“TAKE HIM TO HIS MOTHER”
2 Kgs. 4:8-37
INTRODUCTION
A. MOTHER HUMOR: What Mom’s Say
1. “Keep making that face and it’s going to freeze that way,” Moms used to say to kids. I knew times had changed when I heard one Mom warn her scowling daughter, “Keep making that face and you’re going to need Botox.” —Mary Bouck
2. Susan Balducci says, “My mother, a master of guilt trips, showed me a photo of herself waiting by a phone that never rings. “Mom, I call all the time,” I said. “If you had an answering machine, you’d know.” Soon after, my brother installed one for her. When I called the next time, I got her machine: “If you are a salesperson, press one. If you’re a friend, press two. If you’re my daughter who never calls, press 911 because the shock will probably give me a heart attack.”
3. In a department store Sheila Custer saw a toddler was having a furious tantrum. His mom was unfazed. “You may as well give up on the crying,” I heard her say as she led him to the store exit. “You’re stuck with me for 18 years.”
B. WHAT MOTHERS LEARN FROM THEIR CHILDREN:
1. Mothers learned from their children that a 3 year old’s voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
2. That when you hear the toilet flush, and the words, “Oh, no!” – it’s already too late.
3. You’ve learned that play dough and microwaves should never be used in the same sentence.
4. You’ve learned that super glue is forever.
5. You’ve learned that the Huntsville Fire Department has a fifteen minute response time;
6. You’ve learned that the spin cycle of the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy but it does make cats dizzy. Also, you have learned that cats can throw up to twice their body weight when they are dizzy.
7. You’ve learned that certain Lego blocks can pass through the digestive tract of a 4 year old.
[John Hamby, "Wouldn’t Trade My Mother for Any One Else."]
C. TEXT
8 One day Elisha went to Shunem. And a [great] woman was there, who urged him to stay for a meal. 9 She said to her husband, 10 “Let’s make a small room on the roof….then he can stay there whenever he comes to us.” 13 Elisha said, “You have gone to all this trouble for us. Now what can be done for you?....14 Gehazi said, “She has no son, and her husband is old.” 16 “About this time next year,” Elisha said, “you will hold a son in your arms.” “No, my lord!” she objected. “Please, man of God, don’t mislead your servant!” 17 But the woman became pregnant, and the next year about that same time she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her. 18 The child grew, and one day he went out to his father…19 He said… “My head! My head!” 19 His father told a servant, “Carry him to his mother.” 20 …the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died. 21 She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God. 27 When she reached the man of God…she took hold of his feet. 28 “Did I ask you for a son, my lord?” she said. “Didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t raise my hopes’?” 29 Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my staff in your hand and run….Lay my staff on the boy’s face.” 31 …there was no sound or response. 33 [Elisha] went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord. 34 Then he [Elisha] got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. 35 The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. 36 Elisha…said, “Take your son.” 37 She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out.
D. THESIS
1. This is the story of a mother who couldn’t have a child, then had a miracle birth, followed by the child’s death, and a mother’s grim determination to hold onto God until God should bring her child through.
2. The title of this message is “Take Him to His Mother.”
I. WHAT WAS SO GREAT ABOUT THIS WOMAN?
This story starts out with the words, “And it fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where was a great woman…” 2 Kgs 4:8. What was so great about her?
A. A HOSPITABLE WOMAN (Vs. 8)
First she wanted to feed him (without knowing he was a preacher with a hollow leg!), then she wanted to put him up at her house. She wanted to entertain a stranger!
B. GENEROUS, ANXIOUS TO DO GOOD (Vs. 9-10)
She went so far as to construct an apartment for Elisha, with considerable expense to herself. You bless God by blessing His people.
C. SHE WAS A WOMAN GOD WANTED TO BLESS
Elisha felt indebted to her, because she “exceeded expectations” and sought for a way to bless her. You can’t outgive God. If you seek for a way to bless God, you can be sure it will come back to you.
D. A GIVER, NOT A TAKER
When he said, “Can I speak to the King or General in your behalf?” she answered, “Thanks, but I don’t need any favors,” Vs. 13, Amplified. She didn’t have a selfish bone in her body.
E. SHE ACCEPTED HER CHILDLESSNESS
1. All her married life she’d struggled with infertility/ childlessness. For many years she prayed and hoped for a child.
2. Five years, 10 years, 15, 20 years passed without a child. Finally the last drops of her hope evaporated. She accepted her circumstance. She would never be a mother.
3. She channeled her energies & fulfillment into other areas – like helping others. She found meaning elsewhere.
II. HER FAITH WAS TESTED
A. PROMISE OF NEW LIFE
1. Then came the strange events surrounding the Prophet. Against all odds, she became pregnant and bore a son.
2. HUMOR
a. 3 men were standing in line at the HEB discussing coincidences. The 1st man said, "My wife was reading a "tale of two cities" and she gave birth to twins"
b. "That’s funny", the 2nd man remarked, "My wife was reading 'the three musketeers' and she gave birth to triplets"
c. The third man shouted, "Heaven help me! I’ve got to go!” “Why?” "When I left home, my wife was reading Ali Baba & the 40 Thieves!”
3. HER DREAD OF GETTING HER HOPES UP AGAIN:
“Then she said, ‘Did I ask for a son from my lord? Did I not say, ‘Do not give me false hope’?” (Vs. 28, AMP).
4. She couldn’t bear to face the loss she would have to suffer a second time. It had taken so many years for her to get peace over the situation. Great love suffers greatly.
5. When the boy become ill, his father said those immortal words; “Take him to his mother.” What wonderful words!
6. WHAT IS A MOTHER?
a. The woman who loves you unconditionally from birth, the one who puts her kids before herself and who you can always count on above everyone else.
b. One who expresses the characteristics of maternal affection and protection. “Just telling her your problems makes you feel better because moms always know how to make it all go away.”
c. Notice I DIDN’T DEFINE A MOTHER AS, “A woman who biologically bears a child,” because many who do that aren’t mothers to their kids; and, vice-versa, many who never bore a child ARE mothers to those they nurture & love.
B. THE PROMISE DIED
1. It took no more than a moment for the brightest day to become suddenly clouded with disaster. The boy that left home that morning full of life was brought back from the fields nearly cold and lifeless.
2. He died in his loving mother’s arms.
3. This was a child of promise; it was taken away. What do YOU do when what you’ve been promised is taken away? Do you feel that God failed you? Or that His Word, His promise -- didn’t come true? (It’s not good enough to start this race…)
C. HER FAITH IN A POSSIBLE RESURRECTION
It's amazing to see how like a bull dog, this mother maintained her faith and confession in spite of the fact of the child's death.
1. She guarded her lips. When her husband or the prophet asked, "Is everything all right?" She by faith answered "yes."
2. She undoubtedly believed that since the child's birth had been a miracle, that the same God who’d given her one miracle could give her two miracles!
3. She’d heard of the raising of the widow's son of Zarephath (1 Kgs. 17:22; she’d gotten 2 miracles) and that the Spirit of Elijah rested on Elisha. She was ready to believe that he too could restore what sickness had taken away.
4. In this faith, she made no preparation for the burial of her son, but for his resurrection -- for she laid him on the prophet’s bed.
5. Now in biblical symbology, Elisha stood in the place of Christ and his room in the place of Christ's tomb.
III. HER BOY RESTORED
A. THE WOMAN’S INTERCESSION
1. Elisha was just then at the school of the prophets on Mount Carmel.
2. The woman immediately traveled to him and threw herself at the prophet's feet and held onto them in distress.
3. Finally she interceded, "Did I ask you for a son, my lord? Didn't I tell you, ‘Don't raise my hopes?’"
4. The Hebrew of that phrase hints at a tricking of a person. It meant the equivalent of “Indian–giving;” giving and then taking it back.
5. Elisha sent Gehazi to raise the child, but she didn't move. She was like those who won’t trust to any but God himself. We must look to Christ alone!
B. ELISHA’S RESURRECTION OF THE CHILD
When the prophet arrived at his room, he found the child dead upon his own bed. He went through various steps in the process of raising the child:
1. He sent Gehazi with his staff (29).
2. He & Gehazi prayed to God for the child (33).
3. He stretched himself out on the child (34), as if he would communicate some of his own life to the child. It says that the child's body became warm from his heat. He put mouth-to-mouth (as if to breathe into him the breath of life); eye to eye (as if to restore sight and light); and his hands to the child's hands (as if to put strength into them). There still was no resurrection.
4. Elisha went down from the room and walked around the lower house, possibly to the child's room, then went back up and stretched himself out upon the child, as if to transmit his life to the child. (That might be precisely what Elisha did so that the child might live.)
5. At last the child sneezed seven times. An ancient tradition said that when God breathed into Adam the breath of life, the first evidence of life was sneezing!
6. And Elisha restored the Son to his Mother a second time. (At the resurrection of Jesus, the Father restored the Son to his mother Mary the second time!)
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION: A MOTHER’S SACRIFICE
1. Years ago, a young mother was making her way across
the hills of South Wales, carrying her tiny baby in her arms, when she was overtaken by a blinding blizzard.
2. She never reached her destination and when the blizzard had subsided her body was found by searchers beneath a mound of snow.
3. But they discovered that before her death, she had taken off all her outer clothing and wrapped it about her baby.
4. When they unwrapped the child, to their great surprise and joy, they found he was alive and well. She had mounded her body over his and given her life for her child, proving the depths of her mother love.
5. Years later that child, David Lloyd George, grown to manhood, became prime minister of Great Britain, and, without doubt, one of England’s greatest statesman.
[James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, Tyndale, 1972, p. 375.]
B. THE CALL
1. Now, some of you mothers may NOT have lost your children PHYSICALLY, but you may:
a. Have lost them to drugs;
b. Lost them to bitterness, unforgiveness;
c. Lost them by a broken relationship;
d. Lost them because of distance, separation.
e. Lost them to unbelief, worldliness.
2. The question today is, will you do like the Shunem Mother, who doggedly held on by faith for the restoration of her child?
3. Will you stand between the Devil and your child, or between Hell and your child, and say, “You will not have them! They belong to God!”
4. Will you cling to the Scripture that says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved AND YOUR HOUSEHOLD!?”
5. Will you hold onto the feet of Jesus until He stretches His Body over your child and new life appears?
6. MOTHERS: PLEASE STAND! If you have kids still outside of Christ, raise your hands! PRAYER.
C. GOD CAN HANDLE YOUR PROBLEMS
1. “Good afternoon, I am God. Today I will be
handling all of your problems. Please remember that I do not need your help.
2. If the devil happens to deliver a situation to you that you cannot handle, DO NOT attempt to resolve it. Kindly put it in the SFJTD (something for Jesus to do) box. It will be addressed in MY time, not yours.
3. Once the matter is placed into the box, do not hold on to it or attempt to remove it. Holding on or removal will delay the resolution of your problem.
4. If it’s a situation that you think you’re capable of handling, please consult me in prayer to be sure that’s the proper assumption.
5. Because I do not sleep or slumber, there is no need for you to lose any sleep. Rest, my child. If you need to contact me, I am only a prayer away. [origin unknown]
[The germ for this message came from Philip Harrelson]
