The reading of God's Holy Word we find in the book of Psalms, Psalm 91. Psalm 91 is what we read as scripture reading. Hear the word, he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. Surely he will save you from foul snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. If you make the most high your dwelling, even the Lord who is my refuge, then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra. You will trample the great lion and the serpent. Because he loves me, says the Lord, I will rescue him. I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. So far the reading of the word. The text we find in 2 Kings. Text for the sermon this afternoon, 2 Kings 6. first 15 to 17. Israel is besieged different times different occasions by the king of Syria. And that leads to the action to capture Elisha. And then we read in verse 15, when the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots has surrounded the city. Oh, my Lord, what shall we do? The servant asked. Don't be afraid, the prophet answered. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them. And Elisha prayed, Oh, Lord, open his eyes so he may see. Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked, and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. So far the reading of our text. Congregation of the Lord. In my home congregation of the Conform Church of Addercliffe, we've had, in the last three years, some serious experiences. Some of you may be familiar with it. It was quite an experience for myself and family when we, as ministers' family, moved in, and one serious thing after another happened. Now, I'm not here just to convey some stories and to tell you that we had some serious trials, but I'm using it as a lead-in to maybe awakening you to some of the memories of serious events that may have taken place in your life, illness or disease or threats. Different occasions, people may ask you, so what's the purpose of that? What's wrong with you? What's wrong with us? That's the question was asked in our midst. Is this something that's supposed to be happening? Do we have to take heed and take the warning? Some had difficulty with that question. Others would shrug the question off as not worthy of an answer. And so I'm here this afternoon to alert you to the fact that there is a way to deal with that. What have events in the past, recent or more removed in history, done for you? When illness or disease or danger showed itself or when there was a disappointment or something seriously going wrong, what did you do with that? What has it brought out in you? In fact, What has it added to your development? Our text shows us that these events can add a lot to your development in the faith. Our text speaks about a heavenly army. You know the story. I do not necessarily have to repeat that for you in detail. But what are we going to do with that story? We who live in 2011, the third millennium, a technical age in which there are really no secrets. If you want to be wise like the rest of the world, you Google whatever you need to know. And if you don't watch it, you might be presenting a speech, and if you plagiarize, people will, while you're reading, find on their blackberries whom you're quoting. time frame we live. And now we're going with this story of an angel army, a totally different direction. We are almost disconnecting, so it seems. What do you do with a text that speaks about heavenly soldiers that protect and guard you? While we're so connected with the rest of the world that we can nearly explain everything. What is this? Is this a message from a different time? Is it something that belongs to long ago? Something we believe to be true, but for them and for them, but not necessarily for us? Or is this in your mind like a story from a different world? Like a story from a mission field. You may be familiar with some of these stories. Missionaries that are going out to do the work of God sometimes end up in a situation where they will enter a village where no one has ever seen a white man, let alone heard the gospel. And the different times these stories come back to the home churches that these missionaries enter that village, with fear for their lives, and eventually they get connected, and they get to talk, and they ask, why did you not take us down? You are known as headhunters. Upon which the elders of the village replied, well, we wanted to, but we couldn't, because you had all these guys with you. Have you ever heard such a story? What do you do with a story like that? Do you think in our text it's the same kind of story? You accept it when it's far from home, far away in time? If I would ask you if this story happened today, what would you do with it? We as modern Christians have in a way very clearly problems with talking about heavenly army that possibly could protect and guide us. How often is it now that we, as people who read the Bible, read these stories about miracles and so on as things that you have to believe. And then it's like the emphasis is on you have to believe it. You don't make a problem out of it. But you kind of leave it, you know, it's like That's the kind of stuff, well, it's there, but what do we do with it? And we throw our hands up in the air and say, okay, we don't deny it, but for the rest, we just leave it alone because it doesn't help us anyway. Well, if that was what we are supposed to do with the text, then we're on a dangerous path. First of all, we would be selecting what we think is important, but that's not the worst. The worst is that we would skip the parts that don't make sense to us. We skip the parts that we don't understand and then we essentially have rewritten the definition of what believing is. Because in believing is taking everything we can understand, nothing more. Well, that is not believing. Church is the modern definition of believing. If I don't understand it, I won't believe it. If it doesn't make sense, I won't accept it. But that is not what you came to church for. That's not what living by faith is all about. You only do what your mind tells you to do. We know our minds to be corrupted, so how can we make a good selection for one? And how can we express to God that we believe him if we make our mind our master? It would not give me comfort. if I had to go by what I could reason out myself. The text offers us much comfort for each and every one of us. And that is what we will see as we go through the text. I preach to you the word of God in this way. God groups his armies of angels around his children. God groups his armies of angels around his children. We see three things coming out of the text. As you follow the verses, you see that you first see the little faith of the servant. In the second place, you see that there's the word of God's prophet. And in the third place, there's the gift of spiritual insight. Well then, the text that we're dealing with shows us the way of faith. And there you have, in fact, in a nutshell, what this text teaches us. That without faith, you cannot see the works of God. I say that right off the hop, because there are many people who say that this is not one of those stories that you maybe should relegate to the realm of fairy tales. It's very exceptional. What are you going to do with it? Well, it may be true that all that happened is exceptional, but that does not automatically make it untrue, as if it didn't happen. And it's clear from the fact that the context of the text shows a lot of things which are very concrete. These soldiers that are sitting there threatening Dothan are very concrete. The fear of the servant is as palpable as anything. And because of that, it should not be too hard to accept the reality of these heavenly troops as well. In fact, it's more like this. Ask yourself a question. Why would God put this story in the Bible? Why would he show his history with His people in this way, if it was not for the very purpose that we should believe it. God's not trying to make it hard on us, but He's teaching us. He's teaching us how real it is when faith works in the life of believers, so that we may learn to see our life in faith. by the eyes of faith. For sure it may be exceptional, but it is not untrue what happened. And to see that and to take that with us, it is worth it and it is also necessary that we go through part of the history. The history in which that angel army shows up to protect. The prophet Elisha lives in a time that the people of Israel experience a very tough crisis. It's in the days of Jehoram, son of Ahab. And in those days, it says early on that the king of Syria was waging war against Israel. Well, that kind of war we should think of not as a big war. It's not like a battlefield and two armies just running into each other and trying to kill each other. There was never a big fight. There's never a defined battlefield. We don't read it anywhere, and that's not what it says. It's like this. The king of Assyria would camp here and then there. And the purpose of it is that they would steal the crops. So sneak in, do a flash visit, and take the food away. It's like little invasions to rob and steal. Under the stealth of night, they would come in and do it. It's like what poachers do when they come in and steal what doesn't belong to them and disappear under the stealth of night. Such things have taken place more often than you can think of the time of the judges. In those days also there were these flash visits to grab the food. You know the stories of the judges who were actually afraid of that initially. Gideon is one of them. That was then. This is different in the sense that now it went with royal approval. The king of Syria organized it. The king was Ben-Hadad III, the one you read about in 2 Kings 13, for instance, in verse 3. He is the successor to the king that had a general by the name of Naaman, who was a leper. Naaman was very thankful. because he found a total recovery from his leprosy. But of the thankfulness, nothing was left with the king or his successor towards the people of Israel, or the God of Israel for that matter. The king of Syria takes a different course. He supports, he puts his royal consent on these trips to steal from Israel. Little guerrilla actions. I got stuff that you can get a hold of, but you know it's happening and it could come out of the woods just like that. And the purpose of that was not to kill people directly. It had everything to do with trying to bring Israel economically on its knees. If there's nothing to eat, people will die eventually. They will get upset. And then it's time to come in and to take over. So that's the background here. It's a very discouraging situation for the King of Israel and for his people. Because there is barely a clearly defined line between war and peace. All kinds of war action, flash visits took place. And that's why verse 8 says that the king of Syria was at war with Israel. But we know that he was not that successful. Because the prophet of the Lord, Elisha, tells King Jehoram, and it says, time and again, where the camp of the hostile troops will be. That is, special care of the Lord for Israel. Now, Israel did not live that eagerly in the ways of the Lord. Jehoram was just like his father Ahab, one who did not really serve the Lord. They are on record as doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord. They didn't deserve it. But the Lord is teaching his people, as he's teaching us as well. The Lord is willing to show that he is in control of all things. He shows his power via Elisha. And so Elisha has to tell whenever the enemy is going to be expected. And Elisha does so quite a few times. And in that way the king of Israel is able to concentrate his troops and to thwart the attacks. And so these attempts to weaken Israel fall flat. The plunderer is prevented from plundering. The king of Assyria trying to weaken Israel economically is unsuccessful. The Lord takes care of his people. When the king of Assyria has his camp and tries to plunder, every time he runs into this, there's nothing here. He can't weaken Israel. He cannot get in the door, in the back door you might say. It's because of the words of the prophet. But the king of Assyria doesn't know that. And he's not pleased with the situation because he knows what the point is and it's not happening. The whole situation is frustrating experience. He looks ridiculous in the eyes of his own men. What kind of a royal consent is that? We're not making any difference. And so he wants to have it clear. Is there a spy? Is there a betrayer? Is there someone who lets the word out before we get there? They have a big meeting. All the generals come together. Let's straighten this out once and for all. Who's the one who's talking? And everybody's like, it's not me, it's not me, it's not me. There is no spy, there's no betrayer among the men of the king of Assyria. But one knows that there's a prophet in Israel, Elisha, the man of God, he's called for a reason. The man of God tells the king of Israel what the king of Syria is saying. It even is recorded that he tells him what he says in his bedroom. That's pretty private. There's a man who knows that. We don't know if he knew about Elisha per se, but it's not unlikely that the slave girl of Naaman was known by somebody and that that man knew about the prophet. The name of Elisha may be very well known in Syria. So finally it's clear what's going on. So action should be taken. Let's determine who the residence is of this prophet, Elisha. And then a great army is sent out to Dothan. It's not too difficult because Dothan is situated at an intersection of two major routes, trade routes. And so it's not difficult to get quickly in the neighborhood of Dothan to catch the man of God as soon as he comes out of town to eliminate that leak. This doesn't aside, it's striking to see that even though the king of Israel does not really acknowledge Elisha, the king of Syria in a roundabout way does. He doesn't send some special elite troops like a bunch of Navy SEALs, as you can drop them into a compound like the Bin Laden compound. He sends a big army that's commensurate with the power he assigns to Elisha. For a man of God is not like a normal human being, he thinks. He's got extraordinary power. So this great army comes because the king of Assyria knows this is not a small thing. The king of Israel laughs about the words of the prophets. The king of Syria immediately attaches great value to it. How striking the difference. Who are the ones cared for? the ones who don't believe the Word of God. Now let's return to the main line. So the besieged is laid around Dothan. It's closed off, sealed off, no one can go in or out. Then we have the morning where we start to read the text. The first thing that the servant of the man of God sees is just that. With his very own eyes he very clearly sees that it's impossible to get through. There's horses and chariots and a great multitude. It's impenetrable. And then the servant is terrified. There's a panic. He's not just having a little inquiry. He says, Oh my Lord, what shall we do? My Lord, we have a serious problem. You want to know the flavor of this? He's saying, Lord, we are basically with our heads in the noose. It's just a matter of when the trapdoor is going to fall that we will die. What is there yet to do? In congregation, it is important, it's necessary that we weigh the words of the servant carefully. For it is so very human what he says. How would you react when you're stuck? Oh boy, we've got a problem. How do we get out of here? It's very human, but it's also very characteristic of little faith. The servant doesn't see any escape, and whatever he believed was too weak to handle that situation. What he sees, mighty power of horses and chariots, It just shreds his trust. It's very human. It's also little faith. In fact, it's unbelief. And for him it was very serious, in fact, because this is not the first thing that he saw that was a bit of a different situation. The servant had constantly experienced how the Lord takes care. Elijah had done many things already. And he had shown he was an instrument in the hand of God to show that the power of God is great. That God does take care of his people. It is pure unbelief when the servant says, oh boy, we're in trouble now. Because the servant was the one who had to warn the king of Israel whenever there was an attack. Every time when there was hostile action to be expected, he was the one who had to carry the message. He had to bring the proof of God's care to the king. He had to run for the prophet, to the king of Israel. And what he had to say was, God cares enough for you that he will tell you where the next attack will be so that you do not have The kitchen cupboard there. Not the only thing. Beginning of chapter 6 we read that the head of an axe had fallen in the water. He was there. He says that the Lord cares for his people. That's how the Lord does it brothers and sisters. The Lord is not just caring for us in big schemes and grandiose things that we don't get. The Lord takes care of us in the details. This prophet's son didn't lose the head of an axe. We would go to Canadian Tire and pick another one up out of the home hardware. But God took even care of the tools of the man. It's like the Lord taking care of your tractor, your hammer, your computer, so that you can do your work. Very concretely, the servant has noticed time and again that God cares. We even have the feeding of the 5,000 there. The Lord took care in the details. The man had enough reasons to trust that God did and would provide. If only he had gone through the concrete history that preceded this event. It's not a story that is vague and somewhere out there, far away in time and far away in space. What is revealed are reasons to trust that God will help. As far as that's concerned, it's good that we ask ourselves the same questions, as in how would we react? When we have to face danger, how strong is our trust in the Lord? When you are threatened, when you are scared, when your life is in danger, when you are touched by illness or by disease, When you suddenly get a tap on the shoulder, you plan your day, and it goes different. You end up in a hospital. When you get into an accident, well, you expect it to go to work. Let's get away from the physical. Let's go to the spiritual realm. What do you think? when society may glide through waves to drown out the church? When there's a lot of noise in the world to drown out the clear message of the gospel? What do you think when Christians are threatened as being the ones that have done everything wrong? When we're blamed for all the mishaps in the course of time? When you have to go the lonely road of being Christian, a professing Christian, and you consider it to be the outcasts. To make it very concrete, what do you parents think when you have to have to let your children go in traffic? When we have to let our children go into the world and expose them to the dangers of society. What is in your heart then? How do you react in those kind of situations, if there is all of a sudden danger? When you see trouble, is there still that trust in the Lord? Or do we have legal faith too? Is the servant saying what we are thinking? Oh Lord, what shall we do? I know. It is very human to talk like that. But where is the confidence? Where is the faith? So if nothing else, This part of God's Word challenges us about the day-to-day situations. Situations as you take your key and turn on your car and go to work, when you put your children on a bus, when you let them go to university, when you read the paper, when you watch the news, when you listen to the radio, And you can call for a doctor. There's something we need to test further. And you can multiply your examples, brothers and sisters, and please do. But in all those situations, the question is, where do we put our trust? That's how we go on to the next point, because there is the word of God's prophet. Apparently what the servant says is not quite right. It's very human, but it is and remains unbelief. It's little faith. And especially for him, a servant of the prophet, the man of God, to be like this is not necessary. It's not right to be so scared. Because he was the man who had to bring the message to the king. He personally had to tell the king that God did not want his people to be plundered. He is allowed, he's given the privilege of bringing the message that God cares for us, body and soul. And related to that, you get the exact response of the prophet. There's a reaction and it is, don't be afraid. It might seem that the prophet Elisha is trying to calm him down a little bit. Like a father would possibly do for a child. It's not that bad. I'll take care of it. Don't worry about it. Is that what it is? Kind of like an, it's not that bad kind of a comment? Is it like, the servant is a little bit excited, but the prophet is as cool as a cucumber? Well, that's not really what it is when the prophet says, don't be afraid. Because what the prophet says is directly linked to the unbelief of the servant. Over against that fear of the servant, Elisha says, don't be afraid. Over against that unbelief, Elisha says, in fact, believe. Over against that lack of confidence, Elisha says, have more confidence. Believe. It's what the Lord always does with His people. Think of Joshua, who is facing the big conquest of Canaan. He says, only stand firm, believe, be courageous, believe in Me. It's what the Lord always does with His people. When He wants to encourage them, He says, don't treat this with unbelief, but believe in Me. Don't be afraid. If you rephrase it, you can say, believe for those who are with us are more than those who are with them. Elisha says, believe that God is mightier than the king of Syria. And that is the issue at hand. The issue is to believe. And especially on that point, we have to look very precisely. For the first thing that the prophet does is, well you haven't noticed it, but I'll highlight it for you. The prophet It's the most important thing. Did you realize that? We tend to look at verse 17 and say, oh, there you have it. That's the specialty of the story. That's not. The point of the story is in that speaking of the prophet. It's not that the prophet says, look around you. Don't you get it, what I'm seeing? Then you have the proof. The point of the story is not first that the miracle of the angels is revealed. No, the servant has to do what he always had to do, namely listen to the word of God spoken by the prophets. And what do you do with the word of God? You have to believe it. There's an order here. And the order is not first seeing, then believing. If I understand it, I will accept it. No, the order is Believe. Apparently, that's the way to go. He who wants to be saved by God has to believe. That is the point. How difficult can it be? It hasn't always been that way. When God speaks, you listen to Him. Church services could be done with your eyes closed, for that matter. Because it is about listening. That is how you function in the covenant with God. You have to believe God on His Word. And that counts for us too. When it comes to all the situations that I referred to before and all the examples that you added to it in your mind, in all these everyday situations, when it comes to trusting in the care of the Lord, then you should not look in the first place for miraculous examples that you may have heard of, things that you know from so-and-so who has a cousin who was so-and-so, and before you know it, you get a long story. What you need to do, what we all need to do, is this. God speaks in His Word. And this is the Word you have to believe. That's where it starts every day. That's where it ends. It's not about the things we have seen or the stories we've heard from other people that confirm our mind in things. It's not what we have heard about once upon a long time ago somewhere in a faraway place, and hopefully it might have happened to us too. That's not the most important thing. Remember what the Lord Jesus says. The people come for the miracles and everything eventually says, I'm going to stop this. I'm going to speak to you directly with the words of God. The Word of God, the Bible, tells us that God takes care of His children. That is the most important thing. And what God says is sufficient. It's a thing for the servant. He has to hear the Word of God from the Prophet's mouth. It's the same for us. It's not about human experiences. It's not about examples that we might know. It's about God's Word that speaks about His care. Remember, the servant's eyes were not opened yet, but God took care of his faith by speaking to him. He can close his eyes, but use his ears. He has to hear that God is almighty. In exactly the same way, we hear it too. And we can hear it, that God protects, that God guides. That's why you take this Bible at the beginning of every day and you read it. You want to have a good start of the day? A day filled with confidence? Listen to your God. Listen to our Heavenly Father. For He will tell you that in Christ you have everything you need for body and soul. And then you can go on in your day. Then you are reminded by the Word that God means what He says. When you were baptized, God didn't show you something. You probably wouldn't even have seen it, because you were too little. But were words spoken. And what did God say at your baptism? That He wants to provide you with all good and avert all evil or turn it to your benefit. Well, there you have it. God wants you to believe Him. Then we shouldn't say, well, that's easier said than proven. Some people have said of Elisha that he had the easy road as well because he saw already what the servant didn't see and that's why he could talk easily and it was like he got the advantage of having the inside scoop. But that's not what the story tells us. Because the prophet is labeled here as a man of God. It is God who says, don't be afraid. Don't fill yourself with unbelief, but listen to me. The man of God must speak as a prophet must speak. He has the orders of God as he had so often. And a servant has to believe and he should not fear. That's a word that was very necessary in those days. Because the people didn't listen to God. They listened to their own minds. They were convinced that they could make it in life if they did it their way. So the kings, led by example, they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And this is how they ended up. in the covenant of God where they were so richly blessed. They scorned the communication that God had with His people and so they fell out of the communion with God. God has spoken so clearly and He showed it so clearly that He protects His children, that He takes care of them all the way. Just bring to mind the words of Moses, they may enter a land where they will find everything ready to go. They don't have to work before they can eat, but they can eat and then go to work. That's how they may enter the land of Canaan. That's how the Lord takes care of all his people. That's the way for us, too. God says, listen to me first. Believe my word. When danger or threat comes your way, don't look at danger. Look at God. And don't think, well, that's a good message for a Sunday afternoon, but when it is that far, I'll see. But believe it. That's why you came to church. To be strengthened in your faith. So believe it. With an upright heart. Believe it as we expressed it at the beginning of the service. Just like the congregation of Acts did. They were threatened. You may know how they were threatened by the Sanhedrin and all the leaders of Israel. The apostles are thrown into prison and then they pray. What do they say? They don't say, Lord, we are stuck. They praise God for who He is. They praise Him for having created heaven and earth. You can do everything. You can also do this. Help us now. As we see that The world is banding together against your anointed one. They quote Psalm 2 and everything. What do they do? They say God can do it because he made all things. He can take care of it too. And so we have said at the beginning of the service with the words of Psalm 124 when he said, our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. That's where you start. You start with God and you listen to him. And then we move on because there's also spiritual seeing. The prophet Elisha spoke the words of God. That was enough. The servant did not need any more. But then Elisha may do more. Elisha is allowed to pray. But his servant may see in which he has to put his trust. That's a special privilege, that you may see what you believe. Not too many people get that privilege to see how God protects them. They indeed have to go by believing. The Lord Jesus even says so. Blessed is he who believes and has not seen. But Elisha knows the privilege because he himself had the privilege of seeing how Elijah was taken up to heaven. Well, this is the same kind of privilege. There's a prayer that the servant may see what's going on. Now, of course, it doesn't mean that the servant was blind. But it means that the servant with his physical eyes, these little blinkers that everyone has, two of, that he may get sight on the spiritual reality that is taking place. The spiritual reality is this, that God in His way protects His children according to His promises. God is on the side of His children. And the servant may see that very concretely. We read that he saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire. It's not too hard to imagine what it looked like. If you think of Dothan as a city located on the hilltop, almost like a bowler hat with a city on top, and then a ring of mountains around it. On the outside mountains, that's where you find the horses and the chariots of the king of Syria. And that's where the servant sees. And then God grants him to see that inside that ring, there's another army of horses and chariots of fire. It's not a normal army. It's an army of fire. It has a special meaning. Horses and chariots are mentioned more often in the Bible. Psalm 68, we sang from it. It says that the church of God are tens of thousands and thousands of thousands. The Lord has come from Sinai into a sanctuary. It's God's mighty army. And we know it for a fact. Because it also says that they are of fire. Now when you go through the Bible and you read about fire, you will find that every time when the Bible speaks about fire, it's a sign from heaven. Remember, outpouring of the Spirit, tongues as of fire. Now go back. When God executes judgment, he sends fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. When God shows himself to be there for his people and to take care of their needs in the desert, he comes in fire on Mount Sinai. And then he continues to go with them with the pillar of cloud and fire. The fire of the Lord came from heaven to execute punishment on those who were rebellious in the days of Moses. So when it says, horses and chariots of fire, it means that this army is from heaven and God is making separation Between those he loves and those he hates. Elisha knew exactly what was going on. Because Elijah went up to heaven in this way. A special vehicle of God was used. A church of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated Elijah from Elisha. That's how God made separation and took his faithful servant and brought him to heaven. God said, I can take care of this. Now that's what we see here too. The church and the horses are on fire. There's a host from heaven. There's a host from God, if you want to narrow it down a little bit more. The army of God protects God's children that is visible. with a servant of Elisha, an army of angels, an army to protect. It's right there before the very eyes of the servant. Brothers and sisters, this is reality. The whole story is just a real story. This is a reality in such a way that even until this very day, it is reality. We don't have to work with a miracle as it happened in those days only. It's not so that we have to say, well, 2 Kings 6 is true, but it was true for those people. It doesn't work for us anymore. It's not like a one-off miracle, like something happens once and never repeats itself. In fact, it's not really a miracle. It's a reality. It's as real as God is real. It's as real as God's Word speaks about God's care for His children. This is not only an example of precious ancient history. It's not so that now that we have Google and everything else, we don't need it anymore. And it's that people then did need a miracle to encourage one another and maybe to take care of some of the things they couldn't explain. This is not something that happened in a place far off in time or far off in space. I know it's easy to reason like that. It seems that things like this don't happen that often in our day anymore. But is that really true? I think we should seriously question if things like this don't happen anymore. Perhaps we should go back to the primary question. Is it that we maybe don't notice it? Is it that our eye of faith is maybe not trained on these things? We have to say it is reality. And as God is real, this is still reality for us today too. The situation in which it took place was very concrete. There was a concrete threat, there was a concrete help. There was the real God and there was real people. And that is the way it goes. But this kind of reality you don't see with your physical eye. A host of angels are very real. And we don't believe what the Roman Catholic Church says, that everybody has a little guardian angel parked on their shoulder that sort of travels along and whispers in your ear every once in a while. We don't believe that. But that there are hosts of angels to protect God's children, we do believe that. Because we believe the Word. It's founded in the Scriptures. What we read here in 2 Kings 6 is proof of it. But there are many more places to prove it. There was a child of God who experienced the same thing. Hosts of angels served him after he was tempted in the wilderness. The Lord Jesus Christ is described in Matthew 4 verse 11, and it was not a one-off. Because the Lord Jesus later on says in Matthew 26, when he is in a real difficult situation in the Garden of Gethsemane, he says, and I quote, My father at once could put more than twelve legions of angels at my disposal. Well, if that is not true, how come that the one who says, I am the way, the truth and the life, would tell us this? In fact, if you quote the Old Testament, what do you think of the legions of angels that met Jacob when he was preparing himself to meet Esau? Jacob meets them. And then we read in Genesis 32 that he says, this is the camp of God. That's military language. He's talking about the armies. The armies of God. This is the camp of God, he says about the angels. Remember what I said about Acts 4? Well then, God sends His angels after the dangers threaten the congregation there. In Acts 5, when the apostles are in prison, the angels come to free the apostles from prison. And God does it again in Acts 12, verse 7. Same situation. God again leads them out. What do you think we read in Psalm 91? He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up on their hands. so that you won't strike your foot against a stone. We read that in Psalm 91, and that's a very concrete psalm, very concrete trouble, but also the guard of the angels of God is very concrete. Sometimes the questions are asked, what's happening? What's the matter? Why is there trouble? Well, we don't have to stumble with those questions. We don't have to be stupefied. We can say with confidence, That in this life, with all its brokenness, God protects us. God is not far away. He is close by. And according to His promises revealed in His Word, He keeps His children in His care. But understand it well. It may never come that far that you say, well, now I have the Word of God on it. I can live a reckless and careless life. I can speed down the road with a hand of an 80 and get away with it. You can do that. The Lord Jesus Christ was presented with the words of Psalm 91 by the devil. And the devil wanted him to jump off the highest point of the temple. And he says, well, God has said so. He will command his angels concerning you, and wouldn't he, to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. The devil tried to be smart by quoting the Bible. But then the Lord Jesus Christ says, it is also written, do not put the Lord your God to the test. In other words, you don't live careless and reckless. You don't try God out. And in the same way, the following is true. When there's an army of God around you, then there's not a guarantee that nothing ever is going to happen to you. Having guards of angels does not mean that you cannot become ill. It doesn't mean that you cannot end up with trouble facing you. Mark this well, brothers and sisters. What we think is trouble may not be trouble in God's book. And angels are not there to make us untouchable. They don't give us immunity for trouble. Angels are ministering spirits, but they don't minister to us per se, but it's always to God's glory. So they are not necessarily expelling what we think is trouble. But God puts his angels in your life. Because they are the ones who will keep you so that you can fulfill your task before God. That maybe through trouble, through illness, through the threats of danger, bring to mind the words of Psalm 66, God will purify us as through fire. And what the angels are doing is lifting us up on their hands so that that will of God, which is that you will meet Him in eternity, that that goal can be met. That you can prepare yourself for that meeting in this life. To meet God when He calls its time. To meet Him without fear. That is the end goal. And to prepare for that is happening in this life. And as you prepare for that, you may go through trials and tests. But the angels will be there to carry you. So that when God calls the time for you, they will carry you to Abraham's side. They bring you to heaven. That's what the Lord Jesus says in Luke 16. That is the ultimate purpose of God for you. that you reach the point of meeting your Heavenly Father. And God wants you to get there. And therefore, He gives you His army of angels to protect you all the way through this life. It's very concrete. It's very real. As God has promised in Jesus Christ, nothing can separate us from His love. He will protect your body and your soul, so that you, body and soul, can meet Him But the only thing that you have to keep on remembering is this. God taking care of you, you only see by faith. Amen.