“Combat Training” #1 – 2 Kings 6:15-17

Little Becky was a middle schooler who dreaded going to school, not because she hated school but because of the older boys who always picked on her on her way home. There wasn’t any other way for her to go to get home and she knew that everyday those older boys were going to call her names and pull her hair and make fun of her. They would knock her books out of her hand and basically just be jerks and bullies like boys can do.

It happened every day but one day she was so worried about what was going to happen that she fervently prayed that God would help her as she went home. So that day, as she rounded the corner and saw the boys, sure enough they started in on her, calling her names and laughing at her. Becky was so angry and humiliated that she looked around to find something to throw at them but could only find one little rock.

She picked up that rock and yelled at the boys to back off and leave her alone or she would chunk that rock at them. It was just one little rock and there were several of them but to her amazement the boys’ eyes got big and they started backing up. One even ran off. The others had their hands up and were apologizing and asking for forgiveness and looked scared to death. Becky was amazed but she got a little more confident and hollered at them to never mess with her again and finally all the boys turned around and ran away!

Well, you can imagine Becky wasn’t scared little Becky anymore. She was big, bad Becky with an attitude as she watched those boys run…until she turned around and saw her big brother who had just graduated from Marine boot camp standing behind her in his uniform with his arms crossed. When she saw him, she knew she was protected, not by a little rock, but by her brother who loved her.

I know we all feel like Becky sometimes. It seems like everyday we are being attacked either by temptation or some serious problem happening in our lives. That’s how Satan attacks. He is prowling around like a roaring lion looking to see who he may devour (1 Peter 5:8) and if God won’t allow him to kill you, then Satan will tempt you or cause some kind of problem for you. Satan hates you and has a plan for your life and he is bigger, stronger, faster and meaner than you and has been doing this for thousands of years. He is very clever and very powerful and has underling demons doing his work all over the planet.

When it comes to us versus Satan, we are like middle school girls standing in front of a roaring lion. We don’t stand a chance. But behind us, and in front of us, and all around us we have the great I AM, the Creator of the universe, the Redeemer, Sustainer and Deliverer, King of all kings and Lord of all lords protecting us and providing for us because He loves us. The One who is and was and always will be, the sovereign God is in control and loves us so what in the world are we worried about?

Now, for some of you, I could stop right there and with that reminder you would be encouraged to continue fighting the good fight, not giving up and continuing in prayerful obedience, you would take your stand against the devil’s schemes (Eph. 6:11). But I want to show where I get this idea scripturally. We learned in Boot Camp that our first response to every idea or problem should be, “What does scripture say about it?”

So, today, as we start our next phase of preparing for spiritual battle called Combat Training, I would love it if you turned to the Old Testament book of 2 Kings. It goes 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles. If you get to 1 and 2 Ezra, you have gone too far…and you need a new Bible.

In the military, you go through Combat Training to prepare you for…you guessed it, combat. In our training, we will see what practical steps you should take when Satan attacks. Most of our focus will be centered on the armor of God as laid out by Paul in Ephesians 6. We went through that last year but there is no better example of how to combat the schemes of Satan than in that passage and now, after Boot Camp, I believe we will be better able to use that armor than ever before.

But today, I want us to see that we truly are in a spiritual battle. I know it feels like it is a physical battle or a financial battle or a relational battle that you are going through but ultimately everything we go through is allowed by God to happen to us as a test. God never tempts us. James 1:13 tells us that but He does oftentimes test us and sometimes, despite what the armchair prophets on Facebook say, He gives us more than we can handle.

When that happens, we can either turn to God and ask for His unlimited help, strength and wisdom or we can turn from God and get whatever help we can from this fallen world. Good luck with that. May karma smile on you. May the force be with you. May glittery unicorns and little green leprechauns give you favor and all that other made up stuff. All of that is man-made malarkey. Spiritual warfare is God’s idea and so we go to God’s Word to see how to do it most effectively and the first thing we have to do is realize who our enemy is and where they come from.

In the book of 2 Kings, chapter 6, we see a great and powerful passage of scripture that is also part of some of the most comical scripture, in my opinion, in the Bible. The king of Aram was at war with the king of Israel and kept trying to catch that army in an ambush but every time the Israelis went around it. Finally, the king of Aram tells his advisers that one of them must be a spy because Israel obviously knew what they were trying to do. One of his advisers told him that there was no spy but that the prophet Elisha was telling his king everything the king of Aram said, even what he said in his bedroom.

So, the king of Aram decided to capture Elisha. Instead of saying, “Hey, we better not mess with this guy” or “This guy is fighting supernaturally like we can’t do” or “Maybe we take this prophet guy a nice present” he decides instead to find him and capture him. Well, we will see that the unicorns and leprechauns were not smiling on him that day. They find Elisha in the little community of Dothan and surround his house in the middle of the night. This huge force was sent to capture one man.

Turn to 2 Kings 6 and let’s read verses 15-17.

When the servant of the man of God (Elisha) got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. "Oh no, my LORD! What shall we do?" the servant asked. 16"Don't be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." 17And Elisha prayed, "Open his eyes, LORD, so that he may see." Then the LORD opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

"Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." Did you know that one of God’s Hebrew names is Jehovah-Sabaoth? It means Lord of Hosts. We sing that song sometimes called “Whom Shall I Fear” and in those lyrics it says, “I know who goes before me
I know who stands behind

The God of angel armies
Is always by my side”. That is Jehovah Sabaoth who rules the hosts, the millions and billions of warrior angels.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed and powerless when Satan attacks you? Then run into the Strong Tower of Jehovah Sabaoth, crying out to the LORD of hosts. "May Jehovah answer you in the day of trouble! May the NAME of the God of Jacob set you securely on high. Some boast in chariots, and some in horses, but we will boast in the NAME of Jehovah Sabaoth, our God. (Psalm 20:1) Our Redeemer, the LORD of HOSTS is His NAME, the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 47:4) (Precept Austin)

One Sunday morning a Sunday school class teacher said to his young pupils, "OK children. We've been learning this morning just how powerful the Kings and Queens in Bible times were. But there is even a higher power than Kings and Queens. Who can tell me what that higher power is?" An 8-year-old instantly raised his hand and shouted out, "It’s Aces, teacher! Aces are higher than Kings and Queens!" (John Gaston)

You know, you can’t argue with that but I want the power of Jehovah Sabaoth in my life and I want my eyes to be opened through faith to see that those who are with us are more than those who are with them. It is because of this very scenario that we are preparing for battle by going to Boot Camp and Combat Training. I see people all the time who feel overwhelmed with problems, addictions, temptations and the difficulties of this life and they just give up and fall over in the fetal position and Satan beats them to a bloody pulp.

I’m not saying that the difficulties for these people are not real or are not serious. Not at all. You, too, may be going through something very real and very difficult; something that is far more than you can handle on your own. In fact, that’s a common position to be in. Elisha’s servant wasn’t imagining the danger to their lives when he stepped outside that morning. Those men were there to capture and probably kill Elisha and anybody that was with him.

Now, I told you that this was a comical passage so let me tell you how it ends really quick.  Elisha prays for the servant’s eyes to be opened and they were. He then prays that the army’s eyes would be blinded and they were. Elisha then just walks up to them and tells them that they are in the wrong place but if they would just follow him that he would take them to the right place so they could capture this Elisha character. He then leads them right into Israel’s capital city at the time where their eyes are open to the fact that they are now prisoners of Israel.

The army that came to capture Elisha was captured by Elisha. That just shows me that Elisha and God had a sense of humor. There is also a fascinating story in Numbers 22 where Balaam’s donkey has his spiritual eyes open and sees the warrior angel in their path and warns Balaam by speaking to him.  In Daniel 10, an angel appears to Daniel and tells him that he was sent to Daniel three weeks before but he had been engaged in battle by a demon and had to get assistance from one of the chief angels.

We have always been in a real, spiritual battle. If we had our spiritual eyes opened, I’m sure we would be able to see angels and demons engaged in battle all around us just like they did then. The good news is that those that are with us are more than those that are with them. Do you believe that? Sitting here in church on Sunday morning, of course you believe that.

Then why do bad things happen to us? Why can’t we always overcome the evil forces since we have more on our side? Do some of us get assigned some sissy angels while others get the tough guys? Maybe some angels are lazy or just incompetent. I don’t think that’s the case and there are several reasons why we have bad things happen to us but let me give you one explanation from scripture that started out right here where Elisha was in 2 Kings 6.

The city of Dothan is mentioned twice in the Bible. Evidently there wasn’t much there except a couple of wells. In fact, that’s what the name Dothan means, two wells. It was in Genesis 37 that Dothan is otherwise mentioned when it says that Joseph found his brothers there. You remember the story. Joseph shows up wearing that fancy schmancy coat of many colors and his brothers throw him in one of those wells.

Where were all the warrior angels? Could they not have kept Joseph from being thrown in the well? What about when he was sold to the Ishmaelites? Come on angels! Where are you? Then he was sold to Potiphar. No angelic help at all. He was thrown into prison, forgotten for years, accused of crimes he didn’t commit all the while Joseph was a godly man with no real sin ever noted in scripture. Talk about spiritual warfare and yet one might think God had abandoned him. It was a hard life for Joseph for many, many years even though he was a good man and feared God. Did God leave him or forget about him?

Just the opposite. All through Joseph’s story toward the end of Genesis it says that God was with him. When Joseph was in the pit, God was with him. When he was in the jail, God was with him; in the palace, God was with him and then, in one of my favorite verses in all the Bible, Joseph confronts his brothers and instead of being angry or getting justifiable revenge, Joseph tells them in chapter 50, verse 20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

God intended it for good. That means that God allowed it to happen, knowing full well that Joseph would live all those years in difficulty. Now, I don’t know whether the difficulty you are going through will save many lives or not but God is allowing it for your good and for His glory. We talked about giving God glory all through Boot Camp and how that should be our focus in the good times and in the bad.

Yes, sometimes we go through difficult times because there are consequences to our disobedience. That’s not what we are talking about here. As true believers, sin should be the exception in our lives and as true believers, when difficulty does come our way, we know that the powers of God far outweigh the powers of the evil one and so we should be able to accept whatever difficulty comes in our lives as coming from an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God. If that’s the case, what do we have to worry about?

If you struggle with this, you ought to take down a few verses that will help you.  1 John 4:4 says, “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” That goes right along with what Elisha told his servant. There are more with us than against us. Hebrews 1:14 says, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”

Also, Psalm 34:7 says, “The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.” Oh, isn’t that comforting? That reminds me of a story I heard about John Paton who was a missionary in the New Hebrides Islands. One night hostile natives surrounded the mission station, intent on burning out the Patons and killing them. Paton and his wife prayed during that terror-filled night that God would deliver them. When daylight came they were amazed to see their attackers leave.

A year later, the chief of the tribe was converted to Christ. Remembering what had happened, Paton asked the chief what had kept him from burning down the house and killing them. The chief replied in surprise, "Who were all those men with you there?" Paton knew no men were present--but the chief said he was afraid to attack because he had seen hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords circling the mission station. (sermoncentral.com)

The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him! Romans 8:31 says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” Is God for you today? Do you have a personal relationship with Him through His Son Jesus? I’m not asking if you have religion or church membership or if you have been baptized. None of that will save you. None of that gets you to Heaven and none of that will protect you when Satan and his minions attack. I’m asking if you have asked Jesus to be Lord of your life and accepted His free gift of forgiveness, freedom and salvation. Do that right now as the music plays.