So the king said, “Go and see where he is, that I may send men to capture him.” On receiving the report, “Elisha is in Dothan,”He said, “Go and see where he is, that I may send and get him.” He was told, “Behold, he is in Dothan.”And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.And he said, Go and see where he is, that I may send and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.
3 sermons cite this verse
So the servant is panicked, so he wakes up Elisha and says, what are we gonna do? We're surrounded right now. And Elisha said, do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them. Huh. He says, there's more of us than there is of them. Now, you put yourself in the servant's shoes, you're like, there's two of us. And there's a whole army with horses and chariots. Like, if you're Elisha's servant, you're thinking, the old guy's lost his mind. Like, he may be a prophet, but he's no mathematician. Like, there's two of us and a whole lot of them. Then listen to what happens. Verse 17. Then Elisha prayed and said, Oh, Lord, please open his eyes that he may see. So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. So Elisha prays, God, help him to see what he can't see. …
… There's a lesson in this. It was not only who said, don't be afraid, Elisha the prophet, but where he said it. In 2 Kings 6.13, they were looking all around for Elisha, and they said in verse 13, go find out where he is so I can send men and capture him. The report came back. he is in Dothan. I almost called this sermon The Devil Went Down to Dothan. I thought that would be a cool thing to call it, but I knew it could also be corny, and I didn't want to take the risk, so I just called it Keep It in Context. When you read the Bible, there's a specific place and time, the geography. All of these details in the Bible carry rich meaning. The place called Dothan is not a very famous place in the Bible. In fact, it is only mentioned twice in all of Scripture. This is once, and another occurrence is found a thousand years earlier. There was a dysfunctional family in the book of Genesis, a dad named Jacob who had a son that he really loved named Joseph. …
God had his soldiers. And the point that I want to make is this, that when you're afraid and when the devil intimidates you and blusters against you, you need to understand that the angel of the Lord encamps round about those that fear him. And what we need to do when we're afraid is to say, Lord, open my eyes. Help me to see, Lord, that you are with me. So many times we're in danger and may not even know it. So many times God may send an angel escort to pick us up, to take us and take care of us. One time I was in serious danger. I mean very serious danger. And that danger passed. I was in physical danger. And I went to the Word of God and it said, you will not die but live. And you will bear testimony of me. God just took that word right off the page and gave it to me. But the strange thing was that several days after that, I received three letters, one from down in Mississippi, one from in Georgia, and one from another place right here. …