Third Presbyterian Sunday Morning Bible Study - November 7, 2021

Below is the Bible Study written by Jim Rudiger for his Sunday School Class which meets at Third Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, Virginia. It's based on 2 Kings 4:8-17.

What does it mean to be hospitable? Friendly. Being generous to guests. Making sure that the needs of your guests are met. Have you ever been surprised when a relative tells you they are coming to visit? What are the first questions you have? When? How long? When someone comes to stay in your home for several days, there are certain things that are going to happen. You have to stock up on food - not the food you like, but, the food they like. You’re going to lose privacy. You’re going to have to share your bathroom with people who don’t realize that the corner of the tub is reserved for your shampoo. You’ll have to interrupt your daily schedule to suit their schedule. You have to pick a restaurant that serves food that their picky kid will eat. I have to admit that when their car pulls away amid goodbye waves, a great relief sweeps over my body. That night Fifi, my dog, and I will collapse in the recliner and watch a black and white movie on TCM starring Jimmy Cagney and all I’ll have to do is scratch behind her ears.

Now, this was being hospitable to a family member. If it was friends, we still would have made sure they felt welcomed. But, what if it was a stranger? How does hospitality work then? What considerations come into play? First - is it safe? One night about 10:00 the door bell rang. When I went to the door I saw that it was young man I didn’t know, I opened the door and spoke through the storm door and asked what he wanted. He said that his car had broken down and could he come in and use my phone to call a friend to come and pick him up. Since I live on a dead end street, it seemed strange that his car would break down on my street. I told him that he could walk the four blocks to Little Creek Road and call at the Seven Eleven. He assured me that he only wanted to use the phone and wouldn’t bother me in any way.

Was I wrong in not being hospitable to this young man? Was I being paranoid? Here’s what happened after I told him “No.” I watched as he left. He walked to a car parked across the street and got into the passenger side. After a few minutes the driver started the car and as they moved past my house I saw that there were two other men in the back seat. Being hospitable doesn’t mean you have to be stupid.

In today’s study we meet a woman who took hospitality to a new level high. Not content with furnishing her guest a meal, she added on a room in her house so he could spend the night after eating the meal. I’d rank her up there as the number one hospitality queen.

Ahab is dead and look, here comes Elijah walking down the road. He looks up and there on a hill, and he sees a young man plowing a field with oxen. He walks over and puts his coat around the shoulders of the young man. That seems a little weird, doesn’t it? Did Elijah think the young man was cold? Was Elijah tired of the coat and was giving the guy a gift? In those days, a prophet putting his coat on a young man’s shoulders was like drafting the young man to be his disciple. This young man was Elisha. Elisha asked Elijah if he could go home and tell his mom and dad goodbye. Elijah was a little put off by the request but said, “You gotta do what you gotta do.” So, the young man ran home, kissed mom and shook dad’s hand and ran back to Elijah. When he got there he killed the oxen and fed the people living around there. You might say he had a going away party. After that Elisha was always as close to Elijah as Fifi is to me..

Then one day some prophets came to Elisha and told him that Elijah was going to die. Evidently, Elisha had been told by God that Elijah was about ready to leave this world, because he told them he already knew about it. Everywhere Elisha went he was told that Elijah was in his last days. They were near Jericho and with all the prophets watching, Elijah and Elisha walked down to the banks of the Jordan River and Elijah rolled up his cloak and smacked the water with it. All of the sudden the waters rolled up on each side and Elijah and Elisha strolled across to the far bank. When they got there, Elijah put his cloak on Elisha’s shoulders and no sooner had he done this, than a whirl wind lifted Elijah and he kept going straight up until he was out of sight. Elisha was left to carry on for God after getting assurances that he would have all the powers that Elijah had. And that is how Elisha became the chief prophet in Israel.

One day a prophet’s widow came to him and told him that she and her children were stone broke. In fact she had been forced to borrow money to get food and now she couldn’t pay it back. The man she owed the money to said that if she didn’t pay up, he was going to take her children from her and they would be his slaves. There was no family for her to turn to, so she came to Elisha. He asked her if she had anything of value left in her house. She said the only thing left was a small jar of oil. Elisha told her to go to all of her neighbors and borrow every empty container she could find and bring them back to her house.

There were jugs, pans, tubs and two liter bottles filling every empty space in her house. When she got all of her children in the house and shut the door, she was to take her small jar of oil and start filling the empty containers. She did as she was told and as she filled the first container, she found that there was still oil in her small jar, so, she started filling a second container. This kept up until all of the containers she had gathered were full of oil. Elisha told her to take all of the filled containers down to the market place and sell the oil. When she was finished selling the oil, she had made enough money to pay off her debt with some oil left over to take care of her for the rest of her life. Now that’s a stimulus package that really worked.

And that brings us up to today’s study.

2 Kings 4: 8 One day Elisha was passing through Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived, who urged him ho have a meal. So whenever he passed that way, he would stop there for a meal. 9 She said to her husband, “Look, I am sure that this man who regularly passes our way is a holy man of God. 10 Let us make a small roof chamber with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that he can there whenever he comes to us.”

What do we find Elisha doing? He was walking through Shunem which was a little south of Mount Carmel. Who does he meet? A rich woman. In the other story, he dealt with a very poor woman and now he is talking with a rich gal. You get the idea that he might have stopped and talked with her every time he passed through town. Maybe she offered him a cool drink of water as they talked. Well, after a while the woman asked Elisha to stay for supper. After that, any time he was in the neighborhood, he would drop in and have supper with she and her husband. This must have went on for quite a while.

Elisha never told her that he was a prophet, but, she has a feeling about him. What does she say about him to her husband? He is a holy man. The woman came to the conclusion about him being a prophet all by herself. How did she know he was a prophet? Maybe it was how he talked. Maybe it was the way he felt about God. Maybe an angel whispered in her ear. Whatever it was, the woman picked up on it. So, the woman and her husband were talking one day and she said, “You know, Elisha is always dropping by to have supper with us, but I notice that after supper he takes his cloak and sleeps under that tree over there. I think it would nice if we added on a room to our house so that after supper, he can get a good night’s sleep in his own bed before traveling on.” Does she fit our definition of hospitality? Hospitality was a big thing in the Hebrew culture back then, but building a room for your guest was never expected. Just think about this, how many of you would build on a room for even a relative who ate a lot of meals at your house?

Her husband went along with the new room idea, so he had plans drawn up to add a room up on the roof. It wasn’t like he was straightening up the attic so it could serve as a bedroom. This was a brand new room addition. Why not build the room on the ground attached to their house? Being on the roof had lots of advantages. It was private - away from the family goings on below, probably with outside steps leading up to the room. It got the cool night breezes. After the room was completed, she did something very girly. A room and bed wasn’t enough. She had to decorate this guest room, too. What else does her poor husband have to pay for? A table. A chair. Not any old chair. I’ll bet it was a Lazy-boy. A lamp with lots of oil.

What is so great about this story is that it tells us a lot about Elisha. First. He doesn’t use his status of prophet to shame the woman into giving him a meal. Second. The first story I told you about was Elisha dealing with a poor broke women. And now he is dealing with a rich women. For Elisha, the amount of money they had wasn’t important. One woman was poor as a church mouse and the other was the Warren Buffett of Shunem and yet they were both rich in the spirit.

2 Kings 4: 11 On day when he came there, he went up to the chamber and lay down there. 12 He said to his servant Gehazi, “Call the Shunammite woman.” When he had called her, she stood before him. 13 He said to him, “Say to her, ‘Since you have taken all this trouble for us, what may be done four you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?’” She answered, “I live among my own people.” 14 He said, “What then may be done for her?” Gehazi answered, “Well, she has no son, and her husband is old.” 15 He said, “Call her” When he had called her, she stood at the door. 16 He said, “At this season, in due time, you shall embrace a son. She replied, “No, my Lord, O man of God; do not deceive your servant.”

So, every time Elisha passed through Shunem, he ate and spent the night at this woman’s house. Then one day when he was with his servant in his room at the house, he said, “You know. I wish that I could do something in return for how this woman has treated me.” So, he had Gehazi, his servant, go down and bring the woman up. Gehazi went downstairs and called for the woman and when she came, he said, “Since you have been so kind and generous to him, Elisha wants to do something for you. Look, he has a lot of pull with the king. If you want, Elisha will speak to the king about any problems you are having.” I believe the woman was sincerely upset with this suggestion. What she had done for Elisha was because she saw Elisha as God’s man and wanted to do something for God not particularly for Elisha. To accept something for serving God took away the gift she was making.

Have you ever done something out of the goodness of your heart and then have the person insist on paying you back? Doesn’t it seem to diminish what you did? How does the woman respond? “I live with my own people.” What in the world does that mean? “If I ever need anything, I have plenty of family around to help me out. In other words, What I did was a gift to God. Don’t give that gift back.”

Did this dissuade Elisha? Not a bit. “There is bound to be something that she really wants that even her family can’t give her.” Evidently, Gehazi had been hanging around town and overheard some of the woman’s relative talking and found out that the woman didn’t have any children. The relatives had said how sad it was. She was such a loving and caring woman. She would have made a great mom. Gehazi said, “Well I did hear talk around town that she doesn’t have any children and her husband is getting really old so her prospects for having a kid are running out.” Unfortunately, that boat had sailed.

The light went on in Elisha’s head. “Gehazi, call her up here right this minute”. The woman climbed the stair and stood in the door wondering what was going on. In all the times Elisha had stayed with them, he had never asked her to come up to his room. Can’t you see Elisha? So happy to find something that he could do to return this woman’s kindness. He pulls the chair over to the woman. “You better sit down because I have some good news for you. Next year, when the time comes, you are going to have a son. When I come back next year, you will be cradling a little boy in your arms.”

How did she accept this news? “Don’t lead me on. Don’t build up my hopes and then have them dashed.” I imagine that she had spent many a day hoping that she would find that she was pregnant. Or, maybe she had become pregnant, once, only to have a miscarriage. She begs Elisha, “As a Prophet, Don’t break my heart again. Don’t put me through the pain of failure again.” She had worked through this thing and had found other ways to occupy her need for a child. It just wasn’t meant to be that she have a child and she accepted that. Elisha knew that at this time, more words would not soothe her pain. Only time and the physical evidence of a filling womb would answer her doubts and allow her to believe that she was going to have a baby.

2 Kings 4: 17 The woman conceived and bore a son at that season in due time, as Elisha had declared to her.

And did she have a baby? Right on time, nine months later, just like Elisha said. What a great way for our story to end. It’s like a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” movie. A nice person. A person we have gotten to know and like gets a gift that she never dared to hope for. A person willing to first feed a stranger because she felt that he was a prophet. Then going so far as building him a room on her house and furnishing it, I’m sure, with new furniture. Even better than furniture bought on sale at Haynes. How do you like this story? When you see or hear a good story with a sweet ending, don’t you sometime wish there would be more - a sequel? Well, guess what? Here’s the sequel.

The boy grows up and is liked by everybody. His mother is so proud of the way he has grown. One day he goes out into the field to help out his dad harvest the crop. As they work side by side, the boy grabs his head and cries out. His dad rushes over to him as the boy moans, “My head, My head.” And with that he falls unconscious in his father’s arms. His dad yells for help and the men in the field carry the unconscious boy back to his house. The mother runs out and grabs the child. She does all she can to soothe his pain as she holds him in her lap.

Then, about noon, the boy gasps and dies in his mother’s arms. She carries his body up the steps to Elisha’s room and gently lays him on the bed. Quietly, she walks through the door and closes it. She tells her husband to send a servant for a donkey so she can ride out to find Elisha.

Can you imagine how she must have been feeling? This boy was everything to her. He had brought a new future for she and her husband. There would be a wedding and then grand children. So much to look forward to. And now those dreams lay lifeless in that upstairs bedroom. Her husband is suffering the lost just as much as she is. The boy is gone. What can Elisha do about it now? The wife just hugs her husband and says, “When I find Elisha, everything will be all right.” And with that, she heads off for Mount Carmel and Elisha.

Elisha sees her riding toward him and he tells Gehazi to go out and meet her. Find out how she is doing. And her husband. And that fine son, how is he doing? When Gehazi got to her, the woman didn’t let on what had happened. She said everyone was all right. Maybe she was afraid that if Gehazi knew about her son, he wouldn’t let her see Elisha. Gehazi leads the woman to Elisha and he greets her. All of the sudden the woman drops to the floor and grabs Elisha around his feet. Gehazi rushed over to pull the woman away, but, Elisha tells him that it’s all right. He can see that the woman is very upset and it puzzled him that God had not said anything to him about what could have upset her.

With all the hurt that can come only from losing your child, the women looked up with tear stained cheeks and asked, “Did I ask God to give me a child? Didn’t I beg you not to break my heart? Now my son is dead. What are you going to do about it?” Elisha turned to Gehazi and told him to get over to Shunem as fast as he can. When he gets to the woman’s house, go straight up to the body of the boy and place Elisha’s staff on the boy’s face. Gehazi leaves and Elisha comforts the crying mother. “Don’t worry. As God is my witness, I won’t leave you until this hurt is repaired.” With that he followed the woman back to Shunem.

When they got to the house, Gehazi was standing there. He had done just as Elisha had said, but, nothing happened. The boy didn’t awake. Elisha climbed the stairs and opened the door. There laying on the bed was the boy. Elisha prayed and then went over and lay on the boy. His eyes looked into the closed eyes of the boy. He held the boy’s hands. Every muscle in Elisha’s body strained as he tried to will the boy awake.

And then, he felt the cold hands start to warm. A faint breath escaped the boy’s lips. And then his eyelids fluttered. Elisha went to the door and told Gehazi to send the boy’s mother up. The woman didn’t know what to expect. Would Elisha tell her it was too late? Too much time had elapsed. Would she see the boy just as she had left him stretched out, still, on the bed? Elisha met her at the door. Looking into her questioning eyes, he simply said, “Your son asked for you.” She fell at Elisha’s feet and bowed thankfully. Then she got up and ran to her son and took him in her arms.

So, somebody is coming to visit you. How are you going to prepare for him? You going to feed him? You going to build on a spare room for him? Well. I have good news for you. The person visiting you doesn’t want any of those things. In fact, he is visiting you to tell you that he is preparing a room for you and you are his guest at a great banquet in a heavenly hall. And all the hospitality required of us is to answer the door when Christ knocks and invite him in.

Prayer: Father, bless those times we have together with our friends and family. Whether it is a quiet dinner, a Christmas Eve party or a boat out on the Bay, may we never forget that where we gather, you are there also. Amen.