FBC Daily Devotional – December 14, 2021

Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. Do you know the story of Naaman the leper?

If you grew up in Sunday school as a child, then you undoubtedly heard this story because it features in the story a little girl, a little servant girl in the household of Naaman.

And that little servant girl happened to be an Israelite girl. She was probably,

I would guess, 10 to 12 years of age, something around that time. But that's not the important thing.

The story is that Naaman was a commander in the

Syrian army, very effective, very successful commander, led a great deal of military campaigns and accomplished much in so doing.

And in one of his campaigns, he conquered some territory in Israel, took captive some

Israelites including this little girl. However, the problem is

Naaman developed leprosy. Leprosy as you're probably aware at that time and place was a very serious disease, could be fatal, would certainly be debilitating and had a stigma attached to it.

People stayed away from the leper. So he developed this leprosy and nothing could be done about it.

But the little girl said, wouldn't it my master, Naaman, were in Israel because he could get healing, there could be healing for his leprosy.

Well Naaman heard that, Naaman reported to the king, the king sent a letter, the king of Syria sent a letter to the king of Israel and said, here's my commander, have him healed of his leprosy.

The king of Israel gets this thing and says, what, who am I, I can't do this. One of the king's aides overheard the conversation and said, well no you can't, but Elisha, the man of God, the prophet of God, he can deal with this.

So the king of Israel sent Naaman, the commander of the Syrian army, off to see

Elisha. Gets to Elisha, Elisha tells him, go dunk seven times in the

Jordan River and you'll be cleansed. Naaman, this proud guy, he says, man, that Jordan River's a dirty river, we got better rivers than that back home, why should

I go up to go dunk in the Jordan River, I'm not going to do that. Well Naaman's aides wisely said to him, look, it's just water, and so what if you get a little dirt on you, you can't hurt, try it.

So Naaman finally humbles himself, goes to the Jordan River, dunks seven times, comes up, his leprosy's gone.

All right? And wonderful story. Wonderful story of God's grace and God's power.

And Naaman comes back to Elisha and is very, very penitent and seems very committed to wanting to worship the

Lord God who healed him of his leprosy. Okay, so it's a wonderful story. But there is a statement in the opening line of this story, opening verse of this story in chapter five, second

Kings chapter five, that gives us a great deal of insight into our

God and into our world. Listen to what this verse says, and listen carefully.

Verse one of second Kings five, it says, now Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great and honorable man in the eyes of his master because he was so effective in his military prowess.

But he is so, listen to what it says. He was a great and honorable man in the eyes of his master because the

Lord had given victory to Syria. Did you get that?

Naaman is a Syrian commander in the Syrian army and he was well respected.

He was a mighty man of valor. He had great military success because the

Lord had given victory to Syria through him, through Naaman.

Now if you're theologically astute enough, you know that God is sovereign.

He's sovereign over all the earth. He's sovereign over everything, every nation, every people and everything else. And you affirm that.

And so initially this doesn't strike you as particularly stunning that the

Lord had given him success. But I want you to think about it though. I want you to think about it. The Lord had given him success even over fighting some of his own people.

Naaman was not a man of God. Naaman was not of the people of God. Naaman was a Syrian. And yet the

Lord gave him great success. The Lord gave him those military victories.

Now here's where it gets interesting. It gets interesting when you can contemporize this, when you bring this fact of the

Lord giving Naaman victory and giving victory to Syria, when you contemporize that and bring it into the 21st century, into our world.

So for example, right now in our world, Russia is mounting up a bunch of forces on the eastern border of Ukraine.

And what's going on there? What's happening? Most people are pretty confident that Russia is planning to invade

Ukraine in an effort to take it over. The question is, will our president stand up to him?

Will the United States stand up to it and intervene there? But so we don't know exactly what's going to happen there.

And the same can be said for Chinese military's plans for Taiwan.

They're doing all kinds of stuff, intimidating, threatening stuff, giving every sense that we're about to take over Taiwan.

And here's the thing, I don't know what's going to be the outcome of this. I don't know if Russia will ever invade

Ukraine and they'll be successful at overcoming it. I don't know if China is going to be successful at overcoming

Taiwan. I don't know what the outcome of it's all going to be. I'm not intending to be a prophet, but here's what I'm saying.

If it does happen that the Russians invade and overthrow the

Ukrainians, then what you can say is, for whatever purpose the

Lord has in mind for that, the Lord gave them that victory.

See, that's a little harder to swallow, isn't it? It's a little harder to handle than to read this account from thousands of years ago and a small country of Syria and a military commander in Syria through whom the

Lord gave victory to his nation. It's easier to handle that than it is to think the

Lord gave victory to China over Taiwan.

We don't like to think about that. And yet, the sovereign Lord who was sovereign over Naaman's life and Syria's army is the sovereign

Lord who is over the Chinese army and the Russian military and the United States military and every other military and every other commander and every other nation.

And God has his purposes for these things, and we don't know them. They're a mystery to us.

They're hidden from us. We can't fathom all that he's doing, and there's no point in trying to figure it out.

But what is important to figure out, what is important to recognize is the sovereign power and authority of our

God and to bow our knee before him. The God who can use a

Naaman and use a little servant girl and use a prophet. He can use an

Israelite. He can use a Gentile. He can use a Christian. He can use a non -Christian, and he does to accomplish his purposes.

Man, man, can you wrap your head around all that? I can't, and I'm glad.

It's a God who is above me and beyond me, and this is the God I serve. I hope you do too.

Father, we do praise you and thank you today for this glimpse of understanding into your sovereign power, your sovereign authority, your sovereign control.

We thank you, Father, for that power. We thank you because we can trust you as the sovereign

God. May we do so, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, now that I have gotten you thinking and gotten your head spinning, have a good day.