2 Kings 7-8

Deliverance, Judgement & Contagious Wickedness

“History is not a random series of meaningless events. It is rather a succession of periods and happenings which are under the sovereign rule of God, who is the God of history.”
John Stott

THE BOOK OF KINGS AT A GLANCE (Tim Keller)

• The ideal king
• The decline of the kings 
• The word of the Lord to the kings through Elijah and Elisha
• Further decline to Babylonian exile

OUTLINE OF 2 KINGS 7:

• The severity of siege of Samaria (6:24-25)
• The king encounters a desperate woman (6:26-30) 
• Elisha becomes the king’s target (6:31-6:33)
• Elisha prophesies deliverance and judgement (7:1-7:2)
• The four lepers (7:3-7:11)
• The suspicious king and his nameless servant (7:12-15)
• Fulfillment of Elisha’s prophecies (7:16-20)

STRUCTURE OF 7:3-11 (Dale Ralph Davis)

• Lepers outside the gate, v. 3a
  • Decision, vv. 3b-4
    • Action, v. 5
      • Explanation, vv. 6-7 (Divine Intervention)
    • Action, v. 8
  • Decision, v. 9
• Lepers back to the gate, vv. 10-11

“Samaria will be saved, but to accomplish this God neither uses nor relies on the courage of the soldiers, the skill of the generals, the politics of the king, or the return of all the people to virtue and morality. God will save Samaria by a miracle. He will do it by the most ridiculous, empty, and illusory miracle, by a noise, a wind, an echo, by an illusion which makes a victorious army flee. This is an illustration of the fact that God chooses ‘things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are’ (1 Corinthians 1:28).”
James Kirk Mead

1. God expects us to believe His promises, no matter how unlikely they might seem.

OUTLINE OF 2 KINGS 8:

• The kindness of Elisha to the Shunammite woman (8:1-2)
• The woman appeals to the king and her land is restored (8:3-6) 
• Hazael murders Ben-hadad and takes control of Syria  (8:7-15)
• The reign of Jehoram (south) in Judah (8:16-24)
• The reign of Ahaziah in Judah (8:25-28)

“The predestination of God does not destroy the free agency of man, or lighten the responsibility of the sinner. It is true, in the matter of salvation, when God comes to save, his free grace prevails over our free agency, and leads the will in glorious captivity to the obedience of faith. But in sinning, man is free – free in the widest sense of the term, never being compelled to do any evil deed, but being left to follow the turbulent passions of his own corrupt heart, and carry out the prevailing tendencies of his own depraved nature.”
Charles Spurgeon

2. God’s sovereignty includes His good grace and His righteous judgement.