So 2 Kings chapter 5 and verse
9. So Naaman came with his horses
and with his chariot and 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, and 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 Farpar, 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! And he went 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. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. You know, this man, Naaman, We
met him when we were thinking about the little girl that was
a servant girl in his house who had directed him, although he
was a Syrian and although he lived many miles away from Samaria
and from the place that the little girl was taken from, she was
taken in to be a slave in his house, Yet she knew that there
was a need that Naaman had. And Naaman, when we think about
him or look at him in our mind's eye, he's a man who seems to
have everything. He has everything going for him. He was popular. He was wealthy. He was powerful. He had a great
reputation. People loved him. And yet the
Bible tells us that he was a leper. And you know, that teaches us
something. It teaches us that we don't always know what's going
on in other people's lives. We look at people from the outside
and we see what they're doing. We might hear what they're saying.
But things can look good on the outside, as indeed they did with
Naaman. And yet on the inside, there
might be terrible things happening, terrible things going on in a
person's life. Outside it looks good, but inside
things are not going so well. Is there anyone here uses social
media? Is there anyone here doesn't
know what social media is? No, I guess we all do nowadays.
Isn't it amazing how words come into our language and vocabulary
and things change over time? Chris, when you were young, you
had no idea what social media was. Or me too. Okay, who's heard of Facebook? Oh yeah, okay, I guess we have. And YouTube, and Instagram, and
WhatsApp, and I look for the top four, that's them. Okay,
social media. Sometimes you see people on social
media telling us what they're doing, showing us pictures of
their lives, showing us the things that they are enjoying and experiencing. And it looks very exciting. And
we think to ourselves, I wish my life was like theirs. I wish
I was able to do those kind of things. I wish I didn't have
this boring life in Great Falls or wherever it might be. I wish
I had an exciting life like all these other people and everyone
seems to have a much better life than I do. I wish I was him. I wish I was her. but the truth is you don't know
what's happening in that person's life. The truth is you don't
know anything except that projection of their life that they want
to show you. They're projecting an image and
it isn't all that it seems to be. That was true with Naaman. Naaman was projecting an image.
He was projecting an image of being an important man with everything
good happening in his life. But the Bible tells us he was
a leper. In his life, this leprosy was
killing him. And before it killed him, it
would ruin him and it would rob his family of everything that
they had. The Bible tells us that no matter
how good we look on the outside, and my, my, don't we spend a
lot of time and money trying to look good on the outside.
No matter how good we look on the outside, inside we've got
a problem. Inside we have a problem, not
of leprosy, but of sin. We have a problem of sin. And
we are in need of cleansing just as much as Naaman was in need
of a cure for his leprosy. We need Christ just as much as
Naaman needed to speak to the prophet of God in Israel. There's something else about
Naaman. Naaman was a proud man. And Naaman was having a hard
time doing what he was doing. Oh yes, he wanted to be cured,
but he was having trouble with this situation that he was in. And I can understand that. You
know, I see myself reflected in Naaman very much. I told you
that I liked that little girl, that little servant girl, and
I do. But I see myself in Naaman. He
was proud. He didn't like to have his time
wasted. He didn't like to feel that he
wasn't getting the proper respect that he was due. He didn't suffer fools gladly. He needed help. So he went to
see the King of Israel and that was a waste of time. In fact,
so much of an embarrassment was it to Naaman that this king acted
in such a foolish way before him that Elisha, the prophet
of God, had to say, what on earth are you doing to the king? Send
him to me. And the next thing, Naaman is
being sent away from the royal court of Israel down to this
poor little part of the country to stand outside of the prophet's
house. And what a picture that was.
Here's the little house where the Prophet lives. And here's
Naaman standing in his chariot with all his horses and his servants
and his soldiers all around about him. And they're standing there
and they're waiting. And he must have been getting
eaten up inside. Here I am. expecting to be healed
of my leprosy, and I'm standing here in the cold, waiting on
this man coming out to see me. You know what? The man didn't
even come out to see him. He sent his servant, and he said,
if you would be cured of your leprosy, go and dip seven times
in the Jordan, in the Jordan River. Oh man. Naaman was so angry. This is the way he would, a great
man in Syria, a mighty man in Damascus, and this was the way
he was treated? And he said to his servants,
I expected him to come out, to lift his hands up, to say a prayer
to his God, to invoke the heavens, and to slap his hand across my
disease, and bid it be gone. Oh, he wanted the dramatic. He
wanted to see a big show. And then he wanted his leprosy. He was a proud man. And it got
him angry. The way he had been treated,
the way he had been humiliated. Who did these people think they
were? Who did they think he was? The Jordan River. It was a filthy,
muddy stream, not like the beautiful rivers of back home. He could
bathe in them any time and get clean if that's what he was looking
for. Verse 11 and verse 12 tell us
that he was angry and that he turned away in a rage. Naaman took his eyes off the
prize. He took his eyes off the prize.
He was there to get cured, but he had allowed those feelings
of self-importance and pride to rise up within him to such
an extent that he turned away and headed home. You see, Elisha,
and indeed God, was teaching Naaman a lesson. We cannot come
to God for healing. We cannot come to God for salvation
on our terms. We're too proud. We're too full
of ourself. Naaman was a leper and he needed
to come to God as a leper. And we are sinners. And we need
to come to God as sinners. He thought he was a mighty general
and he thought that he could come to God as a mighty general. But he had to come as a needy
soul. And that's how we must come to. Not projecting an image of something
that we're not. Not pretending that everything's
going well in our lives. Not imagining that we're okay
and we'll just add God into the mix so that we've got all the
bases covered. But to realize that without God,
we're dead. Without God, we're lost. Without the Lord Jesus Christ
taking away our sin, we have nothing. but judgment and condemnation. I'm glad that Naaman had a servant
who was brave enough to show his master how foolish he was. When men get powerful, they gather
around themselves lots of yes people. People who say, yes,
yes, yes, anything you want, you go ahead, you do it. We can
see that in the world today. Here was a man who was brave
enough to say to his master, wait a minute, this isn't the
way to do it. Just obey the instruction. Just
do what the prophet is telling you to do. Come to God, come
humbly, put away your pride, come humbly, do that which is
needful, without pride, without pretense. And we're told in verse 14, that
Naaman went 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. He went down once, twice, three
times, and nothing happened. But when he was obedient and
dipped the seventh time, we were told that he was cleansed. Naaman
was made whole, he was complete again, and he was cured from
his leprosy. When sinners come to the perfect
Saviour, number seven in the Bible speaks of perfection and
completeness and wholeness. When sinners come to He who is
perfect, to the Lord Jesus Christ, we find that there is a holy
God who is willing and able to receive us, but we must come
in humble faith as a sinner. We cannot come with a projection
of something that we're not. He is able to remove our sin
as he was able to take away Naaman's leprosy. But we don't come to
him in our way. We come to him in his way. We come to him through the Lord
Jesus Christ. We come humbly and we come trusting. that he will fulfil what he has
promised to do. Let me read some verses for you
from 1 Corinthians. This is 1 Corinthians 1, verse
27. It says this, God hath chosen
the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And God hath chosen the weak
things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. and
base things of the world, and things which are despised hath
God chosen, yea, and things which are not to bring to naught things
that are, listen, that no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus,
who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification
and redemption, Healing, healing comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ has made to us all
these wonderful blessings of God, that according as it is
written, he that gloryeth, let him glory in the Lord. Amen.