May it please God to bless us
together this morning as we consider his word. Let's turn to the second
book of the Kings and chapter 5 and we'll read verse 15. The
second book of the Kings, chapter 5 and verse 15. This is what Naaman said when
he'd been recovered of his leprosy. and he returned to the man of
God he and all his company and came and stood before him and
he said behold now I know that there is no God in all the earth
but in Israel now therefore I pray thee take a blessing of thy servant the account of Naaman is very
interesting and it's wonderful to realise that here was a man,
a Syrian, who had this disease of leprosy, and how he needed
this disease of leprosy to be cured, and how it was cured,
and how his response was to believe in the true God, whereas he was
a worshipper of Rimon. As we know, he went with the
king and he was a worshipper of Rimon. And now he'd come and
have been directed to come to this prophet Elisha. And that
which had been carried out was a wonderful blessing to relieve
him of this leprosy. And we should recognise that
the wonder of God's plan in doing this because we know that he
was a great man, he was honourable and he delivered Syria a number
of times in their battles. But in one of those battles they
brought back a little maid as a captive and she was the servant
to him and to his wife. She waited on Naaman's wife and
she knew that this man had this leprosy and he couldn't cure
it. and she spoke to her mistress and she said would God my Lord
were with the prophet that is in Samaria for he would recover
him of his leprosy well that was a very simple statement but
somebody went and told Naaman of this truth and came to the
king and he went to the king and the king told him to go and
to go to Israel and to find this prophet or go to the king rather
and be recovered of this leprosy. So we read that he departed and
took ten talents of silver and six thousand pieces of gold and
ten chains of raiment and he brought a letter to the king
of Israel but when this letter is come the king of Israel was
not able to do anything and he read the letter and he rent his
clothes and said am I God to kill and to make alive that this
man does send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy wherefore
consider I pray you and see how he seeketh a quarrel against
me so we can observe what happened there being this little maid
who was used in this chain to cause Naaman the Syrian to come
into the land of Israel. The king of course was unable
to cure him, but the prophet Elisha, he heard what was going
on. He heard that the king of Israel
had rent his clothes, and 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." And we see that Naaman
went to the house of Elisha and he stood at the house and expected
Elisha to come out. But Elisha sent a messenger and
he sent a messenger with really quite a strange message. And the message was he was told
to go and wash in Jordan seven times and his flesh would become
clean. Well this didn't appeal to Naaman.
He thought it was a very infridate to be asked to go and do such
a thing. He thought that the Prophet would
come out and perform some wonderful act so that he might indeed be
cured. And he also said, well, surely
the rivers in Damascus are better than the rivers in Israel. And so he was angry and he went
away in a rage. But we observe that his servants
came and they spoke to him and they said, well, if you'd been
asked to do some great thing, would you not have done it? And
therefore, Why not do what the Prophet has asked you to do,
to wash and be clean? So he listened to his servants
and he went down the river, he dipped himself seven times and
his flesh came again, like the flesh of a little child and he
was clean. So we see that whatever occurred
was, he was cured of his leprosy. which was of course the real
reason why he'd gone to Israel. But something far more important
had really happened to him in his life. And you might say,
well what was that? Well, just remember that he was
a worshipper of an idol god, Rimmon, and now he comes and
he makes a tremendous statement. The statement he makes is this,
behold now I know that there is no God in all the earth but
in Israel. He now knew that there was only
one true God and that was the God that the Israelites worshipped
and he was willing and able to make such a statement like this
that he now knew that there was no God in all the earth but in
Israel. And the importance of that statement
for us this morning is that all of us may realize that there
is no God in all the earth, save the true God, the living God,
the God of Israel. I was reading recently in a magazine,
Gospel Advocate, and there's a little account now been running
through a missionary called Henry Martin. And Henry Martin, he
died when he was 31, he was only a young man. And he was a missionary
in India and he had translated the New Testament into Persian,
which I would think is probably the language that we know as
Farsi today. And he'd been told that in actual
fact the translation wasn't very good. So he was in India and
he left India to go into Arabia so that he would have a better
knowledge of the language and be able to produce a better translation. So he arrived in Arabia and worked
on this translation. Well, this was in the year 1811,
just over 200 years ago. But at that time, the Muslim
world was very strong in that area and he had many, many debates
about the Christian religion and the religion of Islam. And it culminated really on an
occasion when he was summoned before a large gathering with
the important people of Arabia there and they asked him a question
and they said, Do you believe in Allah to be the true God? And do you believe that Muhammad
is his prophet? Now he was by himself, a young
man of 30 years age, and he had to answer. Well, we have a number
of people in the word of God who had similar situations. We
can think of Daniel, or we can think of Those three, Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego. And here was this young man,
faced with that question. And what was his answer to be?
Well, he was fully committed in his life to the truth of God. And he made this statement. He
said, God is God. And Jesus Christ is the Son of
God. That was his very simple and
very direct statement. And rather than being attacked
and beheaded, they allowed him to go free and he was able to
continue and complete that translation of the New Testament. So we see
how he was faithful in that time of great opposition. And basically,
he made the same statement as Naaman did here. When Naaman
came and said, I know there is no God in all the earth, but
in Israel." Now that's very easy to read, isn't it? And it's very
important that all of us here today are able to make the same
statement as that. You see, it wasn't hearsay. He
wasn't listening to what other people had told him. He believed
it himself. He believed it to be true. And
he was able to make such a statement. And it was an important statement.
And it was a statement that could be very costly for him. Because
here he was acknowledging there was only one true God. Now, of course, he was not the
only person to make such a statement like that. And we are blessed
with the record in the Word of God There are those accounts
and those statements to encourage us today that we do come and
worship the same almighty God. Remember Solomon, that great
king. And when the temple was built,
that wonderful building, there was that dedication and he made
a prayer to God. It was a long prayer. And when
he completed that prayer, he then stood up and addressed the
people. And he said, Blessed be the Lord that hath given rest
unto his people Israel according to all that he promised. There
hath not failed one word of all his good promise which he promised
on the hand of Moses his servant. He goes on in a few verses and
says that all the people of the earth may know that the Lord
is God and that there is none else. That was a very clear statement
that Solomon made and it was important on that occasion and is equally
important for us today to be able to come and say that we
may know that the Lord is God and that there is none else,
none else at all. Remember in Elijah's day, when
Elijah was on Mount Carmel, and there was that great question
as to who was the true God. Was it the living God or was
it Baal? And they had that, as you might
say, competition to see whose God would come down and consume
the sacrifice. What we know is that the priest
of Baal could not get their God to come down and consume the
sacrifice. But what we do know is that Elijah,
he prayed to the true God and the effect was that fire came
down from heaven and consumed not only the sacrifice, but the
stones and all the water in the trench that had been put there
to douse the sacrifice so that it would be very difficult to
ignite. And when all the people who were assembled together at
that mount, Carmel, saw what had happened, what did they say?
They said this, the Lord, He is the God. The Lord, He is the
God. Well, We need to know that ourselves
today, that the same God is the very true God, the living God. Ezra's day, Ezra lived in a time
when the captives were to return from Babylon and to come back
to Jerusalem. And there they were in Babylon
and it was most remarkable, one of the Babylonian kings was a
man named Cyrus. And Cyrus gave a decree to encourage
the people. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia,
The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth,
and hath charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which
is in Judah. This is this king in Persia. who'd been given this decree
from God. Most amazing, really. And then
he comes and says, Who is there among you of all his people?
His God be with him. And let him go up to Jerusalem,
which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of
Israel. Then he says, He is the God which is in Jerusalem. Well, it's wonderful to think
that this king had this vision and was able to declare so clearly
this God, He is the God. Well we today have many evidences
of the true God. Again as a country we can look
back in history and observe how God has appeared for us as a
nation on many occasions. We can think of the days of the
Spanish Armada when the Lord arose and caused a storm to defeat
the Spanish Armada. We can think of occasions in
those world wars when the Lord has wonderfully delivered us
as a nation by situations which we could not have done for ourselves. And so we see the good hand of
God upon us. Well, if we think of these things
and try and analyse them, what does it really come down to?
It really comes down to this, that God does for us things that
we could not do for ourselves. He done that for Naaman, he done
it naturally, he done it spiritually. And we need to consider that
this morning in reference to our spiritual situation, that
whether God has done that for us, which we could not do for
ourselves. You may say, well, just explain
that, what does it mean? What I mean is this, God has
made us spiritually alive, and that's not something that we
could do for ourselves. And the reason we couldn't do
it for ourselves is very simply because we were born dead in
trespasses and in sins. And if someone is born dead,
if we are dead, a dead person cannot actually revive themselves. That's quite obvious, isn't it?
A dead person cannot make themselves alive. And that is the situation
with all of us by nature. We are spiritually dead and we
therefore need the Spirit of God to make us spiritually alive. And if that Spirit of God makes
us spiritually alive, what that means is we will then know in
our hearts that we have a never-dying soul and that that never-dying
soul will live forever And we then need to know that we're
amongst those whom God has called and who has gone to prepare a
place for us in heaven. So we see then that it is a wonderful
observation to realise that God has shone into our hearts and
done that for us which we could not do for ourselves. And the result must be just like
Naaman as he came and said now I know that there is no God in
all the earth but in Israel that we may come and know there is
no God in all the earth apart from that God who has spoken
to our hearts and has made us spiritually alive you know we
have those examples don't we in the New Testament We have
the example of Paul when he was on that Damascus road and the
Lord came and shone that great light into his heart and he was
made spiritually alive. And there are other examples,
we think of Lydia, the opposite really. The Lord opened her heart
to receive the things of God. It was the work of God. It was
His gracious, sovereign work. And it is a wonderful thing to
realise that we have this God today, who still does great things,
like he did for Naaman, so he does for the Church of God, so
he does for his people today. John the Apostle, when he wrote
his epistle, and right to the end of the fifth chapter, he
tells us this, and we know that the Son of God is come and has
given us an understanding that we may know him that is true
and we are in him that is true even in his son Jesus Christ
this is the true God and eternal life. Now God had given Naaman an understanding
It's a blessing for us today if God has given us, you and
me, an understanding that Jesus Christ is the true God and that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Because the Apostle was able
to speak in these terms and say, and we know. And how important
it is for each of us today to be able to come and say, we know. It's not something which is just
a theory. Not just something we read about,
but something that we know. Naaman knew that it was the God
of Israel that had healed him. And he knew that there was therefore
the only one true God. And how important it is for us
today to realise that there is indeed only the one true God. and that we may truly worship
this great almighty God, that one who has created all things,
that one who rules and reigns over everything. In the Gospel of John, in the
sixth chapter, we read the beautiful words of the Lord Jesus, and
much instruction was given And Jesus spoke to his disciples
and he asked them a question and he said, would you also go
away? There were many people that had
left the Lord Jesus because they didn't want to take on board
the things that he said. They weren't prepared to acknowledge
that he was their God. And so the Lord asked them that
question and Simon Peter answers and said, Lord To whom shall
we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. The only person that we can go
to, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says, and we believe
and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living
God. That was a wonderful testimony.
But it's a testimony that all of us need to be able to say
today. We believe and are sure that
Christ, the Son of the Living God, that had been revealed to the
Apostle Peter and how good it is if these things are revealed
to us, so that we also recognise the truth of God. Just one further
comment with regards to John's Gospel. At the end of the first
chapter, there's an account of Nathaniel, who God had called. And he'd come, Philip had found
Nathaniel, and Philip had said, we have found him of whom Moses
and the law and the prophets did write. Jesus of Nazareth,
the son of Joseph. Nathanael said unto him, Can
there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Jesus saw Nathanael
coming to him and said, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom
is no guile. Nathanael said unto him, Whence
knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto
him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the
fig tree, I saw thee." Nathaniel answered and said unto him, Rabbi,
thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel. It was revealed to Nathaniel
the truth with regard to the Lord Jesus Christ and he made
this tremendous statement, thou art the Son of God, thou art
the king of Israel. Now coming back to these words
that Naaman spoke, he said, now I know that there is no God in
all the earth but in Israel. Well, Naaman was able to say
that truth and it is important for all of us today to be able
to confirm that is true, that we do come and we do know and
we worship the true God and we have the evidence in our heart
that he has called us out of darkness into the marvelous light
of the gospel. He's made our souls alive and
we therefore have the evidence that God has done that for us
that we could not do for ourselves. That's what had occurred here
in the life of Naaman. He received that from God, and
what a wonderful blessing it was. Well, may we today be able
to come and say, like he did, now I know there is no God in
all the earth but in Israel. We'll leave it there because
my voice is retiring. May God bless his word. Amen.