Joram's Last Chance for Grace Meeting the Shunammite's Son

2 Kings
Written By Steve Estes

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Speaker: Steve Estes
Scripture: 2 Kings 8:1-6
September 1, 2024

2 Kings 8:1-6: Now Elisha had said to the woman whose son he had restored to life, “Go away with your family and stay for a while wherever you can, because the LORD has decreed a famine in the land that will last seven years.” The woman proceeded to do as the man of God said. She and her family went away and stayed in the land of the Philistines seven years.

At the end of the seven years she came back from the land of the Philistines and went to the king to beg for her house and land. The king was talking to Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, and had said, “Tell me about all the great things Elisha has done.” Just as Gehazi was telling the king how Elisha had restored the dead to life, the woman whose son Elisha had brought back to life came to beg the king for her house and land.

Gehazi said, “This is the woman, my lord the king, and this is her son whom Elisha restored to life.” The king asked the woman about it, and she told him.

Then he assigned an official to her case and said to him, “Give back everything that belonged to her, including all the income from her land from the day she left the country until now.”

Sermon Outline

1. Background to today’s text (2 Kings 4 for reference)

2. King Joram had already seen God’s divine kindness through Elisha

  • Aramean ambushes foiled

  • Aramean army delivered into Joram’s hands

  • Northern kingdom’s capital relieved of starvation

3. King Joram asks to hear more about Elisha’s great works

  • The widow in debt

  • Death in the stew

  • Feeding one hundred

  • A borrowed ax

  • The Shunammite woman’s son

4. Lessons

  • See how God cares for His own people

  • See how important our response to accounts of God’s mercies are

Background for next week’s sermon

  • 2 Kings 8:7-14, NIV: Hazael Murders Ben-Hadad

  • 2 Kings 8:25-29, NIV: Ahaziah King of Judah

Steve Estes

Steve Estes has been senior pastor at Brick Lane Community Church in Elverson, Pennsylvania, for over thirty-five years. 

Steve’s books and other writings began with his longtime friendship with Joni Eareckson Tada. As teenagers, they grappled with why God allowed Joni’s paralysis in a swimming accident in the Chesapeake Bay. Steve left for college . . . they kept in touch . . . she liked the style of his letters. When her 1976 autobiography Joni spawned thousands of reader responses, she asked Steve to join her in crafting a follow-up. The result was A Step Further in 1978.

Later, Wycliffe Bible Translators commissioned Steve to write the biography of former college friend Chet Bitterman, a Wycliffe linguist who was kidnapped and murdered by political terrorists in Colombia in 1981. Other books and articles followed, including When God Weeps (with Joni) and A Better December (a giveaway book for non-Christian friends at Christmas.)

Steve was educated at Westminster Theological Seminary, Columbia Bible College and Jerusalem University College in Israel. He has taught homiletics at Westminster and is a board member of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation.

But Steve would say his most significant life achievement was persuading college classmate Verna Stoltzfus to marry him in 1974.  They now have eight children and more grandchildren than can fit in a van.

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