Evil vs. Good

Introduction

Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I learned a long time ago that words have values. Just like money or commodities of various sorts. Some words are just very special. Some words are just uh more valuable than other words. And our beloved brother has used one of those words in the prayer that he has so fervently prayed for us this morning when he said we’re thankful for our spiritual family. Family is a word that just carries wonderful connotation with it. In fact, it’ll make uh it’ll make goosebumps for you. Because family, when they are reunited after having been separated, that’s one of the joys of life. Uh just to be with those that you love, and then having been separated to be with them again brings a special kind of feeling.

And I get that feeling here this morning, because so many of you I’ve known through the years and have appreciated so much, and you’ve been so kind to listen to me preach too often probably. But it’s been a great relationship, one that I have cherished and one that I love a lot. And when you get uh family, then you can add a word to that and say close family, and uh that just gives a new connotation to the word. And uh Harkwriters are very close friends of ours. Uh Robert encouraged me to preach when I was very young, and he was very young. He’s a little younger than I am, but he’s pretty old, and uh he uh has been a great help to me. He and Arlene have been close friends for many years.

When we first moved to the Houston area, he was uh preaching at uh across town, and we uh were able to be together some and enjoyed it very much. Brother and sister Ricky Jenkins and part of their family in the audience this morning. Ricky’s been special to me. He’s been like a son. He’s been a great inspiration to me. I’ve watched him grow and watch him, watched him become one of the really sought after and one of the better preachers among our brethren. And so here is close family. We get all of these things all bunched up together, and it just gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling on the inside. Glad you’re here this morning and glad to be with you. I’d like to ask you to get your Bibles, if you will, please, and turn to 2 Kings, and let’s read chapter 5 with your kind permission.

Chapter 5 of 2 Kings. I’ll wait until you’re located. If you don’t have your Bible, it’s okay. I would ask you to listen very carefully to the reading. Even if you have your Bible, try not to run ahead. Get each thought as we come across the thoughts as we read this morning. Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and honorable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria. He was also a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. And the Syrians had gone out by companies and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid, and she waited on Naaman’s wife. And she said unto her mistress, would God, my Lord, were with the prophet that is in Samaria, for he would recover him of his leprosy.

And one went in and told his Lord, saying, Thus and thus said the maid that is of the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, Go to, go, and I will send a letter unto the king of Israel. And he departed and took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold and ten changes of raiment. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, Now when this letter is come unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee, that thou mayst recover him of his leprosy. And it came to pass when the king of Israel had read the letter that he rent his clothes and said, Am I God to kill and to make alive that this man doth send me to recover this man of his leprosy?

Wherefore consider I pray you, and see how he seeketh to make a quarrel against me? And it was so when Elisha, the man of God had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? Let him come to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger out unto him, saying, Go and wash seven times in the Jordan, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away and said, Behold, I thought he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and strike his hand over the place and recover the leper.

Are not Abanah and Farpar rivers of Damascus better than these waters in Israel? May I not wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. His servants came near and spake unto him and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he saith unto thee, Wash and be clean. Then he went and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God. And his flesh came again like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came and stood before him, and said, Behold, now I know there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.

Now therefore I pray thee, take a blessing of my of thy servant. And he said, As the Lord liveth before whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him not to take it, and he refused. And Naaman said, Shall there not then I pray thee be given to thy servant two mules of burden of earth, for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord. And this thing the Lord pardoned thy servant that when my master goeth into the house to Rimman to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Riman. When I bow down myself in the house of Riman, the Lord pardoned thy servant this thing, and he said unto him, Go in peace.

So he departed him a little way. But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God, said, Behold, my master hath spared Naaman the Syrian, and not receiving at his hands that which he has bar brought, but as the Lord liveth, I will run after him, and take somewhat of him. So Gehazi followed after Naaman, and when Naaman saw him running after him, he lighted down from the chariot to meet him and said, Is all well? And he saith unto him, All is well. My master has sent me, saying, Behold, even now there come to me from Mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets. Give them, I pray thee, a talent of silver and two changes of raiment. And Naaman said, Be content, take two talents.

And he urged him and bound two talents of silver and two bags and two changes of garments, and laid them on two of his servants, and they bare them before him. And when he came to the tower, he took them from their hand and bestowed them in his house, and let them go, and they departed. But he went in and stood before his master, and Elisha said unto him, Whence comest thou, Gehazi? And he said, Thy servant would not wither. And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee when the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee. Is it a time to receive money and to receive garments and olive yards and vineyards and sheep and oxen and men servants and maidservants?

The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee and unto thy seed forever. And he went out for them from his presence a leper as white as snow. I make no apology for reading all of that, and I hope it means something to you, because it is a grand story from which there are many lessons to be taken, not the least of which is the healing of Naaman. We understand that story. I want to spend the time this morning, though, on the latter part of the story, and speak with you for a few moments this morning about the folly of Gehazi. He made a foolish kind of mistake, but in doing so, God has given us one simple fact. And I want you to get this as we go to the study this morning.

A person can be very evil in the midst of very religious surroundings. May I say that again? We can be very evil in the midst of very religious surroundings. Get that fixed in your mind. Gehazi was such an individual, a very fine servant. I don’t know how long he was faithful to his master and how long he’d been serving him, but apparently for many years. And he had a rather respected position. He had special privileges, as you notice. He served the man of God. He had seen things and been with him and heard things that were marvelous, that were astounding, that showed great, great connection to God. And yet, in the midst of all of that, here he is with a new temptation and something that just brings him under the condemnation of God.

And it gives for us a route of pursuit that is used by the devil. The devil is not a man that has horns and has a sensuous kind of look and a wily kind of disposition and smells strongly of soot and ashes. That is not the devil. The devil may come to you in a hound’s tooth coat and a red tie. And we better understand that that’s the case. He is wily, he is cunning, he is crafty. He’s always on the prowl. He works on the level of wherever we are. It doesn’t make any difference where you go. He follows you around. He’s always lurking on the periphery, just outside your sight. And he doesn’t want to make himself abundantly clear to you. He doesn’t want, he doesn’t come up to you with a sign saying, I’m the devil, watch out for me.

1. The Battle Between Good and Evil

There’s no warning sign at all. He’s always ready to slither in in the cracks. And he comes in when you’re not expecting him. And apparently that’s what he did with Gehazi. I choose to think that Gehazi had been a good person all along, though we may see here some of his character flaws that penetrated him as an individual before even this time. I don’t know about that. I know about this time, though, and he has given us a valuable lesson. I want us to notice first of all the battle that he has between good and evil. In verse 20 of this passage, the scripture says that he was distraught because uh the uh money and and and changes of garments were not accepted. Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the son of God, said, Behold, my master hath spared Naaman the Syrian.

Now, you have to understand, first of all, that Naaman, in the strictest sense of the word, is an enemy. And he has been spared what he could have done. He he could have taken from him, you see, uh, all of this and and and really weakened him somewhat. But he didn’t he didn’t do that. And he said, in not receiving the hand at his hands, that which was brought. But as the Lord liveth, I will go and take it away. The battle starts. This is a battle between good and evil, and he has had it dangled in front of him. Now, the devil does not come up to you and say to you, get on board, we’re going to go sin. That’s not the way he does it.

James describes it beautifully in James chapter 1 and verse 13. He says, Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. And lust when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death. So please be advised that the devil uses a predictable course. We can learn from that. Every time he dangles in front of us something, we need to be very, very careful. I said to the young people yesterday, watch the prodigal son and his demise, and don’t be bedazzled by the lights of the far country. That can get you in trouble.

Don’t be bedazzled by the uh by the fruit that is forbidden. Forbidden fruit is all always looks tasty. It always conjures up feelings in your mind that you’d like to have a little piece of that. And that’s the way the devil works. He doesn’t say let’s go sin. He dangles in front of you the sin. I have for years used the illustration of a fish. You like to fish? Well, when you fish, all you have to do is go out here and get you a string and put a hook on the end of it and drop it down in the water. And an old fish comes along there, and I used to draw this on the blackboard. Old fish comes along there and he looks at that thing and he says, Look at that.

And he gets on the hook and you pull him up, right? No. That won’t work. But I’ll tell you what you can do. Get you a piece of plastic about two inches long and paint green and red stripes on it. And put a feather on the back of it and put three, three strands, it has to be three, three strands of plastic right behind it, so that it all wiggles, and then put a propeller on the end of it, a little propeller. And when when you put that in the water and the fish comes along, he looks at that thing and says, What in the world is that? And about that time you pull it and the feather flutters. And you pull it again, and the little plastic strips go up and down in the water.

And all of a sudden the sun’s rays are refracted by the uh by the propeller as it starts to go around. I don’t know if a fish’s mouth waters or not, but he he’s ready, he’s ready to take a shot at that, and you pull it, and the first thing you know, he he’s ready, and he says, I’ve I’ve got to get a closer look at that. And so he goes up a little bit closer, and the first thing you know, you pull it, and it all comes together, and whom oh, he hits it, and you got him, hook, line, and sinker. Now listen to me. That’s not nearly the way the devil works, it’s plum how he works. Every time, and that’s what James says.

Let no man say when he’s tempted, I’m tempted with God. God cannot be tempted with evil, but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust. When he is drawn away, did that that is precisely what has happened to Gaza. His folly commences then with the fact that he entertains an evil thought as if it would be something that he really wants, that he’s just really fascinated by, that he’s bedazzled by. And so the bait of the devil is being used and he is being drawn away of his own lust and enticed. So he can see there all of the things that he could buy with those funds and all the nice things that he could have. I’m sure he thought, well, Elisha, he’s not going to be here forever.

And when he leaves, I’ll be fixed. And I notice in the King James Version that when he came back, he took the money to his house and he said he put it in a tower. And the Hebrew word translated tower there is a word that describes a secret place. He took the money and put it in a secret place. Now, you see what the devil does is heaps sin on top of sin. Now he’s hiding stuff out, and he’s doing stuff that he oughtn’t. And that’s the way it works all the time. Once you get involved in it, it just uh it just proliferates, and the first thing you know, you’re doing more and more and more. So let no man say, when he is tempted, I’m tempted of God.

Every man is tempted when he’s drawn away of his own lust and enticed and lust when it hath conceived. Lust when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin. When it’s full grown, it brings forth sin. And that’s exactly what happened here. Listen to what he said. I will go after him. So Gehazi followed. I will run after him and take somewhat of him. I I I just I’m always interested how the Holy Spirit gives us such graphic things in his narratives. I just have a picture of him. I think he just really was uh I think he was really fascinated by the possibility of having this stuff for himself. And he’s all he’s breathing hard now. And so he runs after him. I mean, he doesn’t want him to get away.

And and and that’s how sin works. You run after it if you’re not careful. The devil does such a good job of depicting the pleasure of involving yourself in this forbidden fruit. The first thing you know, you can’t hardly stand to be without it. You’re just breathing hard. Boy, I got an opportunity here to have something that’s going to fill my heart with pleasure. So off you go, you see. And he ran after him and said, I will take something of him. And so Gehazi followed after Naaman. And when Naaman saw him running after him, please note that he was running. He didn’t want him to get away. That’s the way we do sin. We run after as hard as we can go. So he has this big battle between good and evil, and then he just surrenders.

He said, I will go after him. Nobody commits a sin by accident. I used to say to my dad when I was a kid, if I made a mistake or did something I shouldn’t have done, I’d say, I didn’t go to do it. That’s why we said that back then. That means I didn’t mean to. And my dad said, You did go to do it. Don’t tell me that. Don’t tell me you didn’t go to do it. You decided to do it. And that’s right. And that’s what happens in sin. We decide to do it. You can’t go to God and say, Well, I’m really, I didn’t mean to. Yes, you did. Yes, it did. He said, I will go after him. And he he begins this big battle.

And the battle is between him and the evil, and the evil wins almost without a fight. And the reason is that he has declared him weak and impotent before he even starts. He gets it first in his mind. He gets it, he conceives this whole idea. He knows exactly how this is going to work out. He already has the plan fixed in his mind. He is headed out there to get him and he has this this plan that he has made and all he has to do now is unfold it. He’s got the blueprint right here. Step number one, I’ll run after him. Step number two, I’ll tell him that this story here. And step number three, I’ll do this. And he lied to him, didn’t he?

2. All Sin Is a Lie

All sin is a lie. I don’t care which one you want to talk about, it’s a lie. It just does not work with the truth. Sin and truth are totally incompatible. You can’t make one out of the other. Sin is just a lie. And you lie to yourself when you lie to yourself you lie louder than anybody. You lie the you lie the loudest when you lie to yourself. And that’s exactly what he did. He said, I I’m worthy of this. I have this figured out in my mind I it it it ought to be mine and I’m going to go take it. And Elisha is just foolish because he didn’t take it it’s been intended to be left here. And I can hear him reasoning in his mind and the reason I can hear is because I have did that as they say back home.

I have did that. The fact of the matter is if you’ve ever been involved in some kind of sin you did it the same way. It’s just the way things work with the devil. And you your mind gets blinded to the truth, and the first thing you know, you’re embedded in this plan to to deceive yourself is what it’s all about. And that’s exactly what he did. I want you to turn something and look with me to Acts chapter 5. And I want to show you about this business of lying. In Acts chapter 5, we read the story you know of Ananias and Sapphira. But a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira, his wife took a possession and sold a possession, rather, and kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostle’s feet.

But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? And keep back part of the price of the land. I want you to notice, first of all, that the sin was a lie. It was a lie.

And then I want you to listen to the next line. Whilst it was remained, was it not thine own? And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? Why hast thou conceived this thing in thy heart? How did he do it? Well, it all started with messing with his heart. That’s what a conception is.

He said, I’m going to take this and give it to the apostles, and I’ll receive all the praise that the rest of them are giving, uh are getting because of their extreme benevolence. And so he brings just a part of it and makes out like. You ever hear that term? He makes out like that’s all of it. And so he gives that and and uh and says, This is all I’ve got. And he said, You lied, and not to me. Notice who he lied to? The Holy Spirit. I want you to know that when you lie in sin, you lie to God. I don’t care what the deal was. You lie to God. You mismanage the truth. You pollute the truth. You diminish from the value of the truth.

3. Consent Brings the Evil Plan

You erase part and parts of delineation of the truth. You just mess stuff up when you do that. And we have to be very, very careful. We need to learn to recognize how this works, because sin is always a lie. It doesn’t make any difference. Who tells it? It’s always a lie. And then consent brings the evil plan. You have to say yes to it. And I’m thinking that when the devil gets a residency in your mind, that what happens is he just nips away at the edges of your morality. He doesn’t just penetrate you all of a sudden and say, okay, we’ve got to commit this sin. He disguises that sin and camouflages it and makes it look like what it’s not, and he gives it some kind of an impression that makes it look like you’re going to get something really good out of it.

And so he just operates in there on you all the time. Remember what Paul said to the Ephesians in chapter 5, as I recall, when he said, Give no place to the devil. In the bulletin article today, I make an observation that you can’t keep the birds from flying around your head, but you can keep them from making a nest in your hair. Now, you can’t keep Satan out. You can’t keep him away. He’s going to be there all the time. And he’s going to go in and out of your mind. Everybody. He’s going to go in and out of your mind. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how strong you are, how long you’ve been a Christian, he’s going to go through your mind.

But you don’t have to give him a place to sit down. You don’t have to give him a place and say, well, just sit here and let’s talk a while. You owe you’re asking for trouble when you do that. Just sit here and we’ll just talk about it. I’m not going to do it, you understand. I’ll just take a look. Do you know that that’s how the devil works with pornography? That’s exactly what he does. He just causes you to get on the computer and something comes up about that, and first thing you know, you say, I’ll just take a peek. One of the worst things I ever had happened to me. I have to tell you this. I was doing a meeting in San Antonio, Texas one year, and I flew in there late in the afternoon, and preacher came and picked me up and took me to the hotel.

And uh he said, We have a uh dinner engagement at five o’clock, uh, 5 30, whenever it was, and he said, uh, so I’ll come back and pick you up. So I took my suits out and hung them up on the thing and had my shirts Norma folds, and she back then I was serving by myself. She folded those shirts just meticulously. So I I opened the drawer to put my shirts in there, and there laid a copy of Hustler Magazine. Now I don’t know if you know what Hustler magazine is, but it’s pure pornography. So I didn’t even have to flip through the thing. I mean, the front cover was plenty for me to see, but I I did this, you know. I I took a look at it, and I thought to myself, that is pure trash, and I pitched it over in the trash barrel.

All of a sudden, ding. Here’s going to come the maid. She’s going to look in the trash barrel and say, the preacher’s reading Hustler magazine. Here’s his Bible on the shelf, and here’s his Hustler magazine and the tack. You know what I did? I folded it up, I put my coat on, and I put it around my arm there, that Hustler magazine. And I went out in the in the lobby there and went down through the way to the trash barrel. And then I got to the trash barrel and I shook it out like that. Nobody ever saw it. But I’m going to tell you, folks, if you’re not careful, just to peek will get you involved. If you don’t ever take a peek, you never will engage yourself in pornography.

If you take a peek, you run the risk. I don’t care who you are. I’m lucky that I didn’t get too much out of that Hustler magazine. So what you do is you just you take it to the trash. Take it to the trash. Get it out of your mind. And don’t have something to do. Don’t give the devil a place to lodge. And sometimes, if we’re not careful, all we have to do is invite him in for a coke, and the first thing you know, he’s got a room upstairs. We better watch out for him all the time. That’s what happens to Gehazi here. His folly is that here he is in this wonderful situation, and he’s not satisfied with things, which is another tool of the devil.

He’s not satisfied with things, and so he has to have more and more. He’s got a heart that is uh is bent on having things, and first thing you know, he finds an opportunity to have some things. Now, let me say to you, if he had not given the devil residency in the first place, if the devil hadn’t been in his mind already, he would not have done that. He would not have done that. The devil was already there. He was looking for an opportunity to get Gehazi to do what he wanted him to do, and when the opportunity came, Gehazi, listen to me, recognized it graphically. He saw what the deal was, and he saw the possibility of being involved in it. He was going to take care of that.

4. Very Evil in Very Religious Surroundings

And so sin, which is always a lie, is going to bring you to the wrong place. Now let me say to you, you can be very religious, very evil, rather, in very religious circumstances, very religious surroundings. You can sit in the assembly of the saints and think about stuff that is absolutely garbage. You can sit in the assembly and conjure up plans of what you’re going to do that are just as evil as they can possibly be. You can use the Lord’s Supper and just go through the motions and not particip and not participate with the right kind of a mind. And I am convinced as surely as I stand here before you that one of the things that all of these things of worship do for us is they cleanse the bad stuff.

They get rid of all of the bad junk all the time, and so we can get rid of them. You occupy your mind if you put enough good in it, the evil can’t penetrate it. Now, I’m not going to say it doesn’t go through there, but it can’t penetrate it. It can’t stay there. It can’t get you, so to speak. So Gehazi was very, very evil in the midst of a very religious surrounding. He was he was with the man of God. Don’t you think he saw what he did? What about the miracle that he’s just witnessed? I mean, here’s a man who’s whitened with leprosy, an incurable disease. And he comes to the man of God, and the man of God says, dip in the Jordan, and you know the confrontation that he had with himself and with the others, and he finally goes and dips in the Jordan and he’s cleansed.

Don’t you think he saw him before and after? Why, sure he did. He just saw the man of God do that, and yet he’s going to cheat the man of God. I say to you, you can be very evil in the midst of very religious surroundings. And what seemed like a good thing to him is going to turn, he’s going to have a horrible end to this whole thing. He runs after him. And he he just propounds a big lie. He just makes up a big deal. Uh the Lord’s got some prophets that are coming from a different location, and we need to feed and clothe them, and you can help us if you’d like. Isn’t that something? Instead of just going to him and say, Elisha wouldn’t take anything, I’ll take a little bit.

5. What Seemed Like Success Became Failure

I’d have been a whole lot I’d have been a whole lot more uh impressed with him had he done that. Because he would have been doing the truth anyway. He’d be saying, I’ve I’ve got a covetous heart, but I I just want you to give me some of it. I’ll take it. I’ll take it. And he probably would have gotten it. He probably would have gotten it. But he’s got this, he’s got to conjure up this meticulously designed plan, and then he’s got to go and mismanage everything that he’s seen. The devil won with Elisha. I mean with Gehazi. He won over Elijah with Gehazi. Because he caused him in the midst of his very religious surroundings to commit sin. So here we go. What seemed like success became failure.

He took the stuff and he said, you go on your way. Everything’s okay. And let me say one other thing before we go. I love the narratives that God gives us. The Holy Spirit makes everything so graphic to me. I can see this great Naaman, what a great fellow he was. I can see him when uh Gehazi came running after him and he came and what’s the first thing that Naaman said to him? Is everything okay? Do you think he might have run after him and said, Your leprosy is going to come back? He wanted to know is everything okay? Is the report still good? And so that’s where he is. And so what looked like a great plan, what seemed to be a success, he got what he went for.

But it became a failure. And that’s how things work. Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth to his flesh shall of his flesh reap corruption. But he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. Please take note. What he did was sow to the flesh. He sowed to the flesh. Isn’t that interesting? Because we’re talking about a disease of the flesh here. He sowed to the flesh. And of the flesh he reaped corruption. His body became corrupted. And not only that, but please take note of the fact that his sin affected generations to come. His people were affected by the same thing. Sin has a horrible, horrible effect. And you think just one little sin won’t hurt anything.

And yet one little sin can have horrible circumstances and very large circumstances if it’s not cared for. And so what looked like success became failure. If we sow to the spirit, we’ll reap life everlasting.

6. You Can’t Tell One Lie

That’s continuous, present, active. What that’s saying is, he that soweth to his flesh shall continually reap corruption. I believe that may be, I’m not dogmatic about this, but I believe it may be a reference to the eternal part of man who is not faithful to God. He’ll allow the flesh, reap corruption from now on. And that’s part of the horribleness of what he’s going to have to put up with in hell. It’s continual corruption, I believe. So then he looked like he was successful, but he he wasn’t. And and then one final thing I’d like to make, and this is just a passing point. You can’t tell one lie. You have to constantly be propping it up with another one. And that’s what he did here.

He came back and he went in and stood before his master, and Elisha said to him, Where did you come from, Gay uh Gehazi? And he said, I didn’t go anywhere. Now he’s already lied. He’s already lied. He first of all lied to himself. And then he’s already lied uh to to Naaman. And now he’s lying to to Elijah. Don’t you see that what happens is you you have to constantly be propping it up. That’s how lies work. And lies are so abundant. There are so many ways to lie that you have to just really worry. You can’t tell just one lie. And then, of course, the end of all of that is just pure disaster. It’s just horrible. It all starts out with a man very close to God, very close to a man of God anyway, and yet he uses that proximity to bring about a heinous crime before God.

Conclusion

And as a result of that, he reaps continual corruption because he sowed to the flesh. Thank you for listening about the folly of Gehazi.