WHY WE SIT WE HERE

Luke 17:6

And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say
unto this sycamore tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou
planted in the sea; and it should obey you.
 If law is the vehicle that brings God’s wrath, then faith is the
vehicle that brings God’s grace
o If I am in a cafeteria serving uji with a big bakuli, then one
comes with a small cu and another with a big cup, will I be
blamed for giving the first one little uji

2 Kings 13 14 - 17
 where King Jehoash was meeting with Elisha and Elisha told him to
strike the ground with arrows and rather than continually strike
the ground, the king only did so 3 times. As a result, the king was
only able to defeat his enemy 3 times.

WHY WE SIT WE HERE

 The place is Samaria and it is under siege by the king of Aram.
 Aram was the ancient biblical name for what we today call Syria.
 A siege was designed to starve the inhabi tants of a city into either
surrender
 The siege lasted so long that the city was beginning to starve.
 death and despair, then, became an increasingly vivid reality for
Israel
 An ass's head sold for four pieces of silver.
 First of all, who on earth wants to eat a donkey’s head? I think
that’s the point – the inhabitants of Samaria were starving to death –
they would have eaten anything!
o Rwanda genocide – hospital waste
 Food was so scarce that people were eating human flesh.
 Idea was to reduce them to a state of such weakness as to be
unable to put up any resistance when once the wall was breached.
 no one went out, no one came in. no mouth in no mouth out
2 Kings 7:1-8
7 Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the LORD; Thus saith the LORD,
Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel,
and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.
Tomorrow about This Time:
 24 hours the economic situation in Samaria would be completely
reversed
 Do they deserve such a miracle? No way.
 This is not Jerusalem, it’s Samaria – the capitol city of the
rebellious Northern Kingdom.
 One could understand God’s coming to the defense of
Jerusalem, the city in which He has chosen to place His Name;
But Samaria…?
 So why would God rescue a rebellious people? Deuteronomy
28:52–53.
o Because He chose to;
o Because He is good and merciful.

2
Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God,
and said, Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this
thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt
not eat thereof.

 And so God, promises a monumental miracle; to take place by the

same time the very next day.
 How was this news received? With joy? With praise to God? No.
With cynicism and unbelief.
o This was the man of God speaking.
o Unlike false prophets who spoke whatever their benefactors
wanted to hear).
o Secondly, this is good news, not bad!
o Would it absolutely kill you to believe it?
o hirdly, is anything too difficult for the Lord?
 the wise man delivered the army, but no man remembered the
wise man, Eccl. 9:15.

Windows in heaven
  The supply came without the opening of heaven’s windows
 Unbelief says,
o There is no way to accomplish this thing.”
o There is only one way God can work.”
o Even if God does something, it won’t be enough.”
 He thought it impossible, unless God should rain as He did in the
case of manna;
 He is doubting the power of Jehovah:
o Who by His understanding made the heavens;
(His love endures forever!)
o Who struck down the firstborn of Egypt, and brought Israel
out from among them;
(His love endures forever!)
o Who divided the Red Sea asunder;
(His love endures forever!)
o Who struck down great kings;
(His love endures forever!)
o Who gave the land as an inheritance to His servant Israel
 Guard your soul against the downward spiral of doubters.
o Allow yourself to be vulnerable (exposed, to face shame).
o Take God at His word that He will neither fail you nor
forsake you.
o Hasn’t He promised you eternal life, and He will deliver.
3
And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they
said one to another, Why sit we here until we die?

 The four lepers

o These were loathsome (disgusting, repugnant, to be treated
like dogs, despicable)
o emaciated due to starvation
o These diseased, dying, starving lepers
o They represent the whole human race under the judgment and
curse of sin.
o Man, without Christ, is spiritual wretched, miserable, poor,
blind, and naked (Rev. 3:17)
 o There is no way to adequately describe the total ruin, utter
poverty, and spiritual helplessness and hopelessness of Adam's
sons (Rom. 3:10-19; Rom. 5:12).
o Psalm 14:3, “They are all gone aside, they are all together become
filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”
o Only the Spirit of God can reveal to sinners what happened in the
Garden of Eden and the terrible consequences upon us all and
cause us to cry with Isaiah, "I am undone; I am cut off" (Isa. 1:4-6;
Isa. 64:6).
o Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wreck like me …..

Why sit we here until we die?

 Sin levels the playing field For all have sinned, and come short of the
glory of God” (Rom.3: 23) For all have sinned, and come short of the
glory of God;”
 It is said that “misery loves company,” so is sin
 Though Jews, they were keeping company with a Samaritan leper,
 They were all dying of the same disease.
 is the same now at Jerusalem; in the leper-houses, termed “Abodes
of the Unfortunate,”
 Jews and Mohammedans will live together. Under no other
circumstances will these hostile peoples do this.
 Mark 2:17, “When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are
whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not
to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
 Just as leprosy brought separation to the one afflicted by it, sin has
brought separation between the sinner and God.

Isa.59: 2, But your iniquities have separated between you and your
God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”

Isa.64: 7b, where Isaiah said, “…for thou hast hid thy face from us,
and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.”
 Where they told, off to thy own place, lest thou defile other

4
If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and
we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come,
and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall
live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.
Mambo ni matatu
a. If we stay here, we will die; - die in their sins
(b) if we go into the city, we will die, for they have no food; or – dini ni
spitual food HEY HAD NO FOOD for themselves nor for anyone else (Amos
8:11-12).
(Jer. 13:23; Gal. 3:10)
Men have nothing to offer; the law has nothing to offer; religion has
nothing to offer except a refuge of lies (Isa, 28:14-15).

(c) the Syrians are our enemies, but they have plenty of food. We can go
to them and seek mercy and help. If they choose to show mercy to us, we
will live; but if not, we have lost nothing; for we will die anyway. Wisely
they chose to cast themselves on the mercy of the Syrians, and they were
delivered by the providence of God.
Under the mercies of God (Isa. 59:2; Psalm 130:3-4)
the Lord delights to show mercy (Micah 7:18-19; Rom. 5:6-10; Eph. 2:2-7).
Why are we sitting here until we die: Their logic was perfect. They
would soon die from the famine if they stayed by the city. If any food
became available, they would certainly be the last to receive it. So they
decided that their chances were better if they surrendered to the Syrians.
if they killed them, better die by the sword than by famine, one death than
a thousand; but perhaps they would save them alive, as objects of
compassion
The prodigal son resolves to return to his father, whose displeasure he
had reason to fear, rather than perish with hunger in the far country.
If the Syrians kill them, they’ll just die a little quicker.
5
And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the Syrians: and
when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold,
there was no man there.
leper decided to turn to the only possible source of relief, they reasoned,
"It may be that they will save us alive." Men of wisdom have used this
reasoning before in reference to God's mercy—Jonathan (I Sam. 14:6),
David (II Sam. 16:11-12), the King of Nineveh (Jonah 3:8-9).
God is certainly not obligated to save anyone, but those who know their sin
in the light of His holiness and are persuaded to look to Him and cast
themselves on His mercy in Christ Jesus always find plenteous redemption.
They came to the camp as someone from afar would approach, not as
someone from Syria. They figured that this was their best chance, coming
as if they were not from the besieged city and to the least fortified
positions of the camp.

that nobody inside the city heard a thing.

 How thunderous a sound to cause trained soldiers to panic and run
for their lives!
 The defeat of the massive Syrian army came without Israel lifting a
finger. (Completely God’s d

Reminder: Israel was, at this time, completely undeserving of this
miracle. (God did it because He is good and kind)
6
For the LORD had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots,
and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to
another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the
Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us.
perhaps the Lord had in some way magnified the stumbling footsteps of
the men as they made their way around the camp’s opposite end
the noise of a great army: Israel was powerless against this besieging
army, but God wasn’t powerless. He attacked the Syrian army simply by
causing them to hear the noise of an army.
The same God who struck one Syrian army so they could not see
what was there now struck another Syrian army so that they heard things
that were not there.
the siege for Samaria was over – even though no one in the city knew it
or enjoyed it.
“Everybody who went to bed that night felt that he was still in that horrible
den where grim death seemed actually present in the skeleton forms of the
hunger-bitten. They were as free as the harts of the wilderness had they
known it: but their ignorance held them in vile durance [imprisonment].”
7
Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and
their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their
life.
siege of Samaria was raised in the evening, at the edge of night (v. 6, 7),
not by might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts, striking terror
upon the spirits of the besiegers.
Sennacherib's army before Jerusalem, by a destroying angel; but, 1. The
Lord made them to hear a noise of chariots and horses.
8
And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they
went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and
gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered into
another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it.
The words to the outskirts of the Syrian camp imply that they came
not only to the edge of the camp, but that they walked around to
the furthermost part of the Syrian camp, the part away from the city.
Yet, they enjoyed the feast first before they told others about it. We cannot
properly share the good news of Jesus Christ unless we ourselves are
enjoying it.
when things were at the worst. Man's extremity is God's opportunity of
magnifying his own power; his time to appear for his people is when their
strength is gone, Deu. 32:36.
Faith – sitting on a chair, what if it is a 3 legged chair,
Unbelief is a sin by which men greatly dishonour and displease God, and
deprive themselves of the favours he designed for them.
hose that believe not the promise of eternal life; they shall see it at a
distance—Abraham afar off,
I have good news for you.
The famine is over for ever.
Heaven says: Your isolation is over.
You need not fear coming out.
You’re coming out to your plunder and abundance.
You’re coming out to pursue your dreams
Radically come out of isolation without fear
Come out to do what God has called you to do.