Now
there were four men with leprosy sitting at the entrance of the city
gates. “Why should we sit here waiting to die?” they asked each other. “We will starve if we stay here, but with the
famine in the city, we will starve if we go back there. So we might as well go out and surrender to
the Aramean army. If they let us live,
so much the better. But if they kill us,
we would have died anyway.” So at
twilight they set out for the camp of the Arameans. But when they came to the edge of the camp, no
one was there! For the Lord had caused
the Aramean army to hear the clatter of speeding chariots and the galloping of
horses and the sounds of a great army approaching. “The king of Israel has hired the Hittites and
Egyptians to attack us!” they cried to one another. So they panicked and ran into the night,
abandoning their tents, horses, donkeys, and everything else, as they fled for
their lives. When the men with leprosy
arrived at the edge of the camp, they went into one tent after another, eating
and drinking wine; and they carried off silver and gold and clothing and hid
it. Finally, they said to each other,
“This is not right. This is a day of
good news, and we aren’t sharing it with anyone! If we wait until morning, some calamity will
certainly fall upon us. Come on, let’s
go back and tell the people at the palace.”
So they went back to the city and told the gatekeepers what had happened.
“We went out to the Aramean camp,” they
said, “and no one was there! The horses
and donkeys were tethered and the tents were all in order, but there wasn’t a
single person around!” Then the
gatekeepers shouted the news to the people in the palace. 2 Kings 7:3-11(NLT)
Matthew Henry said, God’s….time to appear for his
people is when their strength is gone.[1]
The
strength of the people of God was gone. Years of siege by the
Arameans had sapped every resource within the city walls. Starvation was
becoming the fate of God’s people in the northern kingdom of Samaria. Some
of them were even resorting to cannibalism.
In our text, four lepers were sitting at the gate. They
were unable to go into the city because of their disease and unwilling to
leave, but living in abject fear as they waited for the enemy to strike; talk
about a rock and a hard place!
The Lepers Needed a Miracle
There is little doubt that the lepers were in the worst possible
position. 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, or faith that God would provide,
or 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!
Many people read this story believe it was the faith of the lepers
that provoked a miracle. I say Not so! The soldiers had
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 a God-given inspiration; they made a
decision to do something different.
· 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, the dead man, got up and out of the tomb, no one
witnessed the resurrection. He was gone before that stone rolled
away!
Miracles are always God’s
business…and His alone!
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, literally, over nothing. They heard things that went bump
in the night…and there they go…all heels and elbows making for home as fast as
feet will go!
The second miracle 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.
Actually, 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. That’s because…
Miracles are Not Good News
to Everyone
In the first part of this 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 how the siege and
the accompanying shortage of food were 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
fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? Jeremiah
23:29 (NRSV)
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,[3] not just
back then…but always.
Today…Let’s Hear (and do)
God’s Word
The seed of this story is sown in every church, every family
and every community. From time to time – especially in hard times,
economic frenzy, times of crisis – the seed of unbelief blossoms into a
full-blown crop of strife. This strife is the kind of
contentiousness that nourishes division in the church and
communities. That, in turn, always keeps God’s people from their
mission.
In many ways we are as the lepers and the city people of
Samaria.
· Hard-heartedness and individualism can lay siege to the church and
wall us in like prisoners.
· Anger and accusation can cannibalize a congregation; we wind-up
fighting anyone and anything but the enemy.
You have, perhaps, watched a movie or read a book with this story
line. A team faces a formidable opponent. Then, division
happens, tempers flare – that team is defeated before the game
begins! It can be that way – and often is – in the church!
Enter God’s Miracle:
the Least of These
The lepers are often seen as the least-powerful of
society. Yet here they represent those among us who have managed to
stumble across the truth that the enemy is really powerless to defeat us, if we
will but 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 really 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 who got
trampled in the stampede of faith.
The real enemies of any church or community are anger and
pride. Spiritually-speaking, anger and pride are products of
unbelief, and the father of that is Satan who revels in that atmosphere; but
God is grieved whenever His children are at war with each other.
Anger is like the enemy camped at our gates; it 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.
Will Rogers was a comedian who understood this need for
reconciliation. Once he was talking on stage about people having constant
squabbles – he compared them to two snakes he saw once as he was walking
along. They each had bitten down on the other’s tail end – they
formed a perfect circle. He said it was an odd sight, but odder
still was the fact that in just a second, sure enough they had swallowed each
other. And that’s what anger and pride do!
By the way…Will Rogers wasn’t THAT smart, he got his image from
Paul:
If, however, you bite and devour one another, take
care that you are not consumed by one another. Galatians 5:15 (NRSV)
We are still only a few weeks into this New
Year. Perhaps some of your resolutions are still
surviving? It’s not too late to add some peace resolutions to the
list. Here are three related leper-at-the-wall decisions
that can help plunder the enemy’s camp in your life…
Get over your past….Learn
to forgive
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”.
There is not a single person here today who doesn’t have some
hurts, unmet expectations or disappointments. Things which have
happened cannot be undone…but ruminating on them like a cow chewing the cud,
makes it worse.
Forgive what’s been done to you.
Get over your anger…Learn
to let God help you forget
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.
A good question I use for judging whether something needs to be
put in the sea of forgetfulness is this: Is what’s bothering
me going to matter in 100 years?
In another church I once served there was a lady who was a
McCoy. She was a genuine descendant of the West Virginia McCoys; you
might recall they had a slight falling out with the Hatfields? She
married into our family, became my step mother-in-law. I asked Nanny
once what the feud was all about. She told me, I don’t
think anybody remembers. And it’s been over a hundred years!
Learn to forgive, AND forget, and then…
Get on with your mission…be God’s instrument of peace
This may be the most important piece of the puzzle…just getting
busy for God! 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 and follow His
Spirit’s leading. You can’t do that when all your energy is taken up with
fighting fights that don’t matter.
Getting on with the mission requires that most critical step in a
journey of a thousand miles – the first one. My daughter Carrie and
her husband have two small prophets at their house –Jonah and
Micah. After church one week they went to a Japanese steak
house. You know what the cooks do there, knife-juggling, vegetable
throwing...it’s as much a show as it is a meal.
Their chef was a master, flipping things up into his chef’s hat,
blowing flames all over the grill, all the while engaging everyone around the
seating area with chatter and jokes. About 15 minutes into this
delightful experience there was a slight pause, and in the dead silence, the
kind that a 6 year-old is good at picking, Micah spoke for the crowd, would
you just cook? I’m starving!
The lepers outside the city gates knew their time was limited…and
so is ours.
If you’re having trouble getting past old anger, don’t be like an
old cow wasting precious time on the past and what’s been done to you…just get
on with the mission! It’s better than dying at the gate!
Father, the past and all it holds is in your
hands.
People and actions which have disappointed us are also
yours to judge. What you have placed in front of each of us is the
mission…to step into it, live with it….and know that we are called to it.
Thank you for the opportunity, the high privilege of
walking with you and serving You by serving all peoples here and now.
Grant us success in putting away the past which robs
our joy, and putting away anger which would corrupt our present and destroy our
future. Lead us ever in the pathway of reconciliation with all
people; both those like us, and those so different from us we cannot imagine
how You’ll do it.
We pray in the Name of the Father, Because of the Son,
Cooperating with the Spirit…Amen!
