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Colin Smith: Leprosy in the Bible is a powerful picture of what sin does in our lives. We know that sin makes us guilty, so we need to be forgiven, but the Bible also stresses that sin defiles us so that we need to be cleansed.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith. I'm Steve Hiller, glad that you're listening today. And Colin, it sounds like we're going to be hearing the story of Naaman.

Colin Smith: This is one of my favorite stories in the Old Testament, Steve. It's a wonderful story of this man who was a commander of the army. He had everything going for him, and yet he had this terrible affliction of leprosy. Without telling the story right at the beginning of the program, I want us to see today that this is a story of marvelous hope.

I can't imagine anyone who was less likely to become a worshiper of the living God, and yet this man, who was so far away from God, experienced the grace of God in the most wonderful way. I think for anyone who is looking for hope for a friend or for a loved one who is far from God and has very little interest, this is a wonderfully encouraging story. I hope that that encouragement will come to all of us as we open the Bible together today.

Steve Hiller: Well, let's do that. We're in the book of 2 Kings, chapter five, beginning a message called God Will Cleanse Us. Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: We're looking at a remarkable story from the life of Elisha today. It comes in two parts. In the first part, a rich leper is converted, and then in the second part, a rogue prophet is exposed. These two stories almost go in opposite directions. In the first part, we have a man who doesn't know God, but he comes to faith in the living God. In the second part, we have a man who does know God and is even known as a servant of God, who ruins his testimony and destroys his own ministry. So, wherever you are, whatever your position before God today, there will be something in these stories for you.

We're introduced to a man by the name of Naaman, who was the commander of the army of the King of Syria. Naaman is described here as a great man, a man of mighty valor. He was known for his strength and his courage, and because of his many courageous acts on the fields of battle, he would have risen through the ranks until he became the commander of the army, the very top position of all. He was a direct report to the King of Syria. There are not many people who rise as high in their career as this man Naaman did. He's not only a direct report to the king, but the king holds him in high favor.

I want you to notice why. Verse one: "Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor." Why? Because by him, the Lord had given victory to Syria. You see, God gave victory to the enemies of His people. This must have been very hard for God's people to stomach. But it's quite clear here that when their enemies prevailed, the reason for their prevailing was that the Lord gave them victory.

We like believing that God is sovereign when He's clearly acting for us. When things seem to be going against us, we're not so sure. But this truth is very clear in the Bible: that when God's people sinned against Him, He gave them into the hands of their enemies. That pattern is seen repeatedly in the book of Judges, and it's quite plainly stated here that Naaman's army prevailed in battle because the Lord gave them victory. Success in life comes from the hand of God, whether a person recognizes God, worships God, believes in God or not. Your godless boss, if you have one, has been given the success that he or she enjoys by the hand of God, even if they don't believe that He exists.

Naaman had been blessed by God with great success. But you notice here that he also had a great affliction. He suffered from a terrible disease. Verse one: "Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, he's in high favor because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria." It's piling up everything that's going for him. "He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper." That one terrible reality outweighed everything else that was going for this man. Great success, great achievements, great reputation, but he was a leper.

Leprosy in Bible times, as you would know, was an incurable disease. Here is a man that has a great past, a prestigious present, and a grim future. Leprosy in the Bible is a powerful picture of what sin does in our lives. We know that sin makes us guilty, so we need to be forgiven, but the Bible also stresses that sin defiles us so that we need to be cleansed. Leprosy is a kind of picture of the defiling effects of sin. Like leprosy, sin starts small, but it spreads. Like leprosy, sin is hidden usually at the beginning, but then it eventually shows. Like leprosy, sin alienates us from God and it alienates us from other people. In Bible times, it was a condition for which there was no known cure.

What we're looking at today is a remarkable story of how God, by His miraculous power, healed this man Naaman of his leprosy. As we follow the story, we're going to see not only how he was healed of leprosy, but by way of analogy, how it is that a sinner can be cleansed and reconciled to God. Remember that Naaman did not know the God of the Bible, but God very wonderfully brought someone into his life who did know Him. She was a little girl, a little girl whose name we don't even know.

Verse two: "Now the Syrians, on one of their raids, had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife." I want us to think about this little girl's story and her experience. It would cause anyone with a heart to weep. She was born into a believing family. She would have learned about the God of the Bible in her early years, how He did miracles, parting the Red Sea, feeding His own people in the wilderness, bringing them into the Promised Land. She knew that when God's people sinned against Him, He sent prophets, that He had spoken and worked miraculously through Elijah the prophet, and that He was still speaking and working miraculously in her day through Elisha the prophet.

Here's a little girl growing up with a knowledge of the truth, blessed in her early years to come to know the God of the Bible and to have living faith in Him. And then one day, without any warning, tragedy struck. You can imagine this, because the world never changes. This sounds very familiar. One day, without any warning, raiders arrived in chariots and they seized this little girl and they abducted her, removed her from her family. When they returned home, Naaman, the commander, decided that this little girl would be an excellent servant for his wife.

Think about this. After what this young girl had endured, it would not have been in the least surprising if she was absolutely filled with hatred. She might have taken pleasure in Naaman's illness. She might have been thinking, "Serves him right. He commands the army that took me from my home and my family. I hope he suffers long and that in the end he rots in hell." But there isn't anything remotely like that in this little girl.

We're told in verse three that she said to her mistress, "Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy." This little girl is an amazing example of what it means to shine like a light in the darkness of this world. She's just full of faith, she's full of hope, and she is full of love. She believes with all her heart that God's marvelous grace is not only for her and for her people, but that it really is for all people. She believes that God loves her enemies, so she loves them too. She prays for her enemies, and she longs for them to know the blessing of her God.

Naaman took what this little girl said seriously. He went to his boss, the King of Syria, and the King of Syria said, "Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel." Verse three: "Naaman went, taking with him ten talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing." He is equipped with a letter from the king and he's carrying with him a boatload of money. Why? Because money talks. Naaman wants Elisha to know that he is a man of means, and that if Elisha can cure him of his leprosy, he is in a position to reward Elisha very richly indeed.

The story of how this man Naaman came to faith in the living God really plays out in three remarkable scenes. The first scene takes place in the palace of the King of Israel, and things did not go so well there. When Naaman arrived at the palace of the King of Israel, he brought with him the letter from the king, which said, "I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy." That's what the letter said. So we're told in verse seven that when the King of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and he said, "Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me."

See what he's saying. "The King of Syria, I know what he's up to. He's staging a diplomatic incident. He's setting me up by calling on me to do something that I obviously can't do, and when I can't deliver on what he has asked of me, he will use this to provoke a conflict." You can understand his frustration. Naaman can't heal himself, the King of Syria can't heal him, and obviously the King of Israel can't heal him. The strange thing here, though, is that the King of Israel seems not even to have thought about calling on Elisha. He knew what he couldn't do. He didn't seem to have reckoned on what God could do.

But Elisha heard that the king had torn his clothes and sent a message to the king in verse eight: "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 comes with his chariots and with his horses, arrives outside Elisha's house. It must have been quite a sight. We're talking here about the ancient equivalent of a presidential motorcade. Can you picture this? It's horses plural, it's chariots plural, and can you picture them arriving, complete with a boatload of money and with many, many servants?

Scene two takes place outside Elisha's house. Verse nine: "So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house." Can you imagine this man standing in his chariot, surrounded by the motorcade and all of the servants, and he's looking towards the door of Elisha's house? Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean." Sending out a messenger to a man standing in a chariot surrounded by his retinue, having come from a foreign country and being such a great dignitary that everyone respects so much, is not exactly an example of how to win friends and influence people, don't you think?

But Elisha knew exactly what he was doing. Remember, Naaman did not know the God of the Bible, and Elisha therefore knew that he would see him as being some kind of magician with special healing powers. Actually, you can see that that is indeed what Naaman thought. If you look at verse 11, he said, "I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper." You see, he thought that Elisha would come out and perform some kind of ritual, and that Elisha was a person who had some special healing powers that were resident within himself, and that if he said certain words and waved his hand and so forth and so on, that this might bring about the healing.

Elisha, knowing that that's what he thinks, really wants Naaman to come to know the living God. He doesn't want Naaman to think that the power lies within Elisha. So what Elisha does is he takes himself entirely out of the picture. Naaman doesn't even see him. He just gives him a word: "You go and wash yourself seven times in the River Jordan," so that when the miraculous healing took place at the River Jordan, it was so plain and obvious that it was the living God who did it, because Elisha wasn't even there at the time when it happened.

But Naaman was angry. He was angry because Elisha had hurt his pride. "I thought he would come out to me." You see what he's saying there? "This man has shown me no respect. This man has insulted me. I'm a great man. I came here and I want to be affirmed. I want to be recognized for who I am." He's angry because Elisha hurt his pride. And he's angry because Elisha offered only one way to be cleansed. That's the point of verse 12. He said, "There are other rivers in Damascus. Could I not wash in them and be made clean?" Then he was angry because he didn't want to do what Elisha said. "Go wash in the Jordan seven times?" That is not something that I want to do.

What we have here, if you think about it, is a perfect picture of the response of the natural human heart to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Think about this. The gospel humbles us. It says to us, whatever your achievements, whatever your virtues, whatever your position, your influence in life, they make absolutely no difference whatsoever to your standing before God. Before Almighty God, you are a sinner and you are in no better a position than any other sinner. The natural response of the proud human heart to that is to be angry.

The human heart is proud by nature. The natural response to the gospel that humbles us is to be angry. Of course, the human heart by nature is independent, and so the natural response of the human heart to being told that there is one way in which you can be cleansed is to be angry and to say, "I want to choose my own way. You're telling me that you can only be cleansed through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ?" The natural response of the human heart is to be very angry about that. "Why can't I choose my own way?"

Then the human heart is angry towards the gospel because, by nature, it is a sinful heart, and a sinful heart clings to sins that it loves. "You're telling me go wash? You're telling me repent?" That is not something that I want to do. So Naaman was angry. He turned away, verse 12, and he went away in a rage. He's actually returning home, and he's taking his money and his leprosy with him, except for one thing: the marvelous intervention of his servants. I love this. Verse 13: "But his servants came near and said to him, 'My father, it is a great word that the prophet has spoken to you. Will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, "Wash and be clean"?'"

You see what's happening here. Naaman had taken offense at the command. "God's commanding me to do something I don't want to do." But the servants come to him and say, "Now Naaman, you've taken offense at God's command, but did you not hear God's promise? He said, 'Wash and be clean.'" This may be precisely the position of some of us here in this service this morning. You have been offended by God's command. There is something that God calls you to do and you don't want to do it, or there is something that God calls you to give up and you don't want to give it up, and you're offended by God's command. You're stuck in that position. Here's the question: Did you not hear God's promise? He says, "You can be clean."

Steve Hiller: What a challenging and encouraging message today. You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith, a message called "God Will Cleanse Us" as we take a look at how Naaman came to faith. If you ever miss a broadcast in our current series called "In God We Trust," come and listen online at openthebible.org.

Open the Bible is listener-supported. We do depend on your generosity to keep this teaching on the air, and as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a copy of Lincoln's Daily Devotional. Colin, tell us about this book.

Colin Smith: Well, the first thing that's absolutely fascinating to me is that Abraham Lincoln had and used a devotional. He read scripture and had it in his mind and in his heart. I discovered this because a friend of mine a while ago gave me an early edition of the actual devotional that Abraham Lincoln used. It's brilliant. It lays out each day a verse or two of scripture, they're organized topically around a month, and they go through the experience of a Christian believer: our joys, our sorrows, our temptations, and of course, our final hope and blessedness.

I was absolutely thrilled to discover that all these years ago, Abraham Lincoln was reading and meditating on a verse of scripture each day. Then I discovered that the book's been reprinted and it's been beautifully reproduced. It's in the old King James Version, which of course is so beautiful in the way that it expresses the word of God. I've found this just to be very wonderful and rich. I think people will treasure having a copy of the devotional that Abraham Lincoln himself used to meditate on the word of God.

Steve Hiller: We want to send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for financially supporting Open the Bible this month. You can give a gift online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365. Again, our website is openthebible.org. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time.

Colin Smith: Fly Through the Bible is a short, simple, and shareable book that you can use with a friend, a neighbor, or a loved one who needs to know Jesus. It's also freely available online. Fly Through the Bible will introduce you to five people in the Old Testament, five events in the life of Jesus, and five gifts God gives to every believer. You could ask a friend to read Fly Through the Bible with you. The book has 15 chapters. You could read a chapter and meet together over coffee and discuss the questions. Fly Through the Bible is designed to help you open the Bible with others. It will give you a better grasp of the Bible's story, and most of all, it will help you to grow in your love for Jesus Christ. For more information, visit openthebible.org/fly. That's openthebible.org/fly.