God Does Greater Things

Elisha God over gods God does greater things

Text: 2 Kings 4:8-37

Intro: Your life can matter for eternity without a high IQ, high EQ, smart, come from a good school, or be a good-looking person, but you need to know a few things and be committed to them for a lifetime. Our goal should not be that our life meets all our expectations here on earth. We should hold up as heroes of the faith those who have left it all for Jesus. Everyone leaves something in their pursuit of following the Lord. God had promised to raise up a prophet greater than Elijah, and now we have Elisha. Elijah would perform fourteen miracles, and Elisha would perform twenty-eight. What if you want the Lord to do greater things in your life, but you have found your Christian experience non-eventful and possibly even not fruitful?

• God’s blessings are tangible, but do not always look as you expect. This passage describes God blessing a Shunammite woman. Not every passage that is descriptive is also prescriptive. I am trying to be careful to show some principles of God’s blessing that are seen in this passage, as well as other passages in scripture.

1. God Blesses Making Space for Him.
   1. The woman
      1. Nameless
      2. Wealthy woman - powerful in every way. Powerful financially, yes, but also socially, and in every other way. 4:8
   2. This woman encourages her husband to make space for Elisha, and it becomes a key piece to the rest of the story. This decision placed her near God’s prophet, but it doesn’t force God to do anything in her life. 4:9-10
   3. The movement of God is often mysterious and is much like a blowing wind. We have no authority over how and where the wind blows, but we can live with our sails raised to catch it when it blows.

• My parents raised me in the church and taught me it was a priority. They taught me the scripture and put me in places where I memorized scripture. This didn’t promise that I would become a Christian or follow Christ, but ultimately God used the Christian school where they placed me as a tool for God’s calling in ministry.

1. What does putting your sail up look like, so that we might catch the movement of God? We don’t need to build a room for a prophet, but we might need to…
   1. Invest time in serving - we call this living like Jesus.
   2. Invest time in being with the Lord every day or as many days as you can - we call this loving Jesus.
   3. Invest time in reading more about the things of God, or while you are driving listen to some great podcast about the Lord - we call this learning from Jesus.
   4. Invest time in telling others about Jesus - we call this leading others to Jesus.

• Fred Craddock, in an address to ministers. "We think giving our all to the Lord is like taking a $1,000 bill and laying it on the table--'Here's my life, Lord. I'm giving it all.'

"But the reality for most of us is that he sends us to the bank and has us cash in the $1,000 for quarters. We go through life putting out 25 cents here and 50 cents there. Listen to the neighbor kid's troubles instead of saying, 'Get lost.' Go, meet with someone who is in need. Give up a cup of water to a shaky old man in a nursing home.

"Usually, giving our life to Christ isn't glorious. It's done in all those little acts of love, 25 cents at a time. It would be easy to go out in a flash of glory; it's harder to live the Christian life little by little over the long haul."

1. Elisha wanted to bless the hospitality of the Shunamite woman, and it was difficult because she was wealthy and powerful in every way. 4:11-13
2. Gehazi, Elisha’s servant, shared that she had no son. When Elisha heard that, the Spirit of God confirmed to him that God wanted to give her what she truly longed for, deep in her heart. 4:14-16
   1. Sons in that time period were everything as they took care of you in your old age, kept the family line going, and maintained the family inheritance.
   2. A life without a son was considered incomplete.
3. Elisha prophesied that she would have a son in a year.
4. The son was born, and then the next thing we hear is that he dies.4:18-20
5. The woman knows to run to Elisha, who represents the power of God. 4:21-22
6. Elisha tries to bring God’s power to the dead child through his servant Gehazi, but fails.
7. Why does the Bible say these things? Because they happened, including when Elisha lay on the child, and on the second time the child sneezed seven times—no symbolism—it just happened, and Elisha knew the child was alive.
8. God Blesses Weakness, not our strengths.
   1. This woman had everything: money, influence, and authority, but God showed up in her weakness.
   2. The first sin in scripture from Adam and Eve was their choice to live independently from God. They believed they would be better off if they were on their own. 2 Cor. 12:8-10
   3. Being rich in talent, relationally, or professionally could create the same independence. In one moment, every area of your life that you have experienced God’s kindness in talent, relationships, giftedness, health, and money are all temporary.
   4. Thinking you are rich spiritually is the most dangerous. Rev. 3:17
   5. Our richness and independence keep us from experiencing the richness of God’s grace, kindness, and mercy.
   6. Sometimes, like this woman, things happen in your life that we can’t fix: the death of a child, cancer, divorce, an addiction that you can’t get past. These failures and pains are God’s mercy, where we see His blessings in our pain rather than in our strengths.

• By 2018, country artist Walker Hayes had gotten sober, but then tragedy struck. He and his wife lost their seventh child, Oakleigh, at birth. It's a moment he now recognizes as a "real test." He described it by saying, "Just holding a lifeless child. It's indescribable. I can't imagine a worse pain." He admits that for a moment, his sobriety was in jeopardy. "I'd been sober for three years when we lost Oakleigh. I was ready not to be. As soon as that happened, I was like, This is why you drink."

The loss of Oakleigh with helping him find his faith. He said, “When we lost Oakleigh, I would have called myself an atheist.” When faced with a kind of grief he'd never experienced, things began to change. "I think I found out in a roundabout way that I was screaming at somebody. I would have called myself an atheist, but I was looking for someone to blame."

But it wasn't just one thing that suddenly brought him to church. His wife, Lainey, befriended a fellow mom, and that mom invited the family to her and her husband's new church. Hayes said that although he went in kicking and screaming, he suddenly felt the opposite of how he'd felt in church before.

But the final push came while reading a book late one night on his tour bus. "By the grace of God, somebody recommended a book to Laney called Secrets of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Butterfield. This woman's testimony is exactly like mine, except I hadn't surrendered yet … I wolfed this book down. I finished it by the time the sun came up.”

Hayes explained that he didn't "come to Christ" that morning,; rather, he bought a Bible and began to read and learn on his own. Slowly, he had faith. But he is confident that the catalyst for this massive awakening in his life was a direct result of immeasurable loss. He said, “I know for some reason losing Oakleigh led me to Christ. I would not know Jesus if I had not known the loss of my daughter. That's what it took for me.”

1. Did you notice that he woman goes alone to Elisha? Including Jesus’ resurrection, there are ten resurrections from the dead in scripture, and six come from requests. Five of the six come from women. Heb. 11:35
   1. Women were marginalized in society (they were the weak), but God listened to them. In their weakness, God blesses them.
2. God Blesses our Trust and Dependence
   1. Elisha is presented with a problem and doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t have a book answer or formula for her circumstance.
   2. God doesn’t call us to trust in a formula, but He does call us to trust Himself.
   3. As sinners, we do not need a genie in a bottle, but we need a savior who died on a cross, conquered the tomb, and whose resurrection power is available for the troubles of our lives.
   4. Why did this woman say multiple times, “All is well”? 4:23,26 Was it a ploy to get to Elisha, or was it honest faith that everything would be well, but she desperately needed to reach the man of God? I want to believe that she had honest trust in God.
      1. Genuine faith in God during hard, tragic times includes both contentment in who Christ is, as well as a holy discontentment with what we are going through.
      2. She repeatedly states that “all is well” - contentment. Her primary concern is to reach the man of God to reveal her pain.
   5. We are to trust God while not being okay with what is happening around us:
      1. Not liking what is going on in the government, schools, culture, or the entertainment industry, which hates on Christian truth and upholds secular truth.
      2. Personally, trusting God while hating that your kids don’t know Jesus, your marriage is hanging by a shriveling thread, your work demands you to serve it rather than Christ.
   6. The woman sees Elisha and will not let go of him because of her pain. 4;27
   7. When we trust Christ and are content in Christ, we look at our problems differently.
      1. We understand that we are not the answer and know that Christ is.
      2. We learn to live trusting that Christ can, and we pray He will do something in His time to change the situation.

• What is that thing that you need to run to God with? Trusting Him while living in a holy discontent.

1. The real problem is when we are not trusting and content in Christ but are content in the world. Sadly, this is true for many Christians today.

• In the autumn of 1873, Horatio Spafford, a wealthy Chicago businessman, placed his wife, Anna, and their four children on the Ville du Havre sailing from New York to France. Unresolved business caused him to stay in the United States for several more weeks to settle some business matters before he could journey to join the family in Europe.

The evening of November 21 found the Ville du Havre move east toward France on a calm Atlantic. The journey was progressing beautifully. A few hours later, about two o'clock in the morning on November 22, the Ville du Havre was carrying its sleeping passengers over a quiet sea when frightening screams followed two terrific claps like thunder. The engine stopped, and the ship stood still. Passageways were terrified, half-dressed people shouting questions that no one could answer. The Ville du Havre had been rammed by the English vessel, the Lochearn.

Mrs. Spafford saw three of her children swept away by the sea while she stood clutching the youngest child. Suddenly, she felt her baby torn violently from her arms. She reached out through the water and caught little Tanetta's gown. For a minute, she held her again. Then the cloth was wrenched from her hand. She reached out again and touched a man's leg in corduroy trousers. She became unconscious. She awoke later, finding that sailors had rescued her from the Lochearn. But her four children were gone.

In the meantime, Horatio Spafford was back in the United States, desperate to receive news of his family. Finally, the blow fell. A cable arrived from Wales stating that the four daughters were lost at sea, but his wife was still alive. The news crushed him. All night, he walked the floor in anguish.

On the way across the Atlantic to join his wife, the captain announced that they were now passing the place where the Ville du Havre was wrecked. For Horatio Spafford, this was passing through the valley of the shadow of death. He sat down in his cabin on the high seas, near the place where his children perished, and wrote the hymn that would give comfort to so many, titled "It Is Well with My Soul."

1. God blesses persistence
   1. This woman’s desire to get to Elisha reminds me of the unclean woman who fought to touch the hem of Jesus garment.
   2. Romans 12:12, Col. 4:2. There are many things about God that I don’t understand, such as why God doesn’t just give us what we ask for without calling us to be persistent. I am not sure, but I know He desires us to persistently ask Him and not stop.
   3. The woman clung to Elisha and made it clear that she would not leave Him. God will not leave us, but during times of pain, will we run from Him? Sadly, sometimes the answer has been “yes.” In our pain we should run to Him not from Him.
   4. What areas of your life are you on the verge of giving up?
      1. I guess God is not going to say “yes” to a spouse, a saved marriage, saving my children, giving me a child, etc.
      2. Whatever the areas - trust God and keep praying. Keep telling the Lord that you are trusting Him and what your heart’s pain and desire is. Then come back tomorrow and pray again.
2. God blesses by not simply giving deliverance for the child, but our deliverance from death.
   1. Elisha covered the boy, body to body - eyes to eyes, nose to nose, mouth to mouth - a simple picture of complete identification.
   2. Jesus did the same for us 2 Cor. 5:21
      1. God made Jesus to be sin-substitution
      2. For our sake - answers the why question
      3. Who knew no sin - holiness of God
      4. In Jesus - there is no hope outside of Jesus
      5. In Jesus we become the righteousness of God. We are able to put on the righteousness of God through the substitution of Jesus.
   3. Romans 5:6-8 God loves us so much that He gave His life for our sins. If God would give us His life, He will also provide everything we need for our lives. Rom. 8:31-32
   4. There is no sin too strong, no addiction too powerful, no life too broken and no shame too severe that God can’t save and bring hope.
   5. Can you imagine the unspoken emotion of 2 Kings 4:35-37? The dead son is now alive.
   6. Praise the Lord. Every time we see someone move from spiritual death to life, we must remember that this happens only through the power of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
   7. Jesus’ defeat of death reminds us that God has the power to address every issue of our lives and that nothing is outside of His authority and power.
   8. What is the thing that you need to ask God to show up in today? Know that God can, pray that He will, and trust Him no matter what.

Conclusion: There was a small town that had been selected to be the site of a hydroelectric plant. The plan was to set up a dam across the river which would result in the submerging of the small town. The announcement of the plan was made with ample time to give all the residents there the opportunity to get their affairs in order and relocate.

In the intervening months, something strange took place. House upkeep stopped. Community improvement ceased. Infrastructure, basic lawn care, all came to an end. The town looked abandoned long before any of the residents had moved away.

One resident explained the phenomenon in these terms: “Where there is no hope for the future, there is no power in the present.” Illustration by HB Charles