Sweet Sovereignty (2 Kings 8:4-6)

2 Kings 8:4-6

4 Now the king was talking with Gehazi the servant of the man of God, saying, “Tell me all the great things that Elisha has done.” 5 And while he was telling the king how Elisha had restored the dead to life, behold, the woman whose son he had restored to life appealed to the king for her house and her land. And Gehazi said, “My lord, O king, here is the woman, and here is her son whom Elisha restored to life.” 6 And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed an official for her, saying, “Restore all that was hers, together with all the produce of the fields from the day that she left the land until now.”

                Is God sovereign? Does it matter? O dear me, yes!

                Here’s the story. Elisha had raised this woman’s son from the dead. He then told her, when a  famine was coming, to leave her home and her land. After 7 years, the woman returned to ask for mercy in the form of the return of her abandoned land. It just so happens that she made this request on the very day and at the very hour that Elisha’s servant was telling the king about what had happened in the life of this woman.

                You can choose to believe, I suppose, that this woman just happened to come to the king at exactly the right day and exactly the right moment of the day when the king had asked Elisha’s servant to recount Elisha’s great deeds. You might choose to believe that all these things fell together in a neat set of coincidences that just happened to work together for the woman’s good. But I think it would be better for us to see that God moved the woman, the king, and the servant to be thinking the right thoughts in the right ways at the right times to accomplish a sweet, God-honoring outcome.

                God works in ways we cannot see. Often, he works behind the scenes to accomplish things we have no reason to expect will happen. We need to know this about our God so that we will be bold enough to obey him and trust him to accomplish his will.

                One application point here might be evangelism. You do not know what God has done in a person’s heart. You do not know what conversations they have just had. Maybe, just maybe, that person you think unreachable has just been silently saying in his or her mind, “God, if you are real, have somebody tell me about you.”You don’t know. God does more amazing things than that. Trust him. Obey him. Share the gospel every chance you get.