve, that the Bible includes an extraordinary story about an amazing foolish mistake that we're going to look at today. I mean, it was nearly a disaster. It was a very sincere and no doubt godly young man who, well, I can't give away the story, but boy, he made a mistake that might have had devastating repercussions.

And I think we all know what this is like. I mean, I certainly know this in my own life. What was I thinking when I said that? Why did I do that? It's part of our human condition that sometimes we say and do things that we just don't realize the consequences of.

And the point of the story here is that we're going to see God's marvelous grace and mercy, that when we are at our worst and act in ways that are foolish and do things that might have brought devastating consequences, God in His grace and in His mercy is able to save the day. And so I hope that this fascinating story that probably will be new to a lot of people today, I hope it'll be a great encouragement to say, I can trust the grace and mercy of God even when I have made a very foolish mistake.

Steve Hiller: All right, well let's look at the story together. We're in 2 Kings chapter 4 as we begin a message called "God Will Feed Us." Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Our series is entitled "In God We Trust." We're looking at six scenes from the life of Elisha and they all have one central message: that God is faithful and that we can trust Him in every circumstance of life. Each of these stories that we're looking at centers on a miracle, and a miracle is an extraordinary intervention of God that points to what He does or will do for all of His people.

So the miracle of the jar of oil that just kept on flowing points to God's wonderful provision for His people as we walk with Him in faith and in obedience. Then last week we looked at the marvelous miracle of the resurrection of the promised son that very clearly points us to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and also to the glorious hope of triumph over death that is ours in Him.

The miracle that we looked at last week, then, the resurrection of the promised son, was surely the greatest of all of these miracles. There is no greater miracle than the resurrection of the dead. And the miracles that we're looking at today are surely the strangest of all the miracles that we will look at. But they point to the wonderful, encouraging, and very practical truth that God's work continues and it advances despite our foolish mistakes and our obvious inadequacies. That's what we're going to see from the scripture together today.

If you have your Bible open, you'll see that the story begins in 2 Kings chapter 4 and verse 38, where we read that Elisha came again to Gilgal when there was a famine in the land. And as the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, he said to his servant, "Set on the large pot and boil stew for the sons of the prophets."

Now, here we're introduced to a group of men who were known as the sons of the prophets. And these men lived together in community and they devoted themselves to a ministry of the word of God. That was their special calling. They gave themselves, in other words, to a life of study, a life of prayer, and also to a ministry of preaching. They would have brought the word that God spoke to Moses and to the other prophets to the people.

So if you think about a college or think about a seminary where students are preparing themselves for a life in ministry, well, you'll get the general picture and idea. And we know from verse 43 that there were about a hundred men in this community—a hundred preachers of the word of God. Think of the influence of that throughout the wider community and the nation, all concentrated here together, a hundred preachers of the word of God living in community in this place called Gilgal.

And I expect that because there were a hundred men there, that Elisha would have gone there quite often. He would have gone there to teach and to train and to mentor, to open the word of God with these students, to call on them and exhort them to walk closely with God all the days of their lives.

And here we're told about a particular time when Elisha visited the college during a time of famine, which of course doesn't mean that there was no food; it just means that there was little food, that the food was scarce. So I expect that the college students were on a pretty meager diet. And Elisha, when he visited, wanted them to enjoy a really good meal.

So he said to his servant Gehazi, "Set on the large pot and boil stew for the sons of the prophets." This was going to be a really good meal. Now, we're not told where this food came from, but remember last week we looked at a story about a wealthy woman who fed Elisha. And if she or someone else of means like her knew that Elisha was coming to visit and minister to a hundred sons of the prophets, well, it wouldn't be surprising if such a person had said, "Well now, take some meat here with you. I want you to give your students a really good meal."

So Gehazi gets out the large pot and he prepares a feast. That's what this was, for a hundred men who had devoted themselves to a ministry of the word of God. And then we're told that one of them, that is one of the students, went out into the field to gather herbs. Now, you have to admire this student's initiative. He sees meat, a lot of it, enough for a hundred men, going into the pot.

And he thinks, "Well, if we're going to have a feast tonight with all this meat, we'd better add some flavor." And so he decides to go out into the field and to gather some herbs. And we're told that he found a wild vine and he filled his lap with these wild gourds, and that he came and cut them up into the pot of stew, not knowing what they were.

So this student, eager though he was, didn't realize that the plants he had just cut up and put into the stew were poison. Well, when the sons of the prophets tasted the stew, they immediately knew that something was very wrong indeed. And they shouted out, verse 40, to Elisha, "Oh man of God, there is death in the pot!"

And it's a good thing that they shouted out and didn't just eat it, because if they'd carried on with this meal, they would have been in very serious trouble indeed. But now think about this: what is to be done with this poisonous pot? The pot of stew in a time of famine—stew enough to feed a hundred men? I mean, if that was to go to waste, it would be an absolute tragedy.

So Elisha told the sons of the prophets to put flour into the pot, and then we read verse 41, "And there was no harm in the pot." God made the poisonous stew safe. Now this strange and rather wonderful story points us to a wonderfully comforting and important truth, and it's this: that God's work continues despite our foolish mistakes.

I don't know about you, but I feel rather sorry for the college student who put the poison in the pot. This was not some foul sin; he was certainly not trying to harm his colleagues. He just made a really foolish mistake. But what he did might easily have wiped out the entire student body.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called "God Will Feed Us." Now we're going to pause here, but we'll continue this message in just a moment. Our message is part of a larger series called "In God We Trust," where we're taking a look at different accounts from the life of Elisha.

And if you ever miss a broadcast in our series, come and listen online at openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Again, that's at openthebible.org. Let's get back to the message. Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: God's work continues despite our foolish mistakes. Put yourself in his shoes. When he realized that what he'd done was to put poison in the pot, he must have held his head in his hands. "What have I done? How could I have been such a fool?" And when by a miracle of God's grace, because that's what it was, the poison pot of stew was made safe, well, that student must have breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"Thank you, Lord. My foolish mistake here might have led to complete and utter disaster, but you stepped in and by your power you saved us from the worst effects of my folly." Now, that's really the theme that's before us in this remarkable story. I want you to think about this: that the Bible is full of very foolish mistakes. I mean, just think about the Gospels during the ministry of Jesus.

You've got James and John asking if they should call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village. I mean, that's a very foolish mistake, isn't it? You've got Peter drawing his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane. That was a very foolish mistake. You've got the mother of James and John saying to Jesus, "Can my two boys sit on your right and on your left when you come into your kingdom?"

That was a very foolish mistake. You've got the disciples rebuking little children when they were coming to Jesus. You've got the leper who was healed and Jesus said to him, "Don't tell anyone," but he went and told everyone anyway, and Jesus had to move to another location because of what he had done. So many foolish mistakes.

And the amazing thing, when you think about it, is that God's work actually continued despite the foolish mistakes of His people. And of course, this speaks very directly to us today because our lives have often been filled with many foolish mistakes as well. I mean, which of us here does not have reason to regret some foolish thing that we have said?

"Oh, if only I had bitten my lip!" But I didn't do that. I opened my big mouth and once these words were spoken, I just couldn't take them back. Or perhaps your regret is over something you didn't say. "If I'd spoken up sooner, we wouldn't be in this position now." But I didn't, and here we are.

Or maybe your foolish mistake relates to money. You fell for some scam, and now you realize what happened. You feel very, very foolish that you did. Or you bought something, spent a chunk of money on it, and now you realize you really don't need it and actually you very rarely use it, and because now you need some more money, you just wish that you could have that money back, but you can't get it back.

How often parents regret decisions that we made in bringing up our children. We didn't realize it at the time, but we were too harsh, too demanding. We should have cut them more slack. We should have given them more space. Or for others, of course, it's the other way around. We didn't realize it at the time, but actually we gave our children way more freedom than they were actually able to handle.

We should have confronted earlier, but we didn't do it, and now there are patterns of behavior that are really, really hard to change. And then, of course, there are all the foolish mistakes that we make in the course of ministry, serving our Lord Jesus Christ. One commentator, Ronald Wallace, says this: "For many of us, the enthusiasm of our early days of Christian service was often marred by misdirected zeal and by a way of approaching other people that was more likely to do harm than good. We did not know any better at the time."

A friend of mine has said with feeling on more than one occasion something that I'm sure many of us will resonate with: "I was such a fool when I was young." Well, if the student who had made that very foolish and potentially disastrous mistake of putting poison plants into the stew, if he was here today, I think he would say something like this by way of testimony to us.

I think he'd say, "I shudder to think what might have happened that day. The entire student body might easily have been wiped out, but God's work continued despite my foolish mistake." Isn't that a wonderful truth? Now, you see, you ask the question: how can God's work continue when His people make so many foolish mistakes?

I mean, you think in our own time of all the poison that is out there in the world that is around us, and of all the issues that potentially could cause division even among us. You put all of that together and you say, "It's absolutely amazing that any church ever survives." And actually, when you think about it, there's only one explanation, and that is that God graciously protects us from the worst effects of our own folly.

And how does God do this? Well, in the story, of course, God does this by a direct intervention. There is a clear miracle of God's grace. Elisha says to his servant, "Put flour in the pot." Well, very obviously, flour does not have the power to neutralize poison. What happened here was rather like other occasions in the Old Testament.

You may remember the occasion where Moses threw a log into the bitter waters of Marah, and when he threw the log in, the bitter waters became sweet. And there's another story actually earlier in the life of Elisha in 2 Kings and chapter 2, where you have something similar. Elisha put salt into the bad waters of Jericho, and there was a similar healing effect.

So the log, the salt, and in this story, the flour were very clearly in each of these visible signs of God's invisible work. It was God's hidden hand that made the poisoned stew safe. This is a very wonderful truth: that God's marvelous grace protects us from the worst effects of our own folly.

And you see it very beautifully illustrated in the Garden of Gethsemane. The soldiers come to arrest Jesus. They're armed and there's a mob with them with swords and with clubs. And you remember that Peter drew his sword and brought it down over the head of the high priest's servant. The man's name was Malchus, and Peter cut off his ear.

And Jesus said to Peter, "Put away that sword. No more of this." And then He touched the ear of Malchus, the high priest's servant, and healed him. God protects by His direct intervention. His hidden hand saves us from untold disasters.

But there's something else here that I want us to see, and it's very practical. Not only does God deliver us from the worst effects of our foolish mistakes by direct intervention, but God also protects us through wisdom that is given to others. Now, think about this with me for a moment.

If the young student had taken with him into the field someone who actually knew the difference between a plant you could eat and a plant that was poisonous, he would not have picked the plants that poisoned the stew. The problem was that in his enthusiasm and his self-confidence, he picked these plants on his own and he didn't know what he was doing.

Now, think about this. Here's a question. I won't ask for a show of hands, but if you were out in the forest, would you be confident that you know the difference between the berries that are safe to eat and the ones that might be poisonous? Because if you can tell the difference, well, go ahead, you can pick the berries safely. But if you can't tell the difference, you'd be very wise to take someone else with you. God protects us from many foolish mistakes through the wisdom that He gives to us through others.

Steve Hiller: An important truth we've been looking at today here on Open the Bible, and next time we're going to see how God's work advances despite our obvious inadequacies. So I hope you'll join us. Our message is called "God Will Feed Us," and it's part of a larger series called "In God We Trust."

And if you ever miss a message in the series, come and listen online. Our website is openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. Again, that's at openthebible.org. We're able to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching each day because of your financial generosity.

And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of Lincoln's Daily Devotional. And Colin, what is one thing that you'd like people to take away from this book?

Colin Smith: Well, you know that opening the Bible is really very, very simple. I think some people have the idea, oh I don't have time for studying the Bible and it's all very difficult and all very complicated. Actually, it's beautifully simple. And Lincoln's devotional is really a good place to begin.

What this book does is it gives us a verse for every day of the year—just a verse, sometimes it's two verses from the Bible, but it's very, very short. The idea is that you try and take in a simple and wonderful truth or promise from the word of God and then just carry it in your heart and in your mind to be able to draw strength from it, to draw comfort and hope from it.

And each month in this devotional is organized around a theme of part of the experience of a believer's life. So one month you'll be looking at the temptations that a Christian faces, another month you'll be reading verses from the Bible about the sorrows that a Christian will experience, another month you'll be reading about the joys, and of course, you'll end up reading about the glorious hope and the great future that lies ahead of every believer.

Very simple, a verse from the old King James version of the Bible, and then a short poem or a verse of a hymn that just reflects on it added. And that's there for you every day for a year. It's a great place to get started, or if you've got bogged down, it's a great way to be refreshed.

Steve Hiller: Well, we want to send you a copy of Lincoln's Daily Devotional as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month. You can give online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That might be easier to remember as 1-877-673-6365. And again, the website is openthebible.org.

For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time. This program is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

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