INTRODUCTION:
1. It was the day before Thanksgiving when an elderly man in Phoenix called his son in New York and said to him, “I hate to ruin your day, but I have to tell you that your mother & I are getting a divorce. Forty-five years of misery is enough. We’re sick of each other, & so you call your sister in Chicago & tell her.” The son frantically called his sister, who exploded on the phone. “Like heck they’re getting divorced,” she shouted, “I’ll take care of this.” She called Phoenix immediately, & said in his most “I’m in charge voice” Dad, “You’re NOT getting divorced. Don’t do anything until I get there. I’m calling my brother back, & we’ll both be there tomorrow morning. Until we arrive, don’t do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?” The father mildly accepted the orders from his daughter, hung up his phone & said to his wife. “Okay, honey, the kids are coming for Thanksgiving this year and for a change this year they’re paying for their own flights.”
Cell #1: II Kings 5 is found on page 286 of the Bible in your pew.
2. Don’t you love it? Sometimes people can be real characters can’t they? Some-times the people you least expect can find ways to get the job done in the most unexpected ways.
3. Today we begin a new series of messages that will deal with a wide variety of very different characters who have been used by God in a wide variety of ways. You probably won’t relate perfectly to every single character in the series, but I suspect you’ll find a little of yourself in several of these Bible characters.
4. Not all of them are a great example and did everything the right way. In fact, some of them are an example of the kind of person you don’t want to be. Others, are the story of people who didn’t start out the right place, but who ended up the right place. Still others, started out well, but ended up going the wrong direction. Some of the characters we’ll be studying are famous, you’ll recognize their names: Solomon, Paul and Zacchaeus. Others, aren’t well known at all: Gehazi, Ahithophel, Tamar, and even the little girl we’re talking about today who is never named in scripture.
5. However, as I said a few moments ago, each one has something valuable to teach us, whether it’s a positive example that we should follow or a negative example that shows us behavior we should avoid.
6. If you have found 2 Kings 5 in your Bibles would you please follow along with me as we read the first 17 verses together.
Read the passage
7. Let’s pray together before we begin this morning’s study. PRAYER
TS— This morning I want us to focus on the little girl in the story and see what we can learn from here. Let’s begin with this…
Cell #2:
I. We Need to Show COMPASSION
1. The narrator sets the stage for the story of Naaman with only a few words. In these 1st verses of the story, he introduces the main character & supplies the information that establishes the story's direction. Naaman is described in glowing terms. He is named commander of the army of the king of Aram & is portrayed as highly esteemed by his master the king. He is a great man & a valiant soldier… but unfortunately, he’s a leper. There is an entire string of positive things said about Naaman, but with that 1 word, “leprosy” he captured the attention of the Jews, because leprosy was so dreaded. (1)
2. There is another detail in the story that is worth taking a moment to mention as well, we learn that it was the Lord who gave Naaman his victories. At first this claim may seem startling because Naaman wasn’t an Israelite. In fact, he was the military leader who led the Armenian forces against Israel. However, 1 & 2 Kings emphasize God's sovereignty over all nations & people groups repeatedly. The Lord also had sent the prophets with His message to non-Jews before & He would do it again, so it’s not surprising that He dealt with Naaman here. (4)
3. Now we get to the point for us, the little girl who was going to be most in-fluential in helping Naaman, was a little Jewish girl. It would be hard to overstate the differences in the two of them. She was an Israelite, he was an Aramean; she was a “young girl who was a maid.” He in contrast was described as a “mighty warrior.” She was a captive servant, he was a commander. She was in captivity, he was her captor. He was well known to the king; her king had been killed & the Israelite nation dissolved. Yet, with all Naaman had going for him, he illustrates a very important principle…
Cell #3:
No matter how successful someone may become they still HAVE PROBLEMS. (1)
4. Part of what made the little servant girl’s faith so impressive was that while there were detailed records in the law about what was to be done for some-one who was cured of leprosy, there’s no record in the Old Testament of any Jewish person was ever healed of leprosy. This led the Jewish scholars of Jesus’ day to decide that when someone was healed of leprosy would be one of the ways they would know the Messiah had come. The fact that no Jew was ever healed of leprosy makes the child’s faith even more amazing.
5. Naaman didn’t understand what was involved in being healed by God. In fact, he was going to go about it all wrong. You will notice in verse 5 that he took money to pay for the miracle when he was healed. It was really quite a gift too. He took 750 pounds of silver & 150 pounds of gold with him. I looked up the value of 750 pounds of silver last Friday and it amounted to $229,800. Again, last Friday it was worth $3,168,000. That’s just under 3.4 million dollars.
6. But God wasn’t interested in the money because you can’t buy a miracle from God. It appears Naaman thought he could. God worked it out in a to-tally different way, and it didn’t even cost him a dime. (5)
7. Naaman didn’t expect to walk away from a dirty river healed. Not only was his leprosy healed & his skin restored, but he was healed of a far greater disease, his prideful spirit was dealt with. God changed him from the inside out. That wasn’t what he bargained for, he brought with him a fortune.
Cell #4:
God is at work in the lives of even those who don’t yet KNOW HIM. (1)
8. God had placed the little girl in the general’s life. He had already given him great military victories, although the general didn’t realize those were from God. In other words, God had already been working in his life, although the man didn’t have a clue what was going on. The same is true around us. God is at work in the lives of many people who don’t have a clue what He’s up to.
9. Naaman was beginning to soften through this process because of a little Jewish servant girl who had the compassion to reach out to him with the hope she had learned from her mother & father before she was taken from her home to a distant country.
TS— But the story doesn’t end with her lesson about compassion, there is a sec-ond lesson we can learn here. We not only need to show compassion; this little girl teaches us this lesson as well…
Cell #5:
II. We Need to Guard OUR ATTITUDE
1. One of the things which makes the little girl so impressive was that she had a good attitude. Think about it for a moment. Would it have been easy to have a lousy attitude toward the man who had taken you from your father & mother? Would it have been easy to develop hatred for the person who had destroyed your homeland & transported you many miles from where you had grown up & from everything you had known & loved? Yes!
2. These introductory verses established the story’s underlying tension. God had given victory to Aram through Naaman. In the king’s eyes, Naaman was responsible for this triumph. In that battle, King Ahab of Israel was killed, which fulfilled God’s promise to him before the battle began. The pas-sage implies that Naaman was the one who led the battle where an anonymous Aramean had shot an arrow that pierced Israel’s king? The ancient Jewish historian Josephus suggests that Naaman was the archer who fired the shot. The passage also speaks of military bands from Aram that raided Israel & capture a “little” girl. This was the little girl who ended up in Naaman’s house. She became his slave. A pious Jewish reader would prob-ably have viewed Naaman’s leprosy as poetic justice. What’s interesting in the passage is that this doesn’t seem to be the little girl’s view at all. (1)
3. The “little girl” appears to have been out of step with contemporary belief when she demonstrated compassion & maintained a merciful attitude to-ward her master. The fact that the story is more complicated that most Jews at the time understood is demonstrated by the fact that the passage begins by saying God gave Naaman victory of the Israelites.
4. In a way you could say that God allowed this little girl’s captivity & that Naaman was God’s instrument. Why would God punish Naaman for doing His will? Naaman’s leprosy wasn’t pay back for his acts against Israel of the “little maid.” It was in fact, an opportunity for the work of God to be on dis-play." (6)
5. I don’t know about you, but if many of us had been the “little girl” we would have been furious, to say the least, at our captors. Consider this…
• They were responsible for destroying her dreams.
• They were responsible for the nightmares that woke her up in the night.
• Because of them, she would likely never marry a handsome Jewish boy & raise beautiful Jewish children & live in a nice house in a nice Jewish village.
• Because of them, she was alone in a strange land & surrounded by strange people.
• Because of them, she was miles away from her mother & father. (6)
Cell #6:
It’s easy to get a bad attitude toward people & situations when we’re MISTREATED. (2)
6. But that was not at all what this little girl did. She refused to give in to her lower nature. She managed to stay upbeat & reach out to the man who had imprisoned her. Were there times she was discouraged? There must have been. Were there times when she had been angry & lonely & even de-pressed? Possibly, but by this part of the story she had worked through her frustrations & it appears that she had a great attitude that God was going to use to help out her boss.
7. Amazingly, she had a much better attitude than most of the adults in the story. Naaman was about to throw a fit. He had expected the prophet to come out of his house, wave his hand over the leprous sores & say some magic words. His frustration got worse when the prophet told him to dip under the water of the dirty Jordan River 7 times. In a similar vein, the king of Israel panicked when Naaman showed up asking to be cured of his lepro-sy.
8. Interestingly, the little girl refused to participate in any of this drama. She just did what she could to help out her boss. She refused to give in to the pity that must have tempted her to feel sorry for herself from time to time. You might say, her good attitude led to her good actions, which led to Naaman being healed. However, she could have allowed her anger to fester & that bad attitude could have been like an infection destroying her & destroying Naaman’s chance to be healed. The reality is that…
Cell #7:
A bad attitude can hinder us from being used as GOD DESIRES. (2-17)
9. Thankfully, that’s not what happened to her or to Naaman. Corrie Ten Boom was separated from her father & mother, & imprisoned in a German concentration camp during WW II. Her crime was helping Jews escape from Nazi Germany. She not only experienced the horrors of life as a prisoner of the Reich. She had watched her sister Betsy die of weakness brought on by starvation in a flea infested barracks. She would never be reunited with her father & mother. She should have died a bitter old woman, filled with hatred for her captors. Instead, she became God’s apostle of forgiveness. God taught her to forgive the very men who were responsible for her suffering & for the deaths of her sister & parents. Then, He sent her to the world with her story of forgiveness & God’s message of forgiveness. (6)
TS— And that is the perfect step to lead us to the final thing I want to share with you this morning. So far we’ve looked at the fact that we need to show compassion. We’ve seen that to do that we must maintain the right kind of attitude, but finally this morning, I want to show you what is at stake.
Cell #8:
III. We Need to Point People TO GOD
1. The little girl had focused on her master’s needs. As we learned earlier, she was concerned about him & told him how to get help for his terrible medical condition. However, in the process, she’s was going to actually do more, she would introduce him to the God who would heal him & even more.
2. On another level, however, the action of the young girl calls attention to the account’s underlying irony. A victorious Aramean commander turns, of all places, to Israel for help. In this, a young Israelite captive aids him. But more important the unnamed “little maid” serves as a contrast for evaluating the main characters. She is the one who puts other people in the story in perspective. We’re drawn to her, even though we have few details about her. (1)
3. The little girl in the story didn’t push her boss. She merely identified his need & told him that she believed the prophet in Israel could heal him. She didn’t specifically mention her faith, but she showed him where he could find something that was missing in her life. Her incredible attitude did more than help him, it would transform his life. The Apostle Paul demonstrated a similar reality in his book to the Corinthian church. Listen to what he said.
25 This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, & God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.
26 Remember, dear brothers & sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you.
27 Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. (1 Cor. 1:25-27)
4. The little maid wasn’t impressive on her own, but when she told her boss that he could be helped by the prophet, she was the voice her boss needed to hear to regain his hope. Here’s the lesson she teaches us…
Cell #9:
We don’t need to push people but we can share our HOPE IN GOD. (3)
5. Naaman wasn’t just healed, we’re told that his skin became like the skin of a young child. That is probably not just a description of the facts, but also a subtle reminder of the “young child” who had pointed him in the right direction to begin with. Naaman thought he might have to do something great, instead he just had to wash in a dirty river. He was following the advice of his own little servant girl. He got instructions from an unusual prophet. When he did all of this his skin became like that of a young child.
6. The greatest miracle that took place that day, wasn’t that he was healed of leprosy but that he experienced a changed life. In the miracles found in scripture and you’ll find in nearly every case someone’s life was changed. In the Bible Jesus performed 39 miracles that were recorded. We don’t know how many weren’t recorded, there could have been hundreds.
7. Naaman once more stood before the prophet, only this time he was no longer afflicted with leprosy. His words reflect the change that had taken place in his heart. He calls himself “your servant” & says that he now believes in the God of Israel! He even asks to take back a little dirt so he can build an altar to the God who has healed him in his own country. His re-quest represented the belief that deities were local gods who protected the land of their worshipers. Naaman’s petition is ironic, before he was healed he put down the land of Israel & its rivers, which couldn’t compare with the rivers of Damascus. His view of the world had changed. All these things to-gether teach us an important lesson that we would each do well to learn…
Cell #10:
When we point people to God, they will be HELPED & God will be HONORED. (14-17)
CONCLUSION:
1. In our culture, all too often people become obsessed with being celebrities & miss the fact that God calls us to be so much more than that. Many aspire to be super stars but miss the point of being true heroes. Lou Bartet, a pastor, came up with the following differences between superstars & heroes. The distinction is crucial. He wrote…
•Superstars strive for the applause of the crowd; heroes act without regard for recognition.
•Superstars crave consensus; heroes define themselves by the judgment of a future they see it as their task to bring about.
•Superstars seek success; heroes experience success as the outgrowth of inner values.
•Superstars say what people want to hear; heroes say what people need to hear.
•Superstars don’t commit themselves until they’ve checked to see which way the wind is blowing; heroes act upon what’s right no matter how the wind is blowing.
•Superstars don’t throw themselves on hand grenades; heroes do! (7)
2. The point is that we are to be the kind of people that honor God not just with our words, but also by our actions & perhaps just as importantly our attitudes. We are to let our faith impact us to such a degree that we allow God to live through us & touch others in the process. God can make a difference through us not by just what we do, but by who God makes us. Perhaps you heard about the newly movie documentary that was just released on the band Hillsong. The director, Michael John Warren who is an agnostic described the band this way.
Cell #11:
“They’re sincerely LOVING & NICE people, & they’re happy. They’re happier at
the ROOT LEVEL than most people I know in life, actually.”
Self-described agnostic Michael John Warren, director of a documentary film about the worship band, Hillsong, describing his movie’s subjects.
3. We are to be the kind of people who when others observe our lives, they are challenged to change & become more than they have been. That was how God used Naaman’s little maid. That is how God used the band Hillsong, & that is how God can use us. Would you commit yourselves to being that kind of per-son?
4. If you don’t know Christ, you can begin that journey today by inviting Him into your heart today. Will you? If you’re already a believer, but have been struggling to trust Him & live for Him as you should, you can commit to taking yet another step in your spiritual journey this morning. Will you? Let’s pray together.
