Ten Unique Servants of God

Introduction

Men. The footsteps of Jesus, we will follow the steps of Jesus wherever they go. Jesus is our King. Jesus is our Lord. Jesus is what it’s all about. And so this morning we are going to talk from the Bible in 2 Kings about the story of Naaman, which is a familiar story to a lot of people in the religious world. It’s a familiar story to members of the church for a lot of various reasons. But the story of Naaman is not just the story of Naaman and Elisha. It’s not just about them. I noticed in my last study of this particular chapter that there are ten serving people in the chapter. If you turn in your scriptures to 2 Kings chapter 5, where we’ve had our scripture readings come from, I would like you to turn to 2 Kings chapter 5 with me as well.

I’ve got my bookmarker there, and I’d like you to turn there with me. In 2 Kings chapter 5, we read of ten unique servants of God. One of our scripture readings that we read this morning was from Nehemiah chapter 9 and verse 3, where it says, Someone stood to speak, they read the text, and then those on the side of them gave the sense. So they had in that sense that idea, and that’s what we’re going to do for just a moment. We are going to read the text and then give the sense and then make sure we’re standing to speak. So let’s read Nehemiah chapter 5, if you’ll just listen along. Now, Naaman, the commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great and honorable man in the eyes of his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria.

He also was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. And the Syrians had gone out on raids and had brought back captive a young girl from the land of Israel. She waited on Naaman’s wife. Then she said to her mistress, If only, if only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria, for he would heal him of his leprosy. And Naaman went in and told his master, saying, Oh, thus and thus said the girl who’s from the land of Israel. Then the king of Syria said, Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel. So he departed and took with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing. Then he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which said, Now be advised, when this letter comes to you that I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may heal him of his leprosy.

And it happened when the king read his letter, he just tore his clothes. He said, Am I God to kill and make alive that this man sends a man to me to heal him of his leprosy? Therefore consider how he seeks to make a quarrel with me. He basically saying he thinks he’s going to pick a fight. Verse 8 says, So it was when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. Now Naaman went with his horse and chariot, and he stood at the door of Elisha’s house. I guess he waited.

Is he coming? Where is the guy? And Elisha sent a messenger. He sent a messenger to him saying, Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored to you, and you shall be clean. Naaman indeed became furious and said, Indeed I say to myself, he will surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and wave his hand over the place and heal the leprosy. Are not the Abadana and the far far the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants, this was the scripture reading, do you recall? And his servants came near and spoke to him and said, My father.

1. The Diseased Servant

Now these are servants calling him father. We’ll get to that later in the lesson. But these are servants who said to him, My father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it? How much more than when he just says, Wash and be clean? So he went down and dipped seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean, and he returned to the man of God, he and all his aides, and came and stood before him, and he said, Indeed, Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel. Let’s first talk about Naaman for a moment.

Naaman was a diseased servant. He was respected as great if you’ll look on at the text. Just look at your Bibles, keep them open, look at the verses. I’ve got them behind me on the screen, but just look at the verses. He was respected as great, and it gives more details about that. Genesis 1.26 tells us that we are made in God’s image. So even though Naaman was Syrian, even though Naaman wasn’t a Jew, wasn’t even Samaritan, wasn’t half Jew, he was all Syrian. He was made in God’s image. And if you look at 2 Kings chapter 5, verses 2 through 3, he chose to listen to reason. He was one of those people that was thinking. He didn’t just think it was all about him.

He decided to listen to some others. In 2 Kings chapter 5 and verse 4, we see where he communicated with his spouse. Good leaders listened to wisdom, and it’s not only the guys that have wisdom. He listened to her. Because she had some valuable things to say. Because a number of the things she said would help him. Yet he needed salvation. 2 Kings 5 14. He went down and dipped seven times in the Jordan according to the saying of the man of God, and his flesh was restored. But it couldn’t have been restored if he hadn’t obeyed the way in which thou salvation was given. We today, in the world in which we live in, are like Naaman. We’re like Naaman in that we need to obey the things that God tells us to do in order to be saved.

Acts 22, 16 gives a four-part way. Arise. We’ve got to get up and be a self-starter. We’ve got to be baptized to obey his word specifically. We’ve got to arise and be baptized and wash away. That means actually stop sinning. We’ve got to arise and be baptized and wash away our sins, calling on the name of the Lord to start evangelism in our life. We, like Naaman, need to make the changes we need to make to be saved. I noticed this morning that everybody was handing out those articles that I wrote. I brought some articles and printed them off. It’s got a very simple way to teach your neighbor how to be saved or your friend or family member how to be saved. It gives a list of five things that all start with the same letter.

It’s just real easy to do, so that you can do that very simply and proficiently.

2. The Underdog Servant and the Help Meet Servant

I didn’t really like totally like force them to listen to me, but at the end of the flight, I go, hey guys, I want to give you something. So I gave them each, got their names and gave them each one of the uh the articles, so there may not be enough. I don’t know. If you need more, we can reprint them. But as we look at this, we need to recognize that this servant was diseased, but he was healed. He was healed of his disease. Now let’s talk about another servant for just a moment. I’ve named her the underdog servant. Florida State, they won their game. Florida, they won their game. Let’s not talk about Miami. But the you we know in sports, when there’s an underdog, we recognize who they are.

And sometimes in like high schools or uh colleges, uh, not as much in the national sports, but there are some of that that goes on with that. But we sometimes like those movies where the underdog wins, where the little guy he he conquers, he does something that we’re like, that’s pretty cool. The guy that that you would least expect of all people to be victorious is become victorious. And we we kind of relish in those sports movies, don’t we? When it’s the little guy that stands up and does something great with lesser, with the less that he’s got. That’s this servant girl. This servant girl in this story had been dealt terrible, terrible things by the world. She’d been captured. She was taken. Did you read that verse in chapter 5, verse 2?

The Syrians had gone out on raids and had brought back captive a young girl from the land of Israel. And she waited on her or the family there. But you know, she made the most of the situation. She sought to heal her boss’s husband. Yeah, that’s in the context. It’s in verse 3. It says she said to her mistress, if only my master, well, that’s what she’s calling him, if only my master were with the prophet who’s in Samaria, he would heal him of his leprosy. She didn’t have to tell him her that. She didn’t, she could have been like, oh, I’ve been slighted. I’m a victim. I’m everything is terrible. But she goes, you know what? My society back in Israel believes in the Almighty God and believes in changing people’s hearts for the better.

And believes in righteousness and faith. And I’ve got trust that I can go back to my home country someday, perhaps. But if not, I can at least let these people know there is a God and he can heal and he can save. She sought to heal a man in charge of raids. She served the Almighty God evangelistically. As she said to her mistress, these things that we mentioned, there is a prophet, for he would heal him of his leprosy. How are we like this servant girl? Marginalize, victimized, have an enslaving boss. I’ve talked to some people, they look at me and they go, You don’t know my boss. And I can understand that.

I’ve had various bosses through the years, but I mean, I’ve had people tell me, Oh, you don’t know my boss. Well, this girl shared the good news to all. That’s really how we should be. In our Christianity, let’s be the best servant of Jesus we can be. If anything, to apply from any one of these things, of all this sermon that I’m going to preach, let’s just be the best servant we can be. Naaman listened. He listened to the good sense of his wife. The wife listened to the servant, and let’s just talk about her next. The help meet servant. She had a sick husband. He’d been afflicted with pain. Afflicted with a great deal of pain. Look at verse one. Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, is a great, an honorable man in the eyes of his master, but he was a leper, this mighty man.

This help meet servant, this wife of Naaman. She had the courage to tell her husband of real hope. You know, they may have had all sort of strange ways of trying to heal. We remember the lady in the New Testament. She was trying all these doctors trying to figure out all these things, and nobody could figure it out, and Jesus healed her. Well, that’s kind of the same way with Naaman. I mean, the Syrians, they had their mock doctors, or some of them could do some medical things, but they couldn’t heal him of his leprosy. But at the same time, listen to the way this help meet servant, this wife of his communicates. First of all, she listened. She was a good listener, and she listened to the one entrusted to her managing.

Verse 3 says that the girl said to her mistress, if only my master were with the prophet. Now, see, when I read that, I think there was communication. She must have had a good relationship with her servant, but she must have also had a great bond with Naaman. In Ephesians chapter 6, it says, husbands love your wives. Husbands love your wives and be willing to die for them. To give yourself for them as Christ gave himself for the church.

He listened to her, but she listened to him. I’m not sure how leprous couples communicated at those ancient days, but we know they took time to communicate. It may have gone something like this. The lepers have to be over there. We have to be over here. We can’t go in the close proximity of the lepers because they’d have to be in a leper colony, but since he’s of a mighty man of valor and esteem in the general of the army, maybe they have an ability to be at a distance. And maybe they’re standing at a distance, and she says, How are you doing today? And he says, Not so well. And she says, Well, you know, I was talking to the servant girl, and she says, Someone can heal you.

And he listens to her and they communicate. However, they’re communicating, they’re seeking to do things right. And that’s what we need in our life as well. It doesn’t say that this little servant girl was one who healed, excuse me, one who viewed her mistress as a mom-like figure. It doesn’t say that. But if you’ll just glance at the text, 2 Kings 5, 13 and 15 said the male servants called Naaman father Naaman. We read that before, and I said, We get to it, here’s the point. And so here, this help meet servant was treating the her boss as if she was like family. I’ve had some people in my life that I have viewed as spiritual motherlike people, along with my own physical mother. Now, I was blessed with my mom, Sarah, and her mom Joyce.

Joyce and Sarah were my Lois and Eunice growing up. As we know from the book of Timothy, Paul was told that Timothy needed to realize the unfeigned faith and the good faith that was there of his grandmother and mother that helped teach him of the first principles of the old Testament scriptures. They taught him those things. And he said, when it stirs up my remembrance of them, he had tears, Paul said in that very early chapter in that book. But there are also many people who through the years I’ve looked to and said they’re spiritual, they’re doing what’s right, they’re serving God. And here in this context, we need to realize that so much we need to treat the older women like mothers, the older men like fathers, the younger men like brothers, and the younger women like sisters with all purity.

3. The Servant of Appointed Authority and the Small-Minded Servant

We need that because God says to do it. And this is kind of interesting because all of that is having to be shown from the young, young servant girl who does all this work to convince her boss that her boss’s husband, who’s taken all these people captive, can be saved of leprosy. The help meet servant. Now let’s talk for a moment of the servant of appointed authority. I won’t belabor this point, but the powers that be are appointed by God. God allows good rulers to rule, and God allows evil rulers to rule. Heaven may not always approve of rulers’ deeds, but God rules in the kingdoms of men. The king of Syria had faith. He wasn’t the Israelite king, he’s the Syrian king, and he’s got a little bit of faith because of one little servant girl.

He said, I will send a letter from my throne. You know, worldly people sometimes communicate with worldly people, and sometimes they become converted because they’re talking about stuff. Building rapport. That is the secret sauce to evangelism. You just want to know what it is. It’s building rapport. I wrote down his name in my notes, but I’m going to keep it in anonymity. One of the fellows I know in the town I lived in saw me going through the store, and I had a few things in my cart, and I had some boxes. Because I was talking to the uh the ladies in one section of the store that were kind of tearing apart boxes, and they looked like they were having a terrible day. And I said, uh, you mind if I take those boxes off your hands?

They go, You mind? Take them. In fact, you can come back and get them. I said, Okay. Well, uh, I just want you to know, I hope you have a good day, and I was chit-chatting with them. And uh then I get to the aisle, and there’s a fellow there, and he goes, Boxes, you moving? I go, Yeah, I’m moving. And the fellow says this I work on Sundays, so I haven’t been able to come to church, but I’ve kept your card on my desk, and I know who you are and know where you worship. And he said, I’ll try to be there. I’m sorry you’re moving. I would always like to meet you. But you know what? We all cross paths. You know how that works.

The whole point I’m trying to say is here is a guy in the world that has built rapport simply by just seeing somebody and just talking to them each time and visiting with somebody. The point in the story is is essentially at this point, neither the king nor Naaman had obeyed the words of Elisha, though they were willing to hear the man of God, like the fellow in the story I just mentioned. I don’t think he’s obeyed the gospel, but he’s willing to listen to reason and willing to keep that idea going. And this king, he had faith. It doesn’t say the king became a zealous Israelite, but it does indicate he was basically exemplifying that he seriously cared about his chief army officer and knew that one young child who worked for Naaman’s wife was filled with credibility.

Imagine that. An enemy nation finding someone who’s spiritual and then becoming willing to go hear that. Now let’s talk about the small-minded servant. The small-minded servant is not a small ideas servant. He’s a lack of faith servant. It says in the fifth verse, so the king of Syria said, Go now, I’ll send a letter to the king of Israel. Spiritual people may be spiritual. Spiritual, that’s funny. I like that. Spiritual. Spiritual people may be spiritual, but they don’t always get it right themselves. We don’t. Sometimes we don’t. And this king in Israel, he’s the king, and his issue was is salvation really attainable to this foreigner, to this Naaman? Isn’t he just wanting to fight with me? I’m way up here. He’s sometimes against me, he’s taken some of my people.

Is this really possible? Oh, how we can often doubt the validity of one’s sincerity. We can be this way, and this was like the king. Oh, how we would do well to say, let me get back with you on that when we don’t have an answer. And not be discouraged when we’re puzzled. In fact, let’s not get evil suspicions or evil surmisings of the lost who wish to be found. Or the spiritually leprously sinsick spiritually who actually have faith. That’s how people are converted. When they know they’re in a spiritual or a leprously sin-sick way, but they want to be restored and they want to be better. Do you recall the older brother and the prodigal son? Or recall the early laborers in the vineyard? The older brother and the prodigal son said, This son of yours.

You can almost hear his tone in the passage that some of us are familiar with in the New Testament. Yeah, he’s really come back. Do we really think he’s come back? Has he really been repentant? You’re throwing a party for this guy? Well, the reality was he was pretty sincere. He was going to be a slave in his father’s house rather than even being a fellow heir in his house. So he was humbled. What about the laborers in the vineyard? That guy hasn’t been a Christian for 50 years, and now he wants to be a Christian. You know how much work? No, no, no, no, no, no. The labors in the vineyard, the equality is there that it doesn’t matter when someone is baptized or when someone becomes a Christian, we need to rejoice with them that they’ve made the decision.

4. The Collaborative Servants

God says, Is your eyes bad because mine is good? That’s the context there. And so we need to be mindful of this small-minded servant and not be small-minded ourselves. Now let’s look at the collaborative servants. Let’s do a little talking. Okay? The collaborative servants. We work together. There is no clergy and laity in the church. There is no this sense of uh it’s so popular in religion today. You have people go, Are you the right high reverend so and so? And how’s your church? And I go, the right high reverend is Jesus, and his church is just fine. I’m just a member of it, and I’m glad to be part of it. I may preach, I may teach, but I’m like everybody else in the congregation who’s able to do the same thing to those in the capacity that they do so.

I work with them, and I’m glad to be a part of the church, but there’s no big people and little people as far as the preaching message goes. There are people that preach and there are people that teach, but we need to see that what Elisha did was really work well with this principle. Let’s not forget this principle. This is not an Elisha point. Elisha was the quote unquote man of God because he stood before the king. There was there had to be somebody selected to be in a certain position to talk. And you can’t have like 5,000 people just like crowding the king. You got to make decisions on what you’re gonna do. But when you look at 5.8, as you look at the verse, it says, So it was when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes that he sent to the king, saying, and then he continues on.

But then if you look down at verse 10, it says that when Naaman had got into the house, it says in verse 10 that Elisha sent a messenger. We talked about two by two in the class this morning. I hope you guys can attend these classes because they’re very good. Uh taught by one of our elders here this morning. Excellent job. But the apostles went out two by two, and if I can recall, Jesus selected twelve, so they all always went out, generally in pairs of two, because twelve divided by two is six, so you have uh them going out in those groups, but you also have a pattern throughout the book of Acts that in every single instance in the book of Acts, they go out in groups of two or more, except for one instance of Paul in one city, and some of the passages, such as uh the third missionary journey, they go with as many as like seven.

So when you look at the principles there, yes, they go out and they work together. Togetherness is all over the Bible. It’s a big theme. The applications that we need to make from here are all truth from comes from God, no matter who speaks it. The good news of salvation is not a clergy-only evangelism, and clearly the messengers worked with Elisha. I’ve been studying uh a lesson with a sister who was baptized about a one and a half years or so ago. She’s young, so anytime she’s in my office, I have another there with me. One of the elders likes to sit in with me and study. Uh, some of my past studies I’ll I’ll have my wife join with me. And if it’s a young lady, sometimes my wife will just study with her in different scenarios.

But so when we look at this, we’ve got people working together with people. It shouldn’t be uh a solo thing. And here with Elisha, he could have gone to this guy. He could have, you know, said, Look what I need to do to tell you, and give some sort of like big speech. He just sent his servant who could do the same thing. He sent his servant who is able to do the same thing he was able to do and work together with him. I like collaborating with people. I like working together with people and hearing their ideas and seeing what they come up with. You know, when you’re studying with two different people, you can hear two different senses of the same truth, but just given from a different angle that might help somebody in such a way that you alone can’t do.

5. Unswerving Servants

I think Jesus recognized that in the sending of the Great Commission, the Limited Commission, and his advice to us as Christians. Clearly, messengers worked with Elisha. And we as well here at South Bumbi need to be collaborative servants. Let us pray continually for those both in the pulpit and abroad teaching. We pray for kin right now. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Okay. Next slide. Unswerving servants. Naaman doesn’t really like the idea of not seeing it his way. He’s got in his mind this system of how he thinks he ought to be saved. This is my way I ought to be saved. Well, that sounds like a lot of people in the world’s religion. This is the way I want it to be. This is the way I want to be saved.

That’s not the story here. His own servants, who they call him Father Naaman, say, look, if he would have waved his hands over you or said some big speech or said, listen to this, raise your hand, close your eyes and pray, or place your hands on a scroll, or uh say a little prayer that you’d be saved. If that was your thinking of what you would want to do, you would have done that if he told you. So why don’t you just do what he told you to do? Go dip in the Jordan River. Don’t go back to the Armana the Far Far River. Just do what he said and see if it works. Why don’t you just obey what he told you to do? Perhaps the very relatives of the servant girl.

Did you ever notice that? They’re servants. They’re all servants, and maybe they were part captured in the raids by the Syrian people. Maybe. You’d think they very well could be. In this case, they could have just said, I don’t like this guy. He’s taken our sister, he’s taking our family, he’s taken us, and we’re captures. But he didn’t do that. These servants work together. Look at verse 13. We’re going to read it. His servants, like I said, perhaps relatives of the servant girl, if we don’t exactly know, but perhaps, came near and spoke to him and said, My father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it? How much more then when he says, Do you wash and be clean?

6. The Salvation Giving Servant

Average people in this case listen to reason. They weren’t even the one, quote unquote, being converted. They were the ones not being saved. They were the ones telling the saved, who are probably the younger people, saying, Why don’t you just listen to the guy? We should be like these and not swerve. We should be like these and have momentum. We should be like these and listen to reason. Well, it’s top of the hour, essentially, but that’s not gonna end the lesson. We can’t end it there. We’re only at the ninth servant. We gotta give servant ten, the salvation giving servant. There is no God in all the earth except in Israel. Indeed, now this I know, he says. He says, I know their God is real when he’s saved.

God sent Jesus to Israel. He asks no gift of us. He made salvation free to all of us through the cross. What would a story of salvation be without Jesus? Jesus is God’s Son and the Son of Man. Mark 16, 16 says, He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. He who doesn’t believe shall be condemned. But he who believes and is baptized shall be saved. Jesus was the one that gives us the ultimate salvation that we have. The salvation-giving servant in this passage of Scripture is God. Jesus is all God and all man. God was one that sent him to this earth to show us how to be real men, to how to be real people, to live the way we should live. And Jesus says, wash and be clean to us today.

He doesn’t say, say a sinner’s prayer. It’s not in the Bible. Acts 22, 16 says, Why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord. When we look at that passage of Scripture, we can see the parallels in this story of Naaman. We can see what all these servants recognized, there is a God. Even the one that was hesitant to allow Naaman to be in his land and thought we were bignified, even he still believed there is a God. And so when we look at these principles, we need to recognize we first have to show the world there is a God. Now we may not get a miracle today, but when you see the hearts of transformed people that do things that nobody else in the world does, that live in such a way that makes decisions, says things and does things that nobody in the world does, they say, I don’t see them.

Conclusion

I see Christ Jesus living through them. Do you want that to be you? Naaman was told, wash and be cleansed. I have a baptistry behind me. Lift up the screen, there’s a baptistry back there. That’s what’s back there behind the screen, if you guys want to know. In it is water. In the pattern of the Bible, we read how people are saved today. How people find their salvation today, how people become a Christian today. And like Naaman, we all have our spiritual leprosy. We all have something that is blocking us from being cleansed. And it’s called sin. It’s repugnant to God, but God says you can be washed, you can be clean, and you can be born again, washed anew, like a little child, as it mentioned in the text in chapter 5, you can be saved today.

Won’t you hear his message and believe it? Repent of your sins, confess his good name, and be baptized, immersed in water for the forgiveness of sins. For there is an antity which now saves us, baptism. 1 Peter 3 21. Not a removal of the filth of the flesh, but an appeal to God for a cleansed conscience. If we can help you in that manner this morning or in any other way, please come forward and sit on one of the front rows while we stand and sing our invitation song.