All right, we're gonna look at
2 Kings chapter five, the first few verses here. And the title
of your lesson is Christ Our Great Physician. The reason I
entitled that, it's about healing here. And this is the story of
a man named Naaman, a Syrian. We call him Naaman the leper.
And of course, we're gonna see that he was healed of his leprosy.
But this is a great illustration of how God Almighty draws His
people to Himself and calls them out of the darkness and unbelief
of the world and into the fold of Christ. Calls them unto Christ,
that's what this illustrates. Calls them out of the world,
as I said here, and into His spiritual family. And He does
it by this healing. We're gonna see a man here who
is physically healed. Well, we look at ourselves when
God gives us spiritual life in the new birth, how we're spiritually
healed. And that's why I call this Christ
our great physician. I've got marked here in your
lesson, the Lord said, you remember he was talking to the Pharisees,
and he said, they that are whole have no need of the physician,
but they that are sick. And he said, I came not to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And that's what happens
when God calls us. Now, Naaman, he was a great,
honorable man, noble, high up. He was the captain of the king's
army in Syria, all of these things. But as great as Naaman was, he
had one major, huge problem. He was a leper. And you know,
leprosy back then was sick unto death. Leprosy in the Bible,
is a type of sin and depravity. And I think about, you know,
a lot of times, and I'll just read this to you, I've got it
marked in your lesson, but over in the book of Isaiah, chapter
one, when the prophet Isaiah was bringing an indictment against
Israel. And he starts out in chapter
one, in verse four, he says, ah, sinful nation. a people laden,
that is, a people heavy with iniquity, a seed of evildoers,
children that are corruptors, they have forsaken the Lord,
they have provoked the Holy One of Israel under anger, they are
gone away backward. And then listen to the description
of Isaiah 1 in verse 5. He says, why should you be stricken
anymore? You were revoked more and more.
The whole head is sick. The whole heart faint from the
sole of the foot, even unto the head. There's no soundness in
it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They've not
been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment."
And so you have a description there of a physical disease,
but Isaiah is talking about a spiritual disease. And so what you have
there, the physical disease that Isaiah is describing, if it wasn't
leprosy, it's pretty much like leprosy back then. And he says
it hasn't been bound up or mollified. In other words, there was no
cure for it. It was sickness unto death. And
so what we're led to see here is that if there could be a cure
back here for Naaman, in the disease of leprosy, and as it
illustrates, our sin and depravity, if there could be a cure for
our sin and depravity, it has to come from God. Man has no way of curing this
disease, our disease of sin. Man's efforts to cure it will
always fall short. And that's another thing, I've
got somewhere in your lesson here, I've got a reference to
the, you remember the woman with the issue of blood? She had a
flow of blood because of a disease, and she went to so many physicians,
and they didn't cure her, but all they did was take her money.
And she was the one who talked about the Messiah, Christ. If
I could just touch the hem of his garment, I'd be healed. And
she was. And so what you have here is
the disease of sin. And the only one who can cure
this disease of sin is Christ, our great physician. But there's
another lesson that comes out of Naaman the leopard. Now, Naaman
was not a Jew. He was a Syrian. Over in Luke
chapter four, I'll just read this to you too. If you want
to turn there, that's fine. But you remember when the Lord,
when he first began his public ministry in Judea, he came to
his hometown and he went to the synagogue and they were reading
from the book of Isaiah. This is Luke chapter four in
verse 18. And the place that they were
reading was in Isaiah. And in Luke 4.18, the Lord stood
up and he read this. And listen to what it says in
Luke 4.18. It says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because
he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath
sent me to heal the brokenhearted. There's the healing. to preach
deliverance to the captives, the recovering of sight to the
blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and he says,
to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And verse 20 says,
Christ closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister
and sat down, and the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue
were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them,
this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. Now what he's saying
to them is the Messiah has come. This prophecy of Isaiah is being
fulfilled before your very eyes. The Messiah is here. And he says
in verse 22, it says, and all bear witness and wondered at
the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said,
is not this Joseph's son? How could he be the Messiah?
He's Joseph's son. And he said unto them, you will
surely say unto me in this proverb, physician, heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard done
in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. They had heard about
him performing miracles, healing the sick in Capernaum. They said, well, now if you're
the Messiah, then show us, give us proof, perform a miracle here. Now this is his own country now. And he said, this is verse 24,
verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country.
But I tell you the truth, many widows in Israel, there were
many widows in Israel in the days of Elias, that's Elisha. When the heaven was shut up,
and we're dealing with the prophet Elisha here in the story of Naaman,
because that's who Naaman was to go to, Elisha. And he says,
when this heaven was shut up, three years and six months, when
great famine was throughout the land, but unto none of them was
Elisha sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman
that was a widow. Now, what's the significance
of that? Well, there are widows in Judea, in Israel, but God
didn't send the prophet Elisha to any of them. He sent it to
a Gentile woman. Now that's offensive, that was
offensive to these people. And then in verse 27 it said,
and many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha, the prophet,
and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian, a Gentile. So that's a big significance
about this story of Naaman. And what it proves is that God
has a people. Now, some people may argue, well,
was Naaman saved spiritually? Was he healed spiritually? I
don't know. The scripture here doesn't say
anything about that. But he's an illustration of how
God has a chosen people out of every tribe and nation, every
race and color, every, it's not just for the Jews. God saves
Gentiles too. And we thank God that he does.
And that was offensive to these Jews because they thought, well,
you know, if a Gentile was ever going to be right with God, he
had to first be circumcised, had to become a Jew, had to accept
their creed and their ways. And of course their creed and
their ways was anti-gospel. They sought righteousness by
the works of the law, not in Christ. So this story illustrates
it. Let's go back to 2 Kings 5. Look
at verse one. It says, now Naaman, captain
of the host, that's the army of the king of Syria, he was
a great man with his master. He was honorable. And that word
honorable there, if you have it in your concordance there,
it means gracious. And it says, because by him the
Lord had given deliverance unto Syria. God used this heathen
soldier to deliver Syria. Now God's working all things
after the counsel of his own will. It's not God is in this
one place here over here in Jerusalem and he's doing his work and everybody
else is out there just doing their thing. No, God's working
it all. God's sovereign over the whole
universe. And even in the deliverance of
Syria, that's from one of their attackers. And of course, we
know Syria became a great enemy of Israel. Later on, you'll see
where, if you read through 2 Kings, where Israel and Syria were at
war together with each other. And it says about Naaman here
in verse one, he was also a mighty man in valor, That is in his
ways. But he was a leper. That says it all. He was sick
unto death. And what a great, what a picture
of us by nature. And it doesn't matter who we
are. Doesn't matter how high we rise, how powerful we are,
how respected we are, how good we try to be. Nahum was a mighty
man of valor. He was a gracious man is what
that indicates. But he had a problem, and it
was a serious problem. It was one that he couldn't cure
and nobody else could cure. It was the problem of sin, S-I-N,
and that's our problem. There's a lot of differences
between all of us in just our little congregation. But think
about all the difference of people all over the world. There's mighty
people, there's rich people, there's poor people, there's
black people, there's white people, oriental people, but we've all
got one problem that's in common. There's none righteous. No, not
one. There's none that doeth good,
none that seeketh after God. We fell in Adam into sin and
depravity, and we have this spiritual leprosy called sin. And here's
another thing we have in common. Not one of us, by nature, has
the cure. No physician, no preacher that
preaches man's word, Man's gospel, oh, we seek ways of curing the
sin problem. Proverbs 14 and 16 tells us there
is a way that seemeth right unto man, but those ways are of death. So it doesn't matter how high
and mighty and good and rich and noble that Naaman was, he
was a leper. And what an illustration of all
of us by nature. Now Naaman, he realized his situation. He knew he was a leper. By nature,
we know we're not perfect. You know, even before the Lord
reveals himself to us, I mean, how many people would go around
and say, well, we're perfect people. We always do everything
right. We know something of sin, but by nature, we're ignorant
of the reality of sin. By nature, we're ignorant that
even our best, our righteousnesses, as we say, Isaiah 64, six, are
what? Filthy rags. You know, most people
today in religion, you know, who call themselves Christian,
they'll go around quoting passages like Romans 3, 23, all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. And to most, and I remember
when I used to do this, to most of us that was just an admission,
trying to be humble before people, and an admission that I know
I'm not a perfect person. But to understand what that verse
really means is this. You take the best of the best
of the best, Somebody who we don't, I mean, who we think is
the noblest, the most sincere. And what that means is that even
their righteousness falls short. Even they fall short of the perfection
of righteousness that can only be found in Christ and his righteousness
imputed. That's what that means. Because right after that, that's
what the apostle was led by the spirit to describe. but now the
righteousness of God without the law. Without the law, what
do you mean? Christ was made under the law.
Christ said he had to keep the law. The Bible says Christ is
the end of the law. So when it says that even, when
it says but now the righteousness of God without the law, what
does that mean? That means without our works, without our efforts. without anything that comes from
us or done in us, but it's all done by Christ. And that's the
problem. Well, let's read on, look at
verse two. It says, and the Syrians had gone out by companies and
had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little
maid. Now this shows you that there was, even though right
now in this particular passage, there was a time of, I don't
know, you might say a cease fire or something like that. but there
was a little Israelite maid that had been taken captive and she
waited or she served on Naaman's wife. So this little Israelite
maid who was taken captive by the Syrians, she was put into
the service of Naaman's wife, her servant. And verse three,
it says, and she said unto her mistress, would God my Lord were
with the prophet that is in Samaria. Now Samaria, you remember the
kingdom was divided. The northern kingdom, the southern
kingdom at this time. The northern kingdom consisted
of the 10 tribes and the southern kingdom consisted of two tribes,
mainly Judah and Benjamin and it was called Judah. The northern
kingdom was called Syria. Well the capital city of the
northern kingdom was Samaria. And they even built a temple
up there. You remember the woman at the well in John chapter four?
When she said that some say in this temple we should worship
and you say in Jerusalem. And she was referring to that
Samaritan temple. It was a false temple. The temple
in Jerusalem was the one that God had ordained. But anyway,
Samaria was the capital city. And this little maid went to
her mistress and said, I wish that my Lord, talking about Naaman
now, would to God that Naaman were with the prophet, talking
about Elisha, who's in Samaria. For he would recover him of his
leprosy. This little old maid. It's like
a gospel preacher, isn't she? There is a cure. Where is it? In Samaria, where God's prophet
is, Elisha, where God's man is. And this would be the cure. And it says in verse four, that,
and one went in and told his Lord, saying, thus and thus said
the maid that is of the land of Israel. And so this is what's
happening here. By God's providence, think about
the workings of God here. I always, when I see things like
this, I always think of the tapestry illustration. And you know, it's
like a tapestry. If somebody was sewing up a tapestry,
and if you looked underneath it, you might see all kinds of
confused colors with no pattern at all. But then you go and look
over top and you see the perfect patterns and the pictures and
everything is just right. And that's the way God's providence
is. We see so many things that look to us like it's out of control. But when we look at it from God's
viewpoint, and we can do that because of the scriptures, it's
all working perfectly according to his plan. And what he's doing
here, this little old maid, who was captive, sent to the house
of Nahum and the leper, And she said, just like a gospel preacher
is sent to tell God's people, lost sheep, here's salvation. Here's green pastures. Here's
the water of life. Here's the bread of life. Christ
is the only cure for our sin and depravity. Legally, spiritually,
Christ is the only cure. The only way that a sinner like
me can be justified is in the glorious person and finished
work of Christ. Standing as my surety, my substitute,
my redeemer. That's the only way, there's
no other way. The true Christ as he's identified and described
and set apart in this book. And he's not the one that's being
preached today on the main. That one who's trying to save
you if you'll let him and all that, if you'll cooperate with
him, that's not the true Christ. There's no cure there. You see,
we're lepers, spiritually. And by nature, we won't come
to the right cure. We're gonna see that illustrated
here too. But that's what gospel preachers do. We point sinners
to Christ. The gospel is the power of God
unto salvation. We point sinners to his blood
for the forgiveness of sins, to his righteousness. for justification. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the word of God, and that word is communicated by God to
his people. And that's what we do. Well,
look at verse five. Well, the king of Syria said,
go, go to, go, and I will send a letter, a letter, Naaman would
heard about this and went to the king, his king, and he said,
I will send a letter unto the king of Israel. And he departed
and took with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000 pieces of gold,
and 10 changes of raiment. Ain't that like us by nature?
There's a cure up there. Well, I know if there's a cure,
I got to pay for it. I got to change for it. I gotta
bring my gold and my silver, my works, my will. I gotta change
clothes, but I gotta do something to make myself fit and clean
and righteous. Isn't that the way we think by
nature? Why is it, and I didn't put this
in your lesson, but I thought about it, and I've got it listed
out here. Come ye and buy without money,
without price, Isaiah 55. The Bible, as it presents the
gospel of Christ to God's people, tells us what old top lady wrote
in Rock of Ages. Nothing in my hands I bring,
simply to thy cross I cling. We don't have anything to bring
to God, to recommend us unto him. Now that's right. Nothing we do, nothing we decide
will recommend us unto God. We are sinners, naked before
God, without righteousness, no goodness. And this is what Naaman
has in his mind, well, I better take these 10 talents of silver,
6,000 pieces of gold, and 10 changes of raiment because I'm
gonna have to look right and do right in order to attain what
I want. Salvation by works. And look
at verse six. It says, and he had the letter
of recommendation from the king. Now surely that'll do enough. Well it says in verse six, and
he brought the letter to the king of Israel. Now where did
Naaman go? The maid said, the prophet, you
go to the prophet. You go to the one who has the
word of God. But he went to the king of Israel.
Why? Well, that's how we think naturally. He was a nobleman. He was the
captain of the host of the king of Assyria. Who you gonna go
to? Somebody who's got power. Somebody who's got riches. Somebody
who's got authority. So you go to the king. And he
said, now, when this letter has come unto thee, behold, I have
therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee. Thou mayest recover
him of his leprosy. The king of Syria sent him to
the king of Israel so that the king of Israel could recover,
could cure him. But look what the king of Israel
said. Verse seven, and it came to pass
when the king of Israel had read the letter that he rent his clothes,
he tore his clothes. Now you know back then that was
a sign of sorrow. That was a sign, it's like, man,
I give up. He tore his clothes and he said,
am I God? To kill and make alive? Only
God kills and only God makes alive. Didn't Job say that? Blessed
be the name of the Lord, that this man doth send unto me to
recover a man of his leprosy. I'm king of Israel, but I can't
do this. I don't care if you're the king
of the world. Napoleon or whoever, you can't cure leprosy, and you
sure can't cure sin. Wherefore consider, I pray you,
and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me. That's what the king
of Israel thought, well, the king of Syria's just trying to
pick a fight. Sent Naaman here, his captain
of his army, for me to cure him, and I can't cure him? So here's
Naaman coming, trying to buy the cure. Can't be bought. Coming to the king of Israel,
who powerless to do it. And of course, the lesson here
is this. Look, who did the maid say to go to? Go to the prophet.
Go to God's prophet, Elisha. Look at verse eight. It was so
when Elisha, the man of God, had heard that the king of Israel
had rent his clothes, the news spread pretty fast on his time,
that he sent to the king saying, wherefore hast thou rent thy
clothes? Let him come now to me and he shall know that there
is a prophet in Israel. A prophet of God. What was Naaman's
problem? He followed the wrong instructions. The little maid, who was a nobody,
said go to the prophet. But the king of Assyria, who
was a somebody, said go to the king of Israel. Isn't that the
way it is in this world today? People today, they might hear
the gospel and they're turned off by it and they go to some
famous preacher or nobleman or somebody they respect and they
get wrong instructions, wrong directions. rather than going
to the preacher, who's a nobody, preaching the word of God. Now the prophet, Elisha the prophet
at this point, he's a type of Christ, isn't he? Christ is our
prophet, our priest, and our king. He's the king who is directing
all things according to the word of his power and purpose. He's
the priest who stands for his people before the Father, presenting
the merits of his blood, his righteousness imputed, and he's
the prophet to give us the word. I need to hear the word. I need to hear the gospel. I
need to hear about a righteousness that is perfect, that cannot
be contaminated, that I need, that can justify me before God. That's what I need. You know,
if you get sick unto death, if you hear you've got heart disease
or you've got cancer, you go to the doctors. And the doctor who diagnoses
your disease but cannot give you the cure because either there
is none or he doesn't know about it, he really doesn't have much
good news for you, does he? That one doctor who says, you've
got this disease, and if you don't do something about it,
you're going to die, but here's the cure. Now that's the good
news. And that's what Naaman needed
at this point. Oh, I'm telling you, he said,
he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. How do you know there's
a preacher of the gospel? Only by the word of God. to the
law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to
this word, there's no light in them. Test the spirits, test
the preachers. This is the gospel. How do I
know that? Because this book tells me this
is God's word. This is the book of the cure,
the sure cure for all sin, both legally and spiritually. And it has to do with our Savior.
Well, look at verse nine. We'll read through verse 12 here. It says, so Naaman came with
his horses and with his chariot and stood at the door of the
house of Elisha. He didn't go in. You know what
he's waiting on, don't you? Verse 10, and Elisha sent a messenger
into him saying, go and wash in the Jordan. See, Naaman's
standing outside the door because he expects the, this is Naaman. the captain of the host of Syria,
and he's expecting, oh, you come out to me, you do me homage,
that's what he's wanting. See, he's coming with a wrong
attitude, coming in his pride, and that's the way we do, too.
We come, you know, when God first draws us to him, in our lostness,
you know, we think, well, you know, we have something That's
worth something as far as God's side when we really have nothing.
But here's what the prophet said, verse 10, Elisha sent a messenger
and him saying, go and wash in Jordan seven times. And thy flesh
shall come again to thee and thou shalt be clean. The Jordan,
Jordan River. And you know, the Jordan River,
it's kind of like the Red Sea, you know, it's kind of like a
type of the wrath of God against sin. You remember how Elijah,
he took his mantle and he struck it and it divided and they went
over on dry land. Seven times, what does that represent? Well, that's the perfection that
can only be found in Christ. That's the finished work. This
is representing the finished work of Christ. So that Jordan
River that he's washing in represents the blood of Christ, which puts
away all the sins of God's people. By one offering he hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified. But now in verse 11, look here.
But Naaman was angry, he was wroth, angry, and went away and
said, behold, I thought he will surely come out to me. What do
you mean? I'm Naaman, the captain of the
host. Elisha will come out to me and
he'll stand and he'll call on the name of the Lord, his God.
He'll make all this big religious hoopla. and strike his hand over
the place and recover the leper. I thought, is it any wonder that
God says, my thoughts aren't your thoughts, your thoughts
aren't mine. When I was in the preacher school at 13th Street
back in the early 80s, Brother Mayhem brought in a message,
and I can't remember who the fellow was that preached it,
but he was up in Michigan, and it was on this passage. And you
know what the title of the message was? It ain't like you thought
it was. And that's the way it is with
salvation. When we come to God on our own in our nature and
our ignorance, it ain't like we thought it was. We think it
is, but it's not like that. And that's what Naaman thought,
I thought. Well, that's why we have to be brought to God, to
Christ, by the gifts of faith in Christ and repentance. Our
thoughts have to be changed. concerning how God saves sinners.
And so in verse 12, he says, are not the Abana and the Farpar
rivers of Damascus better than all the rivers of Israel? We
got better rivers back in Syria than you got here. May I not
wash in them and be clean? Isn't that religion? Isn't it
just as good over here at this church where they preach something
different? Isn't that just the same? Couldn't
I wash over there and be clean? So he turned and went away in
rage. In verse 13 it says, and his servants came near and spake
unto him and said, my father, if the prophet had bid thee do
some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather
then when he saith to thee, wash and be clean? His servants told
him, what's the big deal? You're getting angry, you're
walking away a leper. You came a leper, you're walking
away. And so verse 14 says, then he went he down. That's the way
God brings us, he brings us down. Off of our high horse, off of
our pride, he gives us the gift of humility. brings us down,
just like, you remember when Christ spoke to Zacchaeus? God, Zacchaeus, come down. That's
what this is all about. It's not about standing up and
saving face and retaining our pride. It's coming down in humility
and our sin and depravity, saying, God, be merciful to me, the sinner,
the leper. And he went down and dipped himself
seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God,
according to the word of God. Did what God said. And his flesh
came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was
clean. Isn't that a beautiful illustration
of how God saves us? He brings us to submit. We strip
off our own righteousness, and we submit to Christ as the Lord
our righteousness. And in our conscience and in
our minds, we come up clean in the sight of God, washed in the
blood of Christ and clothed in his righteousness. All right.