Weeping and Restoration

Domestic Violence

Friday marked White Ribbon Day. A day that has been set aside to acknowledge the epidemic that is throughout our society, the hideous and usually hidden atrocity we call domestic violence.

You may be less aware, but today has also been marked as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

So this morning, the plan is to address this issue, but I’m going to do that at the same time as concluding our series on Elijah and Elisha.

Now from the outset, I’ll acknowledge that this passage before us is not directly addressing what we call domestic abuse. But, that being said, my plan is to look at some of the lessons we can take from it, and I believe they suit very well the domestic abuse issue.

So, let me tell you my plan for this message:

I first want to introduce the issue of domestic violence with a few brief remarks about what the bible says on the issue.

I’m then going to shift gears, looking at the passage before us and giving consideration to the actually context.

And then I’m going to bring it all together and see how the passage can help us think better about domestic violence.

Intro to Domestic Abuse

Well, already I’ve inter-changeably used the terms Domestic Violence and Domestic Abuse. I’ve used the word ‘violence’ because that is how we most commonly refer to this hideous issue, however the abuse takes on more forms than just physical violence.

The abuse can also include, spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, economical abuse or even social abuse.

In each case, what we see is a dominant partner controlling the other is the different facets of life.

Now it is true that domestic violence is not always the man as the perpetrator. The man can also be the victim, and so I will clarify that all violence and abuse is wrong regardless of who the perpetrator and victim are. That being said, in the vast majority of cases, it is the man that is the perpetrator and the woman who is the victim. For this reason I will mostly speak of the woman as the victim, but what I look at will apply either way.

Statistics

Well, we could obviously spend a lot more time looking at the nature of this abuse, but I want to turn to some statistics, because I think it is here that we realise that this is not a few isolated instances.

Now it should be noted that statistics of this nature can be a little tricky to get because so much abuse does not get reported. But these stats at least give a little insight into the issue.

So if we take women who are 15 years of age or more, than as you see on your screen:

1 in 5 have experienced sexual violence

1 in 6 have experienced physical or sexual violence from a current or former partner, which, if you compare this to the previous stat, shows that most of this type of abuse comes within domestic relationships

1 in 4 have experienced emotional abuse

A staggering 1 in 3 have experienced physical violence

And 1 in 5 women have been stalked during their life time

The sad thing is that this is also having a huge impact on the kids as well. The stat I have up there shows that 1 in 4 children have been exposed to domestic violence.

I’ve also got the other stat up there showing that far too often the final result is death. Taken over a 12 month period, on average one woman is killed every week as a result of intimate partner violence.

Unfortunately, statistics also show that this problem knows no boundaries. It exists with the rich and with the poor. It exists with people of any colour. And unfortunately it doesn’t even know any religious boundaries. While I wasn’t able to find accurate stats on it, but certainly we know that domestic violence exists within church going families.

There are people even here today who I am aware have experience abuse of this nature. And I will take this time to acknowledge that part of what I want to do today is to make it clear that what happened to you was not acceptable and that we need to do what we can to change it.

The sad reality is that, whether you know it or not, each of you will know multiple women who have suffered due to this terrible problem. They are in your street. They are in your group of friends. They are everywhere - the problem is that big.

Biblical problem

As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to bring into this discussion, but before I do I want to just make a few brief remarks regarding some misunderstanding of Biblical passages.

In particular, the passage found in regarding wives submitting to their husbands. Now I recognise there are a variety of ways to understand what this means, and I’m not about to get into all the ins and outs of it now. However, regardless of your understanding of that passage, it can never, I repeat, never, justify a husband abusing their wife.

That passage in actually spends much more time describing how a husband needs to love their wife. It is completely incompatible for a husband to love their wife and to abuse them.

Instead of abuse, the picture the Bible provides for us is one where the family is a place of safety and security. The fact that so often this has failed is because we have turned our backs on God and no longer live as we should.

It is as we get back to the ideal, the very thing the Bible helps us to do, that we will start to see things change.

Elisha

Well, as I said before I want to bring the story of Elisha into this conversation. So I’m going to do somewhat of a gear change as we move into the world of Elisha, but I will draw these two parts together shortly.

Context

Well, this is actually the last in our series on Elijah and Elisha. As I’ve described during the earlier messages, we’re at a critical point in the history of Israel.

They’ve been at a low point with their relationship with Yahweh, but excitingly, we are about to see a new age, one in which God raises up numerous prophets, many of which we have their words recorded for us in what we describe as the five major prophets and 12 minor prophets. All of which help prepare us for what is to come in God’s plan for humanity.

It started with Elijah, which we looked at for a number of weeks, but then his ministry moved onto Elisha.

Last week we explored two particular miracles in the ministry of Elisha, namely helping a widow out of a debt, and a Shunammite woman whose son was miraculously brought back to life.

Now it’s the second of these stories that we need to pay attention to because it comes back into the story today.

So let’s just recap that a bit further. The woman is an unnamed woman, but we refer to her as the Shunammite because she comes from a town called Shunem. Now, this woman was actually a well-to-do woman.

So much so that she was in a position to add a room on her roof just for Elisha to stay in.

Though this woman seemingly had everything, God saw that she lacked a son, and so graciously allowed her to conceive. But unfortunately it all seemed to end in tragedy when her son suddenly died, but God, working through Elisha, brought the son back to life.

Now last week, I made a little slip up which you may have noticed - it was pointed out to me by my wife!

When I was making some comparison between other similar miracles in Scripture, I mistakenly

Now I realised I actually made a slip up last week which you may have noticed - it was pointed out to me by my wife!

When making comparisons with similar miracles in Scripture, I mistakenly called the Shunammite woman a widow, but she clearly wasn’t.

Well, she might not have been a widow in chapter 4, but though it doesn’t spell it out specifically for us in chapter 8, it would seem she is now. This is based on the assumption that the woman’s husband is not mentioned in the chapter and she seems to be making the big family decisions. (So in calling her a widow last week, maybe I was just a week early).

The Famine

Well, as now look into chapter 8 we find that there is a famine in the land. We’re not exactly sure of the time frame of this, but it is to last seven years.

Elisha foresees this famine and recognises that it will be best if she leaves the land for those years.

When we get to verse 3, we are now at the end of that seven year period and on the basis that she is making an appeal for her house and land, it would seem that her possessions had unfairly been taken advantage of.

One of those points being that the story ends with the need for her belongings and income to be restored to her.

The precise nature of what happened is a mystery but I want to highlight the unfair nature of it. You see, this woman rightfully owned that property and certain people took advantage of her when she was in a vulnerable position.

Now, while I recognise this is not domestic violence, yet I certainly think there is a connection there when you consider that this represents a domineering person taking advantage of the vulnerable.

Therefore it is assumed that during the seven year period,

Well, I’m going to come back to this connection but for the moment let’s just stay with this story and see what happens.

Restoration

Well, it’s one of those stories where it is just so evident that God is orchestrating the whole thing.

You see, verse 3 has the woman coming to the King with an appeal. The difficulty of course is that while she might have been a well-to-do sort of person, it would appear at least that she didn’t have her husband any more and probably doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on (so-to-speak).

But God works in mysterious ways, and so it just so happens that at the same time, Gehazi is there having a bit of a chin wag with the King. Who knows what sort of relationship Gehazi had with the king, but it doesn’t really matter.

What happens however is the king asks about some of Elisha’s work. By God’s providence, Gehazi happens to recount the great story of the Shunammite’s son being brought back to life.

And then lo and behold, who should walk in? The Shunammite of course. Now if that isn’t God orchestrating it, I don’t know what is.

Gehazi then says - that’s her, that’s the woman!

Suddenly the odds that this woman is going to be heard just grew exponentially. Of course the King rules in favour of the woman, and all of the belongings that had unfairly been taken from her are restored, including the income that should have been earned from her land.

Hazael

Now I want you to keep this miraculous restoration in your mind, because I’m going to come back to it when I integrate the theme of Domestic Violence into this story. But before I do, I’m going to go to the next part of the story in the chapter.

Now this is actually quite a curious little account.

You see it starts with Elisha going to Damascus. This is curious in itself, particularly once you recall that Damascus is the capital city of Aram which has been a long time foe of Israel. In fact, we skipped over chapters six and seven, but if you look back over them, Aram had spent much of that time terrorising Israel.

The Bible doesn’t tell us why he goes - that hasn’t stopped various commentators from speculating, but I think I’ll leave that speculation to them.

Whatever the reason, his visit was noticed by the leaders of Aram. The obviously recognised Elisha as something special - but don’t get too excited by that, they would have believed in lots of local deities and so they would have seen Elisha as just a means to access another local deity.

And that being the case, it would seem that they were particularly delighted by Elisha’s entry because the King was sick, and they wanted some divine wisdom on what was going to happen.

Who is Hazael?

Well, they send Hazael to talk with Elisha - but who is Hazael?

Well, we’ve actually heard his name before, but way back in , which was the chapter that Elijah heard God still small voice up on mount Horeb. Back up on this mountain, God told Elijah that Hazael would become the new king of Aram although curiously a lot has happened since that was told and so you might have been forgiven for thinking that that prophecy had been forgotten.

But curiously, Hazael is not given any lineage and it is generally assumed that he was likely a commoner who managed to work his way up in the army.

Hazael with Elisha

Well, Hazael approaches Elisha with lots of diplomacy asking him about what will happen with the Kings illness.

The answer Elisha gives almost sounds a little contradictory. He tells Hazael to tell the King that he will recover, but then says that in fact he will die.

Is Elisha actually telling Hazael to tell a lie?

Interestingly, this is one of those verses that has troubled translators because there are a few variations in the earliest manuscripts.

I don’t have time to get into all the ins and outs of the whole debate, but it would seem to me that the premise of what Elisha is getting across is that the illness won’t take the life of the King, but something, or more accurately, someone else will. He doesn’t state it, but I think it’s quite clear that Elisha knows full well that that someone is in fact Hazael himself.

But then comes the curious part. You see, after giving Hazael the answer, he then stops… and stares.

He fixes his gaze on Hazael, to the point that Hazael starts to feel a bit uncomfortable.

Then this fixed gaze turns into weeping. As Elisha looks into the eyes of this man, he can see the future, and he can do nothing but weep.

Hazael is feeling very awkward. After all, he’s probably not very used to weeping prophets. And so he asks: “Why is my lord weeping?”

Elisha does not hold back on what he sees.

It’s because of the harm that Hazael is to do to the Israelites.

He’s not sad because of the political upheaval that is about to occur in Aram. His sad because innocent people are going to have their houses set on fire. Men will die by the sword. Children are going to be dashed to the ground. And perhaps most horrifically, pregnant women are going to be ripped open.

The context for this is not domestic relationships, but yet in the echo’s of these words appear the very problem that we face today.

And just like Domestic Violence, there is this hiddeness about it. Hazael asks - but how?

To which Elisha reveal what was foretold to Elijah way back on Mount Horeb - you are to become king.

We could the epilogue in verse 14 and 15, with Hazael returning to the king, giving the message of the recovery, only to murder the king himself and take possession of the throne.

Application

Well, let’s now applies these stories to our issue this morning and see what we can learn.

Weeping

I want to draw my first main lesson from the second story, and in particular the prophets response of weeping.

I think the problem for us too often, is that we become de-sensitized to this sort of thing.

It’s in the movies we watch. It’s in the jokes we tell. It’s constantly in the news.

Because it is so constant we learn to push it back. We don’t want to feel uncomfortable like Hazael so we just dismiss it.

When we dismiss it, we also get the benefit that we also don’t have to deal with it. Assuming we are not in the middle of the problem ourselves, it’s a matter of out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

But let’s look at this from God’s perspective. When God sent Jesus to earth, we learn that a big part of it was to set the oppressed free. Right throughout the Bible we see God’s heart for the marginalised and the downtrodden.

God’s heart breaks when he sees this sort of injustice. And if we are his followers, we need to have hearts that break for what breaks his.

So rather than allowing this information to wash over, allow that Holy discontent to build up. Cry out to God. Allow the burden to sit with you.

This is real and it can not be ignored.

We might not all be called to be Domestic Violence advocates, but we can make a stand. We can stop telling inappropriate jokes. We can speak up when we see bad things happen, and not turn a blind eye.

Restoration

Now the second lesson I want to draw comes from the first story where we saw the Shunammite have her land restored.

The point I want to draw from this is that if we know that God cares about restoration, then so should we.

One of the sad realities of Domestic Violence is that the victim very often looses almost everything.

Sadly there are statistics that show that domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness.

It is this fact that the Baptist Association, with it’s public engagement group, has picked up on this year.

That is because during the course of the year, as part of their commitment to the cause, they surveyed many service providers who look after those suffering from this sort of abuse. What their survey showed, was that 70% of those who provide emergency shelter reported regularly turning away women in crisis.

It is so sad when you realise that these women have made a massive risk in leaving, and when they do, there are not even the services available to look after them in the way we should be.

Now in some ways this problem just seems so big. After all, what can we do, sitting here at Tanilba Bay with only very little resources available.

Well, on a bigger scale, maybe the answer is not much - but yet perhaps this is an area to consider how we can help.

You see, when we talk about restoration, we know that on a spiritual level we can offer the most amazing security you can ever get - becoming right before God. Yet while this is extremely important, we also need to realise that restoration should also cross over into the physical realm.

God cared for the physical needs of this Shunammite’s physical needs, and we need to care for the physical needs of those who are suffering in our community and neighbourhood.

Conclusion

This is a huge problem, and this side of Christ’s return it is likely to be around. But if we can begin to take a stand… to say that this is not right… to do what we can to bring at least some sort of resemblance of restoration to their life, then at least we can begin to make a difference now.

When God looks at sin, his heart breaks - but he also is about restoration.

Our heart needs to follow that of our heavenly Father and looking at the issue of domestic violence should also break our hearts and make us think about restoration.

Let’s pray...