Naaman Part 1

Naaman Part 1

Kill Your Pride

2 Kings 5:1-6

Intro

What comes to mind when you think of the word "pride"?

Maybe you think of someone who is only thinking about themselves. They only want to talk about how great they are and how they did on this test or that sporting event or this video game. They only have themselves in mind.

Maybe you think of being proud of your work, so pride in a positive way. You think of working hard and earning what you've worked hard to achieve.

Pride can also mean that you think highly of yourself, so much so that you often think of others as less deserving of you, or of your time.

Think of it as thinking, "Well, at least I'VE never been to prison," or, "I've never gotten anyone pregnant!"

You get the point.

Scripture

We're going to look at two people in the Old Testament book of 2 Kings today who had pride. One put their pride on display, the other put their pride down.

2 Kings 5:1 [CSB]

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, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Application 1

The nation of Israel was no longer one, but two. Mostly evil kings ruled in Israel, while mostly good ruled in Judah. We're told that, in an odd occurrence, God hadn't given victory to the Israelites, His people, but instead He had given victory the pagan nation of Aram, which was just to the north of Israel.

To our minds, God doesn't make sense sometimes. Until He does.

There was a general in Aram who was famous. He was a great soldier, a master commander, and well thought of; not only by the people, but by the king himself.

All this, we're told, is because God had given victory to him.

Ask: What is something God has given to you?

You may be a great writer. You may be an excellent athlete. You might be a whiz at math. Whatever the skill or ability, all of those things come from God. We recognize that here with Naaman.

Story 1

Story of me taking pride in my guitar abilities

Application 2

He was a great general, but not because he was a great general. He was great because God had given him the gifts, talents, and abilities to be great!

God has given you something to be great at, by the way. You just have to find it.

Now we're told everything wasn’t great for Naaman. He had leprosy.

This is a skin disease that is still around today, but not nearly as much. It affects the skin in such a way that you don't feel pain. That may sound cool, especially for a general, but think of it this way: you have pain as a sign of something wrong. Your hand hurts when you touch a hot pan, so you pull it away. Your fingernail hurts when it gets infected, so you go to the doctor.

Someone with leprosy doesn't have that pain, so after repeated injuries, they may lose their fingers, toes, nose, and ears.

Naaman may have been a great general who was given victory by God, but he was sick. That sickness, as we'll see, extends beyond the skin. He was sick in his heart too.

2 Kings 5:2 [CSB]

Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife.

It's easy to hold a grudge against someone who has mistreated you. I didn't say holding a grudge was right though. You can imagine what must be going through this young girl's mind.

She was separated from her family and her homeland. In ancient times, you hardly ever moved, let alone went very far when you did. This girl was probably away from home for the very first time, it was not a short trip, and it was as a slave. Also, if she alone was taken captive, what had become of her family? Did Naaman and his raiders kill them? Were they also taken captive but taken somewhere else?

Whatever the case may be, surely this girl had a right to be upset! Surely, no one would blame her if she held a grudge against the man who kidnapped her, took her away from her family and her home, and made her a servant in the home of an enemy general.

But this girl did not hold a grudge!

2 Kings 5:3 [CSB]

She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

A couple quick things to unpack here: the prophet to the nation of Israel was living in Samaria. That might sound odd but remember this is Old Testament Israel. The Samaritans were people who weren't thought highly of in the New Testament, but right now was not a thing.

Secondly, oh my goodness!

This young girl, who was kidnaped, enslaved, and separated from her home and family just told her mistress, aka, the wife of Naaman, "I know exactly how your husband can be healed. Your husband: the same guy who sent out the raiders to my home and brought me back here."

You would think that someone would have told this girl what she SHOULD have done was to hold a grudge and to hope Naaman's skin rotted off his body so that he would DIE.

But this girl didn’t do that. Instead, she laid down her pride, and forgave Naaman by offering him a chance to be healed by God.

It's hard to forgive someone, especially when they've wronged you! Pride says that you deserve to be mad, to hope that they will be sorry and suffer for what they did to you, That usually makes us feel good, right? We want them to feel like they are in the wrong.

But forgiveness?

Real forgiveness is hard. I love this from Ken Sande in the book Peacemaking for Families:

“Real forgiveness is four things:

You'll never bring it up to hurt them again

You won't think about the wrong did to you

You won't talk about it to others

You won't let the wrong hurt your relationship.”

Can you imagine what it took for this girl to forgive Naaman?

"I forgive you. I won't bring up that you probably killed my family and kidnapped me, and I won't talk badly about it when others ask how I ended up as your wife's servant AND I won't think about this every waking minute for the rest of my life."

Yeah. Not Easy.

Forgiving someone isn't the easy path. It's hard. But that's why God wants us to do it. Because it is exactly what He's done for us. He's forgiven us of our sin through Jesus.

God doesn't bring up our past sins to haunt us.

He doesn't dwell on them; He's removed them.

He doesn't tell others what we've done.

And He doesn't let our past sins come in between us and our relationship with Him!

Praise God for that!

2 Kings 5:4-5 [CSB]

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 will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing.

This is roughly 75 pounds of silver and 131 pounds of gold.

The silver would be worth $190,000 in today's dollars. The gold? It would be worth 2.8 MILLION dollars today.

Naaman is loaded up.

Oh, and he also has clothes.

Weird, but all right. Actually, the clothes were just as lavish as the money, though you couldn't buy as much with clothes. Mostly, in ancient times, you had one set of clothes. You put on an extra piece for during the day and took it off to sleep at night. The rich would have TWO sets of clothes.

The ultra rich? Ten will do. One for each day of the week PLUS three for special holidays.

All of this makes me think of two things:

1. The King of Aram loved his general and desperately wanted him to be healed. He showed this by giving him the letter and the treasure. If the king didn't give him the money especially for this purpose, he certainly gave it to him for being his general. This king loves his general.

2. Naaman was willing to pay a ton for his healing.

Ask: So, what does forgiveness cost?

It costs more than any money in the world can buy. In essence, it costs you your pride. It cost God His. He was exalted on a throne, praised for all eternity by angels that would scare us beyond words.

But He made Himself low: a human. Jesus became poor when he owned everything in the universe. It cost Him His life.

Why should we complain about what forgiveness may cost?

2 Kings 5:6 [CSB]

The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”

Ask: What can forgiveness do for you?

We often think forgiveness is something we do for someone else. The reality is that forgiveness can also do a lot for us!

Forgiveness can restore a broken relationship.

Forgiveness can lift the burden of bitterness off our shoulders.

Ultimately, forgiveness makes us right with God.

But we have to first put down our pride.

Conclusion

Put your pride away and forgive.

Is there is a person who you're holding a grudge against? Someone who mistreated you, or left you out, or has been bullying you, or someone who you have history with that's not good?

Is it time to forgive them and move on?

Take a moment right now and think about what you need to do. If this little girl could forgive Naaman, and God could forgive us, shouldn't you forgive the person you're thinking of right now?

You may object and say, "You don't know what they did." You're right. I don't. But they do, you do, and God does. That's all who need to know. If your heart isn't ready to forgive that person yet, maybe that's where you need to start: ask God to make your heart more willing to forgive that person.

If you are ready, maybe after this lesson is over you should go find them. Tell them you forgive them. Tell them you won't let what happened end your relationship, that you won't think about it, that you won't bring it up to hurt them, and that you won't talk about it to others.

Put away your pride today.

Let's forgive.

Pray