THIS IS A DAY OF GOOD NEWS

2 Kings 6:24-7:20

Key Verse 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." 

From this passage we can learn the faith that meets the challenges of life and turns them into reasons to praise God’s name and render glory to God.  

An English historian, Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), wrote a famous book entitled A Study of History. In his book he covers 26 civilizations throughout world history. He attempts to explain why some civilizations became prosperous and why some ended up perishing. He expressed his conclusion with two words: challenges and responses. His conclusion was that all civilizations have met with more or less the same challenges. Yet, some not only survived but also prospered, while some were overcome by the challenges and disappeared from the surface of the earth. His question then was: “What made the difference?” He found an answer in the way a body of people responded to the challenges, not in the challenges themselves. A right response generates a right result. By the same token a wrong response generates a wrong result. 

But when we study the Bible, we can quickly find that the Bible teaches this kind of wisdom over and again. It is not just Arnold Toynbee’s discovery but what the Bible teaches us all the time. In the passage as well we find the same truth. Let us then think about the passage in two parts: 

Part I. Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen? (6:24-7:2)

The story recorded in this passage indicates that an absolute majority of the people of Israel in the day of the Prophet Elisha failed to meet the challenges with a right response. They met them with a wrong response. I would like to call it a “fateful” response, not a “faithful” response. 

Let us read 2 Kings 6:24-25. The people of the Northern Kingdom Israel faced a formidable challenge. 

How did they respond to the challenge? Look at verses 26-27. “As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, ‘Help me, my lord the king!’ The king replied, ‘If the LORD does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?’” This king is Joram, the second son of King Ahab. His mother was the notorious queen Jezebel, the idol worshiper. His father Ahab was a kind of sissy person. Obviously, his mother was an unbeliever. Yet, he was a descendant of Abraham. So he could have shown a faithful response before the challenge. But he did not. Rather, he adopted a fatalistic attitude towards the challenge. In his fatalistic attitude, he thought that he had to accept the outcome of events. He judged that he could not do anything that would change the outcome, because events were determined by something over which he had no control of whatsoever. 

When you think about it, even though we call ourselves “Christians”, on many occasions we also adopt this kind of unfaithful response. This is what happened to me lately. In my backyard, there is a tree called a Chinese Juniper. I love this tree. It is tall and powerful. Most importantly this tree gives lots of shade. But one day, about a month ago, one of the big branches broke off all by itself. It grew too heavy and could not maintain its own weight. So the branch fell off. This made me angry. My first response was, “Why did this happen to me? Why did the Lord God make my life in Downey, California so difficult?” I kept maintaining this kind of attitude for a while, because among other problems after the branch was gone, a big chunk of shade was gone, so that as the California sun was raging down, the plants started drying up. I watched plants turn from green to yellow. So I was seriously thinking about selling this house, and living in one of those senior apartment housings down the street. But as I studied this passage I discovered that I was not that much different from King Joram. So what did I do? I started to build a small arbor attached to my study room. It costs me $188. And the frame is almost ready. Then I started liking Downey, California once again. I am no longer sullen. 

Again, each challenge requires a faithful response. If we fail to respond to one challenge or another with the right remedy, the situation will only get worse. In the passage as well, the king kept maintaining a fatalistic attitude. He did nothing to meet the challenge. Like many spiritual kings in the history of the Israelites, both in southern kingdom and northern kingdom, he could have done a number of things. He could have prayed to God. He could have called the Prophet Elisha for help. He could have summoned a national prayer meeting. Like King David, even he could have gone out to meet the enemy Ben-Hadad and strike him with a sling shot, all in the name of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and of course the God of Joram. After all, his name Joram means The Lord is High. But he didn’t do anything to secure help from above. He just sat down on a couch complaining, perhaps expecting that the problem would go away. Did the problem go away? No. It worsened. The famine grew so severe that people started practicing cannibalism. The story recorded in verses 28-29 is so horrible that it makes us feel so sick to the stomach that we are not going to read it. 

Verses 30-31 show us that the root of his problem is a lot deeper than it looks. Look at verses 30-31. ^“When the king heard the woman's words, he tore his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and there, underneath, he had sackcloth on his body. He said, May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today!’” Verses 32-32 indicate that Elisha’s personal residence was located inside the city that was under siege. The king then might have thought that Elisha was supposed to take care of the problem, but because Elisha did not do anything, he must be put to death. This shows us that he did not have personal faith in the Lord. He was not an infant. He was a king. He was “the man” in charge of the nation. Yet, he did not have an independent faith. So, naturally, he blamed someone else for all the problems he had. 

Let us read 6:32-7:2. Here we find another factor which prevented the king from responding to the challenge with a faithful response, that is, he surrounded himself with unbelieving people. 2 Kings 7:2 says that the king was “leaning on the arm” of the royal official. We don’t know exactly why the king was “leaning” on the arm of this official. But two things are certain. First, this man was very close to the king. He was so to speak the King’s confident. Second, this guy had no faith at all. Maybe he had tons of Bible knowledge. But he had no faith at all. Maybe he had some kind of theoretical faith, but not practical faith. I think King Joram failed to show a faithful response to the challenge because he maintained a bunch of unbelieving people like this official as his staff. 

Here we learn that in order for us to remain strong in faith we need to keep company with believing people. In the Book of Daniel, we see Daniel keeping his strong faith, so that he could overcome challenge after challenge. And thanks to his faith he turned the challenges into reasons to praise the name of God, and thereby render glory to God. One thing we must recognize however is that Daniel was able to stand firm and meet the challenges by faith in God not only thanks to his own personal, independent faith in the Lord but also thanks to the faith of his friends. He held tightly together with his believing friends. He prayed together with his friends and they encouraged each other. Knowing the importance of fellowship among believers, Jesus kept his disciples close to himself. He also continually encouraged them to love one another. Of the 12 disciples, Judas Iscariot was not a believer. So in order to protect the 11 disciples, at the last supper table, he arranged the situation in such a way that Judas would be removed from the disciples’ fellowship. After Judas left Jesus prayed for the 11 disciples. 

For the same reason, the Apostle Paul said in Galatians 5:9, “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” Then he says in 2 Corinthians 6;14-18, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. Therefore come out from them and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters,’ says the Lord Almighty.” 

In verse 2, Elisha said to the official, "You will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it!" Later this prophecy came true. 

Part II. “Let us go at once and report this” (7:3-20)

2 Kings 7:3-11 tell us that the Lord God used the four lepers to spread the good news to the city besieged by the enemies. Let us read this Bible passage. This passage indicates that it was through these lepers that many lives could be saved. 1 Corinthians 1:27 says, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” The lepers belonged to a social underclass. Society marked, classified and wrote them off as useless. But the Lord God picked them up to save many. This then indicates that we can learn something from them, especially the wisdom to overcome fateful looking circumstances.  

From them we can learn many things. But for our own purposes, we would like to think about two things:

First, the spirit of adventure

 Let us read 7:3-4 once again. “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? 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.’” I don’t know what kind of message you get out of what they said to one another. To me, their discussion which resulted in the conclusion to check out the enemy camp comes with one message: the spirit of adventure. 

Some one once said, “Faith is an acronym for Fantastic Adventure In Trusting Him.” To believe in Jesus requires a venturous spirit. When you study the Bible, especially the four gospels, you can find tons of messages that are hard to believe. For example, think about the promise to have all of our sins forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 4:1-12; John 1:29). Suppose you have $1 million in credit card debts. Suppose a collection agency is coming after you for that. You’ve got not a small challenge. Suppose however someone rich came to you and said, “Do not worry. I will cover you free of charge.” Then suppose that person presented you $1 million in cashier’s check as a gift. Wouldn’t you be glad and accept it? But our sins are a much heavier debt compared to financial debts. But Jesus died for our sins, so that for those who put trust in him the Lord God would find them as if they had never sinned before. What a wonderful transaction it is! But this promise of sin forgiveness is just the beginning. For example, in John 6:62, Jesus asked his followers, “What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?” Indeed as Jesus said here, the Acts 1 tells us that indeed Jesus ascended to heaven. I would like to ask everyone read Acts 1:10-11. Jesus also said in John 14:9,”Because I live you also will live.” These promises are too good to believe. But because we die anyway, we better believe. The bottom line is that there is nothing to lose in believing. 

Second, compassion

The lepers overcame all human limitations and boldly shared the good news to the dying. In so doing what they said to one another is quite amazing. And the key verse for today shows that they had compassion for the dying. Let us read 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.’ When you think about it, what the Lord has revealed to us, the body of believers is far more fabulous than what the lepers discovered. The news they bumped into was just economical. But the news we have in Jesus is different. Speaking of the absolute greatness of the news of salvation we have in Jesus, the Apostle Luke says in Luke 2:10, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” Then the Apostle John says in John 3:16, “God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This is indeed too good to believe. But let us believe it. When we really believe it, the Lord God reveals his true goodness. His kingdom rests in our hearts. Then we can have a compassionate heart for those who do not know the joy of salvation. In this compassionate heart, the Lord can strengthen us to share this good news with many. 

Lastly the people trampled in the gateway the unbelieving official. So Elisha’s prophecy, “You will see it but not eat it,” was fulfilled. This prophecy reminds us of Jesus’ story about a rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31. After the two had died, the rich man went to hell, but Lazarus went to paradise. The rich man did not believe in Jesus. So in hell the rich man saw Lazarus leaning on Abraham, but he was not able to cross over to the Lazarus’s side.

In conclusion, we learn that spiritual challenges such as sin and death are a lot greater in risk and danger than physical ones such as lack of money. But, thank God that he sent Jesus the Savior. In our generation many, especially young people, face lots of challenges, especially the temptations of sin. But when we have faith in Jesus, we can overcome the power of sin and death. We will not fall victim to the tempting environment. Rather, we can live as more than conquerors. Furthermore, in the joy of salvation, we can pray to bring this gospel to all nations, and obey Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations.

One word: This is a day of good news

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