FBC Daily Devotional – December 14, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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

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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.

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

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

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The story is that Naaman was a commander in the

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

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

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Israelites including this little girl. However, the problem is

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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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

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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.

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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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.

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If it does happen that the Russians invade and overthrow the

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

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

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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

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

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Lord gave victory to China over Taiwan.

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.