Yesterday, we continued our studies in 2 Kings. This week we reached the second half of chapter 8. It contains a little episode whereby the King of Aram seeks out Elisha’s prophetic insights into whether he will die from an illness afflicting him. He sends his military commander, Hazael, who learns that the king will, but won’t, survive. It transpires the King of Aram would have lived had he been left alone but Hazael is determined to kill him so that he can seize the throne. You can listen to the sermon here and find out more about this particular episode.
The episode is supposed to be something of a rebuke to the people of Israel. Back in 2 Kings 1, King Ahaziah has a similar problem; he is injured and wants to know if he’s going to die. Only, Ahaziah determines to go and enquire of the prophets of Baal. Elijah told him that because he seeks after false gods he will surely die. Ben-hadad of Aram, by contrast, seeks out Elisha – Yahweh’s prophtet – for the same kind of information. The point is that foreign kings are enquiring in the right place whilst Israelite kings, who should know better, continue seeking after idols. It is less ‘well done’ to Ben-hadad as it is a rebuke to Israel; even foreign pagan kings seem to know better than them!
It isn’t too difficult to discern how we may suffer from this same problem today. When we face suffering and difficulty, it is very easy to look almost anywhere else other than to the Lord for help. We have become particularly accustomed to simply being able to sort out most of our immediate problems. When issues arise, it is so easy to turn to our money, savings, contacts, skills, abilities or what have you and effectively fix the problem ourselves without any need for the Lord. Rather than turning to him in prayer first, it isn’t uncommon for us to press every button available to us and only think to consult him if and when all our efforts to help ourselves fail and we reach the end of our, frankly, quite plentiful set of resources.
It might come as something of a rebuke to us when, apropos of nothing, an unbeliever turns up at church – having reached the end of themselves – believing that perhaps Jesus might have a solution for them. It can jolt us out of our functional atheism to see unbelievers recognise what we – who should know better – seem so quick to forget. The Lord is our helper and he ought to be our first port of call. As John Bunyan was apt to note: ‘You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.’
I feel we should perhaps take better note of that.