A Proud Man and a Suffering Girl

Well, good morning Summit Church and all of our campuses across the Triangle. Before we dive in this morning, I want to make you aware of a couple of things that will affect you. First is that coming up toward the end of June, I have an incredible opportunity I'm going to embark on.

And it will affect you at least indirectly. Most of you know that God first called me to be a pastor by calling me to the mission field. And so I spent the first two years of my ministry as a church planter overseas.

Southeast Asia. I've also told you that God never relinquished that call to missions overseas missions. He simply showed me that my role in it specifically was to be a part of a church that sends and supplies the mission field in extravagant ways. Well, the elders of this church have extended an opportunity for me to go with my family and live with some of our church planners for a few weeks this summer. So toward the end of June, my family and I and one other family are going to be going to live with some of our summit teams on the mission field, specifically in South Africa as well as Central Asia. This is an opportunity for us to spend time on the front line, so to speak. You know, where I can be less of JD, the guy on stage and on the screen and more of JD, the guy who lives in the neighborhood and shares Christ with people. It will allow me, Lord willing, not only to encourage our teams there, but also to renew my own passion for missions and to spend some focus time with my kids sharing this passion kind of life on life with them.

Now, I know when you hear that, I know what you're thinking. You're like, well, who's going to take care of us while you're gone? Over the weeks that I'm going to be in this mission trip, we are bringing in some of your favorite guest speakers from around the country. And you will also be hearing from some of our own very gifted pastor teachers. So let's just suffice it to say that you are in excellent hands while I am away. In fact, I am confident that these are going to be some of your favorite weeks of preaching of the year. In fact, to be honest, I'm a little nervous that you might enjoy them too much. And I might get a note that says, just stay man, just stay and minister over there.

I would ask that you pray for my family and me as we prepare for this trip, that God would refresh and renew my vision and passion for missions that he would use us to lift up the arms of our missionaries, that he would use this trip as a catalyst to reaching our goal of a church of planting 1000 churches in our generation, and that my kids would not drive me absolutely insane on the plane ride from here to there. Will you do that with me? Will you do that for me? Thank you.

In fact, not everybody clapped there. So if you will not do that for me, would you just raise your hand so I can know? Okay.

It looks like everybody on that one. That's the first thing. The second thing I was going to tell you is, just as a heads up, at the very end of the service today, we're going to do that thing that we do from time to time where we extend an invitation for you to be baptized if you never have. Right now, today, you say, well, but I didn't come prepared.

It's okay. We are prepared. We are prepared for you.

We have everything that you will need, towels, change of clothes, get baptized in, whatever. You're like, well, I didn't know I was going to go home wet. That's okay.

But the looks of what it is outside, you're going to go home wet either way. So you might as well make it count. All right. 2 Kings 5. If you have a Bible, and I hope that you do, if you'll open it to 2 Kings 5, we're in the middle of our series called The Whole Story. And in this story today, you are going to hear the stories of two people who are suffering. One is a follower of God and the other is not.

But neither of them can figure out why they are suffering. The non-believer discovers that he has a terminal disease and he has only a few years to live. The believer is a 14-year-old girl whose parents have just been murdered and she has been kidnapped and put into human trafficking. And you're going to see God weave their two stories together and thereby giving us a quick snapshot of what he is doing in the world and what he is doing in your life. You see, as we go through this series called The Whole Story, you get these insights into what God is up to, not just in the days that these stories are written in, but what he's up to in our day. You see, I know that some of you have situations where you look at something in your life and you wonder what God could possibly be up to.

Or maybe it's even made you wonder whether there's a God at all based on how things are going in your life. I remember as a kid, there was this painting show that would come on after all the good cartoons on Saturday morning were over. It was the kind of thing you'd watch when you'd totally given up on your day. And you're not even watching TV for entertainment anymore. You're just watching it for distraction, otherwise known now as the HGTV channel, in my opinion. But this show, this guy, Bob Ross, if I remember his name correctly, would paint these pictures and he would explain as he went along in a very soothing voice what he was doing. Anybody remember this? I feel like you do.

All right. He'd start by slapping these amorphous blobs of color onto the canvas and you would think, what is he doing? And then he'd do a couple of strokes or add a couple of dots and you'd see like, oh, it's a cloud. Happy little clouds. Or it's a bunch of happy little trees.

Or it's the face of Nicholas Cage or whatever it was that he was painting. Well, in a way, that's what you're going to see God do in this story. You've got a couple of things that are going to feel like accidental chaotic blobs of color that God is going to suddenly add a couple of strokes to. And then all of a sudden they're going to transform into these beautiful works of art.

That is happening in your life. Second Kings five, verse one through 18. It's the story of Naaman, y'all. This is my favorite story in the entire Old Testament.

I'm serious. I love it more than David and Goliath. I love it more than Daniel and the lion's den. I love it more than left-handed e-hud sticking a knife in the fat man's belly, that whole story. I love it more than all those stories.

And here's the thing. If you did not grow up in church, I guarantee you that you have never heard this story, but it contains the answer to those questions of what God might be doing when you can't see any evidence of his loving kindness at all in your life. Chapter five, verse one, Naaman. Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria was a great mighty man with his master and in high favor, because by him, the Lord had given victory to Syria.

Now, hold on for a minute. Israel and Syria are enemies. So when it says that God had given victory to Syria through Naaman, who is it victory over? It's victory over Israel.

If you remember from last week, because of their persistent disobedience and idolatry, God had sent in people like the Syrians to punish them, and eventually they're gonna be driven off into captivity. Well, this is a story from that era. Well, there was this man, Naaman, who was this mighty captain of the enemy army. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.

Now, that's a huge but. Leprosy was the most feared disease in the world. It began as this small white powdery patch of skin, almost like a rash, that would very quickly spread all over your body, and wherever it spread, the nerve endings in your skin would die, and these boils would break out all over your body and leave these gaping wounds of raw flesh. Eventually, body parts would lose feeling and fall off, your facial features would lose their shape, and they would become grotesque.

Essentially, you would turn into a character on The Walking Dead. And in those days, there was no cure. Leprosy had a 100% death rate.

And in those days, it was regarded to be highly contagious. So the moment one of these spots was discovered on you, you were immediately banished, where you would spend the next 10 or 20 years in isolation until you died. Mighty Naaman, who was on top of the world, sitting at the head of the mightiest army in the region at the time, discovers one of these spots of death on him. Verse two, now the Syrians, on one of their raids, had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. And she said to her mistress, Wood, that my lord were with the prophet who was in Samaria. She's talking specifically about Elisha, who was one of the mightiest prophets of this era. He, he, Elisha, could cure this man of his leprosy, could cure Naaman of his leprosy. Verse four, so Naaman went and told his lord, the king of Syria, thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel.

And the king of Syria said, go now, I'll send a letter on your behalf to the king of Israel. So Naaman went, taking with him 10 talents of silver and 6,000 shekels of gold and 10 changes of clothing as a gift that he can give to Elisha. This would have been, by the way, an enormous sum of money.

750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold. Clothing might seem like an odd addition. Here's $50 million and some shirts. But in those days, clothing was handmade and it was very expensive. And this would have been what they call party clothing. Most people would never even own a single set of these kind of clothes.

So having 10 sets of these clothes would be like having a garage full of Rolls Royces. Put it this way, the man of God gonna be blinging after Naaman shows up. Verse six, and he brought the letter to the king of Israel. And the letter said, when this letter reaches you, know that I've sent you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy. And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, am I God to kill and make alive that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me. In other words, he thinks the king of Syria is looking for an excuse for war.

I'm gonna ask you to heal him and you didn't, so now I'm gonna destroy you. Verse eight, but when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king, why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel. Elisha, you see, perceives a bigger purpose in this leprosy. God is wanting to do something in Naaman's life and he's wanting to show something to the entire nation of Syria. Verse nine, so Naaman came with his horses and his chariots. I mean, you can imagine what this would have looked like needed this mighty cavalcade of horses and chariots showing up at little old Elisha's house.

It'd be like a big army of, you know, suburbans and helicopters showing up at the end of the church service right out here in the parking lot. And there they stood at Elisha's house. Verse 10, and Elisha sent out a messenger to him saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean. Elisha doesn't even go out to see him. He sends a messenger kit, an intern. He sends an intern out to him.

By the way, how would you have liked to have been this kid who had to deliver that message? I'm sorry, Mr. Naaman, powerful man in the world, most powerful man in the world. Dr. Elisha cannot see you today. He has no room in his schedule. I know you traveled all this way, but he just is too busy. Meanwhile, you know Elisha's house could not have been that big.

So Naaman can look in there and see him sitting on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table watching the Bob Ross painting show or whatever he was doing. I read this week that Steve Jobs got really upset. Steve Jobs, the Apple guy, when after they released the first iPad, Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff called to congratulate Steve Jobs instead of President Obama himself.

And that totally sent Steve Jobs into this like mild depression. Here you got the most powerful man in the world coming to the home of a relatively unknown prophet and the prophet won't even come to the door. He sends out an intern. What do you think God is doing here? Verse 11, but Naaman was angry. He felt disrespected and he went away saying behold, I thought surely he would come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. I thought there'd be like a ceremony.

Elisha would run out of a smoke filled tunnel and jets would fly over and then Beyonce would sing and then he'd walk on hot coals and do a dance and charm a snake and bam, I'd be healed. Furthermore, are not Abana and Farpar, the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? Could not wash in one of them and be clean? Yeah, I don't know if you've been to Israel or not. I've been one time. I'm telling you the most unimpressive thing you will ever go to is the Jordan River.

I'm thinking like baptism of Jesus. It's gonna be, I'm gonna get chilled by. It's like, I mean, most of the creeks that are in Raleigh-Durham are bigger than the Jordan River.

It is so unimpressive. I'm making sure you get a whole body into the Jordan River to be honest with you. Plus it's another 15 miles out of the way from where this guy is. And he's like, this just seems like a big waste. So he turned and he went off in a rage.

The word for rage in Hebrew means literally super ticked off. He's already plotting his revenge about what he's gonna do. But his servants, verse 13, notice more servants, come near and say to him, my father, if it was a great word, the prophet had spoken to you, wouldn't you have done that? All he said to you is wash and be clean. In other words, if he told you you'll get the berries off of a plant at the top of Mount Everest, or he told you to clip the toenails off of a dragon, you would have done that, right? Man, all he told you was go and wash. What have you got to lose, Naaman? Try it. We'll swing by the Jordan on the way home.

And if it doesn't work, then you can come back and open up a can of whoop trash on these people and we'll all help you. Verse 14, so he went down and he dipped himself seven times in the Jordan. You gotta picture this scene. And he's seething with rage and he gets into the Jordan River and somehow he gets his whole body into that muddy, nasty little creek. And he stands up and when he stands up, it's no different than he was. And so he just kind of shakes his head and his servant's like, do it one more time. You gotta do it seven times.

It's two times, no change. Three times, four times, five times, six times. By that sixth time, he is just, I mean, he is angry.

You can just feel his anger. And his servant's like, just one more time, man. He's in seven times. And he goes down that seventh time. He comes up cussing. And when he comes up, it says, he looked and behold, his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child. And he was clean. He looks at his arm and it's gone.

His skin looks like a baby's skin. He's totally and completely healed. Verse 15, then he returns to the man of God, Elisha.

He had all of his company. And he came and stood before him and he said, stop. He is meeting Elisha for the first time.

Keep that in mind. He has a terminal disease that this man has just healed him from. If you were meeting the man who healed you from a terminal disease for the first time, what would you say to him? It's gonna come out something like, thank you for saving my life.

Thank you for giving me back my family and my kids and blah. Notice what he says right there, verse wherever we are. Behold, verse 15.

Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel. He makes not the first mention of leprosy. Naaman was not looking for God.

Naaman was looking for a cure for leprosy. But God used his search for a cure to lead him to something even greater than the cure itself. And that is the relationship with God himself and the knowledge of God that Naaman found was so valuable that when he finally met Elisha for the first time, he forgot to even mention the healing.

All he talked about was God. Number one, God uses your pain to bring you to himself. You see, here's the question I want you to think about in your life.

What if God had a much bigger purpose in your pain? You see, up until the moment that Naaman discovered this spot on him, he had felt like he was on top of the world. It says that he was on the king's arm, which meant that he was the king's right-hand man.

It said that he was highly regarded, which meant he was a celebrity with a lot of Twitter followers and everybody loved him. All that was taken away in a moment by one small spot. One small spot made Naaman realize how fragile and fleeting everything was. What if God was saying that to you through your pain or your problem?

What if that problem that is there in your life had been put there by God not to punish you, but had been put there to try to wake you up? I know a lot of athletes in our church that point to an injury that they couldn't understand why it happened as the thing that woke them up to the important things in life. That was once introduced to a professional athlete in the area. He had just signed a multimillion dollar contract to play in the pros, but then shortly about two weeks after he signs the contract, he gets into an accident doing something dumb that totally destroyed his future career. Now this guy didn't know God, his career, his professional career had become his God. So we met at this coffee shop and he tells me with tears in his eyes. He said, when I had that accident, I lay there on the ground, my legs broken.

I knew my legs were broken. I kept saying to myself, I can't believe I threw them away my entire career for a few foolish seconds of fun. Now I look back at him and I said respectfully, man, I'm not trying to be like the self-righteous preacher, but I think God might've been up to something much bigger in your life. In fact, I think God might've been trying to say to you, you were throwing away your entire eternity for a few seconds of glory in an athletic arena. Make a long story short, God ended up using this to bring this guy to Christ.

Here's my question. What if God in your pain had something for you beyond, far better than the cure that you seek for that pain? What if what he had for you was better than a professional athletic career? What if it was better than riches? What if it was better than health? What if it was better than a relationship? And what if this thing that he had for you was so valuable that after you found it, like Naaman, you've got to even mention the healing that you received?

I mean, it's like if you asked your boss to get Friday off, right, and your boss sends back a messenger to your cubicle later and says, yeah, you can have Friday off and we're raising your salary by $300,000 a year. When you call your spouse later that afternoon, you're not gonna talk about the Friday you just got off because it just got eclipsed in this overwhelming better thing. Well, let me ask you, where has a spot been revealed in your life that tells you that you're not as together as you might have thought? You see, maybe you've just encountered a problem in your marriage.

I can't tell you how many men I know in this category. They've conquered everything in their lives and then all of a sudden they go through a problem in their marriage and it starts falling apart and you feel like for the first time in your life, you can't do anything about it. Or maybe it's a problem with your kids and you now feel helpless in light of this problem. Maybe it's a habit that you can't break.

Alcoholism, pornography, maybe a temper problem. Maybe it's a fear that has paralyzed you. Maybe it's a personal failure you've just gone through. Maybe it's a health scare that for the first time in your life has made you realize your own fragile nature, your mortality. Maybe it's a guilt for something you've done that you just can't get rid of. Now read this thing about Naaman and his spot and what I think of is that scene in Macbeth where Lady Macbeth, after the murder, is trying to wash her hands to get this spot of guilt off of her and she's like, out cursed spot, I can't get rid of it. Maybe it's a dull, aching unhappiness you just can't get rid of. That sense that you've never really found that love or acceptance or purpose you've always craved and been looking for.

You see, that spot, those spots point to a bigger problem, a spot on your soul. You see, leprosy throughout the Bible symbolizes sin. Like leprosy, sin deadens. It grows in you and corrupts you more and more over time. You lose feelings in different part of your life. Parts of you die. Your innocence dies, your joy dies, your compassion for other people dies. Your soul has a disease and it is terminal. Scripture says, for all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God and the wages, the penalty, the result of sin is death. These lesser spots that come into your life can wake us up to the ultimate spot that we've really got to deal with.

And in light of that, when all the others are rather insignificant. I think I've told you this before, but before I became a full-time pastor, I was a part-time pastor at a little church that couldn't afford to pay me full-time. I was a student pastor. And so to make ends meet, I worked as a, let's just call it an architectural landscape engineer. And so I was part of a crew that went around parts of South Florida.

We mowed yards and all this kind of stuff. Well, the chief of our crew was this guy who was about six foot seven. I never knew his real name. We always just called him Ivan because he looked like Ivan Drago on Rocky Ford. You remember that movie? He looked like the Russian from Rocky Ford.

So we just called him Ivan. The dude could cuss like nobody I had ever heard in my life. I mean, I don't cuss, but I had to acknowledge that that was art. That what came out of his mouth, I was like, that was impressive. And so one day after I'd been there about three weeks, he let out a string of words that, again, were very artfully put together, but he used the queen mother of all curse words, the GD. And I don't know what came over me. I'm assuming it was the Holy Spirit, but I just felt this sudden sense of like holy righteousness.

He's six foot seven. I put my finger in his face and I said, Ivan, one day you can stand before God. And on that day, he's gonna have a record of everything you've ever said or done.

And believe me, man, the last thing you want on your record when you stand before God is a bunch of accounts of you taking his name in vain. And then the Holy Spirit totally left. And it was just me.

And I'm pretty sure I heard one of the guys say, if he dies, he dies, right? And so I turned and I was like, you know, it's time for me to leave. Holy Spirit's left, I'm out too. So I turned and I, and I heard these big foot steps, comes around and he stands in front of me. He says, what did you say? And I said it again, but this time much more timidly and respectfully. And he said, you really feel like God is, will be angry at me because of the way I talk or what I live.

And I said, man, the Bible says that one day you got to give an account and yes, you should not take his name in vain. All of a sudden we get into this really deep conversation that I would never in a hundred years of guests we're about to get into. But two days before this, he had just gotten a report from the doctor because they found a spot on his skin and they figured out it was melanoma. And he said, we don't know yet how bad it is. It could be something they can take care of.

It might be something that's too far advanced. And I may not have that long to live. And he said, I'm scared.

I'm scared. And so we started to talk the rest of the day. We used our breaks and our lunch periods. And we talked about the gospel the very end, right before we all, before we all got off. He, we were the field we were working on the yard we were working on. There was an accident that took place in the street, right next to it and make a long story short. One of the cars had flipped over and there was a kid trapped on the inside and he goes out there and he, man, he pushes this car. It was impressive.

He, beast of a man flips his car right side up and there's this kid in there that he wasn't dead, but he was definitely very messed up. And so because he and I were kind of witnesses to the accident, they made us wait there until the police got there. And so we waited for about 20 minutes.

And for the first 10 minutes, we just stood there in silence. I mean, just kind of, and eventually after about 10 minutes, he looks over at me or he doesn't look at me. He actually just speaks kind of out of the corner of his eye.

He never makes eye contact. He said, man, he said, two days ago, I get a diagnosis of melanoma. He said, today, you suddenly put your finger in your face and tell me I'm gonna stand before God. He said, now I see an accident where a kid almost dies. He said, man, do you feel like God is trying to speak to me?

I said, no, man. I mean, God's screaming at you. And if I were you, I would listen. We continue on conversation for two or three days and he ended up putting trust in Christ. But the reason I share that with you is because I imagine that, yeah, different scenario, but I just wonder if there are people listening to me right now that there have been spots that have revealed themselves that are simply God's way of asking you, are you ready for the ultimate questions? You see, the point of this story is not that every leper who heads out to the Jordan River is gonna find healing for his skin disease. The point is to show us that God uses these kinds of things to bring us to himself. This story is about how God pursues sinners, not just then how he pursues them today.

In fact, before I move on to our second point, let me show you how the story ends. Naaman says, we're 15, except now a present from your servant. But he, Elisha, said, as the Lord lives before whom I stand, I will take none of it. Naaman urged him to take it, but he refused. Now, here you got a fabulously wealthy guy trying to give a gift to a pastor and the pastor refuses.

I do not know of a single other situation in history where that has ever happened. But see, Elisha knows that to receive this gift might confuse everybody watching. Naaman had started this process thinking that he could purchase the miracle because of his riches. And if he ends up receiving this gift, even in gratefulness, people might assume that he had been able to purchase it. And the one thing, the one thing that has to be understood about the gospel is that it is a free gift of grace.

It cannot be won, it cannot be earned, it cannot be purchased, it has to be received as a gift. Verse 17, then Naaman said, well, if not, please let there be given to your servant two mule loads of earth. For from now on your servant will not offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god but the Lord.

Now, that's quite a jump, isn't it? If you won't take my multimillion dollar offering and could I at least have some dirt? What is going on with that? His plan is to spread it out underneath him whenever he sacrifices to God back in Syria, because you're only supposed to offer sacrifices to God in Israel. So he's gonna take a little bit of Israel with him and offer sacrifices to God there. That is never commanded in the Bible.

Not one place, he just totally made that up. But it gets better, verse 18. In this matter, may the Lord pardon your servant. When my master goes into the house of Ramon, that's a false god, to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow myself in the house of Ramon, the false god, could the Lord pardon your servant in this matter?

What? He seems to be asking Elisha for permission to be a coward and bow down before a false god. Now, I would expect Elisha, at this point, to go all Old Testament prophet on him. And be like, listen pal, if you're not ready to carry the cross, you're not ready for Jesus.

That's what I would've said. Oh, but he doesn't. He says, verse 19, Elisha says, go in peace.

Naaman's obedience is imperfect, but it's a start. And he's coming in faith, so God receives it. Y'all, I feel like a lot of Christians forget this, because they talk like you come to Jesus, and then, bam, all of a sudden you wake up the next morning, the Spirit-filled mentor Christian, you're humming God songs in your head, all the Beyonce and Eminem on your iPod has transformed into Kami and Hank singing gospel tunes.

I'm just gonna tell you, that's not true. You start out as a baby, and babies crawl, and they drool, and they run into stuff, and they break things, and that's okay, because you're crawling the right direction. You see, if you're serious about repentance, God is serious about having you, regardless of what shape you come in. As a compassionate father, he will patiently guide you if you just start coming in his direction. Y'all, the only thing you need to come to Jesus, the only things that you need are humility and faith. Humility, that's the one thing that God keeps going after with Naaman, isn't it?

Isn't that the one thing he keeps going after? Naaman in this story keeps trying to go to the top. God keeps sending him to the bottom. God will only speak to him through servants.

He's gonna make Naaman bathe in a nasty creek. You see, the path to God is the path of humility, and you can't get there any other way. The one thing, the one thing that you absolutely need when you come to God is need. In fact, it's all that you need. All that you need is need.

It's the one thing you can't do without. Naaman wants to find salvation through power and strength, but it can't be found that way. It won't be found that way, because it is by grace you can be saved through faith. Faith not in how awesome you are, or even all the great things you're gonna do. It's faith in what God in his grace did for you when Jesus died on the cross. It's not of words, because God doesn't want anybody to boast.

Naaman's problem is his pride. And so God has gotta tear down his pride, and God's gotta say, you are helpless, you got nothing. You're only gonna have my grace, and until you get that, you're never gonna be saved.

You see, the cross absolutely destroys our pride, because the cross tells you that God's verdict on your life was death. You wanna be like, how am I doing? God, how am I doing? And God says, how you doing?

Death, that's how you're doing. And most people don't wanna embrace that. Most people don't really want to wrestle with that.

For most people, what keeps them from the gospel is they don't have the humility it requires to agree with God that the verdict on their entire life is death and hell. And they are powerless to do anything about it, and their only hope is grace. Y'all, we talk about how much we love grace. Oh, we sing about it. It's sweet, it makes us get sentimental.

But we don't really, most of us wanna be in a position where we really need it, because it's insulting. I heard a great illustration of this. I had a friend who went with another friend who was leading a one-month-long camping trip for high school students, which sounds like the seventh circle of purgatory to me. But he went with them to lead these high school students, and this guy who was leading the trip had all the high school students, they were supposed to read a book in preparation for the trip. And so they get there to the first day of the trip, and they all strap up in their backpacks, backpacks about 50 pounds each.

The first part of the hike is a two-mile hike up to the crest of this mountain. And so the guide says, how many of you read the book that I assigned? And about half of them said they read it, and the other half admitted they didn't. He said, okay, I need everybody to take off their backpack, because some of you are gonna be carrying somebody else's bag up to the top of this hill. Now, everybody assumed, naturally, that he was gonna have the people who did not read the book carry the backpack, of those who did read the book, as a kind of punishment. But my friend said he totally flipped it on him. He said, if you read the book, I want you to pick up, not just your backpack, I want you to pick up the backpack of somebody who did not read the book.

And I want you to carry it for the next two miles. Now, my friend said, here was the thing, you would have expected that the kids carrying the extra weight would be whining, but they weren't. They felt awesome. Even though they had extra weight, they felt like the extra weight was a compliment to their competence and their strength, and that pride boost made them not mind the extra weight.

It was the ones who weren't carrying their bags, who hated the experience, because they felt humiliated. Because we don't like to feel needy. We don't like to feel like we're dependent on the favors of others. We don't like to feel like we are dependent on grace. The question is, I know you say you love grace, but do you have the humility to actually come to Jesus and say, you got what I deserved. You took what I deserved, that was the verdict on my life.

I did not get a gold star, I did not get a passing grade, I failed entirely and completely, and if you gave me what I deserved, I would be apart from you forever. Because that is where the gospel begins. You know, I'll give you one other thing on this. Think about how much humility it took for Naaman to cross that border to come into Israel. These people were an inferior race to him, it was a despised culture.

He had to admit that salvation was not found among the mighty Syrians. Let me tell you why I point that out. Because there's about 10 of you, I would guess, but 10 of you at all of our campuses, that what I'm gonna say next applies to you. You never thought that you would be in a place like this, with people like these, listening to somebody like me.

In fact, I'm not even sure, you don't even know why you're here, you lost a bet. And that's why you're here right now. Because we are born again Christians. And you're like, born again Christians, knuckle dragon neanderthals, you people use snakes, I'm just scared of you people, I don't know what, and that's not really true, by the way, but you, I'm just, and your thought, this is like, there's no possible. Here's the question, do you have the humility to question your convictions, and the humility to admit that salvation might actually come from people that you previously despised? Because that's what Naaman had to go through in order to find this healing. Humility, and then faith. You just gotta believe what God says, and then you gotta accept it. God says there's a river that can wash away your sins and heal you, but you have to believe that and plunge yourself in it and receive it as your own. You see, it can't be that easy. That's what Naaman said, it can't be that easy. If you're saying that, it's only because you're still looking for a way that you can save yourself.

You're looking for what mountain to climb. But salvation is not found, it's not about what you do to save yourself, it's about what he has done that you simply believe and receive. You see, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. That river is not made out of the good works that you do, it's not made out of how religious you can be, how many verses you know. That river that flows is entirely fueled by God's grace, it's a gift, and you plunge in and you believe it, and you receive it. Baptism that we do, it's a picture of that, that's all it is, it doesn't save you. What it does is it gives you a picture of what salvation looks like. Just like somebody gets put in the water, you are basically putting yourself into Jesus, and you're saying, I didn't do it, I didn't do the work of salvation, you did it. And then you put yourself into it and you receive it, and it washes away your sin, it makes you a new creation, and you become, in your heart, white as snow. Before I go on to that, let me just show you one other thing in this story, and then I'll bring you back to the baptism thing. Number two, God uses our pain to bring others to Him, that's what we see from this story. God uses our pain to bring us to Him, He uses our pain to bring other people to Him after we become believers.

Let's turn away from the pain of Naaman and then go back to the little girl that we saw at the beginning, because in my opinion, she's the real hero of this story. Let me ask you a question, how would you respond to the person that had murdered a lot of your friends and family, and then taken you as a slave to live in his house? How would you respond when that person got leprosy? I can tell you exactly what I would have done. Ha, old goon's got leprosy. Now I get a front row seat to watch his decrepit old body fall apart and die, and I will say there is a God.

That's what I would say. Listen to what this sweet little girl says. Would that my Lord were with the prophet who's in Samaria, He could cure him of his leprosy. She seems genuinely to care about him. She seems genuinely to care about him. Remarkably, she seems to have forgiven him. Somehow, a little 14-year-old girl has the faith to say, I'll let God be the judge who makes things right.

I'll have compassion on Naaman. I really want to give this girl a hug when we get to heaven. Because this little sweet 14-year-old girl whose name we never know, gives us maybe one of the clearest Old Testament pictures of Jesus.

Think about it. She was suffering through no fault of her own. In fact, her suffering was caused by Naaman's sin, but she forgave him. And what's more, her suffering became the means of his salvation, right?

I mean, think about it. Had she not been in this situation, then Naaman would have not known about Elisha, and Naaman would have died in his leprosy. So her suffering, which he caused, became the means of his salvation. In the same way, our salvation would come through a suffering servant. Like this little girl, Jesus suffered not for his own sin, he suffered for ours. And like her, instead of hating us for causing this suffering, he forgave us and he kept loving us.

And this suffering became the means by which we can wash our sins away. We killed him. We killed him. But he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was put upon him. And by the stripes that we put into his body, by those stripes, we are healed. So Lord, now indeed I find thy power and thine alone can change the leper's spots and melt the heart of stone. Jesus paid it all.

All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. My sin had left a crimson stain.

His blood washed it white as snow. And see, here's what that means for you, believer. Like this little girl and like Jesus, God is gonna use your suffering to bring other people to him. You see, last week we saw that God was punishing Israel for their disobedience by putting them into captivity. But here we see God had another purpose in sending them out to other nations. He was gonna use the suffering of the innocent people caught up in that, like this little girl, to point the Naamans of the world to salvation.

Let me get you to write something down. It's a difficult statement, but it's true. Suffering is the God-ordained means by which God brings salvation to others. The suffering of the church is the God-ordained means that God uses to bring salvation to others. Let me show you where that's in scripture.

It's all over the place, but a really clear place. Paul said it, Colossians 1, 24. It's a very difficult verse. Now I rejoice, he says, in my sufferings for your sake. Paul's not a masochist. He was like, I rejoice in my sufferings because, you know, give it to me again, God.

I just, I'll take it. No, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake because in my flesh, my body, listen to this, I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ afflictions. What? Hadn't Jesus on the cross said, it is finished? What do you mean something is lacking in Christ afflictions? How does Paul have the nerve to say something is lacking in Christ afflictions after Jesus said, it is finished? It's true that Jesus paid the full price for our sin.

That part is finished, and there's nothing that you or I could ever do to add to that. But Paul understood that it wouldn't matter if Jesus died for people if they never heard about it. And while the work of salvation has been finished, the work of evangelism has not. And Paul knew that in order for people to hear about Jesus's death and believe and be saved, wounds were gonna have to appear in his body. The way that God would bring salvation to the world, I hate to tell you this, and I don't even like to think about it myself, but the way that God brings salvation to the world is not through our elevation. It's not through our success.

It's not through our becoming rich and awesome the way that God brings salvation to the world according to scripture is through suffering. 1950, some of you may have heard the story of five young American men who were speared to death on a beach in Ecuador as they tried to bring the gospel to a group of tribes people that had never heard it. It was an unexpected tragedy.

Jim Elliott, if you've heard that name, he was from that, Nate Saint, and some three other guys, they were just tragically killed right there on the beach. All they were trying to do is bring medicine and health and the gospel to this group of tribes people. And everybody asked, why would God let that happen? Well, years later, Nate Saint's son, his young son when he grew up, they did this very careful investigation. They talked to a lot of the Alka Indians who had actually murdered these guys because they had become Christians about what happened on that day. And after doing this careful investigation, Nate Saint's son said the most remarkable thing in this interview.

Listen to this. He says, it looks like there's no way this could have happened apart from the direct intervention of God. Meaning there were so many things that went wrong at the same time. It was just too random to all go wrong together.

They should, this should never have happened. It was like God arranged it all just perfectly so that they could die, which means that not only did God not protect them, God seems to have arranged their deaths. And he said, it's because of Colossians 1 24. God had appointed the salvation of Alka is to happen to the death of the church just as our salvation happened to the death of his son.

You see for the world to live in many ways, the church must die. So when John Piper says that at any given moment in your life believer, God is doing about 10,000 things in your life, you're aware of about three of them. The other 9,997 you don't know about.

And of those 909,097, about 9,992 don't have anything to do with you. It has to do with what is God is doing through you to the world. God brings salvation to the world, to the suffering of his church.

So the question is, are you willing to take on wounds so that other people can come to know Jesus? You see, maybe God has been putting on your heart that you make this financial sacrifice that's really gonna affect your lifestyle. You wanna kind of give off the excess, but God says, no, I want you to give it away that's gonna change your lifestyle.

And it's gonna bring a kind of pain into your life. But see, that's gonna become the means of salvation for others. Maybe it's letting your kids have the freedom to pursue the mission of God.

Letting your kids be able to go on one of these mission trips, even though it scares you as a parent. Maybe if your kids are grown, it means that you give them the freedom to not live near you if God is calling them to live as a part of a mission somewhere in the world. I know you've always wanted to have your grandkids in your hometown and being able to live close to them, but maybe God is saying, I need them to be a part of this that I'm doing over here, and it's part of your suffering. And you're gonna suffer by not being that close to your families you always want, but God's gonna use it to bring salvation.

Maybe it's for you to forgive somebody and it feels painful, it feels like death. Maybe it's for you to endure the scorn of other people who talk badly about you because of your convictions and your choices. When I got really serious about God in high school, I was the first of my friends to do so. So I got made fun of by a lot of my, you know, friends. And I was the Jesus freak and the Bible banger and self-righteous and all those things.

And by God's grace, I kept going because I knew there was no other alternative. And years later when I, well, not that long, but four or five years later, second year of college, I got this letter from a girl who I'd spent, I'd probably talked to for 30 seconds total in high school. I never knew her and we never had any kind of relationship. She sends me this letter out of the blue and says, I became a Christian last week. And she says, that person who led me to Christ asked me what it was that brought me to faith in Christ to name the influences.

And she said, the first person that came to my mom was you. She said, when you got serious with God in high school, she said, I was in a place where I didn't really know what I believed. Seeing how you believe made me realize that I wanted to know Jesus. You never knew it, but how you endured the mockery of those people gave me the courage to follow him.

I realized when I got that letter that God had appointed the mockery of my friends as a means of bringing her to faith in Christ so she could believe. Are you willing to become a suffering servant for others? You see, I think the story of Naaman presents two questions, one to the believer and one to not a believer. If you're a believer, are you willing for your suffering to become a means of salvation? Will you say, God, here am I, use me?

I don't like pain, I wish I didn't have pain. But if that's what you got to do to bring salvation to my kids, my neighbors, my family, my friends and unreached people groups from around the world, then God, here am I, send me. If you're not a believer, let me ask, do you have the humility to come to Jesus? See, it only takes two things, humility and faith. Humility is the ability to admit he's your only hope, faith to believe that he will save you and reach out in faith and receive it.

That's all it takes. I want you to bow your heads if you would, bow your heads. If you have never received Jesus, if you've never experienced his forgiving salvation or you're not sure that you have, I want you to get in your mind the image of Naaman stepping into that water of the Jordan River. And I want you right now, if you never have, to plunge yourself into Jesus, embrace him. Jesus, I received this river, your blood that was shed for me so that I could be forgiven and cleaned. I don't deserve this, I didn't do anything to contribute to it, I receive it as the free gift that it is, I receive it, Jesus, save me, save me.

I believe it. Now, Jesus says that the first act that you were supposed to do after you receive him as your savior, so you're supposed to be baptized as a public profession of that faith. It's like a wedding ring. It's like declaring to everybody else that you are serious about Jesus. And like I told you at the beginning of this message, we're gonna have a time where if you've never done that, you can do it right now today. What's gonna happen is I'm gonna stand everybody up and just say, if you want to be baptized, come. So I want you right now, if you have never been baptized, whether you just became a Christian just like a couple minutes ago, or whether it was last week or last year, 15 years ago, 30 years ago, if you've never been baptized since becoming a believer, I want you to say, God, I want to obey you here, so give me the strength to obey. You say that to him right now, God, give me the strength to obey. I'll take the first step, give me the strength. Father, I pray that you would give people the ability to do what you have called them and are telling them to do in Jesus' name, amen.