2 Kings 8, and reading from verse
1. Then spake Elisha unto the woman
whose son he had restored to life, saying, Arise and go thou
and thine household, and sojourn wheresoever thou canst sojourn. For the Lord hath called for
a famine, and it shall also come upon the land seven years. And the woman arose and did after
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 seven
years end that the woman returned out of the land of the Philistines
and she went forth to cry unto the king for her house and for
her land. The king talked with Gehazi,
the servant of the man of God, saying, Tell me, I pray thee,
all the great things that Elisha hath done. It came to pass, as
he was telling the king how he had restored a dead body to life,
that, behold, the woman whose son he had restored to life cried
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 unto her
a certain officer, saying, Restore all that was hers and all the
fruits of the field since the day that she left the land, even
until now. Amen. May God bless to us this reading. These thoughts are particularly
perhaps for some of the younger people here, so do give me your
attention as we think about this story about the Shunammite lady,
because we've heard of her before. She's come back into our story
of Elisha. And here we might remember something
of the circumstances of this lady that we already know. We were told in the early part
of 2 Kings that she was a great lady. She was a lady of some
power, a lady of some reputation, a lady of some wealth. and she lived in a house that
was big enough to cater for visitors of whom Elisha was one. And Elisha had come to stay with
this lady. He had learned that this lady
didn't have a child, that she longed for a child, and he prophesied
and told the lady that she would have a son. And that little boy
was born to her. But then if you remember the
story, after some time that little boy died. And the lady came to
Elisha and asked for his help because the child had died. And Elisha went and he miraculously
raised the boy to life. Now that was some time ago. In
fact, it was probably quite a long time ago. And we discovered that
here is this lady still with her boy. Although in this story
that we have before us, In 2 Kings chapter 8, we don't have any
account of her husband. And it may well be that this
lady's husband has died. And Elisha still feels a closeness
and a friendship with this lady. And so he warns her of an imminent
famine in the land of Israel. Now it's not altogether clear
just when this warning was given, and I've looked at it and I've
tried to think about when it might have happened, but it's
quite possible that this warning was given to the lady seven years
ago. And it's placed in the story
of Elisha now because it is now after the trouble with the Syrians
who had come to lay siege on the city of Samaria that she
comes back. That, as it were, that siege
now broken was the end of the seven years of famine, and this
is the lady coming back now to recover her property. But if
you see it slightly different to that, then that is not a problem. But here we have this lady and
I wanted just to make, because it's only six verses that we
have today, I just wanted to make six points very quickly,
one from each of the verses as we think about this story and
what it might teach us. And the first thing is this,
I wonder if you noticed in the opening verse that when Elisha
spoke to the woman of the famine that was about to take place
and how much trouble it would cause in the land and how that
for her sake and for the sake of the boy she should get out
of the country, get away from the land of Israel and sojourn
wherever she could find a place to sojourn. He tells her that
it is the Lord who has called for the famine. I think that's
interesting. I think that it's good for us,
whether we're younger or older, to realise that nothing happens
in this world except the Lord's control is over it. And it was
the Lord who called for this famine. Some people think the
Lord only gives good things. But there were terrible times
in Israel because of this famine. There was starvation. There was
sadness. There were tears. There was death. There were terrible crimes committed
because people were starving. And it was God who called this
famine to come, called it into being, made it happen. And there
is a judgment which comes upon this world, and it comes upon
the men and women of this world, and it sometimes seems indiscriminate. But we can never get away from
the fact that God is in control, and those things which happen,
happen for His glory, and happen to the end and accomplishment
of His purpose. But in that, we also notice that
the Lord carefully looks after those that he loves. And sometimes
there will be disruption in our lives. Sometimes we may have
to leave the things behind that we value and love. Sometimes
we have to give up things because of trouble that comes into our
lives. but the Lord still loves us in the midst of our trials. And he showed this lady that
he loved her and he loved her son by allowing them the warning
through Elisha to go to a place where they might be better preserved. She had to leave her home. She
had to leave her fields. She had, it seems, to be without
a husband. But she and her son found a place
of security and safety amongst the Philistines. Second thing
we might notice is that she acted in faith. She was prepared to
leave all behind, even although the famine hadn't started. She
acted because she believed the word of Elisha. She believed
the word of God. And sometimes when we hear the
word of God, we might say, well, you know, I'm not so sure that
that's actually right. But then that's what faith is.
We're going to be thinking a little bit about that later. Faith is
when we act without having the direct evidence of physical things
before us. In fact, if we have the evidence
of physical things before us, it's no longer faith. Faith requires
us to trust in the word of the Lord. And here was a lady who
did that. The Lord's warning came to her,
but she was to act according to her own will and wisdom. There's another lesson there,
I think. She had to use her own discretion. The Lord told her
to get out of the country, get out of the land of famine and
find a place to live wherever you can. He didn't say to her,
go here, go there, you'll find somebody to house you there,
you'll find some friends or some family there and there and there.
He told her that she had to act and he left the acting up to
her wherever she went and whatever she did. That doesn't mean the
Lord wasn't watching her, but it does mean that when the Lord
speaks, he doesn't always tell us every step of the way along
the path that we have to go. He leaves it to us to act with
the wisdom and with the common sense that he has provided to
us. Faith doesn't make us passive,
but it calls us to be active in our obedience to the Lord. The next thing I noticed about
this story was that the lady returned according to the direction
of the Lord. How long did the Lord say the
famine was going to last? Seven years. How long did the
lady stay away? Seven years. You know, she might
have come back seven years to the day. I think that would be
lovely if that was indeed the case. She came back when the
Lord's word came to its conclusion. She waited and then she acted. And there's sometimes some wisdom
in the Lord's people waiting before they act, doing the things
that the Lord sets before us. If we're right in thinking that
this interview, this conversation happened after the siege of Samaria,
then it's interesting that the king has got in touch with this
man Gehazi. I bet you didn't think we were
going to hear about Gehazi again. This is the man who took the
leprosy that Naaman had had. What is he doing in the king's
presence? Well, I actually don't know the
answer to that, but I'll tell you something that I did read,
which I thought was quite intriguing. What if Gehazi had been one of
those lepers that was sitting at the gate of Samaria? And now, The king goes to Gehazi,
knowing who he is, he certainly has got some celebrity now, Gehazi,
and he says, look, here is Elisha, he's done all these things, he's
told us that this famine, this siege was going to be broken.
My friend, the Lord, upon whose arm I leaned is now dead, exactly
as Elisha had said it would be. What else has Elisha done? What
else is in the history of this man Elisha that we should know
about? And the king was intrigued, clearly,
and he goes to a man who might know something about Elisha.
He goes to Gehazi and he says, tell me what you know of him.
The king was intrigued, but he wasn't converted. You see, there's
people can know about the things of God. There's people who can
talk about the things of God. There are people who might like
to make a study of the things of God, but they don't know God. And that was Jehoram's situation. He was interested, he was puzzled
about this man, God, and about the power that he had, but he
never learned to know the true God of Elisha. May the Lord be
pleased to be gracious that we don't just learn things about
God, but that we'll know God himself through the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ who reveals him to us. And I love the precision. of
the providence of God in the way in which he brings these
people together at the exact time. We've been thinking a little
bit about Esther recently and here we find that this lady comes
into the presence of the king at exactly the moment When the
king is being told by Gehazi about the resurrection of her
son, how could that have been other than the providence of
God and the ordained arrangement of God? Not a moment too soon
and not a moment too late. And I think we should be ready
as the Lord's people to look for occasions in our life when
the Lord brings these circumstances together in such a way that we
think to ourselves, how could it be other than the hand of
the Lord providing and blessing us in our time of need and trouble? And finally, when this lady did
leave her message before the King, we discover that everything
that she had lost in her time in the land of the Philistines,
in the time when she was away from home, everything that she
had lost, I don't know who had it. Maybe it was some relatives
of her that had taken over her land and her house and refused
to give it up. Maybe it was just her neighbours
that let their animals go onto her ground and broke down the
fences and wouldn't take them out. Maybe it was the king's
own men who had come and confiscated her land because she was no longer
in the country. Whatever it was, the king was
so impressed by this woman's story, her history and God's
work in her life, that he restored everything to her. And our lesson
from that is this, that we'll never lose anything. We'll never
be jeopardised for having followed the Lord and trusting in him. You know, some of you younger
people might think that your life's a little bit boring because
you go to church, because your parents are a little bit down
on you about what you're allowed to do and what you're not allowed
to do. And you think your friends get
some more exciting things to do than you do and get more latitude,
more allowance as to what they're able to do. But you will never,
by following the Lord, lose out. The Lord will always give you
more and better for following after Him. And that's what this
lady received back. Everything was restored, her
land, her buildings, you know, even the crops. that had been
consumed in the time of her absence were given back to her. Now they
probably weren't very much because this had been a time of famine,
but even all that were lost, all that was lost then was given
back to her. And I'm certain that this is
surely to emphasise God's bountiful care and provision for his people,
those who trust him, those who follow him, those who depend
upon him, those who have faith in him. In Acts chapter 3 verse
21, there's a little verse and it talks about the restitution
of all things. The restitution of all things. When everything will be restored
that we've lost. And these things speak of fulfilment. These things speak of accomplishment.
They speak about the promises of God to us in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And in that sense, Christ to
us is the restitution of all things because he will make up
to us all the loss that we ever have experienced. The Shunammite
is a type of the believer. She trusted and she obeyed the
word of God. And sometimes we are called to
go out not knowing what will happen, but to obey without seeing
the consequences. And to follow, even if it seems
that it might be at our cost and our loss. The Lord Jesus
Christ has shown us grace today, you and me here today in this
place. He has shown us grace by warning
us to flee from the wrath that is to come, warning us to flee
from the judgment that is coming soon. And he has promised that
he will preserve us and protect us as we follow him as his pilgrim
people in this world. And while we act to honour him,
And with that desire on our heart that we might honour Him in our
faith and in our service, He has ordained all things to honour
us. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. Amen.