AP

2 Kings 7:3-4 Now there were four men who were lepers at the entrance to the gate.  And they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die?  If we say, ‘Let us enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there.  And if we sit here, we die also.  So now come, let us go over to the camp of the Syrians.  If they spare our lives we shall live, and if they kill us we shall but die.”

In the outworking of the Providence of God, these four lepers saw themselves as being in what we call a ‘lose-lose’ situation.  Don’t we often feel like this when we have to make a choice between two options, both of which will have disastrous outcomes?  We are required to decide between ‘the lesser of two evils.’  The capital of Samaria was under seige by Ben Hadad, King of Syria, and it seemed doomed to certain annihilation.  Contrary to the evidence, the prophet Elisha had prophesied deliverance, but the Captain/Advisor to the King of Israel discounted this prediction as logically impossible.  We are not told who the King of Israel was, but it was almost certainly Jehoram, the son of Ahab and Jezebel.

It is good for us to see here that, many times when our sympathies are with the rationality of the King’s Captain, we must realise that there is a Sovereign God for whom ‘nothing is impossible’ (Luke 1:37; Matthew 19:26).  The ‘lose’ situation which the four lepers chose, turned out to be the means by which this Sovereign God brought about the exact fulfilment of Elisha’s ‘impossible’ prophecy, and saved his Covenant People!

With this in mind, and with God’s help, “I will trust my Saviour, Jesus, when my darkest doubts befall; trust him when to simply trust him seems the hardest thing of all.”, and, because I can never do this in my own strength, my constant prayer is the chorus: “Jesus, only Jesus, help me trust you more and more; Jesus, only Jesus, may my heart be ever yours.” (Rich Thompson, Jonny Robinson, Tiarne Tranter, Jaywan Maxwell)

My favourite three questions in the Heidelberg Catechism help me with all this:

“Q26. What do you believe when you say: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth”? A. That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence, is my God and Father because of Christ, his Son.  I trust him so much that I do not doubt he will provide whatever I need for body and soul, and he will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends me in this sad world.  He is able to do this because he is almighty God; he desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.

Q 27. What do you understand by the providence of God? A. Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he still upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures,  and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness [even my dear wife’s untimely death last year], prosperity and poverty all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.

Q 28. How does the knowledge of God’s creation and providence help us? A. We can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love.  All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.”  

Knowing this is what keeps me going.

– Bruce Christian