2 Kings 4–7

0:00 Over the years of my life, I have been able to attend two presidential inaugurations. I went to one of George W. Bush's inaugurations, and then what was it, eight years later, I went to one of President Obama's inaugurations, and I love them. I love, it's weird, I know, I love presidential inaugurations. If I'm not able to go to one personally, I will absolutely turn on the TV and just watch the thing all day long. I love the pomp. I love the circumstance. I love the flags. I love the ceremonies. I love the parties afterward. I love all the dignitaries up on the stage in front of the Capitol. I love everything about them. But one thing that I've noticed as I've just watched these presidential inaugurations over the years is that once the thing is over, right, like once you kind of walk away from it and you start getting back to life, I've noticed, and if you're a politics nerd like me, you may have noticed the same thing, that once the thing is over

1:00 and you sort of go back to real life, there's this real sense of weirdness that kind of pervades, you're nodding, you know exactly what I'm talking about, there's this sense of weirdness that pervades your mind, because all of a sudden, everything is just kind of different, right? You got a new president, you got a new government, you got a new kind of everything, the faces on the TV are different. These people over here on this side of the aisle that have been making these arguments and these people over here who have been making the opposite arguments now basically trade places and start making the opposite arguments of what they were just 10 minutes prior. It's incredible the way it happens. Why is that? Well, it's because leadership is something that we see all the time on our TVs, in the radio, on the internet. It's just something that's in front of us all the time so for example when you get eight years of one president president obama it's just about every day that you're seeing president obama's face on the tv and when that face

2:00 changes everything feels different i think that sense of weirdness is not just true of changes in leadership changes in president and presidents governments all the rest of it i think that sense of weirdness and that sense of change is something that pops up over and over again through the course of our lives as years pass because as the years roll on and as we live through the you know from for most of us it's going to be something like 80 or 85 years of our life almost a century things change circumstances change and at various points in our lives we can just have this sense of weirdness that the ground is shifted under our feet a little bit and everything is now different It's important that we as Christians kind of learn to deal with that, to not be thrown by it when the ground seems to shift under our feet.

2:52 Whether it's a presidential inauguration or a change in your circumstances or, you know, somebody who's taken from you in death. It's important for us as Christians to be able to understand that even though circumstances may change on the surface, even though things may feel different on the surface, the granite foundation on which our lives rest never, ever changes. That's the message of that song we sang just a few minutes ago. Great is thy faithfulness, O God, my Father. There is no shadow of turning with thee. Thou changest not. Thy compassions, they fail not.

3:23 As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be. It's an incredible thing to say because there's nothing else in the world that's like that. Even the mountains themselves, you can never say, you can never say, even if the mountains themselves, as thou hast been, thou forever wilt be. And yet of God you can say that. And that's what our text is about this morning. Turn with me to 2 Kings chapter 4. That's where we're going to be starting this morning. If you're using one of these Red Pew Bibles, you'll find 2 Kings chapter 4 on page 309 of that.

3:56 And we're going to be looking at four chapters of that book. We're actually in the middle of 2 Kings, so we're continuing a study that we've been in for, well, two weeks now. And we've begun this series, it's going to be eight, ten weeks, something like that. I don't exactly remember, but we're really studying the second half of one book that ought to be called just kings. For various reasons through history, it got divided into two, so we have in our Bibles now, first kings, or one king, some people say, or second kings, two kings, it got divided.

4:31 But in reality, it's one book and one single story that runs through both of those books. And it tells the story, essentially, of the ancient monarchy of ancient Israel. Generally speaking, the book of Kings from 1 Kings chapter 1 all the way through the end of 2 Kings covers a span of history that's about 400 years long. It starts with the reign of Solomon, David's son, who led a kind of golden age in the nation of Israel. Follows that story from Solomon on to Solomon's son, who managed to split the kingdom into two, north and south, all the way down at the end of 2 Kings to the invasion and exile, finally, of the southern part of the kingdom by the empire of Babylon in 586 B.C.

5:12 So if you do that math, 586 B.C., going back about 400 years prior to that, we're talking about events here that happened roughly 2,500 to 2,800 or 2,900 years ago. That is a long, long time, 2,500 years ago, and you've got to ask the question, why on earth are we doing that? Why are we gathered here? There's hundreds of us that are here, gathered together on a perfectly good Sunday morning in this building in order to study this book with this mind-spinning array of names and events that happened almost 3,000 years ago, and it's not even our country.

5:56 that we're talking about. Why are we doing that? Well, the reason is because the point of studying this book of Kings isn't just to get the historical events correct. It's not just to remember and sort of drive into your mind that Jehoram followed Ahaziah in the north at about the same time Jehoshaphat followed Asa in the south. That's not the point, and you're never going to get that stuff anyway, I promise you. I've been studying this stuff for years, and did you catch my eyes having to look down at my notes to even say that little funny thing, I can't even get those four kings in the right order, much less all the rest of them. But that's not the point anyway. The reason we study this book of kings is not because of what it tells us about the kings.

6:35 That's not all that important. It's not to see what it has to tell us about this 2,500-year-old ancient Near Eastern minor kingdom of Israel. It's not to learn what it can tell us about history itself and all the events though that stuff is fun now we study this book because its purpose its point the very reason for which it was written in the first place is to teach us about god the creator and ruler of the universe and in doing that it also manages to teach us about ourselves and our relationship to that god that's why as you read it you've probably noticed if especially if you were here when we were studying the first uh first kings you've probably noticed and you're going to notice that the book is so often uninterested, just completely uninterested in the things historians would be interested in.

7:23 You know, the battles that this king fought, or the cities that he built, or the way he expanded or contracted the borders of the nation. Most of the time, when the book even sort of, you know, sniffs at that kind of thing, it just backhands them away with a little comment like, as for that other stuff, you can read about it elsewhere. Now, the focus of the book of Kings is on the way each of those kings not just managed the nation, but how, most importantly, they responded to the word of God. Every king is judged on how he obeyed God or not, how he repented of his sin or not, and how he was therefore blessed by God or not.

8:05 So as you read it, ultimately, the lesson that the book of Kings is trying to teach us, that it's basically screaming at us, is really straightforward and simple. It's that we should hear the word of God and obey it. We should hear the word of God and obey it. The problem is that just like the kings of this book, we have a tendency to mess up both halves of that. Hear the word of God is the lesson. What we do instead is everything in our power to shut our ears to God's word, to not listen to it, to flee from it, to shut it up, to twist it, to change it, to soften it, to make it say things about other people rather than things about us.

8:43 And then once we've failed to run away from it, and it gets through to us anyway, and we do hear it, our tendency is then not to obey it, but sometimes to ignore it and keep doing what we were doing anyway. Time and time again, that's the pattern that we see in the lives of these kings. And the whole point of the book is basically the author screaming at us as Christians today not to do the same thing they did, but to hear the word of God and obey it. Well, today we're going to be looking at four chapters of the book of 2 Kings, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

9:17 And we're going to make our way through that. We're not going to read every bit of that, but we are going to read certain points of it as we go. I do just want, unusually, to take a moment and point you to the title of the sermon this morning, Supernatural Events. I can do that because I actually don't title the sermons, if you have ever wondered that. Whoever the pastor's assistant is that's working with me at the time is given the task of titling the sermons before they are even developed, before they're even preached. And this one, I thought, was particularly good.

9:50 Tim, I can't say that it's like your most classically brilliant work. I mean, it's fine. But my guess is, here's why I bring this up in the first place. It has to do with an exhortation that I've made to you a ton of times. My guess is that if you took a little time this past week to read the text in advance, when you saw the sermon title, you at least slightly grinned. If you did not take the time to read the text this past week, you probably looked at the title and had no idea what it was talking about.

10:26 So if you want to get the occasional jokes that show up in the sermon titles in the bulletins, read the text in advance. All right, we're looking at 2 Kings chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7. Let me bring you up to speed on where we're at in the story. It won't take long. Last week we looked at chapters 1 to 3 of this book, which pretty much tells the story of this continuing war between the wicked house of the northern king Ahab on the one hand, right? King Ahab on the one hand, and Elijah, the prophet of God, on the other hand.

11:00 And for many, many chapters and many, many decades through the book of 1 Kings, you had this clash going on between wicked king Ahab and the prophet of God, Elijah. That was the story of the whole second half of the book of 1 Kings. What's interesting about the first three chapters of 2 Kings, though, is that that long-running battle between Ahab and Elijah now spills over into a second generation. The torch gets passed in both of these cases. So for Ahab and his house, what happens is, the way the torch gets passed is that Ahab basically dies in battle and is succeeded, first of all, by his son Ahaziah, who really does nothing except fall out of the window of his palace, nearly killing himself.

11:45 He tries to strong arm God into healing him, but only manages to get like 102 of his men roasted by fire from heaven by trying to arrest Elijah. And then he dies. He dies childless, and so his brother, the second son of the old king Ahab, takes the throne, and his name is Jehoram. Now, Jehoram is the guy that's going to be the sort of wicked king for the next few chapters of 2 Kings. So anytime you read about the king, really up until about chapter 9, chapter 10, something like that, the guy that it's talking about is this fellow Jehoram who succeeded his brother who fell out of the window.

12:24 That's who we're talking about. So the torch has been passed from wicked Ahab to now almost just as wicked, Jehoram. Not quite as bad, but almost. On the other side, Elijah's torch is passed down to his servant, Elisha, after Elijah is taken to heaven in a whirlwind. The names are all very confusing. So now, basically, instead of this main event of Ahab versus Elijah, What we have for a main event in these chapters is Jehoram versus Elisha.

12:58 That's the fight that's going to be happening over the next few chapters. The battle has spilled over into a second generation. But before we get there, before we get to the main event, the author of Kings has a little bit of work to do before getting on to that. He basically needs to spend some time convincing you, the reader, just like the people of Israel needed to be convinced, That this new guy, Elisha, is really the real deal. Because at this point in the book, you're supposed to not quite be convinced. Just like the people of Israel were not quite convinced.

13:31 And that's what's happening in our chapters today. Basically, you've got a series of supernatural events or miracles that this guy Elisha does that more or less replay miracles that Elijah did. And the point is to say, look, this guy Elisha is just as much of a prophet as the other guy, Elijah. God did not depart when Elijah departed. He's still here, and he's still doing the same things that he was doing. So let me run through it. We're not going to read it. Just let your eyes kind of run over it. I'll tell you what's happening in each thing here. In chapter 4, you've got three episodes, three different stories, showing basically that God provides for his people.

14:08 You've got the widow and the oil, the Shunammite and her son, then these little two stories that are kind of one story, but the poison stew, that's where the soup joke comes from, And then the bread, right? Chapter 5, you've got the story of Naaman, this foreign general who gets healed of his leprosy and learns who God is and what God can do alone. And then 6 and 7, you've got more or less the story of the siege of Samaria and God rescuing his people when they have no way of rescuing themselves. And all those episodes, every single one of them is in some way showing you that Elisha is as much of a prophet as Elijah and God is still there.

14:42 But they're also teaching us not just about the prophet, They're teaching us about the prophet's God, and that's what I hope we'll learn from them as we study them today. Main idea, even though you may be tempted to doubt it through the years, even though you may be tempted to doubt it through the years, our God still provides, heals, and protects those who put their faith in him. Let me say it again. Though you may be tempted to doubt it as the years roll on, the older you are, the more you're going to know the truth of that, Our God still provides, heals, and protects those who put their faith in him.

15:21 As thou hast been, thou wilt ever be. That's what I want to teach you and convince you of today. So three points to the sermon. Looking at chapter 4, then chapter 5, then chapters 6 and 7. Number one, God still provides, God still heals, and God still protects. Let's look at them. Number one, God still provides. So back in chapter 2, Elijah had been caught up in a whirlwind and taken to heaven. And just like God had said way back in 1 Kings 19, something like that, long, long time ago, this guy, Elisha, who's been serving as Elijah's servant, picks up the fallen cloak that dropped off Elijah's shoulders when he was caught up in the whirlwind.

16:00 He picks it up and basically takes Elijah's office as the primary and leading prophet in Israel. And most of chapter 2 then was taken up with more or less showing both us and the people that Elisha really was Elijah's successor. He starts to do things that Elijah only could do, right? So in one part of the story, Elijah, before he's taken up, takes his cloak, slams it on the Jordan River. The river parts, and he and Elisha walk across on the other side. Elijah's taken up. Elisha takes the cloak, turns around, does exactly the same thing.

16:30 The river splits, and you're supposed to take from that, oh, God is still here, and he still does things like splitting rivers. Not only that, but if you remember from last week, Elisha actually retraced exactly the steps that Elijah had taken when he went out of the promised land. And what that's teaching you is that when Elijah departed the promised land across the river, God's word didn't go with him. Elisha brought it right back in along exactly the same route. Chapter 3 after that tells the story of how this new prophet, Elisha, foretold Israel winning a great battle against Moab.

17:07 The sticker in that, though, is that things in the end don't turn out exactly like we expected when Elisha promised the victory. Because we're thinking about total victory, we're thinking about total defeat of this enemy army, and that ends up not happening at the end. So, when chapter 4 starts, there's still some question that's lingering in the back of our minds. Is this new guy, Elisha, really the real deal?

17:39 Because he's done some things that the great prophet Elijah did. We've seen those things. But he also kind of whiffed on the Moabite thing. He didn't get it exactly right. So is he really the new Elijah? So chapter 4 sets out to give us a definitive answer to that question. And it does so by showing us a series of miracles that Elisha did that reflect, again, very similar things that Elijah did. Let's read just a little bit of it. Look at chapter 4, verse 1. Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried to Elisha, Your servant, my husband, is dead.

18:15 And you know that your servant feared the Lord, but the creditor has come to take my two children to be his slaves. And Elisha said to her, What shall I do for you? Tell me, what have you in the house? And she said, Your servant has nothing in the house except a jar of oil. And he said, Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels, and not too few. Then go in and shut the door behind yourself and your sons and pour into all these vessels. And when one is full, set it aside. So she went from him and shut the door behind herself and her sons. And as she poured, they brought the vessels to her. When the vessels were full, she said to her son, bring me another vessel.

18:47 And he said to her, there is not another. Then the oil stopped flowing. She came and told the man of God, and he said, go. Sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your sons can live on the rest. Okay, now think back. Those of you especially who were here in the study of 1 Kings, what does that remind you of? That story ought to remind you of Elijah providing a never-ending stream of oil for a widow in Zarephath, way back in 1 Kings 17. And the details are a bit different here.

19:18 I mean, there it was just oil that kept flowing kind of for the rest of her life. Here it's oil that keeps flowing and filling up the bottles so that she can sell them and, you know, live with her son happily ever after. I think some people look at the details of this story and take exactly the wrong lesson from it. Because they look at verse 6, the oil stopped flowing. And they turn that into a kind of negative thing and say something like, well, it was actually her fault that the oil stopped flowing.

19:53 She was told by the prophet to go out and gather as many bottles as she could, but she didn't gather enough of them. And so when she ran out of bottles, the oil stopped flowing. Her faith was too weak or not strong enough or not big enough. She didn't expect enough from God, and so she robbed herself of God's blessings. I think that's the wrong lesson to take from this. In fact, I wonder if sort of retellings of stories like this one in the Bible that are wrong sort of take up residence in our mind and give rise to this idea that exists all over evangelical Christianity that if we can just gin up enough faith, God will make us happy, wealthy, and wise, and healthy.

20:36 I think that's probably part of what happens there. We get these ideas in our minds of these stories, we read them wrongly, we understand them wrongly, and it gives rise to all kinds of bad ideas about who God is. As if he's sitting up on his throne, staring at you, waiting on you to gin up enough faith, and then he'll give you good things. If you just believe in him hard enough, you'll finally get his blessings. But if you read it right, there is literally nothing in the text that says that.

21:09 And from start to finish, this is a story of a woman who hears God's word, and it's very straightforward. Go get the bottles from your neighbors, bring them back, fill them up. She does what God's word says, and she's blessed with overwhelming provision. Her sons are saved. She sells enough oil for her entire family to live on for the rest of their lives. Look, that's the lesson that you were supposed to take from this story. Not that you've got to gin up enough faith and gather up enough bottles in order to think big enough thoughts for God so that he can give you good things.

21:41 That's not what it's saying. It's saying, listen to the word of God and do it, and there will be blessings. Friend, if your mind is kind of captured by the idea that you've got to gin up a big enough or strong enough faith in order for God to bless you, and that you're just failing and failing and failing and failing, you need to take that idea right out and chuck it away. It's not true. Faith is not some substance that you can get more of and make it bigger. You can't do that.

22:12 Faith is just a matter of hearing what God says. Whoever comes to me and calls on my name, I will save. And you go, yep, I think you are, God, who you say you are. I think you mean that when you say that. And now I'm trusting in you to keep your promise. Hear the word of God and obey it. Hear the promises of God and believe them. That's the point of this story. Hear and obey. God provides for his people. He promises that he will and he wants us to hear him. Same points, I think, being made in the next story about this wealthy Shunammite woman.

22:47 We're not going to read that whole thing. I hope you had a chance to do that. But it's a fascinating story, and I want you to see. There's a lot of details in it, so clearly we're talking about a sort of eyewitness account of this Shunammite woman. But I want you to see just kind of the main story, main contours of this story. Basically what happens is that the story is being told that when Elijah would pass through, or Elisha would pass through this little town of Shunamm, There was a wealthy, the Bible says, a great woman. She's a wealthy woman who lives there, who kind of became his place to stay when he would pass through this little town.

23:21 Well, in a desire to be grateful to her, he asks her at one point, Hey, what can I do for you to repay you for all of your hospitality to me? Can I go put in a good word with the king, for instance, or put in a good word for the commander of the army for you? And she says, No, I don't need any of that kind of thing. I live here among my people. I'm happy, and everything is good. Well, Elisha goes away, has a conversation with his servant Gehazi, and he says, well, what can we do for her? Like, what is it that we can do? And Gehazi says, well, her husband is old, and she doesn't have any sons.

23:55 And so Elisha calls her back in, and he says, I'll tell you what the Lord can give you. I'll tell you what I can, the way I can show my gratitude is that this time next year, you're going to be embracing a son. And so it happens. She conceived, she bears a son, and he's born. the next year, she's got him. Well, the next part of the story, if you look down at verse 18, some years later, the little boy dies. There's something that happens in his head. I mean, doctors have talked about it, you know, for centuries, and we don't know exactly what it is. There's not enough detail, maybe an aneurysm, maybe something, maybe something else, we don't know, but he dies. The woman goes to Elisha and begs him to come and do something for her son, But she makes this argument to him.

24:37 She makes this argument that, listen to me. I did not ask the Lord to give me this child. And yet he gave me the child. And now he has taken him away and I am in bitter distress. You hear that in her? I didn't ask for this. And the Lord gave and took away. Well, Elisha goes to her house and sees the child lying on the bed. He goes in, shuts the door, prays to the Lord, and then he lays down on the child like Elijah had done prior to that.

25:10 Stretches himself out on the child, and the child breathes, comes to life, goes back to his mother. It's an amazing little story, isn't it? It seems strange to us, I think. I mean, one of the things that, I mean, I've told you that there are lots of weird stories in the book of 2 Kings. One of those weird stories is this one, and our minds are kind of caught by, wow, that's really weird that he lays down on the child. and there's so much detail about it being, you know, mouth to mouth and eye to eye and, you know, the whole deal. That seems strange. But if you think back to 1 Kings, Elijah did exactly the same thing with another dead son.

25:46 And the symbolism of the prophet sort of laying down on the child, you know, sort of eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth, you know, all the way down. The point of it seems to be the life of the prophet transferring into the dead person at every point. That's the best we can come up with. Sometimes there's just no good explanation for the symbolism, but it seems to be that nothing is being left out. Like, this is not just a kind of halfway resuscitation. The child is coming back to life at every point, and it's happening through a transfer of life from prophet to child.

26:18 Whatever the meaning of that symbolism, I want you to notice a couple of things here. First, I want you to notice, I kind of flagged it a second ago, But I want you to drill in on the fact that the tension in this story comes from the fact that God gives this woman a gift that she didn't even think she needed. And then he takes that gift away from her. He gives her a gift that she didn't even think she needed. And then he takes that gift away from her. I mean, look at verse 13. This is in that, the conversation where Elisha is saying, hey, can I go put in a good word for you with the king or the commander of the army?

26:59 13, he said to him, say now to her, see, you have taken all this trouble for us. What is to be done for you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the king, to the commander of the army? And she answered, look at this, look at this answer, I dwell among my own people. What she means there is, no, I don't, I don't need you to talk to the king for me. I don't need you to talk to the commander of the army for me. I'm good. I live here among my people. I have everything that I need. I don't need anything. I'm content. Well, compare that in verse 13 to what Elisha says about her in verse 27.

27:37 When she came to the mountain to the man of God, she caught hold of his feet, and Gehazi came to push her away. But the man of God said, leave her alone, for she is in bitter distress. Do you see that? It goes from I have everything I need to she is in bitter distress in just a very few years. And it's all because of a gift that God gave her that she didn't even think she needed. You ever notice that God sometimes does that sort of thing, even in our own lives?

28:16 Sometimes God gives us good things, and then those good things, in God's providence, turn out to be the source of great pain for us. And maybe you know circumstances, maybe you've experienced circumstances where that's been the case. Maybe it's a person that God gave to you and then took away. Maybe it's a job that God gave to you and then it turned bitter. Maybe it's a set of circumstances that you were very content in, and then God changed them in a moment. And maybe the good thing that you had wasn't even something that you asked for.

28:49 Maybe God just gave it to you as a gift, and then he took it away, or he turned it into a source of pain. And you're left wondering, why did you do that, God? It would have been better if you had never given me the gift in the first place. I was content before this, and now I'm in bitter distress. And why does God do that? It's a huge question because when he does that sort of thing in our lives, it makes us inevitably want to doubt his goodness. It makes us play a movie in our heads where God is this awful, capricious deity up in heaven that just kind of gets delight from torturing us.

29:29 It's like, oh, that person is content? Well, let me give that person this thing that will make them not just content, but truly joyful. And then let me rip it away from them and see what happens. That's what it makes us, that's what it tempts us to think. It's exactly how this Shunammite woman felt. I mean, you can see her reaction to all of this in verse 28. Then she said, did I ask my Lord for a son? Did I not say to you, do not deceive me? She's mad.

30:02 She's angry. Because what God has given, he has now taken away. Why does he do that? Why does he do that? Well, in many ways, like so many things with God's providence, it's a mystery. But I think one thing we can learn from the Bible, one thing that even the Shunammite woman learned, is that God does that sort of thing sometimes in his providence so that our faith and our trust and our sense of well-being and our comfort will not ultimately rest in the good things God gives, but in the God who gives them in the first place.

30:42 That's at least one of the reasons that he does this kind of thing. So friend, what is it that God has given to you that has the potential to take your eyes and your faith off of God? What has God given to you that has the potential to cause you to take your eyes and your faith off of God? You know, one way to get at that reality, one way to sort of identify what that thing might be or what those things might be is to ask yourself, what do I most fear losing?

31:20 What would most crush me if the Lord decided to take this thing away? And as you flip through those things in your mind, When you come to one and you feel your blood run cold at the thought of losing it. Well, there you've got it. You've got your finger on the danger. You've got your finger on the thing that you love so much that it has the potential to take your eyes and your faith off of God. So what is it for you?

31:53 And if you can find it, it might be worth taking some time to just deliberately offer that thing back to God. And pray some prayer like, God, I don't want this to become an object of worship for me. I want my eyes on you, and I can feel it in my blood when I think about losing this thing, that I'm tempted to worship this and offer it back. And say, God, if you need to take this to make sure that my worship is of you and you alone, take it.

32:27 It's a hard prayer to pray. It's a hard prayer to pray. And yet it's critical that you do so. Because your faith belongs in God and God alone. One of the most important things that we can do as Christians is to do everything in our power to pry our hands off the things of this world, even the good gifts of God, and make sure that we are clinging only to Jesus as our hope and trust.

33:01 But even in the midst of all that, I don't want us to forget the end of the story either. I mean, at the end of the day, this is not just a story of loss and learning to cope with loss. This is a story of restoration, right? This is a story of joy. The Shunammite woman receives her child back from the dead. And at the end of the story, there's not much said about it. But you can almost hear her laughter and her tears of joy reverberating through the end of this story. She gets her son back from the dead. And here's the thing, friend. The Christian life is also a story of restoration.

33:32 And that is true always and for every single one of us. The Christian life is a story of restoration, and that's always true. It's not always a story of restoration in the way we wish it might be a story of restoration. But God has already told us what comes at the end. Every tear wiped away, no more pain, no more sorrow. All of our griefs cast away, all of our sins cast away as far as the east is from the rest. Some people lose more than others in this life.

34:08 Some of you have dealt some awful blows recently, in the last year, in the last five years. But brothers and sisters, if there's anything that the Bible presses on us to remember time and time again, it's that the story of every single Christian ends in restoration. It's not necessarily the restoration of the things we've lost or even the people that we've lost along the way, But it is the story of the restoration of joy, the restoration of peace, the restoration of the healing of wounds and the wiping away of tears.

34:44 If nothing else today, thinking about the story of the Shunammite woman, if nothing else, I want you to hear the laughter, the sweet, tearful laughter of this Shunammite woman as she embraces her now living son. And know that one day that same laughter is going to be yours too, no matter what you're going through right now. That laughter is going to be yours. It may be a long time, as we humans have to count time, but I promise, my promise doesn't matter. Jesus promises you that that day is coming. God provides for his people. He provides now, and he will provide in never-ending abundance then.

35:19 God provides. Here's point number two. God still heals. God still heals. If you look at the end of chapter 4, starting in verse 38, we're not going to spend a lot of time on these. It ends with these two quick stories that kind of wrap up this theme of God providing. So first you've got the fixing of the deadly stew. And then you've got the provision of a whole lot of bread out of just a little bread. The stew story is kind of funny. It's not funny in the sort of, oh, ha, ha, it's funny that the stew got fixed. The reason the stew story is funny is because in these chapters that are just chock full of supernatural events, Scholars for centuries have tried to look at this one more often than you would expect, really.

36:06 Scholars have tried to look at this one and just make this into a story of Elisha just being a really good cook. And I'm not kidding. You read the commentaries and even like some of the main commentaries that I've used in studying through the book of 2 Kings and 1 too, that I've found just so helpful and insightful. They come to this story and it's like, Elisha's just a really good cook. So they look, for example, at the cry of the guys in verse 40, right there. There's death in the pot. And they turn it into just, this is disgusting.

36:39 It tastes bad. You should never sit down at your dinner table and take a bite and say, there's death in this casserole. Never, ever say that. But, I mean, that's what they turn this into. And then they tell the rest of the story. And it's basically just Elisha, you know, hears that the soup is disgusting. and he whips out his chef's hat, and he salt-baids it with some flour, and the stew is suddenly delicious. And people will make all kinds of points about that. He's very wise. He's very insightful about the world. He has knowledge of the various culinary aspects of plants in the region.

37:12 They say all this stuff about this story, but that is not the point. The point is that this is another miracle of God taking something deadly, kind of like the waters of Jericho back in chapter 2, and making them miraculously not deadly anymore. The point is that this is exactly the kind of thing God does, and that God loves to do, that only God can do, and that he is still doing it. Right there in the time of Elisha. Anyway, the story moves on in chapter 5 to this just, and this is where I want to spend some time, incredibly richly detailed story of this guy named Naaman being cured of his leprosy.

37:50 Let's just read some of that story. I think we'll read about half of it, down through 14. Chapter 5, verse 1. Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. Now the Syrians, on one of their raids, had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, would that my Lord were with the prophet who was in Samaria. He would cure him of his leprosy.

38:21 So Naaman went in, told his lord, thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, go now, I will send a letter to the king of Israel. So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, When this letter reaches you, you know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of leprosy. And when the king of Israel, this is Jehoram, right? When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, Am I God to kill and make alive that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, see how he's seeking a quarrel with me.

38:53 In other words, he's trying to pick a fight because I'm going to send this guy back and he's not going to be cured. And then they're going to come invade us. That's what he's worried about. But when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king saying, why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean. Naaman was angry and went away, saying, Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.

39:28 Are not Abana and Farpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Can I not wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. But his servants came near and said to him, My father, it's a great word the prophet has spoken to you. Will you not do it? Did he actually say to you, Wash and be clean? So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan according to the word of the man of God. And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child. And he was clean. It's a wonderful story. The main point of it is that Naaman comes into Israel with a massive understanding of who God is and how he works.

40:03 And that's kind of the thing that drives the story. He comes in thinking basically that this prophet has the power over life and death. That it is at the prophet's beck and call and that the only way to see the power of God is through the prophet which controls the power of God. And so when he gets to Elisha's house and Elisha refuses to come out and even just sends him off to a river to do something that seems very normal to Naaman, Naaman is ticked. He's just like, what, you're sending me away? The only way I'm going to get healed is to be face to face with this prophet and he's going to, you know, whatever, wave his hand in front of it and I'm going to be saved.

40:38 That's what he thinks. What Elisha has to do is deprogram that idea, and so he sends him away from himself. Do you see that? Go away. Go to the river. Get away from me and do what the word of God says, and you'll be cleansed. And when it happens, Naaman learns. He understands, oh, it's not that the prophet controls God. It's not that the prophet is in control of the power of God. It's that God does these things. He learns. Elisha didn't do it. God did it. I want you to notice something else.

41:10 Very detailed in the text. I want you to look at exactly what it is that causes Naaman to get so mad at Elisha. So first look at verse 10. Elisha, listen carefully, read it carefully. Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean. Okay. Let's keep reading. But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, Behold, I thought he was going to come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord and wave his hand over the place and cure me.

41:46 Are not Abana and Pharpar the waters of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean? Now, what does he mean by clean? He doesn't mean healed. That's not what he means by clean. Because he's washed in the, what do they call it, the Abana and the Pharpar. He's washed in those things many, many times. He's made himself clean many, many times in those rivers. And he cannot believe that Elisha has just told him to go do exactly the same thing in the waters of the River Jordan that he's done a hundred times in Abana and Farpar.

42:17 He's just like, I can get clean, ritually clean, physically clean, all of it. I can get clean in water anywhere. Why are you telling me to go do this very normal thing? Well, keep going. We're in sort of the middle of verse 12, end of verse 12. So he turned and went away in a rage. But his servants came here and said to him, my father, it's a great word. The prophet has spoken to you. Will you not do it? Well, why is it great? Why is it great? We already know that being clean is not a big deal. He's done that a million times.

42:48 And then look what he says, what the servants say. End of 13. Has he actually said to you, wash and be clean? Okay, now what does that mean? Well, first of all, that phrase there, has he actually said. In the Hebrew is the phrase, af kiyamar, has he actually said? And it is the exact same phrase that Satan used in Genesis 3. Did God actually say? Now, the logic is different.

43:21 The logic is different between Eve and these servants and Naaman. It's kind of backwards. We'll talk about that in just a second. But what do they mean? Has he actually said to you, wash and be clean? That's not the thing. It's not like they're amazed at that. Did he actually say to you, wash and you'll be clean? Why wouldn't you do that? No, that's not the point. What they're doing with that phrase, did he actually say, is saying, Naaman, think carefully about what he said. You're locked up on that phrase, be clean, but that's not what he actually said. In verse 10, he didn't say wash and be clean.

43:52 What did he say? Look at it. You answer the question before I do. What did he actually say in verse 10? What's Naaman leaving out? It's not wash and be clean. It's wash and your flesh will be restored. and you will be clean he left it out it's different from eve right and eve added something to the word of god naaman took something out of the word of god but the point is the same when god speaks you have to listen carefully and not just add things that you want to be there or take things out that you don't want to be there the result of that is disastrous when god speaks you got to listen carefully you got to read carefully and the problem is that whether we're leaving stuff out or putting stuff in we have a tendency to do exactly the same thing eve did and naaman did add a little bit of this that we really want to be there take a little bit of that out of god's word in order to make it fit our preconceived ideas of what should be there's a small lesson

44:53 maybe but i think it's also a lesson that that is critical for your life as a christian be careful friends, not to do that. Ask yourself, ask each other, let others ask you, did God actually say that thing that you're saying? Because the most dangerous thing in the world is to get God's word wrong. Most dangerous thing in the world. I want you to notice another last detail near the end of the story. By the end of 15, it's really clear, like verse 15, beginning of verse 15, it's really clear that Naaman's been converted to the worship of Yahweh. He gets it now. He says it there, there's no God in all the earth but the God of Israel. He trips up a little bit trying to offer Elisha payment for what's just happened. Elisha rejects them. Again, the point is, look, you don't owe me anything. I didn't do anything. It's God that you owe your life to now. So Naaman backs

45:54 off. He's learning. And he even kind of strangely asks for some dirt from Israel. He probably wants to go make an altar back in his home in Syria in order to worship the true God. But then look at verse 18. This is just weird. Verse 18. In this matter only, may the Lord pardon your servant. So I'm going to worship the Lord. That's what I'm going to do now. In this matter only, pardon me. When my master goes into the house of Rimon, that's their God, to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow myself down in the house of Rimen?

46:25 When I bow myself in the house of Rimen, please, the Lord, pardon your servant in this matter. You see what he's asking, right? He's a servant of the ruler of Syria, right? And he must be old because he's leaning on Naaman's arm. And he goes into the house of Rimen in order to bow before his God. And Naaman's going, this is not my God anymore. But he says, when he kneels, I have to kneel too to support him. So when I look like I'm worshiping Rimen, may the Lord pardon me. What do you think of that?

47:00 I mean, what advice would you have given Naaman? I mean, you see what he's asking? I have to go into the temple with my master, and when he bows, I have to bow too, and I'm going to look like I'm worshiping Rimen. I'm not going to be, in my heart, not worshiping him anymore, but I've got to go through the motions of worshiping a false God. What would you say to him? No. No, you can't do that. You've got to quit your job. Faithfulness requires that you quit the job.

47:32 But, man, look at Elisha's response. Go in peace. In other words, it's okay. What do we make of that? Honestly, I don't know. I really don't. I warned you, there were going to be a lot of places in Kings where I just have to say, I don't know exactly what to do with it. I don't think I would have given Naaman that answer if he'd asked me that question. But I'm trying to learn from it.

48:05 And I do wonder if that's kind of why the story is there in the first place, To temper just a little bit my tendency, your tendency, to think we know the answer to everything. To give us pause just a little bit to our usual headlong rush to think we know what is right in every situation. We see similar things in the New Testament, right? You've got Christians asking the question, what about this meat that's been used as a sacrifice to these false gods?

48:40 Can we eat this meat? And apparently some people were rushing really quickly to say, of course not. That stuff is demon meat. You can't eat that stuff. It's participating in idols. But Paul says, just hold up. Just hold up. Not so fast. So my question would be, you know, are you like me when you read that? Does Elisha's response to Naaman here catch you by surprise? Maybe even bother you a little bit. If so, then like me, maybe that's a little flag to take a breath and let some humility in.

49:17 Maybe speak a little more softly and with a little less assurance. Maybe as a Christian, learn the value sometimes of shrugging your shoulders and going, man, I'm really just not sure what to tell you there. And saying, I'm not sure, saying, you know, that's a hard question, and I don't have a bullet-pointed answer for you, that is not a skill that's highly valued in a Twitter world. But it is, friends, a mark of Christian maturity, because it's a mark of Christian humility. Well, point three, God still protects.

49:50 He still provides, he still heals, and finally, he still protects. The story of Naaman continues on through chapter 5, but it really, you know, starting in verse 15, well, a little bit later, 20 or so, becomes a story of Elisha's servant, this guy Gehazi. This guy, it turns out, is quite the character, actually. And he's shown up a handful of times in the story already. He's sort of, at various times, you don't take notice of him very much until right now. But if you've known him, you take notice of him more. And you realize he kind of acts like Elisha's bodyguard. That's what he does.

50:20 He tries to stop the Shunammite woman from getting to Elisha. He's delivering messages to Naaman. He's running around doing this and that for Elisha. And what happens is that, especially if you've read this before, and you kind of already know who Gehazi is, if you know that he's tried to swindle Naaman out of his money, then your impression of him throughout all of these chapters will be that he is a sniveling little weasel. And you'll have an image of him in your mind. In fact, he's not named in the story, but I am pretty convinced that the author of Kings wants us to understand that he's the moron who put the poison gourds in the soup in the first place.

50:56 Anyway, Gehazi, it's a fun, super detailed story. Gehazi lies to Naaman in order to get his money. He tries to hide that truth from Elisha that he had done it, and then he gets nailed for it, winds up himself being a leper. Well, chapter 6 then, all of chapter 6 and then down on through chapter 7. Again, we're not going to read it, but it tells this long, detailed story of God saving his people when they cannot save themselves. So you've got six, one through six there, the axe head floating.

51:28 It's not entirely clear what the point of that is. It may even be acting as a kind of time creator to let you know that these events have some time in between them. Like, oh, here's an episode that Elisha did that was interesting, right? It may be doing that kind of thing. Then in 8 through 23, you've got the story of Elisha being surrounded by Jehoram's soldiers, but not being afraid of being surrounded, because he can see the flaming armies of the Lord surrounding them. You've probably read this story before. It's one of the most famous in the Old Testament.

52:01 And it's wonderful, because it reminds us that what establishes us as Christians, what gives us strength and calmness through the difficulties of life, is that we can see things that other people don't see. In the eye of faith, we can see the armies of heaven. We can see our enthroned king. We can see the light of eternity shining. And all of that that we can see as realities through faith steals us to hold on and to press on and to persevere even in the midst of difficulty.

52:36 Last couple of months, we've been singing a new song, sometimes on Sunday evenings, Press On. It's a Getty song, you probably remember it. There's a line in that song that I just absolutely love. And it says that we as Christians ought to be glad in hope, calm in pain, and true in prayer. First time I heard it, first time I saw it, I thought, man, that is just beautiful. And I want to be like that. And Kristen and Keith Getty are just amazing writers of song lyrics. I mean, that's just beautiful. And then I was walking around in Hobby Lobby the other day with my wife.

53:08 and I saw this sign and it said something very similar. And then at the bottom of it, it said Romans 12, 12. And I went, oh. They just sort of jacked Romans 12, 12 and reworded it. But it's beautiful, isn't it? Glad in hope, calm in pain, true in prayer. Friend, I hope that's true of you. Even in hardship, even in the midst of difficulty, whatever that may be in your life right now, learn to be glad in hope and calm in pain and true and steadfast in prayer. Why? Because you can see things that are real and true that the rest of the world cannot.

53:47 Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you that there are realities and truths that we know are there, that we know are true, because you've told us in your word that they are, and yet we can't see them. And Lord, we thank you for the way that those things cause us to press on, glad in hope, calm in pain, and true in prayer. Because we're trusting in you to protect us, to provide for us, and ultimately to heal us. Lord, we thank you for all of these things. We thank you that they are ours because of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, in whose name we pray.

54:23 Amen.