This post is a chapter from the book, Seeking the Cure, Finding the Christ, which is the book version of multiple sermons preached from 2022 to 2025. Since this book was meant to bless the church I am also making it available on this blog.
- 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
- Naaman the Cleansed
- Gehazi
- Jesus
- Still Working
- Conclusion
Still Working
How will you apply these
principles? Who do you identify with most in this story? Let’s do a quick
review of some of the things that God is calling you to; surely this list is
not comprehensive, so don’t limit your response to just my insights. The
questions are largely rhetorical, but it would be helpful to answer them with a
friend.
Naaman
Are you irredeemable like Naaman?
Are you convinced by scripture and conscience that your sins and maladies will
keep you out of the kingdom of heaven, but if you’ll come to the Lord Christ,
you can be washed whiter than snow (Isaiah 1:18). While leprosy, sin, and
unrighteousness and all of their associated titles will keep you from being
redeemed, a better promise exists for those who will repent of their sins and put
their trust in Christ,
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. ~ 1 Corinthians 6:11
Joseph Hart, alluding to Psalm
109:31, Hebrews 7:25, and
John 6:37 among others summarizes the promise,
Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
weak and wounded, sick and sore,
Jesus ready stands to save you,
full of pity, love, and power.
Whether your sin was inherited,
foisted upon you, or if you dove headlong into it and are reaping the
consequences, the truth is that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all
unrighteousness. Redemption is available and freely offered.
Be like Naaman and seek the cure
while it may be found, and may you, like he, find that knowing the healer is
infinitely more valuable than obtaining the cure.
The Slave Girl
Can you identify with that little
slave girl? Through no fault of your own you are suffering and God has sent you
into exile in a foreign land. Here you have no lasting city, the people speak a
strange and vulgar language, and you know that your home is a long way off.
Will you seek to be a blessing to the city and people you’re in exile with? Can
you sing Keith and Kristyn Getty’s song Jesus, Draw Me Ever Nearer,
Jesus draw me ever nearer
As I labor through the storm
You have called me to this passage
And I’ll follow, though I’m worn
May this journey, bring a blessing
May I rise on wings of faith
And at the end of my heart’s testing
With your likeness let me wake.
It may
appear that you are insignificant, lost, and hopeless in a foreign land, but if
you know the Lord you know that he will be with
you, he will be a light unto you, and he will use you to light a world full of
darkness. John called Jesus to be the light of men (John 1:4–5), then Jesus
claimed that title for himself (John 8:12, 9:5), but amazingly he called you,
dear Christian, the light of the world (Matthew 5:14). Will you hide your light
under a basket? Or will you let it shine? Isaiah 60:1–3 is clearly about the
promised Messiah shining on the whole world, but it’s just open enough that we
see we get to reflect his light and have that passage fulfilled in us as we
shine light on a lost and dying world.
Ensure
you have a personal relationship with the God of the world, but don’t let it be
so personal that those around you don’t benefit from it. Worship God in your
heart, but show that he is worthy by publishing his peace to the world!
Will we offer our lives, or just the songs we have sung? ~
Billy and Cindy Foote
Naaman’s Wife
Do you need to put aside your
bitterness and contention to help someone who doesn’t deserve to be helped? To
love someone who is unlovable?
Humble yourself to be discipled by
someone who knows more about love and forgiveness than you do. Seek the highest
and best usefulness of the people around you, even if you don’t like them and especially
if you don’t think they deserve it.
Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help to forgive him…Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives along with the command, the love itself. ~ Corrie Ten Boom
Who can you love today who is
unlovable? Wife, you might start with your husband. Husband, you might start
with your wife. But don’t stop there.
The King of Syria
Someone on this planet needs you to
spend and be spent to move them closer to Jesus. What resources has God
entrusted to you for their sake?
Someone needs an urgency and an
exhortation because they are presuming on God’s grace and they think that someday
they’ll get right with God. Who can you remind that tonight their soul might be
required of them?
Someone needs an advocate to speak
up for them. Who can you be a voice for today? Who can you help on their
journey to be the person God’s desires them to be? How many young preachers are
hindered because no one will lend them a pulpit or a recommendation?
God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbor does. ~
Martin Luther
The King of Israel
Does anyone think you think you’re
God? Humble yourself today to declare, not deny, but declare, that Jesus Christ
is the true God and Saviour; the only name given under heaven by which we must
be saved.
Help people on their journey to
meet him, don’t stand in their way. Don’t offer false salvation or false hope,
even if you don’t know the true hope of humanity.
When you and I are nothing, God is all; and when we are
empty, there is room for God to fill us. ~
Charles Spurgeon
Elisha
Be found faithful in the work that
Christ has prepared beforehand for you to walk in. Sometimes that work will be
monumental, and other times it will feel small.
A small thing is a small thing, but faithfulness in a small thing is a great thing. ~ Hudson Taylor
Be faithful if you’re called to
witness to the leading general of a foreign nation, and be faithful if you’re
making unnamed disciples or helping to build a house.
If you cannot honor God in your shop, or in your kitchen, or in your daily work, you will not honor Him anywhere else. ~ Charles Spurgeon
Do you have a grasp of the needs of
your community? Be that the world, the nation, the state, the city or the
neighborhood? Do you know how to pray for your neighbors and coworkers? Have
they heard about the cleansing and saving work of Jesus? Who is going to tell
them?
Are you buying the truth and not
selling it? Can you say the following verse faithfully with the Apostle Paul?
I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. ~ Acts 3:6
Elisha’s Servant
You have been entrusted to deliver
the message of eternal life, to proclaim that Jesus is the way, the truth, and
the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him. Are you faithfully
proclaiming this message? Are you an ambassador of the king? Is the king
pleased with your message and how you’re handling his word? Have you kept quiet
where you should have spoken? Have you spoken where you should have been quiet?
When you were sent, did you go?
If faith comes by hearing, who have you told? ~ Aaron Johnson
Naaman’s Servants
Are you a peacemaker or a
peacebreaker? Are you encouraging people to trust and obey the promises of God?
Or are you helping them to get mad at people and embittered towards God?
How many Bible verses do you know?
Are you putting them to work? The men only knew one Bible verse, but they put
it to work, and we’re still talking about it nearly three thousand years later.
Have you moved people closer to
salvation and God?
Gehazi
What sorts of things are drawing
your affections away from the living Christ?
Are the things
you’re living for worth Christ dying for? ~ Leonard Ravenhill
Which weights and sins have clung
so closely and have stopped or slowed your race? How can you cut them free
today?
Think about the last time you fell
into grievous sin; did you repent immediately? What might keep you from
repentance and seeking the cleansing power of Jesus? What does it profit a man
to gain the riches of the world and contract leprosy? What does it profit a man
to gain the whole world and lose his soul?
He is no fool who
gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. ~ Jim Elliott
God can use you in spite of your
sin; he can use you as a bad example, or as a witness to the miracles he is
performing. You can Know that he is mighty to save and
still not repent or seek his blessings.
Don’t perish having read this book
or your Bible and hearing the redemptive message meant to make you wise for
salvation in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15). If God can save Naaman, if God can
save me, then God can save you. But unless you repent, you will perish like
Gehazi and Judas.
Jesus
Notice that none of these people
pretended to be the savior. There is one Saviour, and we are not him. We needed
a perfect man to make peace between us and God, we needed God in the flesh to
sanctify us from all unrighteousness, and we needed a mediator to intercede for
us continually. Jesus of Nazareth stepped out of heaven bear our sins,
suffering and scorn, and to lay down his life so he could take it back up
again.
Because he lives, he is able to
save to the guttermost all those who draw near to him in faith. He is able to
wash us whiter than snow, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He is
able to make us new, and he is even able to use us in our afflictions.
For all of these reasons it seems
impossible to emulate Jesus. We’ll just be still and know that he is God
(Isaiah 46:10).
But beloved, you are called to look
like and act like him (1 Corinthians 11:1, Romans 8:29). Let’s start with the
fact that there are communicable (attributes we can imitate) and incommunicable
(attributes that belong only to God), so don’t try to be God or the Saviour or
the Holy Spirit in someone’s life: point them to the Father, Son, and Spirit
who are able to fulfill those roles perfectly. They must increase, and we must
decrease.
But beloved, we can seek and save
the lost, we can bring his healing to the world, and we can love the unlovable.
If it costs something to see someone redeemed, pay that price. If it requires
time to love someone, spend it. If this kind can only be cast out by prayer and
fasting, then pray and fast! If somebody might have to die to take the message
to a lost and dying world, then be that somebody. Perhaps you’ve come into the
kingdom for just such a time as this.
Go for sinners, and go for the worst. ~ William Booth
Ross King wrote a wonderful song
recently called Like Jesus, and in it he juxtaposes that many of the
things Jesus did and said cost him dearly; if we are called imitate Jesus, then
consider some of these lyrics.
I wanna be like Him when he tells the Pharisees the depth of
their own sin.
But I don’t really wanna be like Jesus later when he dies for them.
I wanna be like Him knockin’ down those soldiers just by
sayin’, “I am He.”
But not so much the part right after when He surrenders peacefully.
I refuse to pick and choose
the parts of Jesus that are easiest
to bow down to…
And finally beloved, what is your
answer to that old hymn by E. A. Hoffman, Are You Washed in the Blood?
Have you been to
Jesus for the cleansing power?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Lay aside the
garments that are stained with sin.
Oh be washed in the blood of the Lamb!
There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean.
Oh be washed in the blood of the Lamb!
If you’re not washed in the blood
of the Lamb, I implore you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, be reconciled
to God!
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