Transcript
Second Kings chapter 7. And we want to begin reading at verse 1.
Then Elisha said, “Hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord, ‘Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.’”
So an officer on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God and said, “Look, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, would this thing be?”
And he said, “In fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat of it.”
Now there were four leprous men at the entrance of the gate. And they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, ‘We will enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. So now, come, let us surrender to the army of the Syrians. If they keep us alive, we shall live. And if they kill us, we shall but die.”
And they rose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians. And when they had come to the outskirts of the Syrian camp, to their surprise no one was there. For the Lord had caused the army of the Syrians to hear the noise of chariots and the noise of horses, the noise of a great army. So they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians to attack us.”
Therefore they arose and fled at twilight. And they left the camp intact, their tents, their horses, and their donkeys. And they fled for their lives.
And when these lepers came to the outskirts of the camp, they went into one tent and ate and drank. And they carried from it silver and gold and went and hid it. Then they came back and entered another tent. And they carried some from there also, and went and hid it.
Then they said to one another, “We are not doing what is right. This day is a day of good news, and we remain silent. If we wait until morning light, some punishment will come upon us. Now therefore, come, let us go and tell the king’s household.”
So they went and called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them, saying, “We went to the Syrian camp, and surprisingly no one was there. Not a human sound. Only horses and donkeys tied, and tents intact.”
And the gatekeepers called out, and they told it to the king’s household inside. Then the king arose in the night and said to his servants, “Let me now tell you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we are hungry. Therefore they have gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field, saying, ‘When they come out of the city we shall catch them alive and get into the city.’”
And one of his servants answered and said, “Please, let several men take five of the remaining horses which are left in the city. Look, they may either become like all the multitude of Israel that are left in it. Or indeed, I say, they may become like all the multitude of Israel that are left from those who are consumed. So let us send them and see.”
Therefore they took two chariots with horses. And the king sent them in the direction of the Syrian army, saying, “Go and see.” And they went after them to the Jordan. And indeed all the way was full of garments and weapons which the Syrians had thrown away in their haste.
So the messengers returned and told the king. Then the people went out and plundered the tents of the Syrians. So a seah of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord.
Now the king had appointed the officer on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate. But the people trampled him in the gate, and he died, just as the man of God had said, who spoke when the king came down to him. So it happened just as the man of God had spoken to the king, saying, “Two seahs of barley for a shekel, and a seah of fine flour for a shekel, shall be sold tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria.”
Then that officer had answered the man of God and said, “Now look, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, could such a thing be?” And he had said, “In fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat of it.” And so it happened to him. For the people trampled him in the gate, and he died.
In 1979 John and Dorothy Peckham took their cruise to Hawaii. Under Hawaiian cruise. At one point they joined a number of other couples in throwing bottles overboard into the ocean. Each bottle contained a message inviting whoever might pick it up to contact the person who had thrown the bottle into the sea.
After more than three years the Peckhams received a reply to their message. It came to them by air mail from Thailand. The responder was a man named Nguyen Van Nuyen, a thirty-one-year-old former South Vietnamese soldier who had evidently heard just a little bit of English from American GIs.
He wrote, “We have received a floating mailbox by bottle on our way from Vietnam to Thailand.” Well, the Peckhams thought that was a nice ending to the story. But it wasn’t really the ending at all.
In his second letter Nguyen explained how the moment he had seen the bottle somehow or other he thought it was an answered prayer. That it was in some way going to be his key to obtaining freedom. The Peckhams corresponded with Nguyen for several more years. He lived in three different refugee camps. He got married. He fathered a son.
And then he finally asked for and received from the Peckhams help in coming to the United States of America. So on a very happy day in 1985 Nguyen landed at Los Angeles International Airport accompanied by his wife Ga Kim, his sixteen-month-old little boy, and a one-year-old brother. The Peckhams greeted them as they were surrounded by photographers and reporters.
And Mrs. Peckham said, “Welcome to the United States of America.” Through an interpreter Nguyen described himself as what he considered to be the luckiest man in the world. He explained he didn’t know why his six senses had told him to pick up the Peckhams’ bottle. But obviously he was glad that he did.
Here’s the bottom line, folks. At the point at which the Peckhams threw the bottle into the ocean it floated nine thousand miles through the shores of Thailand where it became the means by which a prayer for freedom was answered.
Now I’m sure that everybody in this auditorium has received many messages in their lifetime. And many of these messages have not been very important. Some of them have even been trivial. A few of them have been very important. And a few of them you probably remember very clearly.
I suspect that none of us have ever received a message that came back and had that kind of life-transforming result. And yet, and yet, there is a sense in which all of us have received a message like that. A very important message indeed.
And the danger is that we will underestimate that message. And if we ignore and underestimate that message we can wind up with lives that are a mess. Lives that are filled with trouble, disappointment, and frustration.
So that leads me directly to the title of my message this morning which is in the form of a question. And here it is. What do you want: a mess or the message?
I think that’s a pretty easy title to remember, don’t you? So just to fix it in your mind let me repeat it again. My question to you this morning is whether you want a mess or the message.
Now I feel confident that all of us are aware that we are entering the holiday season in the year 2000. Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner. And they make some of us line up. We make of the holiday season what we would. But work always comes around to food. Or that work or would be food is pretty impossible to think of these holidays without also thinking of food.
And I can guarantee you folks that the word that was on the mind of everybody in the city of Samaria at the time when our passage of Scripture describes was the word food. And it wasn’t because there was a policy how that they season the protein by any means. Food was on everybody’s mind because there wasn’t any. There wasn’t any.
You see, war had broken out again between the Syrians and the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And the Syrian army had invaded Israel. They had surrounded the city of Samaria. They were imminent enough, strong enough to break through the city. And the Israelites broke through the city through the people of Samaria. And pretty soon the city of Samaria was in the grips of a horrible and terrible famine.
And you may remember in the tragic story that we learn from the previous chapter of the kingdom of Israel is walking along the wall of the city. And he sees two women. And one of them cries out to him for help. And she explains that she and another lady had agreed to boil their own children. They had eaten her child. But now the other lady had hidden her child and refused to let him be eaten.
And the woman is crying to the king for justice. It means to say the king is horrified. He tears his royal garments. And in parchment he is filled with rage against the prophet Elisha. Probably because Elisha had not helped them in that war might have helped in previous wars with Syria.
But the messenger that the king sent to Elisha’s house to execute Elisha was stopped at the door. And when the king of Israel arrived the first occasion to probably didn’t have heard for one of the execution. And that’s when Elisha made a message from God. And Elisha gave him a message.
He said, “Hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord, ‘Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour will be sold for a shekel and two seahs of barley will be sold for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.’”
Now folks, please remember that we’ve just found out from the previous chapter that at the height of this famine a donkey’s head was selling for eighty shekels of silver. And one-fourth of a kab of dove’s dung was selling for five shekels. And now the mother’s body said in twenty-four hours something like eight gallons of fine flour will go for a shekel or something like sixteen gallons of barley will go for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.
Now to the credit of the king of Israel he doesn’t say anything in response to this stunning prophecy. Or at least he doesn’t say anything the Bible recalls before. But one of his favorite officers who is at his side can’t keep from making the comment. And the officer who says, “Look, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, could this thing be?”
And if you will permit me to give you an update twenty-first century free rendering afterwards this official he is saying, “You have got to be kidding. There is no way in all the world what you have just said could possibly come true.”
Oh ho ho. This man is treating God’s message with mockery. He is hearing God’s word with a crowd underneath. And Elisha says to him, “In fact, you will see it with your eyes, but you will not eat of it.”
It may, I pause to say, it is always dangerous to make light of the word of God or to receive it with a crowd underneath. Well as this thing begins to unfold one of the most amazing stories in all of the history of warfare. There are a lot of unusual stories in the history books about warfare. But you’ll never read any other story that’s exactly like this.
It all begins with the lepers who are sitting at the gate of Samaria. They gave her mother use in Samaria. They surely die. So they say to each other, “Why should we sit here? If we go into the city, well that’s where the famine is. If we just sit here we will die. Why don’t we go out and surrender to the Syrians? If they keep us alive we’ll live. And if they kill us, well same difference, we’ll die.”
Let me assure you as the chances of four lepers walking into the Syrian camp and staying alive were about who furnished their. What did the Syrians care about Jewish beggars? What if they were spies? The chances were at least a thousand to one it seems to me that if they went this route they died more quickly than any other thing they might have done.
And once you see, my friend, don’t you see that these lepers exhibit to us a poverty-stricken sorry state? Nothing they could do would alter their situation but fall on the doubtful mercies of the Syrians. So they get up. They go out. We can’t. And one of them. And then they pick up the gold. Another came to do the same thing.
And here are two beggars. Four beggars. I should say here are four beggars who are suddenly the best-fed people of the whole city of Samaria and getting richer and richer by the moment.
Don’t you see that the principle that leaps out of this story is very clear? The word of God is the answer to our hopelessness and despair. The word of God is the answer to our helplessness and our despair.
And if there is any place where we should have learned that it was at the time and place that we were saved. Because we came to God as poverty-stricken spiritual failures to receive the satisfying bread of life and the riches of His grace.
Yesterday I attended a wedding of a friend of mine who was married at a large Baptist church over in Arlington, Texas. The auditorium in which he was married was a lovely, well-appointed auditorium. On the large platform up front there were four candelabra each of which by night held fifteen lighted candles. The bride and groom looked wonderful. And so did the wedding party that attended them.
But the preacher hadn’t spoken back home before he spoiled the occasion for me. Because very early in the wedding ceremony the preacher said that this couple had important that they had given their lives to God. How they went a little bit later he said that they had given their life. The choir man had been a friend of mine needed marrying on that platform. I didn’t severely tend to be get up from my seat and stalk out of the other court.
What an insult. We’ve done. How dare any person who is describing the experience of salvation describe it as if it were a trade? As if we made some deal with God in return for what he gives to us. That’s not the way it is at all.
And the Bible says by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And the Bible also says whosoever will let him take of the water of life freely.
And that wonderful hymn “Rock of Ages” the songwriter got it right. He says, “Nothing in my hand I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling.” Maybe come to be addressed. How does look to be for great? Wow. I do the fountain flow was me. Savior there I die. Maybe we never, never forget that when we came to God for His saving grace we came as pitiful, helpless, poverty-stricken, starving beggars. And God showered us with His grace in response through our faith in Christ.
And that should teach us, shouldn’t it? Whenever life confronts us with something that seems insurmountable, where we feel totally helpless, that is a reminder that the word of God is the answer to our helplessness and despair.
Well finally the beggars kind of woke up to what they were doing. And in fact a Christian who suddenly realizes, “You know I ought to share this good news with my unsaved friends and relatives.” And so these beggars say to each other, “We’re not doing the right thing. This is a day of good news. And we remain silent.”
When they go back in the dating ban former gatekeepers the gatekeepers pass the information along to the household of the king. And the king gets up in the middle of the night. And the king of Israel says, “Praise the Lord. The prophecy of Elisha our inaction is about the country.”
Mm-hmm. No. The individual says, “Okay folks let me just explain to you what the Syrians are up to. They know how hungry we are. And they’ve abandoned the camp and they’re hiding in the field. They’ll issue us had as a gate of the city.”
Well instead of responding to what God is doing with faith he responded with fear. Fortunately one of his officers said, “Well, Your Majesty, weren’t you that some men take five horses out? Five at it up to this city. And then they look and see what the situation really is. Because the worst had happened to them is no driving everybody else in the city from five. So what have we got to lose?”
And the king says, “Fine. Let them go and see.” And when they get out who they can think that exactly isn’t bigger and destroyed it. And then they were checking to see the Syrians were your mind all and with weapons. And they came back and reported their discovery to the king.
And don’t you see, my friends, not only is the word of God the answer to my fear? Well what is the answer to our fear? Most of you know that in March of 1998 I had a very serious heart attack. And the heart attack came to its climax while Lewis and I were out in the office of our tax accountant out in Colleyville.
And paramedics arrived and they had me on the stretcher and they had the oxygen mask over my face, my mouth and my nose. And he said to me, “Do this too.” And after I got well I was talking to him on the phone one day reminding him with what he said. He was so embarrassed. He says, “I don’t know why I said that. But I clearly remember the Ebro.”
But you know what I don’t remember? I don’t remember being afraid. And I’m not saying that to my own credit. I am saying that God gave me the grace to confront that run mine or what I knew about the word of God. I remember thinking as they were taking to you whether this is probably serious. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. But God is in it.
I never something God did for me. But isn’t it true that in the moment that is likely to terrify us the hook the word of God is the answer to our fear?
When things got better in Samaria right away there was food. The Syrians had fled. And the officer who had been right beside the king was in charge of the gate. And when the crowd of famished Samaritans arrived they were interested in who was in charge. And they were over here. May not have met. They trampled him to death.
Well there are other ways to die folks. But if you ask me being trampled by a crowd is one of the ugliest. And if you asked what did the royal official look like after this had happened my answer to you is it looked like a mess. Broken bones, crushed body parts. Oh what an absolute mess.
And my dear friend when we make light of the word of God, when we receive it in crowd underneath, we may not actually die. But our lives may become a mess filled with fun, disappointment, and frustration.
For the question is what do you want? A mess or the message?
Twenty years ago Robert Moffat was a pioneer missionary in South Africa. And he lumpy I needed to head back to Great Britain with the intention of finding volunteers to cover the missionary activity that was going on in Africa. He was encountered by a very brutally cold winter. And on one occasion when he was scheduled to speak at a certain church the weather was terrible.
And when he got up to speak he had a very small group there. And they were all ladies. Now in those days you didn’t exactly expect ladies to go out through a mission field like Africa where there were so many hardships.
And her little work the text that that Mr. Moffat was reading from was from Isaiah 8:4. And it says, “To you who men I call.” Pretty hard to preach that to a bunch of ladies, right? And Moffat almost didn’t notice a little growing up in the left who had come to work the bellows of the church. Walker when they went ahead preach anesthesia that serves certainly be of course a result.
Bob Moffat usual for an addition for him out. But the little boy that worked the bellows had been inspired by this traffic. He decided to follow the steps of this pioneer missionary. And he went to school and he got a degree in medicine. And he went and spent the rest of his life reaching the unreached tribes of Africa.
And here’s the bottom line. This little boy’s name was Dr. David Livingstone. One of the greatest and most famous missionaries ever heard in the land of Africa.
What happened? The message got through to him. With mother risen. And my dear friends if you will let the word of God get through to your heart and really affect you the results will be very, very one.
Shall we pray?
Father, thank You for Your message. Thank You for its power. Thank You for the opportunity we have to believe it, to rely upon it, to follow it, to trust Thee for everything. Help us to do that we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.