Grace: Blessing and Judgment. 2 Kings
6:24-7:20
Grace is truly a concept that
goes beyond our finite comprehension, we understand it only marginally when we
first are saved. There is only one thing that can be free to us and that is
salvation as expressed in the Scriptures because Jesus Christ is the one who
paid the price, the bill, so that we could have salvation because we trust in
Him. It is through our faith in Christ and Him alone that we have this free
gift of salvation. As we come to the cross we have just a microscopic
understanding of grace, but once we are saved, once we have received God the
Holy Spirit, He begins to teach us through His Word and we begin to understand
more and more about God’s grace. But one of the things that really challenges every one of us is when we come to those passages
of Scripture that encourage and exhort us to deal with other people in grace as
well. That just goes completely against our old sin nature and our own
self-absorption and we don’t want to deal with those people in grace,
especially if they have hurt us in some way and have caused us pain or
suffering in our lives. Often when we are in rebellion against God, have
rejected God, have moved away from God and we have a consciousness of our own
guilt, sin and depravity, it is often hard for us to recognize that God truly
and freely forgives us; and that simply and freely admitting our sins to Him
clears away the guilt. Grace is difficult for us to understand and yet it is
integral to everything in salvation and in the spiritual life.
In 2 Kings chapter
six we are going to see another episode that is quite horrible in some aspects
but is again a depiction of the grace of God. Again it has to do with Israel’s enemies. We have looked at the Syrians and the fact
that they are the military enemies of Israel and that as they were engaged in sending out these
raids into the northern kingdom there was a level of frustration on the part of
the king of Syria, Ben-hadad, it seemed as if
somebody was giving the enemy inside information. We saw Elisha
giving a banquet for the prisoners and sending them back to their master. All
of that was a picture of God’s grace. We can see the picture of God’s grace
from Israel towards her enemies but this was also to teach the
northern kingdom about the fact that even as they were in apostasy and enemies
of God in their arrogance God would treat them in the same way that he was
having Elisha treat the physical enemies of Israel.
Jesus gave a number of
examples in the sermon on the mount as to what is
required and what should be part of the character of believers. Matt 5:43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy. [44] But I say to you, love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you, [45] so that you may be sons of your Father who is in
heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on {the} evil and {the} good, and sends
rain on {the} righteous and {the} unrighteous.’” If we think about verses 44
and 45 we get an interpretation of the Mosaic Law. The reason for emphasizing
that is that when Jesus is teaching at this early stage in His ministry He is
still in the period of time which we refer to as the age of Israel or the dispensation of the Law. The Mosaic Law is still
in effect at this time and so He is emphasizing this principle of loving our
enemies. It may be a national enemy or it may be a personal enemy but the
responsibility of the individual is to love that enemy, to bless those who
curse you and to do good to those who hate you.
The Bible makes it clear
in passages like this, passages that are restated later on in the New
Testament, like John 13:34, 35 when Jesus said “A new commandment I give to you
(speaking to His disciples and to the church as a whole through His disciples)
that you love one another, even as I have loved you.” How did Jesus love them?
He gave His life as a substitute for them, so that His love that was
demonstrated at the cross is to be the hallmark, the key evidence in the life
of any believer in the Lord Jesus Christ of the truth of the gospel and of all
the truth in Scripture. So we are to love one another as God for Christ’s sake
loved us, as Paul writes in Ephesians four. But when we start talking about the
application of this in terms of forgiveness a question often comes up. What
does it mean when Jesus said to forgive seventy times seven and yet someone
still gets abused or maltreated in some way again and again and again? God
doesn’t want someone going back into those kinds of situations, does He? No, He
doesn’t! This is why it is important to understand the overall context of
Scripture, not just the context of a passage, to be able to look at issues from
the totality of Scripture. The passages that are talking about loving one’s
enemy, blessing those who curse you, forgiving one another, are passages that
are talking about individual responses to individual attacks and they are
emphasizing the fact that we are to be responding with a mental attitude of
love, not a mental attitude that is dominated by hate or anger or resentment or
vindictiveness. It does not necessarily mean that we put ourselves back into
that position of vulnerability again for the sake of being vulnerable. That is
how a lot of people hear it, unfortunately.
If we look at the classic
examples in Scripture of how Jesus dealt with His enemies often the emphasis is
on what happens at His arrest and at the cross when He indeed does make Himself
vulnerable to His enemies. But this is not some kind of willy-nilly vulnerability, this is within the very plan of God to
provide for the salvation of the human race. So one principle that we learn is
that when Jesus is applying this and illustrating this at the cross it is
within the structure of a plan with a purpose, it is not just being vulnerable
for the sake of being vulnerable or somehow putting Himself in a position of
danger where He is wrongly accused, wrongly sentenced and wrongly executed just
for the sake of fulfilling some sort of pacifistic view of love and grace. It
is for a purpose. We have to understand that these passages that we read in
Scripture are taken out of context and can be twisted to try to show that the
Bible rejects war, rejects violence, even self-defense against an attack as
some sort of legitimate application of love and grace. That would make much of
Scripture contradictory. God does give clear direction towards violence at
times, clear direction towards not putting one’s self in danger at times, and
he also emphasizes the legitimacy of self-defense. We can’t make the mistake of
a superficial interpretation when we come to these kinds of passages. The Bible
does not authorize us to foolishly put ourselves in harm’s way for the sake of
some superficial or shallow notion of love and grace.
There is one example we
might go to in the life of Christ to demonstrate this. It happens the night
before He goes to the cross within the context of Hs arrest and His execution.
Luke 22:36, 38. It occurs as He is preparing His disciples for the future. He
gives them new orders that are different from the orders he gave earlier in His
ministry when he sent them out two by two to the house of Israel and not to the Gentiles. He told them not to take
anything with them, not to take a sword with them, but to proclaim the gospel
and God would provide for them. But after His rejection by Israel and now that he knows He is about to go to the cross
he gives new marching orders. Luke 22:36 NASB “And He said to them, ‘But
now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and
whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one...’ [38] They said, ‘Lord,
look, here are two swords.’ And He said to them, ‘It is enough.’” These are not
verses that we hear liberals talk about very much. Jesus told His disciples
that they needed to be armed so that they could protect themselves when they
were going out into the world and would be subject to assault and to attack. If
He meant by “love your enemies” the idea that you don’t defend yourself and are
just passive to the attack, then this would be a major contradiction in His
thinking. But it is not because biblically speaking love and grace have
multi-faceted concepts that seem contradictory to the shallow liberal view of
love. The question needs to be asked as to why did the disciples needed the two swords for protection. It was because
anything could happen that night that would possibly lead to the premature
death of the Lord rather than allowing Him to make it to the cross. So He is to
be protected from an illegitimate personal assault so that He can then be taken
advantage of through a false application of the judicial system and be arrested
under false charges and go to the cross and die for our sins.
We have to define what
grace is. This is important for understanding what happens in 2 Kings 6 &
7.
1.
First, we
recognize that when we talk about grace we usually define grace as God’s
unmerited favor or His unearned blessing. That is great as far as it goes. When
we are talking about salvation or about the spiritual life that is often as far
as we need to go, but that is a somewhat restricted definition focusing on God
and what He has provided for us. We see two verses that give us an example of
God’s love as related to God’s grace and the fact that God’s love (which is
what lies behind His grace) is given without respect to the deeds, the actions,
the thoughts of the recipient. It is not based on who we are or what we have
done, grace is based on who God is and it is based upon His character. John
3:16; Romans 5:8. John 3:16
can be translated: “For God loved the world in this way, that He gave His
unique Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have
everlasting life.” God’s love is for the world, towards unbelievers, those who
are in rebellion against Him, a world that is hostile to Him, at enmity with
Him, and so it is directed toward those who are friend and foe alike, believer
and unbeliever alike. Both verses emphasize the fact that the cross is a
demonstration of God’s love. It is a demonstration towards us of kindness and
generosity in providing a substitute for our sins, but it is an expression of
judgment and horror to the Lord Jesus Christ as he paid the penalty for our sin
and had to endure receiving the imputation of our sin to Himself as the
perfect, spotless, sinless Lamb of God.
2.
Both of these verses
use the Greek verb agapao [a)gapaw], a
broad term for love, and that love is directed toward all human beings. There
is another word that is used for God’s love in the New Testament, the Greek
verb phileo [filew], and that is a narrower concept. agapao you could picture as a large
circle and phileo you could
picture as a subset of that circle. These words are sometimes used synonymously
and when they are used in the same context phileo
will emphasize a more direct intimate love, like the love within a family,
whereas agapao does not bring in
those ideas of intimacy and closeness which phileo
has. phileo is only used of God’s
love for believers, so we have a more intimate relationship with God. Because
we are within the family of God we are also subject to family discipline, and
that includes punishment. Hebrews 12:5,6 (a quote from
Proverbs 3:11, 12) shows that this is a universal principle that is
not dispensationally nuanced, it relates to both the
Old Testament and to the New Testament. We have to remember that when God’s
love is directed to those who do not deserve it, and that includes family
members who are disobedient, those actions are described as grace. Grace is the
expression of God’s love toward those who do not deserve it, those who have not
earned it. Love therefore involves both blessing and discipline, both the good
and the harsh that may come into our lives from the loving hand of God in order
to train us and discipline us and to bring punishment into our lives because of
our disobedience.
So as we think about grace
in 2 Kings we have to think of both sides of grace: both in terms of blessing
and in terms of judgment. Two principles that we see throughout the Scripture
that must always be in our minds when we are thinking about this concept is a)
grace always precedes judgment—before God brings discipline He is going to
extend to us grace to woo us back into fellowship with Him before He lowers the
boom in harsh discipline; b) grace often comes with judgment (exception, Noah.
There was grace before judgment but there was no grace during the judgment to
those who were left behind. They had already had their chance and had rejected
it). There does come a time when God stops extending the hand of grace and he
has to fulfill the judicial requirement of His nature to bring judgment on
those who have rejected Him.
When we come to thinking
about Israel and her history we have to always remember that what
happens to Israel as a nation is a great picture for us of how God
deals with us as individuals. That is one of the ways in which we come to
application as we study these different events in the Old Testament. In the Old
Testament God had experienced a rejection by mankind at the tower of Babel. As a result God judged these people and gave them
different languages, which caused them to scatter throughout the earth. From
that point on God decided no longer to work through the human race as a whole
but only through one particular individual and his descendants—Abraham and his
descendants Israel. There was a grace covenant given to Abraham. God freely
gave him this promise that He would give him land, he would bless His
descendants, and that through his descendants He would bless other people—the Abrahamic covenant. Then when God freed them from their
slavery in Egypt God entered into new covenant with them, a covenant designed
to be a temporary and conditional covenant, the Mosaic Law. It was designed to
teach the people of God—the people He had already called out at salvation—how a
saved people were supposed to live. They were to be a kingdom of priests in
relation to the whole world. So the purpose of the Mosaic Law was to show the
distinctiveness of this one particular people and God’s grace to them. Because
of the importance of their role as a kingdom of priests God said there were
going to be certain consequences if they were disobedient. God would richly
bless them if they were obedient but of they were disobedient there would be
consequences. The stages of discipline (Leviticus 26) become increasingly harsh
and their purpose is to bring the people back to God so that they will obey Him
so He can bless them. It is part of grace. Deuteronomy 28 gives a fuller
description, vv. 15, 17ff.
All of that is just
background foe being able to understand what happened, starting in 2 Kings 6:24 and on through chapter seven. It is a rather simple
episode to deal with and easy to understand. There is a siege. Syria invades and has been sending in these combat teams to
attack the northern kingdom for several years but following the last episode Elisha sent one hit team back home, Ben hadad
really gets angry and decides to pull his whole army together to lay siege to Samaria, the capital city. 2 Kings 6:24 NASB
“Now it came about after this, that Ben-hadad king of
Aram gathered all his army and went up and besieged Samaria.”
2 Kin 6:25 NASB “There was a great famine in Samaria [Cycles of discipline, stages 1-3] ;
and behold, they besieged it, until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty
{shekels} of silver, and a fourth of a kab of dove’s
dung for five {shekels} of silver.” The significance of the donkey’s
head was that a donkey was an unclean animal. They didn’t eat a donkey or horse
meat under the Mosaic Law. This was no acceptable food but they were so hungry
that they would eat a donkey’s head, and there is not much meat on a skull.
Eighty shekels is about equivalent to about two pounds of silver—in today’s market
equivalent to about $500. So they are starving to death.
2 Kings 6:26 NASB
“As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall a woman cried out to him,
saying, ‘Help, my lord, O king!’ [27] He said, ‘If the LORD does not
help you, from where shall I help you? From the threshing floor,
or from the wine press?’” You can just sense his
desperation. He sees these people and there is nothing he can do. [28] “And the king said to her, ‘What is the matter
with you?’ And she answered, ‘This woman said to me, ‘Give your son that we may
eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. [29] ‘So we boiled my son and ate him; and I said to her on the next
day, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son.’”
2 Kings 6:30 NASB
“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.” He is showing that he is in repentance; he
is hoping that God would deliver them and he is turning to God. But then
something happens and his sin nature kicks in so he blames Elisha.
[31] “Then he said, ‘May God do so to me and more
also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on him today.’” But he is going
to immediately regret this and that shoes his positive volition.
2 Kings 6:32 NASB
“Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders
were sitting with him. And {the king} sent a man from his presence; but before
the messenger came to him, he said to the elders, ‘Do you see how this son of a
murderer has sent to take away my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut
the door and hold the door shut against him. Is not the sound of his master’s
feet behind him?’” Elisha isn’t
disobeying the law, he is engaged in defending himself because he knows that
the king is going to rescind the order, he is just right behind him.
2 Kings 6:33 “While he was still talking with them, behold, the
messenger came down to him and he said, ‘Behold, this evil is from the LORD; why should
I wait for the LORD any longer?’” In other words, I know
this is from the Lord, why do I have to go through this? How many of us have
gone through that? We have gone through suffering and adversity for months, and
years in certain circumstances, and our patience in thin, but we know it is
from the Lord. So we go back and forth from trusting God and being impatient
with God, but God is teaching us something.
2 Kings 7:1 NASB
“Then Elisha said, ‘Listen to the word of the LORD; thus says
the LORD, ‘Tomorrow about this time a measure of fine flour will be {sold} for
a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.’”
He is saying it is time now, we have pushed everybody to the limit and now grace
is going to come in action—the positive side of grace, the blessing side. The
measure of barley was the equivalent of about seven quarts of barley; a shekel
would be around a couple of dollars. We can see how the prices have changed
because of supply and demand. Obviously some big supply of flour and barley is
going to come in to their possession. But there is an officer there who doubts
this. [2] “The royal officer on whose
hand the king was leaning answered the man of God and said, ‘Behold, if the LORD should make
windows in heaven, could this thing be?’ Then he said, ‘Behold, you will see it
with your own eyes, but you will not eat of it.’” Because of his
lack of faith he will be judged. He will see it and then die: divine discipline.
Now from verse three to
the end of the chapter we learn that the Syrians fled during the night. But
they are discovered by four lepers, unclean and living outside the gates of the
city. They are starving to death as well and they decide to go down to the
Syrians. They may kill them but it is better for them to just kill them than to
slowly starve to death.
2 Kings 7:5 NASB
“They arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Arameans;
when they came to the outskirts of the camp of the Arameans,
behold, there was no one there. [6] For the Lord had caused the
army of the Arameans to hear a sound of chariots and
a sound of horses, {even} 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 the Egyptians, to come upon us.’ [7] Therefore they
arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents and their horses and their
donkeys, {even} the camp just as it was, and fled for their life.”
God miraculously caused them to have this group hallucination and to hear the
assault of an army, and they all fled. [8] “When
these lepers came to the outskirts of the camp, they entered one tent and ate
and drank, and carried from there silver and gold and clothes, and went and hid
{them;} and they returned and entered another tent and
carried from there {also,} and went and hid {them.}” Then they
think better of it and realize that it wasn’t right. [9] “Then they said to one
another, ‘We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news, but we are
keeping silent; if we wait until morning light, punishment will overtake us.
Now therefore come, let us go and tell the king’s household.’ [10] So they came
and called to the gatekeepers of the city, and they told them, saying, ‘We came
to the camp of the Arameans, and behold, there was no
one there, nor the voice of man, only the horses tied and the donkeys tied, and
the tents just as they were.’ [11] The gatekeepers called and told {it} within
the king’s household.”
We see the fulfillment of
the prophecy. 2 Kings 7:16 NASB “So the people went out and
plundered the camp of the Arameans. Then a measure of
fine flour {was sold} for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel,
according to the word of the LORD.” We have prophecy and we have exact
literal fulfillment. But there was also a little judgment with that. [17] “Now the king appointed the royal officer on whose hand
he leaned to have charge of the gate; but the people trampled on him at the
gate, and he died just as the man of God had said, who spoke when the king came
down to him.” He saw but he did not eat and so the judgment on him
was fulfilled.
The lesson is that, first
of all, God’s grace continues to be extended to this disobedient people. He
continues to do that which He can do in order to cause them to turn back to
Him, so that then He can richly bless them. But their heart is hardened. Again
God is showing that He is the source of food and life in a culture that has
chosen death and is worshipping nature and the nature gods, sacrificing their
children to idols; and again they turn their back on God’s grace. How many times
we have seen these miracles in chapters 4 through 7 that God is doing different
things to show He is the God of life, the source of blessing, and yet again and
again they have turned their back on Him! God’s grace and His judgment doesn’t
just fall on us the instant we are disobedient. He gives us many, many
warnings, extending grace to us again and again to cause us to come back to
fellowship.
Grace is hard for us to understand.
It is hard for us to understand how to deal with those who oppose us, who hate
us, those who have done us wrong, those who have
treated us in an ill manner, because we can only operate on this finite
experiential, empirical level on the earth. But we have to operate on faith and
not by sight, and so what God gives us in these little vignettes, these little
pictures, these little scenes of His grace, in order to understand what grace
is really all about and begin to implement that in our own lives in the way we
think and the way we respond to God. But at the core we have to be in
fellowship. We have to respond to what God brings into our life in judgment as
well as blessing and not become arrogant and self-sufficient. We have to
remember to turn back to Him and to walk closely with Him.
We show that we love God
by keeping His commandments, by staying in fellowship and walking in
fellowship.