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Introduction
The Point: Be loyal to the LORD.
What do you think of when you hear the word “Loyalty”?
<pause for answers>
One of the most common images of loyalty are dogs.
They look to their master for food, for approval, for direction and for companionship.
Their identity is intrinsically tied up in their master.
When they are separated, the dog’s world is not quite right.
They long to be where their master is, even if just to sit at their feet.
When they receive their master’s wrath, they reform their behavior to avoid the displeasure.
I have a dog myself.
He is a border collie, and the sweetest dog you ever met.
When I’m outside with him, he follows me around, and frequently looks over to me to check what I’m doing and align himself with me.
When I go inside, he will set himself up against the closest door to where I am in the house, waiting for the moment I go outside again.
When I am watching, he will try to show-off by playing tug of war or herding chickens or chasing a ball.
He is faithful.
Despite the other people around who tell him what to do, or feed him, he looks to me and ignores them when I’m around.
He listens when I tell him to do the seemingly insignificant things, come, or sit or “get-out-of-t!”.
This picture reminds me of the Loyalty that we ought to have towards God.
Sure, its not flattering to think about ourselves as dogs, but it’s an excellent idea of how we act in relation to our Master, our Boss - the LORD God.
The Bible uses the idea of loyalty all over the place: it is the theme across vast swathes of Old Testament.
Our passage today is like many others where God’s people are presented with two options, two ways to live, two paths in life:
It’s either
Faithfulness or Unfaithfulness.
serve the True God or serve Idols.
Obedience or Disobedience.
Life or Death.
Listen or Ignore.
Loyalty or Disloyalty.
As we make our way through the passage, 2 Kings 5 will shows us how peoples actions reveal their true loyalties.
It shows us how loyalties affect the world around us.
This passage is a challenge to think about our own loyalties, and if our own lives reveal loyalty to Jesus or otherwise.
We will break it down into five sections and walk though it:
next slide
Loyalty in Oppression (v1-5)
Loyalty Lacking (v6-7)
Loyalty through Humility (v8-14)
Loyalty Confirmed (v15-19)
Disloyalty leads to Deprivation (v20-27)
1. Loyalty in Oppression
v1-5
Show Map
So where are we starting?
We’re dropping into Old Testament Palestine.
It’s around 800 BC, and the Kingdom of Israel that existed under King David and Solomon is divided in two.
The northern half, with its capital in Samaria is called Israel (confusing, I know), and the southern half is Judah, with its capital Jerusalem.
As per usual, they are being pushed on all sides by other nations of different ethnic, religious and political backgrounds.
Usually Israel or Judah is at war with at least one of these nations, and in this case it’s Syria to the north.
It’s supposed to be that the people of Israel & Judah are distinct from the other nations, following after their God Yahweh, living differently than all the pagan nations around them.
They’re meant to be the Good Guys, who the other nations want to be like.
They’re meant to be living by the laws and morals and attitudes of life that God gave them.
Unfortunately, the Good Guys have become just like the rest of the nations.
The people of Israel generally weren’t living lives loyal to the LORD, instead wanting to be like everybody else.
They wanted other gods, and exotic foreign women, or and political allies and not to have to give their wealth to the poor and not to worry about orienting their lives toward God.
They wanted good stuff from God but when it suited them they ditched him in a heartbeat.
Things are broken in the Promised Land.
But there’s still some hope.
God is still sending Prophet’s to Israel, with promises of blessing if they would only turn to the Lord and serve him and no-one else.
In comes this fella called Namaan.
He’s a commander, or a general we would say, of the Syrian army.
Probably second in command to the King of Syria!
The guy has an impressive resume, including some wins against Israel (by God’s permission).
By all accounts he’s a successful and competent man.
He had everything going for him, except...
He had a skin disease.
It was, it probably wasn’t nice to live with, and it probably carried a stigma in society.
It could have been viewed as a curse from the gods, or as a result of some moral failure.
Essentially, as long as Namaan had the disease he would be ritually impure, and viewed as broken.
In the ANE culturally people valued life in bodily wholeness, so disability, disease and sickness were seen as weaknesses, impurity and associated with death.
You see that when you read through Leviticus and you come across heaps of weird laws that don’t seem to make sense to the modern mind.
Why do bodily discharges make you ritually unclean in Leviticus?
Because it is associated with death, and YHWH is the God of life.
Same goes for skin diseases.
Those who were diseased in Israel we separated from the people in general, and had no hope of coming before the Lord in worship until they were healed and cleansed.
Viewed from an Israelite perspective, the worst case, furthest from God type people are
ethnically different,
religiously different,
state enemies
with leprosy.
If you tick all those boxes in Israel you are the furthest from God that you can get!
So, here’s Namaan, a Syrian career-military guy who has a skin disease.
And, through God’s providence, he has an Israelite slave that he kidnapped during one of his raids against Israel.
This young girl, stolen from her home and family, was put to work in the enemy household and would have every reason to be bitter and angry.
You would expect her to heap curses on the head of her master and mistress, but she doesn’t.
Instead, when she hears about the issues he master has, she tells them of a mighty prophet of God in her home country that could help.
She holds out hope that her oppressor could find healing.
You can see it in v3!
The maid holds out hope of healing!
Imagine that!
There is a possibility he could be healed!
Isn’t it interesting that this enslaved little girl, still holds onto the God of Israel and his prophet despite her situation.
She knows that the LORD works through that prophet doing miracles.
Who knows how much faith she has, but she knows God works through his prophet.
The slave girl certainly puts high stock in the God’s prophet, a man loyal to the LORD.
So much so, that her advice is enough for Namaan to make arrangements to go investigate this prophet.
He trots off to put in for health leave, by getting permission from his boss.
This little slave girl, speaks of the power of God’s representative here on earth, and puts Namaan on a path to an encounter with the LORD.
She’s an inspiration to us!
This girl, enslaved maid in a foreign land, one of the lowest in her society is able to affect the spiritual destiny of this powerful man.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like I’ll never do anything of significance for God, yet here we have this reminder that low status and dark circumstances don’t stop God from working though us.
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