Nothing is Impossible with God

May 25, 06:18 PM

“This is what the Lord says, ‘About this time tomorrow, a seah of flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.’” 2 Kings 7:1

There is an interesting account of a rather dramatic change in circumstances recorded in the book of 2 Kings. It happened several years after the reign of David. Israel had divided into two nations, Israel in the north and Judah to the south. This story takes place in the Northern Kingdom during the reign of Joram, son of the notorious king, Ahab, husband of Jezebel.

Ben-Haded, king of Aram (Syria) had attacked Samaria, laid siege to the city, cutting off all of its supply lines. The people in the city slowly starved to the point where it is recorded that the inhabitants had begun to eat even their own children. In the midst of these horrible circumstances, the prophet of God, Elisha, proclaimed that in one day there would be such an abundant supply of grain that flour and barley would be sold for next to nothing at the city gate. One of the king’s officers scoffed that this pronouncement saying that even if the Lord sent a miraculous rain immediately, this thing could not possibly take place.

The next day there were four men with leprosy hanging out by the city gate who basically concluded that they had nothing to lose. They could stay where they were and die of starvation, or go surrender themselves to the Arameans and maybe live or not – it really didn’t matter at that point. So they went out to the place where the army was camped only to find every soldier gone, leaving all their food, tents, clothing, and weapons. Apparently, God had caused them to hear the sound of a great army with chariots. They abandoned their camp in fear. The people of Samaria went out and took the plunder. They brought back so much booty that a seah of flour was sold for a shekel as was two seahs of barley.

God can change things in a hurry. What looks to be utterly hopeless one day can be patently different the next. There is nothing God cannot do. In fact, you cannot even imagine what God might do or how He might accomplish it. Nothing is impossible with God. Nothing. God altered the economics of an entire city over night. People surrounded and cut off one day found their enemies gone in an instant.

There are those who can only see things through the eyes of their own pragmatism. They are simply not able to comprehend divine intervention any more than they can fathom the love of God. They scoff at those who trust in God, calling them naïve and foolish for believing in their religion. Even those of us who are convinced that God can and does intervene miraculously in the course of human affairs sometimes hold our breath and wonder: can God in fact divide the sea? Even those of us who believe the Biblical witness at times ask: can God rescue us from the fiery furnace? In those moments when things look bleak and hopeless, we wonder: are the scoffers right? Are we foolish to trust God? Can He open the eyes of the blind, produce streams of water in the desert, cause the sun to retreat in its course, and raise the dead?

We are not silly for trusting in God, we are only foolish when we don’t.

The rest of the world will never understand our faith, but the time is coming when those who trust in their own vain philosophy will become so wrapped in fear that they flee from phantom sounds. But those who wait on the Lord will be steadfast in their hope. “He will have no fear of bad news: his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.” (Psalm 112:7) There is nothing God cannot do.

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