2 Kings chapter 8. Tonight we come to a coda passage. We will, and there's no return to the head. It's just a coda. We've had a section here since 2 Kings chapter 2 that describes the ministry of the prophet Elisha and how God has worked deliverance through him over and over and over and over in so many scenarios, whether it was providing the widow's oil, or giving a prophecy in the desert and providing water, or rescuing from a siege, or striking Syrian soldiers with blindness, or making an ax head float. At every level from the most intimately scaled domestic crisis to some of the biggest geopolitical events that the entire Bible records, God has been at work saving his people. Now, that changes, in a sense. Obviously, God continues to be at work saving his people through the rest of 2 Kings. But from 2 Kings 8-7 onward, we resume the downhill slide of Israel. And the beginning of the end is clearly at hand. Things are wrapping up for the northern kingdom. So we have this coda passage tonight that confronts us with the question of, will you trust God? You've seen what he does. You've seen how he saves, whether by many or by few, whether in a domestic crisis where your sons are going to be sold as slaves or your axe head falls off and you aren't going to be able to repay the person you borrowed it from, all the way up to your city is under siege and being slowly starved, all the way up to your nation is under attack and not likely to survive. God is able to intervene and save in all of these situations. And our text tonight is just six short verses that brings up the question of how are you going to respond? When you've heard everything God has done, what are you going to do about it? So 2 Kings 8, beginning at the first verse. Then Elisha spoke to the woman whose son he had restored to life, saying, Arise and go, you and your household, and sojourn wherever you can sojourn. For the Lord has called for a famine, and furthermore it will come upon the land for seven years. So the woman arose and did according to the saying of the man of God, and she went with her household and sojourned in the land of the Philistines seven years. And it came to pass at the end of seven years that the woman returned from the land of the Philistines, and she went to make an appeal to the king for her house and for her land. Then the king talked with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, saying, Tell me, please, all the great things Elisha has done. Now what happened is he was telling the king how he had restored the dead to life, that there was the woman whose son he had restored to life appealing to the king for her house and for her land. And Gehazi said, my lord, O king, this is the woman and this is her son whom Elisha restored to life. And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed a certain officer for her saying, restore all that was hers and all the proceeds of the field from the day that she left the land until now. Thus far, the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, draw us into your presence with this story. Confront us with the reality of your salvation. Show us who you are and implant in our hearts a desire for life in the land in fellowship with you, with your blessing. We thank you that You restore the dead to life, that You restore exiles to their homeland, that You bring people who did not know You close to You and issue an invitation saying, come, trust me, be my child. Help us to respond to that call tonight, we pray, Father. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and all God's people said, Amen. Throughout the Bible, we have this theme of dwelling in the land, and its opposite, which is the curse of exile. Every Jew wanted to live in the land. That's God's promise. To your seed I will give this land. And then everything from that promise in Genesis 15 onward through the book of Joshua, so the entire Hexateuch, deals with the fulfillment of God's promise to give the land to His people. And then everything from Judges onward to the end of 2 Chronicles details how God's people completely blew it, completely failed to live up to the promise of life in the promised land, and instead were exiled away from God's presence back to Babylon. So for the Hexateuch, we're ramping up, seeing the fulfillment of God's promise, and then for the rest of the Old Testament, we sort of crash and burn. And that story, that of course is the macro scale. That's the narrative of the entire Old Testament. You see that same narrative played out in two verses in our text tonight. The micro scale, life in the land, compromised by famine, exile, distress, and then God calls this woman back and restores her land to her. Now, what I hope to show you tonight is that the Shunammite's exile and restoration stands as a sign of, an echo of, and a promise of life in the land for everyone who heeds God's word and seeks God's favor. Now, just a word about the approach here. This is not an allegorical interpretation, right? We could think of this as the Shunammite is the individual soul. Jehoram, the king, stands for Jesus Christ, the one who gives life in the promised land. And Elisha stands in then for the minister of the gospel saying to you, go, leave the promised land to avoid famine. The soul comes back to the promised land and dwells in heaven forever. But there's one big problem with trying to interpret the text that way. Anybody see it? It's kind of obvious here. The lady goes and sojourns in the land of the Philistines seven years. So allegorically, how does that make sense? The Word of God comes to you and says, leave heaven for the sake of economic prosperity leave the promised land that stands for heaven and go sojourn in the land of the Philistines. That doesn't work. God telling you to leave the promised land and go find food somewhere else. So this is not an allegorical interpretation, but rather we could say we're looking at the pattern of this story and comparing it to the pattern of the larger story. This woman is exiled, driven away from the land by famine. And notice what size famine this is. The Lord has called for a famine, Elisha says, and moreover it will come upon the land for seven years. So that's the famine that's been the background for these last six chapters. That's the famine that made a fourth of a cab of dove's dung sell for so many shekels of silver in Samaria in our text last week. That's the famine that made the gift of 20 rolls of bread to Elisha and the sons of the prophets such an amazing gift. But also, in terms of the book of Kings, what's the last famine that we saw? 1 Kings 17. Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, as the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years except at my word." And of course, the book of James tells us that that famine was three and a half years long. So Elijah called for a three and a half year famine. But Elisha calls for a famine that's twice as bad. Twice as horrible. Twice as perfect. We could say a seven year famine, this is the perfect famine. A number of perfection. This is the worst famine imaginable. Seven years of famine. We could even call it a famine of biblical proportions, if we were so inclined. So this biblical famine strikes, and what does Elisha say? Flee the promised land. Go find somewhere else to live. Go find food. This famine is God's judgment. We talked about that last time. Where God said, if you won't listen to me, you'll get to the point where you start eating your own children. And of course, what are they doing in 2 Kings 6? Well, they're eating their own children. So God sends this famine of judgment on the house of Omri, on the nation of Israel, but he protects his own by providing for them in exile. Now in one sense, we skip right over the word famine because none of us has ever been hungry. Okay, maybe you've been hungry, but we've never had to go hungry because there simply wasn't enough food. And so when you read the word famine, you should put in there some condition you've actually experienced, something unpleasant. and then multiply it out to seven years. We're all familiar with winter travel in Gillette, or almost all of us are. Roads can be very icy. Well, imagine having icy roads for seven years. Or imagine traffic for seven years. I read this past week that Beijing, China once had a traffic jam so bad that traffic was backed up 60 miles and some trucks were stuck for 10 days. Well, that's bad traffic, but imagine traffic that lasted seven years. Imagine not having enough food for your family, not just for a night or for a week or a month, but from now until the year 2024. That's a long time. So this is a severe judgment that God calls down, and yet, He provides in the land of the Philistines. God takes care of His people even when they're not in the promised land. Even when they're not benefiting from those promises of life in the land and communion with God. Of course, we'll talk at the end about how encouraging that could have been to the first audience of this book. So there's mercy in judgment, where God says, I'm going to judge the land, but you can be spared. Go sojourn wherever you can sojourn. And then there's restoration after judgment. As it just so happens that the woman comes back, and her land has been taken somehow, so she makes an appeal to the king. Jehoram, restore my inheritance. Well, It just so happens, apparently coincidentally, that Gehazi, who is apparently rehabilitated from his leprosy in Chapter 5, so if you wonder about that, there are a couple of ways to explain it. Either his leprosy wasn't bad enough to exclude him socially, Or perhaps the narratives are not in chronological order and Second Kings 8 happened before Second Kings 5. Or perhaps the king really didn't care and he liked Gehazi enough to talk to him even though he was a leper. Different ways to think about this. But apparently Gehazi is rehabilitated and here he is telling Jehoram everything that Elisha has done. Now Jehoram had been present for some of it. He had seen firsthand the ministry of Elisha and bringing the blinded Syrian army to Samaria, for example, in chapter six. But there's a lot he had missed. And why does the narrative go out of its way to tell us this? Well, this was Gehazi's opportunity to do for the king exactly what the narrator has just done for you. As you've been reading through 2 Kings, you've seen all these stories of God's salvation. Chapter 2, God saves by providing water in the desert. Chapter 4, God provides oil, raises a widow's son. Chapter 5, God heals Naaman, provides salvation for one of Israel's enemies. And so, Jehoram is basically having the same experience you're having. Wow, here's what God is doing here, and here, and here, and here, and over there, and over there. God is at work. And so Gehazi gets to the story of the resurrection of the Shunammite woman's son. And it just so happens that he's like, and then Elisha stretched himself on the son. And then he walked back nervously, back and forth in front of the house, nervously. Oh look, that's the woman. There she is. And so the king says, wait, is this really you? Did the prophet raise your son? And Shunammite says, yeah, yep, that's me. Here he is. See, he was dead 10 years ago. What a confirmation. What a testimony. So the resurrection was verified. Yep, God raises the dead. All these stories of Elisha are true, including the most impressive one. You know, Jehoram was already familiar at first hand with Elisha's ability to read the mind of the king of Syria. Now he has the opportunity to see Elisha's ability to raise the dead. So he restores her land and livelihood. He gives her a caseworker, somebody to guide her through the bureaucracy and get her everything she needs. So that's the story. Now, what do we take away from this? Well, the story tells us something about what our God is like. It tells us who He is. He's a God who provides for His people. He has power over debt, death, danger, exile, slavery, geopolitics. Every one of these things is fully under His control. And so He responds to His people by being merciful in the midst of judgment. We live in a nation under judgment and yet God is merciful to us in so many ways. We could throw it open for testimony time and every one of us could stand up here and say, yeah, God was merciful to me just this week in this way. He let me have food. He let me have water. He let me have air. He let me have a car. He let me have a job. Let me have salvation, communion with God, worship, Christian friends, all these things. God shows us mercy. Now he is just. He is most terrible and fearsome in his judgments. He has indeed swallowed up girls and boys, men and women, kings and emperors, cities and realms, as Aslan says in the silver chair. God's judgments are ferocious. We just saw one ferocious judgment with the siege of Samaria. We're going to see more in coming weeks as we look at Jehu's purge of Ahab's house. In the midst of those judgments, God is merciful. He was merciful to the Shunammite during the famine and he restored her after the famine. God provides an exile. Now, all of us are natives. We're all Americans. We're all living here in America. We're very used to the privileges and joys of being part of a rich, wealthy colossus, such that those things hardly even register with us. But if we were exiles, this would mean a lot to us. God provides in exile. And of course we are exiles from heaven. We don't live there yet. And God provides for us here and now, on this earth, where we are, where we live, today. My sister has lived abroad for the last three years. In China, in England, now in Singapore. And I can guarantee you that she rejoices in the truth that God provides for people who are far away from home. God takes care of those who are surrounded by the unfamiliar and the strange and the different and the difficult. That's the message of our text. But in addition, God also provides a place in the promised land. Right? That's what this Shunammite wanted. I don't want to just survive in Philistia. I want to live in the promised land. I want to know the fellowship with God. I want to be surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ. I want to have that ability and the availability of going to worship God. That's what I need. And that's what Jehoram provided. God didn't just promise us bare existence. He promises life. A placed life. Life in the place where you belong in fellowship with Himself. So that's the promise. That's the character of God as revealed in this text. And therefore it's an invitation. First of all, it was an invitation to Jehoram. Right? Jehoram wanted to hear about God's mighty works. He wanted to hear about God's saving actions in and through Elisha. Or through Elisha. He wanted to see the show like Herod, right? Oh boy, I would love to see a miracle. Life has been so boring recently. But he didn't want to be changed. Yeah, go ahead and tell me about Elisha, Gehazi. I would love to hear what the prophet has been up to. But believe him? Trust the God he worships? Submit? Turn away from Baal? I don't think so. I don't want to go that far. Like Agrippa, almost you would persuade me to become a Christian. Paul, I'm this close! You can imagine Elisha preaching the gospel to him. How would he put it? Jehoram, you've been sojourning in heathendom, away from the riches of the commonwealth of Israel. Right, you're an Israelite by birth, but you don't claim the privileges. You don't want the birthright of communion with God that being an Israelite gives you. You want to walk in the ways of your mom and dad. Follow Baal, serve him, worship him. Yet, Elisha could have said, in your royal prerogative to restore this woman to her land, Jehoram, don't you get it? Don't you see the picture? In that royal prerogative is a picture of God's royal prerogative to restore you to what the promised land was supposed to be. A place of communing with him, a place of meeting with him, a place of worshiping him in his house. Jehoram, you've seen with your own eyes someone who was dead a decade ago. You've seen the power of God to kill and make alive. You saw what happened to your father and to your brother. Right? To Ahab, who refused to submit and was killed by a Syrian arrow in the guts. And to Ahaziah, who refused to submit after seven warnings, as we saw in chapter one. He was killed by a nasty providential fall. Don't you get it, Jehoram? Are you still wanting to fight God? You've heard how He saves. You've heard what He does. You've seen with your own eyes how He punishes those who won't listen, as we saw at the end of chapter 7. Your favorite officer, the guy whose arm you leaned on, he got trampled to death because he wouldn't accept God's saving grace. Jehoram, accept the promises of God. That's the invitation to Jehoram, and as far as we know, he blew it off. No, no thanks, Elisha. I'd rather walk in the way of Ahab and Jezebel if it's all the same to you. It's what I know. It's what I grew up with. That's who I am. Even miracles couldn't change the heart of Ahab's son. which is why we shouldn't pray for miracles or ask God to unleash a new era of signs and wonders. Those things don't actually convert people or change people. So Gehazi, by telling Jehoram the same thing we've seen in 2 Kings 2-8, is telling him, submit to God. Embrace God's saving power on your behalf in your life. Gehazi missed the invitation. But the invitation is still there for the first audience of this book. Remember, the book probably was published, first came out just after the exile. It was given to God's people in Babylon as a way of saying, okay, you're in exile. You've been dragged away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. What are you going to do? How did we get here? What happened to our country? So when you're sitting there by the Chibar Canal in Babylon, and somebody hands you this book, and you're reading through it, and you read about how God brought back the Shunammite from exile, what comes into your mind? Well, you realize, God can bring me back. Exile is temporary. Punishment is temporary. I won't be here forever. That was God's message to the first audience. I'll bring you back. I'll bring you home. I'll give you a place in the promised land." Which is exactly what this Shunammite was seeking. So what's the invitation to us? It's the same as it was to Jehoram and to the exiles. God's word sends you into exile, right? That's how the Shunammite went into exile. And yet, God's Word brings us back. There's restoration for those who listen to the Word of God. She could have stayed in the land and died. Instead, she goes and sojourns in Philistia. God brings her back and restores her land to her. So there's restoration for those who listen to Yahweh's Word. There's restoration for us. God promises to bring us to His heavenly kingdom out of the exile that we're in, in this world, if we listen to his word. Right? That was Jehoram's problem. He didn't listen. Yeah, tell me about what Elisha did. I'm all ears, Gehazi. I want to hear all the cool, flashy stuff. But I don't want to believe in the God who did it. No way. You have to not only listen to the word and say, wow, there's some cool stuff here, but you have to want to be changed by it. You have to want to heed it. And the second thing we see is life in the land for those who seek Yahweh's favor. Shunammite came and she said, please give me my land back. Please give me my inheritance. And through Jehoram, God gave it back to her. When we say, Lord, I want to live in heaven forever. I want to dwell in your house forever. I want that inheritance that I have given to me through the death of Jesus Christ. God promises life for those who ask that. Not just bare existence, but life in the land, life in fellowship with God. So in this picture of the Shunammite restored, we see a picture of any one of God's people restored to the promised land, shown mercy in exile, given restoration after exile, right? We're all in exile from Eden. God kicked Adam and Eve out, and we've been trying to get back in ever since. But God's promise is, I will bring you back into my presence. if you listen to my word and if you seek my favor. How do we seek his favor? Well, we approach him in worship. Through the means of grace, the word of God, the sacraments of the church, prayer where we talk to him, worship where we come into his house and meet with him. That's how we seek the favor of God, right? This woman didn't seek Jehoram's favor by staying in Philistia sending him a letter. Hey, if you want to give me my land back, that would be great, and then I'll come back. No. She went to Jehoram's presence and asked him, can I have my land back? And at that point he gave her a caseworker. If we wanted to go full-on allegorical, we could say, God gives a pastor to every Christian. Help him get to heaven. I don't think that's what the text is telling us, just that Jehoram cared that she got her land back. and he knew he wasn't the man to do it, so he gave her somebody to lead her through the bureaucracy. But just as Jehoram was able to restore a place in the Promised Land, so much more God is able to give us a place in heaven. I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it weren't so, would I have told you that I go and prepare this place? and after that I'll come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also." A place in the promised land, a place dwelling in the house of God forever. God saves, by many or by few, more with us than with them. That's the message of 2 Kings 2-8. So listen to it. God offered life and the land to Jehoram, to the Babylonian exiles, and to you. So seek that life and live that life. And again, I'll see you in heaven. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving the Shunammites land back. We thank you that even under this perfect famine, you delivered. You showed her mercy in exile and restoration after exile, and You are showing us mercy in exile, and You have promised us restoration after exile. Be with us, Father God. Restore us. Grant Your mercy to us. Bless us with Your grace. Cause the brightness of Your face to shine upon us, that Your way may be known on the earth and Your saving health among all peoples. Let the peoples praise you, O God. Let all the peoples praise you. We ask, praising you 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.