OUTSIDE THE GATESThere is a story in the Old Testament (2Kings 7) about how the unseen world of spiritual light and spiritual darkness operates. It is the story of Elisha and the four lepers of Samaria. This story demonstrates how limited the power of darkness is when it faces up to the power and purpose of God and his goodness. The spiritual world is an unseen world – the real world of God’s activity – the world dominated by light and God’s goodness and faith, and with faith we can withsta...
OUTSIDE THE GATES
There is a story in the Old Testament (2Kings 7) about how the unseen world of spiritual light and spiritual darkness operates. It is the story of Elisha and the four lepers of Samaria. This story demonstrates how limited the power of darkness is when it faces up to the power and purpose of God and his goodness. The spiritual world is an unseen world – the real world of God’s activity – the world dominated by light and God’s goodness and faith, and with faith we can withstand and overthrow the spiritual darkness in that unseen realm with its fear and deception.
The story begins with Israel under siege and with the Syrian army camped in the hills nearby and God’s people starving to death inside the walls of the city of Samaria, which had become the temporary capital of the Northern tribes of Israel.
It was reported that people were paying fifty dollars for the head of a donkey to eat, and the king of Israel was blaming Elisha for causing this situation to come about. That was because Elisha had provoked the Syrian army the previous year when he had asked God to blind their eyes so he could trick them by leading them away from where they were headed, to a city called Dothan, and into the waiting hands of the King of Israel in Samaria, where they were ambushed and defeated.
However, by this time the Syrian army had regrouped and now they were back, and the King of Israel was angry with Elisha and threatened to have him killed by his hatchet-man - his chief officer, and Elisha was aware of that plot.
2Kings 6:31 ‘May God kill me if I don’t execute Elisha this very day the king vowed. Elisha was in his house meeting with the elders of Israel and the king sent a message to summons him, and Elisha said to the elders ‘This murderer has sent his chief officer to kill me. When he arrives, shut the door, and keep him out, for the King will soon follow him’, but while Elisha was still saying this, the chief officer arrived followed by the king.
The King must have presumed that Elisha was praying with the men for God’s help.
2Kings 6:31-33 When the king entered the house he said. “Why should I expect any help from the Lord? The Lord has caused this mess,”
2Kings 7:3-21 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!”
The chief officer objected, “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!”
So the King is in two minds and he hesitates, and the plot fails, and the story continues.
Vs.3 Now there were four lepers sitting outside the city gates. “Why sit here until we die?” they asked each other. “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.”
So that evening they went out to the camp of the Syrians, but there was no one there! (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. So they panicked and fled into the night, abandoning their tents and horses, and donkeys.
When the lepers arrived at the edge of the camp they went into one tent after another, eating, drinking wine, and carrying out silver and gold and clothing and hiding it. Finally they said to each other, “This isn’t right. This is wonderful news, but we aren’t sharing it with anyone! Even if we wait until morning, some terrible calamity will certainly fall upon us; come on, let’s go back and tell the people at the palace.”
So they went back to the city and told the watchmen what had happened—they had gone out to the Syrian camp and no one was there! The horses and donkeys were tethered and the tents were all in order, but there was not a soul around. Then the watchmen shouted the news to those in the palace. The king got out of bed and told his officers, “I know what has happened. The Syrians know we are starving, so they have left their camp and have hidden in the fields, thinking that we will be lured out of the city. Then they will attack us and make slaves of us and get in.”
One of his officers replied, ‘Why don’t we send out some scouts to see?’.
So four chariot horses were found and the king sent out two charioteers to see where the Syrians had gone. They followed a trail of clothing and equipment all the way to the Jordan River—thrown away by the Syrians in their haste.
The scouts returned and told the king, and the people of Samaria rushed out and plundered the camp of the Syrians. So it was true that two gallons of flour and four gallons of barley were sold that day for one dollar, just as the Lord had said!
The king appointed his chief officer to control the traffic at the gate, but he was knocked down and trampled and killed as the people rushed out. This is what Elisha had predicted on the previous day when the king came to arrest him, and the prophet had told the king that flour and barley would sell for so little on the following day.
From start to finish this was an outlandish scenario – almost like a stage play of a comedy of errors, with all kinds of characters with all kinds of strange ideas going through their heads, some plotting malice and death and destruction, with suspicion and confusion and panic. The King didn’t know what he believed or what to believe and the people were desperate.
Just as it was God’s will to allow Syria to lay siege to Israel it was also God’s will to cause the nightmare panic of the Syrian army and their withdrawal from Samaria. The control of God over history and the power of God’s word in the shaping of history are common themes in the Old Testament.
We can affirm that God is also in control over the seemingly outlandish scenario of today’s global society of confusion and panic and suspicion and malice and opposition to God’s word of truth.
When I think of the strange assortment of characters depicted in this real-life drama of the siege upon Israel by the Syrian army I ask myself which of these characters I can most identify with. I find that curiously I identify most with the four lepers.
(I had thought that maybe Elisha would be a good choice, but I believe that he represents the Holy Spirit with the Word of God to his people). The reason I chose the four lepers is that when I read or watch the news of the daily happenings and the erosion of values in current mainstream culture, I often feel like I’m outside the gates like they were, not able to and not wanting to share the frenzied confusion of a lifestyle that has become rudderless and cut off from love and truth and faith. I don’t want to let my soul die there, and like the four lepers I don’t want to sit around and wait for the enemy to come and destroy the city and everyone in it. Like the four lepers I want another option and to bring back good news about what God has done!
The four lepers took a risk when they walked boldly into the enemy camp, and the threat to them was what the enemy might do to them, but when they went in they saw with their own eyes that God had been at work because the word of God about the blessing and the relief of the famine in Samaria had been spoken by Elisha and was already in operation. Those lepers should have been the most desperate ones of all the people but if they had not taken this initiative and walked into the enemy camp no one would had moved in the entire city and they all would have starved, even though God’s word of blessing had already been spoken!
Just as the four lepers went into the enemy’s camp, we walk into the enemy’s camp when we venture into the territory of our mind. That is where the devil wants to blind our minds and to plant confusion and deception and fear. That is his greatest weapon, and even though darkness cannot defeat us we can defeat ourselves by believing he has more power than God. But when we walk boldly and confidently into that territory with a mind that is renewed by the Word of God we align ourselves with the authority of his Word and we resist the devil and the darkness has to flee, just like the Syrian army (James 4:7).
And just as God’s word of blessing had been spoken over Israel by Elisha (Elisha means ‘God of Blessing’), the word of spiritual blessing has been spoken over us in Jesus and we are to trust that it is working in our lives, and it will come to pass in every situation.
Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm…
These are the inner spiritual blessings of God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit that bring wholeness to our souls by acting upon our minds and our emotions and our will. Through being made one in spirit with Jesus our minds are able to receive the wisdom of God in all situations, and our emotions can likewise receive his peace and joy. And through the softening ofour hearts by his love we are moved to lovingly surrender our wills to the Father’s will for our lives in all situations.
The threat to humanity by the devil is not the risk of what he can physically do to us. The threat is being blinded by unbelief to the goodness of God which can make us become fearful that the devil has the power to stop God from having our best interest at heart. The devil does not control my destiny – God does.
This is about growing in the knowledge of God and having faith and trust in his personal and loving intentions for us. This kind of faith is the only way we can get to know God personally. We are not waiting for our so called ‘goodness’ to operate, but his goodness.
2 Cor 10:4 ‘For the weapons of our warfare do not operate through our human nature but they are mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God…’
We are not weakly struggling against a powerful dark force but firmly aligning ourselves with the powerful force of God. Let God arise and his enemies be scattered.
