Beware Of Taking Short Cuts
2 Kings 5:1-27 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Calvary 6/26/2011
Today we are going to recognize those who have been promoted and those who have graduated and reached a new milestone in their lives. How many of you remember what it was like on that last day of school and you saw those words promoted to the next grade?
Promotions do not stop in life simply because we get out of school. There are promotions on our jobs, promotions in our families and promotions in our organization. But the most important promotions occur in our spiritual lives. As believers in God we are called to reach higher levels of promotion on a spiritual level. Promotions often require a certain amount of effort.
Suppose a good student has planned to spend the evening studying for his final exam, when he gets a call from a friend threatening to commit suicide. He has this test to study for, but he also loves his friend. He goes over to his friend’s house and spends time with him to keep him from doing this. By the time he gets home, he realizes he is not as prepared as for his exam as he had wanted to be and there’s not much time left to study. His final exam is 50% of his grade.
That next morning, someone comes to him and offers him a small cheat sheet to help him pass the exam. In the middle of the exam, he sees there are several things he does not know on the exam, He didn’t get a chance to study them. He needs to pass this exam to graduate. Does he go for the sheet and pass or does he risk failure and embarrassment by not graduating? That sheet could be his shortcut for success. What should he do?
Have you ever been in the place of being offered a short cut to get what you wanted? Is there anybody besides me who has discovered, some shortcuts are a lot more dangerous than we think. I remember back in my late teens I was driving my aunt and cousins to Ga from NY. When I got to GA, I was getting tired and I looked on a map and saw a short cut. If we left the main road and went on this new route, we could pick up the main road much further down without going around a lot of bends. It was late at night and I took this shortcut.
What I didn’t know was this shortcut, was a path through the Smokey Mountain National Park through a mountaneous region and the road as it traveled the mountains did not have guard rails all the time. It was the most terrifying drive of my life. Even though it was 3 in the morning everyone woke up to try to make sure we did not drive off the edge of the mountains. Instead of driving 55, I was doing about 15 mph. That shortcut cost me a lot of extra a time, a lot of unnecessary fear and anxiety and a whole lot of piece of mind.
Shortcuts are not always what they seem to be. Our lives are going to be full of the chance to take shortcuts. But remember at the end of the day, you and I will give an account to God for each shortcut that we take that take us outside of the will of God for our lives. I want you to meet a young man today, who tried to take a short cut with his life who really messed up big time. Who did not end up graduating.
He had been chosen by one of the prophets to be his servant. The prophet was grooming this young man to one day take his place as being a great spiritual leader to whom kings would look to for advice. The young man’s name was Gehazi.
His teacher was the great prophet Elisha. Elisha saw a lot of promise in Gehazi, and Elisha poured himself into developing this young man. The sky was the limit for him. We met Gehazi in our scripture reading this morning but his name, had not come up yet.
There was a great warrior by the name of Naaman who had a severe skin disease called leprosy. He was actually from a neighboring country and had been sent by the King of Aram to the King of Israel to be healed. The king of Israel had no way to heal this man and was terrified at the thought of trying to do it. But the prophet Elisha sent word to the King of Israel, saying “send Namaan to me and the man will know there is a God in Israel.”
Namaan went to Elisha’s house with his entourage of people. He was used to getting special attention wherever he went. He was one of the most powerful people in his country. Now when he got to Elisha’s he expected Elisha to be impressed with who he was and the gifts he had to offer to him.
Elisha however was only impressed with God. He heard all the fuss going on outside his house, and realized it was Namaan and his group. Without looking out the window, he sent his servant outside to tell Namaan, “Go wash in the Jordan River seven times and your flesh will return back to normal.”
Now these instructions were pretty easy to follow. They were very straight forward. A lot of times, when we do not want to do something, it’s not because we did not understand the instructions. We just don’t want to do it. Namaan’s disease was very serious. For years , he would have done anything to get rid of that disease. But sometimes the steps we have to go though to get what we want are different than what we had in mind. When we do there will be a danger to take a shortcut.
Namaan got so angry that 1) first Elisha did not come out and acknowledge his presence, 2) Elisha did not come and wave a majic wand while calling upon God to cure him and 3) Elisha told him to wash in a dirty river, the Jordan River, when he knew some much cleaner rivers were in his own country.
He decided he would wash, but he was going to take a shortcut and wash in the Abana and Pharpar rivers near Damascus in his own country. He stormed off Elisha’s property probably calling him every name but a child of God.
Naaman figured his shortcut of doing things his way would get him healed. Some of you may be going off to college. You will find freedoms you have not known before. You will find temptations you have not faced before. You will be encouraged to throw away the values you have been given from the church and you will be ridiculed for holding true to your faith in God.
Remember though, that there are Christian college students all over this nation that will be facing the same temptations as you are, but they are not going to try to take shortcuts for fun and acceptance. They are going to say no to the weed, the cocaine and the pills. They are going to say no to boyfriends and girlfriends who want to move in together or to be friends with sexual benefits. They are going to remember that God has something better in mind for them if they stick to God’s game plan. Your family at Calvary urge you to do the same thing.
Namaan started to walk away from what could be his. Thank goodness he had the right group of friends around him. The quality of your friends will have a tremendous impact on how far you go in life. His friends told him, “You know if the prophet Elisha had told you to go out and do something great, wouldn’t you have done it to be healed. Then why not go and do this small thing like he told you to do. Just go wash 7 times in the Jordan River.”
God is not going to ask most of us to go out and do something great for Him to be blessed. God is asking most of us to simply stop taking short cuts. Where ever you are compromising the word of God in your life, you are taking a shortcut and its keeping you from being promoted.
Namaan didn’t want to, but he went to the Jordan River, and after 7 times of coming up in the water, he was completely healed on that 7th time. Too often we quit before letting God do what God wants to do in our lives. I tried it 3 times and nothing happened. What if your miracle comes on the 5th, the 7th, or the 20th time. Keep on doing what God told you to do.
When Namaan saw he was healed, he rushed back to Elisha to thank him and to offer him a huge gift. Namaan had 750 lbs of silver, 150 lbs of gold, and ten of the finest suits money could buy. That was a lot of money. He had come with over a million dollars worth of stuff. He was ready to give Elisha whatever Elisha wanted.
Elisha told him, “as surely as God lives, I will not accept a thing from you.” Even though Namaan begged Elisha to accept an offering, he would not do it. Now the servant whom Elisha had sent out on the porch to tell Namaan to go and wash was the young prophet in training by the name of Gehazi. Gehazi saw all that gold, that silver, and those ten designer outfits that were made of the finest of fabrics and it turned his head more than once.
He thought to himself, if I could have some of that, oh my goodness. How many of us, have seen something that did not belong to us, but we really wanted to have it? Did you know if you see it and think about it long enough, you will convince yourself that somehow you should have it. You begin to plan a short cut to get it and you justify your behavior.
Now Gehazi did not say to himself, “ I am being greedy and sinful in wanting this stuff that’s not mine.” No the Scriptures says, he thought to himself, “my master was too easy on Namaan by letting him get this tremendous healing without paying anything for it. As surely as the Lord lives, I will run after him and get something from him.” Let’s look at this, Gehazi calls Elisha his master, but he’s saying his Master was too dumb to know the right thing to do. When we plan shortcuts we are in essence saying, God you are too dumb to know the best path for me to take, so I’m going to take this one.
The next thing he tries to do is make it seem as though he’s doing this in the name of God. He does not say, “as surely as I’m a selfish person, I will run and get something from him.” No Gehazi says, “as surely as the Lord lives” I will run and get me something. Shortcuts will cause us to short change our relationship with God. You can not be promoted to a higher level of intimacy with God, when you voluntarily choose to disobey God. One thing about disobedience, is that if we do not acknowledge it, we slide further down the road into it.
As Namaan and his group were passing over the hill, they see somebody running after them. When Gehazi reaches them, Namaan is thinking perhaps someone is ill and they many need one of his horses, so Namaan asks,” is everything all right.” Gehazi first lie is yes, ‘everything is all right.” It was a lie because he was not all right. He knew he was being deceptive. His second lie is that Elisha sent him to Namaan. His third lie is that two prophets appeared unexpectedly and they have a severe need. They could really use a talent of silver and two sets of clothing. Now a talent of silver weighed 75 lbs. Today’s market that would be $42,000 worth of silver.
Namaan said, “thank goodness that’s all it is. You had me worried there for a second. He say by all means, at least take two talents of silver and I’ll even send two of my boys back with you to help you carry it all. Now when they got close to the house, but before they could be seen by Elisha, Gehazi said, “fellows I’ll take it from here, you all hurry back so that you can catch up with commander Naaman. I appreciate your help.
Gehazi hid the silver and the clothing with the expectation of enjoying it in the future. He had about $90,000 worth of stuff. Not bad for a day’s work. His shortcut plan seemed to have worked. Namaan was glad to give the gift, he was happy to receive the gift, and nobody got hurt in the process. How many of you know that God loves us so much, that our choice to sin hurts the heart of God? The bible tells us in Ephesians, do not grieve the Holy Spirit by your actions. Shortcuts grieve the Holy Spirit.
Gehazi dusted off his clothes, put a nice smile on his face, and went into the house as though he had done nothing wrong. Elisha, looks over at him and says “Where have you been Gehazi.” Gehazi now has to make a choice to either confess the wrong that he had done and get his life back on course, or he could continue to carry on deception by another shortcut.
When we look back over our lives this week, or even this weekend, God asks us. “where have you been.” Our response should be “living my life with Christ beside me” or a confession of where we went astray. Because if either of those things come out of mouths, it will allow for us to be promoted to a deeper level of knowing and experiencing God’s love.
But if we try to pretend everything’s okay when it’s not, we stay on a collision course with disaster. God pleads with us, to not go there; to change today, before a wreck occurs tomorrow. Gehazi is facing the biggest challenge of his spiritual future, and whether or not he will graduate will depend on the next few words that come out of his mouth to that simple question “Where have you been?” All of us know the right answer to that question in regards to our own obedience. Are willing to come clean, or will we try one more shortcut to cover our tracks?
Gehazi said, “Your servant, didn’t go anywhere.” Have you ever had someone lie to you and you knew that they were lying to you and how disappointed you were as they were doing it. Elisha had spent years investing in Gehazi preparing him to be one of the next great spiritual leaders. In a simple manner of a few hours, he saw his dreams for Gehazi shattered beyond repair.
It would be so good if we had some kind of warning, that this decision today is the one that is going to alter my future in a great negative way. We thought what we were after was going to be found in this thing or in this person or in this philosophy. Once we get it, we think we will be happy and content. Gehazi had the silver and the clothes hiding in the house, but they are not bringing him the joy he desired. $90,000 had seemed like such a jackpot.
We forget that Jesus told us, I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. We forget that Jesus said I am the Way, The Truth and the Life and that no one comes to God the Father except though him. We forget Jesus refused all shortcuts in order to love us and pay the penalty for our wrong doing.
As the last words “didn’t go anywhere” rolled off his lips, I can imagine that Elisha started to cry as he said, “ my spirit was with you, when Namaan got down from his chariot to meet you. This was not the time to take money or clothes, or any other kind of riches. The leprosy that Namaan had, will now cling to you and to your descendants forever. When Gehazi prepared to leave, his skin changed to a bright unhealthy white and he the disease of leprosy clung to him. It all started with him choosing to take a shortcut.
In 1 Corinthians we were told, the temptation you are facing is not beyond your ability to handle it. God is faithful and will not allow you to be tempted above what you can endure. Others have been successful with what you’re going through. The question is, will we say no to the shortcut and wait for God to give us the desires of our hearts in God’s own timing. Let’s all desire to be promoted today, by getting right with God.
Sermon Outline—Pastor Rick
Beware Of Taking Short Cuts
Calvary 6/26/2011
2 Kings 5:1-27 1 Corinthians 10:1-3
A. Praise God For Life’s Promotions
1. The Promotions Around Us
2. A Student, A Suicide, A Test
3. What’s The Price For Success
4. Shortcuts—Scary Mountain Night
B. Shortcuts Are Not What They Seem
1. Life Offers Plenty Of Shortcuts
2. A Young Man Destined For Greatness
3. Elisha’s Investment In Gehazi
C. The Great Warrior Namaan
1. The Battle With Skin Disease
2. The Battle With Pride
3. The Battle With Anger
4. The Desire For A Shortcut
5. The Arbana & Parpha Rivers
D. The Graduate Leaving Home
1. The Challenge Of Temptation
2. The Challenge Of Friends
3. The Challenge To Remember
E. Just Do What God Asks
1. Forget The Great
2. Don’t Quit Too Early
3. Accept What God Gives
4. Elisha Won’t Charge
F. Gehazi Gets A Test
1. He Got Off Too Easy
2. I Deserve Something
3. I’ll Take A Shortcut
4. One Lie Then Another
5. Short-Chaning God
H. Namaan Wants To Help
1. Gehazi Blows It 3 Times
2. Wealth Is Not All It Is Suppose To Be
3. Hiding The Stolen Goods
I. God Is Always With Us
1. Grieving The Holy Spirit
2. A Nice Pretending Act
3. Where Have You Been.
4. What’s My Response
5. Spiritual Promotion
6. Confession Of Suppression
J. A Relationship Destroyed
1. A Broken Trust
2. No Early Warning Signal
John 10:10
New King James Version (NKJV)10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
3. I Didn’t Go Anywhere
4. This Was Not The Time
12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 13 No temptation[c] has overtaken you except what is common to us all. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted[d] beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted,[e] he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
