One Small Step, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, J.D. Greer says it's really quite simple. You're saved by a simple act of obedience. Naaman had only to believe and submerse himself in the river to be healed.

You and I have only to trust in Jesus and submerse ourselves into his fountain to be healed. Paul says if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. You have a terminal disease. You got it.

Jesus took it. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. I'm Molly Vidovich. I think it's safe to say that most people have high aspirations.

So what are yours? Maybe you dream about running a marathon or starting your own business, but it's easy to talk the talk. You know, it's a lot harder to take the little everyday steps needed to reach that goal, like jogging regularly or getting that business degree. And sometimes the same is true in our walk with God. We like to think that we'd follow God to the ends of the earth, but we haven't even taken the first little steps of faith. Today, Pastor J.D. wraps up our study of the prophet Elisha called Something Greater, and he stresses the importance of that one small step needed to move forward in relationship with God. So grab your Bible and let's hear what God has to say to us.

Here we go. Second Kings, chapter five, verse one. Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria. He was a mighty man in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. Victory over whom, by the way?

Israel. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. Leprosy was the most feared disease in the world. It began in those days, or even today, it's now called Hansen's disease, but it began as a small patch of white and skin, almost a powdery that would kind of break out into a rash. It would slowly spread over the whole body until it deadened the nerve endings. Your bodily extremities began to fall off like your fingers and your toes. They believed it was highly contagious. There was no cure for it at all, and so you were put outside. It was just the worst. It was a death sentence.

You would be outside where you have to spend the next 10 or 20 years until you died in isolation. 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. She said to her mistress, would that my Lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria?

He would cure him of his leprosy. So Naaman went in and told his Lord, means the king, thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, go now and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.

I'll write you a cover letter. So Naaman went, taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold, and 10 changes of clothing. All right, verse six, when they brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, when this letter reaches you, know that I've sent to you, Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy. When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, am I God to 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. But when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king. Elisha, you see, he didn't live near the palace.

He was way out in kind of the backwoods. He sent to the king saying, why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel. Elisha, get this, perceived by the spirit, that there was a greater purpose in Naaman's leprosy. And that greater purpose was that Naaman come to know God.

So Naaman came with his horses and his chariots. By the way, notice the plural. This would not have been a subtle thing, and this would not have been impressive to the children of Israel. They're not out looking at it, out there going, oh, look at that cavalcade of escalades. I wonder who that is.

They must be important. Verse 10, and Elisha sent a, watch this, messenger to him, saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh will be restored and you shall be clean. Well, Naaman, as you can imagine, is angry. And he went away, verse 11, behold, I thought he would surely come out to me and stand out and call upon the name of the Lord, his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Verse 12, are not Abana and Farfar, the rivers of Damascus, are not they better than all the waters of Israel?

Could I wash them and be clean? I mean, they're back where I live when I made this journey. So he turned and went away in a rage, verse 13, but when his servants, there it is again, his servants came near and said to him, my father, if it was a great word the prophet had spoken to you, wouldn't you have done it? So he went, verse 14, and he dipped himself seven times in the Jordan according to the word of the man of God. And on that seventh time, his flesh was restored like the flesh of a baby. Verse 15, then he returned to the man of God, first time face to face with Elisha, hey, stop for a minute, what would you say? This man just saved your life, right?

What does he say? Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel, not the first mention of leprosy. So accept now a present from your servant, says Naaman to Elisha.

But he, Elisha, said, as the Lord lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none. Naaman urged him to take it, but he refused. Remember, Naaman had started this process thinking that he could purchase this miracle by his riches, and the one thing, the one thing that has to be understood about the gospel is that it is a free gift of grace.

Here's what I want to do, I'm gonna use the rest of my time to show you two things. I'm gonna show you, first of all, why Naaman came to God, and then secondly, I'm gonna show you how Naaman came to God. Let's think about Naaman for a minute. Naaman was the ultimate insider, was he not? He was, he was a very successful general, he was a hero, he was a celebrity. When it says he's highly regarded, that's what it means.

Everywhere he goes, people buy him dinner, pay for his drinks. Leprosy puts you on the outside faster than anything else. Leprosy was a sentence of banishment and death. Naaman had found the spot of death. We don't know when, where it was, but he took off his armor one day and there it was, that little patch. But Naaman would never have found God if it had not been for that spot.

His spot of death became his portal of eternal life. That's why Naaman came to God, is because God put him on his back that showed him a deeper problem, and that was the spot of leprosy on his heart. Number two, how Naaman came to God.

How Naaman came to God, why Naaman came to God, now how Naaman came to God. I'm gonna identify kind of three things here. The first one we'll call a searching humility. A searching humility, did you notice that throughout this story? Did you notice?

I'm sure you did. That throughout the story Naaman keeps trying to go to kings and God keeps sending him to slaves. The story begins with a Hebrew servant girl, which is about as low as you can get in Syria. She's Hebrew, which means she's part of a despised race. She's a servant, she's a female, and she's a kid.

You can't get lower than that. She's the one that tells Naaman where his healing will be found. So where does Naaman go?

Does he go? No, he goes to the king who sends him to the other king who is terrified, doesn't know what to do. When Naaman finally gets to Elisha, he is greeted by an assistant, an intern. When Naaman rejects the prescription, the ones who talk him back from the edge and convince him to finally do something are whom?

The servants. Naaman shows up with a mass of money and power that no one else in his day would have been able to put together and Elisha dismisses it out of hand and says, don't want it, don't need it, ain't going to do you any good at all. Elisha tells him to go dip in a muddy creek seven times. Naaman says, I'd rather swim in the mighty rivers of Syria. And Elisha says, well, you can do that all day long if you want.

It's never going to change anything until you go dip in that creek in obedience. What's the message and all that? God does not save through the strength of men. Your money, your strength, your moral rectitude, your righteousness, your religion, your goodness, your culture, your upbringing, your power, all worthless in the sight of God.

God saves by grace through faith. Salvation for men was not found in their ingenuity. It's not found in their achievements. It's not found in their morality. It's not found in their religion. It's not found in their science.

It's not found in their education. It's not found in the indomitable spirit of man. Salvation for the human race was found in a despised man who died on a cross whom we thought so little of, we crucified and just forgot about. You see, the first thing the cross does when it comes to you is it destroys your pride. The cross shows you that God's verdict on your life was death. You ever think about that? Because unless the gospel has really insulted you, you've probably never understood it.

Because the first thing the cross does is it goes to war with your pride. What's the verdict on your life? By the way, you ain't gonna hear this from Dr. Phil.

You ain't gonna hear it from Oprah. What's God's verdict on your life? Condemnation, death. You want to know how God sums up your life? You want to know what obituary he would write?

He wouldn't write an obituary. He'd put a picture of a cross there and be like, that's what you deserve. And it destroys your pride because it shows you that not only was that the condemnation that you deserve, that's God's verdict on your life, it shows you were powerless to do anything about it. Grace is hard. And the reason most people are not profoundly changed is because they've never really thought about grace and they've never considered what it means.

Your soul hates grace. And yeah, it's going to become beautiful to you one day, but only after it's taken you through this path of humiliation and if you've never felt the sting of the cross when I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. My richest gain, I count but law. That's a little trite phrase to throw out there.

What's your richest gain? You counted as loss and pour contempt on all my pride? That whole line that I heard growing up about how you got to take pride in yourself and you got to be your man and you got to respect yourself. Yeah, I poured contempt on all that because the cross said that God's verdict on my life was not there's a man to respect, it's there's a man to condemn. And I fell at Jesus' feet and he gave me grace and grace became sweet but only after I tasted the bitter pill of the cross. Do you have the humility to come to Jesus? See, most people, that's why they'll never come to him. They don't have the humility to get there to admit that God saves.

They can't save themselves. Let me show you one other place that Naaman showed humility. Think about how much humility it took for Naaman to cross that border. Basically what he was saying is healing for my disease is not found in all the things that I've taken pride in and been confident in in the mighty Syrian doctors. Healing is found in those despised people that I've been looking down on all my life. Naaman had to be open to the idea that the salvation he saw would come from outside the things he normally took pride in and in which he had usually found confidence.

And you just feel like you've built an identity on a certain thing but there's something in you and maybe God for you. Maybe we're like the Israelites and you're like Naaman and the question is do you have the humility to cross the border and question your convictions and maybe doubt whether or not you're wrong. Lewis said the reason most people never find God is most people are always looking down on others in their life and God only speaks from above. He said because you're always looking down on others you never see the face of God or hear the voice of God. And so here's my question, do you have the humility to be open to the fact that you might be wrong? And maybe the things that you found so much confidence in have not given you what you need and maybe it's a despised people to you.

Maybe it's a despised group that God's going to use to give you the most important message of your life. You have the humility to do that? That's the first element is a searching humility.

Here's the second element. This one's so subtle y'all that you probably read right over top of it. This is a character in the story that has seemed so minor but she the whole story depends on her. A suffering servant. Now the Syrians on one of the raids had carried off a little girl.

Can you imagine the horror of that? This girl is a victim of human trafficking. The fact that she is a captive means that, listen, at best her family was taken captive and sold a slave somewhere else in Syria. At worst it means she watched them butchered in front of her eyes. This is the little girl and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. Well who does that probably indicate conducted the raid?

Naaman, right? I mean he's the captain of the Syrian army. Somehow remarkably she seems to have been able to forgive him.

She doesn't say, ha ha, old goon's got leprosy. Serves him right. Now I get to watch his decrepit old body fall apart and cheer as every digit falls from his body. God has given him what he deserves. It's what I would have done, right?

You too probably. She was suffering through no fault of her own. If anything her suffering was caused by Naaman's sin and in some great irony her suffering caused by Naaman's sin became Naaman's salvation. If you're saved, see, you will be saved by a suffering servant. This sweet little unnamed girl gave us one of the clearest Old Testament pictures of Jesus. Jesus suffered like this little girl, like her. He's the ultimate outsider. He didn't come as a king.

He came as a carpenter. Like her it was not his own sin that he suffered for. It was ours. Unlike her he entered into that suffering voluntarily. She had no choice. She was just taken captive.

She was stripped from her family involuntarily. Jesus left his father voluntarily to come to earth to save us. No man took his life from him.

He said he laid it down of his own accord. This girl was just a girl. Jesus was a mighty prince who ruled the universe, who chose to become a slave, though he was in the form of God. He did not consider equality with God a thing to be held on to, but instead turned his back on that, took the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, obedient to the point of the death of the cross.

This girl simply told Naaman about Elisha, who told him about the river. Jesus spilled his blood to become the river in which we would bathe and wash our sins away. In fact, in Matthew chapter 3, John the Baptist is baptizing in the same river, right?

The Jordan River, Matthew chapter 3. As he's baptized, it's called a baptism of repentance. Essentially, what that means is you go into the water, you would confess your sins that you're a sinner, and then John would say, I baptize you, insert name, as a sinner, and I baptize you. You come up symbolizing you're starting a new life, and God was washing you clean, and you're starting something new.

What does John do in all this? One day, a man works his way through the crowd and steps into the water and says, I want to be baptized. John the Baptist sees this as Jesus and rightfully objects and says, why would you want to be baptized in a baptism of repentance? What have you got to repent of? You've never sinned. That's a good question. What does Jesus say?

No, no. Let it be so because I need to fulfill all righteousness. Fulfill all righteousness. He's already as righteous as can be. He can't be any more righteous than he is. So whose righteousness is he fulfilling? He's fulfilling my righteousness. You see, he's going to get in and be baptized in repentance for my repentance and for my sin.

Imagine that everybody had to wear their sins on their chest like a name tag, your name and all your sins. It was as if Jesus was walking through that crowd, pulling off people's name tags, and putting them on himself so that when he got in the water, he didn't represent himself anymore. He was repenting for our sin. See, he took our sin and our sorrow, and he made it his very own.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrow, right? But we esteemed him and spent him by God and afflicted because after he would come out of that baptism, he was going to go to the rest of his ministry here, living the life that you and I were supposed to live, praying the prayers we were supposed to pray, walking the way we were supposed to walk. But then he was going to die to death and we were condemned to die in our place so that his blood, when it came out, would be a river in which we could wash our sins away so that we would sing a song like this. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may I, the vilest he watched all my sins away. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him, spent him by God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. If you're going to be saved, you're going to be saved by humility, but you're also going to be saved by a suffering servant who's going to do it in your place so that he can give you his righteousness because God made him who knew no sin to become sin for you so that you could become the righteousness of God. See, you're saved by searching humility, you're saved by a suffering servant. Number three, you're saved by a simple act of obedience. You're saved by a simple act of obedience. Naaman had only to believe and submerse himself in the river to be healed. You and I have only to trust in Jesus and submerse ourselves into his fountain to be healed, right? Because God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever would believe in him, that's it, believe in him and trust in him and surrender to him, would not perish but have everlasting life.

Naaman came up out of that water with skin like a baby. Paul says if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new.

You have a terminal disease. You got it. Jesus took it. He took it and he took it and he buried it and he took it away so that when you would trust in him, you would get his righteousness, his healing, the power of his resurrection would go to work in you because he had taken your sin and your corruption and he put it away in those waters. It's a simple act of obedience but it leads to a life-changing, an eternity-changing result. After you do that, the Bible says the first thing you're supposed to do, no, watch this, first thing you're supposed to do after you're saved is you're supposed to be baptized. That just was a picture of what just happened.

I mean, you got a great picture over here with Naaman, right? You're going to the water. You're coming up clean. Baptism is a symbol of how Jesus took you into himself and washed you of your sin. Now, I've done this long enough.

Here's the number one. We got a lot of people listening right now who have never been baptized. Here is what they say. They're always like, well, I just don't see it being that important. It's inconvenient. It's a little embarrassing.

Get them soaking wet in front of everybody and it's just inconvenient and all this kind of. Do you hear the spirit of Naaman in that? Who are you telling God that what he's commanded is not important? It's not that the commandment obeying it does anything to you. It's that God uses that as far as a portal in which he begins to pour his power and his presence into your life.

That's what's going on there. You see, it's the spirit of Naaman. It's the same thing all over again. I've told you there's nothing magical about the water.

I mean, it's Durham City tap water. You'll be dirtier when you come up than when you went in. I know that. It's that a small act of obedience becomes a portal for life. It's where God begins to pour himself out to you. But some of you need to make that decision. You never trusted Christ.

That's the decision you make. Some of you need to be baptized. Maybe believer, there's some other act of obedience. Maybe God's telling you to stop something. You don't understand why it's that important, but you know God's telling you that. Maybe God's telling you to break out with somebody. And see, what you don't realize is that God's got the rest of your life unbelievable blessing, but you'll never experience it until the simple act of obedience. Until you do this, God can't give you this.

See, don't trifle with obedience because God always has more for you than you probably realize. Maybe he's told you to start something. Maybe it's a ministry.

Maybe it's a new career. Maybe you need to join the church or start a small group or start to give generously. Maybe that's what God's been speaking to you about is starting to sacrifice. You have no idea what God has waiting for you, but it comes to a simple act of obedience. You'll never see it because it's not the commandment. It's not getting in the water. It's what God begins to do. See?

Maybe, how about this one? Maybe like this little girl, God's told you to share Christ with somebody and you're scared because it's somebody important. And this little girl, she has to go up to Naaman and she has to share Christ with a guy who could have her killed. Maybe that's what God's saying is, hey, I need you to tell this person about me.

And you're not doing it because you're afraid. Do you realize what could happen in their life and in your life if you would open up that portal for life? A simple act of obedience leads to an eternity change for them and in many ways a life-changing experience for you.

Or how about this? Maybe God's told you to forgive. Maybe like this little girl, God said you got to forgive and you're hanging on because you're like, I got to nurse this wound.

I got to nurse it. Do you realize what God could do? And this girl gave us a picture of Jesus.

We're talking about 3,000 years later. You know what kind of blessing God could put in your life if you would obey that and you would forgive? Not to mention the blessing that could come from the person to the person that you forgive. Great blessings of God come through small acts of obedience. Jesus promised it this way, John 14 21. He said this, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he will be loved by my father and I will love him and I'll manifest myself to him. You hear it manifest?

It's a whole lot more than you thought. You obey the commandment and all of a sudden God makes himself known to you. God reveals himself through small acts of obedience. What's the act of obedience that you need to yield to? How is the Holy Spirit leading you to act today? Most likely it's just one small step.

Are you ready? You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer and the conclusion of our series called Something Greater.

If you missed any part of this study, you can find every message free of charge at jdgreer.com. So J.D., speaking of God revealing himself through these acts of obedience, we've been seeing how God revealed himself to Elijah and Elisha over the past few weeks and specifically how as Elijah's view of God expanded, he learned to trust God more. And that's the focus of our complementary study as well, right?

Absolutely. Knowing God for who he really is, that's the key. Just because I can't make up truth about you and say, well, this is the molly that I prefer to know, so let me make up some characteristics and qualities about you.

I would have to just know you as you are. Well, in the same way, God has to be known for who he is. Many people have kind of a deity they assemble.

I call it a build-a-bear deity, where it's like you assemble the God that makes you feel warm and fuzzy, but that's not the true God. The true God has revealed himself, and that's the battleground that Elijah stepped into. This eight-part study that we've produced, it just goes along with the stories about Elijah and Elisha that you're hearing about on Summit Life or that you're reading in the Bible. It's a resource I think will really help you. I think you'll find yourself wanting to give it to somebody and say, hey, let's go through this together. If you'll reach out to us today at jdgreer.com, it'll allow you to get connected to our ministry, allow you to be a part of what we do, and give you a resource.

It's just a way of saying thank you. We'd love to get you a copy of this resource today to help you learn more about the one and only God. We'll send it with our thanks when you donate to support this ministry and help keep these messages on the air and the web. Ask for something better, something greater, a study of Elijah and Elisha from Pastor JD when you donate at the suggested level of $25 or more. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or it might be easier to give online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again tomorrow when we kick off a brand new study about the birth and the spread of the early church. You don't want to miss it, so grab a friend and listen Wednesday to Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.