Insight for Living

Chuck Swindoll: God's goal is not to bring us down, God's goal is to lift us up. God's goal is not to push us in a corner and hide us, God's goal is to pull us away from the corners and use us. That's his plan.

Bill Meyer: Imagine this storyline. A decorated military commander with a terminal disease encounters an unexpected messenger with impossible hope. It's not a fairy tale, it's true. And today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll unpacks the dramatic plot about a Syrian officer whose search for healing led him down a meandering path.

In the end, he discovered God's surprising way of salvation. If you've ever wondered why coming to Christ feels too simplistic or too formulaic, this ancient account will challenge your convictions. Chuck titled his message, "Naaman: The Officer Whose Leprosy Was Cleansed."

Chuck Swindoll: Let's pray together. How good you are, Father, to bring young men and women from really thousands of miles away to minister to us. To use various media to touch a heart that's searching and lonely. To bring someone across another's path to be of encouragement and assistance and accountability. To cultivate a friendship between opposite kinds of people and to have that friendship grow into a relationship and to have the spiritual life deepened and a walk with Christ strengthened.

It was no doubt that way with Paul and Timothy and with Silas and with Barnabas and with Dr. Luke. It certainly was that way between David and Jonathan and so many through the scriptures who grew together. I'm thankful, Father, that you have not ceased doing that great work from one life to another.

And I'm prompted to thank you at this moment for the church of Jesus Christ that you have raised up. Of so many different faces and different expressions and in different cultures and languages, even different labels and denominations. And yet there are so many more things that draw us together than separate us. Forgive us, Father, for fighting with one another rather than arm in arm, marching together to the cadence of Christ and sensing in that march a purpose and an objective that is eternal.

Minister through the word for the next few moments as we open our hearts and as we close our minds to other distractions that we might learn of you and learn more of your ways. In the Savior's name, Amen.

Bill Meyer: You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into today's topic on your own, be sure to purchase our searching the scriptures Bible study workbook by going to insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message, "Naaman: The Officer Whose Leprosy Was Cleansed."

Chuck Swindoll: To prepare our minds for another Old Testament story, I want you to take your Bibles and I want you to locate the 55th chapter of Isaiah. I have selected four verses that appear right in the heart of this 13-verse chapter of scripture. I'm looking at Isaiah 55:6-9, and I want to make a couple or three observations about Isaiah 55:6-9.

First, let me read these somewhat familiar verses for you. Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and he, that is the Lord, will have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. First, would you observe that these words are addressed to those who don't know the Lord? They're seeking to find him.

They're on a search and these words are addressed to those in that search. They begin with a command: seek him while he can be found and call on him while he is near. These are words addressed to people who are seeking and hoping in some way to call on the Lord. Second, I notice these verses offer three things to a seeker.

First, they offer an invitation to seek, to call, in verse 6. And then the verses offer a warning: let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous forsake his thoughts, and the warning, let him return. The implied statement is, if you do not, there is a price to pay, there are consequences that will follow. But there is an invitation, there is a warning, then there are a couple of promises at the end of verse 7.

He will have compassion, he will abundantly pardon. So, the verse offers three things to a seeker: it offers an invitation, the verses offer a warning, and the verses offer a couple of promises. Now third, God clarifies that there is a surprise factor in coming to him. I find that in verses 8 and 9.

There is a surprise factor in coming to Christ, in coming to the Lord, and most of us in our unsaved state did not know that. In fact, some of us are still learning how surprising a walk with God really can be. The surprise: my thoughts are not your thoughts. Those are God's words. He doesn't think like humanity thinks.

My ways are not like your ways. So his plan is different than ours. And you know, it really works out in practical ways, if I may interrupt our thoughts for a brief example. I thought we would have two children. I really did. We had a boy, very healthy, happy, delightful little kid. We had a girl, soft, feminine, lovely. Perfect. Alpha, Omega. Perfect. Two children.

But God's ways are not the ways of ours. His plan superseded our plans. I thought I would minister in one territory of the country throughout most of my life, and I would not minister in the very places that I have served the Lord throughout my ministry. He's full of surprises. Some of you just think you have reached the end of the tether, you have experienced the ultimate that the Lord will lead in your life, are you in for a surprise.

As long as you have breath in your lungs, as long as you have the ability to move about at will, the Lord will surprise you with his ways. And the good thing is that his ways are, well, look for yourself. Our thoughts are not his thoughts, our ways are not his ways, but I've left out the most important: his plan is higher than our plan.

God's goal is not to bring us down, God's goal is to lift us up. God's goal is not to push us in a corner and hide us, God's goal is to pull us away from the corners and use us. That's his plan. Now, it's still in process. It's still going on. It's still going on in my life. About the time I think that is it, that was the year that was, that was the ultimate, there is no way that I could know more of surprises in God's arrangement, the next year is full of even more and even more.

Now, I'm saying all of these things out of Isaiah 55 to prepare us for a story that's tucked away in 2 Kings, chapter 5. So, will you go back to that Old Testament section of scripture? Those words from Isaiah 55 are going to come back to haunt us in the life of a man we are about to study.

Every story has a setting, just like every beautiful gem needs a setting in a ring or a necklace or a bracelet for it to be appreciated. And the setting of this story is a little bit unusual and perhaps not clear to a number of people. Just before we get into chapter 5 of 2 Kings, let's understand that there is a war going on.

It isn't a simple and easy war, as no war is, it is a war within a nation. It is a nation at war with itself. If we were reading American history in 2nd Kings chapter 5, we would be reading during the era of 1861 to 1865, during our Civil War. The worst war we have ever been through. That is wars fought with weapons, with guns, with armament, etc.

The worst war in all of time is the war for life, of course, the whole issue of abortion. That's the worst war. That's taken more lives than any other war in the history of time. That's the worst. But in human terms in an American history, the worst war we've faced has been the Civil War, and it lasted for us only four, four and a half, five years.

Israel lived as a nation for 120 years under three different kings: first Saul, and then David, and then Solomon. Because of the weakening of spiritual life in Solomon, by the time he died, his son was not walking with the Lord, and before too many months the nation that had been united for over 100 years, almost 125, split. Most of the tribes were in the northern kingdom, called Israel.

Two of the tribes remained in the southern kingdom, Benjamin and Judah, and they came to be known as simply Judah. Now, the scene we are looking at is a scene that took place in the northern kingdom during the Jewish Civil War. It's a time of upheaval. It's a troubled era.

It is a time in which God worked mainly through his spokesmen who were known as prophets. The difference between a prophet then and a prophet today is that then he was a prophet in the technical sense of the word, he spoke ex cathedra. God's word was not complete and when a prophet stood to declare, if he was a true prophet, to declare the word of the Lord, he made no mistakes in the declaration.

His prophecies were precisely as God's oracle would have been written, and often they were put into written form and they have found their way into the Bible that we love and read today. The particular spokesman who was at odds with his times in this particular era is the man Elisha.

The main prophet during the kings in the early part of the kings would be Elijah, that is in the writing of 1st Kings. But the main prophet now, now that Elijah is off, is a man whose name sounds much like his, it is Elisha. Elisha walked in step with his God and remember, God's ways are different and God's ways are higher than man's ways.

So he was walking at odds with his times. By the way, that still goes on. People who walk with God walk against the cadence of the world. They do not watch the world for their cues, they do not pay attention to the world for their direction, they in fact, we in fact resist the counsel of the world in learning how to live our lives. In that sense, we have that in keeping with the early prophets, and Elisha is the man we have in mind here.

Now, what we have in 2 Kings 5 is a story of a miracle. And the main character in the story is a man named Naaman, N-A-A-M-A-N, who's mentioned in verse 1, Naaman. Now the question you might have is, was he a Jew in the northern or the southern kingdom? Remember, we said it was the northern kingdom, but he wasn't a Jew. He was a Syrian.

That's important when you see the last part of this first verse, we'll get there in a moment. Understand now, he is an unsaved Syrian military officer who serves the king of Syria named Ben-Hadad, who isn't mentioned in this account but is mentioned elsewhere in the book of Kings. Now, notice in verse 1, he is a proud man.

First of all, we read he is captain of the king's army. The army of the king of Syria, perhaps highest ranking. Germany during its involvement in the Second World War had a position known as a Field Marshal. And every once in a while you would read of Field Marshal Rommel or another Field Marshal. I think perhaps this might be along that line.

He was no doubt responsible for a section of the war under Syrian rule at the time. So he is a high-ranking officer. We read also he was a great man with his master. So apparently Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, and Naaman spent time together. There was a mutual respect certainly between the king and this captain in the army.

Third, we read he was highly respected. Highly respected and he was an honorable man. I read fourth that he was an instrument in preserving peace. The man was also a valiant warrior. He wasn't an armchair general who stayed back behind the lines, he was involved in the skirmishes and in the battles. He probably had the scars of war.

But, says the text, and it changes everything: he was a leper. In fact, you will notice in the New American Standard Bible the words "but he was" are in italics, which means they aren't in the Hebrew text. So literally it reads: the man was also a valiant warrior, leper. It's supposed to be abrupt. It is extremely, it's just awkwardly abrupt in the original text. Leper, supposed to scream at you from the passage. Leper!

He wouldn't cure himself. It was terminal, of course. Now, had he been a Jew, he would have become an outcast once the leprosy showed up, but he's Syrian, remember. In a very reliable work by Keil and Delitzsch, this old German couple of scholars put together commentaries on the Old Testament, Keil writes in this work on 2nd Kings: there is an allusion here to the difference between the Syrians and the Israelites in their view of leprosy.

Whereas in Israel lepers were excluded from human society, in Syria a man afflicted with leprosy could hold a very high state office in the closest association with the king. It's unheard of in Israel. When you were a leper, you were put out of the camp, you were put out of the city and you were treated as an outcast. Not in Syria.

So here he is in the warp and woof of life, in touch with, involved with different people, and now out of a blue he discovers he has leprosy. Years ago when I worked in a machine shop, I broke my hand on the chuck of a turret lathe that I was working on, and this was called a tracer lathe and it was speeding at multiple, multiple revolutions per minute and I got my hand too close and boom, I broke it and this bone on the left small finger came out in what was a terrible looking thing and I had to go to an orthopedic surgeon to get it worked on.

Still have that scar there where he cut it open and put it all back together. Wonderful surgeon. He was a surgeon of the hand and he, I just appreciated the way he did his work and except for having a barometer on my hand when it's going to get cold, I can feel it in my bones, you know, and it's going to change weather, I can feel it. Other than that, I have no disability from it at all.

Anyway, when I went back to have the little pin looked at that he had put from the knuckle all the way down to the wrist as he set that, he said to me, I won't be here the next time you come back for an examination. He said, I'm going to go and have a little mole taken off my stomach. In fact, he showed it to me, opened his shirt, and there's a little black mole right there about the size of your fingernail on your small finger.

And he said, it's kind of irritating, it's right on the belt line, I just want to have it taken out. So I went back in two weeks to have my hand looked at and the man was dead. I couldn't believe it. Here was this up-and-coming, capable pace-setter of an orthopedic surgeon, dead.

When they cut him open, they found that he was full of cancer. And they didn't touch him, they sewed him up and asked him if he had a will, and he took care of necessary legal matters and financial matters, he was gone. I couldn't believe it. My mouth literally fell open when I asked about how the surgery went. They said, oh, you haven't heard, Dr. so-and-so has died.

He was in his mid-30s. It's that kind of abruptness when you read at the end of verse 1: leper. As good as dead. Terminal. I can't imagine how the man felt the morning that he was dressing and he found the first spot. And though Syrian, he knew what leprosy looked like. Changed everything. Suddenly the medals that hung from his chest seemed unimportant.

In a matter of seconds, his future paled into insignificance. He was a leper. We're not told every detail of what he said or what he did, but out of the blue, and this is just the way God works, there's a little servant girl that comes across his path. Remember what we read in Isaiah 55? My ways are not your ways, my ways are higher than your ways. I am working when you don't even know how I am or where I am working. You don't even know who I'm working through.

Look at verse 2. The Syrians had gone out in bands and had taken captive a little girl from the land of Israel and she waited on Naaman's wife. Isn't that interesting how these lives crisscross and dovetail. And she said one day to her mistress, I wish that my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria. The prophet is Elisha.

She knows of Elisha. This man didn't know of Elisha. His world is Syria, and if he knew of him, he'd quickly put him out of his mind. Prophet, prophet, who cares about some Jewish prophet when you're a Syrian field marshal? And she says to her mistress, I wish your husband could be with the prophet in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy. Now, you better believe that that wife said something to her husband that night.

She says to him, Naaman, my maid was speaking to me today as we were finishing with our meal and she knows someone who is in that land, that territory of Israel that you and I don't know of, but somehow he has power. Do you wonder if Naaman was open to it? Verse 4. Naaman went in and told his master, that's the king, Ben-Hadad, saying, thus and thus spoke the girl who is from the land of Israel.

Remember, my ways are not your ways. My ways are higher than your ways. And out of the blue, across his path comes this little maid who brings to his attention, through his wife, a man in Samaria, which leads him to say soon to his authority, there is someone who can help me in the land of Israel.

Now understand, there's a lot of prejudice, there isn't an openness between these countries, but when you're pressed, those kind of things sort of break down. It is not until we accept the fact that we are diseased that we see cleansing. Christ didn't come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

Bill Meyer: This is Insight for Living. Chuck Swindoll is midway through an often-overlooked story in the Old Testament about Naaman, the officer whose leprosy was cleansed. This is message number 12 in a 14-part series of biographical sketches that concludes soon. It's called Fascinating Stories of Forgotten Lives.

You know that feeling when you're reading through the Bible and suddenly a minor character jumps off the page? Maybe it's Naaman, who thought his life was coming to an end, or Abigail, who deflected the wrath of David and saved her husband's life. Chuck has that rare gift of turning these brief mentions into unforgettable encounters with real people who faced real struggles just like we do.

His series fills in the details of these portraits. Picture yourself on a Saturday morning with your coffee, opening one of these messages and meeting someone you've read past a dozen times. Or imagine your small group discovering together why God preserved even a single verse about someone's faithfulness.

Well, the Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook is a great resource we have to guide you. This popular spiral-bound workbook will transform your experience from listening to Chuck teach into discovery for yourself. To purchase the Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook for Fascinating Stories of Forgotten Lives, call 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org/offer.

Before you go, we'd like to invite you to request a brand-new resource called Guided by Grace. It's a high-impact quarterly magazine that we've designed to bring biblical encouragement directly to your mailbox. Inside its colorful pages, you'll explore characteristics that define Christ-like living.

One issue might focus on joy, another on generosity or authentic community. Each addition features Chuck's teaching, stories from Insight for Living pastors who are witnessing God's work around the world, and devotionals to help you apply what you're learning. It's rich content that will inspire and equip you throughout the year, and it's yours for the asking.

We'd love to send this valuable resource your way. So call us at 800-772-8888 or visit insight.org/guidedbygrace. I'm Bill Meyer. Chuck Swindoll continues his powerful biographical series called Fascinating Stories of Forgotten Lives, Monday on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, "Naaman: The Officer Whose Leprosy Was Cleansed," was copyrighted in 1990, 1992, 2006, 2012, and 2024, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2024 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.