Well, tonight, if you'd turn with me to the Book of Second Kings, we have been preaching or going through in a study or a series of expository sermons on this particular book. We've come to chapter 6, verse 24. We're gonna be reading through chapter 7, verse 2. But I want to just remind you, this is a difficult text. I've told my wife several times, they know that I do this, sometimes I do this in jest, but partly it's so true. This is just a horrible scripture passage. It's awful. The things that are written here, we don't want anyone to experience. And so it prompts me to ask the question, as we often do, how wicked can the human race get? You know, stories this week, you know, there have been stories this week of children, babies that have been beheaded. We've heard stories of the elderly being kidnapped, civilians being targeted especially to show awe or shock to others. But I want to remind you, these types of things are not new. In fact, if you remember World War I, you know about chemical warfare, the terrible things that took place. If you know about even the time of the Middle Ages and the time of the Reformation, you know about biological warfare, where they would take the dead bodies of diseased people and catapult them into fortified towns so that the people there would get sick. Terrible things. If I even say the word Holocaust, you know how wicked the human race can get. And the list goes on. These are just a few things. The world asks this question. Where is God when such horrible things happen? But this passage, I think, reminds us the Lord is still God when horrible things happen. Again, this is in the time of King Jehoram. Elisha is the prophet. Ben-Hadad is the king of Syria. Although they have been stopped from committing raids into Israel, yet this did not stop them from returning to war and particularly a siege on the capital of Samaria. That's where we find ourselves in this section. Chapter six, verse 24. Afterward, Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, mustered his entire army and went up and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria as they besieged it, until a donkey's head was sold for 80 shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of doves' dung for five shekels of silver. Now, as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, Help me, or help my lord, O king. And he said, If the lord will not help you, how shall I help you, from the threshing floor or from the winepress? And the king asked her, What is your trouble? She answered, This woman said to me, give me your son that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, give your son that we may eat him, but she has hidden her son. When the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes. Now he was passing by on the wall, and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath on his body. And he said, may God do so to me and more also if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, remains on his shoulders today. Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. Now the king had dispatched a man from his presence, but before the messenger arrived, Elisha said to the elders, do you see how this murderer has sent to take off my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold the door fast against him. It's not the sound of his master's feet behind him. And while he was still speaking with them, the messenger came down to him and said, this trouble is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer? But Elisha said, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord, tomorrow about this time a sea of fine flowers shall be sold for a shekel, and two seas of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria. Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, if the Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be? But he said, you shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it. As we consider this portion of God's word, as brutal as it may be to our ears, let us turn to him briefly in prayer. Lord, grant us understanding from this word. Grant us a measure of your grace that we might apply it to our hearts and lives, and that you might work within us as a result of it. Lord, I pray that the things spoken here might be consistent with your word, or else pass away and never be heard from again. Give us ears to hear it and hearts to understand it, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. In our country, after one of the many hurricanes, or perhaps during recovery from tornado destruction in the Midwest, or from flooding events across our country, today's refrain often is this, where is the government? Where is the president? Where is FEMA, the organization that is emergency management on the federal level? But I have to ask the question, What will the president, the governor, or others in the government really do to help the life of that individual who has lost seemingly everything? Here's the reality check. The government cannot fix all our problems. In fact, there's no human institution, organization, or individual who can fix all our problems. And there are times. when things are going to be very grim. In fact, there are some of you now who have gotten to the point in your life where you've been in a time of desperation. If you haven't been there, there might be a time coming for you when you may lose your family, you may lose your spouse, you may lose your job, you may lose your possessions, you may lose your freedom, you may lose your health. Whatever it is, you might come to a point in time where you are in complete desperation where will you turn? People around us say, to turn to this or that, to turn to some way to escape reality, perhaps, or to turn to some government official, or to turn to some charitable organization, or something like that, and sometimes these things can help a little bit, but in the end, they can't solve your problem. The first thing that happens in this section of scripture is that the impotency of government is exposed. We have a God in our land, one of those idols is government. We think that if we have the right people in office, the right officers, the right procedures, the right laws, the right philosophies, that they can solve all our problems. At least that's what people tell us on the news. That's what people talk about sometimes. That's how people get us all upset so that we want to do some things. In this particular situation, the people of Israel were in dire distress. Here is the siege of Samaria. Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, mustered his entire army. He went up and besieged Samaria. If you remember the context of this, this is where he had begun this battle with Israel by these little raiding parties that would go in unsuspecting villages. And instead of finding success, what had happened is God had told Elisha exactly where those raiding parties would be. Elisha would tell the king of Israel and the king, assumedly, would send defensive positions and armies or soldiers to those places where the Syrians had sent those raiding parties So that when they got there, there wasn't anything to raid because they found themselves on the defensive themselves. And so they went back home. And in the end, Elisha had an army that had come to try and capture him. And of course what happened was, instead of capturing him, God struck the army with blindness. They were led to the king of Samaria. And instead of killing them, he had fed them a great feast. They went back to their land and the king decided that this particular policy of raiding parties wasn't working. But he still didn't like Israel. So now he sent his entire army, not a raiding party, but an entire army around the capital of Israel, Samaria. And of course, in those days, the thing that they would do was a siege. A siege would last not a day or a week or a month, but it would last a long time, whatever it would take, six months, a year, and they would basically try to starve the people out. And this is what they were doing. Verse 25 reminds us of this process, says there was a great famine. In other words, the people were hungry, they were not getting food in from the countryside, everything was cut off, all their supplies were cut off, and it tells us the exorbitant cost of food in those days. A donkey's head was sold for 80 shekels of silver. Now, first of all, a donkey's head would not have much nutrition in it, would it? Probably the worst part of the donkey to try to eat. Very disgusting, I know. Not only this, but donkeys were unclean animals. Israelites were not supposed to eat donkeys. And so here it is, an unclean animal with the least nutritional value sold for 80 shekels to get an idea of what that exorbitant cost was. Some commentaries consider that during these days, a shekel was one month's wages. So for 80 months wages, you can buy for yourself one of the least nutritional sources of meat that you could possibly buy, a donkey's head. For five shekels of silver, you could get a few pods to eat, or perhaps these does done, which was fuel for a fire. Now, of course, you know what that means. It was very little, very scant. For five months wages, you could have enough to perhaps satisfy your hunger for a few minutes, or perhaps to feed a fire for an hour. The exorbitant cost of food also brought together an exorbitant cost on families. So much so that you get this picture. The king is out perhaps doing reconnaissance around. He's walking on a city wall. Of course the city walls in those days were very wide. They were for protection and so forth, but they were also able sometimes to have rooms or even buildings attached to them so that they could be there. So it was a wide place. He's walking on the wall and one of the women cry out to him, help me, help my lord, oh king. In other words, they're going to their king. Who else could they turn to? They can't turn to their neighbor because their neighbor's starving. They can't turn to their father or to their son who might provide for them because they're starving. Everyone is starving to death in this city. The siege has come upon them in such a way they cannot afford to feed themselves. They are starving to death. And then you get this terrible, terrible situation. The king asks, what is your trouble? She answers this. She says, this woman said to me, give your son that we may eat him today and we will eat my son tomorrow. And you think, how in the world can I come to this? I have to say, we are so fat. I know I am. When I shaved off my beard this week, I looked in the mirror and I thought, boy, how much weight have I gained over the last couple of years? And I think we have so much. I can go to any store I want, any restaurant I want in Myrtle Beach. I can get any kind of food I want. Seafood, I can get beef, I can get pork, I can have a whole smorgasbord. If you want to spend a lot of money, you can go to one of those places with a big feast of seafood that has 150 items advertised on a billboard. To know what it's like to be so hungry, you would consider killing your own child to eat them. I can't fathom it. I've not been there. I've been in some pretty bad spots in my life, but I've not been there in starvation. These are unconscionable actions. We cannot possibly imagine getting to this desperation. And the ironic thing here is the king is presenting kind of the opposite situation that King Solomon was presenting. You remember King Solomon, these two prostitutes have two babies. One of them dies in the bed by mistake or by an accident. The two women come to Solomon and they're fighting over who should get this living child. Instead, here in this place, with all these people starving to death, these two women come to the king and they're fighting over who's going to be able to help them kill the second child so that they can eat it. I don't think Jehoram was having the wisdom of King Solomon. He didn't know what to do. On the one hand, you think these are unconscionable actions, these are things we cannot possibly imagine, and yet on the other hand, they are with great detail prophesied in the Old Testament. In fact, if you'll turn in your bulletin to the back, and you'll see the quotes that are there, Leviticus chapter 26, verses 27 through 29 says, Israel, if you disobey me, In spite of this, if you will not listen to me, but walk contrary to me, then I will walk contrary to you in fury, and I myself will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters." And if that wasn't specific enough, here's what Deuteronomy says in that section of scripture that illustrates the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience. This is one of the curses. They shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout all your land. They shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the Lord your God has given you. And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you. The man who is the most tender and refined among you will be grudged food to his brother, to the wife he embraces, and to the last of the children whom he has left. so that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing else left in the siege and in the distress of which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns. The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will be grudged to the husband she embraces, to her son and to her daughter, her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears. Because lacking everything, she will eat them secretly in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your tales." This happened not just during the siege of Samaria. Lamentations 4.10 tells us that in the destruction of Jerusalem, The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children. They became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people. This is in the days of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. You see, these are unconscionable actions, but they are divine prophecy that has been fulfilled in the judgment of Israel for disobedience. You think God doesn't take sin seriously? Use that as an evangelical witness to tell other people in society and get them to come to church. This is awful. I can't begin to imagine what these individuals are going through. I can't begin to imagine what's going through this king's head. Here he's this leader of this people. And his people are eating their children because they're in such dire distress and starvation under the divine judgment of God for sin. Here's the reaction of Samaria's cane. The first reaction to this, before he heard what the woman told him, he said this. If the Lord will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor or from the winepress? In other words, he's saying, if God's not going to help you, how can I help you? We're all starving to death. If I go to the winepress, I cannot give you a glass of wine. If I go to the threshing floor, I cannot give you an ear of corn or a grain of wheat. There's nothing. It's a cynical answer of impotence. We realize that in this situation, it doesn't matter how powerful you are. It doesn't matter what authority you have over men. You are under the same divine judgment of God and can offer nothing. And then when he hears this story, This woman saying, hey, can you get some way to get this other woman to give the son so that we can eat her son too? There's a human reaction of pure desperation. He just tears his clothes. We don't understand that so much here in our society. We don't see people tearing their clothes at bad news. But of course, this was a public demonstration of humility, of sadness, of great grief and mourning, or of repentance. They would tear their clothes out of desperation in this case. There was nothing the king could do. He couldn't enact a law. He couldn't tell his army to go do something for them. He couldn't tell the local welfare office to provide for these needs anymore. There was nothing. On the practical level, this is what is so strange about our times. when I turned to the news this last week, and they talk about these children that have been beheaded and these people that have been kidnapped, and they talk about all the atrocities that have been committed around the world and across the world, both in Israel and in Ukraine, and we could even mention several other places that aren't in the news anymore. They say, how can we be in such a place where a particular political party could not put a speaker in the House? As if a U.S. House Speaker could provide for these grieving families in Israel. As if a political party getting together could actually do something to stop the violence that's taking place. This is how cynical I've become about government, is to understand I don't care who gets in office, it really doesn't make a lot of difference to me on a day-to-day level. Who's there or what's going on, it all seems to be the same thing and they have not been able to stop the rampant violence and destruction in our cities. They've not been able to stop the depravity that seems to be flowing increasingly in our society. What have they done? The government cannot stop evil. What has the president actually done to relieve the stress of a flood victim? Maybe for a moment to come alongside and pat them and say, I'm here. But in the end, even if they give the money to replace their house, what they have lost they cannot get back. But God can do something. God is not the government. God is the sovereign over all things. And in the midst of this, we're going to find out that though the impotency of the government is exposed, these ruling officials in the end cannot change the hearts and lives of these people and get rid of what's going to become post-traumatic stress in their lives. They cannot do anything, but God can do something. But this king, remember King Jehoram is in the line of Ahab. King Jehoram is not a believer. King Jehoram is wicked just like his father and his brother and others who have ruled in the land, his grandfather Omni. This is the house of Omni. And in this myth, by this point, even though Elisha and Elijah both had been considered the enemies of the king of Israel because they were following the false gods and not the true gods, yet what had taken place in the earlier part of this chapter had endeared Elisha to him so much so that now Elisha is living in the capital in his own house. And by this point, the elders of Samaria are meeting in Elisha's house. There's been an apparent plan of divine deliverance that this king has at least heard. How do we know this? Because when he rips his clothes, underneath you see sackcloth. Evidently, Elisha in this circumstance, as the siege had come upon Samaria, he had had counsel with the king and God had given his plan to have humility and repentance and to wait upon the Lord. for deliverance. Again, how do we know this? Because at the end, in verse 33, the king says, through his messenger, this trouble is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer? In other words, he had been told, wait upon the Lord and he will deliver you. But this apparent plan of divine deliverance was now the king rejecting this plan of divine deliverance. Yes, he put on the sackcloth. But, you know, we can all put on the vestiges of religion, can't we? We can all tell people, look, I go to church. We can all tell people, look, I read my Bible. Look, I have a posture of humility. I do all these things. Look at all the things that I have done or all the things that I do to show my devotion to God so that he will give me X. This sackcloth was tried by the king until this great shock. He was told to have humility and repentance and wait upon the Lord, but when he heard this story from this woman, yes, it was a great shock to his system, but rather than at that point demonstrating that he was truly in a position of humility and repentance, instead his anger and fury grew and he vowed before God to kill Elisha by the end of the day. He laid the blame of the entire situation upon the Lord. Again, this trouble is from the Lord. Now, ironically, it was, wasn't it? It was God's judgment upon a wicked people trying to get their attention because he loved them and he wanted to draw them back to himself. But in essence, he's saying, it's your fault. I shouldn't have to do what you told me to do because it's not working. So on the one hand, he says, kill the messenger. And Elisha, just like he heard the words of the king of Syria saying where he was going to send his raiding troops, he also knew what the intent of the king of Israel was and he told the elders who were meeting together, he said, stop the door against the messenger because they're coming to kill me. Stop the murderer. Why? Why does King Jehoram do this? It's because Practical atheism wins today. You know what happens in your life when it gets really, really tough and everything seems to be falling apart and the answers you usually turn to seem to be far away. It doesn't seem to be that God is quite so close to you or present to you. You're not receiving the blessings you expect to receive in your life because you've devoted yourself to him and all this comes upon you And sometimes it reveals to us whether we really have repentance and humility before God. Here's what people say. I tried that, but it didn't work. You know, there's someone who's trying to repair their marriage because someone has been addicted to drugs. And they try to do everything in loving that individual, showing them grace and love, but also showing them the tough discipline to help them get off those things. And sometimes it seems as if nothing is going to work. And at some point, that individual might throw up their hands and say, it doesn't work. I'm not going to do it anymore. What is the king doing and seeking? The blessing of removal of the siege. Again, what is he seeking? He's not seeking the Lord who gives the blessing. He's seeking the blessing that the Lord might give. And there's such a difference. In the last days, we're told by Paul to Timothy. One of the verses that was read was that they would be those having an appearance of godliness, but denying his power. This is King Jehoram. He had the sackcloth on. He had the demeanor of someone who was grieved at evil. He had righteous anger that God's people were suffering, in a sense. But instead of seeking God more significantly and with more urgent pleading and begging God for the sake of his people, instead he got angry at God for not giving the blessing. I think we all do that sometimes, don't we? When we don't think God is doing what we want him to do. And sometimes those things we know that are the most wonderful things that he could give us, health, happiness, financial prosperity, peace with our neighbors, restored relationships. If God doesn't give us those things, sometimes we get mad at God because he's not done it, even when we think we've done everything we can according to God's law to get those things. In other words, we want the blessings without the king. But perhaps the most telling is the guidance with the king. The messenger goes, of course he does not take off the head of Elisha. His master is right behind him. In other words, the king is there, and we understand the king is there with his aide-de-camp, or his military adjutant, whoever you want to say it is. It says captain in some places. He's there, and Elisha says this. You know, he could say a lot of things to the king. He could say, king, I think you should be removed because you wanted to kill God's messenger. You know, I think that perhaps you should rethink your reaction to this thing, or perhaps teach him and disciple him about the importance of being steadfastly patient before the Lord. But instead, he says this. Hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord. Tomorrow, about this time, a sea of fine flowers shall be sold for a shekel, and two seas of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria. First of all, it's this. Hear the word. Thus says the Lord. Hear the word. And here's the word. It's already evident that God has brought judgment upon Israel. We know that this is a wicked people. By this time, there have already been 850 false prophets killed when Elijah was the prophet. There have already been the gods of Jeroboam, son of Nebat, worshipped for generations now. They were told that these were the gods that brought you out of Egypt. The scriptures tell us there was an idol on every hill and under every leafy tree. That the people were wicked to the core. And yet, here's what happens. Grace is given to this undeserving people. Instead of God saying, okay, that's enough. Now I'm going to just really destroy Samaria. Every last one of you is going to die because you deserve it, and that would be true. God would be just. He would not be less loving to say so at this point. He says this instead. Tomorrow you'll get relief from the siege. A quick relief from the siege is promised. Tomorrow about this time, a sea of fine flowers shall be sold for a shekel." Now it's interesting when you understand the financial picture that's going on here. He's not saying that tomorrow food will be so cheap you won't recognize it, you could just go in for pennies and buy whatever. In fact, I think from the understanding I had reading this text in context is he's saying that what you might be able to buy in the measure of 100 quarts of barley, you could buy 15 of those quarts. In other words, it's not as bad as a donkey's head in a cab of dung, dove's dung, but it's better. It's gonna be different as dawn breaks. There's gonna be relief from a siege. They don't deserve it. The king certainly doesn't deserve it. Nobody deserves it. But this is the word of God for his people. But verse two tells us this. Then the captain, the aide to camp, whatever you call him, on whose hand the king leaned, said to the man of God, if the Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be? He refused to believe that word. You know, there is great reward for faith. God doesn't want us to believe totally unrealistic things unless they're things that God is doing. He merely wants us to believe his word. I was joking with the kids, I just can't help but say this particular illustration. Ralph Davis, a commentary writer, he has such an imagination here. He says, imagine if you're having a church picnic, and you shut your eyes, and you believed as hard as you could that God was going to send you a pickle that was 12 by 4 foot, 4 foot long, or 12 feet wide, or 12 feet long and 4 feet wide, for your picnic to have condiments. and provide for you all kinds of ketchup and all this kind of stuff. God isn't asking us to believe such silly nonsense. He's asking us to believe His Word. This is the Word of God. Do we believe it? This captain didn't. I remember when I was younger, you know, the famous Hollywood Indiana Jones movies. The third one, a lot of people think the third one's the best. Now, they're not all good. They have bad scenes, and I don't recommend them to everybody. There's one scene where the star of the movie looks off this cliff, and he has to go across to the other side, and he looks off the cliff, and he closes his eyes, and he's just trying to believe hard enough that there will be a way to get across this cliff, and he steps off that cliff. That's not what God is asking us to do. He's asking us to believe his word. the written word of God that will stand forever, that has stood for generations, that no one has been able to really oppose, no one has been able to destroy. God has promised we'll not come back void, and he has promised that this word is God-breathed and is useful to challenge us. That is to train us in godliness and to discipline us when necessary, even correcting our wrongs. It's simple, yet it's difficult to believe the word of God. This guy didn't. The reward for faith. His righteousness. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. Habakkuk says the righteous shall live by faith. but there's a terrible reward for unbelief. In this context, there was a prophecy. You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it. Next week, we'll get to the conclusion of this passage. This guy had a terrible reward, but the reward even goes even more terrible than that. If you refuse to believe the word of God, there's a place of judgment for you. God hasn't promised there won't be horrible times, I have on here on my notes that I can give a list about the horrible times. I don't think I need to do that. This is just a microcosm of what takes place. The things that take place in the homes of wicked people. The policemen in our community that encounter a domestic dispute can tell you those things. The people that deal with abused children can tell you those things. The movies that illustrate the sexual slavery of our times can tell you these things. Those that come in and kidnap children of believers during a worship service in Nigeria can tell you these things. Those churches that meet in secret in basements or in secret places in China can tell you these things. There are going to be horrible times, but the Lord is still God. He is still on his throne. And he reminds us that even though times of despair and desperation may come. To wait on the Lord. To have humility and repentance before him. And to trust his word. Will bring grace to his people. Let's pray. Father, right now there are those all over the world. Probably some within our own community. who are in desperate situations. They're calling out for help. Perhaps they're calling in the wrong places. Lord, use us that we might show them your grace, your power. Your love for your people. Lord, we pray that you'll help us not to just seek the blessings that you give. But to seek you. Lord, train us by your word. Help us to hear it. Give us ears to hear it and hearts to understand it. Lord, help us to believe your word, the word which tells us that though this world stinks with sin, yet the aroma of Christ is so beautiful for those who have eternal life in him. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.