"if Not Now, When? If Not You, Who?"

"If Not Now, When? If Not You, Who?"

I. INTRODUCTION:

Today Alfred Nobel is known as the scientist who established the Nobel Peace Prize to recognize people's achievements in such fields as physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, and literature, or for someone's work toward peace among the nations. However, the name Albert Nobel was not always associated with peace. At one time it was associated with war and destruction.

According to historians, a drastic change took place in Nobel's life because of an error in a local newspaper. One day, Alfred was reading a Fench newspaper and stumbled across a scathing obituary about...himself! In this obituary, Alfred was labeled as a "merchant of death." He was known for inventing and developing explosives (including dynamite) used in both construction projects and warfare. He was horrified at what he read and the legacy that the article proposed that he had left behind. While the newspaper's error of mistaken identity was corrected--the paper was meant to identify Alfred's brother, Ludwig, who had died--Alfred had an awakening. He "became so obsessed with his post-humourous reputation that he rewrote his last will, bequeathing most of his fortune to a cause upon which no future obituary writer would be able to cast aspersions." No one today thinks of Alfred Nobel as the inventor of explosives. We think of him as a man who advanced peace through the Nobel Peace Prize.

You can determine your legacy. You cannot redo what you've done, but you can turn yourself around, starting now, and live a life that counts for the Kingdom. It happens when you begin to realize that if it is going to happen you have to stop thinking about the past or the future and just start where you are realizing that you are the one God has called and destined, this is the place where He has placed you and wants to work through you, and now is the time to do whatever it is that He has called you to do. (See "Overcoming When You Feel Overwhelmed" by Jentzen Franklin)

There is a story in the Bible that illustrates this point. Let's look this morning at 2 Kings 7. The story takes place during a time when there had been a famine in the ancient northern Israelite city of Samaria. During the famine, the Syrian military set up a siege against the city. Sieges were one way one nation would attack another when trying to conquer them. They would basically camp outside their opponents' city walls and starve them out. Things were going from bad to worse for Samaria. There was a famine and a siege. They were starving. They were trapped inside their own place of safety, dying. And right in the middle of their difficult circumstance, God gave them a word through the prophet Elisha.

How often has this happened in your life? God has a way of sending us just what we need when we need it, doesn't he? Our text reads:

II. TEXT:

2 Kings 7:1-20 (NLT)

Elisha replied, “Listen to this message from the LORD! This is what the LORD says: By this time tomorrow in the markets of Samaria, six quarts of choice flour will cost only one piece of silver, and twelve quarts of barley grain will cost only one piece of silver.”

The man of God prophesies that within twenty-four hours, where there was once famine and starvation, there will be plenty. One of the beautiful and mysterious things about life is that there are moments when things turn around quicker than we expect. Why are we so negative? Our imagination often drifts to the worst-case scenario. We are conditioned to believe the worst, but the prophet says things are going to turn out better than you thought. He isn't completely unrealistic, however. The prices that Elisha predicts are still pretty high, but he says that there will be enough. And that is far better than the state of things as they are presently enduring a famine while under siege.

2 The officer assisting the king said to the man of God, “That couldn’t happen even if the LORD opened the windows of heaven!”

This is the king's administrative assistant. Although, he is no stranger to the prophetic word, in this difficult moment he scorns the word of God.

He doubts the power of God. The phrase translated as "windows of heaven" here refers to rain. He was thinking that God would have to pour out rain on crops that would have to grow, be tended, harvested, and ground. His mind was stuck in what he understood as natural processes.

He doubted the creativity of God. He thought that God could only work in one way. He looked around and thought that because Samaria was surrounded, so was God. In his carnal view, he imagined that the only way God could provide was to open "the windows of heaven." God is up there, and we are down here. God had to work inside of his preconceived notions.