Reverse The Curse

5. Notice how God was working supernaturally through Gehazi. Just as he finished telling about the woman and her son – how Elisha told her to go to another country to avoid the famine – into the throne room walks the woman & son! And she comes to appeal for her property to be restored to her, which the King grants. The timing was supernatural. God was in it. So what’s happened to Gehazi?

B. GEHAZI’S CURSE WAS REVERSED

1. The turnaround started with a test – 2 Kings 7:3-9. Ben-Hadad king of Aram had besieged the city of Samaria for so long that the famine was severe. There were four lepers starving outside the gate of Samaria. There was no food in the city, so they decided to go to the besieging army and beg for food, but they found the camp deserted. (God had made them Arameans hear the Egyptian army coming, so they had fled.)

2. The lepers began gathering gold, silver, etc. out of the tents. Greed had taken hold. But then one of the lepers, conscience-stricken, said, “What we’re doing is not right...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” (2 Kgs. 7:9). And they did.

3. The Jewish holy book, The Talmud, says that the four lepers at the gate of Samaria were Gehazi and his three sons (Sotah 47a)! Gehazi got a retest of his greed and he passed the test by choosing grace over greed.

4. The curse was irreversible until a change occurred. It took Naaman the General 7 dips to get healed of his leprosy; it took Gehazi 7 years of famine before he got his healing. Mercy prevailed over judgment. (Yer. Sanh. 29b also intimates that Elisha had been too harsh with Gehazi.)*

III. THE GREATEST REVERSAL: JESUS CHRIST

A. THE TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN

1. [POWERPOINT of the TREE OF SIN.]

2. Before Adam and Eve sinned, they lived in a perfect world; there were no crimes, sickness, or death.

3. But when they sinned, it brought about all the problems of society that we see today:

a. Broken homes e. Addictions

b. Crime f. Hate, prejudice

c. Lust, Pride g. Slavery, abuse

d. War, violence h. Sickness

4. But the fountain of it all, what caused it all -- was SIN! If somehow we could turn back the clock to where sin would be eradicated, so also would these other evils -- including the curse of the Law.

B. CHRIST TOOK THE ‘CURSE OF THE LAW’ ON HIMSELF

1. When Moses lifted up the Serpent of Brass that brought healing to those bitten by snakes (Num. 21:9) – he lifted up an effigy of Jesus Christ, crucified. The poison coursing through the Israelites bloodstreams was a potent symbol of the sin that poisons us all. That effigy healed the poison!

2. In the O.T., God said that anyone who was impaled on a pole was under God’s curse (Deut. 21:23). When Christ was crucified, He took all of God’s curse on Himself as our representative, and paid the full penalty of death. Once dead (which we are counted, in Christ), a person is no longer under the jurisdiction of the Law (Rom. 7:6).

3. SIN ALSO HAS BEEN CANCELLED! “[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Where there is no Sin, no Law, and no Curse, there can be no condemnation!