34 Four Lepers and What They Found

FOUR LEPERS AND WHAT THEY FOUND
TEXT: 2 Kings 7:3-8a

SUMMARY:
The fact that God’s intervention on behalf of Israel is revealed to helpless lepers is an apt illustration of His salvation of sinners.

I. THEIR CONDITION POINTS TO THEIR HELPLESSNESS, v. 3a.
A. Leprosy was a Very Real, Physical Disease.
B. Leprosy Pictures a Very Real Spiritual Disease.

II. THEIR RESPONSE TO THEIR CONDITION POINTS TO THE DUTY IMPOSED ON SINNERS, vv. 3b-5a.
A. A Hopeless Predicament.
B. A Hopeful Response. “Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation [Rom. 5:6 8:7]; so as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin [Eph. 2:1,5], is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereto.” (1689 LBC, “Of Free Will”)

III. GOD’S RESPONSE TO THEIR CONDITION POINTS TO THE ONLY SOURCE OF SALVATION, vv. 5b-8a. The saving work of God:
A. No human help of any kind. “[Sinners are] by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3), the servants of sin, the subjects of death (Rom. 6:20; 5:12), and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus set them free.” (1689 LBC, “Of the Fall of Man, Of Sin, and Of Its Punishment”)
B. From the Heart of a Merciful God.
C. Blessings that cannot be numbered.