Sermon Tone Analysis

A Potluck Gone Wrong

INTRODUCTION

If you grew up in an evangelical Church, especially if you grew up in a Baptist Church - you very likely grew up with church potluck dinners, as one of the shaping influences on your life.

In case you are new around here - a Potluck is where the church gathers together for a meal - but there’s no catering.

Every family brings a pot or a dish of food - and you hope that, with any ‘luck’, you’ll find something you can enjoy.

I always had a love-hate relationship with Potlucks.

I absolutely loved the church family getting together - tables all set up in the auditorium, sitting with your friends - and everyone’s parents close by.

It was like a big, extended family, eating together, enjoying each other’s company … and I have SO many fond memories of those potlucks.

… But on the other hand - I also get shivers when I think about some of the dishes that used to make the rounds.

When I grew up in the 70s and 80s, Tuna Casseroles were a big thing - and I don’t like cooked tuna (I’ll take a slice of tuna sashimi - or rolled up in sushi - love it that way), and I’m not a fan of creamy soups.

And it seemed as though the recipe for tuna casserole involved cooking up some perfectly good pasta … and then drenching it with cream of mushroom soup and then coating it with cooked tuna.

Obviously some people loved it then - but I still carry around scars today from tuna casserole.

I am so thankful that our dinners don’t strike fear into me like those ones sometimes did.

I eagerly look forward to our dinners together as a church family.

I don’t know if it’s just that we have amazing cooks here at Maranatha, or whether potlucks in general have come a long way.

Maybe it’s a little of both.

Well this morning we read about the first church potluck ever recorded in Biblical history.

So you can see that there’s a Biblical basis for our current practice.

But we also see that it has always been the case that potlucks can go wrong.

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1 A POISONED POT HEALED, vv.

38-41

Our passage this morning walks us through 2 separate miracles God performs for His people.

These 2 miracles wrap up a chapter that has been filled with miracle after miracle - and I think it’s important to spend just a couple of minutes, right now - before we get into the text - just to bring a little clarity to the purpose of miracles in the Bible.

When you read in the Bible of God doing a miracle - whether it’s in 2 Kings 4 or in Jesus’ day or in the Book of Acts - please know that they aren’t just ‘magic tricks’ done to wow the crowd or get people’s attention.

When Jesus was doing miracles in his ministry - he was constantly being critiqued and questioned.

In Luke 11:20 he explained - “But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”

And that’s the key - miracles are God’s Kingdom breaking visibly into this world of suffering and death.

There are all kinds of miracles - but what they have in common is that they are glimpses into the future, when creation is set free from its bondage to corruption and we obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God, as Paul puts it in Romans 8:21.

If you ask people to define what, exactly a miracle is?

Some will say, “Well, a miracle is when God does something that is contrary to nature: seas parted, the earth’s 24 hour rotation around the sun paused, the dead becoming un-dead ...

… something that goes against the normal course of nature.

But that’s not quite true.

God’s miracles aren’t CONTRARY to NATURE .... they are contrary to the FALL and what the Fall has done to nature.

They are pointers to the way things OUGHT to be .... pointing forward to the day when Jesus Chrsit returns and all will be made right.

We’ve seen it already in this chapter: debts paid, barrenness gone, the dead raised .... there is a GREAT REVERSAL coming, Christian - so see these miracles and recognize your future.

The first verse of our text gives us the context - where these events take place.

Gilgal is the place.

But more important than the place is the situation in Israel at the time of these events.

Look at v. 38 again, “Elisha came again to Gilgal when there was a famine in the land.”

Here at Gilgal - God steps up and says, “I’m about to show to the world again that ‘I, your God - am different than Baal and every other imposter deity … I can and will supply all of your needs’”.

“Right in the midst of the famine … I will reverse the effects of the Fall and release into your life such Kingdom powers that will make you as a little community of faith stand out like a blazingly bright Lighthouse in the midst of a dark world.”

This isn’t the first time in the books of Kings where Israel has found itself in a time where food was scarce.

That may not mean much to us ...

Ray Dillard helps us here:

“It is striking how many of the stories about Elijah and Elsha have to do with food.

It is difficult for modern Western readers to understand what life in an agrarian society of basically subsistence levels meant for the average individual in ancient Israel.

Starvation and hard times were never far away … In modern Western countries, food is a far smaller part of a household budget than it has ever been; the time invested in gathering it is ordinarily limited to how long one spends in a supermarket or convenience store and perhaps a small family garden.

Life was very different in ancient Israel.

In subsistence or marginal economies, providing daily bread may represent the largest expenditure one makes and may also consume almost every waking moment.”

So with food scarce - no promise that there’s going to be dinner to put on the table tomorrow - what are God’s people doing?

Elisha is in the midst of a teaching session with the ‘sons of the prophets’.

Verse 38, “The sons of the prophets were sitting before him’.

What’s going on here?

It’s a Bible Conference - a church service.

See the prophets sitting at the feet of this man of God - he’s teaching them.

He has his Bible open (the first 5 books of the Bible would be what’s written) and Elisha is teaching God’s Word to these spiritually hungry students.

That’s a big deal.

Remember the context here - we’ve just read that there’s a famine in the land.

Food is scarce .... people are living on the brink of starvation.

When you are in the midst of that kind of a crisis - the crisis tends to dominate your attention, doesn’t it?

Your thoughts consumed with - questions, panic: “Where’s tomorrow’s food going to come from?!”

But what is this faithful group of God’s people doing?

They recognize that there’s a greater famine in their day than one revolving around physical bread.

They’re gathered together to feast on the Word of God.

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

The people of God don’t KNOW the word of God.

7000 knees that haven’t bowed the knee to Baal - an encouragement to Elijah … but still, in an entire country - the fact that there are only 7000 who have remained faithful … hardly an massive movement.

Here at Gilgal - God steps up and says, “I’m about to show to the world again that ‘I, your God - am different than Baal and every other imposter deity … I can and will supply all of your needs’”.

“Right in the midst of the famine … I will reverse the effects of the Fall and release into your life such Kingdom powers that will make you as a little community of faith stand out like a blazingly bright Lighthouse in the midst of a dark world.”

True priority - the Word of God - living according to the Word of God.

Even when we don’t seem to be changing the society around us … hear this: there are voices within the Christian Church who are continually berating the Church for not changing society - for not stopping the descent into God-LESSness in our world.

“If only the Church of Jesus Christ would get its act together.

If only we tried this new program or that new method ...” - we wouldn’t be losing society ...”.

Well, there may be some truth in that - there will ALWAYS be areas where Christians could be growing

.... but for most of history - Christians have not been in the driver’s seat of the world.

And yet, what the Bible shows us so clearly, over and over again - is that even when you can’t change the tide of public opinion - even when godliness doesn’t win the day in government decisions

… we can be about the business of letting the Word of God transform our lives - “The word of God transforming our lives is able to inject into the world we live in something that goverment and social agencies are utterly incapable of producing.”

Our nation is dying for famine of hearing the Word of God.

It is in this circumstance - Elisha tells his servant (Gehazi): Verse 38, “Set on the large pot and boil stew for the sons of the prophets.”

The plan is made to have a luncheon after the church service is over.

The great pot stands on long lets over the fire pit.

The fire is lit.

The broth inside begins to warm.

One of the prophets wants to help make the meal just that much better, so he goes out to find something that he can add, to throw into the pot, to kick it up a notch.

This is the first recorded church pot-luck in the Bible.

And there’s always one of this type of people at a potluck - they won’t follow a recipe - There’s the recipe in the book - it’s been handed down from generation to generation.

It’s been tried thousands of times, it’s been tested over and over again and proven itself to be delicious … that’s why it’s in the cookbook.

BUT I KNOW BETTER.

I’ll just add a little of this and subtract a little of that … I can make it better.

My mom used to do that when I was growing up.

Mom would be the first to tell you that cooking wasn’t her forte - but she could do the basics well and that’s all I ever wanted.

But she could bake pies.

I LOVED mom’s pies.

They were guaranteed success.

Except … every once in awhile, mom would get bitten by the creativity bug and as she served up dinner, she would say: “I tried something a little different with the dessert tonight.

Let me know what you think.”

And as soon as she said that, we would all take a deep breath, because you just knew that you were in for an adventure.”

The son of the prophet wants to be creative.

He doesn’t even know what he’s hunting for - “I’ll know it when I see it.”

Verse 39, “One of them went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine and gathered from it his lap full of wild gourds, and came and cut them up into the pot of stew, not knowing what they were.”

So, he’s gathering herbs, and a plant catches his eye - not sure exactly what it is - ‘Citrullus colocynthis’ - about the size of an apple, looks like a watermelon on the outside - - we don’t know for sure - this fellow doesn’t know what it is himself - but it looks like it will add some flavor and body to the stew, so he bends over and starts to pick.