The Danger of Assumptions
Basic Text - 2 Kings 6:24-7-19
A
WOMAN was flying from Melbourne to Brisbane ...
Unexpectedly, the plane was diverted to Sydney.
The flight attendant explained that there would be a delay, and if the passengers wanted to get off the aircraft the plane would re-board in 50 minutes..
Unexpectedly, the plane was diverted to Sydney.
The flight attendant explained that there would be a delay, and if the passengers wanted to get off the aircraft the plane would re-board in 50 minutes..
Everybody
got off the plane except one lady who was blind.
A man had noticed her as he walked by and could tell the lady was blind because her Seeing Eye Dog lay quietly underneath the seats in front of her throughout the entire flight.
He could also tell she had flown this very flight before because the pilot approached her, and calling her by name, said, 'Kathy, we are in Sydney for almost an hour. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?'
A man had noticed her as he walked by and could tell the lady was blind because her Seeing Eye Dog lay quietly underneath the seats in front of her throughout the entire flight.
He could also tell she had flown this very flight before because the pilot approached her, and calling her by name, said, 'Kathy, we are in Sydney for almost an hour. Would you like to get off and stretch your legs?'
The
blind lady replied, 'No thanks, but maybe Max would Like to stretch his legs.'
Picture this:
All the people in the gate area came to a complete standstill
when they looked up and saw the pilot walk off the plane with a Seeing Eye dog!
The pilot was even wearing sunglasses.
People scattered.
They not only tried to change planes, but they were trying to change airlines!
Things are not always what they appear!
The pilot was even wearing sunglasses.
People scattered.
They not only tried to change planes, but they were trying to change airlines!
Things are not always what they appear!
Assumptions
– surround us every day, but they have astonishing power over our lives
Look at the
stories in 2 Kings 6:24-7:19
Background – there is no love lost between the Israelites and the
Arameans. Earlier Chapter 6 – account of when God told Elisha all the battle plans
of the Arameans, and Elisha passed them onto the king. The Arameans sent a task
force to kill Elisha, but God blinded their eyes, and Elisha took them directly
to the Israelite king. Left shamed and embarrassed.
By the time we read this passage, the Arameans had taken revenge
for this by laying Siege to Samaria, then Israel’s capital city.
2 Kings
6:24-31
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
shekelsa of silver, and a quarter
of a cabb of seed podsc for five shekels.d
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 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
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!"
ASSUMPTION 1 - The
problem could have been sorted out by the king, but he didn’t care
The woman who called out to the king is in incredible distress,
and calls out to the king – who tells her he cannot help her – he has nothing
left to give.
“What’s the matter?” Was king angry? Or just desperate?
We often assume that leaders have all the answers, but if they
don’t then it must automatically be their fault.
We live in a society where actually admitting “This is my fault”
has become incredibly rare. We are surrounded by people who look like adults
yet react like toddlers. Everyone else is to blame, and everyone else becomes
an easy target.
It is very easy to say, or
even think at someone “Why don’t you just grow up?” The truth is, growing up
always starts with yourself. We need to move from a position of toddlerhood to
one of maturity in our thinking, in our speech, and in our behaviour.
Dr Edwin Louis Cole states “Maturity is not a question of age; it
is a question of accepting responsibility”. Accordingly, I have met many
ancient toddlers, and one or two mature children!
One of the most interesting questions I get to ask people is “And
which part of this was actually your fault?” Where we live by truth, it
actually becomes much easier to clearly see who was responsible for what.
Abuse scenarios are perpetuated by the fault being pushed onto the
wrong person.
Perpetrators manipulate victims into assuming “it must have been
me”.
Avoiders manipulate themselves by assuming it must have been
someone else.
In her desperation, this woman, in the rawness of such horrendous grief,
called out to the king, who appeared not to care.
“If the Lord
does not help you, where can I
get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress ?”
But note that scripture tells us that he tore his robes (2 Kings
6:30). This was a drastic act for anyone in the bible, but there is an added
detail – “the people looked, and there, underneath, he had sackcloth on his
body.” (6:30)
The assumption was that nobody cared, least of all the king, for
he had everything – didn’t he? No, he had nothing – no food, no money, no power
to change anything. He did care, but felt powerless.
When you believe that no-one cares it is frighteningly easy to
blame others for your situation. The
king blamed Elisha.
Instead of working the problem, we try to work the person –
getting personalities in the way, and our own opinion of others, which are
often based on assumptions blur the truth. We base our assumptions on what we
see and hear, which can be very fickle indicators of reality.
ASSUME NOTHING, CHECK EVERYTHING
It is not just about communicating, although that is important. We
have incredible technology to communicate, but often fail to connect. Take time
to connect with people, before you start assuming.
ASSUMPTION 2 – If nobody cares, then nothing matters
What we see in 2 Kings 6 is that
because of the siege of the city, a whole value system changed.
“a donkey's head sold for eighty
shekelsa of
silver, and a quarter of a cabb of seed
podsc for five shekels.” (2 Kings 6:25).
The standard wage at the time was a shekel a month – so a donkey’s head
is costing the equivalent of your salary for 6 years and 8 months! Also the
words “quarter
of a cab of seed pods” (6:25) is
translated in some versions as “a cup of dove’s dung”! Note also that donkeys
were on the unclean list of animals for Jews, so they have been starved by this
siege to the point of utter and absolute desperation.
When you assume that nobody cares for you, nothing matters – the sense
of hopelessness and powerlessness is immense – as is the desire to go to the
extremes of life. You either lash out, or despair. The king in this account
chose to lash out at Elisha, believing him (and God) to be the source of the
siege. He commented
2 Kings 6:33
The king* said, "All this misery is from the Lord ! Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?"
It
looks as if Elisha has told the king to wait for God to intervene, but the king
is fed up of waiting – sound familiar?
Elisha addressed the real issue here – the issue of value. He said that
when God stepped in, the values present in times of trouble would return to
normal levels. But the people had got into the habit of assuming that only the
worse would befall them, and so they mocked the words God had spoken through
Elisha.
But there is another interesting group – the lepers.
2 Kings 7:3-4
3 Now
there were four men with leprosy* sitting at the entrance of the city gates.
"Why should we sit here waiting to die?" they asked each other. 4 "We
will starve if we stay here, but with the famine in the city, we will starve if
we go back there. So we might as well go out and surrender to the Aramean army.
If they let us live, so much the better. But if they kill us, we would have
died anyway."
The
lepers were the lowest of the low, having to exist outside the city walls.
Death faced them if they tried to go inside, and death faced them if they went
to the Aramean camp. They decided to surrender to the enemy, fatalistically
believing that nothing mattered now anyway.
They did not know that through the night, two miracles had happened.
- God had allowed the Arameans to
hear a sound so loud that :-
“it sounded like an
Army of horses and chariots (2 Kings
7:6)” They ran for their lives
- But notice that they were able to leave so
quietly that the watchmen on the walls had no idea they had gone!
A
number of assumptions going on here –
- The lepers assumed they would die
- The Arameans assumed the Israelite King had
obtained reinforcements from the Hittites and the Egyptians
- When the lepers returned to the city with the
news of the abandoned Aramean camp, the Israelite king assumed it was an
ambush tactic, and that the enemy was still lying in wait for them. He
refused to believe that God had given them a miracle.
We
often hear the phrase “The darkest hour is just before the dawn”. This is
actually true – God often performs incredible works at night-time – an
interesting word study for you!
While
we struggle to sleep, God is working out His plans and purposes, and there is a
morning coming when you will see just how much He has accomplished while you
worried!
ASSUMPTION #3 - If nothing
matters, then nothing will ever change
The
lepers speak to us of a fatalistic attitude that pervades society today.
We
are so bogged down by rules, regulations, health and safety issues, protocols,
political will and straightjacket guidelines that seem to suggest that nothing
will ever change, so we just have to face the inevitable, suck it up, and just
plod onwards.
The
messenger of the king in chapter 7 personifies this attitude. When Elisha told
him that God would provide food for them, he said “
2 Kings 7:2
“Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens,
could this happen?"
This
servant paid for his lack of faith with his life, for when the people in the
city realised what had happened in the enemy camp, and that there was more food
than they could ever wish for, they rushed out, trampling the servant to death.
Are
you at a point of believing that nothing can change? You have waited so very
long, and your faith tank is utterly empty?
God
is able to turn things around in a single day.
Assumptions
|
Realities
|
God is the King, and He can sort things
out
|
|
God Cares, and everything matters
|
|
God can change it in a day!
|
Conclusion
1.
Don’t assume – check
2.
Don’t believe Satan’s lies – check out
how God loves and cares for you in the Truth of His Word
3.
Escape the Blame Culture - Always work
the problem not the person
4.
God can change your situation around in
a single day – and this could be the day!
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