2 Kings 5 | "When Personal Faith Impacts International Relations"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Independence is a kind of common grace, not common to all peoples everywhere, but common to some in certain areas of the world.

In our country, it is common to us.

But there is another kind of freedom that is a more specialized kind of grace, a more specific kind of grace that can be experienced by anyone in any kind of situation.

And I'd like to direct your attention to that kind of situation this morning.

If you have a Bible, I encourage you to open it to the book of 2 Kings.

Book of 2 Kings this morning.

Going to take a break from our study of Matthew, come back to it and look at the family of Christ next week as we celebrate as a family the Lord's table together.

This morning I'd like to look at 2 Kings chapter 5.

2 Kings 5 · chapter mention

There are so many, so many elements of the Old Testament that are rich and fascinating.

And so much of it we don't get a chance to really dive into.

And we're going to dive into some of it this morning.

Only really half of this passage we'll have time to look at this morning.

There's a lot too that as we even get to our English translations of the Old Testament that we miss out on.

I'm going to try to point out some of those things that we miss out on this morning because I think they're important to grasp the intention of the writer of 2 Kings chapter 5.

2 Kings 5 · chapter mention

If you have a Bible or a device I'd like to read from verse 1 through verse 14, if you would like to follow along.

And 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 ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten 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?

Am I God to kill and to make alive that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy?

Look 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 his chariots, and he stood at the door of Elisha's house.

And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, Go and wash in the Jordan River seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.

But Naaman was angry, and he went away, saying, Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of Yahweh his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.

Are not Abanah and Farpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?

Could I not wash in them and be cleaned?

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.

Amen.

May our response to the word of God be as Naaman's was.

Now that you have a quick overview of the story, and you can keep on reading, not now, but you can keep on reading later and finish out the story and see how things are turned around, and Elisha's servant ends up having the leprosy that Naaman had.

But for now that you have a bit of an overview, let's go back and think through it a bit.

Let's consider the characters in this account, the people that are involved here.

We have a respected man, we have a faith-filled little girl, we have two pagan kings, and God's prophets.

Now there are many dissimilarities from Naaman's world to our world today.

There are many, many things that just don't compare side to side.

Too long ago, different geography, different language, different culture, all kinds of things that are not the same.

But the political climates and the people and the faith perspectives are not that different.

And I think when we consider those, we will be challenged in our own spirits, in our own walk with the Lord, in our own response to the word of God.

So first, look with me at this man named Naaman, who is a respected man.

You'll have to pardon me so I don't keep looking at the screen behind me.

You've got to look at the one on in front of me.

Who is this respected man named Naaman?

You'll notice that as you look through this passage of scripture, we have we have the name of this Syrian general.

We have the name of Elisha, the man of God, but we don't know the name of Naaman's master.

In fact, we don't even know the name of the king of Israel.

We can figure it out from the rest of the Old Testament, but here we don't have it listed for us.

And perhaps most importantly, we don't know the name of the little girl.

We know Naaman and we know Elisha.

The rest is left untold.

So what do we know then about Naaman?

Well, we can find out many details just from the very first verse and into the second verse.

First of all, we are told that Naaman was a man of position, of high position.

We're told he's a commander, literally a prince of the army, a prince of the hosts.

When it calls God the God of hosts, the same terminology is used here of Naaman.

So Naaman is likely a very high-ranking official, a commander in leadership over the armies of the Syrian people.

These armies are probably divided up into different fighting groups, into smaller groups, who then raid into the land of Israel and surrounding territories in verse 2.

This is not an ordinary fighting man.

This is an extraordinary leader, especially concerning military matters.

But he wasn't just a fighting man, he was a man worthy of respect.

Says he was a great man with his master and in high favor.

Here we have the beginning of a set of terms that are very common in the Hebrew Old Testament that elevate people of respect.

If you're curious about it, it's Ishgadol.

He's a man of respect before his master, before his Lord.

This is an unusual situation where his master, his lord, respected him.

Sort of like the president of the United States, having great respect for the commander of his armies.

He was a great man, and we're told why he was a great man in the eyes of his master.

It was because he was victorious in battle.

It's almost as if he never lost.

He was the leader of his king's forces and he led them to victory.

Therefore, he earned the trust and the respect and honor of his Lord, the King of Syria.

We might consider him the Stonewall Jackson or the Robert E.

Lee or the George Patton or the Douglas MacArthur of his time.

He had the respect, he had earned the respect of his superiors and his subordinates.

And not only that, we're told in the last sentence of the first verse, he was a valiant man.

Here's where we begin to see a play on words that takes place in this text.

The first term is Ish Gadol, he is a man worthy of respect.

Here it is Ish Gibor.

Gidol and Gibor.

What's the difference?

Well, one refers to a man of respect, another, as the English Standard Version says it, a mighty man of valor.

He wasn't simply a man who led.

He led by example.

This was someone we might call a hero in today's language.

This is the kind of man that would be elevated to a high status in his world, in his society, because of what he accomplished on the battlefield.

Naaman and his accomplishments would have been known all throughout the Syrian world.

But that's not where Naaman's story ends.

As most of us know, there's a part of our lives that a lot of people don't know, isn't there?

There's often a painful side, there's often a hurt side to life that we don't let very many people know.

In Naaman's case, he was a diseased man.

Obviously, that becomes a significant part of the rest of our story, doesn't it?

He was a leper.

He was a man with a skin disease.

We don't know exactly what this skin disease was.

Leprosy was a term that was applied to all kinds of skin diseases in the ancient world.

And in that time in world history, there were all kinds of skin diseases.

On the one hand, it was not that uncommon to have a skin disease in the ancient world.

But if you did have a skin disease, you were generally thought to be under the curse of a god.

You had made the gods angry in some way, in some form.

They were not pleased with you.

And so you had to do something to appease them.

Now Naaman's disease couldn't have been too bad since he was still able to lead the armies, to make raids into foreign territories and be successful in battle.

But it still set him apart in a bad way.

And understand that this book of 2 Kings is a record, not for the Syrian people, but for the Israelites.

And according to the law of Moses, it didn't matter what kind of skin disease you had, if you had a skin disease, you were considered unclean.

You were separate.

You were distinct.

You were set apart in a bad way.

So as an Israelite who's reading this, they're automatically thinking: not only is this man not an Israelite, he's a Gentile, he's not Jewish, he's Gentile, he's a pagan dude, but he's sick.

He's diseased.

He's unclean.

And as an unclean man, he cannot come and worship the God of Israel.

He cannot be a part of our worship system.

He would have been considered to be under God's judgment because of this disease.

And it was a skin disease that was Naaman's biggest problem.

At least that's what he thought.

Here's a guy who's successful.

He's popular.

He's well off.

He's the guy everybody looks up to.

He's the national hero.

He was at the very same time the man everyone wished they could be, and the man no one wanted to be.

That's Naaman.

But that's where things start to get a little sticky, if we can use that terminology.

Because the author of 2 Kings tells us in the middle of verse 1 that he was a pagan man, he was a Gentile, a non-Jew.

And as a pagan, non-Jewish person, God worked through him.

Notice what the text says.

Yahweh, the Lord, had given victory to Syria through Naaman.

Now that's where a Jewish person's jaw would have hit the floor.

They would have been stunned, rocked, because Syria, at this point in world history, is Israel's perennial enemy.

And God gave Syria victory over Israel.

If you question that, just go back to the very last part of 1 Kings.

The last three sentences, three verses or so of 1 Kings.

Syria had even killed one of Israel's kings.

An Israelite hearer of this passage would be shocked to hear that God was working through her enemies.

And now God is telling them that he had given victory to the Syrians through this mighty man named Naaman.

If you're familiar with your Old Testament, you might compare it to Habakkuk.

Habakkuk is told by God that these awful Babylonians are going to come through the Middle Eastern territories and ransack and destroy everything and everybody.

Because of Israel's sin.

And Habakkuk comes to God and says, How could you do such a thing?

Really?

You can't be serious, God.

You're going to use a foreign, sinful country to discipline.

Yes, God, I know we're sinners, but that seems a little much, God.

This would be enough to send a Jewish person into a Tizzy.

How could God do such a thing?

Nahaman was raiding in Israel by God's divine plan.

Let that sink in for a moment.

God is sending foreign sinful peoples into Israelite territory to raid and to kill and to destroy and to steal.

And it's his divine plan.

And that means that the girl stolen from her home as a young girl was brought to Naaman's home as part of God's sovereign purpose and plan.

That's a difficult truth.

It's not in our time plan this morning to really work that out.

But it's important to incorporate into how you think about countries, how you think about war, how you think about refugees, and even your own personal suffering.

All of these kinds of difficulties can very well be part of God's purpose and plan for you, for your people, for your country, be it a blessing or a curse.

Now, as we look at this particular account, we don't have all of the information that we would like to have.

I mean, I would like to know more.

Who is this young girl?

What is her name?

How old is she?

How difficult was it for her to go from being a little girl that's helping out her mom at home to being a slave girl helping out a foreigner in a different country?

Interestingly, we we don't hear any complaints from her.

There's no griping that things have gone so horribly for her.

She's not on her phone telling the world on Instagram and Snapchat about how awful it was that Naaman was living like a pagan.

There's no complaining that God has brought this upon her now that she's thrust into a world of slavery.

Now we can't assume that it was easy.

That would be an inappropriate assumption.

We can't assume that there are no trials now in her life or that she's made this transition easily.

But at the same time, we're not given those details.

None of those types of responses that so often characterize our responses to difficulties or to changes are recorded here in the pages of Scripture.

So what is it that we do see?

If those things are left out, if those things are not recorded for us, what do we see that is recorded for us that is so clearly important for us to know?

I'm glad you asked that question.

We find that she is a little girl who is filled with faith.

Now, first, we need to understand and remember above all that she is a young girl who was captured from Israel during a raid by the Syrian armies.

It's a common occurrence in ancient times.

In fact, in uh in 1939, there was an archaeological dig that uncovered a description of this exact kind of thing taking place in Syria.

It was uncovered in Damascus.

Israel routinely, during this time in history, was fighting Judah to the south, Moab, and Syria.

But this isn't describing some all-out international conflict.

This is describing more small raiding skirmishes across the border designed to intimidate and to discourage the enemy.

This would be designed to frustrate people, to make them want Israel to form an alliance, to give in to Syrian armies so that this would just stop.

So this young girl is most likely taken from a small border town or village near the border with Syria, where Naaman and his men could get in quickly and stealthily and get out just as quickly.

But what that means is that at some point on a particular day, we don't know when.

Was it early in the morning?

Was it just before nightfall?

But at some point, this young girl is torn.

She's torn from her home and she's torn from her family.

Just like that.

Her world changes.

It seems that she was not.

Married.

The word used here for a girl is a word that's often used in the Old Testament to refer to a girl who is of marriable age, probably between 12 and 15 years old.

On the other hand, the author of 2 Kings adds a qualifier to that term.

He says she's not just a girl who is of marriageable age, she's a little girl.

Now that may tell us that she's on the lower end of the marriageable scale.

From that perspective, she may have been as young as 10, maybe younger.

We don't know.

We're speculating here, we're just trying to put pieces of the puzzle together.

At any rate, she is a young girl, perhaps not even yet a teenager, ripped away from everything she knew.

She was taken from her friends, she was taken from her family, taken from her home, and instantly made a slave girl.

Her future is now uncertain, unknown.

It includes servitude, maybe forever, perhaps no marriage, perhaps no family of her own, no freedom of movement, no freedom of choice, no freedom of worship.

But even though that is the case, she appears to be accepting and at least humble to the situation in which God has placed her.

She even made a recommendation that would bless her master.

What does that tell us about her attitude, about her predicament?

You know, we we tend to fight against God taking us through difficult times, don't we?

We get stirred up and we we want to tell somebody about how awful this is, and we we try to resist God taking us through those difficulties.

We gripe over the smallest inconveniences and the smallest trials that God takes us through, don't we?

I'm throwing myself under that bus too.

I do that.

But here is a little girl who seeks to be a blessing to her captor.

This is the picture of the gospel in Ephesians chapter 6, verses 5 through 8, where the Apostle Paul says, Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ.

Ephesians 6:5–8

Not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man.

Knowing that whatever good you do, this you will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free.

That's a hard, hard truth.

But here's a little girl who is living that out.

How does she do that?

The only thing that makes sense about this little girl is that she has a childlike trust in her God.

Of course, we don't we don't often demonstrate that that having a faith in God makes a difference, right?

Usually when when we get put under pressure, it's the worst that comes out of us.

You know, it's like the teabag.

You've probably heard that story before.

When you put a teabag in hot water, you get to see what's inside of it.

When you put us in hot water, you get to see what's inside of us.

And what often comes out of us is not generally good things.

But here's a little girl who seems to genuinely, truly trust.

My friends, we have no excuse for not trusting the Lord implicitly.

If a little girl in these circumstances can do this, then with the Lord's grace, we can too.

Now, in no way, please hear me, in no way are we minimizing the difficulties of life in a broken world.

There are horrendous things that should not occur.

Welcome to the curse of sin.

Instead, what we're doing is we're highlighting the grace of Christ that enables us to live otherworldly lives in the midst of a broken world.

That's what this little girl is doing.

There's a sense of contentment here that is unusual.

I like the way that Sinclair Ferguson described contentment.

He said, it is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord and to be totally at his disposal in the place that he appoints at the time he chooses with the provision he is pleased to make.

That's this little girl.

She is here at the Lord's service, at the time that he has decided, in the situation that he has given her, provided with what he's given, and she says, Oh, that my master could know my God.

And this little girl demonstrates that she is one who trusts in the Lord's chosen messengers.

Would that my Lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria.

He would cure him of his leprosy.

If you read your Bible often, you might not really catch how unusual that statement is.

Elisha was God's messenger, God's voice to Israel, and this little girl at least knew who he was.

Maybe she had met him, we don't know.

She at least knew that he was the prophet of God.

We're not told if she had ever met him, we're not told if she had heard him speak.

We're not told if she had heard one of Elisha's miracles.

But she knew that Elisha represented the God of Israel.

And she trusted that the God of Israel would work powerfully through Elisha.

Her knowledge and her trust of God and his ability and his power were not hampered at all by her circumstances.

Notice her statement.

If only my Lord were in Samaria, the prophet would cure him of his leprosy.

That is an amazingly grandiose statement.

Naaman is the commander of the armies of the king of Syria.

I would think it would be a safe guess to say that he had the best medical treatment that was offered at that time.

I mean, based on what the king sends with him as a gift, he surely had the best treatment that money could buy.

It surely meant that in his pagan world, he had offered sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice to false gods to be appeased so that they would heal him, take away this disease.

And now this little foreign girl says, oh, well, you know, if if you were in Samaria, you could just go up to the prophet and he would heal you.

Yeah, right.

She says it as though it's an everyday kind of occurrence for people to be healed of leprosy.

Now, granted, Elisha has twice as many recorded miracles than Elijah, the prophet who came before him.

He had a double measure of God's Spirit, and twice as many miracles are recorded.

But it is far from the case that leprosy was healed on a common basis.

How do we know?

Well, Jesus said in Luke chapter 4, verse 27.

Luke 4:27

He says, Of all of the lepers in Israel during the lifetime of Elisha, none of them, zero, were healed except Naaman the Syrian.

Of all of the lepers, of all of the people with a skin disease in Israel, none of them were healed.

But a foreigner was.

One foreigner.

What does that tell us?

Well, it tells us that the curing of leprosy in Old Testament times was anything but normal, right?

It rarely happened.

So this little girl could not have heard of Elisha curing skin diseases like leprosy.

She's functioning with a childlike faith that believes God is real, that God works powerfully in his world, and that he works through his messenger, Elisha.

And if only my Lord would go and see the prophet, he would come home healed.

What kind of person who's been through trauma does that?

Has that kind of faith and trust in her God?

This is a young girl who is not afraid to trust.

It didn't start when she got to Syria.

Because the Syrians didn't worship the God of Israel.

This trust must have been developed at home in Israel through the instruction of God's word.

This kind of faith must have been lived out at home in her parents.

I would submit to you that she is able to trust during this time of trial and suffering because she had already learned how to trust.

What about us?

Are we learning to trust?

Are we teaching our younger generations how to trust through hardship, through uncertain futures, through circumstances that we wish were different?

I don't know how much all of you are aware, but there are pastors just north of us of the border in Canada who have spent months in prison simply for wanting to preach the gospel of Christ to people.

It's not that far away.

When we might be in similar circumstances, are we learning now?

Are we preparing one another now for what might come?

See, at some point, this little girl is taught and came to believe that God is bigger than her circumstances, that he is worthy to be trusted no matter what.

Some of you are familiar with Cori Tenboom.

If you're not familiar with that word, you need to look her up.

She said, never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

Amen.

Now let's look at two kings.

Who are they?

Well, one is king of Syria.

This king very clearly believes in healing power.

So Naaman goes and tells his Lord in verse 4, hey, this little girl said this, and she's from the land of Israel, and so the king of Syria said, Go.

Absolutely, go.

There's better treatment there, there's miracles there.

Go.

I'll send a letter along with you that you can take to the king of Israel.

Now remember, he respects and he favors his commanding officer, so he's desiring to do whatever he can to help, even if it means reaching out to an enemy regime.

That gives us a little bit of a clue as to how much he appreciates Naaman.

But this man is a pagan unbeliever.

We didn't read this far, but if you look down to verse 18, you'll see that he worships the god Ramon, an Assyrian version of Baal, a god of storms and weather.

And so because of storms and weather, he was a god of fertility of crops and growing things.

He worships a false god.

Maybe he's thinking someone else's god might be a little bit bigger and might be able to fix what's going on here.

And so he acts as any king would act.

He sends a request to a foreign king accompanied with a generous gift.

In this case, it's silver, gold, and clothes.

This gift amounts to hundreds of years of wages for a common person.

This isn't just a trifle.

This is a massive gift.

So again, it demonstrates how much he thinks of Nahum and he reaches out to the king of Israel.

Because the king of Israel, the king, often stood in the place of the people.

He's responsible for them.

And so he says, Listen, I don't know who this prophet is, but I know that you know your people, and so you're gonna you're gonna send Naam and you're gonna direct him to the right place.

That's the king of Syria.

But then there's a king of Israel who did not trust in the healing power of his God.

Instead, he he responds really like an inferior subject of the Syrian king.

He says, Who who am I?

Who do you think I am that you would ask me to heal this guy?

Am I God?

Well, of course you're not.

Why would we think that?

No, you're not.

But you ought to know.

No, God, uh, you have a prophet there, so don't you know him?

He thinks the Syrian king is trying to pick a fight with him.

Verse 7.

Look, he's seeking a quarrel with me.

He's acting like a like a threatened toddler, not a trusting believer.

The king of Israel acts as though he doesn't know anything about the healing power of his own God.

He responds like a picked-on king rather than a trusting believer in the God of Israel.

Israel's king has no childlike faith like the little girl.

Which makes it even more astounding that that little girl has such childlike faith.

There's no belief in this king that God could do such a thing.

He's entirely worldly minded.

He's acting in an unbecoming way of God's people.

He tears his clothes in an act of frustrated anger.

But what would you do?

What would you do if a foreign person came to you asking you for healing?

Would your first response be to pray?

This king loses it.

Throws a temper tantrum, does his version of letting the world know all about his own problems.

There's no thoughtful consideration at all for God's providence in bringing Naaman to Israel.

There's no thought to serving God with joy in the midst of trial.

There's no thought of prayer.

Elisha was the furthest thing from this king's mind.

Placed into a difficult and trying and frustrating situation, the little girls thought first of God's prophet, believing in the power of God.

But this king never had a single thought given to sending him to Elisha.

There's never a thought that God might be powerful enough to work a miracle.

Not only does the king of Israel not think much of Elisha, he doesn't think much of Elisha's God.

So let's think about that.

Let's think about Elisha and Elisha's God.

What does God's prophet communicate?

Interestingly, Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes.

Notice that we've got a man of might, a man of valor, of respect.

And now we have a man of God.

Two pagan kings, a respected man and a man of God.

And he hears that the king had torn his clothes.

Interesting little story that you can find out elsewhere in 2 Kings is that the king of Israel became frustrated with Elisha because Elisha somehow knew everything that the king did and thought.

And the king of Israel's servant said, You gotta be careful because somehow Elisha knows what you're thinking about when you're in your bathroom.

That's the kind of man of God he was.

God communicated through Elisha, and Elisha somehow hears about this indiscretion of tearing his clothes.

So Elisha asked the king to send Naheman to him.

Why?

So that he might know that there's a prophet in Israel.

Now why would it be important to know that there's a prophet in Israel?

Well, we know at the end of the story it's not because Elisha wants to be known.

It's because he wants to know that there's a God behind the prophet.

If there is a prophet of God in Israel, then that implies that there is a true God in Israel who is capable of great things.

And so his statement really is saying we need him to know that there is a true God in Israel.

And so Naaman gets back in his chariot and he drives down to Elisha's house.

He goes and he knocks on the door, expecting Elisha to come out and wave his hand, do some magic trick over the leprous area of his body, and boom, he's healed.

But Elisha doesn't even come out of his house.

He sends his own servant, Gehazi, out.

Notice Naaman's response.

He's angry.

He leaves in anger, verse 11, and goes away.

He says, Listen, the least he could do is do some sort of incantation and send me on my way.

I'm a dignitary, I'm an important guy.

The least he could do is come out and greet me and do something.

Later on, Elisha even refuses to take anything from Naaman in return for the healing.

He doesn't want a gift at all.

He wants to avoid any suggestion that Elisha, the prophet, is the one who healed.

Elisha wants God to get all of the credit.

But Naaman believed that Elisha was merely telling him to go and take a bath in a muddy river.

That's the picture.

Naaman's servants tuck some sense into their master.

Remember, we have wordplays going on in this in this text.

We have this great man of the Syrians.

He's an Ishgadol, he's an Ishgibor.

He's a great man, he's a valiant man, he's a worthy man, a guy that anybody would want to be.

And that worthiness comes out as anger and frustration in verse 11.

But look look at verse 13.

His servants come near and say, My father, it is a great word.

Do you not believe that the word of God to you is a great word?

How are you going to react to this great word?

Master, Father, this is a great word.

You are a great man.

This is a great word.

Won't you hear it?

What kind of great word is this?

I think it's fascinating what kind of a great word this is.

The great word is very simple.

Go to the Jordan River.

Wade in.

Squat down in the middle of it and dip your In the water.

Stand back up.

Squat down, dip yourself again.

Do that seven times.

That's very simple.

This great word is very simple.

It's also very dumbfounding.

Somehow, going and washing in a muddy river is going to cleanse him.

It's going to wash him.

It's also very humbling.

Here's this great man receiving a great word telling him to go and do a simple, dumbfounding act that is going to humble him because if he wants to get clean, why doesn't he just go and wash in the fresh, clear waters of Damascus?

Why this muddy river?

Doesn't make any sense.

Why would I humiliate myself that way?

But see, to receive the word of God is to be humble.

It's recognizing that everything about me is insignificant compared to the word from God.

So this great word is simple, it's dumbfounding, it's humbling, but it's also powerful.

He went down and he dipped himself seven times according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored.

God acts powerfully on behalf of those who express humble faith.

Isn't this what we've been seeing in the Gospel of Matthew?

The Beatitudes, chapter 5.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Why are they poor in spirit?

Because they grieve over their sin.

They've been brought to a place of humility before the great and awesome God.

And those who respond in humility begin to experience that saving grace that is found in Christ alone.

This is a mirror, friends, of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Notice what it says.

His flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child.

And he was clean.

What amazing grace.

Of all the lepers in the land of Israel in the days of Elisha, none was healed.

Except Naaman, the Syrian.

Why was Naaman healed?

It's because he had come to recognize that he needed the same faith that the little girl back home had.

And when he began to express that same little childlike faith of that little girl, God changed his skin into the likeness of a little child.

I don't know if you've ever been in this situation, but I've been frustrated many times in the mountains, backpacking or hiking, when you see a peak and you are climbing it, you're working with your way toward that peak, and you just get all worked up about getting to that point.

And you get to that point, and then you're crushed because you realize that beyond that is a higher peak that you couldn't see before.

That's what's going on here.

This is that peak that is right before the main thing that we're supposed to get from this passage.

Because there's a primary wordplay going on here.

We started out this chapter with this little girl taken out of her homeland, taken away from her people.

And in Hebrew, it's Ne'arrakitana.

And now at the end, this man, the Syrian, becomes a Na'an Katan.

It's a very clear wordplay in Hebrew.

Hebrew often uses similar-sounding words, beginning of words, to connect things.

This is the prelude to the peak.

Here's this great and awesome and respected and venerated commander of the Syrian armies who has somehow, in some way, come to be like the little girl that he took as a slave.

What does that tell us?

It tells us that one child's faith led to another's childlike faith.

In the midst of a faithless community.

Again, you can read the end of 1 Kings to see how faithless.

But the king of Israel here pictures the entire land.

Throughout Israel's history, as the king went, so went the rest of the people.

Here, the king doesn't even think of God's prophet.

Israel is the faithless community.

It's as though God were saying to our church body, you are the faithless community.

You think you belong to me, you believe you worship me, but yeah, you really don't.

And to humble us, God picks out a little girl and uses her to bring faith to somebody else.

Amid that faithless community is the one little girl who, with childlike faith, made a difference.

Friends, there's never a reason to despair.

God is always working, even in us, for his purposes.

And the kind of faith that is shown in this little girl is a trusting faith.

Even when your world is turned upside down.

We don't see her complaining.

Doesn't mean she didn't.

We don't see her telling the world how bad her life is.

It doesn't mean she didn't feel it.

We're not told about her frustration about being treated improperly or her new master acting like pagans acted.

She simply relies on her God and encourages others to do the same.

You wonder who her parents were.

Who was her father?

Who was her mother?

What kind of faith did they have?

What did they teach her?

What did they exhibit?

This little girl had a trusting faith.

She also had a believing faith that believed in the face of the impossible.

She could have never heard of Elisha healing a leper.

It had not happened.

And it would not happen again.

This slave girl wouldn't have heard of Elisha healing a leper, but she believed in Elisha's God and in Elisha as God's prophet.

And Nauman believed the slave girl, and through that he too came to believe in Elisha and Elisha's God.

And that humble, believing, trusting faith became transforming faith.

For Naaman.

It included a transformation.

God began to work in him from the inside out immediately, so that he even desired to worship Yahweh while in a foreign land.

He said, I know I'm going to go back and I'm going to be put into a hard place, but I'm going to be doing my best to worship God there.

My friends, this kind of trusting, humble, simple faith is impacting faith.

All it took, all it took for God to work was one simple statement by a little girl.

If only my master could see the prophet who is in Samaria.

Then isn't this kind of faith challenging?

This little girl still had to trust when her faith was turned upside down.

When her country and her people were being decimated by these raids.

Her world was changed, her life was changed.

Naaman had to trust even though Elisha wouldn't come out to see him.

Nahaman had to trust even though he would return to a pagan land.

It's challenging.

But it's also convicting, isn't it?

Israel didn't have this kind of faith.

But a foreigner did.

A little girl had it, but a king didn't.

A king didn't trust in God's chosen messenger, but a little girl did.

Where do we fit?

Where is our trust?

Is it in the common grace of our independence, or is it in the God who gives us that grace?

Is our trust like this little girl's where it is humble and simple and believing, such that God can make an impact by it?

Where do we fit?

Are we in the unbelieving nation?

Are we in the king?

Are we in the slave girl?

Or the commander of Syria's hosts?

Where do we fit?

The challenge, of course, is that Christ has come.

This is a picture of what would come a thousand years later.

Christ has come.

We have the hope already revealed.

Cannot we merely say, if only, if only you could see and to know Jesus.

If only we could say, would you come with me to a gospel?

I want you to meet my God.

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, forgive us of our waywardness.

Forgive us of our fear.

Forgive us of our lack of contentment.

Forgive us of our uncertainty and just all of the things that come in a broken world.

Thank you for a reminder that a simple faith is a sufficient faith.

Yes, cause us to grow.

Cause us to grow through those challenges, through those uncertainties, so that we might be able to live firmly, trusting in you no matter what may come.

May we be like this unnamed little girl who made a difference with a simple faith.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.