The Syrians had gone out by companies
and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel, a
little maid, and she waited on Naaman's wife. And she said unto
her mistress, Would God, my Lord, were with the prophet that is
in Samaria, for he would recover him of his leprosy. And one went
in and told his lord, saying, Thus and thus said the maid that
is of the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, Go
to, go, and 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, ten changes of raiment, and he
brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, Now when this
letter is come unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman
my servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy. And it came to pass when the
king of Israel had read the letter that he rent his clothes and
said, am I God to kill and to make alive that this man doth
send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? Wherefore consider,
I pray you, and see how he seeketh to make a quarrel against me. And it was so when Elisha, the
man of God, that's the prophet in Israel, had heard that the
king of Israel had rent his clothes, 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. So Naaman
came with his horses and with his chariot, and he stood at
the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto
him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall
come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was
wroth, Naaman was angry, and he went away and said, Behold,
I thought he will surely come out to me and stand and call
on the name of the Lord his God and strike his hand over the
place and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Farfar, rivers
of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not
wash in them and be clean?' So he turned and went away in a
rage. And his servants came near and
spake unto him and said, My father, If the prophet had bid thee do
some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? How much rather,
then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean? Then went
he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to
the saying of the man of God. And his flesh came again, like
unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. Some of you may be familiar with
that story. It's quite a famous story. The
children often get told that in Sunday school and at school
with their Bible lessons. But I wanted to draw something
to your attention about the way in which Naaman had approached
this incident with Elisha. I guess everybody knows what
the word assume means. I wonder if you've ever heard
the saying that assume makes an ass out of you and me. Have you heard that before? Assume
makes an ass out of you and me. Now, when we assume something, Maybe we get lucky and the assumption
is right, but most often our assumptions are wrong. And maybe
we think to ourselves, I know what I want to do, I know where
I want to go, I know what I expect to happen, but invariably things
go wrong. and we end up, our assumptions
prove to be incorrect. Well, I've got a warning for
you this evening. My reason for being here is simply
this, that I don't want anyone in here to make wrong assumptions
about God. And I don't want anyone in here
to make wrong assumptions about salvation. And I don't want anybody
in here to end up in hell. because you thought you knew
better than what the Word of God actually says. I've got five things that I want
to mention to you very quickly, which are assumptions that people
often make with respect to the way of salvation. And I think
that some of you may hold some of these assumptions and be surprised
at what the Bible actually says about it. So here's the first
one. God loves me. God loves me. Do you know that for a fact or
is that an assumption? Maybe you say, well, doesn't
God love everyone? Well, there's a question. Does
God love everyone? I guess most of us assume that
he does. Why do you think God loves you? Why do you think God loves everyone? Who told you that? Where did
you read it? Let me tell you what the Bible
says about that. The Bible says in Romans 9, verse
13, it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. The Bible doesn't teach us that
God loves everyone, but most people assume that it does. In Psalm 7, verse 11, we read,
God is angry with the wicked every day. In the history of the Bible,
if we were to read it in the Old Testament and in the New,
but especially in the Old Testament, we would discover that God destroyed
thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, just like
that. Just like that. Because he was
defending the people that he loved. And somebody says, well,
doesn't he love everybody? He takes 10,000 men's lives just
like that in order to preserve the people that he loves. So there's the first assumption,
God loves me. Here's a second unsound assumption. God wants to save me. Really? Really? Again, I wonder, where did you
get that assumption? Where did you get that idea?
Does God want to save everybody? Does he? Is that something that
we can justify from the Bible? Let me ask you a question. Do
you think that God will ever be frustrated? Do you think that
God will ever want something that he doesn't get? Do you think that God in heaven
someday is going to be sitting on his throne saying, I wanted
to save everybody. And look, hardly anybody came. Do you think that he's going
to look around heaven someday and say, well, I made all these
mansions, all these mansions for all those people. And there's hardly anybody has
come. Do you think that's the kind of God that is taught in
the Bible? That's an assumption that God
wants to save everyone. The reality is, Again, quoting
the Bible, Romans chapter nine, verse 15. He saith to Moses,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion. It's God's will that matters,
not ours. God chooses who he's going to
save, not us. And that is an assumption if
we imagine that God says he wants to save us all. Number three,
Jesus died to save me. That's an assumption. How do
you know that's true? How do you know that that's actually
the truth of the scripture, the truth of the Bible? It's an interesting
assumption, but it's wrong. Let me show you how I know that
that's wrong. What people actually mean when
they say, Jesus died to save me, is that they believe Jesus
died to make salvation possible for me. And now all I've got
to do is choose to follow Him, choose to believe, and that will
make my salvation sure. So in fact, Jesus didn't actually
die to save anybody. Jesus died to make salvation
possible for everybody. But that's not what the Bible
says. The Bible says when he was being given his name, call
his name Jesus because he shall save his people from their sins. Now, if the Bible is true and
we believe it is, and Jesus will save his people from their sins,
how come anybody's in hell? How come anybody goes to a lost
eternity? Well, the answer is this, that
Jesus didn't die to save everybody. And the people that he died for
will be in heaven, and those that he didn't die for will be
in hell. That's the testimony of the Word
of God. Here's the fourth assumption
that we often make. It doesn't matter what I believe
as long as I'm sincere. That's what we call the sincerity
answer. Have you ever been sincerely
wrong? I have. That's what happens with
assumptions. We assume something and we act
on that assumption and it turns out to be incorrect. And you
think to yourself, I was absolutely certain that that was right and
it wasn't. Maybe it's because I don't have
all the information. Maybe events have moved on since
I last looked. Maybe my timing was just off
that little bit. But all my sincerity came to
nothing because I was sincerely wrong. Nor is it enough to say I sincerely
hope that it's going to work out all right in the end. Don't
go there. Don't make that kind of assumption
with something as precious as your soul. I sincerely hope that
God is going to let me into heaven. I sincerely hope that God is
going to overlook the kind of person that I've been. I sincerely
hope that everything is going to work out all right in the
end. Really? That's the kind of basis? That's the kind of
hope that you're going to carry in your hand into the judgment
seat of God? I sincerely hope it's going to
be okay. Sincerity is no substitute for
assurance, and on the matter of your soul's well-being, there
is no room for error on this point. Here's what the Bible
says with regard to this. There is a way which seemeth
right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Here's my fifth unfounded assumption
for us this evening and then I'm done. Thank you very much
for your attention. You have been a fine audience. Here's my fifth one. I've still got plenty of time. Well, I don't have plenty of
time because I know you guys are looking for your dinner.
So I'm going to be quick here, right? A few years ago, I buried
a boy. He was the son of a very good
friend of mine. And this lad was strong. This
lad was fit and he was confident. He was well about himself. In
fact, they called him the gentle giant. So strong and fit was
he that when his enemy came to get him, he didn't come alone. and he brought a knife. And he
stuck the knife in that boy's chest and left him dying there
in his own house after they kicked his door in. And I knew another young man
who died out in the snow on a mountain just north of here, near Shoro. And another young man who died
in his car in a wreck in the street And another young man
who lost his life in his sleep. You don't know that you've got
tomorrow. And I don't know that I've got tomorrow. The Bible
says, boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day
will bring. Don't make assumptions about
how many years you've got, how much time you've got. I'll fix
this another time. You think you know enough to
get into heaven? You don't. You think God cares
enough to let you into heaven? He doesn't. You think you have
time enough to prepare for heaven? I wish it were so, but that's
just an assumption. My friend Rich there, I saw him
at the back of the hall a moment ago. He prayed with me a few
minutes ago. He has a slip of paper and there
are some questions on that. Some questions about the service
here, about what I've said, about whether I prayed, about whether
I read the Bible. One of the questions is, did
he give an invitation? An invitation, an invitation
to what? An invitation to salvation? Listen, my friends, if I could
give you salvation, I would give you everyone before you went
out the room tonight, but I can't give you salvation. I can't save
you. Do you know that I don't even
have the right, speaking on behalf of God, to offer you salvation
tonight? I don't. And anybody who stands
here and offers you salvation doesn't have the ability to do
that. Don't assume that God wants to save you. Don't assume that
God loves you. But do assume that if you are
going to be saved, it is because God will have mercy on your soul. It is His will. I don't know
if God will save you or not. I don't know if you'll go to
heaven or not. I don't know if you'll spend eternity in hell
or not. I do know you'll remember this
meeting. If God saves you, it's because
of His grace. his mercy, his will, and at his
time of appointing. And it will be because the Lord
Jesus Christ has been found an adequate sacrifice and substitute
for your precious soul. What has this got to do with
Naaman the leper? Naaman the leper went to see
Elisha. Naaman the leper said he was
angry. Oh, he was angry. He said, you
know what I thought he would do? I thought he would come out
here. He would look at my leprosy.
He would slap his hand upon it. He would look up to heaven and
he would say, God, cure this man, heal this man of his leprosy. Do you know what Elisha did? He sent his servant out and told
him to go and wash in the Jordan a stinky, muddy river. And Ne'eman
said, I'm going home. I'm not even going to stand and
wait on this man. I'll take my leprosy and I'll
go back to Syria with it. Well, that was smart. That was
smart, Ne'eman. You know that Naaman's servants
came to him and said, Naaman, if he'd asked you to do some
smart thing, some clever thing, some great thing, you would have
done it. Do this, do this. It's all that it is. You see
what happened there? Naaman's assumption about what
he expected salvation to include was wrong. The Bible says, The Lord Jesus
Christ is the only way of salvation. And the Bible says this, come
unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Let's not make assumptions that
are unfounded. Let us be clear about what the
Bible teaches. Let us know what the gospel is.
And let us see the Lord Jesus Christ as he's truly presented
to us in the word of God. Thank you for your attention
this evening. Ladies and gentlemen, the meeting is finished.