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A Great Reversal (6/14/09) |
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Written by Pastor Darrell Cooper
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Monday, 29 June 2009 15:27 |
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2 Kings 5:1-19a
June 14, 2009 - Lindsborg Cov.
“A Great Reversal”
By now, most of you are aware that we are in the middle of a sermon series working our way through the entire Bible. We are now, of course, in the middle of the Old Testament. More specifically, we have been reading the books of history.
Now, if you know the history of Israel, you might remember that early on they requested a king. God told them, “You don’t want a king.”
“Yes we do,” they said.
So, God allowed them to win that argument and gave them their first king, Saul. As it turned out, Saul did not have much of a heart for God at all. So, God dethroned him and replaced him with King David.
David turned out to be a man after God’s own heart, but he too grew old and died and was replaced by his son, King Solomon.
Solomon was rather half-hearted in his commitment to God. And because his heart was divided, so was his kingdom. In the very next generation the nation was split in two. The northern ten tribes became known, collectively, as Israel. The southern two tribes became know, collectively, as Judah.
The rest of the Old Testament, the rest of the history of Israel, is really a story about two groups of people: the kings and the prophets. It is a story of the interaction between the prophets and the kings, because God was always using the prophets to call the kings, and therefore all of Israel, back to himself.
Today’s story involves the interaction between one prophet and two kings. But it is not really about them at all, as we shall see in a moment.
Let me introduce you to the characters in the story. There are really four characters in this story. There are two primary characters and two secondary.
The two primary characters both happen to be servants. Their names are Naaman and Gehazi.
Naaman is not a Jew at all. He is from Syria. He is an Aramean. But he is not just any Aramean. He is a very high-ranking and decorated military general. He is a very powerful and important man, and a trusted and valuable servant to the king of Aram himself. Just how valuable, we will soon see.
So, Naaman is not only the enemy, but is personally responsible for attacking and killing many Jewish people. This means that he is automatically hated by most Jewish people. That is what makes what happens in this story all the more remarkable.
The second primary character is Gehazi. Gehazi is Jewish and is also a servant, but he is a servant of Elisha in much the same way that Elisha had been a servant of Elijah. So Gehazi is sort of a prophet-in-training, if you will.
As I said, there are also two secondary characters. The first one is Elisha, the man of God himself. The second one is a young slave girl. We are not told her name, but we know she is a Jewess and we know she was taken as plunder in one of the Aramean raids on Israel, perhaps by Naaman himself.
Technically, there are two additional characters, the King of Aram and the King of Israel. However, as I said, they are not very important. In fact, the text does not even tell us which kings they were. We don’t even know their names.
Are you with me so far? OK, good. What I would like to do now is simply walk through 2 Kings chapter five verse by verse. Let’s start with verse one.
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.
Immediately the writer sets up an interesting contrast. Here we have Naaman, this great, powerful, valiant warrior who also has a great weakness: Leprosy. No matter how great, how rich, how powerful, how famous, how accomplished, or how respected he is or had been, it can all be undone by one simple little skin condition, the dreaded L-word. Leprosy could take it all away. All of it.
Verse 2:
Now bands from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife.
Again, this young Jewish girl is serving Naaman’s wife because she was taken as spoils of war.
Verse 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.”
Now I found that to be a very interesting statement. She essentially says, “If Naaman would go talk to Elisha he would be healed..” That statement is one of two things. It is either an expression of great faith, or it is a statement of great presumption. You don’t want to go around offering sick people a money-back guarantee of healing unless God has already told you He intends to heal them. So, at this point, we cannot be sure if this is the fruit of a deep and sincere faith or the overreaching of a rash and presumptuous girl.
But what I find the most interesting is that she said it at all. Remember who this girl is and who her master is. Naaman took her away from her country. Presumably he killed her family and then took her as plunder. If she prayed for him at all we might expect her to pray for his death or at least that he would become ill. Instead, remarkably, she is genuinely concerned for his welfare. She is actively seeking his healing and well-being. I am not sure if this says more about her or him.
Verse 4:
Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said.
Verses 5-6:
“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. 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.”
So, the King of Aram sends his trusted and highly valued servant (and we will see just how highly prized he was in just a moment) to the King of Israel with two things:
1. A letter, addressed to the king of Israel, requesting healing for his servant
2. Many expensive gifts.
Verse 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!”
The King of Israel responds with outrage and fear. He knows he has no power to fulfill the request and he knows the king of Aram knows that too.
It reminds me of the time the Egyptian taskmasters demanding that the Israelites make bricks with no straw. Make cookies with no ingredients! They know such an order cannot be carried out, but they also know that the punishment will be severe if they fail to do so.
Put yourself in the shoes of the King of Israel. It is a little like being harassed and demoralized by the school bully. He routinely steals your lunch money, knocks your books out of your hand, trips you in the hallway, and makes your life miserable with constant reminders that he is bigger and stronger than you and will be waiting for you after school too.
Then one day he comes to you and says, “I want you to do something for me.”
“What is that?” you ask.
“I want you to make me twice as big as I am now. Oh, and twice as strong too.”
You might be thinking, “How ridiculous! A: I cannot do that. B: No one but God could do something like that. And C: Even if I could, why would I want to help my enemy by giving him an ability that will only make him even more effective at beating me up?”
So we can begin to appreciate the awkward position the King of Israel is in here. He may have the motivation to grant the request (fear and dread of the enemy), but he lacks both the desire and the ability to do so.
Verse 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.”
Here again, Elisha is either displaying strong faith or terrible presumption in promising healing to Naaman in advance. However, in this case, I think we can safely assume that it is an expression of faith. Elisha is a man of God, and as such he knows very well that God and God alone has the power to heal Naaman. So surely he would not have promised it if God had not already revealed to him His intention to heal the Aramean. So, this offer is a response of simple trust in his God.
Verse 9:
So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house.
I want you to imagine this scene. Naaman is a powerful man who works for an even more powerful king. He arrives at the home of Elisha with an entourage of warriors, horses, and chariots. This could have been an exceedingly intimidating sight to have Naaman show up like this. Especially when you contrast Naaman with Elisha.
Elisha has no power, no position, no protection other than God Himself. But that is exactly the point. Although Elisha seems small and insignificant in this scene, because he bears the delegated power and authority of God, he is actually large and in charge. Naaman is actually the weak and vulnerable one in this scene.
Verse 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.”
Notice that Elisha sent a messenger to give healing instructions to Naaman rather than talking to him personally. Naaman would surely take this as a serious insult. Why doesn’t Elisha talk to him personally? We shall see in a moment.
Whatever the reason, Elisha’s instructions are as simple as they are promising. Go wash seven times in the Jordan River and healing is guaranteed. This perhaps makes Naaman’s response a little surprising.
Verses 11-12:
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. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
Surprisingly, instead of being grateful and eager to obey, Naaman is deeply offended and angry. He expresses surprise and disgust that his expectations were not met.
Have you ever had an important meeting that made you a little nervous. As you anticipated the meeting you imagined who would be there and what they would say, and what you would say and what might happen next. And then, when you actually had the meeting, it didn’t go at all like you thought it would?
That is what has happened to Naaman. He has been fantasizing about this meeting with Elisha. He assumes that it will be a dramatic moment in which he and the great prophet meet face to face and the man of God will call publically on the Name of his God and use dramatic gestures and he will be instantly healed.
But that is not what happens at all. First of all, the prophet didn’t even bother to show up. He learns that there will be no public prayer. There are no dramatic gestures, no instant healing. Instead, he is told his healing will take time and that it will require a process that he finds humiliating and degrading. So, Naaman storms off in a rage.
I think we can be like that sometimes. We pray, asking God for something specific, expecting the answer to come in a certain way. Sometimes God grants our request, but does it in a way we did not expect at all. When that happens, we might be disappointed or even feel like God didn’t come through for us. Like Naaman, we might even reject God’s “Yes” answer to our prayer because it just didn’t come the way we thought it would.
Verse 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’!”
Fortunately, Naaman has wise and loyal servants who try to reason with him. They know him well enough to confront his pride. They say,
“If Elisha had demanded some great feat of honor or strength or courage from you, if you had been challenged to go on a great journey or something, you would have done it with zeal. But instead you are being asked to humble yourself and submit to being washed in a foreign water of a foreign land under a foreign god.”
They were essentially saying to him, “Don’t let your pride stand in the way of your healing. It is such a simple and easy thing to do. If washing in the Jordan River is the means of your healing, then by all means, wash! You have nothing to lose but your pride!”
Perhaps this is why Elisha chose not to heal Naaman immediately and dramatically, and why he did not come talk to him personally. He is testing Naaman to see if he is willing to bow before the God of Israel, so to speak. In order to be healed he has to humble himself and submit to the God who offers the healing.
Verse 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.
Naaman, though reluctant, obeys. He washes in the Jordan seven times and he is indeed healed. In fact, there is some indication that his skin was better than it was before he was stricken: “his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy”.
This is the pivot point in the story. At this point, everything changes. Nothing is the same from here on.
Verse 15:
Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. Please accept now a gift from your servant.”
The truly remarkable thing here is not so much that Naaman is healed, but that he is converted! He goes back to Elisha and confesses faith in the one, true, and only God, YHWH. He even asserts that there is no other god in the whole world!
And then, with a sincere heart of gratitude, he offers Elisha a gift.
Verse 16:
The prophet answered, “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.
I think this would have been a HUGE temptation to which a lesser man would have fallen prey (and a lesser man does, as we shall soon see). The offer of this gift represents a strong temptation on several levels.
For one thing, keep in mind who Naaman is. He is not only an Aramean he is a high-ranking military general. He is personally responsible for the death of perhaps thousands in Israel. This could be a rare opportunity for a bit of revenge. Elisha has the chance to exact a price from this Aramean.
And, if you are not into revenge, how about greed. Understand that the gift Naaman is offering is a staggering amount of money!
To help put it in perspective, we are told in 1 Kings 16:23-24, that King Omri purchased enough real estate to build the entire city of Samaria for only two talents of silver. All that land for only two talents of silver. Naaman is offering FIVE TIMES that much silver. This amounts to 750 pounds of silver, plus 150 lbs of gold, plus ten sets of clothing, which doesn’t mean as much to us in our culture, but was extremely valuable in theirs.
Suffice it to say that this is an opportunity for Elisha to become extravagantly wealthy. And doesn’t he deserve it? After all, he has been faithful to God. Doesn’t he deserve a reward? And yet he turns it down.
You see, if Elisha were to accept the gift, it could imply that Elisha takes some measure of credit for the miracle. It could send a message that Elisha is a miracle-man-for-hire and that the gifts of God can be purchased. It might cast doubt on Elisha’s motives for performing the miracle in the first place.
But by refusing the gift, it t gives all the glory to God because he is not accepting compensation for something he did not do. And it protects the reputation of the man of God. No one can accuse him of profiteering.
Verse 17:
“If you will not,” said Naaman, “please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the Lord.
Here again we have confirmation of the sincerity of Naaman’s new faith in YHWH. He commits himself to worship no other god except the God of Israel and he asks for dirt. That may seem like a strange request, but apparently Naaman intends to use it to build an alter in his own land to the God of Israel (in accordance with God’s instructions in Ex 20:23-25).
But there is a little wrinkle here. There is a problem. Verse 18:
Naaman says, “But may the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this.”
Naaman has a problem. He is now a new and fiercely loyal follower of YHWH, but he also has to go home. He has to go back to Syria and return to the service of his master, the King of Aram.
Now, the King of Aram is a polytheist, so presumably he would have no objection if Naaman returns to Syria worshiping the God of Israel as long as he adds YHWH to the pantheon of other gods. But clearly that is not at all what Naaman intends to do. He intends to worship the God of Israel exclusively.
But if Naaman refuses to bow down before Rimmon in favor of exclusive adherence to the foreign god of Israel, he will not only offend and alienate his earthly master, the King of Aram, but he could be declared guilty of high treason and executed or exiled as public enemy number one.
On the other hand, if he does bow down in the temple of Rimmon he will offend his Heavenly Master. You can appreciate Naaman’s dilemma. He is in a Catch-22.
Naaman makes an early decision to err on the side of offending his Heavenly Master, perhaps perceiving that he will receive more mercy from God than from the King of Aram.
I find Elisha’s response as fascinating as it is troubling. All he says are three simple words:
Verse 19:
“Go in peace,” Elisha said.
Let me quickly summarize the rest of the story. Naaman does return in peace, going back to his earthly master a new man inside and out. But Gehazi, Elisha’s servant is thinking,
“Oh Elisha! You just blew it! We could have been rich, and you threw it all away! I am going to go get some of that.”
So, Gehazi goes after Naaman and catches up with him and then lies. He says, “Just after you left, two prophets showed up to stay with us. But my master, Elisha said that we don’t have any extra provisions to offer them, so he sent me to you to ask for some of what you had offered him.”
Naaman is still deeply grateful and feeling very generous, so he gives Gehazi all the clothing he wants and twice as much silver as he asks. Gehazi hurries home, stashes it away in his house, and returns to duty before his master, Elisha.
Elisha asks him, “Where you been, Gehazi?”
“No where in particular,” Gehazi replies.
“Liar. Don’t you know that I am a prophet? My spirit was with you on your secret journey. Because you have broken faith with God, the Leprosy that was once on Naaman will now cling to you and to your descendants forever!” And when Gehazi left the presence of his master his body was covered with Leprosy.
It is a very sad end to an otherwise wonderful story.
There is so much we could learn from this story, so many life lessons we could meditate on, but we only have time for one. It has to do with insiders and outsiders.
You see, with God, there have always been insiders and outsiders. Even today, those who repent of their sin and follow Jesus are insiders, part of the true Kingdom of God. Those who refuse to submit to Jesus or seek His mercy are outsiders. But there is a danger inherent in being an insider. Those of us who are insiders need to remember who is inside and who is outside and why.
Insiders who demand God’s grace, like Gehazi, will find themselves outside. Outsiders who humbly surrender to God’s commands, like Naaman, will find themselves inside.
This is a real danger for us. God often reverses things. If we are not careful, we can become like the Gehazi or like the Pharisees, self-righteous insiders who stand as gatekeepers, proudly screening all comers to determine who gets in and who does not, who deserves God’s grace and who does not. When we take such a position of judgment, we are one short step away from a great reversal. This story can serve as a sober warning. We should take notice and stay humble before God, lest we insiders be kicked out while the outsiders are coming in.
During His earthly ministry, Jesus made reference to this very story when He was talking to the Jewish “insiders” of His day. He told them that during the days of Elisha there were many lepers in Israel, and yet not one of them was healed. The only one who was cleansed was Naaman, the Syrian. (Luke 4:22-27) The insiders were left to suffer and the outsider was healed. Why? Because the outsider responded to God with humility and obedience and the insiders did not.
Then, in Matthew 21:31b-32, Jesus is again talking to the insiders, to the religious leaders. Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.
The religious leaders were proud of their position and spent their time judging and despising those pagan outsiders, those evil people who did not deserve God’s favor. They had forgotten that they too were sinners who did not deserve to be inside and so there was to be a great reversal. The tax collectors and prostitutes were insiders and the religious leaders were outsiders.
Again, I hope this story serves for us as a cautionary tale, encouraging us to examine our own hearts. Because you see, the primary distinction between insiders and outsiders is not even our behavior, but our attitude. And the only prerequisite for becoming an insider is to humbly submit to the commands of Jesus Christ.
Let us all walk in humble obedience to the commands of Jesus, lest there be a great reversal.
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Last Updated on Monday, 29 June 2009 15:31 |
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