When we are really hungry we might say “I could eat a horse!” But on occasions people have become much more desperate than that. Some have become so hungry they have stolen food. Some have become so desperate that they would kill to be able to eat. And there was that story a few years ago when a plane crashed in the arctic and the survivors were so starving that they actually ate the flesh of those who had died in the crash. That is how desperate the Israelites who were trapped in the besieged city of Samaria had become.
2 Kings 6 25 There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter of a cab of seed pods for five shekels.
26 As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king!”
27 The king replied, “If the LORD does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?” 28 Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”
She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ 29 So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”
30 When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his robes.
Truly a desperate – life and death situation! But into that disaster God brought
MIRACULOUS DELIVERANCE
2 Kings 7 5 … When they reached the edge of the camp, not a man was there, 6 for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!” 7 So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.
In that desperate situation God had provided a miraculous rescue – but none of the Israelites in the city knew about it. They thought they were still trapped. Only four men knew the true. Four men who were the most desperate because they suffered from a dreaded skin disease. So they were outcasts, banished from the city.
2 Kings 7 3 Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? 4 If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”
5 At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans.
And so it was that these four outcasts discovered the wonderful truth.
When they reached the edge of the camp, not a man was there!,
The Arameans had all run away. The enemy was defeated, the siege was over, suffering was ended! Once again God had saved his people! No wonder the four lepers celebrated!
8 The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents. They ate and drank, and carried away silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.
This story has an obvious parallel, of course. The situation in the world around us today is truly desperate. We may not see people starving to death on our doorsteps – although the problems to millions of families caused by poverty and debt in this country are bad enough. But just watch the news and you will hear of chemical weapons being used in Syria and more than a million child refugees who have had to abandon homes and sometimes families to escape that country.
Tensions between the West and North Korea and also with Iran remain high. The dictator Robert Mugabe has begun his seventh term as president of Zimbabwe despite evidence of widespread fraud in the elections. The world is as much of a mess as it has ever been.
But God has already provided a miraculous deliverance from this desperate situation. God has given his Son Jesus Christ to be the Saviour of all who put their trust in Him. Christians have already experienced this wonderful rescue. The power of Christ which is sufficient for every situation. The God who meets all our needs through the riches of His grace in Jesus Christ. In many ways Christians are like those four lepers who discovered and experienced God’s deliverance of the city.
Those four men were really enjoying all the benefits of that amazing rescue. But then they realised something very important.
2 Kings 7 9 Then they said to each other, “We’re not doing right. This is a day of good news and 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.”
They had a MESSAGE TO DELIVER
“We have good news – we shouldn’t keep it to ourselves!” Those four men knew that the enemy was defeated. They knew that the people in the city could be saved. They knew that people who were starving did not need to die. They knew they should not keep such wonderful amazing life-saving news to themselves!
10 So they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them, “We went into the Aramean camp and not a man was there—not a sound of anyone—only tethered horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were.” 11 The gatekeepers shouted the news, and it was reported within the palace.
And Christians are just like those four men. We also have a message to deliver. It is perfectly right for us to be enjoying the blessings of the good news of Jesus Christ for ourselves. But it would be completely wrong for us to keep that message to ourselves. We have to share it!
Jesus came with a message of Good News! From the very beginning of his ministry this was the message Jesus brought.
Luke 4 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Good news for the poor. Freedom and healing and deliverance and God’s blessing! And those blessings are not just for some elite group of people. The blessings of salvation would not be reserved for God’s chosen people Israel any longer. They would be offered to everybody! God’s blessings will be for everyone who puts their faith in Jesus! This is the wonderful message all Christians have been given to deliver. We should not keep it to ourselves!
Of course, any message about salvation can get a sceptical response.
2 Kings 7 11 The gatekeepers shouted the news, and it was reported within the palace.
12 The king got up in the night and said to his officers, “I will tell you what the Arameans have done to us. They know we are starving; so they have left the camp to hide in the countryside, thinking, ‘They will surely come out, and then we will take them alive and get into the city.’ ”
People are often suspicious of a message which brings good news. Thankfully at least one person realized that the sensible thing to do would be to investigate and see if the message is true.
13 One of his officers answered, “Have some men take five of the horses that are left in the city. Their plight will be like that of all the Israelites left here—yes, they will only be like all these Israelites who are doomed. So let us send them to find out what happened.”
That will always be the sensible thing to do. If somebody brings you good news – check it out! And that is what they did.
14 So they selected two chariots with their horses, and the king sent them after the Aramean army. He commanded the drivers, “Go and find out what has happened.” 15 They followed them as far as the Jordan, and they found the whole road strewn with the clothing and equipment the Arameans had thrown away in their headlong flight. So the messengers returned and reported to the king. 16 Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, as the LORD had said.
The message was true! The siege was over! The people in the city were saved, not in the least by their own efforts but entirely by God’s miraculous deliverance. They were rescued because the four lepers had passed on the good news as they were obliged to do. But let’s just think a bit more about their motivation for speaking out.
MOTIVES FOR SPEAKING
First of all they were surely joyful and grateful for their own experiences of being saved.
8 The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents. They ate and drank, and carried away silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.
They had food and drink. They had taken plunder and humanly speaking these outcasts were richer than they had ever been in their lives. Unless they were totally self-centred, we would expect those four men to want other people to share in those blessings as well. They would want other people to live rather than to die!
But then they had a second motive for speaking.
9 Then they said to each other, “We’re not doing right. This is a day of good news and 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.”
It would have been morally wrong for those men to stay silent. Knowing good news but keeping it to yourself would be morally wrong! God would prefer it if Christians shared the Good News of Jesus Christ out of joy and gratitude rather than out of a sense of duty. But God would prefer it if we shared the gospel out of duty, or even out of a fear of punishment, rather than us staying silent and never sharing the gospel at all!
Remember the apostle Paul’s motives for speaking as he shared the gospel.
1 Corinthians 9 6 Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make use of my rights in preaching it. …. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.
Paul was ready to do whatever it takes to share the gospel! So should we!
By the way, did you notice the sense of urgency the four men felt?
2 Kings 7:9 If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.”
They were lepers and outcasts. So they were taking a big risk in even approaching the city gates. But they didn’t wait until morning. People were dying!! As soon as they recognised the enormous responsibility they faced, the men went at once to deliver the good news. The message of the gospel is no less urgent today! We have a message to deliver about a miraculous deliverance. “This is a day of good news. We should not keep it to ourselves!”
I am always moved by the story is told of a messenger who was sent by a great king to the governor of his prison to deliver an important message. But it was a hot day and the messenger was thirsty so he stopped off at a taverna for a tequila on the way. He was still thirsty so he had another tequila. Then a little siesta. Then another tequila. And another. So it was dusk when the messenger finally arrived at the prison and he heard the bell tolling as yet another prisoner was executed. The messenger delivered his message to the prison governor. Of course, it was a pardon for the man who had just died.
“This is a day of good news. We should not – we dare not – keep it to ourselves!”
