Restoration of the Shunammite Woman's Land

Driving home: God had spoken and as a true Israelite whose heart was bound in covenant love and obedience to Jehovah once Jehovah had spoken it was hers to obey.

Martin describes the emotional attachment a woman would have to her home, filled with memories of her son's birth, death, and resurrection, to emphasize the difficulty of the Shunammite woman's obedience in leaving it.

She said, I dwell amongst my own people. I'm a contented woman. I'm content with what I have. My friends and associations and circumstances leave nothing to be desired.

18:48 - 19:00 Read in full sermon

Driving home: God had spoken and as a true Israelite whose heart was bound in covenant love and obedience to Jehovah once Jehovah had spoken it was hers to obey.

He compares the Shunammite woman's 'cry' to the king to the 'cry' of the children of Israel in bondage (Exodus 3:7) and the 'great cry' from Egypt (Exodus 12:30), illustrating the intensity of her distress and plea for justice.

Someone else is living in that home. And so distressed is this woman that with again total silence as to how she gained access to the king the next thing we know she is in the very presence of the king and the language in the original is very, very vivid and strong language. It says in verse 3 that when she returned she went forth to cry unto the king for her house and for her land. And the king said to her and that word cry is precisely the same word used in Exodus 3-7 about the cry of the children of Israel out of their bondage and exactly the same word used of the great cry that went up fro...

22:06 - 23:18 Read in full sermon

The point: Believe that God graciously provides for all who fear Him and keep His covenant, even if their specific provision is not explicitly recorded.

Martin uses the metaphor of a 'stingy provider who withholds crumbs in order to provide a banquet' to explain that God's ultimate provision for His children, even through death, is always for their greater good and eternal joy.

Is he or she a stingy provider who withholds crumbs in order to provide a banquet? You see, the child of God ultimately has nothing to fear. God has committed himself to the preservation of his own as long as he yet has work for them to do, as long as he purposes to make the monuments of his faithfulness in providing their material needs, he is committed to the provision of those needs. And if their work is done, and he chooses to use famine, or peril, or nakedness, or sword, or persecution to release them from all the heaviness and the burdens and the disappointments of this life, that they m...

35:11 - 36:35 Read in full sermon

The point: Learn that God is constantly at work for your good, even when you don't feel or perceive it, and look back to see His providential hand.

He details the precise timing of the king's conversation with Gehazi about Elisha's miracles, coinciding with the Shunammite woman's arrival to plead her case, illustrating the intricate and mysterious working of God's providence.

He just puts a little curiosity into the heart of a king who for the most part from his previous and subsequent record would be the last one in the world we'd ever expect to find talking about the things of God. Here is one of those wicked sons of Ahab who in the previous chapter you remember at the end of chapter 6 vows this rash vow to sever the head of the prophet of God. And now we find him for some strange reason interested in talking about the mighty deeds of the man of God. At the same time God moves a woman to start a journey out of Philistia back up to Shunan at such a time that will ...

38:11 - 39:37 Read in full sermon