The Three Stooges (Part C)

They believe this man is their only hope. The man of God is the only hope. You know, we have people say, I heard when I came up in Christianity, prayer is not the last hope. Sometimes it is. Sometimes prayer is your last, you know, your last stand. It's not always to be that way, but there are times where the only thing you've got is prayer. That is the case with these guys.

They have no choice. They can keep doing what they were doing and die of thirst, or they can follow the prophet's instructions. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 2 Kings.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now let's join Pastor Rick with the conclusion of his message called The Three Stooges in 2 Kings chapter 3. Kind of dumb of Jonah to boast about his faith while he's trampling his faith at the same time.

Anyhow, Elisha is doing that, instantly running the flag of God up the pole in front of everyone. I am not the prophet of your God, King of Edom. I do not serve your God, King of Israel.

I serve, of course, the Lord of Hosts, the real, the true God. And he is, right now, the great military force. Because of him, this invading army will reach Moab. Anyway, one other thing. Invading armies have to be very big.

I think today's calculation is 20 times the size of the force you're attacking because you're going to just suffer. My point is, there's a lot of thirsty men here, and their lives are in the hand of the man of God. Three kings and their armies depend on him. So he says, as Yahweh, before whom I stand. Now his teacher, Elijah, is said to have said these exact words twice. Well, we're going to read, when we get to chapter 5, he'll say it again. He, too, is recorded to have used this twice, probably more likely in life, but it's recorded twice each. And what a testimony to both men.

To the teacher, Elijah, who succeeded in transferring this to his student, and to the student, who is not trying to say, well, you know, I'm not Elijah. I'm going to blaze my own, make my own ministry. You know, that's just, you know, some kids do that, you know, I'm going to go outside of my father's footsteps and show that I can be a man, too. Well, if that's your motive, that's probably not too good. If your motive is, well, you know, dad likes, you know, I don't know, working on cars, but I prefer to steal them.

Then, you know, maybe that's the profession. All right, I don't even need to comment on that. Could you imagine somebody, what did you mean by that?

Give me your keys, I'll show you. Before whom I stand, surely, he continues here in verse 14, surely were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, I would not look at you nor see your face. For that thing that you said, blaming God, blaming God for what you did, trying to reduce Yahweh into this jurisdiction of, this is his territory, but, you know, the God of the golden calves, or whatever is happening here.

Who's got time to sort it all out? This is God's grace, and God's grace does not violate justice. God's grace, I think this is very important, God's grace never is a violation of justice, but the proper administration of mercy to hopefully cancel out judgment. That's why God gives mercy.

And look, maybe you'll figure this out. I'm going, you know, in the story of the man that owed the great debt and he was forgiven, the idea was that he would forgive the other man that owed him less amount of money, and he did not. He was very violent towards that one and unforgiving. So when God shows grace and mercy, it is with the hope of, in return, gratitude that leads unto salvation and avoids judgment. So the prophet is saying here, when he says, I would not look at you nor see your face. I'm going to paraphrase this and see if you agree with me. I can't stand the sight of your blatant, blasphemous, bloated face. Do you think he was meaning, is that the meaning behind this? I appeal to your sense of reason.

I think it is. He's saying you're a blasphemer, you follow Satan, and I don't want to look at you. And if it weren't for Joseph, I have nothing to do with you. John the apostle says, you know, don't let these people in your house, don't even say hi to them when they're actively attacking the gospel.

As, you know, when the Jehovah's Witnesses come around, they are actively attacking the gospel. And you don't owe them something. You can say to them, listen, would you like to hear the truth or would you like me to chase you off my property?

Which one do you want? Because I'm not listening to your side. I have nothing to gain from you. You should see the look on their faces when you do that. How do I know? Call them devils.

Write out and see what happens. Anyway, and not a mean-spirited thing, but just no nonsense. They're not trying to just hurt their feelings.

They're trying to stir them up. Years ago in New York, I used to take them out all the time. I was just, you know, really waiting for Saturdays, Saturday mornings.

I'd camp out by the door. They're going to be here. And I remember this one young couple and I just laid out about why Christ is the Son of God and just chopping down there because I don't want to talk about all the blood transfusion stuff. Who do you say Jesus is?

You're not getting me all over the map just to be wrong there too. Who is Jesus? Why is he worshiped? Worship. You do this to anybody else that's wrong. Say the things about Jesus Christ, about an angel, you'll be blaspheming.

You know this. And at the end, they were speechless. And so I said to them, you're in a cult. You're a young couple.

You need to get out of this stuff. Of course, they probably got their mom and their dad in it. I don't know, but they were silent. They went away somber. I've often wondered what happened to them. You know, they didn't have tracking devices back then.

So, anyhow, back to this. All the characteristics of all the characters in the Bible are still active in people. And they have always been and they will always be until Christ buttons it all up. If someone is a heathen, if they're arrogant, if they're spiritually cowardly, if they're savage, if they're a liar, if they are into self-worship, these are characters from the scriptures. They're alive today in other people, these characteristics. If a person is devout, if they're humble, if they're brave, if they're gracious and brave in Christ, true to the scriptures, loyal.

Well, these are characteristics of men like Daniel, for instance, and others. Then they are alive today in believers. That means scripture is relevant. It will always be relevant. It has everything to do, these stories have everything to do with our lives.

They're not just, you know, a lecture on what the Bible is doing or saying. Verse 15, but now bring me a musician's. Then it happened when the musician played that the hand of Yahweh came upon him. The prophet realizes, you know what, I'm in the flesh. He's, I'm calling this guy names.

I don't want to see your face. No, actually God doing it. But he realizes he's in a bad mood and in no condition to prophesy like this.

How else do you account for this? How, how else do you say, Elijah, why do you want a musician? Because I'm telling you, these guys got my bander up and I'm about to, I'm about to, you know, go off on this guy.

No, maybe you guys, you know, maybe you don't feel this way because when you put your coat on, you got to get your wings in and you're angels out there. Well, the other group though, I think what I really think is I think all of us understand, I think all of us understand what the flesh is and this is what we're looking at. This great man of God dealing with his flesh and he asked for a musician to come bring just, and the musician is going to praise the Lord. Remember, I referenced the army of Jehoshaphat going out to battle a year earlier against these people. What was his battle plan? He put the musicians up front in front of the army. Unheard of. Why? Because they were bad musicians. No.

What did they do? They sang praises to the Lord and that's, that is what they just kept singing the praises to Yahweh. So this is Jehoshaphat. He's bringing his people with him. They're going to bring a musician up and I believe this musician is going to sing praises to the Lord. And if you come to church and you have been dealing with, you know, the challenges of driving in on the road or maybe, you know, family interactions that aren't ideal and you get into the sanctuary, well, the music is supposed to start unraveling that stuff that has twisted itself around you so that when the word of God is preached, you'll, you're a little bit more relaxed.

You're a little bit more receptive. It's not a hundred percent, depending on, depending on the individual, but it is a good practice to sing songs unto the Lord before sitting still to hear what the Holy Spirit has to say to you. And he is going to always say something. The man of God is preaching from the scripture. The Holy Spirit is always saying something. Many people leave a church because they're getting convicted too much.

They want to find a church that doesn't have conviction and, you know, don't blame the pastors if they're preaching God's word. Anyway, these three kings put the prophet in a sour mood. Jehoshaphat for allying himself with two reprobate kings. I mean, that is, you know, still he's a godly king, but they're still irritating. It's like, what are you doing with these guys?

And then of course he had to deal with the other two, and so this transition is necessary. Verse 16, and he said, thus says Yahweh, make this valley full of ditches. Verse 17, for thus says Yahweh, you shall not see wind nor shall you see rain, yet that valley shall be filled with water so that you, your cattle, and your animals may drink. Well, the fact that they went out and started digging these holding ponds is impressive, that they believe this man is their only hope. The man of God is the only hope. You know, we have people say, I heard when I came up in Christianity, prayer is not the last hope. Sometimes it is. Sometimes prayer is your last, you know, your last stand. It's not always to be that way, but there are times where the only thing you've got is prayer. That is the case with these guys.

They have no choice. They can keep doing what they were doing and die of thirst, or they can follow the prophet's instructions. You'd like to think that man, someone would say, the prophet Elijah, his god is my god in Israel, because Judah had more of a chance of having people like that. Verse 18, and this is a simple matter in the sight of Yahweh, he will also deliver the Moabites into your hands. So the prophet says, the water's going to come, there's not going to be any rain, I don't know, underground springs, dry wash filling up, however God did it, it's miraculous, and not only am I going to give you pools of water, but I'm going to have you conquer the Moabites, and nothing is impossible for God.

He's going to bring the victory. Verse 19, also you shall attack every fortified city and every choice city, and shall cut down every good tree and stop of every spring of water and ruin every good piece of land with stones. This is a scorched earth tactic. You remember Tecumseh Sherman employed this in his march to the sea. It is a common practice to break the will of the enemy to fight. Whether you like it or not, it is a tactic of war. It is God saying I want you to stop them from retaliating, I want you to hinder their economy so they're more concentrated on trying to eat than trying to build an army to retaliate.

You must hobble them as a people. Part about the trees, well that's fair game. Deuteronomy said they weren't to cut down fruit trees in Canaan, the promised land. Well they're not in the promised land, they're outside, and so God didn't cut them all down, used the wood for fortifications, you know, fuel, whatever you need it for. This is, the Lord has sort of taken off the gloves from the army, I'm going to give you water and I want you to go slaughter.

I mean some credit, a little bit, for the rhyme, no, just thought of it. Verse 20, now it happened in the morning when the grain offering was offered that suddenly water came by way of Edom and the land was filled with water. So the underground springs or the mountain water, wherever it's coming from, there it is, it's at the time the Jews in Jerusalem were offering, making the morning sacrifice, here God gives them the water. So they had to make it through the night on whatever they had. Verse 21, and when all the Moabites heard that the kings had come up to fight against them, all who were able to bear arms and older were gathered and they stood at the border. So they knew this army was on the move. Just for instance, caravans would have reported, hey, there's a large army of Jews and Edomites and they're probably coming your way.

So they knew this was going that retaliation was coming. They mustered the troops, verse 22, then they rose up early in the morning and the sun was shining on the water and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood. So they arrive at the battlefield and these pools of water, they dug these ditches out to hold the water. The Moabites were fooled by the standing water, this optical illusion. You have the reflection from the sun, you've got heat waves, the breeze across the water and it's making them think that this is blood because water's not supposed to be there. Why would you think this is water? It's the desert.

So what else could it be? It doesn't look like pools to them. It looks like the ground is covered with water. I remember I was in Anchorage, Alaska, and the place where I was staying, the house, you could see Mount McKinley, tallest mountain in North America, and at certain parts of the day, it was an optical illusion because of the atmosphere. The mountain looked like a stick. It just, or you know those lava lamps?

That's what it looked like. And it's just, I've got photographs of this. So this is long before Photoshop. So optical illusions, this is some serious stuff. They're spiritual illusions also.

We may come back to that. But they think this is blood. This has happened before in scripture and therefore it's happened before in the history of the ancients. 2 Chronicles 20, this is when Jehoshaphat had that great victory. They're thinking the invading armies, the three kings, have turned on each other and that's where this blood is coming from. They've slaughtered each other and there's precedence for that.

That's where the precedence is. A year ago, when Jehoshaphat's army, 2 Chronicles 20 verse 23, for the people of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir to utterly kill and destroy them, and when they made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, they helped to destroy one another. This was an alliance against Jehoshaphat and they wiped each other out.

In Judges chapter 7, when Gideon comes and blows the horn and cracks the lanterns, we pick it up in Judges 7 verse 22, when the 300 blew the trumpets and Yahweh said every man soared against his companion throughout the whole camp and the army fled. So my point is when they see this field of blood, they're saying, well, you know, this is not unheard of. This has happened.

This is what they've done. They've killed each other. Verse 23, and they said, this is blood. The kings have surely struck swords and have killed one another. Now, therefore, Moab to the spoil.

So it's really a trap. This is what the prophet Elijah did for them. Interesting that we don't know what an ancient battlefield with swords would look like. In modern weapons, it's a little different story and there's still a lot of bloodshed, but apparently war with swords leaves a lot of blood on the ground. And this, I think, comes, is what he's saying.

Hey, this is classic. This is a battlefield here. Verse 24, so when they came to the camp of Israel, Israel rose up and attacked the Moabites so that they fled before them and they entered their land killing the Moabites. So the Moabite army just waltzes on down to pay themselves with the spoil, which the Jews will end up doing to them. And that illusion, the fruit of their illusion is reality, that the Jews were laying in wait. So when we come to 2 Thessalonians and we read, for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe in the lie. We have that illustrated in this story.

That would make a good lesson to willing, a listening unbeliever, because you know, unbelievers won't give you a chance and then there are those that will. And there it is. Verse 25, then they destroyed the cities and each man threw a stone on every good piece of land and filled it and they stopped up all the springs of water and cut down all the good trees, but they left the stones of Kir Harasheth intact. However, the slingers surrounded and attacked it. Well, the scorched earth to, you know, just pile rocks onto good farmland certainly would have been very difficult for the people to get to undo it. You had a whole army, you know, bringing these rocks to good land. They couldn't take this city. So the slingshotters surrounded the city and just a pelting it like, you know, snipers with slingshot. You got the tombs of slingers just hurling stones to harass them and not much more to harass the garrison held out in this Moabite city. Verse 26, and when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too fierce for him, he took with him 700 men who drew swords to break through the king of Edom, but they could not. So he takes almost a battalion of men. It's a sizable force, 700 men. They're not going to be easy to hide them in night or day.

You hear them from a mile away. They try to break out and they fail. Verse 27, then he took his elder son who would have reigned in his place, that is the crown prince, and offered him as a burnt offering upon the wall and there was great indignation against Israel, so they departed from him and returned to their own land. So what's happening here is Misha the king.

You know, other kings have been defeated and not resorted to this. This savage man decides on human sacrifice of his eldest son, the crown prince, and he does it on the wall for everybody to see it, the enemies as well as his own people. I mean, the smell of the human flesh burning. I mean, this is just disgusting. This is satanic.

This is the type of religion that surrounded the Jews. Stuff like this. You know, of course, they would do this with children and here it is, you know, an adult or we assume he is an adult. Today we're surrounded by those who demand their right, they say, to kill the unborn. So we see Satan still using the same tactics. He just kind of makes it a little bit more sophisticated to make it appealing to those who want it to be appealing. This king, Misha, is doing this to his god, Chemosh.

He feels it is worth it that's going to bring the victory. The Jews, of course, Leviticus 20 prohibits human sacrifice. It says here, and there was great indignation against Israel. Well, not Judah, not Edom, Israel. Somebody is hating on Israel. Well, I think it is the Moabite people. They're, you know, they're just, this is an indignation. It's disgusting.

It's unclear in the text exactly who, but to me this is the easiest way, the sensible way, just to, you know, write the first thought. They're hating on the Jews. Now, some will say, some of the commentators say that therefore invigorated the army of the Moabites and the Jews who could not take them out.

I don't buy that. I think that the Jews were repulsed by this, and they just said, you know what, we're done here. That was a mistake. They paid for that. They were told to raze these cities, to not let, you know, to just hobble them, and because they did not, Misha goes on to regroup, and he goes attacking Israelite, Israel's villages, taking prisoners and rights on that stone, how he did this. It's because they didn't complete the victory.

This is what makes them stooges. They caused, all those deaths were for nothing. What was the outcome? So they departed from him and returned to their own land.

They failed to obey the order to ruin their ability to wage war. As a Christian, when we share our faith, we want to go all the way with it and offer them conversion. Romans 10 verses 9 and 10, again, you know, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, that God raised him from the dead, if you believe, you can be baptized.

I mean, go all the way and not half way. This is not easy. You don't just know this as Christians. It helps when someone comes along and says, you're sharing Christ with someone?

Offer them conversion, or else what is it all for? Anyway, there's always a reason to doubt the scripture, but I have learned there's always a greater reason to overcome that doubt. There are so many elements, science, historians, the archaeologists, the archaeologists that dig on, you know, biblical sites. They even have a name for this group. They're biblical minimalists. And what they do is they'll find a site that's in the Bible, and they try to just block out the Bible that has nothing to do with the Bible, that the kings mentioned in the Bible, all fictitious characters. I mean, this is on a scholastic level. There are others that will just inject subtle doubts either way. God will answer those questions if you remain subject to him.

He will clearly say, listen, this is a lie and here is why. Thanks for joining us for today's edition on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We trust that what you've heard today in the book of 2 Kings has been something to remember. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from this series, go to crossreferenceradio.com. Once more, that's crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. Our time is about up, but we hope you'll tune in again next time as we continue on in the book of 2 Kings. We look forward to that time with you, so make a note in your calendar to join Pastor Rick as he teaches from the Bible right here on Cross-Reference Radio.