2 Kings 5:1-14
The Simplicity of Faith
There is a saying: “Nothing is as simple as it seems.” Sometimes that’s true. Someone well-meaning gives you advice, and you’re thinking, “You don’t know the half of it!” Or you plan something out, and Murphy’s Law kicks into gear, and makes life a lot more complicated than you ever expected. Yet, as we think about the Christian faith, maybe there is a certain simplicity to it. The truth is that God loves you. God loves you so much that he sent his only son to die for your sin and to rise back to life and conquer sin and death forever, so that you may have eternal life. And with that life that God gives us, Jesus says, very simply, to love God and to love others as yourself. That’s it. That’s pretty simple. Love God and love others. If we do those two things, everything else will sort itself out.
Today’s story is about simplicity. The main character is a famous military commander. In fact, he was probably a general officer, the commander-in-chief of his nation’s army. 2 Kings 5:1 calls him a “great man,” “highly regarded,” victorious, “a valiant soldier.” I imagine he was awarded a Legion of Merit, and no doubt received a Purple Heart or two. He wore the Ranger tab. He was a soldier’s general. He led from the front. His only downfall, besides his pride, was his personal health: he had leprosy.
Back then, leprosy was a blanket diagnosis for all kinds of highly infectious skin diseases. There was no cure. All people could do was isolate the lepers and hope they lived an okay life. This fellow obviously hadn’t been isolated in his country, but he knew the prognosis wasn’t good. Then, a slave girl told the man’s wife about a prophet back in her hometown that could heal. So he got with his king, who obviously liked him. The king of Aram gave him about 750 pounds of silver and 150 pounds of gold, along with a nice letter of reference to present to the King of Israel. The king of Israel wasn’t a strong believer, and was afraid this was all a ruse to pick a fight over an impossible task and start a war. Elisha heard the commotion in the palace and sent word that he would take care of this foreign general’s need.
So Naaman showed up at Elisha’s meager Samarian home, expecting a grand reception befitting his military rank. Yet, Elisha refused to even come out and greet the great general. Instead, he sent word through his servant for the soldier to bathe seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman was incensed and stomped off, muttering about the vastly superior quality of Aram’s rivers back home. But his servants eventually settled him down, talked some sense in him, and got him to obey God’s command. And he was healed. Healed completely!
Douglas Mullins, in his excellent article for “Ministry Matters” entitled, “When the Remedy is Simple” [https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/3984/when-the-remedy-is-simple], speaks of three key turning points in the story. And I’ll order three life applications in parallel with these same turning points. The first turning point is when a nobody, a young child, a foreigner, a servant girl, offers help. She recommends to her master’s wife that her master try a prophet in Israel who can heal. From this servant girl, we learn lesson #1, which is to...
1. Offer a simple witness to someone in need.
This girl didn’t do much. All she did was show concern for her master and pass along information she thought might help him. She served as a witness. Much like you and I serve as a witness when we suggest to someone in need, “Have you tried prayer? I will be glad to pray with you. I know, when I’ve been upset, it has really helped when I’ve turned to God. He calms my nerves and gets me through the situation.”
In reflecting on the servant girl’s witness, Douglas Mullins says, “Never underestimate the power or the necessity of your personal witness to another in need.” It doesn’t take much. It takes some compassion, some care, some empathy, and some reflection of how much God has done for you. When you realize how far God has brought you, you naturally want to pass it along to someone else in need: “one beggar leading another beggar to the bread.” This girl did that...for a foreigner, for a person outside her social class, for a person much more powerful than she was. Yet, she knew Naaman needed God. We all need God...even generals. So she offered a simple witness.
The second life lesson comes from Naaman’s servants who accompanied him in his pilgrimage to Israel. It is a turning point in the story when they convince him to accept Elisha’s advice. The lesson we learn from these servants is to...
2. Encourage others to do the right thing
They found their master so angry, so upset in his pride over Elisha’s apparent snubbing, he was stomping off to return to his own homeland, without the healing he had come for. They stopped Naaman by appealing to his common sense. Basically they said, “Look, if the great prophet had asked you to do something really difficult, you would have done it. And here is this simple thing to do: bathe seven times in the Jordan. Why don’t you at least try it? What harm could it do?” They encouraged Nathan to do the right thing, that is to obey God’s spokesperson and submit himself to the authority of God.
The servants, like the earlier servant girl, didn’t have much power. They had no authority over this commanding figure. Yet, they cared enough to encourage him to do the right thing. They knew the decision was his. All they could do was encourage. And he thought enough of them to follow their advice. That does say something positive about Naaman. Although he had some pride issues, he wasn’t afraid to listen to the encouragement of all those around him, even the ones without much stature. And as they encouraged, he responded.
Which brings us to the third turning point of the story: Naaman decided to do the right thing. He decided to obey the word of God. He decided to live out 1 Peter 5:6, which urges us to, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” And that is our final life lesson, to...
3. Accept what God offers you
God offered Naaman a cure, a complete cure, winding back the hands of time itself to give him not only a leprosy-free complexion, but also the skin of a child. God healed Naaman to an even better end state than before leprosy! And it was all because Naaman decided to obey. You see, if Elisha had come out of his home and waved his magic wand to heal Naaman, the great commander may have mistakenly given credit to Elisha, a powerful prophet who but speaks and all is well. Maybe that’s why Elisha didn’t leave his home. Maybe that’s why Elisha gave Naaman so simple a task of washing seven times in the Jordan. It was so simple, that the healing could only have come from God. There was no other explanation!
And that brings us back to the simplicity of the Christian faith. It’s the same faith that Paul urged the jailer and his family in Acts 16:31, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” That’s it. That is all that is required to enter the family of God.
Think about today’s story in figurative terms: Naaman is a picture of us. Someone along the way offers a witness that catches our attention. We start to come to God, but our pride gets in the way. Then someone encourages us to simply trust and see what could happen. We bring ourselves to the Jordan. We enter the waters. And Christ brings the healing. Our sins are washed away. We are born again. We are new. In fact, we are in better condition than we were before. And why did it happen? How much of our own effort played into it? How much of our salvation can we attribute to our hard work, our prideful efforts? None. It is wholly God behind it all. We come, and he brings the healing, completely and totally. Let us pray:
Father, what a beautiful story of a senior military leader caught up in the pride of his accomplishments, of a problem too great for him to solve, of a little person who shared about a God who can do anything, of the encouragement of many who led him to surrender his pride and obey your word, and of your good and perfect healing. May we be like the end-state Naaman today and every day, as we surrender our pride and trust in your complete healing. “By his stripes we are healed.” We ask this in the great name of our Savior and Lord, amen.
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For welcome time:
Having just moved into his new office, a young, ambitious one-star general was sitting at his desk when an airman knocked on the door. Conscious of his new position, the general quickly picked up the phone, told the airman to enter, then said into the phone, "Yes, sir, Mr. President. I do indeed appreciate the appointment, and I’ll do my best to keep your confidence.” Then he hung up.
Feeling as though he had sufficiently impressed the young enlisted man, he asked, “What do you want?”
“Nothing important, sir,” the airman replied, “I'm just here to hook up your telephone.”
2 Kings 5:1-14
1 Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.
2 Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”
4 Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. 5 “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. 6 The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
7 As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”
8 When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. 10 Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”
11 But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
13 Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” 14 So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
