May 8, 2016 The Horror of Unbelief by Pastor Josh Sheldon

And on Mother's Day, as we read in 2

Kings, we will read of two mothers, and we will rejoice that our

God loves us more than any mother could. Amen. Our scripture reading for this morning is 1

Kings 6 -24 -7 -20.

That is found on page 312 of the Black Few Bibles in front of you.

And then we will be reading Matthew 24 -29, the end of the chapter, which is on page 830 of the

Black Few Bibles. And when you are ready, and if you are able, please stand for the reading of God's Word.

2 Kings 6, starting in verse 24. Afterward, Ben -Hadad, king of Syria, mustered his entire army and went up and besieged

Samaria. There was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it, until a donkey's head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a calf of a dove's tongue 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, O 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? The king answered,

What is your trouble? She answered, This woman said to me, Give 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 Shabbat, 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, You see how this murderer has sent to take off my head?

Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door, and behold the door passed against him.

Is 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 flour 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. Now there were four men who were lepers at the entrance to the gate, and they said to one another,

Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, Let us enter the city, the famine is in the city, and we shall die there.

And if we sit here, we die also. So now come, let us go over to the camp of the

Syrians. If they spare our lives, we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall but die.

So they arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians. But when they came to the edge of the camp of the

Syrians, behold, there was no one there. For the Lord had made the army of the

Syrians hear the sound of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another,

Behold, the King of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to come against us.

So they fled away into twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, leaving the camp as it was and fled for their lives.

When these lepers came to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent and ate and drank. They carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them.

When they came back and entered another tent, they carried off things from it and went and hid them. Then they said to one another,

We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news. If we are silent and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us.

Now therefore come, let us go and tell the king's household. So they came and called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them,

We came to the camp of the Syrians, and behold, there was no one to be seen nor heard there, nothing but the horses tied and the donkeys tied in the tents as they were.

And the gatekeepers called out and it was told within the king's household, The king rose in the night and said to his servants,

I will 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 open country, thinking, when they come out of the city, we shall take them alive and get into the city.

One of the servants said, Let some men take five of the remaining horses, seeing that those who are left here will fare like the whole multitude of Israel who have already perished.

Let us go and see. So they took two horsemen, and the king sent them after the army of the

Syrians, saying, Go and see. So they went after them as far as the Jordan, and behold, all the way was littered with garments and equipment that the

Syrians had thrown away in their haste. The messengers returned and told the king.

And the people went out and plundered the camp 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 captain on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate.

The people trampled him in the gate, so that he died, as the man of God had said when the king came down to him.

For when the man of God had said to the king, Two seas of barley shall be sold for a shekel, and a sea of fine flour for a shekel, about this time tomorrow on the gate to Samaria, the captain had answered the man of God, If the

Lord himself would make windows in heaven, could such a thing be? And he said, You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it.

And so it happened to him. For the people trampled him in the gate, and he died. Now please turn to Matthew, chapter 24, page 830, reading from verse 29 at the end of the chapter.

Verse 29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn.

They will see the Son of Man coming on the shining of the sun with power and great glory. He will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

From the fig tree learn its lesson. As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near.

So also when you see all these things, you know that he is near at the very gates.

Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the sun, but the

Father only. As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when

Noah came to the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away.

So will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field, one will be taken and one left.

Two women will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken and one left. Therefore stay awake, for you do not know on what day our

Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not let his house be broken into.

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Putin is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household to give them their food at the proper time.

Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions.

But if that wicked servant says to himself, my master is delayed and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Please be seated.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the

Word that you have preserved for these many thousands of years. And that you have blessed us with the man who proclaimed these words to our ears.

We pray your Holy Spirit would be with us to open our ears and our hearts to receive the message.

We pray your Holy Spirit would be with our pastor as he preaches the message, holds forth the

Word of God, that we might see Jesus. In Christ's name, amen. Amen. Thank you,

Dale. Well, I ask you, how awful is unbelief?

What is God's view of one who refuses to believe in Him?

Despite all He's done in the heavens, in the firmament, in creation as we see it, despite what

He has done in history, despite His Word that He has given, how does

God view those who will not believe His Word, who will not trust Him and His integrity simply in what

He says? What is God's view of the believer in Jesus Christ who in that moment of decision forgets

God? And as it were, and I say as it were for that moment, is an unbeliever.

What is God's view of unbelief? How awful is it in God's view?

We can barely imagine the answers to questions like this because we are limited, we are finite,

God is infinite. We are not God, therefore we are not holy. God is perfectly holy. So the divine attitude towards unbelief is something that we can only scratch the surface of understanding.

But unbelief is one of the things that comes up over and again in this passage that Dale read to you from 2

Kings, our text this morning. A rather long one, I admit that. And there's a lot there.

But I want us to come away with a better understanding of what it means to disbelieve

God, how God looks upon it when His Word is simply ignored or actively set aside.

We've seen this before, what was read to you a moment ago from 2 Kings. We've seen this before in the history of Elijah with a

J, Elijah, and our current subject, Elisha. Wayward as they were,

Israel were still God's people in their descent from Abraham. They had willingly followed their kings in idolatry, we know that.

All Israel was at Carmel to see if Baal, who most of them seemed to favor, if Baal or Yahweh was

God. And we know, of course, after Elijah called upon God and the sacrifice was consumed, they all said,

The Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God. And yet, all Israel had to assemble and be a part of this decision process because they were all given over to the other.

It was a backslidden nation. Yet, they were those whom

God had taken from the land of Egypt. God does not easily or quickly turn away from His children.

Standing against God's people is the world at large, the followers of the prince of the power of the air.

And here, in this passage, represented by who? By Syria. By Syria.

And as wicked as were the practices of Israel's kings, and as willingly as the people followed them, yet, this is that people whom

God, when He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, drew them out of Egypt. This is that people.

Well, not the very people. It happened a long time before. But in God's view, they're the people promised to Abraham, who will be as the sand of the shore.

God has no tolerance for sin. We know that. And yet, God does not easily set aside the people

He had redeemed. Who is attacking

Israel? Israel. God's children being attacked by Syria.

Representing the world. The world just cannot live at peace with God's children, even those as far from a proper worship of God as these were.

Syria had just been treated to a lesson in divine mercy and forbearance. We did this, we preached this last week.

When their blinded army was fed and allowed to return to Syria in safety.

And now here they are once again in Samaria, once again intent on subjugating them.

In the last campaign, it was a raiding force. Now it's an entire army. Israel's previous restraint is not met with any gratitude, but was probably viewed as a sign of their weakness.

And whatever the case, our passage takes us immediately to the siege in Samaria. Now it had to have gone on for some time to get to the incident which was just read where this woman going before the king asking for this justice, if we can call it that.

To have gotten to that point, the siege had to have gone on for some time. But the author simply says, now, Ben -Hadad attacked,

Syria is besieged. And here's the result of it, this horrible, horrible starvation.

It also tells us immediately, very quickly, that their privations within the city, their suffering was so extreme that animal parts that would normally be revolting commanded these huge, exorbitant prices.

Something you might otherwise have reserved for luxuries. The price you'd pay for fine jewelry just to get a bite of something that perhaps your body could digest and give you a bit of strength.

That's how bad it was. This morning we'll go through this history in order, ending where the reading stopped at verse 720.

The lesson here is about unbelief. Why was

God allowing such horrors upon his people? It was to show them the worst horror of unbelief.

Why did God deliver the city from impending doom? To convict them of their folly, of unbelief.

The unbeliever, if you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ today, right now, the unbeliever, you are here warned of the eternal destitution that awaits those who leave this world without faith in Jesus Christ.

An eternal destiny awaits that this siege in Samaria and the horrible suffering that was just read to you can't even begin to approach.

Unbelief. The same warning must ring through the ages to the church today.

Unbelief is an insult to God which he simply will not wink at. The believer is warned that the

Almighty will not tolerate their unbelief but will bring chastisement upon chastisement until he hears true and heartfelt repentance.

If there is faith in Jesus Christ, then we can take strength in knowing that our sins were judged in Jesus Christ on the cross and that God's only begotten

Son will usher us into paradise. But let us not think that God's correcting rod upon the back of a true believer is a mere slap on the wrist.

Where repentance is the goal, God in his mercy might bring upon us even to the travails of Samaria in the siege that was read to you.

This morning's passage warns us. Believer and unbeliever alike of the horror of unbelief in God's view.

How does God see it? It's Israel.

Samaria. They mean the same thing. Israel, Samaria. Unbelief. Unbelief in their king

Jehoram. Who is he? He's Ahab's son. This king who's supposed to lead his people in a godly way.

He represents the rule of God on earth. He represents the rule of Jesus Christ on earth.

King Jehoram refuses to call upon God for help. He will not humble himself before the

Almighty. Unbelief. Unbelief in the king's official who questioned whether God could actually even deliver.

He hears the word from a prophet whose prophecy had always come true just as he said because God was working through him.

Unbelief in this king's official, the man upon whom the king leaned. Asking could

God even do that? Unbelief again in Jehoram who denied the report of God's deliverance.

They said God has sent this army away and the camp is left full of not just gold and silver but more important at that moment, food.

And how hard it is for us to believe that God would actually forgive a sinner in Jesus Christ and promise him heaven because of and for the sake of his son's sacrifice for that sinner.

How hard that is for us to believe that God Almighty would do that for such as me.

It's all about unbelief. The king will be judged when a man named

Jehu is anointed. We'll come to that in a few weeks, Lord willing. Jehu will be anointed king of Israel and he will carry out

God's final vengeance against the house of Ahab which is where Jehoram came from.

The official, the one who questioned God, he will be judged when God's deliverance is confirmed. You heard this.

He's trampled in the gate just as the word of God said he would be. We begin this morning with the siege.

The first two verses are very short. They come right to the point. In verse 25, the

Syrian army has surrounded Samaria and in verse 26, there's a great famine in the city.

As I said, there's a lot of time between the initiation of the siege and this horrible famine that they had.

But again, just as in the other campaign that we preached about last week, it seems like Jehoram and his commanders are caught unawares.

They had no stores brought into the city. It seems like all of a sudden, there's the Syrian army.

They had no warning. All they could do is get themselves inside and shut the gates. Have you ever heard the expression,

I'm so hungry I could eat a horse? I know I used the

World War II battle in Stalingrad last week as an illustration, but bear with me for one more.

Because as the Germans were caught inside the city of Stalingrad and less and less food could get in, one of the signs of their desperate plight was that they were forced to eat horse meat.

As starvation set in, they found no part of the beast too unappetizing. Here in Samaria, it was even worse.

It was even worse than that. A piece of refuse like a donkey's head sold for about the equivalent of two and a half months' wages.

Two and a half months' wages to get a donkey head. Dove droppings, maybe used for food, maybe used for fuel, maybe for both.

They were all so exorbitant. There wasn't anything in there. It was so bad. Then the next portion of this record, verses 26 to 31, they bring us to this gruesome incident of this woman crying out for justice.

She had shared her son for food with another woman. The agreement was that the next day they would do the same with the other.

Of course, that one gets hidden away. Before we get to the king's answer when she calls out for justice to him, as you might expect, or might have expected, he was no

Solomon. I need for just a moment to defend

God's name here. Not that God needs our help, but this is a horrible incident.

This thing that the woman says she needs justice for, it's like, what are you doing this in the first place? This is beyond gruesome.

Why would God do such a thing? How could a good God allow such depravity?

So in defending God's name for just a moment, I want to read just a couple of verses that these

Israelites, these Samaritans, these people in Samaria would have known. God had told them that exactly this horror would be the result of unbelief.

Deuteronomy 28, 47 and 48. Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the

Lord will send against you in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything.

And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you. And then just a few verses down from that.

They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land.

And they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the Lord your God has given you. You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the

Lord your God has given you. In the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you.

Now I say this only to defend God against the accusation of foul play somehow. You see, he had warned them specifically and explicitly of this very thing.

Doesn't Amos tell us this? That the Lord God does nothing unless he tells the people what he's going to do through a prophet.

Now you understand, I added a little bit. I didn't quote the verse exactly, but I'm true to what it's saying. The Lord warns.

The Lord warned. They should have read the scripture.

They had read the scripture. So what's missing? Faith. Faith.

They were told that this would happen, but they didn't believe it. And here it was. Back to our text.

The king is on the wall in the sight of all the people. That's where a leader should be at such a time as that, in the sight of the people, giving them strength just by his presence, by his courage to stand on the wall and be seen by the enemy.

That's what a king should be doing. Now you know what the woman asked for, and I don't want to read it again.

But I'll follow this and see how unbelief, once given ground, is never satisfied, but demands more and more and more.

She says, help my lord, O king. Well, so far so good, right? In the old dispensation, the king represented

God's rule, and no aspect of that was no important than to dispense justice.

But even before he hears her case, he shows us just how empty his heart really is.

He says, if the Lord does not help you, where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor or from the wine press?

You see, what he meant was, first, seek help from God, not from me, which is true enough.

My help comes from the Lord who made the heavens and the earth. So yes, let us point those in need to the one place where help in time of need could be found and should be found, the throne of grace.

Someone says, help. It'd be right to say, help comes from the Lord. What can

I do? What he's really saying is, leave me be.

There's nothing to be done. God has left us in this horrible position. The wine vats are empty.

The threshing floor is bare. What are you coming to me for? We're all suffering this together.

Just leave me be. What can I do, seeing that God, who, by the way,

I neither love nor follow, but he has forsaken us. And then he asks her what the problem is.

I don't know if I would keep going if I went to someone for help. He shrugs his shoulders and says, nothing

I can do. We don't have any resources here. I don't have a God to turn to for you.

I think we'd be through. But he goes ahead and he asks her what the problem is. And I want you to understand why he even asks that.

Because I don't think he cared. I think he's the true son of Ahab, which means he cares about himself.

He cares about his own luxury, his own safety. I want you to understand why he even asked her what the problem is.

What is it you seek? You see, when the two women came to Solomon, we all know that story.

It's the two harlots, they come, and one son had died, and this is the other one, and he takes the sword.

And he says, okay, we'll find out which mother is real because they're both claiming the same one. And the one who wasn't the true mother says, go ahead and kill him,

I'll take my half. And the one who was the true mother said, no, give him to her. Solomon figured it out.

Divinely, with God's help, he figured it out. I bring that up just to point out to you, if you recall, that everybody marveled at Solomon's wisdom.

It was very public. It wasn't just in a meeting room with Solomon and the two ladies. Everybody was in attendance.

Remember when Nathan confronted David over Bathsheba and Uriah, that was public. Nathan didn't take him in a room and let him work this out privately.

This was in the presence of all the emissaries who would be there. You see, when the woman cried out to Jehoram, Jehoram was on the wall.

He was seen by the people. He was on the spot. He had to reply. But he was like the unjust judge that Jesus speaks of in Luke 18, who was only willing to even speak about justice just to get the woman off his back.

She's a nuisance. She's in my way. She's bothering me. Jehoram's no better than that.

He's saying, what do you want? Why? Why is he asking? Because everybody's looking at him. He's on the wall.

He answers for appearance's sake, not for any care for her, not because of any care about God. He was the ultimate fearer of men, and not a fearer of God at all.

So ultimately, no matter what he would say, God is going to take no pleasure in it because all that is not of faith is sin.

And he had no faith because he had no view of God. He didn't believe in God. And when he hears her tale, he has no answer except for a show of remorse and anguish with all the substance of a puff of wind.

He tears his clothes. He had done the same when Ben -Hadad asked for Naaman's leprosy to be cured.

Do you remember that several chapters ago? He gets this letter from this Syrian king. He says,

I've sent to you my servant Naaman. I want you to cure him of this leprosy. And the king tears his clothes. He says, look, he's trying to pick a fight with me.

How can I do this? Notice what he doesn't do, which is to go to God in prayer.

King David tore his clothes when his commander Joash was killed. Josiah tore his clothes when he heard the words of the law and perceived the nation's guilt before God.

Hezekiah tore his clothes when Assyria attacked Jerusalem. But you see,

Josiah's was a spontaneous act of repentance and humility. David's was heartfelt sorrow.

Hezekiah's was a sign of complete dependence. What was Jehoram doing? Jehoram was all show.

He was the hypocrite praying on the street corner that Jesus speaks of. He says, surely they have their reward.

Why? Because they're doing it for men, not for God. Their eye is on the horizontal plane, looking to see who's watching and answering because of their being watched.

Jehoram was all show. And his first response was a complete failure.

He named the Lord as the one who could provide for them. If the Lord doesn't do this, what can I do?

But then what does he not do? He doesn't call on God. And then he puts on this hypocritical show of this holy anguish and tearing his clothes.

And now his complete lack of faith in the God of Israel rises to a crescendo. Because what does he do? Doesn't pray.

Doesn't offer any comfort to the woman. Doesn't rebuke her for this horrible thing she had done and is planning to do again if she can only get the king to condone it.

None of that. What does he do? He threatens the life of Israel's only prophet.

Now we're not told exactly why Elisha should have been blamed for the afflictions that are brought on here by Syria's invasion.

It seems most likely that the reasoning was if Elisha could blind the Syrian raiders and lead them away captive, why didn't he do the same with this army?

Therefore he is to be blamed. Something like that. Whether or not that was his reasoning, his response was typical.

He threatens the man of God with death. Just as his father had done to Elisha's predecessor when he warned of the coming drought.

Just as his mother Jezebel had done when Elisha, in a wondrous display of God's power, executed her pet prophets, the prophets of Baal, so now

Jehoram, death to the messenger. Death to the man of God. Death to anyone that reminds me of God.

Curses upon God for not giving way to my whims. You know, in Revelation 16, we're told three times about how men, while suffering the awful wrath of God, the boils, these hail pieces coming down from heaven, and they know it's from God.

They know their suffering is from God, and they know it, why? Because they won't repent.

They know this, and yet what does the scripture say? Still, knowing it was from God, knowing this, no doubt, they refused to repent, but instead blasphemed the name of God.

So often we find ourselves in this same mess. You know, we press down our own path.

The warnings of God are there before us, but our pride has overcome our senses, so we ignore it.

Or we force fit God's word to fit our own desires. Then we stand on the wall, and we see the rebuke of God.

We look down, and we see those who have suffered for our error, children who refuse God's grace, pocketbooks that seem to have grown craterous holes.

Not so different, really. But why is it so hard to repent?

It's because like Jehoram, pride defeats the stirrings of humility. Arrogance rises up and stifles repentance.

Self -sufficiency replaces our need for God's power by His Holy Spirit. Brothers who would guide us back to the narrow path are suddenly dim -witted in our eyes.

Churches that won't bend to our whim and agree with us are suddenly not good enough for us.

And so we lash out at God's people. We lash out at God. We blaspheme His name by our vitriol against His blood -bought children.

We join Jehoram. May God do to me and more also if His head remains on His shoulders today.

I will do anything. Any amount of violence, any amount of cursing, any amount of blaspheming,

I will do anything but give in to the humility needed for repentance.

To fall down before God. He wore sackcloth. Remember when

He tore His clothes? It says the people saw He had sackcloth on His body. So what?

Sackcloth indicates what? Humility before God. In Jehoram, what did it indicate? It's just itchy stuff on His skin because there is no truth to the emblem.

The symbol meant nothing. The next scene we come to is at Elisha's house where He is sitting with the elders.

He knows who's coming and why before they arrive and He tells the men to hold the door against the king's messenger because Jehoram is right behind them.

There is one difficulty in the text I want to talk about. It's in verse 33 and if you look at that again, verse 33, and while He, meaning

Elisha, while He was still talking with them, which is the elders, the elders of the city, there was the messenger coming down to Him and the paren, someone, said, this calamity is from the

Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer? The question is who said that? Who asked that question?

If you look in your New King James, it says it was the king but in the New King James where it says the king said it is italicized because the original language is sort of ambiguous.

We don't know who exactly said it. The NET and the ESV say it was the messenger speaking, of course, for the king.

I think it was Elisha. I think it was Elisha who said this calamity is from the

Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer? You see, first, King Jehoram seems an unlikely candidate to suddenly name the

God he refuses to worship as the agent behind his kingdom's distress. I don't think

Jehoram is the guy who would say something like that. He blamed Elisha the way his parents had blamed

Elijah. And the second thing is it flows very neatly to the next verse, chapter 7, verse 1, where Elisha announces this oracle of salvation.

So it works like this. Then Elisha said, surely this calamity is from the Lord. Why should

I wait for the Lord any longer? The calamity is the terrible siege, and just how bad it was was demonstrated in the woman's dilemma.

With the king now in earshot, Elisha says it is not from him but from God. This calamity is from the

Lord, King Jehoram. Why should I wait any longer?

You will now hear this oracle of salvation. Very next verse.

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.

In other words, the siege will be lifted and immediately food would be plentiful, so much so that the black market prices would be immediately vanquished.

If Jehoram was our first study in disbelief, then what comes next? A man no better.

A man no better. His officer, the officer on whose hand the king leaned, answered the man of God and said, look, if the

Lord would make windows in heaven, could this thing be? Very odd statement, just the way it's put together.

But what he means is even if the Lord opened the windows of heaven to send rain, for instance, could he turn all this around so quickly?

The idea seems to be that even if rain were sent right away, it would take some time for the crops to grow and bring any benefit.

The Lord, he's saying, the Lord can't do what you're saying in a single day. And why not?

And why not? Were not the heavens and the earth formed in a single day by the word of the

Lord? Did not the Lord provide water to this very king's army when they were in danger of dying of thirst?

Do you remember when he gathered together with the king of Edom, the king of Judah, and they went into that desert, and next thing you knew, they're out of water, and Elisha comes to them, said, this is a small matter for the

Lord. And the next day, they had plenty of water for themselves and for all the animals. This very king was there when they saw that.

How easy it is to forget the goodness of God. Yet he displays his goodness when he sends rain one day and sun the next.

The just and the unjust alike benefit from him. And this is what he does for everyone.

What of those who have benefited from his minute, personal, and exact deliverance?

What cause do they have to not believe? We here at this church know of people who have been miraculously healed of fatal disease.

I've spoken of this before, so I won't go into a lot of detail. But the man was given his death sentence by an expert in this particular malady.

And we prayed. And it wasn't a week later that the thing was gone.

And now all these years later, it's still gone. We've seen that.

Told by experts to prepare for death. Then prayer, then healing, and still to this day, what do we have?

Disbelief. The man still does not believe. And we, we who prayed and saw this, we who have been delivered again and again, jobs have been found, relationships have been restored, bureaucracies have been unwound.

Why, when trouble comes, do we look anywhere but to God? How often we join

Jehoram's servant and ask, can God really do this? Will he do it? Did he really do it before?

Was that just the way things played out? The warning here is this.

If we who believe in God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, if we take such a stance, then we're saying one of two things.

First, we imply that God can't. Can't what?

Whatever we need for the issue of the moment, God can't. Or we're saying he won't, which says that God doesn't hear,

God doesn't care, or both. Maybe that last deliverance wasn't from God.

Maybe that would have happened anyway. Maybe that was just happenstance. If I just kept my mouth shut,

I'd be in the same exact position. Do you ever think this way?

As if the thing you prayed about, and then the next day or the next week or whenever found deliverance, all of a sudden now that another trouble has come upon you, the other one becomes like it was a dream, it was a mirage.

Was it really like that? Could that really have been God reaching down from heaven to help me? Well, that's what

I affirmed when I prayed. That's when I came back to the prayer meeting the next week and said, I want to give a praise report, but now we run into trouble again.

And we look back on that deliverance, on that answer from God specifically to us. We say, hmm, was that real?

What shall I do this time? Maybe that all could have just happened anyway. Do we ever think that way?

Because it's being a kinman to Jehoram's servant. And then we have to ask ourselves, what did it mean then if we came back and gave praise for our deliverance?

If the next time we have trouble, we don't go directly and immediately to God in the name of Jesus Christ, what does it say about the previous time?

Elisha takes it as an affront to God, which is what unbelief is. He says, in fact, you shall see it with your eyes, but you shall not eat of it.

You shall see God's deliverance and not eat of it, not enjoy it, not partake of it.

As Moses' one moment of doubt barred him from the promised land, the officer on whose hand the king leaned would die without himself benefiting from what the

Lord had done. He was trampled in the stampede, out of the starving city, and to God's deliverance.

So I want to finish this history. This portion of this history of Elisha. There are four lepers.

They decide they had nothing to lose by throwing themselves on the mercy of the Syrians. If they stayed where they were, they would die.

If the Syrians killed them, well, they're going to be no more dead than if they starved, but it would be quicker. I sort of appreciate their practicality.

Nothing to gain by staying, so there's nothing to lose by moving. They find the camp left in place with all the plunder they had so far taken and of far more value, all the food.

So they eat, they drink, they hide away much gold and silver. Then they decide to tell the city and share this wonderful bounty with them.

They leave a question unanswered. They don't even ask among themselves what happened.

That kind of rings out at me. They go down to the camp. They find it empty. They're very surprised, and not once do they stop.

The four of them look at each other and say, where do you think they went? Why do you think they left?

They had Samaria on the ropes. We're starving to death in the city. Looks like they were going to win the battle.

So we need our author to tell us. Our author tells us that God had made the Syrians believe that the

Hittites and Egyptians had been hired to rescue Israel, and so they fled as fast as they could.

We see no one with any sense wants to face down those charioteers. The Egyptians and the

Hittites were famous for that then. So very quickly now, they return to the city.

They give the report to the watchmen. The watchmen tell the king, we have a report that the camp is abandoned.

They're gone, and they left everything behind. The king hears the report, and we know what he says.

He disbelieves. He says, look, I'll tell you what's happening. They're just trying to draw us out of the sea.

They're hiding there somewhere, and they'll attack us as soon as we come out. It's all a clever ruse on the part of the

Syrians. His servants, though, with perhaps the same fatalistic practicality of the lepers, convince him to let a few men go to see what's really the case, and he agrees, and of course, the city is saved.

There's a whole lot of verses in a very short time. God had done just as Elisha had said he would.

Food was again so plentiful that the prices dropped back to normal overnight according to the word of the

Lord through the man of God, Elisha. Jehoram, the king, he might have known.

He had this deliverance prophesied in his very ears, but when it came about, he didn't believe.

It makes me think of the disciples who didn't believe the women's report that the Lord had risen. Later they remembered what he told them, and he told them exactly what would happen.

So many times he said, and the third day he will rise again. And then they believed.

Then they were transformed. Then they spoke the word of God fearlessly. See, Jehoram never thought back to the day before when he had gone to take

Elisha's head, but instead heard that salvation was a day away. Yet when the report came, when

Elisha's word was confirmed by the scouts, he refused to believe.

He couldn't even think back just a few hours. Well, he hasn't longed for this world.

Elisha will soon anoint his executioner, Jehu. Unlike the king, in his effort to kill

Elisha, Jehu will not fail, and the Lord willing will come to this in a few weeks. Can we even speculate what might have happened if he had believed the word of the

Lord? Might he have told the people like Moses, stand still and see the salvation of God?

No, but he stayed in his sin. The God he didn't know would find no honor from this king's lips.

Brethren, we whose faith is in Jesus are in many ways in this same position.

Like him, we've been told that the Lord is coming. Unlike him, we don't know when.

Elisha told him about this time tomorrow. The prices will drop, food will again be plentiful.

We're not given anything nearly so specific. Four times in Revelation, Jesus says, behold,

I am coming quickly. When? What time? No, just quickly.

Just be ready. Behold, I'm coming quickly. The book, the entire Bible ends with that very statement.

Behold, I'm coming quickly. The parables of the Olivet Discourse carry that common theme. Jesus is coming at a time that we don't expect him.

So be prepared. Paul says in Titus 2, verses 11 to 14, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great

God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works.

What are we taught to do while we wait for the Lord Jesus Christ? Deny ungodliness, worldly lusts, and the rest.

Peter says in 2 Peter 3, But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat.

Both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?

What do these tell us? That the Lord is coming, that our salvation, if you know the

Lord Jesus Christ, you know his salvation, now our salvation will be made complete. We don't know the hour, we don't know the day, we don't know the year.

Brethren, we don't know the century. We know he's coming.

And we know that he tells us specifically, and in very simple language, be ready.

Be ready as if before this service ends, I might return. Behold, I'm coming quickly.

Jehoram wasn't ready for that salvation. There was a promise to him by Elisha. He heard the word of God.

He says, tomorrow, just tomorrow, about this time, all the prices of this food are going to drop back to normal.

Why? Because God's going to provide. He heard direct from a prophet about this and refused to believe.

We're told in much the same way. We're in much the same situation, surrounded by a world warring against us, trying to hold our own, knowing that Jesus is going to come and take us away from it.

Are you ready? Christian, are you ready? Jesus said, blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.

Doing what? Believing, expecting, living each moment as though God's word were true.

Living as though Jesus might return any moment, just as God's word says of him.

Doing what? Parting company with Jehoram and his companion skeptics, remembering what

God has done and so confidently expecting him to act again. Blessed is that servant who he finds so doing.

Are you ready? Jehoram wasn't ready because he didn't believe.

His servant wasn't ready. He didn't believe and didn't participate at all in salvation.

Got none of the food. Are you ready? Unbeliever, you who do not believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, are you ready? God tells you today through me as much as Jehoram through Elisha, the

Lord's salvation is at hand. What must you do? Believe God's word.

You're trapped in a desperate city. An army of darkness stands against you. It's holding you in place.

God's salvation is there and it's right outside those walls. It's Jesus who was killed outside the camp, a place called

Golgotha, where he went to the cross, where he died for your sins. Are you still with that officer?

Do you ask, can God really do that? Did God really do that?

Yes. I say yes, he can and he did. He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

The windows of heaven are opened. Believe. Believe the gospel.

Know your sin and repent. Repent and believe that God's word stands true.

Repent and be saved. Amen. Lord, we thank you for giving us this day once again.

We thank you, Father, for the warning we gain from scripture. I pray,

Lord, that you by your spirit would guard us from unbelief, from failing to act upon and believe the word of God that you have given us.

I pray, Lord, that unlike Jehoram, who tore his clothes out of exasperation, we would,

Lord, in repentance. And when we look to God, when we point people to you,

Father, we say this is a God not who might or who could or maybe he will, but this is a

God who has acted and will act in our lives. I pray, Father, that this day those who know not

Jesus Christ would come to him in faith and repentance and would benefit and would know the salvation of the

Lord that your word so clearly tells us of. I pray, Lord, that you would open hearts even now.