Pleasant Situations Badly Need God’s Salvation

2 Kings 2:19 “And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren.”

2 Kings 2:20 “And he said, Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him.”

2 Kings 2:21 “And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the LORD, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.

2 Kings 2:22 “So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.”

Morning! Haven’t written anything for a while, but a wonderful story in the Bible from the life of Elisha today.

In this story, the man of God has arrived on the scene. Someone with the Spirit of God who knows the word of God, the only hope for Jericho… and you can be darn sure, the only hope for our country.

Jericho had been destroyed years ago, but they had rebuilt Jericho… but for all their attempt to rebuild and put humpty dumpty together again… there were things they couldn’t fix.

There are things wrong about us which no man can fix. Period. In Jericho, the water was bad, and what city can run without water or with contaminated water. What good is water that cannot be used to a thirsty soul? There’s something in the water in our country that’s for sure, and sadly, in our churches… there’s something wrong in it which must be fixed, and can only be fixed God’s way.

Doesn’t matter how hard you try, how much politicians promise, and how many blessings false ministers of God conjure up… you can’t inject and infuse the blessing of God and flow of the Spirit of God and the joy of forgiveness of sins and eternal life into a life yet still very firmly under the curse of sin.

Them telling Elisha the situation is pleasant is like us. We take the edge of a bad situation don’t we. I mean… I’m not that bad a sinner. Sure, I’m not perfect and there are some things not right, but I’m a pretty good guy!

… just get honest about how bad the situation is. A lot of people mask how bad the situation truly is with the pleasant aspects. How many people commit suicide in our society and nobody even knew how desperate things were below the surface.

You may be a pretty good guy or girl, and your church may be pretty friendly and welcoming, and your life may be pretty in line with expectations and pleasing on the eye… but none of that means the pure river of the water of life flowing through your life at all. You can be as lost, unsaved, under the curse of sin as anyone else, and I pray you follow the formula set out simply in this story for how a pleasant but ugly situation can be fixed.

In case you haven’t realized yet, we have an epidemic of unhappiness and anger in our country. People are angry at God, people are angry about not getting what they feel entitled to. People are worried, fearful, wearing themselves out running this little economic hamster wheel our ungodly nation has volunteered itself too. It’s not going to get better without the Lord, the further you move away, the worse it will get. All the signs are there and continuously stacking up. The Bible says they that hate me love death. We love abortion and euthanasia, we celebrate death both sides of the life curve. You can try and make death smell and look better, but death is as horrible as ever.

Look, no two ways about it, I’d love to see you get saved, and if you don’t like the thought of me being right well you don’t let me be your stumbling block. A guy called Zedekiah in the Bible didn’t get saved because he was afraid what others who were already saved, who he’d criticized and thought he was better than, what they’d say about him also converting to the truth of God’s word. How utterly stupid!

Anyway let’s get to the text… there was a problem at Jericho, the water was “naught”… that doesn’t mean there was no water, it just meant the water was no good for use, it was contaminated.

You can go to many churches and find “the water is naught”… sure, all the vestiges and “form” of religion and faux godliness in the world could be there, although even that disguise is barely in place in pretense anymore… but any substitute for the water of life that our Lord Jesus Christ alone can give leaves a hungry thirsty soul desperately wanting.

But they’ve gone to the right man. Elisha is the man of God. And that’s where the fix is going to come from. Politicians and new political candidates with new fake promises are not going to fix our nation. Christianity is not a political movement, nor trying to convert unsaved people to the redemptive features of saved semblances of morality… healing is going to come through a wholesale unconditional surrender to the truth of God’s word.

And Elisha, at the start of his journey as God’s man, comes to Jericho… that cursed city… and people come out to tell him how good it is, and please fix the bad. I mean, how pleasant can the situation really be where the water cannot be drunk or used… and the ground is totally barren. You don’t bring any goodness to the table when you sitdown with God.

The condition of Jericho reveals the state of the lost… man at his best state is altogether vanity. If you are ever going to get fixed you will have to let God have an honest look into your life without being offended, and lay it bare before God, and see it as God sees it.

Stop looking at others and fixing others problems when the problem is you. But you cannot be fixed or healed before seeing things as they truly are in your own heart and life. The problem isn’t out there, thought it may be, the problem is you. I know your favorite psych won’t tell you that. Stop being so offended. If it’s any help, we are all dirt level sinners, the best of us the Bible says the righteous are scarcely saved… and the highest dust of the world that Proverbs speaks of is still just dust.

Read Jeremiah 18 about the potter and the clay, you know how far apart the clay is from the potter? That’s how far apart we are from God, we are nothing like some inert dirt is to the eye, hand, and intelligence of the potter, let him shape your life, let him tell you what’s what. And the honest situation when we truly behold it “as my lord seeth” it’s not so good is it. Lord, save me.

A pleasant life can have no flow. A pleasant life can be very barren. A pleasant life can be oh so unfruitful of the Spirit of God. The promised land… Canaan… it was a land FLOWING with milk and honey, when you get saved the Bible says out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But it can’t flow out if it didn’t go in first.

They say to Elisha Behold “I pray thee”. And there’s a detail here which is quite phenomenal, which is that the men, plural, say to Elisha “I” pray thee. It goes to singular. You have to get away from this we, us, group think mentality. God wants a personal relationship with you, it’s not enough to say all people sin, you must say be merciful to ME a sinner.

You want to see a difference happen in your life? PRAY. Pray to God for YOURSELF to save you from your sins. It’s ok you’re allowed to talk to God. Pray to God to heal your life. Pray to God, pour out your heart in honest confession of sin. Stop fluffing him and trying to twist his arm and manipulate him. Stop telling him how it is, and wait to be told. Pour your situation out before him, let him examine your life, open your life to Christ, he will change it. And stop going to people, go to GOD. Nobody appointed your favourite God whisperer and diviner of God’s will of your life as the great high priest of your soul… Jesus Christ alone is.

See things as God sees them “as my lord seeth”. They got honest with Elisha about their situation. Because they truly want it fixed. Do you truly want instruction from God, are you truly ready for God to save your soul and fix your life? That’s not going to happen if you come to him, then get offended by when he puts a little salt in, and when he says bring me a new cruse because nothing you have to offer is sufficient for it’s fixing.

If you truly can see the barren and naught condition of your life, if you can see the true situation as God already knows it to be, and he is just waiting for you to acknowledge the truth… and by the way the Bible says that the acknowledging of the truth is an attribute of true godliness…you are now ready for remedial action. You will never see what can be, before you can see what is. You have to be frank honest in light of God’s truth before your before can truly give way to an “after”. Salvation is before and after, it’s old and new.

LISTEN TO WHAT GOD SAYS! When he instructs you, don’t tell him where he’s wrong, and don’t expect to enter into negotiations with him… if you’re asking him for direction, listen to his directions, just read the previous verse in this chapter where Elisha says “Did I not say unto you, Go not?” God’s word isn’t just a good idea or a suggestion, it’s meant to be preached because there is no dialogue or debate, it’s statement of fact.

You don’t have to invent what he said, you just have to do what he says when he says it… and he has spoken. Just people aren’t interested in what he says because they don’t want to be made new, they love that pleasant situation and a barren and unfruitful and rancid water life after all.

This story shows how God heals a lost, barren, cursed, dry, poisoned life. “Behold, I make all things new”. As Jesus said to Nicodemus… ye must be born again. Elisha shows this when he says “bring me a new cruse”. Look, the reason why you must be born again is because the old man, you being you cannot see, comprehend or receive the things of God before you are made new first, capable of that. Forgiveness, joy, peace, true spirituality cannot be poured into a carnal, dead life.

Thank God when he saves us, he begins a totally new work, he starts from scratch. But until consent is given for demolition, there will be no new building. When God fixes you, he makes a new creature in you. The INSTANT you repent of your sins and trust in Jesus Christ, he creates a new creature in you born of God… that’s called being born again. Everything is different now, even though you are still you, and yet you are new, because a new Spirit and new life residing in you, one not arguing with God and debating him, but one who sees the wisdom and the Amen in what he says.
See, many people don’t behave like they are changed, because they aren’t. Quite astounding theology isn’t it.

You know what this nation needs? New cruses charged up with salt. Jesus said believers, his children, are salt and light. It pains me to say, but truthfully, many professing Christians and churches these days are “not worth their salt”… useless. By trying to be so relatable and connected and emphasizing just how like everyone else they are… they’ve shown they’ve got no difference… there’s no salt.

If you want to make a difference, you’re going to have to get some salt, God doesn’t want you to be an anemic, wishy washy, compromised useless Christian, he wants you to make a difference and be different… we add salt because it makes it different, and the only thing that will make our society palatable is to get some salt in there. Salt has many wonderful properties, and you can have many wonderful properties that can do a lot of good in the sphere of influence you are in. You want to truly influence, and truly make a difference, you need a new cruse, and you need to load that sucker up with salt. Notice how it was salt not sugar… people are choked to death, diabetic dying on sugar, there’s so much artificial sweetner out there which people don’t need, when they need salt.

The brought the new cruse to Elisha, because he knew what to do with it. How about let your life be in Christ’s hands. Rather than talking about following him, actually just do it. He knows where to put you, just like he knew where to operate on you. Notice how Elisha knew exactly where to go to fix the problem. All the shrinks and quacks in this world have no idea where your problem is, but God does, and his word quickly gets to the literal heart of the issue.

And so they brought a new cruse with salt in it to Elisha, and in his hand, he knew where to take it. And guess where he went… to “the spring of the waters”. You know where your problem is? Its in the spring… your heart. Everything in life springs out of your heart… the problem with modern discipleship is it’s changing distributaries, where God instead goes to the spring… read Mark 7, Jesus told us where the problem is springing from.

People say “ you don’t know my heart” like there’s some redeeming feature in there. But God says the heart is where the problem is and where the worst evil resides. And when your philosophy contradicts God’s authority, you really should cede to God because he sees the problem far better.

The Bible says Elisha “cast the salt in there”… right in the spring of the waters… and the waters were healed according to the word of the Lord “Thus saith the LORD, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.” The amount of Christians who have literally zero clue about the Bible is staggering. You’d be amazed what God could do with your life if you’d just get to know him by what he says and not by what others say that he said.

This story shows we are healed based on the authority and premise and promise of God keeping his word and meaning what he said. That’s it. It was healed because God said so. Did the literal sprinkle of salt in the spring do anything? No, but yes, because it was what God told Elisha to do.

See, here is a great truth. You may not see what good the gospel of Christ can do. To you it doesn’t seem scientific or that’s not how you would do it. But God didn’t ask you. Nor does God do things the way you do. And your wisdom is utter foolishness compared to God’s wisdom. Trust God’s ways, because God’s ways work. And his way is through the preaching of the gospel, the operation of the heart, the power to save. All these new evangelism strategies are not working, pleasant situations notwithstanding, but you don’t judge a situation by how pleasant it is, but by the state of the water and the barren ground.

We are saved because God keeps his word. That’s it. Because God said he healed the waters and there would never be any more death or barren land… that’s why it says “so the waters were healed unto this day”. You know how amazing this is… this is God telling you in an Old Testament story a wonderful New Testament truth. You have everlasting life because God keeps his promise and it is preserved. If he didn’t and couldn’t you wouldn’t have it. Simple as that. Your goodness doesn’t keep you saved. Your endurance doesn’t, your perseverance doesn’t… GOD’s faithfulness does, and God’s alone.

This is an amazing story in God’s precious word. But I pray God writes it on your heart. A little salt in the spring can do a lot more than you think to all those waters issuing out. Your fix isn’t going to come downstream, it’s going to start in the fountain… I hope Jesus Christ opens his fountain in your life “Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets. Let them be only thine own…” oh that’s not good exegesis, well hows your exegesis going for your barren toxic pleasant life? The Christian life doesn’t run well if the water isn’t running, let me tell you that, I’ve had long periods of drought, and I’ve had some issues in the spring… but Jesus saved my soul, he put a song in my heart, he set my feet upon a rock, it’s good to be saved, I can promise you that… I pray you know the joy of the salvation of the Lord, I hope he writes his amazing truth in the fleshy tables of your heart today.

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