If you will, turn back in your
Bibles to 2 Kings chapter 13. We want to welcome all of our
visitors out today. We are so glad that you have
been inclined to join us today. And we especially are looking
forward to the baptismal service, which is an integral part of
today's service as well. For those who will be baptized
and the families who have come to witness it, we are glad to
have you out. We will also at the end of our
baptismal service acknowledge our new members. I think their
names are in the bulletin. Let me make sure I am not presuming
upon that. Yep, we'll see what we can do
about that to also expedite the time. Why do we pray? Why do we pray? We pray because
our world is a mess. We pray because we are a mess. We pray because we are in between
hope and reality. We pray because we are in a world
filled with trouble. We pray because we intuitively
and instinctively know that the matters that surround all of
us are beyond our ability to fix. We pray because we believe
there is a God in heaven who hears us for Christ's sake. And we pray because we need God's
mercy every hour. And we pray because we've been
taught to pray that one day we will not have to pray ever again. Sweet hour of prayer. sweet hour
of prayer. But we also pray, ladies and
gentlemen, because as our text will inform us today, we are
in the midst of a warfare. And our text describes for us
a miracle in the midst of madness. If you're sensitive to the Word
of God and you read it with carefulness, you will know that there's madness
taking place here 900 years before Jesus, 2,900 years before us. But if you were to read 2 Kings
13 carefully, you'd find out that the same things that are
going on in 2 Kings at that time are going on right now in our
world today. It's not our world a mess. Are we not in many ways
in the midst of a chaotic madness? Storms and winds blowing everywhere
and trouble abounding almost in An inscrutable way in a way
in which we can't really fully answer Why is there so much trouble
and yet in the midst of that trouble in the midst of that
trouble? the God of heaven earth is still
working miracles in the midst of that trouble and in the midst
of death everywhere. And we see it, don't we? And
mankind has been propelled, impaled, compelled, as it were, to seek
life, even if it means leaving planet Earth. We are trying to
find life on other planets. We're seeking to find life in
other galaxies. And in fact, we're seeking to
find life in other universes. We have now bought into the notion
of parallel universes that we don't see. Well, God's been talking
about that for the longest. The realm of angels is a parallel
world. The realm of devils is a parallel
world. There's more to our world than
what we see right now. And those of us who are perceptive
enough to understand that everything that goes on is not merely the
things that we see, but also the things that we do not see.
We also are aware of even at the most subatomic levels of
our inspections and our speculations that we are in the midst of a
warfare. You find the smallest microbes and you'll see they're
engaging in a war. They're battling, they're fighting.
We're all fighting for life. Every one of us. That's why some
of us pray. We're praying to stay alive.
We're praying to have our lives sustained. We're praying for
a better quality of life. We're praying that our lives
might matter, because we're all in the midst of a warfare. This
is a battle that's taking place in our text, and I hope to take
you on a little bit of a journey in that regards today. In the
midst of this battle, we understand that we are striving to preserve,
striving to protect, striving to enhance life. Do you know
man has been looking for the fountain of youth? his days he
has bought into hoaxes and and schemes and shenanigans and he
has flown the uttermost parts of the world to find that water
that water that will reverse the aging process and Deliver
his body from all of the cancerous agents that destroy our life. We are in a warfare and in the
midst of a massive warfare. But let me repeat one more time,
in the midst of this universal, pervasive, worldwide warfare
that we're all in, a warfare of which we are stricken daily
with poverty and sickness and disease and distress. Is that true? Sickness, disease,
poverty, distress, calamities. Abrupt ending of our lives people
died by the hundreds of thousands every day in mass and singularly
and all of these are either intentional or Accidental evils that come
upon the whole human race. This means that we are in a war
Ladies and gentlemen, and and if you if you didn't see the
hand of God You despair with all the evil that's going on
around the world But seeing our text, we are taught that in the
midst of chaos and war, God still does wonders. In the midst of
the war that's taking place in 2 Kings 13, and Israel is in
a mess right now. I hope to make the application
to us in a moment. Israel is in a mess. They are suffering
the consequences of enemies without and enemies within. And Israel
is suffering the consequences of God's disfavor in many ways. And Israel is confused. And Israel
has lost its identity, like a lot of people today. And Israel has
failed to understand a covenant keeping God, as many people do
today. And Israel is under duress and
stress. And a man has died, has he not?
Well, you and I accept death, you know, as a very common thing,
a normative experience every day. We don't even get alarmed
by death, but perhaps your death might alarm you. Enough for you to think about
what does it mean for a man to die. See, in our text, the Bible
is written to people for whom God assumes that they care enough
about reality to be able to read between the lines. And to understand
that when a person dies, it really is, for all intents and purposes,
a tragedy when a person dies. It really is a tragedy. It is
not the way things are supposed to be. We bury people and we
celebrate and we memorialize them and we give all kind of
accolades and we shape it and paint it all sorts of ways. As
I've told you before, we have this fetish with death. We want
to turn death into something normative, but death is a tragedy.
particularly when you die in vain. When you die without knowing
why you're dying and where you're going when you die. And so in
our text, we discover that a man dies. And in the midst of the
hurried, anxious elements surrounding the people that were taking him
to the funeral, they happen to throw him in a special tomb.
And my hope today is that God would be pleased to throw some
of you in a special tomb today. that you might find the life
that you should be looking for. So the title of our message today
is Baptism, the Promise of a Resurrected Life. Now that last line, resurrected
life, will be treated when we get back to the Book of Romans
because it means a whole lot more than merely just coming
back from the dead. But let's work through our text
now so that we can expedite our message and get into it. Our
first point then that I want you to consider under the message,
baptism, Resurrection from the day it is is that we are in the
context of a war and that war is because of what? Everybody
in the world doesn't believe that but many of us do we believe
that the wages of sin is what? Right death is all around us
and death is an affirmation that there's some kind of sin consequence
sin principle working. Is that true? sin in the psychological
sense, sin in the domestic sense, sin in the biological sense,
sin in the spiritual sense, sin all over. That's why we have
death. And between sin and death is a war. And we are told in
our Bibles that the warfare that you and I are really engaged
in is on a spiritual level. It's a war for us to labor and
to toil. To war means to fight. It's a
war for us to daily strive to avoid Getting sick. That's a
war. You know how much money we spend
on trying to eat right? We're fighting a war. And you
know how we struggle with, you know, going to the Whole Foods
stores and we complain about the prices. But see, for us,
that's a kind of armor that we're putting on to try to fight against
the biological warfare that's bringing our physical bodies
down. Am I making some sense? So you might tell me, Pastor,
I'm not in a war. I grant that you are in a war. You may not
admit it, but you are. Either you are in a war and you
are cognitively fighting, or you have resigned to the process
of the war killing you someday. And that's a hopeless life. A
hopeless life is the life where a person just says, whatever
will be, will be. That's a hopeless life. Because
we're all dying. And God's giving you and me time
to do something about it. So what we do is we eat good
food so we can fight against those internal biological conflicts
that's raging against us. And we paint our bodies and we
exercise and we color our hair so that we can live a little
longer and look a little better. That's all the warfare. I don't
care what you say. That's all the battle. We're
all fighting the warfare on one level or another. See you in
the battle. The moment, ladies, you put on a little lipstick,
Put a little tit in your hair, you're in a warfare. Fellas,
we are in a warfare. We're all in a battle. But the
real battle that you have to be willing to acknowledge is
the battle of sin in the hearts and minds of men and women, which
is designed to keep you distracted from the real world and one day
send you to hell through death. where your carcass, your body
will be placed in a tomb in some form or another and there's no
one there to give you life. See, so the first point that
I want some of you to buy into is that we are in a warfare and
that warfare is because of sin and the warfare spiritual on
the level of Christians, you and I are called to put on the
whole armor of God, are we not? That we might stand against the
wiles of whom? The devil. That's right. That we might be
able to engage in acknowledging the truth that there are adversaries
everywhere and that God has called us to put on the armor of prayer. Put on the armor of the word
of God. Put on the armor of trusting God. Put on the armor of submitting
to biblical truth. Put on the armor of Jesus Christ. Put on the armor of the gospel.
That we might be ready to deal with everything come our way.
Secondly, In the context of war because of sin, sin and rebellion
leads to war, it leads to bondage, and it leads to death. Now I'm
going to show you in our text what I mean by the context is
that of chaos, is confusion. Quite interestingly, in 2 Kings
chapter 13, for people who don't believe the Bible and assume
our assert that there's no real contemporary relevance to the
scriptures, the battle that's going on in the Middle East has
its origins in the biblical battles that we're dealing with. The
Syrians are still in hostile variance with the Jews. And the
Jews are still in hostile variance internally with the Palestinians
and other groups. That's our text right now. Let
me show you the foundation of this chaos in which you and I
are all in. Under our second point, under
point number one, we are dealing with now a A sin and rebellion
that leads to war, verse six of chapter 13 tells us, nevertheless,
that is, the children of Israel departed not from the sins of
the house of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin, but walked therein,
and there remained the groves also in Samaria. Again, you have
to be God's covenant people to understand what has just been
stated. Israel occupies two categories
of people. the two southern tribes, Judah
and Benjamin, and the ten northern tribes, which is called Israel
proper. Right now we're dealing with Israel proper, the Israelites,
where Jeroboam has come to the prophet whining and crying because
he's pretending that the death of the prophet means something
to him. But the only reason he's coming to the prophet who is
dying of a sickness is because Jeroboam knows deep down in his
heart that for the prophet to die is to leave Israel open to
judgments. Because Israel has been walking
in rebellion against God, has departed from God's laws. And
whereas you and I read in verse 6 about Jeroboam, they have not
departed from the works of Jeroboam. You remember Jeroboam. Rehoboam
were the two kings that came out of Solomon's reign, where
God had given the ten northern tribes to Jeroboam of Nebat.
And Jeroboam did something very abominable. Rather than leading
the people of God to the house of worship in Jerusalem, where
they acknowledged Jehovah as Lord and understand that salvation
is the consequence of blood atonement taking place between the mercy
seat on the Ark of the Covenant Jeroboam devised a plan by which
he made two golden calves and one of them he put it in the
city of Dan and another one he put in the city of Beersheba
and he told all the people of God you don't have to go to Jerusalem
You can go to Dan and worship, which is right down the street.
And you can go to Beersheba and worship, which is right down
the street. But where they went was out of convenience, not out
of conviction. And a lot of people go to church
out of convenience, not out of conviction. They go where it's
closest and easiest and where it's most entertaining because
the golden calves represented the humanistic mindset of men
that was rooted in the pagan worship of the Egyptians where
Israel used to dwell. So they had a very contemporary
worship service that was absent of the gospel, absent of the
cross, absent of Jesus Christ, absent of redemption, absent
of shed blood. It was contemporary and entertaining.
It was philosophically satisfying, but it was not true. And that's
where we are today with much of our religion. Now Judah, the
two southern tribes down near Jerusalem, Benjamin and Judah,
they weren't that much better. Now they did have the true gospel,
but the problem was they were worshiping the groves and the
idols on the hillsides as well. the implications of that is this
even the churches that were most faithful to the Word of God at
that time they didn't have the galls to throw the Bible away
like the liberal churches they didn't have the gall to not some
way acknowledge that Christ is crucified and that we need to
be saved and that the only Savior of the world is Jesus they didn't
have the gall to abandon biblical truth altogether but they were
so preoccupied with their secular life their cultural norms the
materialism of the world that they were saying for all intents
and purposes Jesus is just a little addendum to my life are you hearing
me and because of this abominable sort of situation and context
in which Judah and Israel existed. What it resulted in, ladies and
gentlemen, was war between the two camps. The two southern tribes,
Judah and Benjamin, were warring against the ten northern tribes,
Israel. And so internal conflict will
always occur where the professed people of God abandon biblical
truth. Internal conflict will always
occur where men and women are not really submitted to what
the Bible says. You want to see people fight
in religion? Get people to value their own
opinions over the Word of God. And you will see people fight.
I'll show you that here in a moment. But I wanted to establish the
context to show us that even in the midst of all this chaos,
God still shows his mercy. But the manner in which he shows
his mercy is going to be taught to us today in the gospel. So
again, we see it in verse 6, and then we see it in verse 7
of chapter 13. Neither did he leave of the people
to Joahaz, but 50 horsemen and 10 chariots and 10,000 footmen,
for the king of Syria had destroyed them and had made them like the
dust by the threshing floor. What are we talking about? The
Syrian army had come in and devastated the 10 northern tribes so bad
that when they finally left, They left them with little of
nothing, no ability to defend themselves. To reduce the king
of Israel down to a few soldiers and a few chariots is to essentially
have an army that could not defend itself. Now that's a precarious
situation for people, is it not? And this is the setting that
we have here in our context. Now look with me at verse 9.
And Joahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in Samaria.
And Joahaz, his son, reigned in his stead. And then again
we read over in verse 11, And he did that which is evil in
the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from any of
the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to
sin. But he walked therein. Now isn't that the tragic epithet
we read of the kings frequently? That the rulers did not obey
God. and they continued disobeying
God and they died in the disobedience wherein they disobeyed God. The
real problem, however, is that when the rulers disobey God,
so do the people. So if our leaders don't have
character, If they don't have sound moral ethics, if they don't
have the gravitas and the actual integrity of living right before
us, they justify us and all of our weird, quirky justifications
of sin too. As the leaders are, so shall
the people be. And so in our text, I am trying
to affirm to you that we're dealing with a mess. A mess. And that mess gets even messier. Look at verse 12. and the rest
of the acts of Jehoash all that he did and is my worthy not written
where he fought against Amaziah king of Judah are they not written
in the chronicles of the kings of Israel now verse 12 affirms
what I just stated there was a battle between the kings of
Judah and a battle between the children of Israel here these
are brothers and they're fighting they're fighting And this is
the context in which now we have this strange event that goes
on. So again, under point number one, we are in a warfare because
of sin. This sin and rebellion leads
to war and bondage and death. And the basic parties of this
are the two kings of Israel and of Judah, which are affecting
Israel as a whole. They are living in stark disobedience. God look at point number two
then Elisha the prophet must die. That's where we are in verse
14 now Elisha was fallen sick of the sickness whereof he died
and Joash the king of Israel came down unto him and wept over
his face and said oh my father my father the chariots of Israel
and the horsemen there now why is he saying that I Is he saying
that because he has such a deep knowledge of the Word of God
and he's committed to, has an emotional commitment to the man
of God? Or is he saying this in a kind of pseudo-religious
interest because everyone knows that Elijah saw Elijah go up
in a whirlwind, in a chariot when he left in chapter 2. It
was news all around Israel that Elijah never saw death. And that the spirit of Elijah
landed upon Elisha, his predecessor, so that he took over Elijah's
ministry. Everybody knew that. And the king would have known
that. Because now Elisha is the man of the hour. He's the prophet
of the whole land of Israel. And the king would have known
that he was the prophet. So he says, Elisha, Elisha, my
father, my father, the chariots of Israel. Now, you know what
he said? You're about to die. God's coming to get you. That's
a strange way to greet the prophet, isn't it? But he's saying this. King Jeroboam is saying this
because King Jeroboam does not know what God is up to. He is
vainly pursuing a blessing from the prophet because he's afraid
of what's going to happen when the prophet leaves. See, here's
the interesting thing about the prophet. The prophet here represents
the word of God. And the prophet here represents,
well, true believers who share the word of God with people.
Now, the believer who has the word of God is a weird sort of
mixed blessing. Because most people who are not
interested in biblical truth really don't care for what you
have to say. That's true. But they'd rather have you around
than not have you around when trouble hits. This is true, especially
if you behave yourself right. Like nobody wants to be around
obnoxious, self-righteous religionists. That's not what a Christian is.
Now, we don't always act like Christians, but a Christian is
not an obnoxious, self-righteous, sort of bigoted person. A Christian
is a sinner saved by grace, understanding the struggle of sin, but also
has the answer and is adamant about that answer. Now, you might
say to those of us who are Christians, Because of your adamancy a biblical
truth. We think you are arrogant. I
would beg to differ Arrogant and confident is two different
things Does that make some sense? Arrogant and confidence is two
different things. If you want to call my confidence
arrogance, then let's test your allegations don't just call me
arrogant because you don't like that I'm standing on the Word
of God and Christians are obliged to demonstrate reasonably and
rationally and biblically while we believe what we believe So
I'm ready to talk with you any day of the week as to why I believe
the Bible is the Word of God Why I believe that Jesus Christ
is Lord why I believe that salvation is only found in Christ And why
I believe that if we die in our sins, we're going to hell. I'm
ready to talk to you about that And if I can demonstrate to you
from the scriptures that this is a reasonable set of truths
to believe in, then you've got to take your charge of calling
me arrogant away. Otherwise, I have the right to
call you not only arrogant, but a fool for not being able to
hold your position logically and rationally as well. But see,
we don't want to go to bantering fools and arrogant, fools and
arrogant. No one gets saved by calling
each other fools and arrogant. Let's get to the real business
at hand. We're all going to die. Are you ready to cross over into
eternity without the security of where you're going? That's
what our text is bringing us to. Even Elisha, the man of God,
is going to die. This reminds the king that he's
mortal too. He's going to die too. And so
the context is set here to teach us some lessons. God is speaking
first and foremost to His covenant people. By application, He's
speaking, therefore, to you and me. I've already set the table
that the covenant people that God is talking to are in disobedience
to God. Well, in our disobedience to
God, God will chastise us. Will He not, children of God?
He will discipline us on a number of levels. All whom the Lord
loves, He what? Chastened. And sometimes that chastening
is so difficult, you think that God has abandoned you. Because
He knows how to pry out of your hand those idolatries that you
hold on to, that you use to comfort your soul when God Himself wants
to be your comforter. And that's what He's doing to
Israel right now. I wish I had time to develop it more fully.
I won't. But I think some of you are persuaded to know that
God cares enough for His people to get into the middle of their
mess and make it worse until they cry out on the Lord. Ask
for mercy. Is that true? So we see that
Elijah the prophet must die There are three things that I want
to call your attention to briefly with that because we're Christians
We believe our Bible has a central theme for those of you who are
visiting with us. The Bible is not simply a collective
Archaic data written by multiple men and some women if you will
if you want to argue that That basically is a hodgepodge of
different human devices and notions different historical artifacts
and ideas ancient relics and and antiquated religious practices. No, we believe the Bible is the
word of God. We believe that God wrote through men, but he
wrote through them in such a way that he superintended his word
carefully enough to convey to us his divine purposes. And the
central subject of the scriptures is to teach us about the person
and work of Jesus Christ. Is that right? So when we are
reading the Bible with eyes of faith, we are looking for the
gospel in the scriptures, are we not? Elijah here then is a
type of Jesus Christ as all the prophets point to Christ. The
Bible tells us in Acts chapter 10 verse 43, all the prophets
pointed to Christ. And remember Elijah and Moses
on the Mount of Transfiguration? When they came to Jesus talking
about his decease that should take place at Calvary? The prophets
then would always point us to Jesus. That's why the last prophet
of the Old Testament, his name was what? John the Baptist said
what? Behold the Lamb of God which
takes away the sin of the world. This is what made him the greatest
prophet of the Old Testament. he got a chance to see God's
lamb. So all the prophets would preach Christ both by what they
said and by what they did. In this context, Elijah has to
die. Now he's a man of God, but he has to die. That means he's
still a sinner by nature, right? Even though he's saved. So we
might as well quell one other silly foolish doctrine that goes
on that when once you become a Christian, you no longer are
a sinner. That's nothing but foolishness. If you are not a
sinner, you will not what? Die. You cannot die if you are
in the whole of your being free from sin. This is the doctrine
of the resurrection that I'm teaching you now. If you and
I were purely redeemed in the totality of our being, we would
never see death. But because we still have a body
of sin, we have an internal warfare, our souls are renewed, our bodies
are still falling apart. We are internally striving against
the downward gravity with an upward longing. that makes us
fight for glory and hold on to the promises of God which are
in Jesus Christ. Am I making some sense to you
right about now? This is very important to know. So we are
somewhat in a sort of morbid way comforted that even the holy
prophets died because we die. He's a mere man and not the Christ. That's the reason why Elijah
died. Secondly, Israel was rebellious in spite of God's merciful prophecies. I'm going to show you something
right here. When Jeroboam comes to the prophet, he comes representing
the people. And he has already come, as I
stated, in this kind of hypocrisy, not honestly and not sincerely. But Elijah is going to accommodate
him. Elijah didn't kick him out, did he? He accommodated the man,
didn't he? Listen to me. Those of you who
don't know God, God will accommodate you if you come. I want you to
get this now. The prophet is going to open
up his doors and receive the king, even though he knows this
king's heart is not right with God. I say to you in the house
today, if your heart is not right with God, come anyway, he will
accommodate you. Now he's going to show you some
things about yourself, because in order to be right with God,
he's going to tell you the truth, even though you don't like it.
So here comes Jeroboam to the prophet Elisha with his sort
of religious colloquialisms and Elijah accommodates him. And so we read in our text now
in verse 15. And Elijah said unto him, take
a bow and arrow. And he took upon him bows and
arrows and said to the king of Israel, put your hand upon the
bow. And what did the king do? He
put his hand upon the bow. And Elijah put his hand upon
the king's hand. Whoa! So now, Elijah is giving
the king instructions to do something that for the intellectual is
foolish, for the rationalist is foolish. What on earth is
Elijah doing with this crazy symbolism of taking arrows and
a quiver and having the king of all people put his hand on
the arrows and quiver and then put his own hand on the king's
hand? He's teaching the king redemptive
realities in a spiritual dimension that will make no sense to the
king, but it will make every sense to you and me. The arrows
in the quiver always represent the instruments of war. The king
is like Nero, I'm sorry, like the Caesars, just like our president
is like the Caesars. I've told you that before. Our
Senate and Congress, they deliberate legislative laws, but the president's
office, all he's called to do is fight wars. The king's job
is to fight wars. Remember what Israel said, we
want a king that goes in and out among us and fight our wars. So what is Elisha doing? He's
affirming the job of the king to fight for the people. Is Jesus
our king? Does he fight our battles? Does
he win our battles? And so the arrow and the quiver
represents King Jeroboam's call to protect the people. And when
Elisha puts his hand on Jeroboam's hand, what he is saying is, when
God is with you, you can't lose. When God is with you, you can't
lose. Every one of your arrows will
strike through the hearts of every one of your foes. You will
subdue all your enemies because in Christ we always have the
victory. We are more than conquerors through
him that loved us and gave himself for us. And we have a king that
cannot fail. Am I making some sense? This
is what Jeroboam was supposed to get out of the lesson. But
Jeroboam is like the people of Israel. They go to church, but
they really don't pay attention to their Bibles. They actually don't believe in
the ways of the Lord. They don't believe in parables. They don't
believe in symbolism. They don't believe in typology.
They don't believe in metaphors. They don't believe in the enigmatic
ways of God because God teaches us in mysteries how He works.
Here's a mystery that God is laying down that the prophet
is teaching the will and intentionality of God to do good to Israel God
saying I will fight your battles, but you've got to believe me.
You've got to let me lay my hands on you Lay my hands on your instruments
of war. You've got to let me help you
fight your battles, but Jeroboam Showed us otherwise, didn't he?
Now watch what goes on in our text. This is what it says in
verse 17. He said, now open the windows
eastward, and he opened the window. Notice that Elisha is commanding
Jeroboam. And Jeroboam is submitting to
the imperatives, is he not? So sometimes people will come
to church, hear a little Bible, and try to do a little bit of
what the Bible says. I'm just giving you the narrative
now. I'm cutting it short for time's sake. Here's what it says,
and he shot, and Elijah said, the arrow of the Lord's deliverance,
and the arrow of the Lord's deliverance from Syria, for thou shalt smite
Syria in Aphek till you have consumed them. Do you know what
Elijah just did? He prophesied. He prophesied an under unction
of the spirit, a prophecy, a promise that was predicated on the obedience
of the king. This is what we call a conditional
promise, but it was a prophecy that was based upon the king's
obedience. What did he do? He shot the arrow. The king obeyed
the man of God. Did he not? He shot the arrow.
So now the arrow being shot allows the prophet to preach because
when we preach the gospel, we are shooting arrows into the
hearts of God's foes. I trust today that God would
shoot some of you and pierce your hard heart and subdue you
for Christ's sake. Am I making some sense? This
is what's taking place. So Jeroboam shoots the arrows.
And notice what he goes on to tell them. Now that the king
is starting to obey him, he says over in verse 18, and he said,
take the arrows. And he took them and he said
unto the king of Israel, now smite upon the ground. And he
smoked three times and stopped. And the man of God was angry
with him. How come children of God? How come? Because in this
particular command, Jeroboam's heart was exposed. Let me help
you understand what Jeroboam missed. Jeroboam missed that
he had an opportunity now to have complete victory over all
his foes if he would have believed God. if he would have trusted
God and if he would have taken God up with all of his heart.
Stay with me for a moment. Stay with me for a moment. See,
what Jeroboam was exposed for being was a half-hearted believer. He was exposed for being the
kind of man that really didn't take God serious enough to do
all that God wanted him to do. And God exposed his heart. Now,
ladies and gentlemen, if your only way out of a battle is to
fight, Remember there are three modes we all operate out of.
Rest mode, fight mode, and then what? If your only way out is
to fight, like you don't have an option to run. You have to
fight. Wouldn't it be reasonable that
you would fight with all of your might? Wouldn't that be reasonable? And so when the prophet says,
take the arrows and crush them, wouldn't you crush every arrow
in the quiver? Wouldn't you crush the quiver?
Wouldn't you take the crushed quiver and arrows and throw them
in the fire? Wouldn't you step up and down
and say, Lord, defeat all my foes? Wouldn't you do that? Trusting
that your actions would correspond with God's potential so all your
foes could be destroyed. You had done that if Jeroboam
had done that Jeroboam would have revealed that he believed
God He believed God all the way, but Jeroboam didn't believe God
like the people who filled the pews Don't believe God This is
a good message Like the people who sit in the pews Select what
Bible verses they're gonna look to What verses they're gonna
obey? The quiver is full of arrows
for you to win every battle. But you're only going to break
one or two. And so as we read at the end of the chapter, he
only subdued his enemies two or three times. Ladies and gentlemen,
your enemies are coming after you until you breathe your last
breath. You got to fight till you die.
Do you hear me? Remember what Paul said in 2nd
Timothy chapter 4. I have fought a good fight. I
have kept the faith I've run my race and I didn't stop fighting
until Nero cut my head off. I kept believing God I kept preaching
the gospel in prison to everyone that came to me. I let them know
that redemption is in Christ alone He didn't give up did he
that's the nature of saving faith. See we believe God to the end.
Do we not I? And so we are at the crux of our message now,
which will bring us to the very important consideration of what's
before us. So we see that because Elijah
must die, he therefore was not the Christ. But before he died,
he meets up with the king and the king reveals the half-heartedness
and the lack of zeal that the people of God supposed to have
for God. And then Elisha dies. This is what the text teaches
us. Look at verse 20. And let's move
now into our fundamental consideration for today. And Elisha died and
they what? Buried him. Elisha died and they
buried him. And in that, the last point under
point number two is that he pointed to Christ who had to die for
us. See, the way that verse 13 puts
it is that Elisha died of the sickness wherewith he was sick.
Elisha died of the sickness with which he was sick. Now, sin is
many things in the Bible, but one of the metaphors that sin
represents in the Bible is disease and sickness. Now, all sickness
and disease is not a direct consequence of sin, but it is a consequence
of the origin and presence of sin. We argue as Christians that
if we were not sinners, we wouldn't be sick, nor would we die. But
because we are sinners and in a degenerative mode physically,
then we get sick and we die, do we not? Well, that Elijah
here gets sick and dies points to the death of Jesus Christ,
who died on the behalf of sinners, bearing their diseases and bearing
their sicknesses. Matthew chapter 8 verse 27. I
just want to affirm this point. He points to Christ who had to
die. You and I would ask the question
if we were really interested in Jesus Christ. Who is Jesus
Christ? Keep that verse here. Who is
Jesus Christ? He is the God-man who bore our humanity. As the Bible says, the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us. And He is the only man on planet
Earth who never sinned. He did not do any sin, He was
never convinced of sin. He did not know sin. He averted
all sin. And yet he died. That's a contradiction. Unless,
of course, we understand that the death of the only sinless
man was a consequence of God placing on him our sickness. Do you guys follow that? It makes no sense that a holy,
sinless man would die since the wages of sin is what? Well, since
he was not sinful, he could not what? Die. But in that he died,
he died because of other people's sicknesses being placed on him. Is that what the text is teaching?
I got eyes behind my head, don't I? The text is teaching that
God in his mercy has taken our disease, Those of us who believe
on Him and place them on Christ. If you ever contemplate with
your eyes why that holy man died, here's why he died. For our sins. You guys got that? For our sins. He was holy and harmless and
undefiled and separate from sinners. He did not know sin, he did not
do sin, and him was no sin at all. And in fact, the Bible says,
he who knew no sin became sin for us in order that we who are
nothing but sinners might become the righteousness of God in him.
Is the picture coming together right now? The man in that tomb
is the substitute for sinners. That's who Elijah represents
here. that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the
prophet saying himself took our firmities and bear our what now
if we were doing an exegetical comparison of Isaiah chapter
53 verses 4 5 and 6 with this Isaiah 53 is talking about sin
Matthew's 8 is talking about sickness and disease what's the
correlation the one is the root of the other And when sin is
taken away, as we're going to continue to learn as we go through
the book of Romans, one day you and I will have all our sin taken
away. That means one day there will
never be sickness, there will never be infirmity, there will
never be pain, there will never be distress, there will never
be the agonies that we go through, there will never be the deterioration
of our bodies, Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer, all of that is a consequence
of sin. Christ took that on himself so
that one day one day See, this is what we as Christians call
the hope of glory one day One day, we won't have to pray anymore.
Will we? Alright, let's deal with the
gospel here for a few minutes to understand some truth We are
not preaching the gospel until we point you to Christ I pointed
you to Christ and that he's the one that must die for your sins
if you're going to escape but ladies and gentlemen It means
nothing for you to have been informed about the death of the
only man who can take away sin until you make your identification
with him. Which brings us to the next verse
in our text. Listen to what it says in verse
20, part B. And Elijah died, and they buried
him, and the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming
end of the year, verse 21, and it came to pass. I love that
phrase. When you're saved and it came
to pass, that's a line of comfort. Do you understand that? Because
we get in trouble, don't we? The joy that we have is this
too shall what? Isn't it wonderful when we go
in and come out of trouble? It's only because we have a God
that's taking us somewhere. See, He didn't leave us in the
midst of our mess. He's taking us through our mess.
And so in our mess we learn the lesson, but we can be sure that
this too has come to what? pass and we will move through
it as well and in God's mercy it allows this tragedy of chaos
around the children of Israel Israel the ten northern tribes
are fighting the two northern tribes the liberals against the
conservatives they're both distracted from the real mission both distracted
then they got the Syrians coming after them and they got the Moabites
coming after them they're all distracted and this is the problem
when you depart from the gospel are you hearing me Like you hear
about all these battles that are going on politically and
socially about this that and the other Church folks who are
on the conservative side and church folks who are on the liberal
side you can be as conservative as cheese And as liberal as the finest
wine and you're both lost because you've been distracted from the
real issue. And the real issue is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. You can argue over gay rights.
You can argue over marriage. You can argue over the size of
the church. You can argue over the color
of the pews. You can argue over all this stuff
and still miss the point. And the point is Christ and Him
crucified to answer your sin problem. You're going to die.
Am I making some sense? You're going to die. But I told
you the devil's job is to distract you from the tree of life. Get
you all heated and passionate, fighting political, social, practical
issues to distract you from the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And that's what's going on in
the church today. That's why the average person does not come
into church and learn about Christ. I wouldn't go to church either
if the person who started the institution doesn't get talked
about. Would you? I wouldn't go to church. If I go to church and you're
talking about the president and the secretary of state, who's
going to win the next election or the football game, I can stay
at home to do that. All right, Sarah, here we go. And
it came to pass as they were burying a man. Can I develop
that line? We're going to bury you one day.
We're going to bury you one day. But I hope to bury some of you
in water. and not in an earthly grave?
Which burial do you want? We're going to bury you in the
ground one day. May we bury you in water before
we bury you in the ground. And it came to pass as they were
burying a man. That's what we do. That behold,
they spied a band of men and they cast the man into the supper
of Elijah. Now in the historical text, they
were in a hurry because the Moabites were their adversaries. And they
simply per adventure, that's the Hebrew term or the King James
term, per adventure found Elijah's tomb. Do you believe in accidents? Do you believe in happenstance?
Do you believe in fortune? Do you believe in luck? Or did
God in his providence lead them to the only tomb that can take
a dead man and bring him back to life again? All right, let's
go to our next point in our outline so I can show you what I'm saying.
I'll get back here, but I need us to deal with our third point. The unknown casualty in this
account is the chosen sinner. That's my third point. Can I
develop that right quick? The unknown casualty in our account
is the chosen sinner. Now you notice they weren't burying
everybody. They only buried one man. Now
who does this one man represent? All of God's elect. Every sinner
for whom Christ has died will ultimately be buried with Christ. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
Listen to it now. The unknown casualty is the chosen
sinner. And there are two points that I want to develop under
that. Bringing the dead to Christ happens through two means. Prayer
and what? Preaching. Bringing the dead
to Christ happens through two means. Prayer and preaching.
Is that good? Watch this now. Some of you pray
while I preach and see if the Holy Ghost will bring some dead
soul today to Christ. Some of you pray while I preach
that God might bring a dead soul to Christ. Why? No one can come
unto the Father unless he is sent. No man can come unto me
except the Father who sent me. Draw him. And a soul will never
be brought into contact with the crucified Christ except through
prayer and preaching. Those souls then that are carrying
that dead body represent those of us who know what our job is.
Our job is to hunt down lost sinners and pick them up and
put them in the tomb of Jesus Christ, collaborating with men
and women who will pray while we look for the dead bodies.
See, there's not a lot of dead sinners in the world. Like, if
I were to ask you to raise your hand and answer this question,
are you a sinner? The only people that will raise
their hand are honest people. That's right, see? Only honest
people. I'm going to raise my hand twice.
I'm going to raise my hand twice. I'm an honest sinner. I'm an
honest sinner. The question is now, are you
a chosen sinner? See, an honest sinner is a start,
but are you a chosen sinner? Because a chosen sinner will
have the privilege of being carried, because he can't walk, of being
helped, because he's spiritually blind. of being led because he's
dead in his trespasses and sin and placed in the tomb of Christ.
That's what will happen to a chosen sinner. And that's why we come
to church every week, every day of the week. That's why we pray
that the spirit of God might take our children and our brothers
and our sisters and our aunts and our moms and dads and draw
them near to Jesus Christ in the preaching of the gospel,
because you're never going to come near. You're not coming
near on your own. You're not coming near on your
own. You're running from God. But today, God hunted you down,
brought you to a gospel church, made you hear the gospel of the
glory of God in the person of Christ. And you can't help yourself.
You're in the presence of Christ now. And we're praying that God
is just lowering you in the tomb and your heart is softening.
saying, yes, Lord, yes, Lord, Lord, me, Lord, yes. Let me touch
the bones of the son of God. Let me touch his bones. This
is the spiritual work of believers in the midst of this war, because
we know that faith only comes by what? And hearing by what? That's why we preach and we pray.
My last point. Pull it up now. Here it is. This
is what I want you to understand. The unknown casualty is the chosen
sinner. Point number four. The unknown casualty is the chosen
sinner. But you and I have to actually get a grip on, he must
be brought into contact with the dead prophet. You guys see
that? He must be brought into contact with the dead prophet.
You guys got your outlines. Point number four. He must be
brought into contact with the dead sinner. This is what's happening
when they cast him into the tombs. The Bible tells us clearly that
there's an hour that comes and now is when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God. Is that true? Do you believe
that? This is why we preach. The sinner must be brought into
contact with the dead prophet. Who is this dead prophet? It's
Christ. All the prophets pointed to Christ. Christ is the only dead prophet
that can benefit your soul. You and I have to come into contact
with Jesus Christ. Is that the reason why he died
on Calvary Street? If I be lifted up, I will draw men unto me.
Is that the reason we baptize people? Because we believe that
in the preaching of the gospel, dead men are made to be identified
with that dead man. Do we believe that? That's why
I gave you Isaiah chapter 26 verse 19. Pull it back up. Genesis,
Isaiah chapter 26 verse 19. Isaiah chapter 26 verse 19. Here's our last verse before
we close out our point. Here it is. Here it is. Thy dead
men shall what? That's a promise, children of
God. Do you see that? Thy dead men shall live. That's
a word for you and me. That's a word for you and me.
Your dead men shall live together with my dead wife. Who's talking
here? Christ. Christ is talking about
the union of the sinner with him. You know what he's saying?
There's no way for the dead to live except they die with Christ. My dead men shall live together
with my dead body. Shall they what? Arise. And you know what? When we arise
from the dead, what do we do? We sing. We sing. Do we not sing? We're getting ready to sing now
in a few moments. Sing, sing. Redemption through
the blood of Christ. Christ is my Redeemer. Christ
is my Savior. Christ raised me from the dead.
Hallelujah. Praise the Lamb of God. Praise
the Lamb of God. He must be brought into contact
with the dead prophet. Union with Christ in his death
is the believer's justification. And this is where the law ends
its power. The law has the power to kill.
But when you and I have died with Christ, we get to take up
the mantra of Paul in Galatians 2 20. I have been crucified with
Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life that I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faithfulness of him who loved me and gave
himself for me. Ladies and gentlemen, this gospel
truth is what we are about to demonstrate in baptism right
now. So those of you who are to be
baptized, go change. We're going to have the offering
at this time. You need to use the bathroom. Go ahead on. Come
on back. We'll get this done and wrap this up. Amen.