Fighting Against Grace

Introduction

“Fighting Against Grace”

2 Kings 5:1-14

By Moses Flores

What is the most unbelievable thing that you have ever heard in your life? I tend to think that it involves the word “free” and its probably part of a scam. Scams are everywhere. Scams are nothing new either. In fact, the biggest and oldest scam, “you will be like God…” still resonates across history.

Unfortunately, we even have a hard time believing God when he offers his grace of salvation freely. This goes for believers and unbelievers. As believers, we always find a way to hear God saying, “If you do something for me, I will do something for you.” So as believers we can be fooled into thinking that God’s motto is “God helps those who help themselves,” and believers will get lost in a world of idolatry and dealing making with God. Unbelievers, on the other hand, do not believe in the free grace of God and figure that there is always something attached. Sometimes, like Naaman, they may want to come on their own terms and resist against grace. Like Naaman, we often fight against the grace of God. As we will see, Naaman uses the familiar weapons of anger, pride and fallen human reason.

As we see how God saved Naaman from not only his leprosy but his sinful pride, let’s focus on the desperationof Naaman’s skin problem, the confrontation of Naaman’s sin problem, and the humbling of Naaman.

The Desperation of Naaman’s Skin Problem

Our story begins by introducing Naaman, commander of the army of Syria. Right away, God’s people would be “booing” this man because he is an oppressor of God’s people. However, the reader is also told that it was “by him the LORD had given victory to Syria.” Just like in the time of the Judges, God will give his people over to oppressors when they do not live according to his will.

Among the Syrians, Naaman was “a great man with his master and in high favor…” Of course, this was because the Lord exalted him among his own nation. But make no mistake, his “greatness” is not because he is of superior character. Rather, he is a brutal military leader. 1 Kings 20:1-4 gives an idea of how Syria conquered their opponents. Essentially, he would gather all those nations he had under him already and go and “bully” another country to submit their resources including “your best wives and children…” It is under these terms that we read about how the events of verse 2 came about: “Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel…”

Let’s not mince words: Naaman is a warlord and human-trafficker. And he is a national hero for doing so! For Israel, he is the “boogie man” whom they fear coming into their towns to take their women and children. For Syria, his exploits were possibly legendary bringing the best of other nations to their own. “He was a mighty man of valor BUT he was a leper.”

There had to be a catch. The sharp contrast between the greatness of Naaman and his illness is correctly introduced with the conjunction “but,” which highlights the difference between his high rank and great reputation on the one hand and his having a disease. In Biblical law, a leper (which included a wide range of skin diseases all the way to the white, flaky-skin) had to be quarantined and isolated from society for the sake of the rest. In Syrian law, there does not seem to be any such laws as against the leprosy that Naaman had as he remained in command and held in high esteem still. However, the Biblical author contrasts his fame and exploits with his health to reveal to us that Naaman still lacked something. Naaman had power and prestige but he lacked health and maybe appearances to match his military prowess.

Perhaps someone here is like that: You have a lot going for you in one area of your life, but there is something about you that is your fatal flaw from considering yourself truly successful. Maybe you have money, but no love life. You have the dream job, but happiness eludes you. What does this make you desperate for? What are you willing to do for it?

Naaman believes that if he can just be healed from his skin disease then he will be complete. Somebody here believes that too. In fact, most of here believe that we are missing something in our lives that will make us “complete.” Whatever that thing is, if it is not God on his terms and according to his word, it is an idol.

An idol is anything that we place our trust in to make us happy, to make us whole, to complete us; it is often revealed in what we will give our time and our money to without question. It can also be revealed in the things that make us angry that we do not get. It can be something like power and control. It can be approval or fear of rejection. It is whatever thing that your heart desires the most that is not God.

Naaman, is an idolater but that is not a problem for him. The problem he thinks he has in a skin problem and thats it. Naaman’s leprosy must not have been severe enough to isolate him but it was enough of a bother to him that when he was told that he could be healed he did not hesitate to make his request known to the king and spare no expense for a chance at treatment. In fact, he became desperate for healing!

Who told him that he could be cured? This is interesting: it was a little girl who was ripped apart from her family. This little girl is a reminder that God can use anyone to bring people to himself with even a simple suggestion of where to go and hear the word of God. A simple “come to church with me” can be used by God!

Naaman is convinced immediately and goes to the king to tell him what he has just discovered. The person who is desperate for what they want wastes no time. The king wastes no time either and says, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel” (v4). Naaman spares no expense for what he thinks this healing is going to cost him. He takes ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten changes of clothing. He arrives in Israel, probably unannounced and submits the letter to the king: “Hey, cure my guy from his leprosy. Thanks. Sincerely, Ben Hadad.” Naaman is a desperate! He is willing to believe that the God of the lands that he regularly loots and pillages from is able to heal him! That’s how desperate he is to deal with his skin problem.

The reaction of the king of Israel is that he thinks Syria is seeking provocation to war. Israel and Syria must have been having some sort of peace between them but only as that between a servant and a master. The king does not believe a cure is possible which is why he believes this must be a provocation to war (v7). The king of Israel is an idolater who does not believe that God can cure Naaman. We read in verse 8 that Elisha had to hear it from the grapevine about the king’s reaction and what provoked it.

Elisha sends word to the king essentially saying, “Look, I know you don’t believe in this stuff, but send him to me that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel…” Israel, in their idolatry, had stopped believing that the LORD was the one true God and began worshiping golden calves. Elisha asks for the Naaman to be sent to him in order to indict the unbelief of all Israel in their idolatry. Jesus makes the point, in Luke 4:27 that there were many lepers in Israel but only Naaman the Syrian was healed because of his faith. This is to say too that Naaman was the only one desperate enough to go to a prophet of God in order to be healed, being that God’s people would not even listen to Elijah or Elisha! Naaman is desperate to be rid of his skin problem.

Confronting Naaman’s Sin Problem

So Naaman is invited to the house of Elisha where he is greeted by a messenger with a simple message: “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” The words are simple enough to understand but there is something embedded in them that strikes Naaman, who becomes angry.

Something interesting in the instructions to “wash…and be clean” is that the word used for “clean” here is a Hebrew word that is used to mean ritually clean. Naaman was being told, in a way, that he was unfit with his money and power and prestige to receive the healing he was looking for. He did not just need another bath, rather he needed to be spiritually cleansed in order to receive what he was looking for. Naaman has never been confronted as “unclean” before perhaps, especially since he was a warlord. Naaman’s real problem is not a skin problem, it’s a sin problem.

Like Naaman, we often misdiagnose our problems as well. We only see the surface. We see the “skin” problem and forget that there is an underlying spiritual problem that prevents us from being healed as well. Like Naaman, we hate it when people confront our own sin call out our need to “wash and be clean.” The point I want to get across is that the beginning of our restoration and ultimate healing always involves confronting a deeper sin problem that we all have: namely, that we are all worshiping something else besides God. Whatever that thing is, it is keeping you from obeying God and submitting to him and the cleansing power that he alone has.

Naaman fights the grace of God with three choice weapons: anger, pride and his own reason. Let’s examine Naaman’s fight against the free grace of God.

The text says very plainly in verse 11, “But Naaman was angry.” He was angry at the greeting his received and did not receive. Listen to his own words: “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper..” Naaman is angry at the offense of the simplicity of the instruction to wash in the Jordan. He is angry at the location and means that God requires.

Anger is a visible sin when it happens. Anger is hard to hide. Anger is a strong feeling of displeasure aroused by a wrong, whether real or perceived. That is, we can make up what we want to be angry about. Usually, it revolves around something we perceive is important. It really could be but it might also have a false importance. In this case, Naaman is angry about how he was not greeted by the person who could heal him. Anger is Naaman’s visible way of fighting against the grace of God.

But some sins are not so visible and remain undetected. Naaman is also a prideful man. Pride is one of those sins that no one sees in themselves but others see it a mile away. Why? Because to be prideful is to lift one’s self up. The Hebrew words used to mean pride always connote a sense of “height.” The opposite of pride in many places in Scripture is to be “brought low.” To be prideful is to think of one’s self more highly than you ought and that you are. It is an inordinate level of self-esteem to use modern language. It is an unhealthy view of one’s own self, abilities or possession. Naaman’s anger and pride work together to fuel each other. That is how it works with us as well.

As believers, when we do not get something from God that we think we deserve, we become angry at God. Which comes first? The pride or the anger? The answer is: yes! We get angry when someone or something does not reflect back to us the identity that we perceive we have. Naaman’s pride set up the false expectation of his reception. What he thought about himself lifted him up and the anger is the result of unmet mutual expectation. The anger then continues to fuel the pride once he verbalizes to his servants what he expected and possibly has now doubled down into a demand which turns into a “rage” by verse 12.

Lastly, Naaman begins to reason from unbelief and his own expectations of how his healing should have come about: He says “I thought…” What do you think God should do for you and how he should do it? Naaman thought Elisha should have come out with a show and “wave hands” all over the place. Naaman thought that other waters were better than the Jordan. Maybe they were, but the clarity or quality of the water was not what was in Naaman’s way anymore. Naaman was using his pride and anger to justify why he should not submit to God’s way through the words of the prophet.

Like Naaman, many of us use our reasoning skills from a basis of pride and anger to justify why we won’t obey God. “No, I will not stop sleeping with this person because….” and we make up some dumb excuse to keep sinning. “Look, isn’t there some other way that I can be happy without God?” and we reason that way to justify our unbelief.

Anger, pride and a sinful use of reason are the deeper sins underneath the skin of Naaman. When Naaman is confronted with the simple command of the Word of God – go and bathe in the Jordan – he explodes and they all come to the surface. Naaman the Syrian general and leper, is also Naaman the sinner.

What about you? What sin does the word of God confront you with that you try to reason your way to why you will not obey God? What do you get angry about that God does not give you or ask you to submit to his will but you think there is a better way? How do you view yourself in relation to God and to others? Does pride get in the way of listening to God through the Bible or through the words of others? The word of God confronts Naaman to change his mind about all that he thinks he knows and to submit himself to the word of God and he does not like it! Confronting sin leads to a fight with grace for Naaman.

The Restoration of Naaman

Naaman almost thinks he “wins” that argument, but Naaman still has a skin problem that all the anger, pride and reasoning in the world will not heal. Let’s face it, if Naaman had remained angry and prideful, he would have reasoned why its better to remain a leper! Sin has made Naaman irrational! He is caught up in winning a debate and missing his healing. His anger and pride were blinding him to what was available and sending him down a spiral of unbelief.

God’s grace does not quit. Naaman’s servants begin to reason with Naaman repeating back the words of the prophet, the word of God, to him. They basically told him, “Look, it’s a simple command. What do you have to lose?” But Naaman now knows he has to drop his anger, kill his pride (especially after the little outburst he just had in front of everyone!), and acknowledge that he does not really know about which waters are better. Essentially, he has to change his mind and believe the word of the LORD through the prophet.

Verse 14: “So he went down….” Now that is significant already because the prideful Naaman, the lifted up one, has to go down. “He went down and dipped himself seven times according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”

When Naaman stopped fighting the grace of God that was freely offered to him, he received what he really needed which was much more than healing a skin problem; he also dealt with a sin problem. Naaman came for one thing but he left with so much more! Naaman came for physical healing but was also granted spiritual healing as well.

When we stop fighting the grace of God, we too will find what we are really needing. God wants to restore people who were created in his image to what they were intended to be. But he does not do it apart from confronting us with our sin problem. We all have many “skin” problems; we want more money, better health or looks, a better love life, a better job, better circumstances, etc… but in God’s grace, he confronts the root problem of our idolatry and invites us to worship him alone to find true satisfaction. The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks us, “What is the chief end of man?” and the answer is rightly stated, “To glorify God and ENJOY HIM forever.”

When God shows us our sins, he also shows us the Jordan that we are to go to. What do I mean by this? There was nothing special about the waters of the Jordan. Many people, including lepers, had bathed there but were never healed. What the word of God with the waters of the Jordan was pointing to was ultimately to a person, to Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God who obeyed God perfectly all the way to death on a cross. Why? Isaiah 53:5 says that he was wounded for OUR transgressions and that by His wounds were are healed. Don’t you see? On the cross Jesus Christ was taking upon himself all the sin of Naaman and his people so that he could kill sin in his own death and by taking our diseases and infirmities upon himself, he was making a way to restore those who have faith in him to perfect and glorified bodies that Naaman could only dream of at this point! Naaman’s healing was free to him but it cost Jesus Christ a perfectly obedient life and death on a cross. When you see that, and to the degree that you see that, your heart of unbelief will melt and give way to obedience.

The grace of God is not a scam. Elisha did not require that Naaman become a better person in order to receive his healing. He did not even require payment afterwards if you keep reading the story! It was free with no strings attached! Naaman had a hard time believing grace was free and believed his healing required a large payment for a large ritual. And he fought against grace when he did not get what he expected. God’s grace in salvation is freely given because Jesus is the one who paid the price.

We may not see our surface issues go away in this life, but the deeper restoration that even Naaman is still waiting for is waiting for us as well when we stop fighting the grace of God and submit to faith in Jesus. When we stop fighting God’s grace, the restoration of our soul will yield a transformed life all the way to a new and glorified body promised by God. When we stop fighting grace, we will become a transformed people just like Naaman was transformed in both body and soul.

With no strings attached, repent and believe in the good news of Jesus Christ. Lay down whatever weapons you fight against God’s grace be they anger, pride or your own reasoning. Restoration awaits all who believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen.