THE WINDOW
Bible Teaching Ministry of
CEDAR LODGE BAPTIST CHURCH
Thomasville, NC
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January 9, 2005
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1Elisha said, “Hear the word of the LORD. This is what the LORD says: About this time tomorrow, a seah of flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” 2The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, “Look, even if the LORD should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?” “You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eat any of it!”
3Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? 4If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”
5At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, not a man was there, 6for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!” 7So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their
tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.
8The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents. They ate and drank, and carried away silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.
9Then they said to each other, “We’re not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.”
10So they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them, “We went into the Aramean camp and not a man was there—not a sound of anyone—only tethered horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were.” 11The gatekeepers shouted the news, and it was reported within the palace.
12The king got up in the night and said to his officers, “I will tell you what the Arameans have done to us. They know we are starving; so they have left the camp to hide in the countryside, thinking, ‘They will surely come out, and then we will take them alive and get into the city.’”
13One of his officers answered, “Have some men take five of the horses that are left in the city. Their plight will be like that of all the Israelites left here—yes, they will only be like all these Israelites who are doomed. So let us send them to find out what happened.”
14So they selected two chariots with their horses, and the king sent them after the Aramean army. He commanded the drivers, “Go and find out what has happened.” 15They followed them as far as the Jordan, and they found the whole road strewn with the clothing and equipment the Arameans had thrown away in their headlong flight. So the messengers returned and reported to the king. 16Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, as the LORD had said.
17Now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate, and the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died, just as the man of God had foretold when the king came down to his house. 18It happened as the man of God had said to the king: “About this time tomorrow, a seah of flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.”
19The officer had said to the man of God, “Look, even if the LORD should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?” The man of God had replied, “You will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it!” 20And that is exactly what happened to him, for the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died. 2 Kings 7:1-20 (NIV)
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Matthew Henry said, man’s extremity is God’s opportunity of making his own power to be glorious: his time to appear for his people is when their strength is gone. [1]
The strength of the people of Samaria was gone. Years of siege by Aramean forces had sapped every resource within the city walls. Starvation was becoming the fate of all the northern kingdom of God’s people. Some of them were even resorting to cannibalism. In our text, lepers sat at the gate, unable to go into the city because of their disease – unwilling to leave, but shaking in their boots waiting for the enemy to strike; talk about a rock and a hard place!
America is like that today also. We are feeding, cannibalistically on our heritage of righteousness; the backbone of Godliness has been under siege for decades. Just this week the atheist, Michael Newdow filed another suit, asking the courts to prevent prayer at President Bush’s inauguration.
The church, as a loving, caring bride of Christ is on the endangered species list. Turf wars dismantle local congregations one after another. Like lepers sitting at the gates we await starvation or the enemies’ arrows. Let’s examine this piece of Israel’s history, and see some parallels for us today.
The Lepers Needed a Miracle
There is little doubt that the lepers were in the worst position possible. They didn’t even have the city wall for protection between them and the Arameans. They needed a miracle! So did the people inside the city.
A miracle is what happens when the laws of nature are suspended by the Giver of those laws. Many people would list some requirements for a miracle as:
• the need for a miracle to exist,
• faith that God would provide, and
• a certain type of prayer.
I suggest to you that the only necessary ingredient for a miracle to take place is God. For instance, the creation itself was a miracle. When God said, “let there be light” there were no people, no needs, and, therefore no prayer or faith. God was all there was in the beginning. God is all that’s necessary!
The Lepers Got a Miracle
Many people read the account of the lepers showing up at the enemy’s camp and equate that with the miracle. Not so! The soldiers fled the night before the lepers got there. God had already done the miracle; the lepers were simply the first to witness the miracle. Their courage was in making a decision to do something different.
• When Jesus, the dead man, got up and out of the tomb, no one witnessed the resurrection. He was gone before that stone rolled away!
• When Jesus changed the water into wine, no one saw the transformation – they only knew it for sure when some wine was poured into the cups and delivered to the master of the feast.
• When Jesus fed the multitudes with the few loaves and fishes, the supply just never seemed to run out…no human hands were involved.
Miracles are God’s business!
There were actually two miracles on the day the lepers found the empty camp. The first, certainly, was that the enemy soldiers had run away over nothing.
The second was the change in the lepers. After plundering around for a while like a winner on one of those giveaway free shopping sprees in a toy store, the lepers began to think of all the hungry people back over the hill. These lepers had their hearts genuinely transformed.
The miracle is that they couldn’t wait to get back to tell the good news. You might say, not so, preacher; those lepers had gotten such a blessing; they just had to tell everyone. Folks, I might agree with you, except for the fact that I have known many, many people who have been saved by the good news of the cross, yet are in no hurry to tell anyone. In fact, many seem rather ashamed.
Miracles are Not Good News to Everyone
If you recall from the first part of the story, Elisha had prophesied that the famine and siege were going to be over in one day – and the king’s messenger had said, surrrrre……I believe that! If you recall, Elisha said, you will believe it…but you won’t like it…there will be no place at the table for someone with your unbelief. When the lepers got back and began to tell about the siege and the accompanying shortage of food being over, the stampede was on; the people trampled the king’s messenger to death right at the city gate. The word of God is always completely accurate!
Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD;
and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? Jeremiah 23:29
Now, that is the story – the question is, what do we make of it? And what do we do with it? One thing is for certain, if the Bible is not speaking to us today, there is never a time when we ought to listen. Bible truth never goes out of style. The Lord Himself even proclaimed, I am the Lord, I change not. [2]
He told us to acknowledge Him in all our ways, not just back then…but always.[3]
Let’s Hear (and do) God’s Word
In many ways we are as the lepers and the city people of Samaria. For some years now strife and gossip has kept us from being God’s people. We have been walled-up and under siege. Anger and accusation have cannibalized our congregation. We have fought anyone and anything but the enemy.
The lepers represent those among us who have managed to stumble across the truth that the enemy is really powerless to defeat us if we will come out from behind the walls and go loot the camp. In the case of the Samaritans and Elisha, it took some trust to believe the enemy was defeated. They sent out a few chariots and drivers to check it out first. Eventually all came to believe and enjoy the victory…except the unbeliever.
Now, our enemy is the animosity and anger that exists because of unbelief. Satan revels in that kind of atmosphere; the Holy Spirit grieves.
• Anger, like the enemy camped at our gates, will hang around as long as there is no belief in a miracle called reconciliation. As long as we have no trust in the table of reconciliation, we will be imprisoned with the cannibals. We will devour each other until the doors eventually close.
Decision Time
There are a couple of things we need to get started on in this new year:
1. We need to get over our past. There is not a single person here today who doesn’t have some hurts, unmet expectations or disappointments. It is so easy to become an expert complainer. One man complained about the breakfast his wife cooked every morning. If the eggs were scrambled, he complained he wanted fried; if they were fried, he wanted scrambled. His wife finally got frustrated and brought him one scrambled and one fried. His complaint was, “you fried the wrong egg”.
2. We need to get over our anger. Too often Christian folks allow others to rob their joy. Whether it be the Interstate joy-robbers…the ones who cut you off, or some other insignificant irritant in life, we need to get a hold on what is truly important.
3. We need to get on with our mission. Without joy and a sense of forgiveness, it will not make a difference how right you are, or how diligently you work, God works through people who are ready to hear His Spirit’s leading. You can’t do that when all your energy is taken up with fighting fights that don’t matter.
The lepers outside the city gates knew their time was limited. They chose to do something different. God is always looking for a handful of lepers to face their need of Him and a miracle – to act on that need, and to tell others where they got the bread.
Our choices are no different. We can sit here and wallow in self-pity and wish for the good old days…or we can get desperate…desperate for God who wants us at the foot of the cross, reconciled, together and hot for Him!
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ENDNOTES
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[1] Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible, Quickverse Electronic Ed, Parson’s Technology.
[2] Malachi 3:6
[3] Proverbs 3:6
