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Lansing SDA Church

David Shin

Fire In My Bones

Let's bow our heads together as we pray this morning.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity that we have to spend a few moments in reflection upon your holy word.

Our hearts go out to the many people whose lives were impacted this week through the events in Boston and in Texas.

May You heal, may You build up, may You restore.

Father, we look forward to when You come in the clouds of glory, when there will be no more sin, no more pain, and no more sorrow for the former things have passed away.

Keep us true to You until then, for we ask these things in Jesus' name.

This morning, I'd like to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Kings 6 24, page 428 in your pew Bible.

This is an introductory passage that sets up our topic of study today, 2 Kings 6, verse 24.

It was a dark time in the history of Israel, and it was a time when many people were suffering.

The Bible tells us, and it happened after this that Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, gathered all his army and went up and besieged Samaria.

This is what historians call the divided kingdom.

You can see that the kingdom of Israel was in the north.

The capital of the northern kingdom, Israel, was Samaria.

The capital of the southern kingdom, Judah, was Jerusalem.

Incidentally, there were only 3 kings of Israel that ruled over a united kingdom.

They were Saul, David, and Solomon, and Solomon's son, Rehoboam, presided over the divided kingdom.

The divided kingdom was consisting of the division of tribes.

Judah had 2 tribes in the south, and Samaria is where we get the term Samaritans.

Have you heard of that in the New Testament?

There was a big division between the groups.

That was because the northern kingdom was taken away into captivity by the Assyrians, and they intermarried and assimilated, and they lost their distinctiveness, and they became the Samaritans.

They did not lose their identity and that's where the lineage of Jesus came from.

This Bible text tells us that this took place during the time of the divided kingdom and Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, was taken captive.

If you look in the next verse, you'll see that things had gotten from bad to worse.

And what the kings and the wartime provinces would do, they would go and they would surround the city and the people would be inside and they would literally starve the people out.

They would many times cut off the water supply if they had a river running through it or they would cut off the food supply or do both and they would just camp out outside of the city and the people inside would hope that they would run out of things to do and go away or it was just kind of a waiting thing that would take place.

Well in this siege we don't know exactly how long it took things had gotten from bad to worse.

You can see it there in 2 Kings 6, verse 25 there in your Bibles.

The Bible tells us, and there was a great famine in Samaria, and behold, they besieged it until a donkey's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and a fourth part of a cab of dubs dung for 5 pieces of silver." They were eating things that were not fit for human consumption and this was what was being sold in the marketplace.

If you look in the next few verses there for the sake of time I have it here on the screen as the king of Israel was passing by on a wall a woman cried to him help me My lord the king then he asked her what's the matter?

She answered this woman said to me give up your son, so we may eat him today and tomorrow we'll eat my son.

The next day I said to her, give up your son so we may eat him.

But she had hidden him." At this point the king tore his robes and he cried aloud and things had gotten very bad.

Even worse, they had resorted to eating their own children.

It was desperate times calling for desperate measures.

And we pick up in our story on the next page, 429, the next chapter, 2 Kings 7, verses 3 through 7.

Now there were 4 leprous men at the entrance of the gate, and they said to 1 another, why are we sitting here until we die?

If we say we will enter the city the famine is in the city and we shall die here if we sit here we die also now therefore come let us surrender to the army of the Assyrians if they keep us alive we shall live if they kill us we shall only die the reasoning when something like this we have nothing to lose we stay we die if we go to the Syrians we may die but we may have a chance to live at least we have a chance so they decided to go out to the Assyrian army verse 5 and they rose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians, and when they had come to the outskirts of the Syrian camp, to their surprise no 1 was there, for the Lord had caused the army of the Syrians to hear the noise of the chariots and the noise of horses, the noise of the great army.

So they said to 1 another, look, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians to attack us.

Therefore, they arose and fled at twilight and left the camp intact, their tents, their horses, their donkeys, and they fled for their lives.

You see the next verse here on the screen, "'The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered 1 of the tents.

They ate, drank, and carried away silver and gold and clothes and went off and hid them.

They returned and entered another tent and took some of the things from it and hid them also." You ever been very hungry before?

This week I decided to go on this one-day kind of special fast because I thought that I would be able to think better.

And what I found was all I could think about was food.

Next day I opened up the refrigerator and I thought I just…it was wonderful.

And this is 1 of those moments, these people are literally starving inside the city.

They come outside and they find that the Assyrians are no longer there, and they're going around and eating all this food, and not only is there food, the Bible tells us, they're carrying away silver, gold, clothes, and they went off and hid them.

And in the midst of this wonderful feast, the next verse tells us they come to an epiphany, something comes up in their thinking process.

Verse 9, then they said to 1 another, what we are doing is not right.

This is a day, what does it say on the screen?

This is a day of good news and we're not telling anyone about it.

Let's bring the news to the royal palace.

Here they are, experiencing the wonders of the banquet outside and suddenly they come to the epiphany that what they're doing is not right.

Today, we are in the midst of a series entitled Winsome witnessing, and sometimes we get a wrong idea of witnessing.

Sometimes the pastor, perhaps hopefully not me, but a pastor, whether it's in this denomination or another denomination, gets up front and says, "'Oh, you need to witness.

Witnessing is not something that we have to do.

It's not something that is forced upon us.

Witnessing does not give us brownie points with God.

In other words, it's not something that you do.

You go knocking door to door and you say, Lord, I did my checklist.

It's not something in which you earn your salvation.

Witnessing is something that spontaneously happens when you've experienced something just marvelous.

These people outside the city, these lepers are experiencing something just great.

And then they say, look, we need to tell someone about it.

You ever had something happen in your life that you just had to tell someone about?

Sometimes pastors get up and say, you need a witness.

Well, witnessing is something that naturally happens after you've experienced Jesus.

You can see it here in your Bibles in Acts chapter 4 verse 20.

We cannot stop telling about everything that we have seen and heard.

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Fire In My Bones

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