Category: A Better Life Through Faith

Four starving outcasts stumbled onto an abandoned Syrian camp in the dark, ate their fill, hid the plunder, and then said the strangest thing in Scripture: “We do not well. This day is a day of good news, and we hold our peace.” Good news is a burden — the weight of having something a starving city needs. And it hands us two commandments of the negative kind: do not stay silent, and do not complain. The four lepers show us the first. The wilderness generation shows us the second. 📖 Scripture 2 Kings 7:9 — “Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good news, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king’s household.” Matthew 28:19-20 — “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations… and, lo, I am with you alway.” Philippians 2:14 — “Do all things without murmurings and disputings.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18 — “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” Contextual Grounding Samaria is under Syrian siege and the famine is so bad the people are starving in the streets. Elisha prophesies abundance within twenty-four hours — fine flour for a shekel at the gate. A lord of the city sneers that it cannot happen even if the Lord opens the windows of heaven, and Elisha answers: you will see it with your eyes, but you will not eat of it. That night four leprous men sitting outside the gate reason that they have nothing to lose — if the Syrians kill them, they die; if they surrender, they live. They walk into the camp and find it empty: the Lord had made the Syrians hear a noise of chariots and horses, and they fled in the twilight, leaving everything behind. Emotional & Theological Depth You are in possession of the best news that mankind has ever had — even if it has been available for two thousand years, people still ignore it and choose other things. That possession comes with a responsibility, and that is why the good news is a burden. Watch the lepers do the math. They have had a tough life — pain, agony, suffering, outcasts at the gate. And now they are standing in an abandoned camp full of food and silver and clothing. They could keep it. Nobody would ever know. But they say: this day is a day of good news, and we hold our peace — we do not well. If we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us. You can’t even wait until morning. That is the urgency of the good news: go tell somebody about Jesus and about the abundance of mercy and grace and love — right now, not tomorrow. And here is the second thing we must not do: complain. The Israelites leaving Egypt could have made the journey in eleven days. They took every opportunity to gripe and murmur, and they spent forty years wandering in the desert and never entered the promised land. Don’t complain ever, ever. Be thankful. Then there is the skeptic — the king’s officer who believed in the Lord, believed in heaven, even believed it had windows, but said the promise was impossible. He saw the abundance with his eyes and never ate of it, trampled at the gate.