Title: After this . . .
Theme: To show that God can work in a moment. A turnaround moment.
Text: 2 Kings 6 & 7
Note: I used Tim Hill’s book Speed of Favor as a reference and notes for this message.
Have you ever had one of those days when things go from “bad to worse”. Maybe one of those weeks or even months. Just when you think to yourself, “It can’t get any worse than this” it does.
This is what it felt link in the story of Samaria’s famine in 2 Kings 6 & 7. We see three interrelated stories that just seem to escalate the problem. On the surface the seem to begin small yet when you put them together they just seem to overwhelm the whole situation.
Floating Axe Head
It starts simple enough when a man who borrows an axe loses it head. Right into the water it fell. There is a frantic going on. An axe was important. Elisha throws a stick in the water and by God’s divine intervention the axe head floats. Wow!
Surrounded
The next story in the saga takes us on the mountain top. Here Elisha and his servant are together. The back story is that the King of Syria was trying to defeat Israel. Every time the King makes a plan, God reveals to Elisha what is going to happen and then Elisha tells the king of Israel.
This frustrates Ben-hadad. He even questions the loyalty of his own men. His advisors tell him that it is Elisha who tells the kings secrets even in his own bedroom. So there is no privacy. The king sends the army down to Dothan. They surround the city. The servant of Elisha breaks out in fear, “Alas, my master what shall we do?” This is a cry of fear and desperation. Then we read on of the most quoted verses in the Bible.
2 Kings 6:16-17 So he (Elisha) answered, "Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." (17) And Elisha prayed, and said, "Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see." Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
This is powerful. God opens the eyes of the servant and lets him peer into the supernatural. We could stop right here and talk about out theme of the year. Vision 20/20. How if we could get a glimpse of the supernatural and see God’s work and protection. God’s angels at his beckoning call to intervene.
Well as the story goes the army of Syria is struck with blindness. Elisha leads them in the middle of the city of Samaria surrounded by the Israelite army. This was Israel’s chance to finally defeat its greatest enemy of the time. After the request of the king to destroy to the army listen to what Elisha says.
2 Kings 6:22-23 But he answered, "You shall not kill them. Would you kill those whom you have taken captive with your sword and your bow? Set food and water before them, that they may eat and drink and go to their master." (23) Then he prepared a great feast for them; and after they ate and drank, he sent them away and they went to their master. So the bands of Syrian raiders came no more into the land of Israel.
So this is what they did, which brings us to this point. After this . . .
After this . . .
One would think that after all that had happened here the King of Syria would leave Israel alone. I mean he would be grateful for the peace and deliverance of his army. But he was not. Instead he built a larger army to siege the city.
They surrounded the city and closed up all the exits. They were going to starve them out. He was containing them and separating them from their harvest.
2 Kings 6:25 And there was a great famine in Samaria; and indeed they besieged it until a donkey's head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and one-fourth of a kab of dove droppings for five shekels of silver.
Tim Hill notes: (This shows an example of the strategy of satan and the church. He loves to try to contain us and separate us from the harvest) To convince us there is no rain and the harvest doesn’t’ care. Yet the rain is abundant and the harvest is white, we need to be careful how we see it).
How many “after this” moments have you had in your life. After a great victory comes on the hardest trials of you life. Maybe you have felt like Elijah (Elisha’s mentor) in 1 Kings 19. After the victory on the mountain in defeating the 450 prophets of Baal. The nation did not turn and Elijah got discouraged. His life was threatened and he went into a depression. Even enough to ask God to take his life.
The city was in survivalists mode. They were desperate. Desperate people do desperate things.
As the king is going through the city he hears two mothers speaking. This defines the plight of the city.
2Kings 6:28-29 Then the king said to her, "What is troubling you?" And she answered, "This woman said to me, 'Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.' (29) So we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, 'Give your son, that we may eat him'; but she has hidden her son."
The king gets angry and sends for Elisha’s head. As they approach Elisha he prophesies
2Kings 7:1 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.' "
This is what turns around the moment. That one phrase it what makes the biggest difference, “the word of the Lord”. It is that one word from God that can give hope in desperate circumstances.
In chapter 7 we are introduced to the rest of the story. The city of seiged. There is no food. It has gone from bad to worse or as Jentzen Frankin calls it “From Bad to Unbearable”. Have you ever been there? Are you there now? Well I have good news for you.
In the unlikest people, four lepers, God sends deliverance. As they are sitting at the gate. They are lepers, they are outcast. They have a conversation.
2Ki 7:3-4 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? (4) 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. Now therefore, 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 only die."
Why sit here?
We might as well do something different because what we are doing now is not working. They reasoned with in themselves to do something different than what they were doing. To think differently than what they are thinking.
Often quoted is the phrase, “ Insanity is doing the same thing over and and over and expecting different results”.
The Walk of faith
Let move ahead. Lets just start walking. Not only was their the thought but there was the action. Walk. Move. Get up and start doing something about it.
There is good reason in scripture that in Jesus miracles he required action. He told the man with the withered hand in Matthew 12:13 to, “Stretch forth thine hand.” To the man at the pool of Bethesda, He said, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” John 5:8. To the blind man he said, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam. Peter had to walk in Matthew 14:29 to get to Jesus.
The Sound of Faith
Here is the coolest thing. As they begin to walk the earth began to rumble.
2Ki 7:5-7 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. (6) 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!" (7) Therefore they arose and fled at twilight, and left the camp intact--their tents, their horses, and their donkeys--and they fled for their lives.
This actually excited me as I read it. We don’t know the power of our faith and action. We don’t know the power of our faith in God who is moved by our action.
Matthew_17:20 So Jesus said to them, "Because of your unbelief; [82] for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.
Joanne Clancy is quoted as saying “Be the kind of woman who, when your feet hit the floor each morning, the devil says "Oh, no! She's up.”
What we hear in the natural is often times explosion and expounded by God in the supernatural. Such as Israel blowing the trumpets around the walls of Jericho. 300 hundred trumpets. Yet God vibrated the walls at the sound and they fell flat.
Go Tell the City
They did not keep it to themselves. They did not dwell in the past hurt and shame. Even though they had probably been treated harshly by the people of the city. But they were delivered. They were surviving.
So they shared. I believe this is true relief.
Rev_12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.
Our overseer Tim Hill sums this story up this way for the lepers to receive their miracle.
Ask the right questions
Make the right choices
Move at the right time
Do the right thing
Conclusion
Turn around moment
Amos 9:13 "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, "When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, And the treader of grapes him who sows seed; The mountains shall drip with sweet wine, And all the hills shall flow with it.
To me the purpose of this message is to get you to understand that God can turn around situations in a moment.
There are some of you that are in a desperate place for a turn around. Your back is against the wall. You need to decide in your mind. Step out by faith.
Now go share with the city.
