Wonder Working God

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If you would, take your Bibles and turn to the book of 2
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Kings, 2 Kings. And then to get a little closer to our thoughts this morning, find
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Chapter 7, 2 Kings, Chapter 7. You know, one of the great mysteries that we all deal with in this life is the reality of what takes place in between, to a great extent, what takes place in between our plans and our purposes and God's plans and God's purposes.
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In truth, I would think you would agree with me that for all of us, whether we be young, middle, old, somewhere along the age of life, that we really never know what a day is going to bring.
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Let me remind you of what James says. He says, come now you who say today or tomorrow we will go into such and such city and spend a year there and buy and sell and make a profit, whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.
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And I think that we would agree that we've all had days where we have made plans.
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We have set things in motion and as the day comes upon us, let's say we make plans the night before, what we're going to do tomorrow, what we're going to accomplish, what's going to take place.
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I think we would all agree that there are times when, although we make plans, we wake up the following day, we're ready to roll, we're ready to get everything accomplished that we have planned and purposes, and all of a sudden something comes out of left field and all our plans and all our thoughts are pretty much scrapped.
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And then we begin to react and then we begin to try to figure out, okay, well, that didn't work out, now what?
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And I say, we often say, at least I'm not really sure who coined that, but it comes out of left field.
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Well, let me assure us that with our God, nothing comes out of left field.
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And that as one has rightly said, and I believe there is much wisdom in it, it says that, he said that man proposes and God disposes.
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And again, I would say that you and I would say there have been a number of days, maybe particular events that we, again, planned on this and all of a sudden there's that.
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One too long ago I had, I went to Walmart just to pick up a couple of things.
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It was just a normal retirement day for me. And as I went to Walmart, I went in,
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I got what I needed, I came out, and I have this weird thing about me,
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I'm always checking for my wallet. Well, I went in, came out, checked for my wallet, and what?
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No wallet. I will tell you my world just all of a sudden unraveled.
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I was going to go home, make breakfast, all of a sudden out of left field my wallet is gone and my first reaction is, what do
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I do? Well, I called my wife.
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After 50 years, that's what you do, right? You just, let me call her, see what she thinks. I couldn't find my wallet.
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Came home, went back, checked every shopping cart in the lot, went to customer service, went to the register, looked everywhere for it, back in my car,
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I'm sitting in my car and all of a sudden it comes upon me, I better call the bank. What do
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I do? I cancel every credit card, I don't have that many, but I cancel this credit card, that credit card, my debit card,
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I mean, I just canceled the world and then all of a sudden
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I look down in between my seat and, you know, I can't really see out of my right eye and I look down and there's my wallet.
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Now you want to talk about having to come up with some new plans. Back on the phone, call the car,
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I mean, call the bank. Took me three weeks to get everything rearranged.
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My whole point in that is, and I'm sure things have happened to you similar to that, but my whole point in it is that we never really know what a day will bring, do we?
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And I started this way because I want to look at something in the scriptures and in the
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Old Testament that I believe addresses this, to some extent, this whole idea of the working of God and how
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God uses, for His glory and for His purposes, many different things, many different people, many different situations to accomplish
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His purpose. And in many ways that's what
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I believe our view of providence should be. It's the working of God He created and now in His providence
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He continues to bring to pass those things which
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He purposed for His creation. Let me say this to us, too, because, again, it's not overly amazing a thought, but do you and I realize that God never has an afterthought?
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See, I lost my wallet and then all of a sudden I'm flooded with all these things in my mind. What am I going to do? What's first?
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What's second? What's third? God never has an afterthought. God doesn't react.
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God acts. That in and of itself should be enough to cause us to, even as our brother said, to bow down before Him because unto
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Him the end is known from the beginning. Unto Him who does, what does the scriptures say to us?
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He does all His pleasure. And as we look at this account this morning,
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I want us to consider what takes place in this
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Old Testament account and that you and I really need to consider that if we're going to just walk by sight, if we're going to just move through life based on the things that seemingly are in our path, then we're going to have to struggle a lot.
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You see, because again, God does it His way.
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God always does, even as it says in Genesis, shall not the judge of all the earth do right?
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So let us look at this account. I'll ask you to read an extended portion with me, but this is the only place
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I think we'll turn to. But you might not be familiar with this and you might, maybe you've never read this, but I want to read this section in 2
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Kings 7, although I want you to back up to verse 24, chapter 6.
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And I'm going to try to read the whole chapter and then just some thoughts concerning it with that thought in mind that the wonder working
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God does all He does and everything is at His disposal.
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So 2 Kings 6, verse 24, and it happened after this that Menhadad, king of Assyria, gathered all his army and went up and besieged
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Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria and indeed they besieged it until a donkey's head was sold for 80 shekels of silver and one -fourth of a cob of dove droppings for five shekels of silver.
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Then as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him saying, help my lord,
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O king. And he said, if the lord does not help you, where can I find help for you?
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From the threshing floor, from the winepress? Then the king said to her, what is troubling you?
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She answered, the woman, and she answered, this woman said to me, give your son that we may eat him today and we will eat my son tomorrow.
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So he boiled my son and ate him. And I said to her the next day, give your son that we may eat him, but she has hidden her son.
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Now it happened when the king heard the words of the woman that he tore his clothes and as he passed by on the wall, the people looked and there underneath him, he had sackcloth on his body.
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Then he said, God do so to me and more also if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat remains on him today.
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But Elisha was sitting in his house and the elders were sitting with him and the king sent a man ahead of him.
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But before the messenger came to him, he said to the elders, do you see how this son of a murderer has sent someone to take away my head?
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Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold him fast that the door is not the sound of his master's feet behind him.
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And while he was talking with them, there was a messenger coming down to him and then said, and then he said, surely this calamity is from the
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Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer? Then Elisha said, hear the word of the
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Lord, thus sayeth the Lord, tomorrow about this time a sea of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel and two seas of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.
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So an officer on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God and said, look, if the
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Lord would make windows in heaven, could this thing be?
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And he said, in fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat it.
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Now, there were four leperous men at the entrance of the gate and they said to one another, why are we sitting here until we die?
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If we say we will enter the city, the famine is in the city and we shall die there.
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If we sit here, we die also. Now therefore, come, let us surrender to the army of the
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Syrians. If they keep us alive, we shall live. And if they kill us, we shall but die.
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Well, they rose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians. And when they had come to the outskirts of the
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Syrian camp, to their surprise, no one was there. For the Lord had caused the army of the
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Syrians to hear the noise of chariots and the noise of horses and the noise of a great army.
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So they said to one another, look, the king of Israel has hired against us the king of the
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Hittites, the king of the Egyptians, to attack us. Therefore they arose and fled at twilight and left the camp intact, their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, and they fled for their lives.
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And when these lepers came to the outskirts of the camp, they went into one tent and ate and drank and carried from its silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them.
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Then they came back and entered another tent and carried some from there also and went and hid it.
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And they said to one another, we are not doing what is right. This day is a day of good news and we remain silent.
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If we wait until morning light, some punishment will come upon us. Now therefore come, let us go and tell the king's household.
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So they went out and they called the gatekeepers of the city and told them, saying, we went to the Syrian camp and surprisingly no one was there, not a human sound, only horses and donkeys tied and the tents intact.
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The gatekeepers called out and they told it to the king's household inside and the king arose in the night and said to his servants, let me tell you what the
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Syrians have done to us. They know that we are hungry. Therefore they have gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field, saying when they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive and get into the city.
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One of the servants answered and said, please let several men take five of the remaining horses which are left in the city and look, they may either become like all the inhabitants, like all the multitude of Israel that are left in it, or indeed
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I say they may become like the multitude of Israel left from those who are consumed. So let us send them and see.
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Therefore they took two chariots and horses and the king sent them in the direction of the
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Syrian army saying, go and see. They went after them to the Jordan and indeed all the road was full of garments and weapons which the
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Syrians had thrown away in their haste. So the messengers returned and told the king.
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People went out and plundered the tents of the Syrians. So a sea of fine flour was sold for a shekel and two seas of barley for a shekel according to the word of the
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Lord. So the king had appointed the officer on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate.
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But the people trampled him in the gate and he died just as the man of God had said, who spoke when the king came down to him.
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So it happened just as the man of God had spoken to the king saying, two seas of barley for a shekel and a sea of fine flour for a shekel shall be sold tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria.
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Then the officer had answered the man of God and said, now look, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, could such a thing be?
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And he said, and he had said, in fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat it.
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And so it happened to him for the people trampled him in the gate and he died.
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Let's just ask God's blessing. Father we just ask you to come
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Lord and do what only you could do and take your word and make it real to us
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Lord by your great grace and great mercy, Holy Spirit, that you would teach us that as we even consider something that happened many centuries ago,
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Lord, that we would learn some lessons from it, that we would learn to see you as the one who does whatever he pleases to do, whenever he pleases to do it and for the very reason he pleases to do it.
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So God help us and may we grow in the grace and the knowledge of the one who so loved us that he gave himself for us in his name, amen.
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So I don't know how many of you have ever read that account, but I'll tell you what, that's an interesting story, don't you think?
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There's some twists and turns in this that I would think that some could write a script for a movie based on this.
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And here's the thing I really wanted to get across to us this morning, is that God uses everything and anything to accomplish his purpose.
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That you and I cannot seek to hold God to the thoughts or the manners or the activities that we think he should do, because God is free to do whatever he's purposed to do.
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I'll just go back to my silly wallet thing. I don't know why I couldn't see my wallet, but God knows.
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I don't know why I got all upset, but God knows and now
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I think I know too. But as you look at this account and as you begin to consider what's taking place, it takes place in Samaria, which was the place where the northern kingdom,
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Israel, which was comprised of the ten tribes, the northern kingdom and Judah being the southern kingdom, but Samaria was the place where much of the false worship took place.
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Much of the idol worship, much of the disobedience took place particularly for the northern kingdom of Israel.
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And what I really want us to think about for a minute is all the characters that are involved in this.
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Let's just look at them for a second. Just think about it. You have Elisha the prophet, right?
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So Elisha followed in the path of who? Elijah, right?
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So you have the prophet of God who speaks on behalf of God to the people.
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And so he's one of the characters that is inserted into this account.
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You have the king of Israel, right? Joram, who's king at this time.
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And as we will see and as you, Joram is truly upset.
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Could you imagine if you're a king and someone comes before you and they say, this woman said to me, let's eat your son, let's eat my son today and then tomorrow we'll eat your son.
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Can you imagine the king? I mean, the king of Israel, he's shot.
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So you have Elijah the prophet, you have the king of Israel, you have this officer who's inserted into this account and the officer is one who is full of unbelief, at least in my mind.
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Because he says no way to the prophet who told him that the famine was going to end the next day.
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So you have a prophet of God, you have a desperate king, you have a unbelieving officer, and then
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God inserts four lepers into the account. And don't forget, you have the army of the
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Syrians, right? And who else is involved in this? The people of Samaria, people of Israel.
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So you've got a number of characters, you've got a number of things going on here. And what's absolutely amazing, what really caught my mind and my heart as I read through this was how
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God as the great orchestra leader blends all these things together to bring them to pass, to accomplish his purpose, and ultimately to end the famine.
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Now you would think if God wanted the famine to end, he could just end it. Why all these different parts?
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Just like us in our lives. How often do we say, why all these different parts?
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Why does this have to come, and that have to come, and this take place, and that take place?
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Don't cry baby, it'll get better. So there's a lot of characters going on.
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And so I want to focus in as much as I can on the four lepers and the officer.
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But don't lose sight of the rest of the characters that are involved in this. And I think this should help us understand in our life, at least at some point, that although lives are different,
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God uses everything and everyone. That God uses the creation, that God uses the evil, that God makes use of the desperate.
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To me, they're all here. That God makes use of all things, and even as the word tells us what.
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God has made all things for himself. You know what it says in Proverbs 16?
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It says, God made all things for himself, even the wicked for the day of wrath. You know what else it says in the word?
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It says, all are God's servants. You see, one of the problems that I really believe that I have, and that we all have, is we have such a small concept of the greatness, and the immenseness, and the invincibility.
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And our thoughts of God are too small. We're really good about our own thoughts, though, but our thoughts of God are often too small.
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But as we begin to unfold and walk through this, it's amazing, isn't it, that God would make all these things come to pass, and use everything?
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Isn't it great that God can save by many or by few? Isn't it great that God is not bound to do something this way, or that way, but as he pleases, he just does?
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Let's just walk through a couple of the verses. In verse 1, Elisha comes, and hear the word of the
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Lord, thus says the Lord, tomorrow about this time a sea of fine flowers shall be sold for a shekel, and two seas of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.
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So the prophet comes, and he tells them the famine is going to end. And he tells them, if you compare what was said in chapter 6 at the end, where they were selling a donkey's head, who was unclean to begin with, they're selling a donkey's head for 80 shekels of silver.
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Best I can tell, a shekel was a couple of days' worth of work. He tells the king in verse 1, hear the word of the
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Lord, thus says the Lord, tomorrow about this time a sea of flower shall be sold for a shekel, and two seas of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.
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Now, I suppose we could have a discussion. Does Elisha know how
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God is going to end the famine, myself?
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I don't think so. I will tell you what I do think, because I think it's right there in front of us.
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He tells them when it's going to end. He says, tomorrow about this time.
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Remember the situation, there's a famine, it's so bad, they're boiling babies. And Elisha tells him, hear the word of the
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Lord, tomorrow about this time, and I take that literally, that he did not know when,
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I mean, he did not know how it would happen, but he believed what
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God had told him to tell the king. Look at verse 2, and then here's the officer, so an officer on whose hand the king leaned and answered the man of God and said, look, if the
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Lord would make the windows in heaven, and could this thing be, and he said, in fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not hear.
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He's an unbelieving servant. If God would open the windows, did not
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God open the windows of heaven and rain manna down on the people of Israel? Did not
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God bring quail when they desired meat, although he brought judgment with the quail, but nevertheless, he gave them the meat.
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If I remember right, it was what? It was a couple of cubits high worth of quail.
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Did not God part the Red Sea? One of the things that I drew from this in my own mind was how often
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I say I believe when I really don't believe, how often
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I think the world's going to end for me, and truly
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I'm doing nothing but disbelieving all the promises of God.
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So here's the officer, and he comes, and he says, no way, this is not going to happen.
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God couldn't possibly do that. So if you think about it, this is a pretty bad situation, don't you think?
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It's pretty grim. This is not your normal day.
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This situation is terrible. Could you imagine if we ever got to a place in our country where we were boiling babies to feed ourselves?
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Oh, that's Old Testament stuff. Oh, yeah? We just such, we live in such a full kind of way, don't we?
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You talk to some missionaries, you see where they've gone to some of the most desolate places in the world and see, or you could just go to a third world country and see how those people survive sometimes, and we're shocked.
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You mean they don't have DoorDash? They don't have
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GrubHub? What's the world coming to? This was a desperate situation, the officer is just full of unbelief, and let me just say this to us, unbelief will always lead us to a bad ending.
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We've not been called to unbelief, we've been called to what? To believe, to trust, to have faith, to obey.
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So he basically tells Elisha, baloney, to use one of Keith's words.
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Not going to happen. The part that's really interesting, in verse 3, now there's four lepers, and like I said, just think about these lepers for a minute.
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Being a leper was really no pleasant journey. Having leprosy was painful, it was something that caused you to be ostracized, it was something that caused you to be cast out, it was something that caused others to want to have nothing to do with you.
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I mean, these four lepers are in their own grim situation, and just look at what they think.
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Isn't it amazing, their thoughts? And tell me that you haven't thought this at times in one way or another.
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Listen just to what they say, in verse 4. If we say we will enter the city, the famine is in the city, we're going to die there.
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If we sit here, we're going to die also. Now therefore come and let us surrender to the army of the
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Syrians, if they keep us alive we shall live, but if they kill us, we'll just but die.
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Again, their situation is pretty desperate, don't you think? What I find interesting also in this account is that they came to this thought of going to the
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Syrians. That's what it says, right? If we go to the
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Syrians and they keep us alive, we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall but die. I take this in part that this is the hand of God working out in his providence to accomplish his end, and that you and I sometimes have thoughts that work in our mind that cause us to do things perhaps that we wouldn't normally do, and we need to be very careful that what we do is those things that God would have us to do, right?
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But many decisions that we make, sometimes we don't really even fully understand why we make those decisions that we make.
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Now, I'm not saying that with the Syrians, with the lepers, because they probably just figured out, hey, this is our best shot.
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This is the best we could do at this point, and heck, there's not much else left for us anyway because we're going to die.
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You know God uses desperate thoughts at times.
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God uses foolish thoughts at times. God uses confused thoughts at times.
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Remember, what does it say to us? It says God knows the thoughts that come into our mind, every one of them.
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Again, please don't misunderstand me. I am not saying that we shouldn't have godly thoughts as best we can, because God is not giving us a spirit of fear, but power, love, and a sound mind.
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But you and I would have to agree that we make decisions sometimes that are not so much contained in the word of God as far as what we should do or shouldn't do, and those decisions at times are the ways in which
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God directs our path. Just like the king, right?
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What does it say? The heart of the king is in the Lord's hand, and like a river of water, he turns it wherever he wills.
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And so they come up and they say this is our best thought at this time.
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You know, isn't it amazing that God even uses the evil thoughts of men? In Psalm 76,
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I think it's 76 .10, it says, For the wrath of man shall praise thee, and the remainder of wrath you will what?
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Anybody know? Restrain. You see, our
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God, who sits on the throne of His glory, this great, awesome, triune
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God does whatever
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He pleases to do in the manner which
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He pleases to do it. Let me read this. This came to me as I thought about this.
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In Acts chapter 4, you don't have to turn here, it says, Peter's speaking and he says, For truly against your holy servant
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Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done.
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Let me just say this to us. Though the world be shaken, though the world seems upside down, though the world seems to be going crazy,
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God rules. And you and I need to take comfort and hide underneath that truth.
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So, they have their thought.
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Verse 5, They arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians, and what does it say?
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And when they had come to the outskirts of the Syrian camp, to their surprise, no one was there.
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The Syrians, all they wanted to do was capture Samaria. To their surprise, no one is there.
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Look at verse 6, it's again to see the hand of God that is so active in this account.
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Look at what it says. The Lord had caused the army of the Syrians to hear the noise of chariots and the noise of horses and the noise of a great army, and they said to one another,
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The king of Israel is hired against us, king of the Hittites and the king of the Egyptians, to attack us.
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Now, I suppose we could discuss, did they really hear the sound of horses and chariots?
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Was it just the sound of the wind? I don't know.
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Maybe if you know better than me, you could help me out with that. But to me, it doesn't matter.
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You see, God accomplished what he purposed to do with the
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Syrian army. Remember what
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Elisha had said. Tomorrow, around this time, the famine will end.
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And again, I take that literally. And so the hand of God has an effect on the
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Syrian army. And not only that, look at verse 7. They arose and they flooded
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Twilight and left the camp intact and their tents and their horses and their donkeys, and they fled for their lives.
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And again,
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I say to us that when our God acts, he accomplishes his purpose.
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Just like his word. And I know I'm breaking away a little bit from this, but let me just say this to you this morning.
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To you who do not yet trust the Lord Jesus Christ for your salvation, his word doesn't return void.
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You can ignore it, you can reject it, you can resist it, but you will be required to give account of what you've done with God's word and God's son.
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But nevertheless, the Syrian army, they just, man, they just get out of town.
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They arose and they left everything. I must have been something. And now, here comes the lepers again.
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Tell me this isn't, to me this is so cool. So when the lepers came, in verse 8, to the outskirts of the camp, they went in one tent and they ate and drank and carried from it silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them.
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And they came back and they entered another tent and carried some of them there also and they went and hid.
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You don't realize that they have gone from, oh, well, we're going to die. Now they think they're at the
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Golden Corral. They have won the big prize.
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Let me add this, there's no telling what God will do. They have gone from desperation to, in a sense, jubilation.
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They got the whole camp to themselves, no one to stop them. And so they run and they hide and then again, they come to the second tent and the same thing happens.
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There's no one there. And then you come to verse 9 and to me, again, this is just the purposes of God being worked out.
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They said to one another, we are not doing what is right. This day is a day of good news and we remain silent.
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If we wait until morning light, some punishment will come upon us. Now therefore, come, let us go and tell the king's servant.
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They have gone from desperation to jubilation and this thought now comes to them that they can't conceal this good thing and this great, if you will, act of God's providence.
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And so it comes to their mind that they've got to do something about this.
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So verse 10, they went and called the gatekeepers of the city and they told them, saying, we went to the
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Syrian camp and surprisingly, no one was there, not a human sound, only horses and donkeys tied and the tents were intact.
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And the gatekeepers called out and they told it to the king's household inside. Verse 12 is, to me, another amazing thought given to us.
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The king arose at night and he said to the servants, let me tell you what the
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Syrians have done to us. They know we're hungry, therefore they have gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field, saying when they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive and get into the city.
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This desperate king has this thought that they're just trying to trick them.
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And I thought about that. I thought about how often we make wrong assumptions of things.
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How often it is that we, because of perhaps the situation that we see before us or because of unbelief in trusting the
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Lord, we make rash considerations. Now, probably most of you have never had that, made a rash decision or rash assumption.
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Well, there might be a few of you that are like me. We all do it, don't we?
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We all think according to, many times, the things that we see or the things that we think.
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And so he makes this wrong assumption. They're just trying to trick us.
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Verse 13, at least somebody's thinking right here. Look at verse 13.
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And one of the servants, he answered and said, please, basically he's saying, hey, wait a minute, king, hold on a second.
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Let several men take five of the remaining horses which are left in the city, and look, they may either become like all the multitude of Israel that are left, or indeed,
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I say, they may become like the multitude of Israel left from those who are consumed. Let us send and see.
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They seem to be the one, this servant seems to be the one who has some kind of sense.
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Wait a minute, king. I mean, I know it looks like this, but maybe we should check it out.
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Maybe we should not act so fast or think so fast. And so, verse 14, they took two chariots with horses, and the king sent them in the direction of the
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Syrian army, and go and see. And they went after them to the
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Jordan, and indeed, all the road was full of garments and weapons which the
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Syrians had thrown away in their haste, and the messages returned and told the king.
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This is amazing, isn't it? They found everything they needed.
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Remember what the prophet said, tomorrow the famine will end.
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Well, is this not, at least for now, the end of the famine?
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They went and they found everything. They plundered the tents in, verse 16, they plundered the tents of the
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Syrian, and so a sea of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two seas of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the
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Lord. Amazing. Listen, our
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God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above.
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All we ask, or all we think, because he's
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God, because he rules in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and because none can stay his hand, and because none can say to him, what are you doing?
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But that's not the end of this providential working of God. And like I said, he's used lepers, he's used this, he's used that, he's used unbelief, he's used the prophet, and now we get the remainder of what took place with the officer.
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Verse 17, now the king had appointed an officer on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate, but the people trampled him in the gate, and he died, just as the man of God had said, who spoke when the king came down to him.
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So it happened, just as the man of God had spoken to the king, saying, two seas of flour for a shekel, and a sea of fine wine of flour for a shekel shall be sold tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria, that the officer answered and said, now look, if the
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Lord would make windows in heaven, could such a thing be? And he had, as he had said, in fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat of it.
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So it happened to him, where the people trampled him, and he died.
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I must say, to me this was just such an amazing account of such a diverse, if you will, crowd that God uses to end a famine.
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And as I said, just like when they asked for meat, God could have just said, do you want meat?
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You got it. Let me just make three quick observations, and we'll go to the
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Lord's table. And the first one is what I have already said several times.
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God can save by many. God can save by few. And you and I ought not to seek to put
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God in a box to do things the way we think he should do them.
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Who has been his counselor? Who are we to dare to try to counsel
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God on how he should do what he pleases to do? We ought to bow.
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And as the Lord Jesus said, not my will but yours be done. Easy to say, friends?
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Well, easier to say than to do. How frail
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I am. I almost lost it because I couldn't find my wallet. Poor Andy.
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God is able and uses everything and anything to accomplish his purpose.
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You remember the story of Joseph, right? Remember what he told them? You meant it for evil.
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And they didn't mean it for evil. They didn't sell Joseph because they were in love with him.
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They sold Joseph as an evil act. At first they were going to kill him.
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Remember what Joseph said? No. You meant it for evil. God meant it for good. God meant for me to be the one to save you at a later date.
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And it was no party for Joseph, was it? A couple of years in prison after he's falsely accused of attacking part of his wife.
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The butler and the baker, one remembers and one forgets. I mean, Joseph's life wasn't easy in the prison, was it?
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He came to that point. And so I say to us, nothing is beyond the providence of God.
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And God can save by many and God can save by few. And the second point is just unbelief will never lead us to good.
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Do we really believe that? Do we really believe that unbelief is going to end?
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It's going to continue and we need to fight against it. We need to trust. We need to lean.
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We need to depend. How often we get so flustered with the things of this life and our
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God has everything in His control. Nothing is beyond Him and unbelief will never lead us to any good.
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I'll say that to you if you're not a believer in Christ. You need to come to Christ.
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There's no good outside of Christ, friends. It might appear to be good.
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It might even appear to be prosperous. Go read Psalm 73 of the prosperity of the wicked.
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Until the psalmist went in to the sanctuary of God and he saw what? He saw their end.
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Unbelief will never lead us to good. Many times God comes when things are the darkest.
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I've read that, I don't know if it's true, probably read it on Google so it must be true, that the best way to see the stars at night is to crawl down inside of a well where it's so dark because the darkness actually causes the brilliance of the light to shine.
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And how often I find myself sitting in the bottom of the well and I climb down there.
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And then the last point, friends, is this. Isn't it amazing that God uses so many different things?
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That's why I said it. God's like the great orchestra leader, isn't
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He? God's like the one who is in His eternal countenance.
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I don't know how to get my mind around it. Can you? In God's eternal counsel before the foundation of the world,
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He purposed everything that comes to pass for His glory and for His people's good.
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How big is your God this morning? How big is my God this morning? I hope this in some way is an encouragement to us this morning.
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And as we come to the Lord's table, let me ask us to consider the cost.
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The cost. God so loved the world He gave His only begotten
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Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. And that you and I ought to remember
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His person, His work, His obedience,
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His love, His steadfastness, and ultimately His coming again.
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So, let's just pray. Father again, thank
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You for Your Word. Lord, there are so many lessons in Your Word. There's so many things that You have given to us in Your Word to teach us, to admonish us, to correct us, to encourage us, to reprove us.
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So, God, help us to be students of Your Word. We thank
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You for salvation, Lord, but we also thank You for Your inspired Word which is so full and so rich.
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And cause us as Your people to grow in the grace and the knowledge of that One who so loved us that He gave
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Himself for us. In His name, Amen. As we come to the time of the table, the time of the