By Paul Tatham
tatham47@hotmail.com
tatham47@hotmail.com
Before my father died at age 92, I
asked him what his favorite Bible story was.
Having been in full-time Christian work
since he was saved at age 16, he had an enviable grasp of God’s Word. He had
always leaned toward the Old Testament, so predictably his response was from the
“left half” of the Bible—a story in II Kings 6-7 about four lepers.
Although I didn’t ask him, I knew why
it was his favorite. The account had a poignant, soul-winning application, and
Dad had an uncanny ability to wring any gospel relevance from any Scripture
passage. He almost always closed his sermons with a moving appeal to bow at the
cross “before it is eternally too late.”
The 2 Kings narrative is a riveting
tale. It chronicles a frightful episode in the life of four lepers who eked out
a living by begging outside the gates of Samaria. Today, we would refer to them
by the less offensive term “homeless.” Capital of the northern ten tribes of
Israel, Samaria was under siege by Syria, Israel’s perennial enemy and a thorn
in their side to this day.
To put the account in context, Syria
was later swallowed up by the much mightier Assyrian Empire, the same empire
that carried out a three-year siege of the same city and thereby succeeded in
taking into captivity the entire northern kingdom. Unlike the Assyrians,
however, the Syrians’ earlier attempt to starve Samaria into submission failed.
But they came close. 2 Kings 6-7 gives
the grisly details. The Syrian army had surrounded the city, blockading all
traffic in and out. The resulting famine was so dire that the emaciated
Samarians were reduced to eating donkey heads, bird dung, and even their own
children.
The lepers, discussing their plight
amongst themselves, reasoned that they would soon die. Either as a result of
starvation, their disease, or the Syrians themselves, their fate was sealed.
So, they debated, why not simply surrender to the Syrians?
Perhaps the Syrians would have mercy on
them and at least feed them one last meal before their execution. They had
nothing to lose. As they approached the Syrian camp, perhaps waving a white
flag, the lepers encountered not one Syrian soldier to whom they could
surrender.
To their dismay, they soon realized
that all of the Syrian forces had fled! God had spooked them into flight by
causing them to hear a great noise that they perceived to be that of the
Hittites and Egyptians, coming to Israel’s rescue. The lepers couldn’t believe
their good fortune and scurried from tent to tent gorging on food left behind
by the Syrians.
But suddenly it hit them — they had
just left an entire city that was on the brink of collapse, with hundreds dying
daily, and they were keeping the good news all to themselves. As if everyone’s
lives depended upon it — and it certainly did — the lepers raced back to the
city and averted certain disaster.
Like the lepers, we Christians have
also discovered the good news. The question is, are we now willing to share it?
After all, as the great Sri Lankan theologian D.T. Niles put it, “Evangelism is
just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”
