Marcus Mecum - Kings Think Differently
If you’ve got your Bibles turn with me to 2 Kings 8, let’s look at verse 1. 2 Kings 8:1. If you’re there say, «I’m there». Just look at the screen and fake it. Say, «I’m there».
«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'. So 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 for seven years. At the end of the seven years she came back from the land of the Philistines and went to appeal to the king for her house and land. The king was talking to Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, and said, 'tell me about all the great things Elisha has done'. And so Gehazi was telling the king about how Elisha had restored the dead to life. And the woman whose son Elisha had brought back to life came to appeal to the king for her house and land. And Gehazi said, 'this is the woman, my Lord the king, and this is her son whom Elisha restored to life'. And 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 the income from her land from the day she left this country until now'».
I want you to notice something very interesting in this story and that is she came with one level of expectation. She came with an idea of what she needed in life and the king, as kings do, exceeded her expectations because kings think different, and that’s what I wanna talk to you about over the next few moments. «Kings think different». If you’ve ever studied the history of kings, if you’ve ever gone back and looked at them, I’ve done much study on the subject especially just with 1 and 2 Samuel or 1 and 2 Kings. Just, really, the Bible centers a lot on the life of kings. And they’re not like normal people, for several reasons, they just are more outrageous, they’re more eccentric, they don’t see the same limits that people do. They just think differently.
For example, when Esther goes to the king of Israel because she found favor in his sight, his response was, «I’m gonna give you up to half the kingdom». I mean, who can do something like that? Who can just go ahead and without even discussing it just say, «I’m gonna give you half the kingdom». Well, kings think different than we do. We know not just kings over nations or countries throughout history, but even kings in different spheres we can look at how they think different. For example, James Bennett in 1841, he is the guy that began the New York tribune which became the most widely distributed newspaper in the world, and as a result he became incredibly wealthy and rich. And they called him the king of of newspapers.
And for example of how kings think different, he went to one of his favorite restaurant and while he was there he notices that there’s a couple sitting at his favorite table in the restaurant. And he goes to the owner and says, «Hey, you know who I am. That’s my table. I wanna sit in my table». And the owner says, «I’m so sorry. The couple just sat down, they just got their food. If you wanna wait for a few minutes or any of the other tables you can have 'em, but right now I can’t give you that table». And he says, «You don’t understand. I came all the way here. That’s my table. I wanna sit at that table». And the owner says, «I’m sorry. Unfortunately, I’m not gonna do that to that couple». And he said, «How much for this restaurant»? He said, «Sir, the restaurant’s not for sale». He says, «That’s not true. I’m gonna ask you again, how much for this restaurant»?
And so the owner threw out just a overwhelming, no way that he would buy the restaurant many times over what it was worth. And he mentioned the price and right there he wrote a check and bought the restaurant. The owner runs out of the restaurant with the check in his hand and says nothing to nobody. And here, James Bennett goes to the table where this couple is sitting and he says, «Excuse me, you’re sitting at my table. I need you to move. You can sit at any table in this restaurant». And they say, «No, I’m sorry, we’re eating our meal. We’re gonna finish.». He says, «You don’t understand. This is my restaurant, this is my table. You can sit anywhere you want but I need you to get up and move right now».
And so they got up, they moved, he sat down, he ordered his food, he had a great meal. At the end of his meal he calls the waiter over and he says, «This is your tip,» and he gives the waiter the restaurant that he had just bought. Because kings think different. Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll. Early in his career before he was widely known but yet he had become successful enough that he could make major purchases. And he walks into a Cadillac dealer, of course, he loved Cadillacs. And he walks in, and the salesman immediately dismisses him. He says, «Sir, I would like to look at that car'. And the salesman says, 'get outta here kid, you could never afford one of these cars or you’re gonna have to work your whole life to maybe afford one of these cars».
And so, Elvis Presley, he leaves, he goes outback and there’s a African American young boy about the age of 14 washing cars. He says, «Son, come with me we’re gonna go into the dealership. I want to do something for you». So they go in the, excuse me, the dealership together and there he says, he pulls out a wad of cash, thousands and thousands of dollars and he says, «I demand to speak to the owner of this dealership right now». So the owner hears about all the cash that this kid had, runs out stumbling over himself to get out there. «How may I help you»? And he says, «Well I wanna buy that car right there and then I wanna buy seven more for my family and my friend, but I’m gonna only do it on one condition, that is you give all the commission to this young boy, and you give none to that jerk right over there». Because kings think different. I’m going somewhere. They think different. They don’t think how we think. The king of Saudi Arabia was a avid golf fan, he loved the sport of golf, and he was trying to improve his golf game.
And he hears about a golf coach that had helped pros around the world, and so he sends word that he would like to hire this golf coach to come to Saudi Arabia to help his game. And so, the golf coach agrees, and this king sends his 747 all the way over to America to pick up this golf coach and fly him all the way back. Just one person. Sends his 747 to get him, puts him up in a presidential suite at a 5-star hotel. I mean, pulls out all the stops just to spend a couple hours with him everyday working on his golf game. Well, in a short period of time, just a couple weeks, he had drastically improved his golf game, which is a big deal, and so the king wanted to do something for the golf coach before he left. And the golf coach says, «Listen, you’ve already brought me over on 747, you put me up, you’ve paid me beyond what I could’ve ever imagined, I’m good». And the king says, «No, I want to do something for you. Is there anything that I could give you»?
And the guy just kinda says, «Well, you know, I am someone that, I like to collect golf clubs, and so maybe you could get me a set or find me a golf club of some type and that would be more than enough». He gets on the plane, flies back home. Two weeks go by, and he gets a letter in the mail, and it’s a certified letter from the king. He reads the letter, and he notices attached to it is a deed to a 500 acre golf club. He thought he would get like a driver or a putter or a pitching wedge, but the king thinks different. In this story, again, that I preached many times, I saw something that I have never seen before, and there’s the probability that if you’ve heard this story you’ve also missed it. And the story goes something like this. The normal part of the story that I’ve preached many times is the prophet Elisha is going through this community and as he goes through it, a woman notices that he has no place to stay.
And so, she comes up with this idea, she presents it to her husband that they build an addition on their house, a room on their house, so whenever the prophet Elisha would come through he would have a place to stay. And they decorate it specifically for the prophet. And every time he comes through he goes and stays at this woman’s house. Just as a result of him being so moved by her willingness to look out for him in that way he asked her if there’s anything that she needed. And it comes to his attention that she had always desired, she had a dream to have a son at some point. The problem was she was barren, and she had tried many times, and they had given up.
And so, the prophet Elisha looks at the woman and says, «One year from now that dream, that desire, what’s in your heart, is going to happen. You’re going to have a son». Just as the prophet said, one year later, she gives birth to this miracle son. She raises him, she’s taking care of him, she’s nurtured him. He becomes a young man and he’s out in the field with his dad. We don’t know if it was because of a sun stroke or maybe he hit his head in some way, but he immediately starts to cry out in a loud voice, «My head, my head». And he falls over. The father picks the young boy up, he’s lifeless in the fathers hands, goes to the house, finds the Shunammite woman, lays the young boy, the father lays that young boy in her hands and she’s sitting there on the porch with the body of her lifeless son in her arms. And she has no clue what to do so she takes the boy to the prophets room that she had designed and built, lays him in the bed, and immediately runs to get the prophet to come.
And the prophet Elisha comes, lays on the young boy, and he is restored back to like. She built a room for a miracle she had no idea that she would need at some point. And I’ve preached that many times. I’ve preached every piece of that, but I’ve completely missed the text that we just read and that was, after the miracle she was forced to vacate this miracle house, the place where she saw her boy’s life be given back to him. She was forced to leave it because of the famine that broke out. For seven years she’s in the land of the Philistines. This culture that’s Godless. Literally, she is living in enemy territory, surrounded by threats every day. Raising her miracle son in unimaginable conditions. She went from a revival to survival. She went from a miracle to an absolute mess. She’s raising her son in this environment and it’s no place, she knows, this is no place to raise a family.
Of all the places I could raise my son, this is not the way I want him to be raised, in fear because of the famine, not sure how she’ll provide for him. Much like in our world today with inflation and all these things, the fear of how are we going to keep up with the necessary things of life. She’s dealing with the fear of provision. On top of all that she’s surrounded by a hostile culture towards people of her faith, and she’s looking at enemies everywhere trying to find a way to rob her family and rob her boy of their faith. And finally, after seven years of this, she goes back to Israel, but she’s lost everything. She’s lost the house, she lost the land during those seven years. She has nothing left. As a last ditch effort she says, «I wanna go to see the king». Well, while she’s on her way to see the king, the king has no idea what’s going on and she has no idea what’s happening with the king. But the king asked Gehazi who was the servant of Elisha, we read it, to tell him some stories about the prophet Elisha.
And so Gehazi starts telling the story of this woman, this Shunammite woman who had built a room on her house, and every time they came through the area they would have a place to stay. And the prophet asked her what she wanted, and she said she wanted a son, and a year later she had a son. And years later that son, out in the field, had a heat stroke he had an accident. He died. She laid that boy in the prophets bed, came and got the prophet, and Elisha went and raised him back to life. And as he’s telling the king the story, while it’s happening. The king has no idea what’s about to happen, the woman has no idea what’s about to happen. As the servant is telling the king the story, the woman walks in with her son to the room of the king and the servant.
And at that moment, surprised, the servant Gehazi says to the king, «This is the woman I’m telling you about. This is her, the woman that Elisha came and raised and restored her son back to life. This is her, and that is her son». She has no clue when she walks in worried, heartbroken. Looking at seven years of disappointment, she has no idea that she was already on the king’s mind. She had no idea that he was hearing stories about her. And you and I have to remember in life, at times, when things are overwhelming and we feel discouraged and we feel like, you know, things are working against us, we have to remember that we have a great intercessor, Jesus, who sits at the right hand of the father. And he ever makes intercession for us, which just simply means he gets in the ear of God on our behalf. And what’s he doing? He’s talking to God about us.
And so, even when things in our life don’t look like they should and they don’t feel like they should, whether you know it or not, whether you have the idea or clue of it or not, you are already on the kings mind. You are always on his mind. He’s keeping track of your story, he knows exactly what’s happening and none of it surprises him. The Bible says in Psalms 139, «How precious to me are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them. Where I count them they outnumbered the grains of the sand». Do you hear what I’m saying? The Psalmist said to God, «What is man that you are mindful of him»? Jeremiah 29:11 says, «This saith the Lord, 'my thoughts for you…"'» If you wanna know how I think God says, «My thoughts for you are good and they’re not evil».
You see, you’re on his mind. He’s keeping track of your story. Now, I love this next part. Even though the king had just heard from Gehazi the miracle story of her son being raised to life, the king wanted to hear her tell the story. The king wanted to hear her talk about her son. The king wanted to hear her talk about how he was lifeless, and God raised her son back to life. And the point is, God loves to hear you, and I tell the stories, the testimonies, to go back and recollect all the times that God was faithful, all the times God came through, all the times it looked impossible, all the times your back was against a wall, all the times that you had no way of possibly escaping the situation. And unbeknownst to you, God was there the whole time, you were on his mind, and he got involved and he stepped in, and you’ve overcome because he was involved. But the Bible says the reason you have to talk about it, the reason God wants to hear your words is because you overcome by the blood of the lamb, that’s his part, and…»
Everybody say, «And». Very important word in the scripture, it doesn’t say or, it says, «You overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of your testimony». So God wants to hear your words. The blood of the lamb, that’s God’s part, but he wants that blood part, his part, the love part, the mercy part, the grace part, he wants that on your words. And so, now you begin to say those things about what God’s done. And the Bible says that’s how you overcome. Why? Why do you have to do that? Because kings think different. God’s not just interested in how you thought about it, how you think about the situation. He’s not just interested in your view on it or your opinion on it, he wants to know can you get up out of that just long enough to go back and say, you know what?
In that situation I look like I was helpless too, in that situation I thought there was no way out too. In that situation I didn’t know if I would ever make it out too. But, you know what? I look back and he was there. That time he was there, that time he was there that time, and all of a sudden you begin to find out that that’s how you overcome what you’re facing today. And so the king says to her, «What could I possibly do for you»? And again, seven years of pain, seven years of disappointment, she says, «I’d like the house that I just told you about. The one that we built the room on that house for the miracle that I needed. The house that I saw my son be raised back to life. That house, I want that house back».
Her expectations were in many ways kind of small 'cause she forgot that kings think different. Kings don’t think how we think. And the king says, «Of course I’ll get you your house back, and I’ll get you your land back. And oh yeah, by the way, the day that you left and went, and you’ve been going through all this stuff that whole time, you know what? I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna send an official to go back every single day and I’mma have him go back and check the books and every single penny that was made on your land while you were gone over those seven years, I’m gonna make sure that all of that income, so you get your house back, you get your land back, and all that you also get back».
And he exceeded her expectations because kings think different. And I hope you get it by now. I’m not talking about earthly kings, I’m not talking about kings in the natural, I’m not talking about some king in Saudi Arabia or some king of rock and roll or some king in some earthly sphere, some type of king of a newspaper. I’m not even talking about kings of counties and presidents of countries, I’m talking about the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. And the Bible says that heaven is his throne and the earth, it’s just his footstool. In other words, kings think different. And every now and then you have to remind yourself you’re on his mind and he knows what’s going on, and he wants to get involved and more than likely you and I are thinking too small about what God can do. And we’re thinking too small about what God is able to do, and we need to elevate our thinking and realize his thoughts are not our thoughts, his ways are not our ways, but the Bible says they are higher.
1 Corinthians 2:16 says, «Who can know the Lord’s thoughts. Who can understand»? And the Bible says, «We can, having the mind of Christ». You know, you can know how the king thinks? You say, «Well how do I know how the king thinks»? Well, you just open up this book. That’s all you do. «Well, I’m trying to figure out how God thinks about this. I’m trying to think about how God thinks about that». Well, you just open it up, 'cause when the word talks that’s God talking. That’s what he’s doing. Right. But the word says he says. And the Bible says, you know what? He backs it up by the way. If he said it, he performs, he fulfills what he said, is what the Bible teaches us. When the Bible talks it’s the king talking. I love the fact that as you go through Isaiah 55, we said it earlier, «His thoughts are not our thoughts, his ways are not our ways». Numbers 23, «He said it, will he not fulfill it».
Our problem is we get lost in the woulds. We get lost in the woulds of life, not the W-O-O-D-S but the W-O-U-L-D-S. We get lost in it. «Oh man if God would then I could. If God would help me here then I could do this». And we get lost in the woulds but when you let God talk to you, one of the things you’re gonna find out is there’s no «If God would, I could». That’s not how it works. His word is his will, which means your language changes from not getting lost in the woulds and you start saying, «Well, if God wills, then I will. If God can, then I can».
Again, but you have to ask yourself, «Are you thinking how you think or are you thinking how the king thinks»? 'Cause kings think different. They don’t think how we think. God doesn’t think how think. So, we’ve got to take some time and say, «You know what God? How is it that you’re thinking about this situation»? Romans 12 says that «You renew your mind,» that’s how you do it. That you’re transformed by this book. And then it says, «That you may prove what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God». In other words, when you begin to allow his word to talk to you instead of your life situation, instead of that relationship, instead of that past, instead of that history, what you start to do, you start saying, «The king thinks a bit different».
And now all of a sudden I don’t have to wonder what his will is, I can know what is the good, perfect, and acceptable will of the father because kings think different. And I don’t wanna think how I was raised to think. I don’t wanna think how the world has taught me to think. I don’t wanna think how worry and fear has told me to think. I don’t wanna think the way my hurt and pain has told me to think. I don’t want that way of thinking. I understand what my circumstance says but I wanna know how the king thinks because I know he thinks differently. And what does it really matter what my thoughts are on the matter? I need heavens thoughts on the matter.