Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Morning, everybody.
[00:00:08] I'm Ben Fleming. I'm one of the other senior pastor. We're starting a series of teachings today called Sunday School. We're going into some Old Testament stories that maybe you learned about in Sunday school or maybe if you didn't grow up in the church. This will be an introduction to some of them. We're redoing these and we did so last summer and enjoyed it so much that we wanted to do it again this year, but with new stories. So last year we talked about Noah's ark and Jonah and the whale and Daniel and the lion's den. And we're going to do more of these Old Testament stories with a little bit of depth and really learn, hopefully a lot about us as well as the nature of God. And so today we're going to be in Second Kings and in chapter five, and we're going to go through the story of Naaman, which is really a story of how we understand humility and obedience in our relationship to God and how we discover that true healing happens through. Through those things, and we begin to really understand grace. So let's read the text here. We are going to do a little bit of reading. Go all the way through this story. It's about 16 verses. Okay, so here we are.
[00:01:07] Now, Naaman was the commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram.
[00:01:17] And he was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.
[00:01:20] And now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and taken captive of a young girl of Israel. And she served Naaman's wife. And she said to her mistress, if only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy. And Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. By all means, go. The king of Aram replied, I'll send a letter to the king of Israel. And so Naaman left, taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold, and 10 sets of clothing. And the letter that he took to the king of Israel read, with this letter I am sending my servant name into you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.
[00:01:56] And as soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and he said, am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? And why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of leprosy? See how he's trying to pick a quarrel with me?
[00:02:10] Whoa.
[00:02:12] Like, what a response. I know we talk a lot about social media and how it's kind of made us really deeply insecure and kind of reactionary and stuff. Here's proof that for thousands of years, humans have been insecure and reactionary.
[00:02:24] It's not just the technology that's doing it to us, right? And so it says, when Elisha, the man of God, heard the king of Israel torn his robes, he sent him this message, why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me, and he will know that there's a prophet in Israel.
[00:02:37] And so Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha's house. And Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored to you, and you'll be cleansed. But Naaman went away angry and said, I thought he would surely come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord, his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.
[00:03:00] Or not. Abana and Pharpar, you preach the message, right? Leave me alone.
[00:03:07] The rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel. Couldn't I wash in them and be cleansed? And so he turned and went off in a rage.
[00:03:14] And Naaman's servants went to him and said, my father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more than when he tells you, wash and be cleansed? And so he went down, dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, and as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean, like that of a young boy. And then Naaman and all of his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, now I know there is no God in all the world except in Israel, so please accept a gift from your servant.
[00:03:43] The prophet answered, as surely as the Lord lives whom I serve, I. I will not accept a thing.
[00:03:48] And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.
[00:03:51] This is the word of the Lord. Father God, we pray that we would be changed and shaped by this teaching today, Lord, that your holy Spirit would come into this place and that we would learn the greatness of obedience and humility and your grace in all of it. In Jesus name, amen.
[00:04:08] You know, I would say most of us can identify with Naaman in a way. Now, I don't think any of us have dealt with leprosy, which is a skin disease. That's really. It comes down to. It's like your body rotting from the outside in highly contagious, left people in isolation. Naaman's actually in a fortunate position in that he's done such great things in his life that he still has people in a community around him in spite of his condition.
[00:04:34] So maybe we can't relate with that specific health ailment, but I bet you can relate with wanting God to take away or heal or provide a solution in the middle of a health problem or a family family problem or financial concern. Fear about the future, a wound from the past.
[00:04:51] We're all familiar with this going to God and asking or being in need of something.
[00:04:59] I've got a couple kids, a 9 year old and 11 year old, and they come to me with requests all the time.
[00:05:04] And a couple of the most common statements or requests are, dad, I'm bored.
[00:05:10] And I give them some solutions, right? And I say, well, you could watch the baseball game with me, or you could mow the lawn, you could clean your room, you could read a book.
[00:05:22] No, none of those things, right? Or dad, I'm starving.
[00:05:28] Okay, great.
[00:05:29] I got a protein bar, some cereal.
[00:05:34] I could make you something. No, I want chick fil A.
[00:05:39] It's like, okay, I don't know if you're starving, right?
[00:05:46] A starving child in this situation. I offer them a piece of bread and they'll be like, oh my gosh, that'd be the greatest thing in the world. You don't, you don't, you're not looking for just a solution, right? And maybe you are looking for a solution, but you want as much control over the solution as humanly possible.
[00:06:00] Now, I've noticed this about our relationship with God is a lot of times we want a solution. We want God to provide that solution. And we also want control over the exact method and the exact timing at which that solution will arrive. That's what we really want from God.
[00:06:14] And I think sometimes our prayers, when we request something of God, God actually creates ways for us to find those solutions. And it's not that God isn't hearing us, but instead it's rejecting the methods in which God is going to allow us to see that solution.
[00:06:28] Because here's one of the most frustrating things that I found about God is that when you look through Old Testament scripture and you look through New Testament scripture, God is very inconsistent with how people get healed.
[00:06:39] There's some stories like this one where it's like, go dunk in a river seven times. The dirty, muddy river. Go dunk in that one. And then there's other stories where Jesus looks at someone, they say, hey, my daughter is sick. And he goes, oh, yeah, go return to her. She's already healed.
[00:06:52] Your faith is amazing. And then there's a blind guy, and Jesus goes, I'm gonna spit in this dirt and I'll put that dirt on your eyes, and you're gonna get fixed that way. And it's like, what are you doing?
[00:07:03] Why can't there be, like, a way to do this?
[00:07:08] And we do this ourselves. We look at how other people have turned out. We look through the methods that they've used, and we looked at the rivers that they have dunked in and gone, okay, well, that's great. That's how you do it. That's how you get fixed. That's how you find healing. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna walk and I'm gonna do that exact thing. And then all of a sudden, it doesn't work in the same way for us. It's as if God has this desire for each and every single one of us to come into him in obedience and humility and listen to what he might have to say in order to change our own hearts, right? And so we like to say, God, heal this or change them. That's one of my favorite prayers that we pray. Oh, God, if you could just change their wicked heart, that they might be kinder to me, you know, God, can you open this door or make this easier? Right?
[00:07:56] But God's always after this deeper issue.
[00:07:59] And in this story specifically, Naaman comes to the prophet needing his leprosy healed. But God ends up healing his pride.
[00:08:09] And we want relief sometimes, right? But God wants to actually restore us.
[00:08:14] And we come to God wanting all of our circumstances to be changed. God, move my environment in the hearts of other people. And God, instead of wants to teach us of how to be surrendered to him.
[00:08:26] And so it says, and we'll go through this kind of section by section or verse by first. Here again, in 2nd Kings 5, it says now, Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master, and highly regarded. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.
[00:08:40] This one sentence, he was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy. Teaches us so much.
[00:08:46] Naaman, successful and respected and powerful, right? Especially in this context. He could be.
[00:08:51] He was the best of the best. Everything that you would want to be if you lived in this time. His rank and reputation, his access. Clearly he has wealth and he has influence over the world around him. But he had leprosy.
[00:09:04] That changes everything because it's telling us that he's a great man, but he's not whole.
[00:09:10] And that's the human condition that each of us find ourselves in today.
[00:09:15] And again, maybe you can identify. Maybe you've got a good job, but you're still anxious. You've got a beautiful home. You're still.
[00:09:21] Maybe you are a beautiful person and you still find yourself insecure. I'll tell you about that experience from my perspective.
[00:09:33] Point number one, how I became so beautiful.
[00:09:38] No, not a. Not a cross that I have to bear in this life. Thank you, Jesus.
[00:09:44] And so the story's telling us there's some of these human things that greatness can't heal, right? And Naaman, from what we'd understand how he could. How he could approach the world, is that with my greatness and my wealth, I can really accomplish and figure out any discomfort that I have in my life by using the resources that I have because I can lead soldiers. But now he's finding himself that he can't lead himself into healing. And that is an opportunity for grace to begin.
[00:10:11] That's the fertile ground in which grace enters because. Because grace can begin oftentimes in the place where our strength has run out.
[00:10:22] And so the next surprising part of the story is how Naaman hears about hope. During one of Aram's raids, a young Israelite girl has been taken captive. She becomes a servant to Naaman's wife. She's unnamed, she has no power, and she suffered injustice at the hands of Naaman's people. And now she's living in a foreign land because of the violence that she's endured.
[00:10:44] And it's amazing how she enters into this story. And she says, if only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy. And so the first witness to God's healing power in this story is not a king or a priest. It's not a general, and it's not even a prophet. It's this young, unnamed, unimportant servant girl.
[00:11:04] Someone that's overlooked and displaced and would be forgotten just about every single other story.
[00:11:11] But if I had enough time, I would probably teach a sermon on how we often don't listen to these really simple, ordinary voices in our lives that we don't understand that are actually really prophetic and can Move us in the right direction.
[00:11:24] Have you noticed that sometimes we just want to hear from, we want to hear from the important person, we want to be seen by them and we want to take on their words and then use that as gospel and finally go forward in our lives with their encouragement.
[00:11:37] Right. When I grew up, we would do these tent meetings and in my mind, tent meetings, anybody? Tent revivals. I can smell the canvas right now.
[00:11:49] And we would have like hundreds of people. In my mind when I was 10 years old, it was like thousands of people. I think we had a few hundred people that would come out into this field at this tent and we'd bring in preachers from around the region that were highly gifted and extremely charismatic and.
[00:12:03] And I remember as a 10 year old, just sitting there, not really knowing what I was wanting, but I would listen to them preaching, I would be like, I gotta believe that they're gonna stop in the middle of their sermon and tell me how the rest of my life is gonna go.
[00:12:14] Oh, and that'll be so great.
[00:12:16] And then I will have confidence as 10 year old me to go forward for the rest of my life into my calling. It's kind of like that feeling, maybe some of you are narcissistic like me, where you've gone to a concert and you've had good seats and you're like, hey, I'm a drummer. I wonder if there's gonna be an opportunity for me to drum tonight for my favorite band, you know, oh, if only, you know. And there's this feeling and there's something about the prophetic word of God, right?
[00:12:39] But I know that so much of my desire was like, I just want to be noticed by what I feel, to be an important person, to hear the words that they have for my life. You know who was speaking to me prophetically every single day of my childhood? It was my mom and my dad.
[00:12:52] Every day through small, ordinary. Clean up your room, brush your teeth, we're gonna be on time. You gotta get in the car.
[00:13:00] Here's how to care for people. Here's how to love people. I'm gonna show you. I'm not just gonna speak it. And this is the prophetic word of the Lord.
[00:13:07] And so a servant girl comes and says something very, maybe even passive to Naaman and just says, you know, if you wanna get healed, I know a guy.
[00:13:15] Then it changes the whole story.
[00:13:19] Maybe we can stop hunting for these massive prophetic words of the Lord, which I think can happen. I know that God works that way. I know that God still works that way. But. But maybe these ordinary, consistent voices that are in our lives are the ones that are shaping us and teaching us how to walk in the way of Jesus. And we shouldn't just simply discard or bypass those because we hear them all the time for the sake of something that we're hoping for that comes out of the ether that we can call the Holy Spirit. Maybe the prophetic move of God happens in ordinary phrases from ordinary people all the time.
[00:13:50] Maybe seeing the world differently in that way will change our lives.
[00:13:55] And so Naaman decides to go, but he does what powerful people do, right? He wants to approach the spiritual problem through this worldly system. And so he goes to the king, sends a letter to Israel's king, and then he grabs his silver and his gold and his clothing, all these things of incredible value at this time. And so he arrives at the door with money, status and political pressure that he can apply in the situation.
[00:14:20] And so he believes that this can actually work. The spiritual healing thing can work in the way that everything else has worked in my life. I'm using my connections and leverage my power. And then I'm going to make you a few installments of payments of gold and silver and clothing.
[00:14:36] He goes through the official channels and he impresses the right people.
[00:14:40] And so Naaman at this point is looking for transaction, and God is inviting him into surrender, and he doesn't know it yet.
[00:14:47] Maybe you treat church that way or your spiritual life that way, and you don't understand it, but you're actually trying to have a transactional relationship with God, and God is simply looking for you to surrender.
[00:14:57] And so Naaman thinks, surely someone important will meet me in an important way. But when he arrives at Elijah's house, Elijah doesn't even come out. He sends a messenger. What a bummer.
[00:15:10] This big important guy, right? He's showing up like Prince Ali in Aladdin, right? He's got 79 golden camels, you know, and all this stuff. And Elisha's like, hey, can you go tell him to dunk in the Jordan seven times and I'll fix this problem. Thanks. You know, he's on the phone. He gets back to him later, kind of an idea, says, go wash yourself in the Jordan seven times. Your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed. So that's it. There's not this big dramatic moment that he's hoping for. And he talks about it, that he would wave his hand. He says, I thought he would surely come out to me and stand and call in the name of the Lord with his God and wave his hand over the spot and keep me of my leprosy. That phrase is so revealing, I thought.
[00:15:52] But I thought I had an idea of how this should go. I'm starving.
[00:15:58] I insist on chick fil A.
[00:16:03] Oh my gosh. And I'll be darned if we don't have a whole lot of I thoughts in this room right now.
[00:16:08] I thought God would do it this way. I thought it would look more impressive. I thought that I would be honored in the process.
[00:16:14] I thought that this process would make a lot of sense to me before I engaged in it.
[00:16:21] I know what I'm looking for.
[00:16:25] I would like to have more control over the situation. Evan and I went to Kansas City a couple years ago to go to this prayer school. And between prayers we went and ate barbecue, which is a prayer in and of itself.
[00:16:39] And we went to Joe's. I don't know if you guys have heard of Joe's, this famous barbecue spot. And somebody's like, yeah, it's in a gas station. I was like, oh, cute. Like in Bend, you know, like active culture, they took over this old gas station and you walk in, you guys, it's like a chevron.
[00:16:55] For real? For real. And I was like, ah, not impressive. But I gotta believe that this is where the good food comes from. And of course, the experience itself. The food is magnificent.
[00:17:07] You know, other places that in my less than critical mind, I would expect to have like one of the most epic meals of my entire life. A Cheesecake Factory. Have you seen the, the ceilings on those things? It's like a Sistine Chapel. And if you stack up like four menus, you can reach the ceiling.
[00:17:25] You walk into that place and you're like, this should be it. Look at this. Look at all the wreath. Look at the, the optics of this place. This is unbelievable.
[00:17:35] And the food, you know, no shade to Cheesecake Factory people in here. It's fine if you eat it after 11 o', clock, it tastes a little better, you know. And then we go to Joh. It's this gritty. It's this. You would never fully expect to walk into a gas station without understanding the context and expectations to have something that's actually great, life changing kind of pork ribs kind of food, right?
[00:18:04] And Naaman is looking at the outside and he's saying, there's no way the good thing that I'm hoping for can come from this. And I know I'm a leader, I'm wealthy, I'm successful, I know how this stuff works. And God is offering him an opportunity to surrender everything that he knows about how things works in order to enter into the real healing that he wants.
[00:18:25] But Naaman doesn't just want to be healed. He wants to be healed in a way that preserves his pride.
[00:18:32] And that's the tension of the story that Naaman is willing to receive from God, but he doesn't want to actually find humility with God.
[00:18:39] And that's probably where you struggle, too.
[00:18:42] I want God's help, but not in God's way.
[00:18:45] And so we want forgiveness, but we don't want confession.
[00:18:51] We want peace, but we don't really want surrender. We want freedom and not really obedience, and we want transformation without humility.
[00:18:58] Ultimately, what we really want is we want resurrection, what our faith is built all the way around, and we don't want anything to do with death, But that's what it takes.
[00:19:12] I talked to a personal trainer after the first service, and I know that there's a few gym people in here. I think I saw Jessica Haig over there somewhere. You own a gym and sisters, right?
[00:19:21] And the consensus, because they do discipleship work too, in personal training, is that people want to be able to look a certain way and be a certain amount of strength, and they don't want to do the small, everyday little things in order to get there.
[00:19:34] That's the same thing when it comes to our spirit, our experience in the Christian faith. We want healing, but we don't want what it takes to get into the process.
[00:19:46] Andy Stanley says something that's really simple and that I really hate, and that's really good.
[00:19:51] He says, to understand, you must first obey.
[00:19:55] Gross. I hate that.
[00:19:58] No way.
[00:20:00] I want to understand so that I can then participate in what you're going to do. How many of us just obey something anymore? You know, let's stick with the food theme. How many of you even try a new restaurant without hearing from 12 friends that it's good and then looking it up on Yelp first?
[00:20:20] You know, I'm not just going to, like, walk into a restaurant. That's crazy.
[00:20:23] Might be terrible.
[00:20:25] I got to look at the menu, I got to go through the things. And God is asking Naaman, he's asking us today to obey. To obey. To walk into the process, to have faith and to trust him. And we're going to, I don't know, tell me exactly how I'm gonna look on the other side, and then maybe I'll agree to jump in this with you.
[00:20:45] But God's asking us to participate in obedience so that we may understand.
[00:20:50] And so Naaman's about to leave angry, and he almost misses the healing because he's so offended by the method.
[00:20:59] That should scare us all a little bit right there.
[00:21:02] And it's not because God's unwilling to heal, but it's because Naaman is almost unwilling to humble himself.
[00:21:08] But again, God uses the most unlikely voices in the entire story, and he uses his servants.
[00:21:15] So one of them comes to him and says, my Father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, wouldn't you have done it?
[00:21:22] How much more than when he tells you, wash and be cleansed? They're saying, naaman, if it had been heroic, you would have done would have been difficult, dramatic or impressive or expensive or dangerous. You would have been all over this. But instead you're resisting it because it's so simple.
[00:21:39] You find it to be beneath you because of how simple and ordinary it is.
[00:21:45] Because a lot of times in our lives, we would rather do the great thing than the humble thing.
[00:21:50] The great thing allows us to stay impressive in our vulnerability. And this humble thing requires us to become dependent on something that is greater than ourselves.
[00:21:58] In our Western Christianity, I think there is nothing more dangerous to our faith than our desire to remain completely independent while calling ourselves Christians.
[00:22:07] I don't want to rely on anybody or anything. Also, praise God.
[00:22:14] It's not how this works.
[00:22:19] Naaman can't earn his healing, and he can't buy it, and he can't command it like he can his troops.
[00:22:25] And he can't impress his way into healing.
[00:22:28] Instead, he can just go down into the water. And so he does.
[00:22:33] So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him. And his flesh was restored and became clean, like that of a young boy.
[00:22:41] And I don't want to blow past, and I don't know for sure, obviously, because it doesn't say in the text, but I have always wondered what Naaman was thinking.
[00:22:52] Three dips into the process.
[00:22:55] Have you noticed that? One of the things, especially technology, and we would go back to, like, training gyms and stuff like that, too.
[00:23:03] People have realized that as human beings, we can do some difficult things, but we like to know exactly how far we are in the process, and we'd like to know exactly when we're going to be done.
[00:23:15] Like, I can wait in line. If I feel like it's moving a little bit, I can look at this screen on my computer. That's not doing much. If I feel like, the progress bar is inching its way over, right? We love that closed door button in elevators. Being like, yeah, I gotta close you guys. That button's never worked a single time. That elevator's looking at you going, okay, get that closed for you right away.
[00:23:39] It doesn't care. We like to feel like we have control over these things. We want to see progress. And I gotta believe her name. And he's like three dips in, and he's covered in the disgust, disgusting things that are inside the Jordan. And his servants are watching him. And he's three in, going, I don't think this is working.
[00:23:56] I'm not getting any better, man. If that isn't the process of discipleship, I don't know what is. Some of you have jumped in and you begin to create a good, healthy liturgy for yourself. Maybe you're participating in silence and solitude, or you're reading scripture, you're coming to church, you're participating in community, and you're six months in, you're two years in, you're five years in, you're three weeks in, and you're going, I'm not sure I'm getting any better.
[00:24:26] The frustrating thing about our relationship with God is that it doesn't often work like a CrossFit class where, you know, in 30 minutes exactly, the pain will be over and you can get in your car and go home.
[00:24:39] Instead, it's this thing that we don't fully know how it's working in the middle of the moment, and we don't know exactly when we'll arrive at whatever solution that we hope to arrive to. But the fantastic thing is, is that a relationship with God is never about this specific outcome that we receive on the other end. It's about the process of obedience and humility in the middle of our lives.
[00:25:01] And so we can let go of what might the outcome be. And instead we can happily agree with God to continue to slowly walk after him, dunk after dunk after dunk.
[00:25:14] And it says that he became clean like that of a young boy, his skin. So he doesn't just go down angry and proud and resistant. He also comes up clean as a child receiving the mercy and the grace of God.
[00:25:31] And after Naaman's healed, he returns to Elisha and he says, now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. So this is the real miracle, right? And what we say all the time, the physical manifestation of the healing power of God, happens so often in Scripture. And I've got hard news for you. Guys, all of those people are dead still.
[00:25:51] They still died.
[00:25:55] And so sometimes we place this massive emphasis on the healing of our own bodies. And we discount the fact that that God is after something that's far greater than some, just some, just a temporary healing.
[00:26:07] Instead, the real miracle is that Naaman came looking for healing from leprosy. And he leaves worshiping the living God.
[00:26:14] He leaves. He came wanting the skin restored, but he leaves with his heart completely reoriented in a direction into a place that's never been before.
[00:26:23] It's important because the grace of God is never merely to improve our circumstances, but the goal of grace is to bring us all home.
[00:26:32] And Naaman finds that miracle meeting him in that place.
[00:26:39] And so maybe you've been asking God, would you fix this situation? But God is saying, I want to free you from the illusion that you're in control.
[00:26:48] And if we're asking God, would you give me peace? God might be saying yes, but I want to dethrone these idols that have been stealing your peace in the first place.
[00:26:57] That requires obedience.
[00:26:59] And so Naaman's leprosy brought him to Israel, but humility ultimately brought him to God.
[00:27:07] And I love that this story points to what I believe to be the heart of the gospel. Because Naaman's story, as I hope you're understanding today, is very much your story.
[00:27:18] And I want to encourage you today that you can come to God and stop bringing your resume when you do.
[00:27:24] God, here's what I done, here's what I why I matter, and here's the troops that I've commanded and the businesses that I've grown and the success that I've had. And so you should bless me based on this kind of faithfulness.
[00:27:37] But the Gospel tells us that we don't come to God by achievement, but we come by grace. And James chapter 4, verse 6 says this. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
[00:27:50] And so we come empty handed in humility and obedience.
[00:28:01] So here's the invitation I want to bring you into today.
[00:28:05] I want you to go through the exercise today or this week and I want you to think about that phrase that I used earlier in the teaching.
[00:28:12] I want you to think about the well, I thoughts of your life.
[00:28:24] Because surrendering that well I thought and that preconceived notion of how things would happen so that you might achieve your outcome are the places where you can actually go and experience something even greater than you had imagined.
[00:28:35] The other day I pulled the kids out of school. My wife and I pulled the Kids out of school so that we could go play at the arcade and have lunch.
[00:28:44] Great dad moment. I don't know, taking him out of school to go play video games.
[00:28:50] But we had fun. And I told him on the way, I said, we're gonna go to lunch.
[00:28:56] And the kids were like, oh, yeah, Burgerville.
[00:29:00] And I was like, no, we're going to Wild Rose Thai food in downtown. And they were like, thai food?
[00:29:07] What's there?
[00:29:09] I don't know, Dad. I just really wanted to. I said, hey, knock it off. I did you a favor and I pulled you out of school. Now you're gonna eat where I want to eat, so shut it.
[00:29:17] I didn't say that.
[00:29:21] And we sit down, you know, and those of you guys have been to Wild Roast, it's like my favorite place in town. And the food is just so good.
[00:29:29] And we sit down and the food doesn't look like something that the kids always eat. And so they kind of give us the look, and, boy, they dug in and they didn't stop eating until it was all done.
[00:29:40] And I had that simple lesson, right?
[00:29:42] Like, see, this is better than what you thought.
[00:29:47] You didn't imagine that you were gonna have this kind of experience today.
[00:29:51] And in our context, maybe the metaphor breaks down because I put you in a car and I drove you to a place and you had no choice, you know?
[00:29:58] But when we allow ourselves in obedience and humility to say there might be a better way, we then begin to submit this idea of, well, I thought God would do it this way. And we begin to be changed from the inside out through that humility.
[00:30:14] And so through these very ordinary things, we begin to go wash ourselves in the river that God has called us to, when we confess something that we've hidden, when we forgive someone, when we ask for help, when we return to prayer after we've been distant for so long, when we stop trying to impress God with our resume and we receive his mercy. Maybe when we make a decision to get baptized and we publicly confess our faith in front of the church body, we obey. In all of these small ways, we surrender ourselves and we open ourselves up to a greater process than we could have imagined, one that is full of the grace and the mercy of God and doesn't require our own beautiful and powerful willpower, but it's something better.
[00:30:59] So in a moment, we're going to receive communion together. And if you want those elements brought to you, I'm going to ask you to raise your hand and those elements will be brought to you.
[00:31:18] So in summary, at the beginning of this story, Naaman is impressive, but he's unclean.
[00:31:29] And by the end of the story, he's humbled, but he's healed.
[00:31:35] I have to tell you today that that is a far better life.
[00:31:41] It's better to be humbled and whole than impressive and unhealed. And it's better to be dependent on grace. It.
