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Elisha and What We Feed On!

What did you feed on this week? Let's see, one night Linda and I had spaghetti, one of our favorite meals, the next night Linda fixed a couple of hamburgers, on Friday I barbecued some chicken, and earlier in the week we had gone out to Outback and ordered filet mignon . We ate all of these meals in peace and quiet; except when Linda tried to stab me with her fork when I went for the last piece of bread at Outback. Of course, that was a minor skirmish compared to the food fights we're seeing in Iraq.

Oops! I got sidetracked. Let me ask the question one more time. What did you feed on this week? Mentally, what did you feed on during the week? What did you chew on between meals?

In our culture, of course, television largely determines what we feed on between meals. We watch the evening news, one or two basketball games, our favorite soap opera, a few sitcoms, Jeopardy, Jag, Law & Order, Law & Order, Law & Order, a half-dozen shows dealing with reality, and, of course, The Red Green Show. Then, if you have cable, or a satellite dish, this food-for-the-mind menu offered by our culture includes . . .
Many notable people have looked at this menu and concluded the following:
    "Television: chewing gum for the eyes." Frank Lloyd Wright
    "Television: the bland leading the bland." Anonymous
    "Television - a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
    "Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home." David Frost
    "I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book." Groucho Marx
This last remark by Groucho reminds us that there are other things to feed on in our culture. Of course, in fairness to television, not everything on TV is bad. But if we find that television is simply "chewing gum for the eyes," we can always read a good book, listen to good music, enjoy the outdoors, take up a hobby, or even meditate on God's Word.

With this in mind, I want you to note what some were feeding on in Elisha's day when Samaria was under siege. In II Kings 6:24 - 7:2 we read:
Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. 25 There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey's head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter of a cab of seed pods for five shekels. 26 As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, "Help me, my lord the king!" 27 The king replied, "If the LORD does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing-floor? From the winepress?" 28 Then he asked her, "What's the matter?" She answered, "This woman said to me, `Give up your son so that we may eat him today, and tomorrow we'll eat my son.' 29 So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, `Give up your son so that we may eat him,' but she had hidden him." 30 When the king heard the woman's words, he tore his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and there, underneath, he had sackcloth on his body. 31 He said, "May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today!" 32 Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. The king sent a messenger ahead, but before he arrived, Elisha said to the elders, "Don't you see how this murderer is sending someone to cut off my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold it shut against him. Is not the sound of his master's footsteps behind him?" 33 While he was still talking to them, the messenger came down to him. And the king said, "This disaster is from the LORD. Why should I wait for the LORD any longer?"
1 Elisha said, "Hear the word of the LORD. This is what the LORD says: About this time tomorrow, a seah of flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria." 2 The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, "Look, even if the LORD should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?" "You will see it with your own eyes," answered Elisha, "but you will not eat any of it!"

It had been quite some time since Israel had experienced a terrorist attack. Now, however, a full scale war, though one-sided, had broken out between Ben-Hadad II and Jehoram, king of Israel. The 4th infantry division of Aram quickly advanced toward Samaria, the capital of Israel. Within two weeks they had put the city under siege. Their strategy was simple, they simply entered an operational pause mode and waited for the city to collapse from within. After all, time was on their side for neither the press nor public opinion was on their backs to quickly end the war.

So while the Arameans relaxed and brought in whatever supplies they needed, those within the city started to do without the basic necessities. Eventually, the famine became so severe that even those items that everybody normally passed over in the marketplace were going for highly inflated prices.

A donkey's head which obviously had very little meat on it was going for ($50) fifty dollars. A cup of dove's dung, or carob seed pods for the lucky ones, was a bargain at ($3) three dollars. The donkey-head, as you can imagine, was used to make soup and the dove's dung, which may have been a wild vegetable, was thrown in by those fortunate enough to find it. And the last time anyone saw anything that looked like fruit was months ago.

When a donkey's head was going for fifty dollars everyone knew things were bad. But they got worse. One day as the king took a tour of the city he stumbled on a case of cannibalism. In desperation, two woman had struck a bargain where they would first feast on one of their sons and then, when starvation again called and called again, they would eat the other son. But the woman whose son was eaten soon discovered that her neighbor, her business partner, had no intention of letting her own son be served up as the next meal.
Well, that's what people were feeding on in Samaria when the city was under siege. But what were they chewing on mentally? What was the king thinking about as he took a tour of the city? What were the two women thinking when they opted for cannibalism? What about Elisha? What was the jest of the conversation as Elisha sat in his house with the leaders of Israel? And what about the officer on whom the king leaned? What was he chewing on when he mocked Elisha's words?
The Thinking of the King!

All the pressure in the world was on the king's shoulders, and he felt the weight of everything that had befallen the nation. In his saner moments he knew that the present siege was indeed the Lord's doing for Israel's failure to repent and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And in a very real sense, the nation's failure was the personal failure of its king to honor God as God.

These moments of honest reflection were few and far between, but when they hit the king undoubtedly kicked himself for being so obstinate. He probably degraded himself for his repeated failure to pay attention to God's voice whether it was spoken through his conscience or by Elisha who everyone knew was a man of God.

The guilt he carried as well as the responsibility of being king angered him for others expected more of him than he was able to deliver. As he walked, he was thinking that he hated being the king. He hated the constant demands of the job. He hated the pressure, especially in times like this when there were so many needs and so few resources. So when he stumbled on the two women, when they asked for help, he lashed out at them. Like everybody else, they wanted something from him and he had absolutely nothing left to give.

When the two women turned and left, the king was ready to blame someone for all the death and despair that was in the city. In part, because he donned sackcloth, it appears that he blamed himself. But, the rest of the story tells us that he put 99% of the blame squarely on Elisha's shoulders.

You see, time and time again Elisha had served as Israel's secret weapon. But during the last six months Elisha hadn't lifted a finger to help the king or anyone else. The king figured that Elisha had the power to save the city as he had done in the past. Yet, for whatever reasons, the prophet had decided not to exercise his power on behalf of Israel and for that failure, so thought the king, Elisha would pay the price of a traitor. So as he concluded his walk he ordered that Elisha's head be brought to him on a platter. Yuk!
The Thinking of the Women!

The one woman, the one who immediately bought into the idea of cannibalism, wasn't thinking at all. The other one, however, had spent her days figuring out how she could get a good meal and have dessert too! She was thinking that to survive in today's economy you have to look out for # 1 with little or no regard for your neighbor. She was thinking that in desperate times some people will buy into anything if it offers the possiblity of surviving one more day. If she had been on one of today's "reality" shows she would have come out on top.
The Thinking of Elisha!

Elisha was thinking that there is a time to act and there is a time to wait and see. This was one of those times to wait patiently, to wait until the Lord revealed what he was going to do in the present situation. Elisha instinctively knew the truth of Ecclesiastes 7:14 which says:
When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, a man cannot discover
anything about his future.

He was thinking that this was not a time to panic, it was a time to trust God. It was a time to prayerfully seek his mind. He was thinking that while we can't see his hand we can trust his heart. He was thinking that one way or another everything was going to be okay.
The Thinking of the Officer on whom the King Leaned!
He was thinking that those who trusted in God were fools. He was thinking that God didn't exist, or if he did exist he certainly wasn't worthy of worship. He was thinking that God was neither good nor all-powerful. For if he was good he must not be all-powerful otherwise Israel wouldn't be in this mess. And if he was all-powerful, he must not be good otherwise Israel wouldn't be in this mess. He was thinking that he was doing some good thinking. But his thinking was, in fact, stinking thinking.

What about our thinking? What would we be chewing on in the same situation? If we had lived in Samaria, would our thinking honor God as God?

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