The Cleansing of Naaman: 2 Kings 5:1-14

Well, brothers and sisters, as you know, we do have a guest speaker this morning. Another blessing of First Love Ministries was that they were able to bring Dr. Conrad Mbiwi all the way from Zambia, Africa, to minister to the pastors who were part of the conference, and now he gets to minister to us.

So just a quick, brief word of introduction. Dr. Conrad Mbiwi has been the pastor of Coata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia since 1987. He's a frequent conference speaker throughout Africa and all around the world, and the author of Maintaining Sexual Purity and Foundations for the Flock.

Just to give you a little inkling of his determination, he took a seven-hour flight from his hometown to Dubai, had a two-hour layover, took a 14-hour flight to New York, stood in line at customs for three hours, and then the worst part of the trip, he had two hours with me in the car.

So keep him in prayer, and with that, welcome to the pulpit, Dr. Conrad Mbiwi.

Naaman’s Need and the Setting of 2 Kings 5

Thank you very much. I know that in some churches, the Bible reading is done while everybody's standing. I'm not too sure about that, but do turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Kings and chapter five, 2 Kings and chapter five.

It's a real delight for me to be with you here. I just need to get, yes. It's a real delight for me to be with you here. As you heard, had a wonderful time during the pastors' conference, a few, three days of intimate fellowship.

I always say when I meet with fellow pastors for a time of fellowship and ministry that I know that through them, the ministry is reaching so many other people, literally within a week or two. It is equally true that when you just minister to what you might consider to be just an ordinary Christian in a little corner somewhere, you just never know what the Lord will do with that singular life.

I was listening to the story of David Livingstone and how as a little child, just helping out with the pianist, he listened to an appeal being made for missionaries by a missionary from South Africa. And the people that were in that church were extremely few.

And the person making the appeal may have felt rather discouraged, having traveled all the way from South Africa. But that little boy heard that appeal, responded many years later, made his way to Africa.

And as they say, yes, thank you, the rest is history. So God is truly amazing. And I will be applying that in a few minutes. But let me read to you from 2 Timothy chapter, rather 2 Kings chapter five.

I was in Timothy quite a few times in the last few days. Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria.

He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. 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, 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.

So he went, taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6 ,000 shekels of gold, and 10 changes of clothing. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, when this letter reaches you, know that I have 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 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, saying, why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.

But Naaman was and went away, saying, behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abana or Frappa, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?

Could I not wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. But his servants came near and said to him, my father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you. Will you not do it?

Has he actually said to you, wash and be clean? So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

We'll end our reading there. Although as you make your way through the Old Testament, you will see that most of the dealings of God, the redemptive dealings of God in the Old Testament revolves around the nation of Israel.

It was not limited to them. Often the nations and the people who encountered the nation of Israel ended up being either blessed or cursed by God, depending on the way in which they related to his people.

And so what we have here is one of those instances. The Naaman was not an Israelite, and yet it's clear from the reading here that he was singled out from so many other people who were Syrians that he might be not only blessed by God, but that he may also come to know something of this God.

For once we go just one verse further than our Bible reading, this is what we find in verse 15. Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him, and he said, behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.

And then he goes on to begin trying to pass on his gifts. In other words, his experience at least revealed to him that there is but one true God, the God of Israel. Now, as we tend to look at this passage of scripture, what we are seeing then is the living God who is making overtures, reaching out to this great army from the rather great commander from the army of Syria.

And as we see that, we are given an opportunity not to allegorize what is happening here, but rather to use it as a mirror for our own lives. In other words, I'm not expecting that you will be seeing the River Jordan as representing the blood of Christ, but rather that you will be seeing the chemistry that was taking place in the soul of this man as God was reaching out to him, and then simply asking yourself the question, is this what is happening with me?

As God is reaching out to me, and indeed reaching out to my family, and reaching out to the world, is this the way in which in the inner man I am having genuine perhaps, but truly genuine wrestlings? Well, that's what we are about to do as we come to this man called Naaman.

He's an individual who has, by any account, a lot to be said in his favor. But whatever positives might have, he needed the grace of Almighty God. And it is true concerning all of us. It doesn't matter who we might be, a beggar in the streets of the city center, or a president to be inaugurated tomorrow.

It doesn't matter. We all desperately need the grace of Almighty God. And this story basically says that for us to be recipients of that grace, we need to humble ourselves. We need to undergo a self-emptying.

We need to get rid of our idols. And sometimes the idol is the little letter I, that is right in the middle of the word sin. And that idol must be smashed in order that God alone might be worshiped. Let's quickly see this in the life of Naaman.

Pride, Frustration, and God’s Hidden Providence

First of all, like all of us, God gives us a lot of positives in life that can make other people envious of our lives and want to be in our place. But God always ensures that he puts in a bat, B-U-T.

And that's what was true of this man, Naaman. We are told there in verse one, that he was a commander of the army of the king of Syria. He was a great man with his master and in high favor because by him, the Lord had given victory to Syria.

And as if it's not enough, it is repeated. He was a mighty man of valor. And then we have this little phrase, but he was a leper. By all accounts, when you read this, I'm sure you would say to yourself, I wouldn't have minded being Naaman because of the positives.

I mean, he was commanding not a small little army that keeps running away from its enemies, but an army that was truly mighty and was feared at this point, at least, by so many other nations. But not only that, look at who favored him.

Again, it is the mightiest in the land. The king himself is the one in whose favor he stood. But not only that, the Old Testament, written by inspiration of God himself, tells us who made this man to have the favor and at least the might to conquer so many nations because by him, the Lord, Yahweh himself, had given victory to Syria.

God favored this man. God enabled this man so that war after war and battle after battle, he was bringing in the spoils and the king of Syria was singing his praises. He was, as it were, the cover boy of the king's magazine, if you understand what I mean.

In other words, as would have been passing anyway within the context of Syria, people would have been looking around and saying, hey, that's Naaman, the great captain, the great commander of the army.

And then the author, inspired by the spirit of God, says, but this man was a leper. He had something he could not solve. He had a frustration that other people around him could not help him with. At the point at which this Bible was being put together, leprosy was incurable.

It wasn't a cough. It wasn't a small rash, yes, on his body that could be contained. It was something that was growing that would end up eating away his body. And whereas other people may not be conscious of it, they may not even see it at a distance, for this man, it was eating away at his joy.

It is like having a sparkling white shirt, but you had a fountain pen in the pocket. The older people in here seem to understand what I'm talking about. And it resulted in a big black stain that yes, you can put on a jacket for a while, and therefore people may not notice, but wherever you are, you are extremely conscious that inside here is a dark, ugly mark.

Neyman was frustrated by this. And our friends, he obviously represents all of us. Because all the way from Genesis chapter three, when Adam and Eve fell, God pronounced upon them and upon all of us that there's going to be this aspect of frustration in life, that nobody's going to have his heaven on earth, nobody.

That there will be thorns and thistles that would hurt us and frustrate us as we go through the events of life. That even in bringing in newborn babies, there would be the pain of childbirth. In other words, wherever we look, men and women in the midst of that soup of life will find a fly in it, a bat.

It may be like Neyman here, to do with personal health. That as you are continuing, you know that there's some aspect of your body, the physical part of you that contains your own frustrating weakness.

Or it might be in your marriage. You thought your married life would be like the favorite bedtime story. Got married and lived happily ever after, but woke up to the realization. As my dad once said, pointing at my step-mom, that is the thorn in my flesh.

Yeah. Thankfully he lived with her all the way to the end. But it may also simply be the family itself. Your children that you've brought into the world, whom you love. But as a result of them, many a night, your pillow is wet with tears.

Therein lies your frustration. We can go beyond the home. It could be the business and economic world that collapses. It could be the weather that brings tornadoes and hurricanes. It could be the flames across California that burn away so many houses.

The point is that as we continue in life, God always puts in that something that we are conscious of that brings about a sense of frustration. That many times behind closed doors, within intimate relationships, we express ourselves, our frustrations, our anger.

If only, if only, if only I can change this, I would be happier. I would be fulfilled. This life would be a heaven on. Neyman was in that condition. But also, God often works in little, apparently unrelated details to point us to himself.

That by going to him, we might find not just what we are looking for, but more than that, that we might find his salvation. We read in 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 Neyman's wife. The best way to understand that sentence is this. Now, it just so happened that on one of their raids, it just so happened that they carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, who just so happened to have been working in the service of, you won't believe it.

Neyman's wife. Coincidence. That's what you might want to call it. It's just chance. But no friends, it's not. God orchestrates life. Nothing happens by chance. Where we are, the relationships that are forged, the people that we meet and so forth, there is a divine mind behind all these details.

God is at work. And that's really what is happening here. There was this little girl serving Neyman's wife. And every so often as she's coming to serve him, she's like a fly on the wall. Listening to this otherwise great army commander who everybody envies.

But she finds him at his lowest point, expressing frustration, miserable. As you know, when you are in the inner room and only with your spouse, you remove your makeup, you remove that pretense, you are yourself.

And Neyman would have been complaining bitterly, oh, if only I didn't have this damned leprosy. So this little girl finally, knowing it's really none of her business, whispers to her mistress,.

Yes.

You know, where I used to live, there was a prophet. His name is Elisha. He can help your husband. He can heal. And of course, the mistress talks to her husband who brings in this girl. She describes this servant of the Lord in the country where she comes from.

And thankfully, thankfully, Neyman listened. This proud man, this great general, because of his frustrations, finally says, well, there's no harm in giving it a try.

No harm.

And so we are told in the passage that follows that verse four. So Neyman went in and told his Lord. Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, go now, and I'll send a letter to the king of Israel.

Well, that's really what he ended up listening to and as a result, began his journey. But here's the point of the story, at least the beginning of the point.

And it is this,.

That whereas our frustration causes us to go out of our normal orbit, to go and look for help, we often do it with our own bias, our own view of life, our world view. And God wants to break through. God wants to show, as we shall see in a moment, that that world view needs to be broken down.

And so of course, the view begins with the king who wrote the letter to a fellow king. Why have dealings with the subject of a king? Just write straight to your fellow head of state. And if you notice in the letter, nothing is mentioned concerning Elisha.

It's not even talked about there. Let's read the account. This is what the letter says. In verse six, when this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman, my servant, that's the king speaking, that you may cure him of his leprosy.

Dun-dun. Yeah, what you do with it is your business, but I'm sending him to you. Deal with it.

That's his world view.

And of course, his fellow king, his little world crumbles because he realizes that most likely the king knew it was impossible. And then number two, he just wants to come and fight with me. This is someone demanding the impossible from me.

But that's not all.

It is Naaman's world view that is in fact dealt with even more. Verse eight, but when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king saying, why have you done this?

Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come over to me that they may know that there is a prophet in Israel. In other words, that God has his servant here. This is not about our ability as Israel. It is about the Lord himself who has his servant in Israel.

So let's quickly read how Naaman shows up in verse nine. So Naaman came, and this is a deliberate account, by the way. There's no word in the Bible that's a victim of tautology and should be thrown away.

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house. You can imagine the pomp and show of this army general. The neighborhood must have come out of their little ramshackle houses to come and watch all this.

What's happening here? What's happening?

Look!

And of course, this great army general is now also expecting, as he says later on, that Elisha would also come out, and there'll be some kind of spectacle, some parade that would show that this is something big happening.

Look at Naaman's response for a moment in verse 11. We'll come back to verse 10. Naaman was angry and went away saying, behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand, that looks a little bit like saluting, right there, this big man, surely.

I should also respond in similar ways and call upon the name of the Lord his God and wave his hand over the place, and I assume that includes the place where the leprosy is, but even more than that, and finally cure the leper.

That was my expectation. Don't you know who I am? I'm expecting that that's the way I will be treated.

That's his worldview,.

But Elisha simply sends a servant. He's inside there somewhere and says to his servant, just go tell him to go to the river Jordan and take a bath. And that's hard, for the ego, that's hard. There's something here about God's being illustrated, and it is the fact that although we may be something to fellow human beings, we are nothing compared to the glory of God.

Elisha was sending that message home. This is not about me and you, this is about you and God, and God is not mesmerized by your achievements, whether it's political achievements, financial achievements, achievements in terms of prowess in the field as a sports person or whatever, that does not mesmerize him at all.

You are the beggar, he is the giver. You get what you need from him on his terms. This was tough for Naaman, because his entire worldview was on a tailspin.

How do you handle this?

I'm so used to pump and show, and here I am with all these little neighbors coming out, and I just get a message from a servant, I'm supposed to make a U-turn and head out to a river that's next to nothing, the Jordan River, and so we are told that he gets angry, he loses his temper, he feels insulted, hence that verse.

After Elisha sent a messenger saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean, Naaman was angry. Angry, first of all, because of what he expected to happen that didn't happen, but also because the river that was being sent to, he was being sent to, I'm not exactly sure what it is about it, but was beneath him, compared to the Abana and Frappa, the rivers of Damascus.

How does the matter get solved? Well, thankfully, thankfully, Naaman had this in his favor. He listened to his servants. Initially, he had listened to a little girl who was a servant to his wife, and now he's about to have his life changed by listening to his own servants.

Listen to this. Verse 13, after he turned and went away in a rage, his servants came near and said to him, my father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you. Will you not do it? Why are you concentrating on all the outward activities, the outward show, the physical things out there?

This man has simply said, go and wash.

There it is.

Has he actually said to you, wash and be clean?

Do it.

Forget this ego trip. Don't you need cleansing?

Go and wash. Be done with this.

And thankfully, as I said, Naaman had this in his favor. He went. He dipped himself seven times, we are told in verse 14, in the Jordan, and it adds according to the word of the man of God. And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child and he was clean.

After the outburst of his emotions, the rage and anger, because of feeling insulted, the words of his servants went right through the defense mechanisms. And I'm sure as he sat there for a moment, he thought, I have to think of it.

Let me just do that.

I know I have to swallow my pride, but there's something bigger than my pride, my well-being. And so he went and the Lord had mercy on him. May I suggest, brethren, that this is the chief lesson that is in this text.

And it is this, that many people are kept away from this great salvation that God offers. This great salvation for time and for all eternity because of pride, because they want God to meet them on their terms, because they think this is who I am, this is what the world thinks about me.

Therefore, I can only experience the dealings of almighty God with this area of my life if it meets with the way in which I perceive and understand life and these interactions. And because of that, they are still in that state of ongoing frustration.

You see, salvation, to borrow the picture of our Lord, is one that demands that you buy this field by selling everything you have. You don't just add to what you have. You give up what you have in order to embrace this.

Or to borrow the way Jesus once puts it, it is more difficult for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Whatever your interpretation of that might be, it's certainly an impossible thing. Then for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Why?

Well, because he wants to carry everything with him. And the Lord is saying, no, you give up. You surrender. And then I have mercy on you. Beggars are not choosers. They are not. And if we are famished and perhaps we are all in South Sudan and this airplane from the United Nations comes and it's heavy laden with rice and whatever other foods might be in it.

And then it's being given out to you in cups that don't have all the nice markings of the Western world. You don't start looking at it saying, hmm, hmm. You are hungry.

You are starving.

Receive that you might live. Patients must not prescribe their own medicine. They mustn't. They mustn't say, I don't like the cover in which this medicine is. I don't like the fact that I have to take it in through a syringe.

I want a cordial that's sweet to my taste. Friend, you're a patient about to die. The great physician is the one who is saying, take it and live. Salvation must be on God's terms and not on ours. What are the conditions that you have been giving to God?

What conditions? For you to accept his great and free salvation. What conditions are you given? For some people, what irks them is the fact that this salvation should be so free. They say, no, I've been going to church all my life.

I was baptized as a little child. I've given money to the church. Surely that should count. And God says, no, come empty handed or nothing. And so many people reject on that. I can't come to this God on the same basis as a prostitute, a murderer.

Surely there must be some way in which my credentials should be acknowledged. And God says, no, the same way that that guy who ran the Nazi concentration camps came in is the way with all your religion.

You must come. May I say as I quickly hurry on to close that that's the glory of the Christian faith. It is that Christ has done it all. He's paid the price. He's died in the place of sinners. He offers a great and free salvation to all who come to him empty handed.

As Augustus Toplady says, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to your cross I cling. Doesn't matter how positive or negative the past might be. It doesn't matter what other people think about it. I come as a beggar that Christ might make me whole.

The glory of the Christian faith is that we all come through the shed blood of Christ. That's where we are cleansed from our sin. It is the fountain filled with blood that was drawn from Emmanuel's veins.

That's how God cures our soul's diseases. Will you not come that way today? Instead of trying to make God acknowledge something positive about you, come on his terms and experience his great salvation.

Amen. That you may acknowledge him as the God of all the earth who's merciful to sinners. Let's pray. Eternal and gracious God, often our pride is our own undoing. Have mercy upon us as indeed you had upon Naaman when he finally yielded, set aside his pride and came on your terms.

Oh, Father, that you might have such mercy even today to any among us that up to this point has been wrestling and struggling with you and your terms. Oh God, that the mirror that we have looked at this morning might cause such a person to finally come to Christ and surrender all.

It's in his name we pray, amen.

The Free Salvation of Christ and the Call to Surrender

You have been listening to the Reformed Rookie Podcast where we aim to teach Reformed Theology to beginners or rookies. Be sure to look us up on the web at www .reformedrookie .com where you will find many more learning tools and aids to help you grow in your understanding of all things Reformed.

And remember, semper reformanda.

Luther’s Refusal to Recant Before the Word of God

Are you prepared to retract these writings? In Psalm I discuss faith and good works. If I were to retract these, I should be denying accepted Christian truths.

I do infer you have not yet answered the question.

Will you recant or will you not? Here it is. I am bound to my beliefs by the texts of the Bible. My conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other.

God help me.

Amen.