Sometimes in this Christian walk we need a Word from the Lord that just jolts us into action. That Word is one that helps us to examine our current circumstances and realize that we are living beneath the privileges that our heavenly Father has promised to those that live according to His precepts and examples.
I recently had the pleasure of hearing just such a Word. The vessel was Evangelist Ramona Nelson. God used her in a mighty way to minister to the hearts of His people–conveying a message of faith, trust, and determination. I pray that this Word is as much of a blessing to you as it has been for me. Be blessed.
3. Anticipate Success
The lepers didn’t know what to expect, for all they knew they would die that day, but they took a chance on life. Know that you know that you know that there is always hope. As long as Jesus is alive there is hope. Have the audacity of hope. Even when others don’t think you should live, you keep the faith and know that God is God. Know that God will insure your success.
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you; plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you hope and a future.
Ephesians 3:20 “To him that is able to do far exceedingly above all which we ask or think, according to the power which works in us”.
In desperation, and knowing they had nothing to lose, they infiltrated the enemy camp at twilight in search of food. They got into the city and there was no one there. What a surprise they found when they made it to the city. To their astonishment, the enemy camp was deserted. God fixed it so that the Syrian army thought the Egyptians and the Hittites were on their way to help the Northern Kingdom, and they abandoned their camp in haste, leaving everything behind. One commentator said that as the four lepers were making their way into the enemy camp; that God magnified the sound of them shuffling into town. You know they had to be shuffling. You know how it sounds when someone drags their feet. Well imagine these four lepers dragging their feet into town and God magnifying that sound.
The enemy thought the King of the Northern Kingdom had hired the Egyptians and the Hittite armies to come to help them. Imagine when you begin to give God praise in advance for your victory. The enemy runs and seeks shelter; imagine when you get up from where you are because you want more out of life; God allows the enemy to hear you on your way to better. God allows the enemy to hear a thunderous sound. When you choose life over death. This is why it is so important to give God praise. When we praise we are letting the enemy know that we chose life. We trust God and his plans for us.
The lepers hit pay dirt. There was food everywhere, there were clothes there was riches. The enemy left everything behind. They went in to one tent and found food, clothes, silver, gold, anything they wanted. The lepers were eating their fill when they remembered they had an obligation.
4. Remember to Share the Good News
The lepers remembered their countrymen were starving back in Samaria. Don’t make the mistake of getting out of your near death situation and not going back to help someone else. Even though they were considered outcasts; even though people treated them less than human; the lepers came to themselves and realized they had to tell the others. Once God brings you out, you are obligated to tell somebody else.
We as Christians are obligated to tell others that Jesus saves. One day we will have to face the Lord of glory and He will ask us, what have you done with the abundance I gave you. Did you take the opportunities you had to bless others and help the poor? Do we give Him our discretionary time, energy, love, money and ability? The lepers took another chance and made their way to Samaria and yelled into the city and told them the good news. At first the King did not believe them; they thought it was a trap.
God spoke through the prophet Elisha in the beginning of our text. He told Elisha that he was going to end the famine. The Israelites looted the Syrian camp and the amount of food available meant that its price dropped, even to the extent that the best flour sold for one shekel, just as Elisha prophesied the day before. The officer who scoffed the day before, saw the sudden abundance of food but did not live to enjoy it, as he was trampled to death in the rush for food. (II Kings 7:17-20)
The four lepers were instrumental in ending the famine because they were selfless and told the people about what was in the Syrian camp.
Once God delivers us, we need to tell somebody else.
We need to come to ourselves and realize the situations we are in. Many of us, if we stay there we’ll die. We have to come to ourselves and analyze our situations. We know God had more for us to do, places to go, people to minister to. If Reginald Boney and Sustained never went out and ministered anywhere else, then the vision of the ministry would cease to exist, expire, or die. We must make up our minds and declare as David did in Psalms 118:17 I will not die but live and proclaim what the Lord has done.
The Rabbis tell us that the four lepers were none other than Gehazi and his sons. Gehazi was Elisha’s main disciple who became a leper. Elisha adamantly refused to take payment from Naaman, whom he cured from leprosy. However Gehazi slipped away from Elisha, caught up with Naaman on his way home and asked for a reward. Naaman gladly gave him ‘two talents of silver and two changes of clothing’. When Gehazi returned, Elisha found out about it and exclaimed “Naaman’s leprosy will cling to you and your children forever.” Immediately Gehazi became leprous and was left Elisha. (II Kings 5:12-27) Thus Gehazi was punished for his greed and jealousy, but that was not the end of the story…
Ironically, though, salvation came to Israel through none other than the disgraced man himself, Gehazi. Thus, the man who brought shame and disrepute to Israel, by taking money from the gentile Naaman, was the very person who saved the entire population of Samaria from death through siege and famine.
I don’t know if the four lepers was Gehazi and his three sons, but if it was, that is a prime example of the kind of God we serve. Yes, Gehazi messed up, yes he was punished; but one day he made up in his mind that if I stay here I’ll die. I must get up from here, things can’t get any worse, I have nothing to lose. It’s better to try and fail, than not to have tried at all. God allowed Gehazi and his son’s to be the vessels he used to perform a miracle. What a mighty God we serve.
Make up in your mind that you will not die, but live to declare the works of the Lord. I shall live, and not just live but. John 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
We were living as lepers, separated, apart from God, but one day Jesus reached down and touched us and brought us into the camp, healing our spiritual leprosy and taking our sins upon Himself and setting us free and healing us of our sins. Only Jesus is able to touch the spiritual leper and heal them, and then He looks upon that leper, as if they had never sinned, as they are new and whole and were never a leper at all. How did the good news finally reach Israel ? By four Lepers! We were born spiritual lepers, as far as God is concerned. But millions don’t know that Jesus died to set them free. Someone told us about Jesus, about His forgiveness, about the power of the cross of Calvary, but so that we might tell others. We have a hope and a promise that no other ‘faith’ can offer. They are mere man-made religion, but Christianity is not religion, but life, eternal life. All other belief systems are spiritual death and eternal damnation, only deceiving the people into thinking they have hope when they have none. That is why Jesus said, “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:23)
These four lepers were between the two, Israel and the enemy. They thought they too would starve to death, or the Syrians would kill them. But then they thought we have nothing to loose, maybe the enemy will pity us. We have to come to the end of our rope, of our efforts before we came to Christ. When we came to the end of our adequacy and resources and we are willing to turn to Christ and ask for His adequacy and resources to touch and change us and set us free, then we can be changed and healed by the Power of God. When you come to Jesus and ask for help, when you are at the end of your rope like the lepers, and say to yourself if we stay we die and if we go out we may die, but we have nothing to lose, as the lepers that decided to leave their cells, their holes where they hid and take a chance at life, you will find it in Christ, who is the only true Savior.
Acts 1:8 his last words were “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”.
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