Naaman Part 3

Naaman Part 3

Live at peace

2 Kings 5:15-19

Story 1

In college, when you live with roommates, you need some ground rules. Back when I was in college, all of our most important ones had to do with food!

If the food smelled bad making it, we made the person put it somewhere else.

If you made the dish dirty, you should wash it.

If you put it in the fridge or the kitchen cabinet, everyone can eat it.

If you bought it, you get to eat the last of it.

Living at peace with people isn't always easy. You have to make compromises and work together. It's especially hard when you're surrounded with people you don't know or who are different from you. Maybe they look different than you look. That's easy to overcome. You just have to be comfortable with each other. But what happens when you believe things that are entirely different from one another?

That's when things become hard.

Scripture

Today's lesson will help us see a little bit into what it might be like to live among people with whom we disagree.

Let me briefly recap the story of Naaman.

He was a general in the country just north of Israel. His army often came and raided Israel, stealing money, crops, and even people! One girl they stole forgave them and told Naaman how he could be healed from his leprosy. Naaman visited Elisha, who sent a messenger to tell the general to go wash in the muddy, grimy, Jordan River. At first, he refused, but then agreed and was healed of his leprosy! God did a miracle in the life of a man who had spent his entire life fighting God’s people. Now this is his reaction.

2 Kings 5:15a [CSB]

15 Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.

Application 1

Do you have friends who aren't Christians? It may be hard to interact with people who don’t believe like you do. You may be surrounded by other believers so much that it’s jarring to find yourself around someone who doesn’t believe in God. On the other hand, you might be around so many people who don’t believe in God that it feels like no big deal.

Either way, this was a big moment for Naaman.

Like we said, he had been an enemy of God his whole life. Not just because he was born in a country that was at war with God, but because we’re all enemies of God from the start. We all have sin in our hearts. We are all enemies of God. Believing in Jesus changes that. We go from enemy to friend, death to life, sick to healed.

Just like Naaman.

His declaration was not a small thing. He said that, even though he was raised to believed in many gods and an entirely different religion, he was now putting himself with God. He believed that, not only was God on the same level as the gods he worshipped, but that God is the only God ever!

He must have prayed to his gods to heal him. He must have made sacrifices and gone through ritual cleansings and done all sorts of things in order to free himself of his leprosy. None of them worked. What did work was faith in the one God who asked him to jump in a river. It had much less to do with a river, and everything to do with faith.

Now Naaman was a believer.

Think about what this would mean!

He was about to walk back into a pagan culture, where NO ONE believes in God except for the slaves that were brought out of Israel. But Naaman didn’t care. He was healed! No leprosy! He would have done anything to be healed from this disease. Do you wonder what he would want to do to show his thanks?

Let’s see.

2 Kings 5:15b-16 [CSB]

So please accept a gift from your servant.”

16 The prophet answered, “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.

Story 2

My kids are beginning to get invited to birthday parties. It’s a lot of fun, though it can be a little chaotic. We’ve been to Chuck E Cheese’s, some trampoline parks, and tons of parks and houses. And not once has anyone ever tried to pay us for the birthday gift we gave to their kid!

How strange would that be! You show up to someone's birthday party with a present and they ask you how much it is and take out their wallet or purse!

You probably never thought to pay someone for a gift. Why? Because it was a gift! It’s supposed to be free!

On the same level, you don't’ give someone a present and then say, “Alright, that cost $19.99 plus tax. Pay up!”

If you do, it’s no longer a gift at all!

Application 2

Naaman’s healing was a gift. So, he couldn’t pay for it. Elisha refused to allow him to pay. It’s the same for our salvation. It’s a gift from God. We don’t pay Him for it. He already paid the price when Jesus went to the cross.

Salvation is a gift. We could NEVER pay for it! We receive it due to God's grace! We can’t live a perfect life, so we can’t be a perfect enough sacrifice. We can’t take on our eternal punishment and come out on the other side. Only Jesus can! That’s why salvation is a gift. It’s not just that we shouldn’t pay for it. We can’t!

Naaman tried to pay, and Elisha refused. But then Naaman has a request that may seem a little weird to us.

2 Kings 5:17 [CSB]

“If you will not,” said Naaman, “please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the Lord.

Was Naaman asking for dirt because he wanted a memory of this time? No, not really.

Him asking for dirt goes back to some old beliefs. Naaman believed, like many around him, that gods inhabited the lands they blessed. Therefore, if God was the God of Israel, Naaman wanted to take back some Israel with him.

He would likely make this dirt into a place in his quarters where he could pray and worship. This was a way for him to say that he not only wanted to continue to believe in God, but to worship Him. He wasn’t going to go through this wild experience and not be changed. He was going to change his life in big ways.

But, like we said, he was going back into a culture that did not believe in God. And he was the servant of the KING of a nation who didn’t believe in God.

Uh…

That was going to cause some problems. Naaman brought them up here:

2 Kings 5:18 [CSB]

But may the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I have to bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this.”

Story 3

In college, I took a trip to Turkey. It was the first time I was in a culture that did not believe in the God that I do. It was strange. At certain times in the day, the Muslim call to prayer would ring out. I expected people to stop wherever they were and bow down to pray. It was strange. They didn’t. They kept on about their work.

They were “Muslim” like many Americans say they are “Christian”: culturally, not actually. Still, it was odd to be there.

Application 3

Naaman was in the opposite world. He was currently in a culture where everyone believed in the God he now believed in, but he was going back to a place where he would be in the minority. And, as the King’s right-hand man, he would have to go into the temple of Rimmon and worship him. Rimmon was a god of thunder and weather. He would have been extremely important to a culture that depended on crops and livestock to survive.

Naaman said he must ask for forgiveness of one thing: he was going to have to go into Rimmon’s temple and bow down beside the king. It was going to look like he was worshipping a false god.

What do you expect Elisha to say to Naaman? You’re going to be surprised.

2 Kings 5:19a [CSB]

“Go in peace,” Elisha said.

I’m still trying to work this one out. If it was me in Elisha’s position and I had to tell someone to either look like they were worshiping God or give up their job and life, I would feel like I should tell them to abandon the false god, other country, and everything.

What a crazy response!

“Go in peace.”

So often, peace is not what we think of when we think of other cultures butting up against each other. We think of arguments. We think of wars. We think of online social media blasting and angry rants. So, let’s ask this question: what do we gain by shouting at those who believe differently than we do? What benefit comes from angry tweets or ranting videos? So often when we shout and elevate the conversation, we don’t gain a listener, we gain an enemy.

If we made it our position to live at peace with those we don’t agree with, what could we accomplish? Now listen, by “living at peace” I’m not advocating that we believe like someone else does. Let me give you an example.

I’m a firm believer in Jesus and that’s not changing. But I have several friends who do not believe in Jesus, or any god at all. I have other friends who are practicing Wiccans, and still more who are Muslim, Buddhists, or pagan.

I don’t make any excuses for my faith when I’m with them. They know I’m a pastor and that only makes it awkward some of the time. At other times, we’re able to have civil conversations about our beliefs and live at peace with one another.

And they may not realize it, but I am slowly trying to convince them that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and that He can change their lives, if they only believe in Him.

Conclusion

First, this means that you are going to have to seek out people who do not believe like you do. That may be hard to do, depending on your life and your circumstances. But still, it’s worthwhile. It also means that you are going to have to REALLY know and understand what you believe, so you can clearly state it when needed.

But it means you’re going to talk to people you don’t agree with. You’re going to hang with people who are different from you. But you’re going to make a conscious effort not to shout at them. You aren’t going to preach. You’re going to talk. And you’re going to listen.

Living at peace means you recognize that the person sitting across from you is made in the image of God, even if they don’t recognize it themselves. Because they are made in God’s image, they are worthwhile. They are precious. We should treat them that way. Otherwise, we can’t live at peace with them. Otherwise we can’t make a difference in their lives.

Pray