Come and See

And he (Jehu) said, Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord.  So they made him ride in his chariot.

Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel.

II Kings 10:16, 28

In verse 16, Jehu tells Johonadab to “come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord.”  Verses 19 through 27 are a chronicle of Jehu exterminating Baal worship in Israel.  That brings us to verse 28, which simply says “Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel.”  Jehu said he had a zeal for the Lord, and that zeal was proven and carried out as he destroyed Baal and Baal worship in Israel.

Here is the question for today: would we tell anyone to “come with us and see our zeal for the Lord?”  Of course, we probably wouldn’t actually say it like that, but the bigger question is this: can the people who are already with us and around us see our zeal for the Lord?  Are we living our lives in such a manner as to point people to Jesus?  Are we living for Him?  Or would the people around us be surprised to find out that we are Christians?  Can others see Him in us?

That is a convicting question that we need to ask ourselves every now and then.  Jehu told of his zeal for the Lord and then he went out and exterminated Baal worship.  How are we doing about “exterminating” the “Baal worship” in “our land?”  I realize that I just used quite a bit of imagery there with all the parenthesis, but I think the application is a fair one.  We all have things in our lives that shouldn’t be there.  How are we doing at destroying the sin in our lives?  How are we doing at getting rid of anything that causes us to not put our trust wholly in Him? 

Let us live our lives so that anyone around us can see the Lord.  Let us leave no question nor doubt about who we serve!

We Do Not Well

Then said they one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king’s household.

II Kings 7:9

I cannot remember who it was, but I once heard a preacher say in regard to this verse “We do not well if we do not tell”.  That is a good thought.  This is the story of the Syrian siege of Samaria.  The people of Samaria had been under seige and were literally starving to death.  In the previous chapter, you find the sad story about the high price of a donkey’s head or some dove’s dung.  We also find people resorting to cannibalism.  But in chapter 7, the Lord had scared off the Syrians, and their entire camp was deserted.

This deserted camp was found by four lepers who were outside the gate of Samaria.  They had decided that if they stayed in Samaria, they would starve to death.  If they went to the Syrians, they might kill them, but they also might be kind to them and give them a little to eat.  They were going to die anyway, so they went to the Syrians.  But the Syrians weren’t there.  Instead, they found food, drink, gold, silver and everything else. 

Of course, they started eating and hoarding the treasures for themselves when it occurred to them that, in the city, thousands of people were dying.  The people were dying while they gorged themselves.  It was at that point we come to verse 9, “we do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace”. 

How often does that describe us?  How often do we feast on God’s Word and never even think to share it with someone who is spiritually dying?  How often do we sit back in our contentment and hoard the treasures of the Lord to ourselves?  If we are not trying to share the “good tidings” with others, we do not well.  How are we doing?

Borrow Not a Few

Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels; borrow not a few.

II Kings 4:3

This verse deals with the story of Elisha and the miracle of the widow’s oil.  This widow woman was in debt and was faced with her creditors possibly taking her two sons to be bondmen to pay off her debt.  She was poor and the only thing of any value she had in her house was a pot of oil.  That is where this verse comes in.

Elisha told her to go out and borrow as many vessels as she could.  He specifically said “borrow not a few”.  After this was done, he had her pour out her oil in those vessels.  As long as she still had vessels, she kept pouring.  When she was done, she had plenty of oil to use and to sell to pay off her debt.  To me, this verse is a great picture of faith.

She could have gone out and borrowed just a couple of vessels.  She could have doubted Elisha and not borrowed as many as she did.  There is no indication in the scripture of how many she borrowed, nor is there any indication that she could have borrowed more than she did. There is every indication that she believed Elisha and that she did exactly as he said. But we have to wonder.  Had she known the miracle that was about to take place, would she have borrowed even more vessels? 

So often in our lives, we don’t have enough faith to “borrow not a few”.  The Lord has given us so many wonderful promises in His Word, but how often do we live weak Christian lives with little or no faith in Him and His Word?  We can make an application to any area of our own lives that need it,  but I will close with one question:  If we had been in that widow’s shoes, how many vessels would we have borrowed?  How much faith do we have?

A “Light Thing” to the Lord

And he said, Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches.  For thus saith the Lord, Ye shall  not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, that ye may drink, both ye and your cattle, and your beasts.  And this is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord: he will deliver the Moabites also into your hand.

II Kings 3:16-18

“No big deal”.  What would we be willing to describe as “no big deal”?  I’m sure that there are a number of things that we could do with relative ease.  We do hundreds of things every day without even thinking about them.  But this passage tells us something that God did that He said was “but a light thing in the sight of the Lord”.

In verse 16, Elisha tells the people to dig a bunch of ditches in a valley because the Lord was not going to send wind or rain.  And without wind or rain, the people would have to depend on the water that would fill the ditches in the valley for all of their drinking and all of their animals’ drinking.  That, in itself, is quite a prophecy and quite a miracle.

How often do we complain about or worry about the weather?  The weather is one of those things that every one of us, either directly or indirectly, is dependent upon.  I live in the Midwest with a bunch of grumpy farmers, so I hear about the weather quite a bit.  It needs to rain soon…  now it needs to stop raining… it needs to warm up…  now it’s getting too hot…  and on and on.  As dependent on the weather as we can be, did it ever occur to you that not one of can do a single thing about it?

God says He is not going to have the wind blow nor will He allow it to rain.  “And this is but a light thing in the sight of the Lord.”  Controlling the weather is no big deal to God.  Just to drive the point home to the Israelites, He tells them one more thing after He tells them this: “he will deliver the Moabites also into your hand”.  I like how the Bible words this.  After telling them that stopping the wind and rain would be “but a light thing” to Him, He then adds on that He is going to deliver the Moabites into their hand as well.

What a powerful God we serve!  I’m glad that things that, to me, are impossible, to Him are “but light things”.