Second Kings chapter 6. Last week we saw a comedy. This week we see another comedy. But it doesn't start in a comic way at all. This is a tough passage at the beginning. Second Kings 6 beginning at verse 24. And it happened after this that Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, gathered all his army and went up and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria, and indeed they besieged it until a donkey's head was sold for 80 shekels of silver and one-fourth of a cab of dove's droppings for five shekels of silver. Then as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, Help my lord, O king! And he said, if the Lord does not help you, where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor or from the wine press? 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. We will eat my son tomorrow. 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. Now it happened, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he tore his clothes. And as he passed by on the wall, the people looked, and there underneath he had sackcloth on his body. Then he said, God do so to me and more also, if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, remains on him today. But Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. The king sent a man ahead of him, but before the messenger came to him, he said to the elders, Do you see how this son of a murderer has sent someone to take away my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold him fast at the door. Is not the sound of his master's feet behind him?" And while he was still talking with him, there was the messenger coming down to him. And then he said, "'Surely this calamity is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?' Then Elisha said, Hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the LORD, Tomorrow about this time a sea of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two seas of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria. So an officer on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God and said, Look, if the LORD could make windows in heaven, could this thing be? And he said, In fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat of it. 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? 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 but die. 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. 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. 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. And when these lepers came to the outskirts of the camp, they went into one tent, and ate and drank, and carried from it silver and gold and clothing, and went and hid them. Then they came back and entered another tent, and carried some from there also, and went and hid it. Then they said to one another, we are not doing what is right. This day is a day of good news, and we remain silent. If we wait until morning light, some punishment will come upon us. Now therefore, come, let us go and tell the king's household. So they went and called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them, saying, we went to the Syrian camp, and surprisingly, no one was there, not a human sound, only horses and donkeys tied and the tents intact. And the gatekeepers called out, and they told it the king's household inside. Then the king arose in the night and said to his servants, Let me now tell you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we are hungry, therefore they have gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field, saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive and get into the city. One of his servants answered and said, Please, let several men take five of the remaining horses which are left in the city. Look, they may become like all the multitude of Israel that are left in it. Or indeed, they may become like all the multitude of Israel left from those who are consumed. So let us send them and see. Therefore they took two chariots with horses, and the king sent them in the direction of the Syrian army, saying, Go and see. And they went after them to the Jordan, and indeed all the road was full of garments and weapons which the Syrians had thrown away in their haste. So the messengers returned and told the king. Then the people went out and plundered the tents of the Syrians. So a sea of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two seas of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord. Now the king had appointed the officer on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate. But the people trampled him in the gate, and he died, just as the man of God had said, who spoke when the king came down to him. So it happened, just as the man of God had spoken to the king, saying, Two siahs of barley for a shekel and a siah of fine flour for a shekel shall be sold tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria. Then that officer had answered the man of God and said, Now look, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, could such a thing be? And he had said, In fact, you shall see it with your own eyes. that you shall not eat of it. And so it happened to him, for the people trampled him in the gate, and he died." Thus far, the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Almighty Father, teach us to wait for you. Show us the warning in this text. Help us to love you and to wait for your deliverance. Father, help me to speak boldly, powerfully, and accurately. Help us all to stand in your presence and hear the word of our great King tonight. Free us from distraction. Help us all to sit and listen patiently. We pray in Christ's name and all God's people said, amen. Well, this story is a story for the suffering, for the weak, for those who are looking for better days, who wish that their circumstances were better. It gives us reasons to wait for the Lord, and ultimately those reasons boil down to two. Number one, wait for Him because He will work deliverance. And number two, the fate of those who won't wait for Him is gruesome. So He will deliver, and those who won't accept His deliverance meet a gruesome fate. In its own time, when these events happen, they show the people of Samaria God's power to deliver. To the original audience of the Book of Kings in exile in Babylon, this story again showed that suffering is temporary and that God will deliver in his own good time. And in the context of the whole Bible, This story shows us that deliverance comes through the word of the Lord, and that trust is always the only proper response to God, no matter how bleak the situation seems. So wait for the Lord's deliverance, because He will send it when He is ready, but not necessarily when you are. Our story has five movements tonight, six movements. First the judgment, and then the response to that judgment, God's response, and then God's deliverance, but then the fate of the doubting officer. First we see God's judgment. Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, comes and besieges Samaria. Last week we talked about Syrian raiding parties just dashing into the country, stealing a few things, and leaving again in a matter of hours. This is a totally different event. A siege meant marching up to a city, surrounding the city, and making every effort to get inside and take everything that was in the city. In ancient times, that's how an army was paid. You were paid by what you could steal. And so if you didn't win, You didn't get any pay for the months that you might have spent on the campaign trail. So siege warfare was a big deal. In order, obviously cities have more stuff to steal than the countryside does. So the most popular way to wage war in this era was to march up to a city and take whatever was in it. So most city that had any pretensions to anything devoted a substantial part of its budget in this era not to water and sewer systems, not to trash collections and schools, but rather to building massive walls around the city. That was the only way that you could protect some of your stuff. Otherwise, you're just too vulnerable. Anybody can march right up and help yourself, help themselves to your wealth as a city. So cities invested in fortifications and the goal was to keep out attacking armies. And these fortifications in the days before air power and explosives were pretty effective. Attacking armies usually weren't able to scale the wall and get into the city. So instead they invented this that they called siege warfare. Sit in front of the city camp there and starve the occupants into submission. They might sit in front of a city for six months, eight months, two years, three years, four years, trying to use up, trying to get the inhabitants to eat all their food. Because the idea is, inside the city there's not enough cropland, there's not enough space to grow everything necessary to feed the population. So that was the whole idea of siege warfare. Now, in our text tonight, this happens to Samaria, and sure enough, it's working. People are getting starved out of Samaria. A donkey's head, which, who would want to eat a donkey's head? A nasty piece of non-kosher food, 80 shekels of silver, which, according to some people, represents eight months' wages. And the people are buying pigeon dung for five shekels of silver. And whatever that is, some say it was maybe a plant and it had this nasty name because it wasn't a nice plant. But regardless, clearly the siege has gone on a long time. There is virtually nothing left in the city. But, of course, things are much worse than that because we end up seeing this horrible inversion. Solomon was asked to divide an infant between two mothers who were fighting about whose baby it was. This time, the mothers aren't fighting about whose baby it is. The mothers are fighting about whether they get to eat it. And yeah, Solomon was wise enough to solve the first problem, but there is no wisdom that can solve the second problem. How do you begin to do justice in this scenario? How do you enforce that contract of, oh yeah, we can eat your kid today. And so the king just tears his robe and says, I can't help you. This is a problem government can't solve. This is way beyond anything I can do as a king. I can't help you from the threshing floor. There's no grain. I can't help you from the wine press. There's no grape juice or wine in this town. There is nothing to eat here. This was God's judgment. Deuteronomy 28, God told them, He warned them, then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemies shall oppress you. Deuteronomy 28, 53. God told His people, you're going to resort to cannibalism against your own kids when you start worshiping idols. Bound to happen. Of course, the same is true today. If you start worshiping idols, you start sacrificing your children to those idols. And our idol in America, I've talked about this, is the god of convenience. And thanks to abortion, we sacrifice millions of our children every year to the god of convenience. Well, these people were sacrificing their children, not directly to idols, but as a result of worshiping idols. So how does Jehoram respond to this pain? Well, not very well. He gets all upset, verse 31, and he says, God do so to me and more also if I don't kill Elisha. Well, there's a solution. Blame the prophet and kill him, the same prophet who rescued you from the Syrians many times in the last chapter. Yeah, that's a great idea. But of course, this is how these situations work. Things aren't going well, it's because we've sinned, so let's kill the people who are pointing out that we sinned. Let's kill the people who say, I know why this is happening. We don't want those people. And that's Jehoram's approach. How do you respond to pain? When you're suffering, and even when you're suffering because of your own sin, do you fight God? Do you get angry at God? that you utter the sentiment, basically, of this messenger in verse 33. Surely this calamity is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer? That's the question that drives this whole narrative. When terrible things happen, when suffering comes, when you're starving to death, why wait for God? Why even bother? Why not just admit, hey, He's not going to help? Move on with life. Don't trust him. There's no salvation there. I think I mentioned to you recently the second Humanist Manifesto from 1973 that contains the line, no deity will save us. We must save ourselves. Well, that's this messenger's attitude. No deity will save us. God's not going to save us. So why wait for him? You know, you could call this the response of anger. God, you didn't do what I wanted, so I'm going to get mad. And when you're angry, you don't have to think. You don't have to say, well, wait, what did I do wrong? You don't have to think about repentance. C.S. Lewis said, anger is the anesthetic of the mind. I just put my mind to sleep by being mad at God. Of course, that's what Jehoram did. He was ready to murder Elisha. But Elisha responds, or God responds, with a promise of deliverance. Jehoram, you don't want to trust me. You think you're a goner, but I promise you that within 24 hours the siege will be over and prices will be falling back to normal. Of course, if you don't have enough faith for right now, then logically you don't have enough faith for 24 hours. You can't trust God for 10 minutes, you can't trust Him for 24 hours. And if you can't listen to what He says for your now, how can you trust Him for a lifetime? God's promise to us is never, yeah, I'll deliver you within 24 hours. His promise is, I'll deliver you at the end. I will wipe away every tear from your eyes, but it's gonna take a lifetime. Blessing isn't going to be here by 5.30 on Monday afternoon. You won't be delivered from all the hard parts of life in this world in the next 24 hours. So Elisha gave this test, kind of as if to say, can you trust God for 24 hours? That's all I ask, one day. Trust God for one day, Jehoram. Now, Jehoram maybe did, but this officer, verse 2, expressed his skepticism, right? If God were to make windows in heaven, could this thing be? Now, that's not just ordinary doubt, right? We all have doubts when we're hurting. God, I'm hurting. Can I trust you? This guy isn't saying, God, can I trust you? He's saying, flat out, Even God couldn't solve this situation. We'll talk more about that at the end of the chapter, like the chapter does. But for us, now, the message is, wait for the Lord, because He will deliver. In His own time, in His own way, but surely and definitely. Even to Job, God's word was never, I'm sorry I hurt you. Right? God doesn't say that. Job, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. What was God's word to Job? I know better than you, and you need to trust me. What's God's word to us when we're suffering? Well, the scene shifts pretty dramatically in verse 3. We move outside the starving city to these four lepers sitting at the gate. And according to Jewish tradition, these are the four sons of Gehazi who were stricken with the leprosy of Gehazi back in chapter five. That's probably pretty ridiculous. There's no reason to think that they are the sons of Gehazi. But it makes the narrative a little more zippy if you think of them as being such. Anyway, there's these four lepers. who are ready to desert to Syria because there's no point in starving with Israel. They desert to Syria, or try, and there's nobody there. They find the entire camp deserted, and it's the end of the day. It's twilight. Just so happens in God's timetable that the Syrians were fleeing at twilight, verse 7. That's the exact same time that the lepers were entering the other side of the camp. The lepers get there and say, There's nobody here. Whoa. Hey, all this stuff is ours. Wow, that's really cool. And they start gathering stuff, and then they realize, no. No, we need to tell the rest of the people in Samaria who are starving. You know, brothers and sisters, this passage, verses 3 to 15, is a perfect text to preach on evangelism. This is us. Four dumb lepers with nothing better to do. Outcast boneheads And all we have to do is say hey, I have some good news You don't have to believe it fine. Don't believe it, but I'm here to tell you that you don't have to live in misery and starvation Because the Syrians are gone the threat is gone Deliverance is here food is here provision is here. Just listen to us and Of course, the lepers come and tell the gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers tell the palace, and the king says, no stinking way. You think I'm an idiot? This ain't my first rodeo. It's an elementary ruse. They just walked out of their camp. We'll go out to get the stuff, and they'll pounce on us, and we're dead. One of his servants, verse 13, says, no, king. Let's just risk five men and five horses. We're all dying anyway, so we might as well investigate further. This is how God communicates the good news. It's not always through the rich and powerful. In fact, rarely is it through the rich and powerful. God communicates the good news through lepers, through low-ranking gatekeepers, through servants, who just say, well, just think about it. Imagine if this good news were true. What would your life look like if today were a day of good news? Honestly, if God's deliverance doesn't sound like good news to you, why would you A. share it and B. wait for the Lord? If God's deliverance doesn't mean anything to you, there's no reason to go tell others. If it's not good news to you in your life, it won't be good news to them. But if it's good news to you, you should be able to communicate it like these lepers. It's just, wow, we've totally stumbled on something amazing. Not because we're amazing, but because God has delivered us. And as soon as you see God's deliverance for what it truly is, And you understand that it's the best news that meets you right in the place of your deepest need. This whole city desperately needed food, needed relief from starvation. And what did God do? He sent them an entire Syrian camp full of war supplies. So they tracked them all the way to the Jordan. People went out and plundered the tents of the Syrians. Verse 16, so a sea of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two seas of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the Lord. Deliverance experienced. And you can think of it, this is just a small time preview of the deliverance God accomplished at the cross of Christ. So turn over with me to Psalm 33. Imagine Elisha sitting down this night after this deliverance and saying, wow, God provided for us in our siege, in our famine, in our tough time. Psalm 33, verse 12. It's like this psalm was tailor written for this event. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord and the people whom he has chosen as his own inheritance. The Lord looks from heaven. He sees all the sons of men. From the place of his habitation, he looks on all the inhabitants of the earth. He fashions their hearts individually. He considers all their works. No king is saved by the multitude of an army. A mighty man is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a vain hope for safety. Neither shall it deliver any by its great strength. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his mercy to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in him because we have trusted in his holy name. Our soul waits for the Lord, right? What did the officer say? Why should I wait for the Lord? Well, here's why you should wait for the Lord, because the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. God delivered these people from death. He kept them alive in famine. And so the psalm ends with, let your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we hope in you. Wow. Why wait for God? Why trust God? Why rely on God? Because the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, who hope in his steadfast love to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. So wait for God, number one, because he delivers, but we can't end the sermon on the high point of Psalm 33 and say, God delivers because the text won't let us do that. We have this four verse coda that hammers home the fate of those who doubt God's ability to deliver. The king had appointed the officer whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate, but the people trampled him in the gate and he died, just as the man of God had said, who spoke when the king came down to him. And the text goes on to tell the whole story. God said, prices will fall towards normal. And this officer said, that couldn't happen if God himself were to make windows in heaven. And Elisha said, you'll see it, but you won't get to participate in the blessing. And so it happened to him, for the people trampled him in the gate, and he died. Wow. Why does the text insist on this, not just in one verse, but in four verses, repeating the entire story to us so that we can tell, here is the fate of the person who doubted God. Is it such a sin to say, look, Elisha, everyone in the city is starving. Are we really going to be significantly better off in 24 hours? I have a hard time believing that. But that's not what this guy said. What we need to see is that doubting God's ability to deliver is a great sin. This guy wasn't just doubting whether it would happen. He was doubting whether God Himself could do it. Could God do this thing? That was his sin. To look at the situation and say, God Himself could not fix this. God can't change this situation. God can't deliver us. God can't rescue us. Now you and I probably aren't tempted to think that in physical terms. While God could not do X, Y, Z. We understand his power. But we are tempted to doubt like this officer when we look at our sin. to think even if he wanted to, God himself couldn't deliver me from this temptation. Even God could not make me go a day without a drink. Even God could not let me go a day without a lustful look or thought. Even God couldn't deliver me from this same-sex attraction or from this ungodly lifestyle choice, whatever it might be. Right? It's easy to think that. And the longer you've lived in a particular sin, the easier it is to think it. Not just to say, I'm not sure that God will totally deliver me from this sin this week. But to take it to the next step and say, I don't think God could deliver me. I think God could apply all of his power toward this problem and it wouldn't change. That was what this officer said. He couldn't see God's power to deliver. He was like the blind Syrian army and like the blind servant in the previous chapter. God's power? What's that? Even God could not fix this problem. So his sin was not just doubting whether God would deliver. His sin was doubting God's ability to deliver. And if that's your sin, look out. The text goes out of its way to highlight the way this officer got trampled. This officer's death gets more space than some kings do. Because this is important. If God's promise of deliverance comes to you and says, I don't think that could happen. God, I don't think you could do that. I don't think you can free me from the presence and power of sin. then you'll see the deliverance, but it won't be yours. You'll die. Well, where do we see God's greatest power to deliver? At the cross. This is how serious God is about conquering sin. He gave his own son's life for it. This chapter is about deliverance wrought through the word of Elisha. What does Elisha mean? God saves. Of course, if you say Yahweh saves, the Hebrew name for that is Yeshua. So Elisha's name says God saves. Jesus's name says God saves. And if you doubt that, if you reject that, if you say, well, God couldn't save me. God couldn't deliver me from my sin. Then you're where this officer is. Nope, can't happen. If God were to make windows in heaven, could this thing be? He wasn't asking a question, he was making a statement. He was saying this thing could not be. God can save anyone, even us. Let's pray. Father, our hearts trust in you. We pray that you would keep our souls alive in famine, that you would teach us to trust in your deliverance. Father, help us to conquer the sins in our lives, free us from doubt and the counsel of despair, which says that even you could not take away sin from us. Father, help us to trust in your mighty power to save. We know that you have delivered us and we have confidence that you will deliver us again. Father, put your eye upon us. We fear you. We pray that you would keep us alive in famine, that you would deliver our soul from death. We thank you, Father, that you are our help and our shield. Father, our hearts rejoice in you, for we trust in your holy name. Let your mercy, O Lord, be upon us. even as we hope in you. We pray it in the name of your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and your Holy Spirit, one God in three persons, forever and ever. And all God's people said, Amen.