This week I have thought about what to write, and I couldn't decide. Couldn't narrow it down. Couldn't discern one particular thought. So tonight, I will lay down three separate devotional thoughts, and see if they have anything in common. Maybe one will reach you where you are right now. Maybe you are searching for something to share at an upcoming talk, and you, like me, can't decide what to speak about. Feel free to use one of these ideas, or maybe one of them will spur you on to your own study and the Holy Spirit may lead you to a thought or idea that He has for you to share. Maybe one of these thoughts will be a stepping-off point for you, maybe not.
Here is what has been on my heart.
When King Ahab Obeyed The Lord
You probably remember Ahab as a wicked king. He was a nemesis to Elijah the prophet. He had married Jezebel, who turned his heart away from God. However, there was a time in his life when God used him to defeat an enemy of Israel.
That enemy's name was Ben-Hadad. We read about him in 1 Kings. He was king of Syria after the nation of Israel was divided. In chapter 15 we see a treaty between Ben-Hadad and Asa, the king of Judah. Asa had been at war against Baasha, then king of Israel. Asa was afraid that Jerusalem would fall to Israel and the kings of Aram (Damascus) and others. So he took all the treasures of the Temple at Jerusalem, and sent them to Ben-Hadad with a plea for help. Syria had apparently been helping Israel in their war against Judah, and Asa was asking Ben-Hadad to switch sides, and to fight against Israel instead of against Judah. Beh-Hadad agreed, and targeted the king of Israel, and killed him.
Fast forward to the reign of Ahab. In 1 Kings 20 we see that Ben-Hadad sent a message to Ahab, basically saying, "You know you wouldn't be king if not for me." Ahab responded that he did, in fact, know this. Ben-Hadad sent another message to Ahab, king of Israel: "You and your entire family are mine. Your wives and your children are mine. And very soon, my army will come and occupy Samaria, and my servants will go house to house and carry away anything and everything that is desirable."
Ahab was frightened by this threat. He went to his advisers and the elders of Samaria, who all told him he would need to stand up for himself. Ahab sent a message to Syria saying no, you can't walk all over us. We will fight you rather than have you come and occupy our land and carry away our wives and our children, our gold and our silver, our households and our servants. This is where it ends.
The name Ben-Hadad means "Son of the mighty one". Hadad was a mighty warrior in the book of Genesis; Ben-Hadad may have been his descendant, or he could have been named for an idol, a false god named for the original warrior Hadad. In any case, Ben-Hadad was full of himself. He sent a message to Ahab that said, "May the gods to so to me and more also" if the armies of Syria do not descend upon Samaria, and wipe them out as easily as picking up handfuls of dust; the whole city will be carried away, even the ground on which it stands.
I love Ahab's response. He said, "Let not him who girds on his armor boast like him who takes it off." (1 Kings 20:11). In other words, show me more than words; show me what you got. Before the fight, it's all words. After the fight, we'll really know who won. If you beat me, then you can boast after the fact. But until then, shut your mouth.
After Ahab had sent this message, a prophet came to him and said, "God will give you victory." You will go up and defeat this toad, and God will give him into your hand. Ahab went up into the mountainous regions where the Syrian and Aramean armies were stationed, and they routed them. The Arameans ran, but re-assembled in the flat-lands. They said to themselves, "Their gods are gods of the mountains, therefore they were stronger there than we; but let us fight them in the plains, and surely we will prevail." (1 Kings 20:23)
Don't ever underestimate the power of God. The Syrians and Arameans formed the battle lines. "And the sons of Israel camped before them like two little flocks of goats, but the Arameans filled the country." (1 Kings 20:27b). The army of Israel killed 100,000 of their enemy that day. Ben-Hadad fled to a fortified city, and sued for peace. He sent a message to Ahab: Please let me live.
Can you imagine? This man who had been so full of himself, whose name means "son of the Mighty", who had been so cocky and arrogant in his original messages, now is pleading for his life. Ahab sent for him, and Ben-Hadad stood defeated before him. He promised to return the cities of Samaria that had been taken in war-time. He even promised Ahab that he could have streets in Damascus--he could come in and occupy the city, just as Ben-Hadad had done in Samaria.
What's sad is that Ahab agreed. He called Ben-Hadad his brother. He made a covenant with him, and let him go. A prophet came and admonished Ahab, saying that God had delivered your enemy into your hand, and you let him go. "Because you have let go out of your hand the man whom I had devoted to destruction, therefore your life shall go for his life, and your people for his people." (1 Kings 20: 42).
God had put it on Ahab's heart to stand up and fight. He had gone from a humble leader of an occupied land to a victorious field general under the direction of God. But when it was time to finish the fight, Ahab proved he was no better than his enemy. He gave up too soon.
Friend, trust God. Philippians 1:6 tells us that even if we feel defeated, we can stand, "Being confident of this very thing: that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ."
When God Worked Out His Will For The Shunamite Woman
After Ahab died, and after Elijah was taken into heaven, the prophet Elisha was ministering in Israel. He had a servant named Gehazi, and they knew a woman in the area of Shunam. This woman was apparently from a family of means, since she held some prominence in the area. Whenever Elisha would travel through the area, she would invite him into her home to eat. She finally told her husband to build a room up on the roof of their house, so that when Elisha came over to eat he could stay in his own room.
Elisha wanted to do something nice for her, but she said she had everything she needed. He asked Gehazi what should be done for her, and Gehazi said she was barren; she had no children. Elisha promised her a son, a miracle baby, since the woman's husband was quite old. Sure enough the woman bore a son, and was very happy. However, when he was about 4 years old the child died. The woman sent for Elisha, asked why he had allowed her to bring a child into the world if God was going to take the child from her like this. Elisha went and prayed over the child, and he lived.
The story of Gehazi goes south a bit. You will recall that the captain of the Syrian army, a man named Naaman, had leprosy. He came to Elisha and asked to be healed. Elisha told Gehazi to tell him to wash in the Jordan River 7 times. Naaman did it, and was healed. Out of an abundance of gratitude, Naaman offered lavish gifts to Elisha--silver and gold and new clothes. Elisha refused the gifts, and sent him away. But Gehazi got greedy, and ran after Naaman and said that Elisha had changed his mind, and he would take 2 talents of silver and 2 changes of clothes, please. Naaman gave them willingly, and went on his way. Elisha, however, knew the heart of Gehazi, and said that God would punish him for his greed and his deception. The leprosy that had been on Naaman, now was on Gehazi. He was sick with leprosy the rest of his life.
Now that we know the back-story, let's look together at 2 Kings chapter 8. Elisha told the Shunamite woman to leave her home, as a severe famine was coming. She left, and lived among the Philistines for seven years. Seven years later, when the famine had lifted, the woman came back home. Someone else had taken her husband's property. "And she went out to appeal to the king for her house and for her field." (2 Kings 8:3).
Can you imagine what was going through her mind? Shunem was a small village in the Jezreel Valley, in the territory of the tribe of Issachar. The law of Moses did not give much protection to widows. Perhaps she was thinking about pleading for possession of the land on behalf of her son. Maybe she was counting the years until Jubilee, when the land could legally be restored to its family of origin. Whatever her strategy, she was probably steeling herself for a long, drawn-out battle.
2 Kings 8:4 says, "Now the king was talking with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, saying 'Please relate to me all the great things that Elisha has done'." Now, there is no space between verse 3 and verse 4, but it makes you wonder what was going on in this situation. Gehazi had leprosy, and no self-respecting Israelite (much less a king) would willingly go up to a leper and start a conversation. And why now? What prompted the king of Israel to inquire about the history and the signs and wonders of Elisha? And just as the Shunemite woman was coming to plead her case?
Gehazi was in the middle of telling the king all about the miracles of Elisha. Just as he got to the part where the boy had been raised from the dead, here comes the boy's mother. "My lord, O king," Gehazi exclaimed. "This is the woman and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life." (2 Kings 8:5). The king verified it with the woman, then appointed an officer of the court to see that justice was done, and more. "Restore all that was hers and all the produce of the field from the day that she left the land until now." (2 Kings 8:6, emphasis added).
Friend, God knows what you need. He is able to do abundantly more than we can ask or think. (Ephesians 3:20). When you are in a situation that looks impossible, God can work it out. "For we know that God caused all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)
To Be Resurrected, We Must Die
I recently had dental surgery. A tooth had to be pulled, and the tooth must be replaced. I cannot spontaneously regenerate a tooth, so one must be implanted. I could not do the implant on the same day that the tooth was pulled, so a bone graft had to be inserted into the void left in the jaw. When it is healed, fused together with my jaw, then a post can be inserted so that a permanent replacement tooth can be attached.
When the dentist took the bone chip out of what looked like a medicine bottle, I asked her what it was and where it came from. I wanted to know if it was bone from a cadaver, or if it was man-made. She checked the invoice, and confirmed that it was cadaver bone. That means it once belonged to a living, breathing person. That person is now dead, but a part of them lives on in me.
Modern medicine has given us many examples of reusing tissue from deceased donors to prolong the life (or the enjoyment of living) of those in need. Organ transplants are pretty routine nowadays. Every once in awhile you hear of a parent who has lost a child, but because the child was an organ donor, the mother can hear the heartbeat of her child in another person's chest.
Even before organ transplants were pioneered in the 20th century, grafting has been done in agriculture for centuries. Farmers and fruit growers know that you can cut off a branch from one type of tree and graft it onto another, and it will continue to bear fruit according to its kind. A cherry tree branch will continue to bear cherries, even after it is grafted to a peach tree.
After my dental surgery, where another person's piece of bone was implanted into my jaw in hopes that it will graft together to form a solid base on which to do further surgery, I came away with this thought: out of death, life. Jesus said in John 12:24, "Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls ito the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." He was speaking of His resurrection, which would not have been possible without His death. If Jesus had come to Earth, waved His hand over us and blessed us, and then was immediately transported back to Heaven, His mission would not have been complete. It was only in His death that He could say, "It is finished."
Some say that the Resurrection was not necessary, that the death of Jesus was all that was needed to atone for our sin. Some even question whether the Resurrection even happened. The Apostle Paul argued that the resurrection of the dead is only possible because of the Resurrection of Jesus. "For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins." (1 Corinthians 15:15-16). He goes on to say that we must put ourselves to death in order to be raised with Him, and not only once, but every day. "I affirm, brethren, by the boasting n you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily." (1 Corinthians 15:31). What does he mean there? Paul explains it in his letter to the Church in Galatia: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)
We must die to ourselves daily, in order to be used by God living in Christ Jesus, His Son. In case we slide back into sin, we must crucify the flesh each day. Just like the person who donated the bone chip for my dental surgery, or the one who donated the heart, liver, kidney or lungs transplanted in other living body, a death had to occur to be useful in the resurrection of another. In the same way, we must die to ourselves in order to one day be resurrected into the presence of God, the One who made us. The only way that can happen is through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, the One who died for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment