Adopting a Supernatural Perspective (2 Kings 6:24–7:20)

“…and there was a great famine in Samaria as a result of that siege, that is, as a result of that attack, of that blockade of the city, so much so that a donkey’s head sold for 80 pieces of silver, and a fourth of a seah of dove’s dung for five pieces of silver.” Let me clarify here regarding “a seah of dove’s dung”: apparently, in the original Hebrew it is not necessarily what it supposedly means in Spanish; it is an unfortunate translation. Rather, it is a kind of very cheap food, but it is not what it seems.

“And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, a woman cried out to him, ‘Help, my lord, O king!’ And he said, ‘If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you—from the threshing floor or from the winepress?’ And the king said to her, ‘What is wrong?’ And she answered, ‘This woman said to me, “Give up your son so that we may eat him today, and tomorrow we will eat mine.” 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 has hidden her son.’ When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his clothes; and as he passed by upon the wall, the people saw the sackcloth he was wearing underneath against his body. And he said, ‘May God do so to me, and more also, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on him today.’”

And now we are going to skip to verse 1 of chapter 7.

Then Elisha said, “Hear the word of the Lord: Tomorrow at this time a seah of fine flour will sell for one shekel, and two seahs of barley for one shekel, at the gate of Samaria.” And an officer on whose arm the king leaned answered the man of God and said, “Even if the Lord were to make windows in heaven now, could this happen?” And he said, “Behold, you will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it.” At the entrance of the gate there were four leprous men, who said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die? If we try to enter the city, we will die there because of the famine in the city; and if we stay here, we will also die. Come, then, let us now go over to the camp of the Syrians. If they let us live, we will live; and if they put us to death, we will die.” So they arose at dusk to go to the camp of the Syrians, and when they reached the outskirts of the Syrian camp, there was no one there. For the Lord had caused the Syrian camp to hear the sound of chariots, the noise of horses, and the clamor of a great army. And they said to one another, “Behold, the king of Israel has hired the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians to come against us.” So they arose and fled at dusk, abandoning their tents, their horses, their donkeys, and the camp just as it was; and they had fled to save their lives.

Verse 9. “Then they said to one another, ‘We are not doing right. Today is a day of good news, and we are keeping silent. If we wait until daybreak, punishment will overtake us. Come, then, let us go at once, enter the city, and report the news to the king’s household.’”

Father, we bless Your name and ask that Your word descend upon us with power and clarify anything You wish to clarify in our lives, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Brothers and sisters, this passage is a continuation of the passage we studied a couple of Sundays ago, where we saw the king of Syria continually attacking the people of Israel. And we saw how the prophet Elisha, enlightened by God, worked a miracle so that the Syrian army was defeated and sent back to its homeland in disgrace. The prophet Elisha asked that his servant might see the glory of God, and the servant’s eyes were opened, and he saw that they were surrounded by angels and chariots of fire defending them. The Syrian army was blinded, mentally confused, and led into the very center of the city of Samaria. There the king gave them food and then sent them back to their homeland, defeated and humiliated.

Who would have thought that after this great favor had been shown to the Syrian army, they would have said, “Well, they defeated us and were kind to us; let us leave it at that and never attack them again.” Yet what happens? Once again, we see the Syrian army returning to the attack, and once again they besiege Samaria, the capital city, and proceed to attack the people of Israel. And this time the siege is much stronger than ever before. The crisis strikes the city in a terrible way, and we are given an illustration of just how dreadful the city’s state of crisis is. Two young women with their children make an agreement that one will give her son as food for both of them and that, once that food is gone, the other will hand over her son so that she too may share him; such was the famine in the city. And the second woman is not ashamed to go before the king and ask the king to “administer justice” by forcing the other woman to hand over her son so they can eat him. And the king, appalled and overwhelmed by the state of crisis his people have reached, practically collapses; and as he walks through the city utterly discouraged, the people can see that his skin is covered underneath with sackcloth as a sign of mourning before God. And in that first part of the account, we see several things:

1. The last time we discussed these passages, I said that Syria and the king of Syria, in his persistent hatred against Israel, are a type of Satan in his hatred against the people of God. Satan is always scheming and looking for ways to destroy the children of God. The element of evil is always trying to cause harm in our lives, seeking different strategies, setting traps, and constantly trying to destroy the well-being of God’s people. And we see here that Satan never gives up. He was defeated once; a little time passes, but then he returns to the attack once again. And there we have a first spiritual lesson for our lives: we can never let down our guard regarding our spiritual lives. The people of God—and I mean you and me—are always in a state of spiritual warfare.

Even as we move through the secular world of time and space, we must understand that there is always that dimension we spoke about last Sunday, that spiritual dimension in which the powers of the devil and of God operate. Even as we live in the twenty-first century, the century of psychiatry and the century of science, we must understand that those rules have not changed. We see this persistence of Satan, for example, in Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. When the Lord was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus defeated him several times, and finally Scripture says that when the Lord eventually told him, “Go away, Satan; depart from Me,” Satan went away and left Him for a time. In other words, on many other occasions the Lord had to confront the enemy’s efforts to destabilize and destroy His ministry.

The apostle Paul tells us to be sober and watchful because our adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion; and that is an image of persistence and consistency: he prowls around seeking someone to devour. And the Bible also says that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. Therefore, we must put on the whole armor of God. In fact, I believe that this is one of the most important perspectives or attitudes of the people of God who identify with a supernatural mindset. And remember that I have told you many times to help us, as a church, adopt that supernatural mindset. That mindset has different components, and one of them is the component of spiritual warfare.

There are many members of our Lord Jesus Christ and many good churches that, despite their sound theology, do not give the proper place to this concept of the spiritual warfare in which God’s people continually find themselves. And that does not mean that we give the devil more room or more importance than he deserves; it simply means understanding that the element of spiritual struggle is something of great importance in the believer’s life, together with other teachings. In other words, we must have balance. And this very important concept of continual spiritual warfare leads us to a second concept that is also part of the supernatural mindset.

2. And that is the concept of power, of the anointing. Now, the concept of spiritual warfare leads us to this concept of having supernatural power upon our lives. That is why Pentecostal people, people who embrace a supernatural mindset, place such emphasis on the importance of spiritual power as well. Why? Because if one is at war, warfare requires power. That is why the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6 that our warfare—that is, our struggle—is against spiritual powers.

And then he concludes, “Therefore, put on the whole armor of God.” There is the concept of power. And that is why the people of God must always be eager and hungry to find that source of power. And this leads us to the fact that, because we need power, that power comes from the Holy Spirit: from a life of intimacy with the Holy Spirit, of becoming immersed in the power that is in God through prayer, fasting, and reading the Word.

It is not enough to come to church, to tithe, or even to read the Bible. It is not enough to have a great deal of information about theology or, let us say, about biblical history or things of that sort. It is not enough simply to identify oneself as a member of a Christian religion. One must always remain hungry and always seek that source of power, that intimacy with God; that is the key to a victorious life.

That is to say, those are two principles—there are many others—in the supernatural life, but those two are very important, and we must understand them. And here in this passage the interplay between these two principles becomes very obvious: the king, with all his principles and good intentions, finds himself powerless to deal with this army that is persistently attacking his nation. This king is clearly sensitive to the suffering of his people, but all he can do is lament, put sackcloth on his body, and adopt a religious but ineffective posture against the enemy besieging his people. Meanwhile, the enemy continues to suffocate and strangle the capital of Israel and the entire nation more and more.

One of the things that motivated me to meditate on this passage is that we are living in a time when Satan has established a very tight siege around this nation and its culture. We see that, as in the time of this king, people have reached a point of extreme spiritual deterioration, as these two women illustrate. But it is also the same in our time; that is the comparison. We see that in our time we have reached a similar spiritual deterioration, where the enemy has taken control and there is nothing capable of resisting him. Even the church has been reduced to merely watching what is happening, and we wring our hands in despair, not knowing what we are going to do. That is, the official institutions see the deterioration, yet neither the official church nor the official government truly has the power to change the situation confronting us.

This king takes out his frustration on the powerful, true church, represented by Elisha. The king seems to harbor resentment against the prophet, whom he associates with what is happening. That is why the king later says, “May God do so to me, and more also, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on him today.” It reminds me of when Jezebel made a very similar threat against the prophet who preceded Elisha, namely the prophet Elijah.

When God sends His judgment upon nations and governments that have turned away from God, those governments often react against the church by persecuting it and identifying it, to a certain extent, with the deterioration society is experiencing. And yet we see here that the only hope for that nation besieged by the enemy is precisely the church of God, represented by the prophet Elisha. The prophet Elisha decides to respond to the king’s frustration, and notice here the mercy of God: instead of sending His judgment against this confused and hostile king, God decides to intervene on behalf of the nation and rescue it from its plight.

Elisha approaches this king and comes to him with a completely extraordinary and unprecedented prophecy. Elisha tells the king, “Tomorrow at this time a seah of fine flour will sell for one shekel, and two seahs of barley for one shekel, at the gate of Samaria.” It is as though we were to say that there is a great famine in this country and that a pound of rice costs 50 dollars and a 12-ounce bottle of oil costs 75 dollars, while all the economic systems indicate that any change will be impossible for many, many years. At that moment a prophetic voice rises and says: tomorrow at this very time—say, 10:40 tomorrow morning—that pound of rice that cost 50 dollars will cost 25 cents, and that bottle of oil that cost 75 dollars will cost 40 cents. Imagine it! People would say, “Impossible! That cannot happen!”

How many of you know that nothing is impossible for God? God often waits for things to reach their point of greatest evil and crisis before intervening. We have seen it time and again. Likewise, in our own lives, things may reach their point of greatest difficulty and desperation, and that is the moment God is waiting for so that He can enter with His gracious power and carry out the work of restoration. Why? Because God always wants to manifest His glory.

Many times He deliberately arranges things in such a way that it is clear that man does not have the answer, and that if any answer is given, it has to come from Him and no one else. That is one of the most constant themes throughout all of Scripture.

We see it in the Book of Exodus, when the Egyptian army is closing in on the people of Israel and the sea is in front of them and there is nothing they can do, and Moses himself becomes desperate, and God steps in and comes up with a spectacular solution by opening the Red Sea.

We see it with Gideon and his 300 men against an army of thousands. We see it with David fighting Goliath. We see it with Lazarus stinking in the tomb for four days and the Lord waiting until that moment arrives before bringing about a resurrection. God takes His time.

And I think, brothers and sisters, that at this time, when man’s wickedness seems to be reaching its fullest expression, this is precisely the time when God wants to intervene with the mighty power of His Spirit; this is the time. And what is needed is a church like the one represented by the prophet Elisha, with a supernatural mindset that is like an antenna capable of receiving the power of God and then channeling it into society. A church that is seeking more and more of God’s power, less spectacle and more intimacy with God.

This morning, when we began our time of prayer, you will remember, I confessed to you that my desire is that one Sunday we would do nothing else but spend the entire service in prayer. And ask the Lord to give me enough courage as a pastor to do that, because sometimes, as a pastor, one thinks, “Well, what about the visitors who may come, and what about those who do not like to pray very much and may become bored?” And I allow myself to be intimidated by that; I confess it.

But many times God wants His church to embrace that supernatural mindset of not coming merely for the show, but for every person who comes to understand that we come here as spiritual warriors to seek God’s blessing in our lives. I ask the Lord that all of you and I may grow in changing our format and our perception of what it truly means to come to the house of God. What do we come for, and what do we come seeking? And may it become possible, as we mature more in the Spirit, for us to yield more fully to the flow of God, as God desires in our gatherings and in our lives. Because I believe that is the only way God will do the work He has to do in this society. The situation is far too desperate to be solved by human strategies.

As in the case of Jericho, another desperate situation: the city wall, the wall of God’s enemies, is shut tight, very tight, and the people of God in their own strength do not have the ability to tear down and break through that wall and defeat the enemy. Only through a revelation of the divine strategy will the people of God be able to bring down that wall, enter, and defeat the enemy. And so it will be with our lives as well, because each one of us has our own Syrian army besieging our married life, our health, our emotional life, our life with our children, our work, and our finances, and we need the divine strategy, the mighty power of God, to break the enemy’s siege. And we need to use the armor of faith; that is why the apostle Paul says again, “Put on the whole armor of God.”

That is the church God wants: a church with a mindset of power. I am addressing all those brothers and sisters who are new to the faith and are coming to our church. I beg you, from the beginning, to commit yourselves to adopting that supernatural mindset in your lives. Do not be shaped by an institutional religious mindset. Do not eat that old bread that has no nourishment in it. We must drink that new wine of the revelation of God’s power.

Elisha comes out with a weapon that is completely inadequate according to the principles of reason, so to speak. Simply a word, the utterance of a prophetic word. Elisha declares something that will happen the next day; it is something so revolutionary and so scandalous that one of the king’s nobles laughs, expresses his skepticism, and says that it is impossible—even if God intervened, it could not happen. Once again, this royal official is a symbol of the establishment, that is, the official wing of society that cannot think in spiritual terms, that is always thinking in terms of reason and according to human patterns rather than God’s. And what does Elisha tell him? “Behold, you will see it tomorrow with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it.”

Why, brothers and sisters? Because when a person does not have faith, that person will never experience God’s miracles in his own life. You may see God working in others, but you will not be able to experience the fullness, the satisfaction, of seeing God intervene in your own life, because it is only through faith. That is why another one of the concepts of the supernatural mindset is the necessity of faith. And faith is the result of a whole series of practices in our lives that steadily increase it. Faith is like the believer’s spiritual health. It is like a child who grows up healthy because he eats well, has a good family life, receives love, exercises, and all these things contribute to his spiritual vigor.

In the same way, the believer of faith reaches that posture of faith because he has fed on that Word, because he has remained in prayer, because he remains in fellowship with other men and women of faith, and because he participates in all those things that contribute to his spiritual strengthening. Faith is the wire, the conductor of God’s power. Without it, we cannot receive the glory of God in our lives.

Immediately after this declaration by the prophet Elisha, the scene suddenly changes. And we are introduced to four leprous men standing in front of the city, and these four men represent something very interesting: the kind of people God wants to use at this time to reveal what He is going to do and is already doing. These men represent another constant element throughout all of Scripture: the God who uses the people no one else wants to use. The God who uses those at the bottom and those on the outside. In those Old Testament times, and in the New Testament as well, there was no one more despised than a person with leprosy. People feared them, first of all, because of the fear of contagion. They were also feared because of the physical deformities caused by leprosy, and they were feared as well because, religiously, they were unclean, and any contact with them also supposedly made the other person unclean before God. And that is why we find them at the entrance to the gate, that is, outside the city. And that represents the fact that God wants to use the lowly people of this earth.

I believe—and by this I do not mean to push anyone aside—that God wants to use the humble churches, and sometimes the ethnic churches, of this nation to bring revival to this nation. The poor churches, the ones no one is paying much attention to because they are not in strategic locations and do not have the money or social standing, but which are humble, are yearning, and believe in the power of God. These men also have something interesting: they find themselves in a state of desperation; they do not care whether they live or die. They have nothing to lose; they are lepers, already outside, on the margins of society. Their physical position also speaks of their social and spiritual position, in every sense of the word. Ironically, I believe that the fact that they are outside is what allows them to think differently from those who are inside—the king, his nobles, and all the people in power.

Look at what verse 3 says: “There were four leprous men at the entrance to the gate, and they said to one another, ‘Why are we sitting here until we die? If we tried to enter the city, we would die there because of the famine in the city, and if we stay here, we will also die. Come now, therefore, and let us go over to the camp of the Syrians. If they let us live, we will live; and if they put us to death, we will die.’”

They are thinking very sensibly. They have reached the point of desperation. They do not care whether they live or die; either way, we are going to die, so let us take action.

Brothers and sisters, I believe that the individuals who learn to think outside the box, outside official channels, outside religion, outside the institutional framework—those are the people to whom God will give the strategy to carry out His work at this time. Those of us who are willing to adopt the attitude that if we live, we live, and if we die, we die.

That was Esther’s attitude: “If I perish, let me perish,” but I am going to do something, remember? You know what, brothers and sisters? God cannot use you until you surrender your life, until you adopt the attitude of a dead person here on earth. The Lord Jesus Christ said, “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone; that is, it bears no fruit,” remember? “But if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Until you surrender everything, you cannot receive everything God has for you; and until we make ourselves poor in our proud and self-sufficient humanity, God cannot come in with His new revelation, with His new wine, and fill us. You have to empty yourself in order to receive God’s anointing in your life.

The Lord Jesus told the rich young man, “If you want to experience the peace of God, take your possessions and sell them, take the money and give it to the poor, and then, stripped of everything, come and follow Me.” But we know the story: the rich young man could not let go of his self-sufficiency or his social standing, and therefore he went away sad and disappointed.

I believe that churches are full of people who are in the church, but the church is not within us. We have not emptied ourselves of our love for the world, for our own selves, for our comfort, or for our material possessions. And we are still like the grain of wheat, whole. We say to Christ, “Break me,” but we are closed to God’s work in our lives. And there are still many people who say, “No, my time is mine,” “My money is mine,” “My family is mine,” “My profession is mine,” “My rest is mine,” “My soap opera is mine,” “My television is mine”; and when the Lord comes and asks us for these things in order to bring us into a deeper dimension of His glory, we tell Him, “No, Lord, You cannot enter there, because that is too precious to me.” And until we reach the point where we have given God all the title deeds and He is the one who holds them in His Kingdom, we cannot see God’s glory in our lives. Not until we reach the position of these lepers, who had nothing to give, nothing to lose, nothing to defend, because they had already lost everything. Until God has broken us, brothers and sisters, until He has brought us to a point where we desire nothing but His glory in our lives and possess nothing of our own because everything has been sold, everything given to God, we will not be able to see the glory of God. That is why these lepers are in the strategic position of being the first to detect that the situation has changed radically.

There are many more things to say, but perhaps we will continue with this passage later. What actually interested me most about this passage is the following: the situation has changed and no one realizes it. The Syrians had been defeated; they had fled. The people were free to move about, and yet everyone in Samaria still had the perspective that they were surrounded and besieged by the king of Syria. Reality has changed, but the people have no discernment to understand that radical change.

The strongest impression in my life lately is that the reality of this nation has changed. In the midst of a situation that looks terrible out there, we do not realize that God has delivered the enemy into our hands, and we must become aware of that.

On May 17, 2004, homosexuals will begin to marry here in Massachusetts, and yet I insist that this is the time when God has declared a change in the spiritual reality of this nation. And God’s people must now begin to move under the assumption that the enemy has been defeated and that the land is in our hands to possess. We must act now, going and taking the spoils, as the Hebrews did when they reached the camp and stocked up on everything that belonged to the enemy and used it to hold a great celebration and a great feast.

Brothers and sisters, I have no rational or even circumstantial justification for expressing this, but I feel in my spirit that I have to declare it verbally because when we declare things as Elisha did, they then become real in our lives. In my mind I tell myself, “Roberto, you are crazy to say this at this time.” Nevertheless, I understand that we must act by means of the prophetic word that we declare in the name of the Lord and in faith. That is the action I am personally taking at this time. I am taking a great risk in saying this, but I feel that when we sense God speaking to us in the Spirit, we must speak in faith even though nothing in the outside world supports us.

I say to this congregation: brothers and sisters, let us dare to preach the gospel to our friends, our neighbors, and our relatives, because the anointing of God is upon us to bring people to church. God wants you to dare to do unusual and bold things in your life, believing that God will honor and bless them—every one of you, brothers and sisters.

Begin praying for people to be healed. Begin daring to evangelize others and invite them to church. Begin giving boldly, believing that God is going to bless you and honor you. Begin speaking in faith that God is going to change your family, emotional, financial, employment, or housing situation. Immigration—God can change all those things. Begin to act, speak, and move with faith in the Spirit, and believe that God is going to uphold your life and fill it with His anointing, because God has defeated the enemy, as He did with the Syrian army, and God has given us all the land on which the soles of our feet tread. In this time, we are going to see the glory of God manifested; we are going to see it as never before in history. And God tells us to prepare our hearts and our lives because He is going to do things that will attract the attention of the whole world. Let us not look at the circumstances; let us begin to discern reality as God sees it, not as ordinary people see it. Let us be filled with the Holy Spirit. Let us adopt the spiritual, biblical perspective and move forward believing that God is going to honor our faith. Let us adopt a desperate, violent mindset like that of the lepers and take action, saying, “Well, if we die, let us die,” but we are going to do something. Let us strip ourselves of every personal interest in comfort or in defending our own interests and surrender everything to the Lord, and then we will see how He gives it all back to us many times over, blessed.

Let us stand up and ask the Lord to cause that supernatural spirit, that mindset, to descend upon us. Dare to do it in the name of the Lord. Dare to proclaim it. Brothers and sisters, please, let us ask the Lord to restore His power to us; let us say to the Lord: “Lord, change my heart, change my mind. We ask You, in the name of Jesus, to visit us with Your power and change our unbelieving minds. We thank You, Lord, because You have changed the reality around us.