Irredeemable
Naaman the Leper
The Servant Girl
Naaman's Wife
The King of Syria
The King of Israel
Elisha
Elisha's Servant
Naaman's Servants
Elisha’s Servant
Let’s talk more about this unnamed prophet. Many of my
favorite characters in the Bible are unnamed. There is a man born blind, a
little boy who shared a small lunch, a thief on a cross, a woman caught in
adultery…there are many more, but you get the point: to be anonymous does not
mean you are unfaithful. Heaven knows who they are, and if no one else knows
who this prophet is, Naaman certainly does.
Christianity in the last century has somehow morphed into a
spotlight of celebrity pastors and musicians. Conferences have predictable
casts, libraries are dominated by names everyone recognizes, people aren’t
called by their preacher’s name very often anymore, but they still love the
cliques.
Despite this celebrity culture, God still loves to use the
unknown and unnamed, as Charles Spurgeon’s grandfather said,
Here comes my grandson! He may
preach the gospel better than I can, but he cannot preach a better gospel; can you,
Charles?
Dear reader, whether you are world renowned or hardly known,
know that God knows your name and your ministry. Consider the most famous
faithful preacher you know, and consider that you both have the same promises
from God, one of which says, “fear not, for I am with you; be not
dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will
uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).
The world needs Jesus, and you have the words of eternal
life. A few weeks before writing this chapter I found myself approaching a
group who were mid-drug deal. It was after a parade and I was excited to share
Christ with everyone I could find, bolstered by some wonderful conversations
earlier in the day. I didn’t realize that it was a drug deal until I was
already committed, and they were obviously incredulous that I would approach
them. Fortunately, it turned out to be a good discussion, and afterwards I
thanked God for the opportunity to be the preacher who shared Christ with them.
A Faithful Delivery
As the prophet answers the door, he simply and concisely delivers
the message. It’s short, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh
shall be restored, and you shall be clean” (2 Kings 5:10). I say prophet
because a prophet is anyone who speaks for God. A true prophet will accurately
deliver the message, a false prophet will either fabricate the message or
modify it. Our prophet delivers this faithfully simple, yet exceedingly humbling,
message.
It requires Naaman to obey a servant rather than a recognized
prophet rather than God. It calls him to humble himself by dipping himself in a
foreign river before a foreign God. It requires him to believe a one sentence
promise that he has traveled over a hundred miles to hear. If you put yourself
in Naaman’s shoes (or skin), it’s quite unbelievable.
Here our prophet has a temptation to expound upon the
message. He could explain the cleansing principles of running water (Leviticus
15:13), he could have waxed eloquent and told of all of the miracles that
Elisha had been performing, he could have made additional promises to Naaman,
and he could have just kept talking and talking. He could have proved the
proverb, “When words are many, transgression is not lacking,” but he chose the
second half, “but whoever restrains his lips is prudent!” (Proverbs 10:19). He
faithfully delivers the one-line promise.
Consider Jonah who likewise preached a one-line sermonette.
He was sent to call out against Nineveh, and call out against Nineveh he did.
Arguably it’s the worst sermon in the Bible, meant to only appease God and to
do nothing for the condemned Ninevites. Jonah doesn’t mention God, he doesn’t
mention repentance, it’s a hopeless message because he only delivers the bare
minimum.
And still, God brings about the single largest revival ever
recorded from any sermon. If we’re honest we’d say that sermon was hardly a
faithfully delivered message. But God can draw a straight line with a crooked
stick. What will he do if you seek to faithfully exposit his Word to the world?
Offend the Audience
The Bible tells us in multiple places that we are
ambassadors for Christ. An ambassador’s faithfulness is not measured by the
response of the audience. The ambassador’s faithfulness is measured by his
accuracy to the king’s message. Our prophet made Naaman mad, but his job was
not to make Naaman happy, it was to be an ambassador for Elisha. George
Whitefield would remind us, “It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that
neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.”
I once had a friend who sought to preach expositionaly
through the book of Romans to a fledgling church. I asked him later how it went
and he said that once he got to chapter nine, he decided to preach on something
else, because his church was not ready to hear it. How could they not be ready
after hearing the previous eight chapters? More so, I met his church once at a
potluck and truly they were not mature in Christ, and a few short months later
my friend was caught in a scandal that cost him his church and his family, and
at the time of this writing he’s working full-time at a grocery store.
Unfortunately, the conclusion was that his sermons were meant to tickle ears,
not to change lives.
The next time you preach and come across something that is
sure to offend, let it offend. God heals up wounds which he himself opens
(Isaiah 30:26). A surgeon uses a very sharp scalpel to inflict a very serious
wound in order to access and repair an even more serious malady. So must we
trust what God says of his Word, “it shall not return to me empty, but it shall
accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I
sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). The life you save may be your own (1 Timothy 4:16).
The best way to keep God’s Word from accomplishing its
purposes is to not preach it! I sat through the worst sermon I had ever heard,
either before or since; the text was Romans 10:17, that “faith comes by hearing
and hearing through the Word of Christ.” How could you mess that up? Somehow
the preacher ended up speaking for thirty-five minutes not on the passage, but
on how God is appearing to Muslims in dreams and leading them to Christ. He
didn’t say it quite this clearly, but the entire message could be summed up as,
“We don’t need to evangelize Muslims, God is doing it for us.”
Afterwards one of my young disciples–who had sat through the
same sermon–looked at me and asked what I thought. Zeal got ahold of me and we
went to meet the preacher, I intended to be tactful, but what I ended up saying
was, “You’d do better to just start reading at Romans 1:1 and read for thirty-five
minutes, then pray and sit down.”
There is a real danger in preaching to say things we want to
say which are not the things that the king wants us to say. Beloved, when you
say things the king didn’t intend for you to say, you risk losing your status
as ambassador. In some countries you could be executed for committing treason.
God has had false prophets stoned and others roasted in the fire.
Consider the next time you seek to expound on an idea, seek
to help people to understand, and to give the sense (Nehemiah 8:7–8), that your
goal is for your king to say amen, regardless of what the audience thinks. We
want them to understand, yes, but they don’t have to like it. “For we are not,
like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned
by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:17).
Our prophet could have ended this story right here, all he
needed to do was refuse to deliver the message, or he could have changed it in
the distance between Elisha and Naaman, or he could have hidden it in his own
words, or he could have seen the fortune that Naaman had brought and said,
“Give me some of that and I’ll wave my hand over the leper and you’ll be
healed!” or “This message comes with a price.”
But he didn’t, he faithfully delivered the message, and
hence the story continues.
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