Jacob had said, “Everything is against me!” He was not right in saying this, as I have indicated. But he would have been right if he had acknowledged these three enemies: the devil, who was no doubt seeking to destroy him as well as Joseph; the world, whose godless values and goals were a constant threat to all of this chosen family; and the sins of his own fleshly nature.
Yet how could Jacob say such a thing? True, he was opposed by great enemies. But had he forgotten God? Had he entirely forgotten the One who had appeared to him at Bethel, saying, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go” (Gen. 28:13-15)?
It is having a God like this that transforms opposition for God’s people. For it is not that we do not face spiritual enemies. We do! It is rather that we have a God who is greater than any circumstances and all enemies and who promises to be with us, bless us and keep us through everything.
I think here of that wonderful story involving Elijah’s successor Elisha and the young man who was Elisha’s servant. The story is set in a time of war in which the king of Aram had been fighting against the king of Israel. The Arameans were stronger and would have defeated Israel except for the fact that God had been revealing the plans of the king of Aram to Elisha who had in turn been passing them on to Israel’s commander. When the Arameans laid a trap, God told Elisha. Elisha told the king of Israel, and the Jewish armies went another way. This happened so often that the king of Aram suspected a traitor and summoned his officers to demand who was disclosing his plans to the enemy.
The officers told the truth. “None of us, my lord the king… but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the very words you speak in your bedroom” (2 Kings 6:12).
When the king heard this he determined to capture Elisha and thus stop him from conferring with the king of Israel. When he learned he was at Dothan—the very place Joseph had gone to find his brothers and had been attacked by them and thrown into a cistern—the king went to Dothan by night and surrounded the city.
The next morning the servant of Elisha got up and went out of the city, probably to draw water from a well for his master’s use. There he saw the Aramean armies. He was terrified. We can see him dropping his water jug, running back up the path to the city, bursting through the gates, finding Elisha and exclaiming, “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” (v. 15).
Elisha was calm. “Don’t be afraid,” he answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them” (v. 16). At this point Elisha asked God to open the eyes of the servant, and when God did so the young man saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. The end of the story shows how, when the armies of Aram began to move against Elisha, God struck the soldiers with blindness and Elisha led them in their blind state into the armed city of Samaria where they were captured by Israel’s king.