Second Kings. And chapter five, we've been
thinking with the children, some of the younger people here, we've
been thinking a little bit about some of the incidents from the
life of Elisha and we've come to that part of Elisha's history
where the man Naaman comes onto the scene. Naaman was a Syrian.
He was not a man of the country or the nation of the Jews, and
therefore he was not one who primarily had the word of God
revealed to him. But Naaman had a problem and
a blessing. His problem was that he had leprosy. His blessing was that there was
a little girl who was a servant in his house. who preached the
good news of healing and the gospel to him. And we've read
a little bit about how Naaman went to see the king of Israel
and was directed to Elisha, the prophet in Israel. And then he
got a little bit annoyed because the prophet in Israel didn't
give him the respect that he felt that he was due. And the
prophet said, if you want to be healed from your disease,
from your leprosy, which we saw was a picture of sin, then you
have to go and you have to dip seven times in the River Jordan. And Naaman thought, no, that's
not going to work. That's beneath me. I'm not prepared
to do that. And he started off back home. And his servant said to him,
Naaman, this isn't going to work. If the prophet had asked you
to do a hard thing, you would have seen it as a challenge to
do it, and you would have done it. He's asked you to do a simple
thing. Why don't you just go and dip
in the Jordan? And Naaman relented, and we can
see the hand of God in Naaman's life, even there. giving him
that space, giving him that opportunity that he might receive the grace
of God. And he dipped in the Jordan and
we're told that he was cleansed. He came back up after the seventh
time and he was clean in his skin. The leprosy was gone. That, in a sense, is where we're
picking up the story this morning. And we find in 2 Kings 5, verse
15, that the next part of the story unfolds for us. So, let me read verse 14 just
to get the continuity here. Then he went down, that is, Naaman
went down into the river Jordan, and he dipped himself seven times
in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God, that was Elisha,
and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child,
and he was clean. Verse 15 says, And he returned
to the man of God, he and all his company, and came and stood
before him and 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. But he said, as the Lord liveth
before whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him to take
it, but he refused. And Naaman said, shall there
not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules burden
of earth? For thy servant will henceforth
offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods,
but unto the Lord. In this thing the Lord pardon
thy servant, that when my master goeth to the house of Rimman
to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself
in the house of Rimman, when I bow down myself in the house
of Rimman, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing.' And he
said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him. little
way. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. When Naaman came up out from
the water he was cured of his leprosy and his skin was pure
just like a little child's and it was clean. And I thought to
myself, how joyful must Naaman have been when he looked down
on his skin and he saw that the leprosy was gone. The curse that
that leprosy had brought, the ruin to his life and his family,
the death that would have flowed ultimately from it. It had been
lifted. It had been taken away. The condemning mark of his disease
was washed away. And I think that Naaman, as he
looked at it and then perhaps looked at his servants and looked
back at his arm, he probably had a great big smile come across
his face. And he would think of the prospect
that he had of a fresh start in life, liberty from that fear
that had beset him for these months and perhaps years before
as he realised this terrible disease was in his body. And he had a knowledge He had
a dawning understanding, a knowledge that Israel's God had made him
a new man. And that's a lovely picture of
conversion because that's what happens when a man or a woman
comes to the Lord Jesus Christ and has their sin forgiven. They get a new start. The fear
of condemnation gets taken away. The disease of their sin which
they felt in their body is removed and they see that that cleansing
has come from the Lord Jesus Christ and that he has effected
a transformation in their life and it brings joy and it brings
happiness and it brings a sense of liberty and peace. When God is ready to convert
a sinner, just like Naaman having to go down into the water, he
brings him down before he lifts him up. He shows him his need,
he shows him his true nature, he shows him his true character,
and then he graciously satisfies that need. He opens his eyes
to see things differently. And he changes what he once believed
to be true and now sees as being false and a lie. And if you see
yourself a sinner, if you know that you need a saviour, then
the Lord Jesus Christ stands before you today as all you need
to be saved, all you need to have peace with God. Do you remember
what happened to Naaman when he felt cut because his pride
had been hurt by Elisha? He almost left in a rage and
went back to Syria with the leprosy still in his body. His pride
got in his way, but God's grace won his heart and brought him
to that place of salvation and redemption. And what I want to
do now is just take a couple of points that we see from these
verses and draw your attention to them. Because what did Naaman
do when he had this change, this conversion, this transformation
in his life. Look at what he did. The very
first thing, he returned to the prophet and he made confession
of faith. And if the Lord saves you, if
the Lord saves you, it's good to tell someone what has happened
in your life. He said, Naaman said, behold
now I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel. Here was a man who was a frequent
visitor to idolatrous temples, who went and gave offerings to
false gods. And such was the change that
had happened in his life, not only in his body. Yes, in his
body, the leprosy had gone, but that change in his body marked
an other transformation, a transformation in his heart, a transformation
in his mind, a transformation in his soul. Because he knew
now that all these false gods were not worth the material that
they were made from. and that there was only one true
God in all the earth, the God of Israel. He said, I know his
cleansing power. I know his healing hand. I have been changed. My leprosy
is gone. My sins are forgiven. The Lord
has made me whole. And it's a good thing to confess
and to testify to the change that the Lord has made in our
lives. Here's a second thing that Naaman
did. He gave thanks. He said, thank you. He said,
thank you to the Lord. And let me tell you that thanks
is all you can give to the Lord. It's all you can give to the
Lord. You can't give. What do you give to God who possesses
everything? What are you going to give to
Him? Even your very life is His. To take or to leave according
to His good pleasure. But when He heals us, when He
takes our sin away, we can thank him for his grace and his mercy
and his goodness. Naaman didn't have to pay. He
had donkey loads of money. He had loads of stuff. He had
gold, he had silver, he had fancy garments and robes and clothes. He had lots of stuff that he
had brought in order to do a trade with God. God doesn't trade with
men and women. God doesn't trade with people. He gives good gifts of grace. Naaman didn't have to pay because
grace is free. Salvation is free. It's a gift
from God. And all we can do is receive
it. We cannot pay. We cannot earn
God's mercy. but we can thank him for it. I think there was good reason
that Elisha declined to take any payment from Naaman. And
perhaps it was for the sake of the people that were present.
Perhaps it was to show Naaman the nature of true worship, that
worship was primarily spiritual and not to do with the physical
things or the tangible things or the monetary things of this
world. When God saves you, he doesn't
want your money. He wants you. And when he has
you, he has all of you. The third thing that Naaman did
was he asked for two mules' burden of earth. Now what was that about? He wanted two donkey loads of
earth. I don't know whether he was planning
to dig it up and put it in a basket and put it on the back of the
donkey, but I guess something like that was what was in his
mind. Can I have two donkey loads of dirt, please? Now, I know
that there are some pretty barren areas of Montana. But I can't imagine that anybody
is going to start a farm with two donkey loads of dirt. What did he want that for? He
wanted it to worship God. That was what was in his head.
Maybe he thought that he could make it into bricks and build
an altar. Or maybe he thought he would
put it in his house and he would stand upon it when he prayed
to God. He wanted the soil of Israel
to be transported and transplanted into Syria. Let me say a couple
of things about that. It tells me this. First of all,
it tells me that Naaman was anxious about worshipping God properly.
He was anxious about worshipping God. He wanted to worship God.
And that is indicative of a transformed person. Here was a man who truly
had been changed and he wanted to worship God aright. But he
was ignorant how to do it. He didn't know what to do. And sometimes when we're young,
sometimes even when we're older, we're all young when it comes
to God. And sometimes we just don't know. We've had a change. We've got
renewed. We've been converted. Something
has happened in our lives. Something has changed in our
lives. And yet we're ignorant about
what we should do now. A little bit like the lady that
Jesus met at the well in Samaria. And he told her that true worship
wasn't done in Samaria or in Jerusalem or in a physical place,
but true worship comes from the heart. The hour cometh, says
the Lord, and now is when the true worshipers shall worship
the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to
worship him. And we worship God in Christ. We worship God when we meet him
in the gospel. We worship him when we gather
together with like-minded believers and worshipers, with the people
of God. We're worshiping God now. And
you don't need a special place to stand, and you don't need
a special suit to wear, and you don't need special words to speak. You just need to be thankful
to God for what he has done in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is
spiritual worship in the gospel. And the second thing I wanted
to point out about this particular, these piles of earth, was that
Naaman was committed to continue worshipping God. He wanted to
worship God into the future, when he was away from Israel,
when he was away from Elisha. And that tells me that the change
in a man's heart, the change in a woman's heart, when they
come to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, is not a temporary
change. It's a change that goes on and
continues. Not just when he was with Elisha,
not just when he was in Israel, but he wanted, as it were, to
take God with him back to his own country. And when you meet Christ in the
gospel, you take him with you. You take him in your heart, into
your life, into the going to school, into your home, into
your family, into your workplace. You take Christ with you. You
don't leave him at church for a Sunday, but he's part of you
all the time. Naaman thought he could do that
with a couple of barrels of dirt, but he now was being taught to
understand that Christ was in him. And here's the final point that
I want to draw your attention to. And it's another thing that happens,
I think, to young Christians. They worry about the old life
that they're leaving behind. They worry, what is going to
happen when I get back to school? What is going to happen when
I start mixing with my friends? What is going to happen when
I start going to work again? Am I going to be able to keep
this Christianity, this change that I feel in my life? And Naaman
was exactly the same. He says, what's going to happen
when the king of Syria takes me to the temple of Rimman? Rimman
was his idol God. Whereas it might even be that
he looked like a pomegranate. Do you know what a pomegranate
looks like? Yes? Tell me you know what a pomegranate
looks like. Okay. Okay, he might've looked like
a pomegranate because that's what the word means. But here
was a temple where a heathen god was worshipped. And Naaman
says, I now worship the true God, but I know what's going
to happen. I'm going to have to go back into the temple of
Rimen. And when my king holds my arm
and bows his knee before Rimen, I'm going to have to bow too.
What is going to happen to me when that happens? And we feel anxiety about the
old life and what it is going to cost us. Now, I don't know
what Elisha said to Naaman. I feel sure that they spent a
little bit of time together and that Elisha advised and informed
Naaman appropriately. But even if the words he spoke
are not given to us. Yet what he did say echoes and
re-echoes down to the people of God through all of these years. He said this to Naaman. Naaman, you go in peace. You go in peace. Don't you worry about what's
going to happen in Syria. Don't you worry about the Temple
of Rimin. Don't you worry about having
to go in and bend your knee before an idolatrous God. 99 out of
100 people would have said to Naaman, Naaman, don't do it.
Don't go there. Don't do that thing. That's not
the same as worshipping God. You've got to know that. And
there would be panic in their voices and there would be uncertainty
and doubt. And Elisha says, Naaman, you
go in peace. Why? name and your sins are forgiven.
And the Lord Jesus Christ doesn't just forgive the sins that are
past or the sins that are now. He has already forgiven the sins
that are future. All our sins are placed on Christ. That forgiveness is for us all. And Naaman was to go and he was
to do the things that he was called upon as an individual
and as a servant of the king to do in the full knowledge that
God knew and understood the true nature of his heart and the confession
that had been made and the salvation that he had. Peace with God is
peace. with God. And when God saves,
he keeps saved. He protects his people. He preserves
his people. And though trial comes, and difficulties
arise, and mistakes are made, God will never leave his people
nor forsake them. Once saved, saved forever. Once saved, safe and secure forever. Peace with God through the Lord
Jesus Christ is his gift of eternal life to those who trust in him. Thank you for listening.