If you will, take your Bibles,
and I want us to open to two places. I'd like for you to open your
Bibles to 2 Kings, Chapter 5. 2 Kings, Chapter 5, and when you
have found that, just hold that and turn also to Isaiah, Chapter
62. So you have your Bibles open
to two places, 2 Kings chapter 5 and Isaiah chapter 62. And now, if you will, look up
at me for just a few minutes and let me remind us of some
things that we know. After the Lord Jesus Christ was
born in this world, he was carried into Egypt. And then he was brought
back out of Egypt and they turned into a city of Nazareth, and
there he lived for twenty-some years. And then the day came
when he walked to the River Jordan and was baptized of John, and
as he was baptized, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in
the form of a dove. John tells us that he was anointed
with the Spirit without measure. He was then in the wilderness
for forty days, And he returned after that to Nazareth, the city
in which he had lived. Went into the synagogue on the
Sabbath day, and they handed him the book to read. And he
found that place in Isaiah, in our scriptures, in Isaiah chapter
61, or 62 rather, verses 1 and 2. And he read these words, 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,
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight
to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach
the acceptable year of the Lord." And then he closed the book.
And the Scripture here tells us, Luke does, that every eye
in that synagogue was now fastened upon our Lord. And he said unto
them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all, Luke tells us, that
all in the synagogue that heard him that day, they all bear witness
and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of
his mouth. In Psalms we read that grace
and truth was poured into his mouth, into his lips. But these
words, I can only imagine this morning what it was to hear the
Lord Jesus Christ speak. And as he spoke, how that his
words were filled with grace and truth, even as he is. And
then he went on to say unto those in the synagogue that day, that
no prophet is accepted in his own country. And he gave them
the truth concerning God's sovereignty. God's sovereignty in saving sinners. God's sovereign grace. He gave
two examples. The example of Elijah with the
widow. And then he spoke of Naaman and
Elisha. And our Lord said this about
Naaman. He said, Many lepers were in
Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them
was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian. So there were many lepers
in Israel. Now, Naaman was not an Israelite,
he was a Syrian. So we can imagine We can imagine,
as there were many lepers in Israel, there were many lepers
in Syria, and there were many lepers around the world. There
were many lepers in the world, but only one was cleansed of
his leprosy in the days of Elisha. Now, the passage in Isaiah chapter
sixty-two, verses eleven and twelve, Behold, the Lord hath
proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter
of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh, behold, his reward is
with him, and his work before him, and they shall call them,"
that is, the daughter of Zion, the church, they shall call them,
the holy people, be redeemed of the Lord, and thou shalt be
called, sought out, a city not forsaken. And the title of my
message today is, Naman Sought Out. Naman sought out. He was one of God's chosen people,
and so he was sought out. And the same is true of every
one of us here this morning who know him as our Lord and Savior.
We, too, have been sought out. Sometimes people believe that
the way they came under the gospel, and to us it may seem like accidental,
but we know that it's not so. That everything about our lives
has been ordained of God, and all to this end to bring us to
know the Lord Jesus Christ, to trust in Him as our Lord and
Savior. Everything in this world is like
One preacher described it one time as a scaffold. The building
is being constructed, and so the scaffolding is there. And
the building is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this
world is just like a scaffolding, and everything that takes place
here, everything is all in God's plan in calling out His people
and saving sinners. Every child of God is truly once
sought out. That's our name, sought out,
thou shalt be called sought out. Naaman, he was sought out. Now
let's look this morning again at Naaman here in 2 Kings chapter
5. The Scripture says, Now Naaman,
captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with
his master and honorable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance
unto Syria. He was also a mighty man in valor,
but he was a leper." There are four things said about Naaman
in this verse, four things. Three things we read that he
was an honorable man, he was a great man, and he was a man
of valor. But you notice that all of these
things were before his master. Before his master, that is, before
the king of Syria, he was a great man, he was an honorable man,
he was a brave man. And so I say this morning to
us that what he was, he was by God's providence. Because we
read, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria.
all that he was, he was that by God's providence. We believe that the Bible teaches
total depravity. I remember years ago attending
a funeral and the pastor stood up and one of the things he said
at the very beginning is this, he said, all men are totally
depraved and he just left it at that. Well, I knew most of
the people that were there, they didn't have a clue as to what
total depravity means. Most people, when they hear that,
they think, well, that means that everyone is as bad as he
can be. That every man on the face of
the earth is as bad as he possibly could be. That's not what total
depravity means. There was a man, he was totally
depraved, yes. But before his master, he was
a great man. He was an honorable man. He was
a brave man. But all of that, even, he was
because that, in God's providence, is the way that God had made
him. That's the way he was. And God
uses many things to fashion and to form everyone. What does total depravity mean
then if it does not mean that everyone is as bad as he possibly
can be? It simply means that when Adam
sinned, when Adam transgressed and broke God's law, that Adam
fell and every part of man was affected in that fall. The heart
of man, which includes the understanding, the affections, and the will,
all three were now ruined. The understanding was darkened.
And the affections are no longer upon God, but they are turned
upon man himself, and the will is in bondage. Man doesn't have
a free will, contrary to what so many people are being told
today. And I'm amazed that people just
receive that and just take that in as though that is what the
Scripture says when the Bible declares just the opposite. Lord
Jesus Christ said, if the Son shall make you free, you shall
be free indeed. But He's the only one who can
make a person free. Our will is in bondage. We are
ruined. When Adam died, just as God said
that he would, we too spiritually died. And we no longer have that
understanding to be able to comprehend and understand the things of
God. Our mind is darkened. It's darkened. We just don't
have the light. Naaman, it's true, he may have
stood head and shoulders above everybody else in Syria at that
time, but whatever goodness he had, it was of the Lord. You see, before the flood, if
you want to keep your place here, just look back over here to Genesis
chapter 6. Before the flood, this is what
God said about man. In Genesis chapter 6, in verse 5,
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil. And in the margin it says, the
whole imagination, the imagination, not only the imagination, but
also the purposes and the desires, was only evil, and that continually,
or that every day. Now when God destroyed all flesh
outside of the ark, and only those eight souls came out of
that ark, this depravity and this wickedness and this evilness
that God saw and said was true of man before the fall was not
washed away. We came out of the ark the same
way men went in, that is, wicked and evil by nature. And I'm of
the opinion that Every good, every good thing that takes place
in this world, I don't care if it's a good thought, a good deed,
or whatever it is, it all ultimately comes from God. That man at his
best state is altogether vanity, and if it were not for the restraining
grace of God, common grace, or whatever term you want to use,
this world itself would be a hell. because of the wickedness and
evil that is in the hearts of men. Whatever goodness, whatever greatness,
whatever honor, whatever power that this man had before his
master, it was because in God's providence that's what God had
allowed this man to be. But it was all with his master,
because it's still true what our Lord told that rich young
ruler when he came running to him and said, good master. And
our Lord said, why callest thou me good? There's none good but
one. That's God. And the Apostle Paul
said, there's none good, no, not one, quoting from the Psalms.
There's none good, no, not one. This is what he was before his
master. He was a great man, he was honorable,
and he was a brave man. But what was he before God? He was a leper. He was a leper. And that is a type that God uses. We call it a sickness, a bodily
infirmity. But God uses it in the Scripture
to pit your sin. Notice in verses 2 and 3, And
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. Isn't it truly amazing that in
this house of this leper would be a little maid from Israel
who believed in the true and the living God? But you can be
sure of this. Everyone that is sought out,
everyone, and our Lord said, the Son of Man has come to seek
and to save that which is lost. And he's going to seek, and he's
going to find, and he's going to save everyone that is lost. Everyone that comes to know that
we are lost, that we are lepers before God. He's going to seek
us out, and he's going to seek us out with his Word. There's
going to come someone along that's going to give a witness, that's
going to give a testimony. There's going to be a preacher
that's going to come along and preach this gospel. That's how
he seeks out his people. Now, this little maid, she doesn't
speak of the leper being cleansed. That's what the law dealt with.
That's what the law of leprosy dealt with. It dealt with how
a leper might be cleansed. But she doesn't talk about cleansing. She says, Would God, my Lord,
were with the prophet that is in Samaria, for he would recover
him of his leprosy. You see, the law, when a person
was covered all over, or when a person suspected that he had
leprosy, he would go to the priest, the priest would examine that
spot, and sometimes he wouldn't know if it was leprosy or not,
but they would put him in quarantine, and then he would come back and
the priest would examine him again. And as long as that decoloration
of the skin continued, and if there was a rawness there in
that skin, then it was leprosy. It was leprosy, and he was put
outside the camp. Now eventually, when it covered
him from head to foot, when the leprosy did, and there was no
more rawness in his flesh, or either if that decoloration in
the skin had stopped growing, Then the leper might be cleansed,
but he was not recovered. He was cleansed. And there was
quite a process they went through to cleanse the leper. You remember when the priest
came out and examined him, then they would take those two birds
and they would kill one of those birds and get some of the blood
in this vessel that had water in it, and the priest would take
the second bird, the live bird, along with some hyssop and some
cedar and some scarlet, and put that down into the water, put
the bird down into the water, and then turn the bird loose,
he would fly away, and he would take of that water and blood
and sprinkle that on the leper for seven times. And then the
leper had to go and bathe himself, shave all of his hair, and he
was allowed to come into the camp. before he'd been outside
the camp. But for six days, he could not
go into his tent. And on that seventh day, they
had to bring sacrifices. There had to be animal sacrifice.
And then again, he had to bathe and shave himself and go then
into his tent, return there with his family. There was a real
process that they went through in that cleansing. But that's
all it was. It was cleansing. It was allowing
that man who had been ceremonially unclean, who had not been allowed
to come into the camp, who had not been allowed to take part
in the worship services there in Israel, he was now restored,
he was pronounced clean, he could come back into the camp, he could
live with his family, and he could worship God with the other
Israelites. But he was certainly not recovered. You see, the law, the law of
God, it can pronounce us clean or it can pronounce us unclean,
but it cannot recover us. That's what the law can do. It
can pronounce us clean or it can pronounce us unclean, but
it cannot recover us. That's the work of the gospel.
The Apostle Paul said what the law could not do, and that it
was weak through the flesh. God sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh condemns sin in the flesh. It's the gospel
that is sent to recover men of their sin. I'm not ashamed, Paul
said, of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto
salvation to everyone that believes it. to the Jew first and also
to the Greek. For therein, in the gospel, is
the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is
written, the just shall live by faith. It is in the gospel,
in the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
who He is and why He died and how He won the victory over death
He conquered death and it came back from the grave and is ascended
to the Father's right hand. Therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. He established righteousness.
He obeyed God's law. He suffered at the hands of that
law. His obedience was even unto death. He established righteousness,
brought in that everlasting righteousness that when we believe in Him is
imputed unto us. And then God declares us to be
justified, not by anything we have done, because the flesh is weak. That is our
flesh. We could not obey that law, but
he came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He had no sin of his own,
but he came as a man and obeyed that law. He came to recover
us. He came to restore what He had
not taken away. The psalmist in Psalms 103 said,
He, that is God, He hath not dealt with us after our sins,
but He dealt with someone else after our sins. Nor rewarded us according to
our iniquities, and it is because He dealt with our sins with the
sins of His people, with the sins of you and I and all of
us who trust in Him today. He dealt with my sin. He dealt
with your sin in the substitute, in the surety, when He took our
sins, when God made Him to be sin for us, that we might be
made the righteousness of God in Him. He came to recover us. Well, notice verses 5 and 6 here
in 2 Kings 5. And the king of Syria said, Go
to now. This man is great and honorable.
I have a lot of confidence in him. I'm going to send a letter
with you to the king of Israel. And he departed and took with
him ten talents of silver and six thousand pieces of gold and
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." Now that's just the way people
think today. That hasn't changed. Oh, we have
sufficient to merit salvation. We have sufficient to recover
ourselves, to earn this, to pay for this restoration. In our
Father Adam, we were all under that covenant of works which
said, Do and live, and when he broke that law we all fell, and
since then none of us can do what God commands, but yet we
all think by nature, we all think the way to be restored unto God
is by our doing. We can buy it, we can pay for
it, we can merit it. There's always something that
we can do to recover ourselves. And yet the sound of the Word
of God sounds forward saying, no, never, never is there anything
that you can do to recover yourself from this sin, from this disease
of sin, from this leprosy of sin. There's nothing that you
can do. And yet, like this king of Syria,
we want to pay, we want to buy, we want to merit. We want to
do something. I don't care what it is. Preacher,
tell me what I've got to do. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved. I know that, but surely there's
something else I've got to do. No. That's what the Scripture
says. You must be in union with Christ. In Him is life, eternal life. And somehow or other, You must
be in union with Christ, and it is by faith we are in union
with Him, and His Spirit in us, He is in union with us. Now,
Naaman going to the king of Israel for recovery of his leprosy is
like a person today. If you can just imagine this,
here's a person, and he's got a heavy burden of sin on his
conscience, on his heart, and so he thinks, what will I do?
And someone says, well, you know, the office of the National Council
of Churches is in New York City, and so that's where you ought
to go. Now, he'd have just as much hope of being told how to
be recovered from the National Council of Churches as Naaman
had hope of this king of Israel telling him how he could be recovered
of his leprosy. Or it might be like this, suppose
you had that burden of sin and someone said, well, if you can
just get an audience with the Pope, Pope John Paul II, that'll
do it, that'll do it. And when you get there, you just
ask him how, Job's old question, how should man be just with God? And I tell you what, he wouldn't
have a clue. He doesn't even know there's
a problem. Don't expect an answer from these men because they don't
even know there's a problem. They don't realize that man is
not able, that man is not competent, that man does not have the ability
to recover himself. It takes the work of Jesus Christ
and Him alone. I read the other day of a man
by the name of Dr. Neal. And he took John Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress and he adapted it for the Romanist. I guess
it was a popular book at one time, you know, so he thought,
well, they're going to get this book, let's make it readable
for those who are Roman Catholics. And what he did, he had Pilgrim
with that burden on his back, not getting rid of that burden
at the cross, as John Bunyan rightly declares, when he saw
The Lord Jesus Christ hanging on that tree, dying in my stead
and in my place, that's when the burden loosened and tumbled
down into that sepulchre at the foot of the hill. But what Dr. Neal did, he had Pilgrim washing
in the baptistery to get rid of that burden. And I'm sure
this morning that any burden taken away by baptism or any
other work that any preacher or church or men may do, if your
burden can be taken away like that, it's going to come back.
Sooner or later, it's going to come back. No, it's only looking
upon the dying Jesus that our burden is removed. It's only
by His blood that our sins are washed away, and then our sins
are gone. Gone, gone, they are obliterated,
they are removed from us as far as the east is from the west.
God said, I will remember them no more. But any other way, any
other way to try to remove that burden of sin is useless. And that burden will come back.
Well, verse 9 and 10 says so. Well, Elisha sent word down to
the king and said, You see, the king said, well, he's picking
a fight with me. That's what the king of Syria
is doing. He just wants to fight. He wants a war. He wants me to
come out so he can defeat me in battle. And he sent this man
here asking me to recover him of his leprosy. That's impossible. And he knows it. The king knows
it. And he's only sent him here picking
a fight with me." And Elisha sent word to the king and said,
you send him down here to me and he'll see that there's a
God in Israel. Well, verses 9 and 10 says, 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 watch in Jordan seven times. And thy flesh shall
come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean." I can just see
that motorcade coming down from Samaria to wherever Elijah lived. Have you ever seen them in person?
Have you ever seen a presidential motorcade? I have a couple of
times. And I tell you what, they've
got those motorcycle policemen there up in the front and all
those lights flashing, sirens going, and those suburbans come
along now. And eventually, after a layer,
layer after layer of important people come, then here comes
the President's car. And then all of those Secret
Service men on the side and behind him. And I can just see Naaman,
the important, honorable man he was. And he comes in his chariot
and all those men riding with him in their chariots and people
running along. And here he comes to the house
of Elisha. And I imagine it took a while
for the dust to clear. And while that dust cleared,
he looked over and he saw that house that Elisha was living
in, and he thought, my, my soul, I know this can't be a man of
God. He doesn't even have a garage
for a charity. Why, if he had faith, if he was
a man of God, a man of faith, he would have a palace, he'd
have these luxurious automobiles, these chariots here, a park,
he doesn't even have a garage here. He can't be a man of faith. That's
what people are being told today, isn't it? If you really have faith that
you're going to have all the riches of this world, the newest,
the biggest, the most expensive, whatever it is, that's what you're
going to have if you just believe God. Well, maybe when he walks
out that door, he'll have a Rolex on his wrist anyway. Oh, Elisha didn't even come out
the door. Lysa sent his servant out there, his servant, and he
said, you tell him this. And the servant was very clear
and relaying the message, go wash in Jordan seven times and
you will be recovered of your leprosy. And that's the one message
that Naaman did not want to hear. Of all the messages that could
have been sent to him, that's the one message that he did not
want to hear. You go wash in Jordan seven times. And when you do, you're going
to be clean. Now, two words in verse eleven
reveals the problem of most men. I thought. I thought. Naaman was wroth and went away
and said, Behold, I thought. I thought. Now, none of us preachers
would ever discourage men from thinking. I wish men would think
some more, don't you? I wish men would use this mind
that God has given us more than we do, all of us. But all of
our thinking must be regulated by the Word of God. What do we
think about God? That's not the important thing.
The important thing is what does God declare about Himself in
His Word? What do we think about man? What
does God say about man? What do we think about sin? What
does God say about sin? What do we think about all of
these other religions in the world? What does God say about
the fact that there's only one way, only one mediator between
Himself and man? That's what is important, isn't
it? And when will we ever get it into our heads? As God said,
for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. I'm so glad
today that God's thoughts are not like my thoughts. Verse 12 through 14, Naaman goes
on, he said, Abana and far, far 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. You see, I started off by reminding
us that all of God's people are sought out. They're all sought
out. And Naaman is determined to go
back to Syria. He's determined he's going to
go back to Syria, and he's going to go back just like he came,
that is, a leper. But God has determined something
else for this man. God is determined to save him. God is determined to recover
him of his leprosy. Who's going to win out? Who do you think? How does God
do it? How does God win this battle?
He uses means, doesn't he? He uses means. When I said a while ago that
man doesn't have a free will, I believe that. And yet at the
same time, when man comes to Christ, when Naaman goes down
and washes in this river, he does so because he wants to do
so. He does so because he wills to
do so. But something happened to change
his will. Something happened to change
him to become willing. And the scripture says, In the
day of thy power thy people shall be made willing. God throws up a roadblock here
in the form of these servants. And they came to him and they
reasoned with him. And they said, My father, if
the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not
have done it? How much rather than when he saith to thee, Wash
and be clean. God-working, isn't it? Through
these servants. Now, they may not have known
they were being used of God, but they were. I said just a moment ago, this
is the one message that Naaman did not want to hear, because
evidently, when he went down to Warsh, he had to strip himself
of his military uniform. And he was a commander. He was
like a five-star general. You know, there's only been,
I think, two or three five-star generals in the history of our
nation. He was a five-star general. I
mean, he had those ribbons. You'd see the chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff sometime on television. He's a four-star
general. He's got a chest full of ribbons
there, doesn't he? They've got those marks on their
sleeves, those slash marks. They've got on that hat those
We called it scrambled eggs. I don't know what the real name
is, but you have to have a certain rank before you can put that
on your cat. I mean, he was dressed to kill. He was dressed to hide
that leprosy, wasn't he? And what he had to do was strip
down and just confess to himself and to all the world what he
really was. What he was before God, he was
a leper. When all the ribbons and all
the slash marks and all the stars and all the uniform and all of
that was taken off, then he was what he was, a leper. He was a sinner and that's the
way you and I are. And as Brother Don said last
night, this is when a person will cry out to God when he is
brought down to that place and he recognizes and confesses and
realizes that he's a sinner. And nothing but a sinner, he
has nothing to bring, he has nothing to offer, he has no merit,
and if God would have mercy upon him, he's going to do it because
of himself. For Christ's sake. For Christ's
sake. Not because of anything in me. Hannah said, he raiseth up the
poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill,
to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne
of glory. He went down, he went down seven
times, and he came up clean. How could it be otherwise when
he believed God? Scripture says, Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. You believe, you trust in Him
this morning, and you have eternal life. Know Him as your Lord and
Savior. You say, Was this man converted?
Yes, he was converted. Yes, he was converted. There's
another man in this story. Let me just mention him in closing. There's a man by the name of
Gehasi, and he was a servant of Elisha. He's the one that
took the message. He's the one that carried the
message, the name, and said, Go wash seven times in Jordan,
and thou shalt be clean. Just because a preacher isn't
saved, that doesn't mean if he's preached the truth, preached
the gospel, that some who have come to faith, who have believed
under that message, are not saved. This man was not saved, but he
took the message that Naaman needed to hear, Naaman heard. But you know, the Scripture says
in the New Testament, take heed and beware of covetousness. What
is covetousness? It's idolatry. The Scripture does not condemn
great wealth. Naaman was a wealthy man. You
can tell by what he brought. He was a wealthy man. Elisha
did not tell him he had to give up all of that wealth in order
to be saved. It's not money per se, but it
is the love of money that is the root of all evil. And Gehasi
had everything he needed, everything that he could desire, but he
desired more. Verses 21 and 22. Gehazi followed
after Naaman, and when Naaman saw him running after him, he
lighted down from the chariot to meet him and said, Is all
well? And he said, All is well. My
master hath sent me, saying, Behold, even now there become
to me from Mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the
prophets. Give them, I pray thee, a talon of silver and two changes
of garments." And Naaman said, be content, take the two talons.
And Gehazi gathered that stuff up and he was going home, hid
it out there in the garage, out there behind the house somewhere.
He didn't know that Elisha knew exactly where he'd been and what
he'd done. And so that leprosy that had
been upon Naaman was now upon him and upon his house. Take
heed, take heed, beware of covetousness. Having food and raiment, let
us therewith be content. For godliness with contentment is great gain. The Lord has blessed us here
this morning. I know each one of us who know
Him as our Lord and Savior. He's passed by, just like He
passed by many lepers, He's passed by many sinners in this world,
and He sought you out. He sought me out. He's blessed
us, hasn't He? We can never praise Him and thank
Him enough. Eternity will be too short. to praise Him all His due for
saving sinners like you and I. Thank you.