Dont Just Sit There

Pericope:  2 Kings 7:1-7 - 2 Kings 7:1- Living Bible (TLB)

7 Elisha replied, “The Lord says that by this time tomorrow two gallons of flour or four gallons of barley grain will be sold in the markets of Samaria for a dollar!”

2 The officer assisting the king said, “That couldn’t happen if the Lord made windows in the sky!”

But Elisha replied, “You will see it happen, but you won’t be able to buy any of it!”

3 Now there were four lepers sitting outside the city gates. “Why sit here until we die?” they asked each other. 4 “We will starve if we stay here and we will starve if we go back into the city; so we might as well go out and surrender to the Syrian army. If they let us live, so much the better; but if they kill us, we would have died anyway.”

5 So that evening they went out to the camp of the Syrians, but there was no one there! 6 (For the Lord had made the whole Syrian army hear the clatter of speeding chariots and a loud galloping of horses and the sounds of a great army approaching. “The king of Israel has hired the Hittites and Egyptians to attack us,” they cried out. 7 So they panicked and fled into the night, abandoning their tents, horses, donkeys, and everything else.)

Sermon Text:  2 Kings 7:4 . 4 “We will starve if we stay here and we will starve if we go back into the city; so we might as well go out and surrender to the Syrian army. If they let us live, so much the better; but if they kill us, we would have died anyway.”

Sermon Title:  Don’t Just Sit There

Point 1:  Why are you here? vs. 4 “We will die if we stay here and we will die if we go back into the city…

        I believe the first reason they believe their options were limited was because they were stationary “why sit here”.  The Hebrew definition for what they were doing is not talking about just sitting in a chair; it means to inhabit, dwell, live, marry and join in a marriage relationship. 

Point 2:  Don’t Just Die There – vs. 4 …if they spare us we will live, if they kill us we will die. 

        They go on to say until we die.  The Hebrew for this phrase means:  be dead and in a state of physical absence from the body.  In other words, “until we die” means they already see themselves as being dead.  It also mean corpse.  The phrase is in the Hebrew perfect tense, which means a completed process has taken place.  In other words, in English, we don’t have a perfect match for the Hebrew perfect tense so we say it like it is happening now when in fact the Hebrew means it has already happened.  So in their minds the lepers are already dead and they say as much – “we be dead”...we are dead men walking.  They were saying our options are so limited we are dead to any alternative to our present state.

Point 3:  Speak Up – vs. 3 …They said to each other…

        Three things happened to change their situation.  They said we will enter in.  The Hebrew means they will set a goal, determine a clear direction, and make linear movement to a particular reference point. 

Point 4: Get Up – vs. 5…they got up..

Point 5:  Line Up – vs. 1Elisha replied, “Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” 16 Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of the finest flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, as the Lord had said. 20 And that is exactly what happened to him, for the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died.