Grace: Restoration and Life. 2 Kings
8:1-6
This is the twelfth incident
we will have studied since the beginning of Elisha’s ministry in chapter two.
These miracles that have occurred in the life of Elisha are primarily towards
teaching something to the Israelites, visual aids to remind them of God’s
grace: that God is constantly reaching out to them in grace to provide blessing
to them and to provide real life for them. It is at one of the darkest periods
in the northern kingdom of Israel when it has been under the leadership and the tyranny
of the Omri dynasty. The false religious system was offering everything that it
could to appeal to the most base lusts of the sin nature, and yet its offer of
life, of success, was totally counterfeit and what came in reality was death
and destruction. That death that came was a result of the judgment of God.
God’s grace isn’t just focused on provided blessing, it also includes
discipline and punishment for His people in order to bring them back into a
position of obedience where God can restore that blessing to them. This theme
of restoration is one that we have seen a few times in these episodes,
restoration of life emphasizing that Yahweh the covenant God of Israel, the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is the real God of life who provides blessing and
happiness and success in life; and that can only come by having a consistent
lawful relationship with God. Israel in the north had succumbed to idolatry under the
influence of Jeroboam I, and then as that had intensified down through the
successive kings God had followed one disciplinary act with another. They had
political instability because of their disobedience to God and one dynasty
would be replaced by another dynasty, until finally God gave them over to this
horrific dynasty of Omri.
Jehoram was the king at the
time of chapter eight and had been since chapter two and it is during this time
that God is bringing tremendous discipline into the nation, according to exactly
as He had laid out in the Mosaic Law in the five successive and increasingly
intensive stages. And yet even in the midst of this culture of death that
existed in the northern kingdom God is reaching out again and again and again
to give life. Each of these miracles somehow focuses on God’s gift of life even
though the northern kingdom is mired in negative volition and has rejected Him
again and again. They continue to turn to false solutions to all of their
problems and one problem just compounds upon another. What we see as the
background to all of these episodes is the culture of death offered by the
false systems of Baalism—in our world today is offered by the false systems of
philosophy that there are many religious systems that leave the God of the
Bible out. What we see in the ancient world of the 9th century BC is
that often the greatest amount of perversity and sin is wrapped in a mantle, a
veneer of religiosity. That is what happened with Baalism: merging all of the
practices appealing to the lust of the sin nature and then wrapping it all up
in a veneer of religion. But no matter how much fun and excitement there was in
following the worship pattern in the fertility rites of Baalism ultimately it
never satisfied the real hunger and desires of the human soul because God has
placed in every human being that desire to have a relationship with the creator
and nothing can takes its place and truly satisfy that desire. The end result
of the pursuit of anything other than the relationship of the God of the Bible
is always death. Proverbs 14:12
NASB “There is a way {which seems} right to a man, But its end is
the way of death.” That is the way it always is in reality. Whenever we violate
God’s ways, whenever we ignore the Scripture, it always ends up with an
emptiness of soul, a barrenness in our life where there is no real joy or
happiness. Proverbs 12:28
NASB “In the way of righteousness is life, And in {its} pathway
there is no death.” It is only when we pursuer our relationship with God that
we really experience the fullness of life that God has provided and intended
for us.
This is what Moses was
focusing on when he was giving his final message to the Israelites before he
went to be with the Lord. When he addressed them in Deuteronomy chapter thirty
he focused it all in one precise verse—19 NASB “I call heaven and
earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death,
the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and
your descendants.” And what we see in these chapters in 2 Kings is the offer of
life again and again and again. God is constantly pursuing even the rebellious
northern kingdom of Israel now matter how perverse they are. The same is true
for us. Until we are dead there is always hope, there is always that
opportunity to turn back to God: to respond to His grace and to be either
restored to real life by faith alone in Christ alone, or if you are a believer
to be restored to fellowship so that we can experience the fullness of life
that God has provided for us. God never turns His back on His people; He
constantly pursues them in grace. He is pursuing the northern kingdom through
His prophet Elisha.
One of the most
interesting and somewhat abbreviated instances is the episode that involved this
woman who lived in the village of Shunam, located in the Valley of Jezreel in the northern part of Israel, and her ministry to Elisha. We saw the first part of
her involvement back in 2 Kings 4:8ff, and in chapter eight we see the
conclusion or the rest of the story that wasn’t even hinted at previously. She
becomes a picture for the northern kingdom, not only of life, that God is the
only one who can give life and restore life but that He is the God who gives a
fullness of blessing as well. In chapter four we saw that she is just a great
woman, not identified by name, a wealthy woman from the aristocracy in the
northern kingdom, a woman of means, married with a family. There is not much
mention of her husband but she shows that she honors his leadership. She is
interested in spiritual things, in the prophet Elisha, and she is sensitive to
his physical needs and logistical requirements. This demonstrated her grace
orientation. There was no initiation from Elisha, this just came out of her own
soul. It came out of her own spiritual life and she was sensitive to the
realities of the need of the prophet. She was willing to give of what she had
in order to supply this particular need.
The next example of grace
orientation comes from Elisha himself because he then in return seeks some
information about her. He is going to do something for her and after enquiring
about her he learns that she was without a child. Having a son in the ancient
world was very important because children would then be the source of social
security, they would provide for the parents when they became too old to work
and take care of themselves. Elisha sent a message to her that within a year
she would conceive and give birth to a son, and it happened. Some time went by
but we know that this must have only been a few years. When the child was only
about two or three years of age this child goes out with his father and has
some sort of heat stroke or something of that nature, and he dies. The woman,
rather than falling to pieces and panicking, immediately packs her bags and
heads for Mount Carmel which is where Elisha was at the time. She goes to
him because she knows that he is the one who graciously gave her this sin and
he can be the solution to this problem because he is the representative of God.
She is actually looking to God as the solution to her problem. The child was
brought back to life. It shows that God is the God who gives life (the birth).
He is the God who takes life (death), and God is the God who restores life. It
is a picture of what is stated by Job in Job 1:21 after he has lost all of his
possessions, his cattle and sheep, and his children. NASB “… The LORD gave and
the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.” Job had
that same grace orientation, recognizing that everything that we have comes
from God whether it is little or much.
The story stopped with
bringing the child back to life and now in chapter eight we learn from the
second event. Some time has gone by but this isn’t too long after that episode.
Verse one is a flashback; both verses 1 & 2 are talking about what happened
previously. 2 Kings 8:1 NASB
“Now Elisha spoke [Heb. had spoken] to the woman whose son he had restored to
life, saying, ‘Arise and go with your household, and sojourn wherever you can
sojourn; for the LORD has called for a famine, and it will even come on the
land for seven years.’ [2] So the woman arose and did according to the word of
the man of God, and she went with her household and sojourned in the land of
the Philistines seven years.”
When we look at verses 1
& 5 we see the real focus of this chapter, and that is in the phrase
“restored to life.” Four times this same verb is repeated in the Hebrew of
these six verses. This tells us that the major teaching point, the doctrine, in
these six verses has to do with the restoration to life, and once again this
focus on life verses the culture of death that dominated the northern kingdom.
This woman is going to be the recipient of God’s grace and another element
related to this idea of restoration. While we have the English word
“restoration” in vv. 1 and 5 that word is not in the original; it is simply the
word to make alive. So it would be read: “Now Elisha had spoken to the woman
whose son he had brought back to life,” and in verse 5, “Now it happened as he
was telling the king how he had brought back to life the dead.”
This is also important
because as we see the king as a major player in this episode we see that he had
used the same word back in chapter five: “… am I God to kill and make alive.”
The reason for pointing this out it because it shows that the issue is clearly
understood in the text that we are contrasting death and life and that God is
showing that He is the only one who can give real life, and the false gods can
simply not provide that. So we are told in 2 Kings 8:1 that God demonstrates
His grace again to the Shunamite woman. She is going to be a visual aid, a
picture, of grace restoration, even in the midst of this famine, this time of
divine discipline. This takes us back to the five cycles of discipline: the
Lord has called for a famine. Furthermore it will come upon the land for seven
years. It is interesting because that is the cycle of the sabbatical year.
Every seventh year there was to be that sabbatical year where Israel would not work, and so God is working through this
same system of seven-year cycles.
We are told that the woman
responded. Part of her grace orientation is orientation to authority; that is
part of all grace orientation. Remember, to be grace oriented we have to
understand true humility. We cannot respond to God’s grace if we are arrogant
and proud, we have to learn to be humble
and to humble ourselves under God—which means we have to be willing to
submit to His authority rather than doing things our own way. Baalism had
really emphasized that the whole northern culture was doing things their way.
They were mired in rebellion against God, asserting their independence from God
and worshipping the god that they wanted to worship. But here we see that the
Shulamite woman was a picture of humility, she responds to the authority of the
prophet and immediately does according to what the man of God says. It is not
because of him but because she knows that the message comes from God. She is going
to depart with her household and her husband and dwell in the land of the
Philistines for seven years.
It may appear to many of
us that she gets off pretty easily here, she doesn’t have to go through the
famine. We need to remember that for someone to move at that time was not
necessarily easy. She has to go into a foreign area, the area of the
Philistines which is down to the south west of Israel (the modern Gaza strip). She has to continue to live in a pagan
environment, yet without her possessions, her wealth, and God is going to
provide for he but she won’t be affected by the famine that is going to affect
the rest of the nation. So she is a beneficiary of God’s grace. There were many
other believers in the northern kingdom, at least 7000 who had not bowed the
knee to Baal, and they did not get to avoid the famine. Sometimes we think that
if God’s grace is really there “I” will get to avoid the tough times; but that
is not necessarily true. The rest of the believers in the northern kingdom had
to go through the famine but God had a plan for her that was distinct from the
others because He wanted to use her as a teaching aid about His grace. In fact,
she lost everything: her home, her land, all of her possessions; but she was
grace oriented and that grace orientation was also linked to a doctrinal
orientation, she understood the plan and the purposes of God because she had
had that revealed to her by the man of God.
We don’t have a prophet
who appears at our front door and tells us what God wants us to do. We have the
Word of God instead and God has spoken to us [Hebrews 1:1], and that revelation
is complete. So we are to go to the Word of God to seek wisdom in how to deal
with circumstances in our own lives. We are to apply the same principles she
did. We are oriented to grace, oriented to God’s authority, oriented to God’s
Word.
The woman left and during
those seven years God provided for her and she was, as it were, in exile from
her home in the northern kingdom of Israel. Then the famine ended and it is time for her to
return to her home. 2 Kings 8:3 NASB “At the end of seven years, the
woman returned from the land of the Philistines; and she went out to appeal to
the king for her house and for her field.” The word “return” there
is simply the normal word for coming back from a place where you have been
before. It is the Hebrew word shub,
but that word has other connotations. In the structure of this particular
episode with the emphasis on her return and on the restoration of her property
we can’t help but think of how this word is used in Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy
God had warned that there would come a time when they would be so negative to
Him that they would neglect Him completely, and God would have to discipline
them to the point of completely removing them from the land that he had
promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God would take them from the land and
would scatter them throughout all the nations throughout all the world but
there would come a time eventually, which has not yet happened in human
history, when they would turn back to the Lord and at that time God would then
restore them to the land of Israel and would fully bless them in terms of all
of the covenant promises that He had given to Abraham, to Moses, to David in
the New covenant. So when we read this word that the woman returned from the
land of the Philistines it shows us that there is some imagery going on here
that is designed to remind the Israelites of this promise that God had made in
the past, that of they would return to Him God would bless them. This woman is
going to make an appeal to the king for her house and for her land because this
land has been confiscated and now is owned by the state and is part of the
kings property.
While this is taking place
God is working on the heart of the king. The king is showing a little curiosity
about the ministry of Elisha. This comes not long after the events of chapter
seven. We see a picture of Jehoram here that is unlike any picture we see of
any of the Omri kings. He seems relaxed and to have a certain level of
friendship and rapport with Gehazi the servant of the prophet and when we first
read this in verse 4, NASB “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,’” we wonder what is going on here. Is
Jehoram becoming positive, is he really interested in spiritual things? Or is
there something else happening? In Proverbs 21:1 we are told NASB
“The king’s heart is {like} channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns
it wherever He wishes.” We always need to remember that. The Lord Jesus Christ
controls history and no matter who gets elected to public office or what their
agenda might be, ultimately it is God who controls history and who is the final
authority. Even though there was this wicked king, and he was not positive,
showing a certain level of curiosity about the things of God, he was not really
interested. Some people like to talk about spiritual things for the
intellectual stimulation and that seems to be what is going on here because the
king has been really emotional impacted by what happened in the last chapter. A
woman’s child had been killed and boiled and eaten, and so it has gotten his
attention. And when there was this miraculous turn-around that occurred and the
Syrian army fled, and now the famine has been reversed according to the word of
Elisha, the king is showing some curiosity. He asks Gehazi for some
information. But God is the one who is behind all of this because He is the one
who is preparing the king’s heart for the encounter with the Shunamite woman
that is going to come up in verse 6.
2 Kings 8:5 NASB
“As he was relating to the king how he had restored to life the one who was
dead, behold, the woman whose son he had restored to life appealed to the king
for her house and for her field. And Gehazi said, ‘My lord, O king, this is the
woman and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life.’” So it
is not coincidence; there is no coincidence in the plan of God, He set the
whole thing up so that Jehoram would be asking those questions and getting him
prepared for this at that particular moment. This made him much more responsive
to her request. [6] “When the king asked the woman, she related {it} to him. So
the king appointed for her a certain officer, saying, ‘Restore all that was
hers and all the produce of the field from the day that she left the land even
until now.’” This is like what would occur during the year of Jubilee and the
focus is on that word “restoration.” She is restored everything that she lost
plus all of the proceeds from the sale of all of the agriculture during this
time. God was restoring to her everything that had been taken from her.
The lesson is that Israel is in the same kind of position as a nation.
Spiritually they have rejected God, spiritually they have been in rebellion
against God for the last forty or fifty years, and during this time God has
been bringing one level of discipline after another against them, but at the
same time He has been offering them the opportunity to return to Him. This is
the principle of grace preceding judgment. We will see that the promised
judgment that God is going to bring against the house of Omri finally will
occur, but this is the last offer of grace, the past reminder that God can
bring them back. But they refused to do it. Like so many their hearts became
increasingly hardened. The more God was gracious to them the more they resisted
and set themselves in concrete so that no matter how much God offers they are
not going to respond. This is just a foreshadowing of the kind of resistance
among those who are called earth dwellers during the Tribulation period. No
matter what God offers they are steadfast in their rejection and resistance of
God.
The picture here in
chapter eight is a lesson of restoration, a lesson of God’s grace” that God
will provide for those who have lost. We are reminded that there are various
ways in which God provides that same restoration for us. It is the offer of
life and we see this emphasized in the teaching of our Lord in the Gospel of
John. In John 8:12 Jesus was
speaking to the Pharisees: NASB “…I am the Light of the world; he
who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of
life.” God is constantly offering life.
Life is a major theme in the Gospel of John. Jesus Christ is the only one who
can give life; the contrast is death and darkness. John 11:25 NASB “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the
resurrection and the life…” Just as God allowed Elisha to restore the life of
the woman’s son this is a foreshadowing of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus
Christ and His eventual resurrection of all believers. “… he who believes in Me
will live even if he dies.” There is only one condition and that is belief.
But Jesus came not only to
give eternal life, which is what we get if we trust in Him, but He came to give
real life or what he calls abundant life. John 10:10 NASB “The thief comes only to steal and
kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have {it} abundantly.”
Every person who trusts in Jesus Christ gets eternal life which can never be
taken away from him, but that doesn’t mean that he is going to have the riches
of the spiritual life that God has promised for him in this life. Because every
day we have to make many decisions. We have to decide to choose, as Moses said,
between death and between life. Are we going to choose the path of life and
make the Word of God and our relationship to God the highest priority in our
life, or are we going top continue to compromise with the world system and
continue to think that somehow the worldly philosophies and ideas offer some
measure of life and continue to waffle between two options, in some cases just
living within the world system and not being willing to turn to God completely
and trust Him for real life.
There are four things that
we are reminded of when we talk about restoration. First, restoration reminds
us that as human beings we lost something when Adam sinned. When Adam sinned at
the fall we lost a component of our immaterial nature which we refer to as the
human spirit. We lost that element of our immaterial makeup that allows our
soul to have a relationship with God and without which we will eventually have
experienced the second death, eternal condemnation. There must be a restoration
of what we lost in Adam in order to have life. That is what happens at
regeneration. Second, restoration reminds us that God promised Israel that if
they disobeyed Him He would remove them from the land and would scatter them
throughout all of the nations of the earth, but that there would come a time
when he would restore them from all the nations, put them back in the land and
give them all of the blessings that he had promised in the covenants. That
focuses us on a future restoration, a restoration that will occur at the second
coming of Christ. Third, we are reminded that we live in a fallen world, a
world that groans under the curse and condemnation of sin, and a world that
looks forward to the time when the sons of God will be made manifest (reference
to the second coming) and once again the curse will be rolled back on creation.
So restoration points us also to the future when Christ will return and restore
all things. Fourth, restoration also relates to use personally and
experientially in our Christian life because we know there are times when we
sin, times when we fail, but there is still the offer of restoration. Just as
the prodigal son was restored to relationship with his father so we can be
restored to our relationship with our heavenly Father through the use of 1 John
1:9 in confession of sin. There is never a time that we sin so much that we
can’t use the grace of God to get back into fellowship with Him and go forward.
Restoration is something
that God always offers because God is continuously the God of grace and the God
who offers life, and there is no life anywhere else.
Illustrations