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  DEATH IN THE POT!
  by Duane Troyer
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of discernment and trust
in God amidst a world filled with poisonous influences and fear-inducing
stories. It highlights the need to rely on Christ, the Bread of Life, to
protect us from harmful ideas and to combat evil surmisings, fear, and
anger. The message encourages spreading the good news of salvation and
trusting in God's mercy and strength, rather than succumbing to worldly
fears and distractions.

Topics: "Discernment", "Trust in God's Protection"
Scripture References: 2 Kings 4:38, 1 John 4:18, Psalms 118:1

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of discernment and trust in God
amidst a world filled with poisonous influences and fear-inducing
stories. It highlights the need to rely on Christ, the Bread of Life, to
protect us from harmful ideas and to combat evil surmisings, fear, and
anger. The message encourages spreading the good news of salvation and
trusting in God's mercy and strength, rather than succumbing to worldly
fears and distractions.

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CONTENT
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Well, greetings, everybody, in Jesus' name. It's really good to be here,
and really good to see everybody in an assembly like this, again. And
yeah, my heart goes out to those who can't be here for illness,
ailments, or other physical hindrances from being here.

And so let's not forget them. I'm sure they'd be glad to be here. Let's
stand for prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you, praise you for this opportunity that we
have to be here, and to be alive, and well. We thank you for healthy
bodies, and sound minds, and all the many gifts that you give us, that
you care about us. Thank you for salvation in the Lord Jesus.

And thank you for this opportunity to be together. We pray for Buddy,
and his backache, and his family. Be with them.

Brother Rick, be with him. Heal him from his sickness. And we pray for
Brother Max and his family, as well.

Keep them all in your special care today. Help us now, as we look into
your word. Help us to have eyes that see, and ears that hear, and a
heart that understands.

Pray, Lord, that you convict us of all evil, and help us to walk in the
ways of righteousness. That your will be done, and your kingdom come.
Yours is the power, and glory forever.

Amen. Amen. Let's maybe start by, I don't know, admitting, or
confessing, or whatever, that I'm not as prepared as I wish I was.

I don't know. It seems like I always, or have for the last quite a
while, just always have this problem when I work on preparing a message,
or something. I just can't really get into gear, or seemingly be really
inspired until the last minute.

And then I don't have much time left. But anyway, that's fine. The Lord
has his way.

I don't know if that's the Lord's doing, or if it's some of my laziness,
or lack of motivation sometimes. But your prayers are appreciated in
those areas. I'm going to start by reading in 2 Kings, I believe it is,
a story about Elisha.

It's 4th Kingdoms, if you have a Septuagint. 2nd Kings in the Masoretic
text, chapter 4. 2nd Kings, chapter 4, and verse 38. Then Elisha
returned to Gilgal, and there was a famine in the land.

Now the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, and Elisha said to
his servant, put on the large pot, and boil some pottage for the sons of
the prophets. So one went out into the field to gather herbs. He found a
wild vine, and gathered from it a lap full of wild gourds, and threw
them into the pot of soup.

Though they did not know what they were, then they served it to the men
to eat. Now as they were eating the vegetables, they cried out and said,
man of God, there is death in the pot. And they could not eat it.

So he said, take wheat flour and throw it in the pot. Then Elisha said
to his servant Gehazi, serve it to the people and let them eat. Thus
there was no longer anything harmful in the pot.

So here we are in the land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey, the
land that God had promised that if his people would walk in his ways, he
would give them fruitful yields. And there was great and many promises,
but they had fallen away so many times. And there was a famine in the
land.

There was a drought. There was probably not much food available. But
Elisha's gathered the sons of the prophets, which the best of my
understanding is like people he was discipling, people kind of in his
school, you might say.

And he was gathered with them somewhere there. And they were hungry. And
they put on a pot to boil up some pottage for everybody.

And it doesn't say who, but someone went out. There was probably not
much available. But he found this plant, this wild vine that had gourds
on it.

And whether he was careless, whether the plant really looked like a good
plant and he just mistook it, or whether he just didn't have much
knowledge about that thing, or however it was, we don't know. But he
gathered a lap full of these wild gourds. And he brings and he throws
them in the pot.

And everyone started eating it. And it was poisonous. He said, man of
God, there is death in the pot.

There is poison in the pot. And Elisha instructed either his servant or
someone to throw in some flour, some meal, some ground up, I suppose,
ground up wheat or barley or something, some ground up grain. And throw
it in the pot.

And they threw it into this pot. And then he said, eat of it. Those
poisonous gourds were still in there.

And he said, eat of it. And everybody ate. And it did no harm to them.

That's pretty amazing. And I don't know just what all people could learn
from this story spiritually. But I wrote a paraphrase for this account
that I'll read.

And I think you'll get it. Then Elisha returned to the earth. And there
was a worldwide pandemic in the earth.

Now the sons of the prophets were sitting before him. And Elisha said to
his servants, put on the large council pot, and we'll boil up some food
for thought for all the sons of the prophets. And so one went out into
YouTube and social media to gather information.

And he found some wild stories. And he gathered from it a lap full of
wild ideas and threw them into the pot. And though he did not fact check
them or verify it or check whether it was from a reliable source, then
they presented it to the men to think about.

And now as they were chewing on it, they cried out and said, oh, man of
God, there is death in the pot. They could not bear it. So Elisha said,
take the bread of life and eat it with the rest of those ideas.

And they ate. And there was nothing harmful anymore. I think it's pretty
easy to gather up a lot of wild gourds these days.

But as I read that last night, something just came to me, kind of about
that story that I had never really thought about before. And there are
things that people hear that will strike them with something that will
lead to death, where somebody else can hear, who has Christ or who has
the bread of life and it does no harm to them. There's stories that can
be spread that are meant.

They are meant by the enemy to strike fear into a person's heart. They
are meant to bring a people into a dark cloud and to bind us with
anxiety and worry and discouragement and depression and bind us and drag
us just deeper and deeper into the pit of despair. And oh, man of God,
there is death in the pot.

But if we have Christ, if we have the bread of life, we can hear that
same story. We can hear the same idea. And it has no harmful effects on
us.

Because we believe and we trust in the one who has conquered sin and
death and rose victorious and gives us the promise of eternal life. We
hear the one who says, I will never leave you nor forsake you, and
therefore we can confidently say the Lord is my helper. I shall not be
afraid.

What will man do to me? He hears and he trusts the one who says that you
are my sheep and I am your shepherd and no man can pluck you out of my
hands. That's how safe and secure we can be. Fear is a powerful thing.

It can just really grip people and drive them to places where they have
no reason to go to. I remember when I was young and I had a vivid
imagination and I would go to my bedroom at night and I would run for my
bed and before I got there, I'd jump into it just in case there was
something under the bed. And I see my same children do foolish things
because they're afraid.

Some of them are afraid of the dark. Some of them are simply afraid of
if the curtains are back when it gets dark because that dark window
looks scary. We just don't know what's on the other side and it scares
us.

Fear is really powerful. Salesmen use this. It's one of the most
effective tactics of salesmen.

If you can strike someone into fear, you can sell them a lot of stuff.
If you can make them afraid that they're going to lose out or miss out
or that their competitors are going to leave them in the dust, you can
sell anything from food to fire extinguishers to gadgets on your
vehicles or whatever if you can make somebody afraid that if they don't
have this thing, they're in real danger. And so fear does that, the
phobia kind of fear.

It can bind us. In 1 John 4.18, he says, there is no fear in love, but
perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment. And the
one who fears is not perfected in love.

Christ, who is the bread of life, is also the perfection of love. And we
can hear this same story that makes the whole world go into a frenzy and
fear, and we can have it or eat it, and it does no harm to us. Just like
that pottage no longer harmed the sons of the prophets after they threw
the meal in there.

But fear is far from the only poisonous gore that's out there. There's a
lot of wild gores and wild stories out there that when some people hear
them, they immediately jump to conclusions, to evil surmisings, to
suspicions, to distrust. The word evil surmising simply means wicked
speculations.

In 1 Timothy 6.4, he talks about something about people who dote about
questions and things they don't know about and come to evil surmisings.
It's a sin. We commit the sin of evil surmising when we think or imagine
that others are involved in wrongdoing without reason or evidence to do
so.

It's so easy to do that. And it is meant to bring us into bondage. It is
meant to bring us into this dark cloud where the devil binds us with
suspicion and mistrust and slander and lying and gossiping and drags us
deeper into the pit of confusion and dissension and division.

And oh, man of God, there is death in the pot. But with Christ, with
that fine flour or that bread of life, we can hear the same story. And
it has no harmful effects on us.

We believe the one whose word says, whatsoever things are true and
honest and of good report and lovely and peaceful, think on those
things. And the one who says, be wise to the good and simple to the
evil, who said we should bring every thought into captivity and that we
should prove all things and hold fast that which is good, the one who
already told us that there will be rumors and rumors of wars and there
will be seducers and they'll wax worse and worse, who has warned us of
all these things and still says but be of good cheer of overcome the
world. There's nothing wrong with some healthy skepticism and to not
just be gullible and believe things.

I don't always trust what is called scientifically proven or scientific
evidence. But there is a difference about being cautiously skeptical of
a report till it's proven or peddling our thoughts and theories that are
unproven at the accusation of a person or a group with basically no
evidence to do so. Brothers and sisters, that's slander.

We as Christians ought to live by a higher standard when it comes to
making accusations, whether it be against government, against the media,
against the doctors, or against the scientists. We should be coming
here. And if we have some good healthy skepticism, that's good.

But we can wait. We can be silent. We can wait until things are proven
before we hurl out accusations, lest we be found worse as a slander or a
false accuser or one peddling lies.

People like secrets. People like to be mystified. People like mystery
novels.

Hidden things fascinate us. To believe in lurking evils allows us to
wrap ourselves in the security blanket of innocence. It's the classic
lure of victimhood.

We suspect people of trickery. We assume the common belief cannot be
real. But as Elmo Stoll once said, nothing is more confusing than the
clamor of armchair doctors and sofa scientists.

I've watched this kind of thing go around in my life with Y2K, with the
blood moons, with the Mayan calendars, and with CERN. And the more
mysterious something is, the more it feeds someone who is inclined
toward evil surmising. And the more poisonous the gourd, the more deadly
the pot.

When will we ever learn? There's other poisonous gourds. Some stories
are out there, and they make a person feisty and fighty. And he gets all
worked up, and he gets brought into this bondage in this cloud where the
devil binds him in anger and hatred and envy and digs him deeper into
the pit of vengeance.

And oh, man of God, there is death in the pot. But with Christ, we can
hear the same story with no harmful effects. Because we believe and we
trust in the one who said, my kingdom is not of this world.

If my kingdom was of this world, my servants would fight. And he said,
his kingdom will not be shaken. Once everything else is shaken, his
kingdom will not be shaken.

We can trust and rest in that. We also believe the one who told us, seek
not revenge, for vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord.

And we can lay these things at his hands. I'm sure there would be many
others we could think of. Many other wild and poisonous gourds that
people throw into that pot.

And I would be delighted to hear your thoughts on those. But I want to
say that in case anyone thinks that what I'm saying today is that we
shouldn't fear, and we shouldn't spread stories, and we shouldn't fight,
I want to tell you that that's not what I'm saying. In spite of the
promises that no external forces can remove us from Christ, no man can
pluck us out of his hands.

Paul says, I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor
height, nor depth, nor any created thing can separate us. In spite of
those great and precious promises, there is one to fear. What does he
also say that he will do with the unprofitable servant? Maybe no
external force can remove the unprofitable servant, but what does he say
he does? He casts him out.

Or what about the unfruitful branch? He cuts it off. Or the lukewarm
person? He spits him out. The one who forsakes him, if we forsake him,
God will forsake us.

Fear him, who has power to destroy both body and soul in hell. And there
is lots of news to spread, brothers and sisters. We ought to be
spreading it far and wide and from the housetops, and it has little to
do with the current pandemic.

It's about the goodness of the life that we can have in Christ, the
bread of life, the life that we can have more abundantly. It is about
the deliverance from every form of death in the pot. It's news about the
salvific properties of the ground-down flour that is the true bread of
life.

That is news we should be spreading. And I am definitely not saying that
we should not fight. We ought to fight the good fight, not with carnal
weapons, but with mighty weapons.

We should be pulling down those strongholds, not those strongholds of
earthly governments and nuclear weapons and viral outbreaks, but the
strongholds of fortresses, of imaginations, of speculations, of fears,
and of lusts, and all the things that surround us that separate us from
the knowledge of God. Fight against them with fury. We can easily get
distracted from what we should be doing by letting our imaginations go
wild and gathering up wild gourds from wild vines.

And I just want to encourage us not to do so. And I'm going to close
reading Psalms 118 in the Masoretic Text, 117 in the Septuagint. I'm
going to read it.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever.
Let the house of Israel say that he is good, for his mercy endures
forever. Let the house of Aaron say that he is good, for his mercy
endures forever.

Let all who fear the Lord say that he is good, for his mercy endures
forever. In affliction I called upon the Lord, and he heard me in a
broad place. The Lord is my helper.

I shall not be afraid of what men do to me. The Lord is my helper. I
shall look upon my enemies.

It is good to trust the Lord, rather than to trust in man. It is good to
hope in the Lord, rather than to hope in rulers. All the nations
surrounded me, but in the name of the Lord I defended myself against
them.

They circled and surrounded me, but in the name of the Lord I defended
myself against them. They surrounded me like bees around a honeycomb,
and they were inflamed like fire in a thorn bush, but in the name of the
Lord I defended myself against them. I was shoved and disheartened that
I might fall, but the Lord took hold of me, and the Lord is my strength
and my song, and he became my salvation.

The sound of exceeding joy and salvation is in the tents of the
righteous. The right hand of the Lord worked its power. The right hand
of the Lord exalted me.

The right hand of the Lord worked its power. I shall not die, but live
and tell the Lord's works. The Lord chastened and corrected me, but he
did not give me up to death.

Upon the gates of righteousness to me I will enter therein and give
thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord. The righteous shall go
in through it.

I will give thanks to you, for you heard me, and you became my
salvation. The stone that the builders rejected, the same became the
head of the corner, and this came about from the Lord, and it is
wonderful in our eyes. This is the day the Lord made.

Let us greatly rejoice and be glad therein. O Lord, save us now. O Lord,
prosper us now.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the
house of the Lord. God is the Lord, and he revealed himself to us.

Appoint a feast for yourself, decked with branches, even to the horns of
the altar. You are my God, and I will give thanks to you. You are my
God, and I shall exalt you.

I will give thanks to you, and you heard me, and you became my
salvation. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy
endures forever. I will open it up for any comments or corrections.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/1H_s269UA-0.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/duane-troyer/death-in-the-pot/
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