Doug, lead us in prayer. Our Father, we come to You this
morning to ask the Lord of one's soul. Lord, we thank You so much for
Your tender mercies. The Lord calls us to seek We bow before you
this morning. Lord, help us to truly worship
you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly worship you in spirit
and in truth. Lord, help us to truly worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly
worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly worship
you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to
truly worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly
worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord,
help us to truly worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord,
help us to truly worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly worship you in spirit and
in truth. Lord, help us to truly worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly
worship you in spirit and in truth. Lord, help us to truly
worship and sin to all your people. Lord, we help us to remember
them this morning. Have heavy hearts, those that
are sick and in need. Lord, we lift them up to your
throne of grace, pray to all your people. We know your grace
is sufficient. Lord, we ask these things this
morning. Amen. I titled this message, Why sit we here till
we die? Why sit we here till we die?
I thought that was a good title for this lesson. I'm going to
pick up in verse 24, I was trying to decide how much of it to read.
So I'm going to read starting in verse 24, down through at
least chapter 7, verse 8. It's so important that we make
much of the Word of God here in 2 Kings chapter 6. Starting
in verse 24, And it came to pass after this,
that Benedad, king of Syria, gathered all his host, and went
up and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine
in Samaria. And behold, they besieged it
until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver,
and the fourth part of a cab of doves dung for five pieces
of silver. He was going to starve them out.
And he just circled the city and just going to starve them
out. And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall,
there cried a woman unto him, saying, Help, my lord, O king.
And he said, If the lord do not help thee, whence shall I help
thee, out of the barn floor or out of the winepress? And the
king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This
woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day,
and we will eat thy son to-morrow. I thought, what a person will
do to live. What a person will do to live one day longer, eat
their own flesh. This is a story that really happened.
You know, when I read the scriptures, I do remind myself from time
to time, this happened. You know, when the Red Sea parting
and Israel going over on dry ground, that happened. You know,
this, what we have in the word of God are actual events that
happened. In verse 29, so we boiled my
son. Can you imagine that? We boiled
my son and we did eat him. And I said to her on the next
day, give thy son that we may eat him. And she hath hid her
son. And it came to pass when the
king heard the words of the woman that he rent his clothes and
he passed by upon the wall and the people looked and behold,
he had sackcloth within upon his flesh. Then he said, God
do so and more also to me if the head of Elisha, the son of
Shaphat, shall stand on him this day. He's blaming God's man,
God's prophet. He's blaming him for this. He
said, I'm going to take his head off is what I'm going to do.
I'm going to kill God's man. You see, it's like this, since
men can't get at God, they do the next best thing, they get
at His servants. Isn't that what they did to the
Lord Jesus Christ? They said, come, this is the
heir, let us kill him and we'll seize his inheritance. That's
human nature. The Word of God does not hide
human nature. It sets it forth as it is. But Elisha sat in his house unfettered,
unscared. He wasn't scared of the king's
command. You know, if you really have a true fear of God, you
don't need to fear anything else, do you? You don't need to fear
anything else if you have a right fear of God. But Elisha sat in
his house and the elders sat with him. And the king sent a
man from before him, but ere the messenger came to him, he
said to the elders, See ye how this son of a murderer hath sent
to take away mine head. Look when the messenger cometh,
shut the door, and hold him fast at the door. is not the sound
of his master's feet behind him? And while he yet talked with
them, behold, the messenger came down unto him, and he said, Behold,
this evil is of the Lord. What should I wait for the Lord
any longer? Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord.
Thus saith the LORD, Tomorrow about this time shall a measure
of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for
a shekel in the gate of Samaria. This time tomorrow food is going
to be abundant in the very place where it didn't even exist anymore. They had no food. But he says
tomorrow bread and food is going to be sold for a shekel. Then
a Lord, on whose hand the king leaned, answered the man of God
and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven,
might this thing be? He didn't believe Elijah, Elisha.
He didn't believe him at all. He said, no, he said, if the
Lord put windows in heaven and rained down food, then maybe
it'll be, but this ain't gonna happen. And he said, behold, Elisha is
talking to him. And he said, behold, thou shalt
see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof. You're going
to see it. But I tell you what unbelief will never eat of it. Unbelief will never eat of the
mercy of God. Unbelief will never eat of the
blessing of God in salvation. It won't do it. And there were
four lepers, and it's just interesting to me, here's four nameless lepers. We don't know their names, do
we? But we know this, they're lepers. They're diseased, and they're
dying. And there were four leprous men
at the entering of the gate, and they said one to another,
why sit we here until we die? Well, that's a question I ask
everyone who sits under the gospel and believes not. Why do you
sit here and die? Why? Scott Richardson had this
saying, Oh sinner, why will you die when the water is so close
by? Why will you die when the water
is so close by? Was it Hagar, whose son was about
to die of thirst, and she set him at a distance and went from
him because he was going to die of thirst? And God showed her
a well that was there all the time, she just didn't see it.
And then she drank of the well and gave it to her son, and of
course you know they lived. But what a statement! Just write
this down in your memory. Why sit we here till we die?
If we say, And the lesson is going to be centered around these
four lepers. If we say we will enter into
the city, then the famine is in the city. We'll die there.
We'll die there. If we sit here, we'll die. If
we go into the city, there's no food there. We'll die. And
we shall die there. And if we sit still here, we
will die. Now therefore come and let us
fall unto the host of the Syrians. If they save us alive, we shall
live, and if they kill us, we shall but die. The worst that
can happen is that we're gonna die anyway. But let's fall to
the host of the Syrians, because they have food. They have food. They have what we need. So let's
venture upon them. Let's go into the camp, and maybe
they'll have mercy. Maybe they'll have mercy. And
they rose up in the twilight to go into the camp of the Syrians.
And when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of
Syria, behold, there was no man there. The providence of God. You know, I wrote, I sketched
this little outline before I just came out here. But they're going
to die. They ask a great question. They're
faced with three choices. They experience God's providence. They experienced God's promise
because he told Elijah said tomorrow You know food's gonna be It's
gonna be sold for a shekel gonna be so much food and then salvation
of the lepers and the death of that one who believed not That's
just a quick outline of this of this story Because if you
go home and read the rest of this chapter, you'll find out
that that Lord Elijah said you're gonna see it. You're gonna see
it but you're not going to eat of it. And he saw it. You know
what happened? The Lord, the King made him,
put him at the gate and the people trampled him running for the
food and he died. He saw it, but he didn't get
to eat it. Unbelief never, unbelief never tastes of the mercy of
God. Unbelief will never taste of
the salvation of God. And they rose up at the twilight
to go to the camp of the Syrians. And when they were come to the
uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man
there for the Lord. Here's the providence of God.
Well, the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise
of chariots. God, listen, God used their own
fear against them. He used their own fear against
them. Like I said, if you fear God, you don't fear anything
else, but if you don't fear God, you fear everything else. And
the Lord made them hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses,
and the noise of a great host. And they said one to another,
Lo, the King of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites
and the kings of the Egyptians to come upon us. And wherefore
they arose and fled in the twilight, and they left their tents, their
horses, their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for
their life. Isn't God amazing? Isn't God amazing? He said, this
is what's gonna happen tomorrow, and it happened. And when these lepers, And it's
just amazing that God would take notice of these lepers, four
lepers. He's taking great notice of four
lepers. And the reason He's taking great
notice of them is because of His mercy, but it's for us that
we might learn something here this morning. That the church
and every generation would learn a spiritual truth from this when
it's taught. And when these lepers came to
the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent and did
eat and drink and carried tents, silver and gold and raiment and
went and hid, hid it and came again and entered in. You see,
first of all, human nature took over. I mean, that's human nature
to do what they did. But then listen, verse nine,
then they said one to another, this is, we're not doing, this
is not right. This is not right. This day is a day of good tidings.
Oh, I tell you, when you hear of the mercy of God, and God
gives you faith, and God grants you life, it's a day of good
tidings. And you want, you want everyone,
everyone you know, everyone you come in contact, you want them
to know about it. To shut up about it is not well. It's not
well, it's not good. Has God saved me? Has God saved
you? Well, He can save another also.
If God saved one sinner, He can save another sinner. If He can
save a wretch like me, He can save another wretch like me.
It's not well to keep it to ourselves. The gospel is good tidings. You
know what they said? This is a day of good tidings.
We ought to be doing everything we can to publish the gospel,
to invite people to come here and hear the gospel. You know,
the Lord said, go out to the highways and hedges and compel
them to come in. That's not just to the pastor,
that's to everybody in the congregation that believes the gospel. Who
knows? It might be a brother or sister
that you invite to come in. We don't know. It's a day of
good tidings, and we hold our peace? We hold our peace? If we tarry till the morning
light, some mischief will come upon us. And it ought to, it
ought to, if we keep this to ourselves. Now, therefore come
that we may go and tell the king's household. So you can read the
rest of that story. But let me just point out a few
things here with what time I've got left, is why this story of
these four lepers is in the Word of God. And it's in the Word
of God that you and I might learn a spiritual lesson from it. These
four lepers represent the whole human race. This is what we are
by nature. You know, it takes, and as I
was reading this, and I was going over my notes here, I thought,
it takes, it takes the power of God to give us sight that
we can not only see ourselves, but we see that the whole world
lies in wickedness. And this is the condition of
the whole world. The whole world's like this. Leprosy, you know,
in the Old Testament represents sin. It's a disease that just
takes over the whole body and eventually it's a slow death.
It's a slow death. You know, I'm 69 years old. It's
been a slow death. I've been dying since I was born.
Really. There comes a time, I think it's
around the age of I'm thinking it's around the age of 25 that
the body starts going the other direction. It's very short. Youth is very
short. It's very short. I don't mean
to be depressing. It's not depressing to me. It might be depressing
to you if you don't know Christ. That's depressing. I know I said one time to a young
man, he was a teenager at that time, up in his teens, And I
said, oh, I would deserve to come back. And he said to me,
he said, oh, is it not me? He said, I've got a lot I want
to do. I want to live. I want to do things. And I understood,
of course, he didn't believe the gospel at that time at all.
And I understood what he was saying because he didn't believe
the gospel. And I understood it was things he wanted to do.
But I tell you, whoa, can you not say, come quickly, Lord Jesus? Can you not say that? You look at the world, it's so
wicked, so evil, but the Lord will come in His time. He'll
come in His time. What age, somebody asked me once,
what age did I want to die at? The age that God has appointed.
That's the age I want to die at. Whatever age He's appointed
and whatever way He's appointed, I want to be able to submit to
it. But this is in here so that we would see that the whole human
race is spiritually miserable, poor, blind, and naked, as it
says there in Revelation 3.17, as the Lord spoke to the church
at Laodicea, because Thou sayest, I am rich and increased with
goods, and have need of nothing. And you know not that Thou art
wretched, miserable, poor, and blind, and naked. Wouldn't it
be awful to be sitting in here completely naked and not know
it? And not know it. Everybody else would know it.
Everybody else would know it, but you not know it? That would
be an awful way to be. To have such a mind that you
don't even know that. We see here that without Christ
we have no hope and we are without God in the world, in these lepers. There's just no way to put into
language the miserable condition of the human race. These lepers
were starving, they were helpless, they were disease-ridden, and
they were dying. And they had no hope. As Isaiah
said, he said, I am undone, I am cut off. You remember in Isaiah,
he was woeing everybody in the first six chapters. Then he saw
the Lord high and lifted up. I think it's in chapter six.
He saw the Lord high and lifted up. You know what the first thing
he said? Woe is me. Woe is me. Before that he was
woeing everybody else. And then he saw the Lord high
and lifted up. He said, woe is me. I am a man of unclean lips
and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. Isaiah 64, 6, But we are all
as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy
rags. And we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the
wind, have taken us away. That's us by nature. But now
these lepers knew something here. They knew their condition. They
knew their condition. Unlike probably 99.9% of the
human race, They knew they were dying. They knew they were dying. It was appointed unto men once
to die. They knew they were going to die. And they knew this, they
knew if they set where they were at, they were going to die. They
knew if they went into the city, there was no food there, they
was going to die there. And they knew this, if we go into the
camp of the Syrians, they might show mercy. They might show mercy. And so they chose the latter.
They chose to go into the camp of the Assyrians, and God had
made those Assyrians, as I read to you, to hear this noise of
a great army, and they all ran just like scared to death, running
just as hard as they could run, and left everything behind. My, my, my. So what are they to do? What
are they to do? The same thing we are to do.
Throw ourselves on the mercy of God. Throw ourselves on God's mercy.
I can tell any sinner this. I can tell anyone this. God has never ever turned away
a sinner seeking mercy. Never has. Never has. And I know that when God convicts
of sin, when the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, righteousness,
and judgment, that a sinner believes that God won't have anything
to do with them. That's one of the first things you believe.
Why would He save me? Why would He save me? God delights to show mercy. You
know God delights to show mercy more than we delight to have
it. Think about that. He delights to show mercy more
than we delight to have it. He delights to show mercy. So they cast themselves in this story upon what they
thought was going to be the Assyrians having mercy on them. But it
really God had mercy on them. God had mercy on them and God
provided everything they needed. Everything they needed, God provided.
They didn't come into that city and bring anything but their
disease. They came into there as lepers. They didn't come into
that place as lepers who healed themselves, but lepers who were
dying. And they found, not in that city,
but they found in the camp of the Syrians everything they needed. And those who come to Christ,
the city of refuge, Find in Him everything they need. I have
found in Christ everything I need. Everything. And I'm so thankful
that this wretch, this wretch, this wretch found in Christ all
that God demands and all that God provided. And I bring nothing
but my disease. I bring nothing but my sinfulness.
I bring nothing but my sinful self. I tell you what, I don't, these
four levelers, one of them may have, who knows, one of them
may have been poor before, the other one may have been rich,
you know, high society, I don't know. But I tell you this, sin
is a great leveler. Sin is a great leveler. When you really see who you are
before God, You're above nobody. You're just a leper like the
rest of the people. You're just one of them, that's all you are. Now there's several reasons here,
a few reasons anyway, why we come to Christ. We come to Christ
for mercy. We come to Christ for cleansing.
We come to Christ for pardon. We come to Christ for acceptance. We come to Christ for justification.
We come to Christ for righteousness. We come to Christ. And in Him
we find all we need. Just like they found when they
went into the camp of the Syrians. But there was somebody else in
this story that it didn't end so well before. That Lord on
whose hand the king leaned, he was a servant, he helped the
king. He said, if God made windows
in heaven, that might happen, but it ain't gonna happen. And
I want you to look in verse 17, I'll close this. And the king appointed the Lord
on whose hand he leaned to have the charge of the gate, and the
people trod upon him in the gate. And he died, as the man of God
said, who spake when the king came down to him. And it came
to pass, as the man of God had spoken to the king, saying, Two
measures of barley for a shekel, and a measure of fine flour for
a shekel, shall be tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria.
And that Lord answered the man of God and said, Now behold,
if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing
be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes,
but shalt not eat thereof. And so it fell out unto him,
for the people trod upon him in the gate, and he died. And
I wrote out by mine, by that verse, died in unbelief. If he
had just believed, What Elisha had said he would have eaten
of the food that day. But he died in unbelief. Why
sit we here till we die? All right.