- I would like to begin by reading a most remarkable story from the 7th chapter of the book of 2 Kings. It
turn to it with me and follow along if you have a Bible handy. I am going to begin reading from the NIV version
beginning with chapter 6, verse 24, in order to give the background of the story:
- Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid
siege to Samaria. 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. As the
king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, "Help me, my lord the king!" The
king replied, "If the LORD does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor?
From the winepress?" Then he asked her, "What's the matter?" She answered, "This woman said
to me, 'Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we'll eat my son.' So we cooked
my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, 'Give up your son so we may eat him,' but she had
hidden him." 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. 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!"
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?" 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?" 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." 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!"
Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other,
"Why stay here until we die? If we say, 'We'll go into the city'-the famine is there, and we will die.
And if we stay here, we will die. So let's go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they
spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die." At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the
Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, not a man was there, for the Lord had
caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said
to one another, "Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!" So
they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left
the camp as it was and ran for their lives.
The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents. They
ate and drank, and carried away silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned
and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also. Then they said to each
other, "We're not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we
wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once and report this to the royal palace."
- The image of the leper in Scripture is a good analogy to what we who are believers here tonight were
from their homes and forced to live away from the rest of society, unless and until their leprosy was cured. But
what leper could ever hope to cure himself? Spiritually, the situation was very much the same with us. Before
God saved us from our “leprosy,” the leprosy of sin, we were unclean in every way in the sight of Him with
whom sin can never dwell. Nothing we could do for ourselves could have changed our condition or made us
acceptable in the sight of a Holy God. We lived outside the camp of God’s Kingdom and love, ignorant of His
goodness--as is the condition of so many people today on the campus of this great university.
- Yet, as Romans 5, verses 8-10, state so beautifully:
"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath
through him! For if, when we were God’ enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of
his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life."
- God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He changed our lives by sending his only beloved
race have done. God healed us of the leprosy of sin and gave us an entirely new life, a life that we never
dreamed existed before we met Jesus.
- To return to our passage in 2 Kings, when Ben-Hadad, king of Aram, besieged the city of Samaria,
that, when Elisha prophesied regarding God’s imminent deliverance of Israel, the officer closest to the king
declared, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?” But God did
open the floodgates of heaven, turning on His celestial loudspeakers and terrifying the entire Aramean army.
He caused them to “hear the sound of chariots, and horses, and a great army,” provoking them to flee for their
lives far beyond the Jordan River—without a single Israelite soldier in pursuit! The Israelites didn’t even know
what was happening!
- Hill of Samaria with Ruins of the Ancient City
- Now let us look more closely at the four Israelite lepers described in verses 3 and 4. “They said to each
we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we
live; if they kill us, then we die.” In some ways, the lepers were the wisest Samaritans of all. They risked
everything because they correctly reasoned that, if they did not, they would lose everything. Do you see any
echoes here of the words of Jim Elliot, the famous missionary to the Arauca tribe in Ecuador? While he was an
undergraduate at Wheaton College he wrote, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he
cannot lose.”
- The lepers took a great risk leaving the city of Samaria, but even so, they were totally unprepared for
already been there. Instead of having to surrender to their enemies, these starving men were free to eat and
drink, to carry away “silver, gold, and clothes,” as much as they wanted with no one the wiser. Isn’t it just like
God to welcome the repentant sinner home with arms wide open and a feast prepared? Think for a moment of
the story of the prodigal son. That rebellious young man was ready to accept the humiliation of becoming a
servant in his own father’s house--just so that he could go back home. And how did his father respond? To
quote from Luke chapter 15, he said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring
on his fingers and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For
this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
- Did the Israelites in Elisha’s day deserve such a miraculous deliverance from the Lord, any more than
nature in Lamentations 4, “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassion’s never
fail. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.” To return to the story of the Israelite lepers, look
at their first response to God’s great mercy. They grabbed every treasure they could for themselves, “and
went off and hid them.” Their second response, however, was wiser. Conviction must have come upon them,
because they turned to one another and said, “We’re not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are
keeping it to ourselves.”
- This brings me to my main theme tonight: How often are we who believe in Jesus Christ guilty of
what we have? It is a glorious thing that we can be here tonight worshipping the Lord, but aren’t there many
others on this campus who are lost and far away from God? They are souls for whom Jesus laid down His life
just as surely as He laid it down for us. Didn’t Jesus say in Luke 15, “Suppose one of you has a hundred
sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost
sheep until he finds it?” For each of us who are saved here tonight, there was someone who prayed, someone
who went after us and took the risk of speaking to us about Jesus Christ. I know how I responded to the first
people who talked to me about the Lord--and I wasn’t very nice. I don’t know if any of them regretted having
wasted their time on me but, thank God, He did not give up on me.
- God could have chosen to save men and women entirely on His own, just as He chose to rescue the
a high privilege, He called us to be co-workers with Himself in rescuing people from death and bringing them
into the joy of eternal life. Jesus said in John 15:16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you to go and bear
fruit—fruit that will last.” We have “good news” just like those lepers of old, and there are many people who
need what God has given to us--just as much as the people of the city of Samaria needed what God gave to
the four lepers.
- I am not going to try to tell you that the work of spreading the Gospel is easy, especially on a campus
this work is absolutely worthwhile, worth every prayer and effort we give to it. Ultimately, the work of salvation
is not our work anyway. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 6, “he has committed to us the message of
reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” Making His appeal through us? How extraordinary
that Almighty God would choose the likes of us as His personal ambassadors to a lost world! But He does--
and we need to be faithful in this calling.
- I would like to briefly tell you two stories from my own life, one sad and one happy. Years ago, a friend
riding on a train in New York when I noticed that he was sitting a few seats in front of me. There aren’t many
times in my life when the Lord has spoken to me, but then and there He said to me, “Go and talk to this man
about Me.” I was a very young and inexperienced believer and, like Moses, I resisted that command, thinking
that I would not know how to speak to the fellow. I resisted too long because, not much later, Cab got off the
train and I have never seen him since. I cannot tell you how guilty I felt for years thereafter. God gave me
someone to speak to and I blew it. I therefore asked the Lord to help me never to miss an opportunity like that
again.
- The second story, as I said, is happier. When I was a freshman at Yale, I went out to preach and sing
went there several times, and I still remember one day when so many people stopped to listen that the police
had to come and push the crowd back onto the sidewalk, because they were obstructing traffic. After one of
those occasions, I asked the Lord to give me someone to talk to about Him on my bus ride back to New Haven.
When I got on the bus, only one seat was open, next to an elderly gentleman. I sat down, struck up a
conversation, and he was soon telling me the story of his life. It seems that he had been happily married for
many years when he suffered a heart attack and landed in the hospital. While there, believe it or not, his
seventy-year-old wife was unfaithful to him for the first time—after 50 years of marriage! That experience so
devastated the old man that he told me he just wanted to throw his life away. He had specifically gone down to
Times Square that weekend to commit every sin he could with every prostitute he could find, because he was
disgusted with his wife, and with his own life as well!
- When the old man finished speaking, I began to tell him the good news of the forgiveness and new life
and just stared out the window. Something in me urged me not to give up, but to keep speaking though the
case appeared hopeless. After about 30 or 40 minutes of total non-response from the man, I was truly ready
to give up. In the meantime, however, it had begun to get dark and I could now see the reflection of the man’s
face in the bus window. Tears were streaming down that face. I asked him if he wanted to receive Jesus Christ
as his savior, and he turned toward me and responded with an emphatic, “Yes!” He prayed the sinner’s
prayer with me just before we got to his stop. When he got up to leave, he was beaming from ear to ear,
turning around every step as he left the bus to say over and over, “Thank you. You don’t know how much this
means to me.” The bus driver finally had to beg him to please get off the bus. I received a beautiful letter from
that happy old man several months later. He was still overflowing with joy—and he was reconciled with his wife!
- In Psalm 49, verse 7 it says, “No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him—
No, we cannot pay the price to save our own lives or anyone else’s, but Jesus Christ has already paid that
price for everyone who ever lived. The only question is what men decide to do or not do with God’s free gift.
The King James version translates verse 7 with the words, “the redemption of their soul is precious, and it
ceases forever.” This world is the proving ground for all of eternity. Right here and right now men and women
make decisions by which they will live or die forever. And to think that God has called us to have a part in the
awesome work of pointing people to Himself, telling them about forgiveness of sin and new life in Christ! We
cannot make the decision for someone else, but we can faithfully pray for them and give them the Good News
of Jesus Christ. If we will do our part, God will be faithful in doing His part—and I expect that you may be very
surprised by whom He saves at Columbia University. God often chooses the most unlikely people, at least
from our limited perspective, because only He can see their hearts. But if, as the lepers said to one another in
2 Kings 7, verse 9, “we wait until daylight,” in our case the judgment day, to offer to others the gift so freely
given to us, “punishment will overtake us.”
- As I come to a close, I would like to read a verse from the book of Daniel, chapter 12. It is not only a
and give it to Jesus, so that others may also find new life in Christ. “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the
earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will
shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever
and ever.” This latter phrase, “and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever,” is
one the Lord impressed upon me when I was a child, and I have never forgotten it.
- Don’t think for a moment that the work of saving men belongs only to those who are called by God to be
or medicine, or whatever He chooses. But part of your work will be to point men and women to Jesus Christ.
Perhaps your epitaph will be like that of one of the first physicians to graduate from Yale at the beginning of
the 18th century, when that university was still a godly place:
- Copyright ©1997 Christopher N. White
(Message given to InterVarsity at Columbia University on 9/17/97)
| Bless’d with good intellectual parts, Well skilled in two important arts, Nobly he filled the double station Both of preacher and physician. To cure men’s sicknesses and sins, He took unwearied care and pains; And strove to make his patient whole Throughout, in body and in soul. (Memorials of Eminent Yale Men, Vol. 2, p. 12) |
| The Ransom of a Life is Precious |
