Sermon Central
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Unwanted Items-Fresh Meat On The Street?
Contributed by Jonathan Spurlock on Apr 2, 2025 (message contributor)
Introduction: This illustration is the first in a series about things that either aren’t wanted, left behind, or otherwise abandoned. Here’s hoping some of these illustrations will be useful!
Text: 2 Kings 7:7, KJV: 7 Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life.
In the story, the Syrians/Arameans (translations vary) had surrounded Samaria, waiting for the people to either starve or surrender. This had gone on for an unspecified period of time, but long enough for the famine to raise prices incredibly high. The last several verses of 2 Kings 6 give some additional information about those conditions.
Relief came, though, and the “they” of the text here refer to four male lepers, outcasts from society, who found the enemy camp completely abandoned! Other translations of verse 7 render the word “left” as “abandoned” or “left behind”. In a word, what the enemy had brought, they didn’t want anymore!
Of course the Bible doesn’t mention our modern day supermarkets and other things like grocery stores but this is just one example of something valuable left behind. And here’s the link (you could call it a leap!) between then and now.
Not long ago I was returning to my house after church services when I saw a plastic grocery bag in the street! Slowing down—I wasn’t about to risk running over a nail or something that might cause damage to my car—I noticed that near that bag was a selection of fresh meat! Now, “fresh” here doesn’t mean someone had just killed an animal and/or processed the meat into portions, but rather, just purchased from the store.
There seemed to be at least four to six steaks or other meat, all now lying on the ground, some of these having been run over by tires—I could see the gravel pressed into one or two of the packages. What might have been someone’s Sunday dinner turned out to be Sunday’s destruction. I mean, would any of us want to claim that meat, not knowing how long the stuff had been out in the open? And with gravel, added to the meat? Not me, that’s for sure!
We could make several points from this. One, in early 2025 meat was very expensive and this loss translated into maybe $50 to $100 USD in nothing but waste! Two, this is a reminder that when shopping, make sure everything is stored properly. Three, there is only a limited period of time to reclaim or redeem perishable items like meat. The sooner it’s reclaimed, the better.
There’s a spiritual application, too. Every believer is tempted to leave the best behind for the good, so to speak. May we evaluate all we do in the light of the Word!
Never leave anything behind, especially when it comes to serving the Lord.
Scripture quotations taken from the King James Version of the Bible (KJV)
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