“Leprosy of the Heart” – FBC Morning Light (6/21/2024)

Well, a good Friday morning to you, approaching another weekend and Lord's Day, and I trust you're looking forward to gathering with God's people Sunday, and looking forward to learning something from God's Word and worshiping the Lord together as you do so.

So, today in our Bible reading we're in 2 Kings chapters 4 through 7, and I want to bring out something in chapter 5 and then make note of something in chapter 6. In chapter 5, we have this wonderful story of Naaman the leper, who is not a Jew, he's a Syrian, and the Syrians had taken captive a bunch of Israelite people and Naaman ended up with a servant girl in his household who was Jewish, and Naaman comes down with a serious case of leprosy, and it's very painful and miserable and so forth.

And the servant girl says, I wish he was in Israel because the servant of the Lord there could heal him of this leprosy, and she's of course talking about Elisha. Well, you know, Naaman hears about this and they go to the king, the Syrians, and the king of Syria sends a message to the king of Israel and sends Naaman along and sends in this message and says, heal my servant of leprosy.

And long story short, Naaman ends up going before Elisha and Elisha simply tells Naaman, go dip in the river seven times and you'll be cleansed of your leprosy. Naaman isn't too happy with that advice, the Jordan River is a dirty river, and he says, oh, the rivers back home are better than this, I don't want to do that.

Naaman's servant convinces him, go dunk in the river, what can it hurt you? Just give it a shot. And finally, he does so. And when he comes up out of the river the seventh time, boom, no more leprosy.

God was gracious to Naaman. Did he deserve it? No, absolutely not. And so this word of the Lord that brought healing to Naaman came through Elisha the prophet, and Naaman, to his credit, I suppose, wanted to reward Elisha for this ministry, so he offered to give him a whole bunch of wealth.

And Elisha says, no, I'm not going to accept anything from your hand, no, I don't want your money, God bless, go on home. So Naaman turns around and leaves to go home. Well, Elisha had a servant named Gehazi, and Gehazi looks at this, he says, man, what a wonderful opportunity to get a few bucks, and he just turned it away, he sent him away.

So supposedly, thinking unbeknownst to Elisha, Gehazi runs after Naaman and he tells a lie He says, we've just gotten some visitors come unexpectedly, and Elisha wants you to give each of them a change of garment and some silver.

And so Naaman says, oh, sure, absolutely, gives him the silver and stuff, and sends him back, and gives him the silver and two changes of garments, and of course this is quite a haul, so he needs help getting back, and so, you know, Gehazi thinks he goes and hides the stuff so Elisha doesn't know, and then Gehazi walks in the room, and Elisha says, where you been, Gehazi, oh, neither here nor there, and then Elisha says, did not my heart go with you when the man turned back from his chariot to meet you, boom, you've been caught.

So in other words, Gehazi got the point, he knows exactly what I did. And Elisha continues, he says, is it time to receive money in time, and to receive clothing, olive groves and vineyards, sheep and oxen, male and female servants?

This isn't a time to become hirelings in the work of the Lord, in other words, Elisha is saying. And then he says this, the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and your descendants forever, and Gehazi went out of Elisha's presence leprous as white as snow.

I think there's a simple lesson that we can get from that, and that is this, greed is costly, and it will eat away at your soul as leprosy consumes the body. Be done with any greed. The second thing I just want to point out very quickly in chapter 6, again, it has to do with Elisha, the Syrians have come and surrounded the city where Elisha is, and Elisha has a different servant now, who sees the threat, sees that they're horribly outnumbered, and he's panicking, he's panicking, and so the servant comes to Elisha and he's scared to death, he says, what are we going to do?

We're surrounded, we're surrounded, what are we going to do? And Elisha says to him, do not fear, in verse 16 of chapter 6, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them. And Elisha prayed, and he said, Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.

And then the Lord does so, answers that prayer, and we're given one of the very rare insights into a world that we cannot see, because it says, then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

What did he see? He saw the angelic protection that was there surrounding God's man, Elisha, and his servant. So what does that mean for us? It means, you know, we can look around and we can become quite concerned about the threats to our faith and the threats to whatever, but what we fail to see is that just beyond a veil of ours, this veiling us, veiling an unseen world from our sight, is an angelic host.

We're charged with the protection of God's people. Eh, what a blessing. We may not be able to see it with our physical eyes, but may we see that reality with the eyes of faith. So encourage us with that, we pray today, our Father, and grant us a good weekend in the worship and service of you, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, and again, I trust you'll have a great weekend, and get with God's people on the Lord's Day. Have a good day.