LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1995, Page 72

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72 CONVENTION SERMON

A lot of you are salaried people. There comes that point
during the year when you find yourself being brought in to
be told-what has happened to your salary. I suppose you
begin to think, “Well, maybe if I just get a cost-of-living in-
crease, everything is going to be pretty nice, or maybe a
cost-of-living increase plus a little bit more.” So you go in
to the boss, and the boss sits down and says, “Well, ’'ve got
your salary figure for next year.” You take a deep breath.
He turns and hands you the sheet, and lo and behold, you
not only received a cost-of-living increase and a little bit
more, but you received a tremendous raise. Your boss says,
“I appreciate the work that you are doing, and I wanted to
show it to you in your salary.” What do you do? You go out
and call your wife and say, “Honey, guess what! I got a
raise the likes of which I would never have dreamed.” It’s
good news. You want to share it with others.

It’s rather interesting in our text for this evening that
we find four men who became possessors of some fantasti-
_ eally good news. But instead of instantly wanting to share
it with others who were around them, the first thought they
had was that they were just going to keep that good news to
themselves, Until all at once, God, through the power of His
Spirit, pricked their conscience and asked them the ques-
tion, “What are you going to do with this good news? Keep
it to yourself or share it with the world?” So it is on this
theme that I would like to speak to you this evening: “What
are you going to do with this good news?”

You know, as you look back into the Old Testament
Scriptures, perhaps you will recognize that this particular
event took place about 800 B.c. As you think of the children
of Israel, you realize that they were a theocracy. That
means that God ruled them. They did not have an earthly
king. But they desired an earthly king very much, like the
other nations they saw around them. And so it was that
God allowed them to have an earthly king. At first it was
Saul, and then there was David, and then there was
Solomon. And then all at once they decided that instead of
having one kingdom and one earthly king there would be
two kingdoms with 2 tribes in one and 10 tribes in the
other. And there was some friction there. Militarily it was a

lousy decision. But what was even worse is that they began |

to pick kings for themselves who were not God-fearing men
who would lead them along the paths of righteousness.
Rather, they were kings who introduced Baal worship and
who led the people away from God, rather than to God. God
sent to them one prophet after another, Elijah, Elisha, and
so on, who called the people of God to repentance. But the
people of God paid no attention to this until finally God de-
cided there was only one thing left to do. And that was that
He would allow both the Northern Kingdom and the South-
ern Kingdom to be carried away into captivity, the North-
ern Kingdom about 100 years prior to the Southern King-
dom. ;

Our text concerns one of the cities of the Northern King-
dom. And it is under siege. The city is Samaria. We are told
it was a walled city. They had built a wall with gates
around their city, and they felt that any time they were at-
tacked, they would simply close the gates, and those who
would attack would have a tough time defeating them. So
when they saw the Arameans coming, they simply closed
the gates, and they thought, “They'll go on somewhere

else.” But the Arameans were in no hurry, and so they com-

pletely surrounded the city and said, “We'll just sit them

out! And when the water and food runs short, they will

have to come out, and when they do, we will destroy the.
city.” It’s at that point that our text begins. It tells us that

there were four men who found themselves caught in this

standoff. Those four men were lepers. They had that dread-

ful disease that was feared so viciously. The hands, the

ears, and the chin would begin to turn white. It became

very obvious that they were lepers. Lepers would have to

separate themselves from others. When they saw people

coming, they had to cry out, “Leper, leper.” Now these men
find themselves at the gate of the city, and they can’t go in-

side because they are lepers and the gate is closed. They
cannot go to the Arameans because they are dead sure that
they will be killed. At first the people had quite a bit of pity
for them, and they dropped food and bags of water over to
them. But when the water and the food began to get a little
scarce, they stopped feeding these lepers on the other side
of the gate. So the lepers said to themselves, “You know, if
we stay out here we're going to starve. Even if we tried to
get into the city, it isn’t any better there because they are
short of food. So I'll tell you what let’s do. Let’s just walk
right straight out into the camp of the Arameans. And if
they see that we are lepers, and they have pity on us and
let us go through their lines, then we'll live, and if they kill
us, then we are dead. But we've got to decide now.”

It’s rather interesting that it says that about that time
God caused the Arameans to hear the sound of a mighty
army approaching from someplace else. And you know how
rumors run around. Rumors ran through the camp of the
Arameans, and you know what happened? They started
saying, “I bet you one of those Israelites got through our
lines at night and went over and made a truce with the Hit-
tites or the Egyptians, and they’re going to come and de-
stroy us rather than we destroy the people of Samaria.”
And as this rumor spread through the camp, they began to
run for their lives. They left their food and their clothing
and their gold and their silver, and they ran for their
lives—because life is always more valuable than posses-
sions.

And now we find these four lepers walking into the
camp of the Arameans, and nobody is there. They go into
‘the tents, and there is food and water, so they eat and
drink. There are new clothes that they put on, and they
dress themselves well. They find silver and gold, and they
take it out and dig holes away from the camp and bury it.
And they go back and find other possessions, and they take
those out and bury those also. And if they think of the peo-
ple back at Samaria, I know what they must have thought,
“Well, they stopped feeding us, we don’t have to remember
them.” :

Until all at once we are told God pricked their con- |
‘science with the question, “What are you going to do with-
the good news?” And then they said, “What we are doing is-
not right. Let us go to the king’s people right now and tell
them the good news. The Arameans are gone.”

Now my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is it really
all that difficult for you and for me in this opening service
to see what God is trying to say to us through His almighty
Spirit-filled Word? You and I have become possessors of