A Proud Man and a Suffering Girl

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer turns to a lesser known story about God's sovereignty and suffering. 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 a 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. Welcome to another day of teaching here on Summit Life with Pastor and author J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. As we're all painfully aware, life doesn't always go according to plan, does it? Sometimes things go wrong because of a reckless or an unwise decision, but much of the time it's not anything that we could have possibly controlled or done differently. And when everything seems to be headed downhill, we might start to wonder if God has abandoned us or quite frankly, if he even exists or cares. Today, Pastor J.D. addresses those doubts by helping us see God's greater purpose in our pain. He's titled today's message from the Old Testament, A Proud Man and a Suffering Girl.

Let's join him right now. 2 Kings chapter 5. If you have a Bible, and I hope that you do, if you'll open it to 2 Kings chapter 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.

And the other is 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 or over. It's 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? But then he'd, you know, 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 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.

And it's going to give you a glimpse into what is happening in your life. 2 Kings 5, verse 1 through 18 is 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 5, verse 1, 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 going to 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, sit at the head of the mightiest army in the region at the time, discovers one of these spots of death on him. Verse 2, 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, Elisha, could cure this man of his leprosy. He could cure Naaman of his leprosy. Verse 4, so Naaman went and told his lord the king of Syria, thus and so is for 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 dollars 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 going to be blinging after Naaman shows up. Verse 6, and he brought the letter to the king of Israel. And the letter said, when this letter reaches, you know that I've sent to 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 going to ask you to heal him and you didn't, so now I'm going to destroy you. Verse 8, 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 9, so Naaman came with his horses and his chariots.

I mean you can imagine what this would look like. You need this mighty cavalcade of horses and chariots showing up at little old Elisha's house. Verse 10, and Elisha sent out a messenger to him saying, go and watch 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, you know, 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've 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, wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. I thought there would 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 going to be, I'm going to get chill, but 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 going to 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, he was washing me 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 got to 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, he stands up and when he stands up, it's no different than he was. And so he, you know, he's just kind of shakes his head and his servants are like, do it one more time. You got to 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. 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 is like a baby's skin.

He's totally and completely healed. Verse 15, then he returns to the man of God, Elisha, he and 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 going to 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. 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 a 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?

Here's my question. What if God and 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? 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 say, 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. And 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 doll 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 parts 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. What came out of his mouth, I was like that, that I don't, 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, you know, 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 going to 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, I, and I heard these big footsteps, you know, 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, 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 were 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, and he pushes this car. It was impressive.

He, this beast of a man flips his car right side up and, 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 continued on conversation for two or three days and he ended up putting, you know, 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 going to 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've 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 multi-million dollar offering, could I at least have some dirt? And 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 going to 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 it. I mean, listen, pal, if you're not ready to carry the cross, you're not ready for Jesus.

That's what I would have said. But he doesn't. He said, 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.

We can't expect perfection on day one, and that's okay. It's about heading in the right direction. God will guide you in your progress. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. If you tuned in a little late today, or if you've missed any of the previous programs in this study, you can find them all online at jdgreer.com. So in this series, The Whole Story, we're moving our way through the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. So J.D., what's the main thing you're hoping listeners will take away from this study? You know, one of the challenges of studying the Bible is it's 66 individual books written on, I think it's three different continents by 40 different authors. Sometimes it's hard connecting them all to this one story because the whole Bible, Jesus said, was all about him. It was all about how he was coming, his love for us, and his salvation plan. I'm hoping that through this series, you'll get a picture of the whole story and realize that everything really connects, that these are not primarily stories of saints that we're supposed to emulate. They're stories about a savior God wants us to hope in and adore. To go along with this and to help in that, we're giving you something here with this series called the Books of the Bible Cards. It's a set of cards that will help you as you read to make connections between whatever book you're studying with the big picture. It'll give you historical contacts, but even more importantly, how this particular book or this story connects to Jesus. It's a wonderful little resource produced by our friend Mary Wiley.

Good thing you keep near your Bible or where you study the Bible, that'll help you make sense of the whole story. We'd love to get these in your hands or connect you to other resources that may help you at jdgrier.com. This set of cards are our way of saying thank you for your financial partnership with this ministry. When you give a gift of $25 or more, or when you commit to ongoing support as a monthly gospel partner, you are helping more people learn and grow through these gospel centered programs. And as you use your Books of the Bible Cards, you'll have a little daily reminder of the enormous impact you're having through this ministry. Ask for the set of cards when you give today by calling 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or you can also request the Books of the Bible Cards when you sign up to be a gospel partner online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vitovich inviting you to join us tomorrow when we'll continue our study of Naaman on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.