Well, hey everyone, welcome to Harbor West.
Good to see you all today.
If you have a Bible, you can grab it now.
Turn to 2 Kings chapter 5 if you're using one of those Bibles under the chairs in front of you, 2 Kings 5.
Will be around page 3. My
name is Justin. I'm
one of the pastors here of our church. And I just
want to welcome you in and welcome you to July 13th. This is July
13th, and you know what that means.
165 days till Christmas.
Yeah, you guys track anybody else tracking it that closely?
165 days, that's all we are out, which means we're like three weeks out from seeing decorations for sale in Costco, right?
Like it's just.
It's right around the corner.
And I don't know if you're like me.
When I was growing up, a staple in my family that we would watch every December was Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase.
Anybody else watched that one?
It was that one that everybody uh it kind kinda got its cycle in a lot of people's homes. And
uh my favorite scene in that, even if you haven't seen the movie, you probably know the Chevy Chase house when when he as the dad went out and
He put out 25,000 Christmas lights on his house.
All right, at least that's what he said.
That's what he says in the movie.
25,000 twinkling lights.
And so one night he brings the whole family out onto the lawn.
For the grand lighting, like the unveiling of their house.
And so he gets everyone out, they're freezing, all the grandparents are complaining, the kids are all upset.
But he's out there and he's full of joy, and the wife's kind of putting up with him, you know.
And so he's out there and he goes to light it.
He has the son do the drum roll.
He sings joy to the world and brings the plugs together to light it.
And what happens?
Nothing.
Nothing happens.
And so he tries to do a couple things, and everybody goes in the house, and he's out there dejected.
And so what he does over the next couple days is goes out and checks all.
25,000 lights.
Now, if that's me, if that's me, Justin White, doing that exact same thing, I would just say, This is it.
We're not getting lights this year.
Like, tough.
Like, I don't know.
I did what I, you know, we're not doing this.
But he goes out and checks.
Every single light, and so he brings everybody back out again.
Says, I think I got it, plugs it in, nothing.
Keeps trying for this great thing to happen.
Nothing happens.
Then if you've seen it, you know the wife figures out all that needed to happen was in the garage, one light switch needed to be flipped on.
That's all that was needed.
Just that one little switch flipped.
And that's kind of like our story today.
We're going see in our text today, there's a guy named Naaman who wants God to do something incredible in his life.
And he's going to try to do it the hard way.
When all it really took
Was a simple act of obedience.
And so here's what I believe: I believe that God can absolutely show up in our service today and in your life today and do an absolutely incredible.
Work.
And a lot of times we think that for God to show up and do an incredible work, it's going to take this kind of fireworks show, or going to take this crazy big sacrifice, or God only does incredible work when
when we're at a baptism or something like that, but God does incredible work in our lives through very simple acts of obedience.
And so I'm going to pray.
I going to ask you to join me in prayer that God would show up today in our service through this text, do incredible work in our lives.
And flip some switches on for some of us.
So let's pray and see how God did it for Naaman.
And so, God, we pray that you would have your way through this text, through your word, in our lives, in this church.
We know that you are the God of miracles, and that you can work some of those miracles this morning.
And so we pray.
That you would lead us to truth, guide us in your way, that your spirit would work in power through your word this morning.
We pray it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Let's look at verse 1 of 2 Kings 5.
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a man important to his master and highly regarded because through him
the Lord had given victory to Aaram.
The man was a valiant warrior, but he had a skin disease.
Naaman's name comes from the Hebrew word that hints that he was a handsome dude, and so he's a successful military commander for Syria, whose army God used to have victory over Israel, right?
A successful.
handsome, valiant warrior, but he has leprosy, which is the most feared disease in the world at this time.
If you had leprosy, you'd get a rash all over your body.
Your nerve endings would begin to die.
Boil would form on your skin and leave gaping wounds all over your body. And
parts of your body would actually start.
To fall off.
The leprosy would leave your face mangled and deformed, and it was believed to be highly contagious with no cure at all.
So if you got.
Lep. You would go
through all of these stages of it until you die, and you would do it alone, isolated from your friends and family. And so,
for Naaman, this is the worst news.
This someone could possibly get in life Here's a guy who had about as much going for him as someone possibly could he had success Status looks wealth family influence.
He had it all
If anyone had reason to believe that they had made it in life, it's Naam. And
man, we can definitely get into that space where we deceive ourselves and we believe that we're okay.
That life is just kind of humming along and it's going okay, and there's no real major problem or drama or chaos. And
we're like, okay, I think I'm good. I
think I've made it.
Maybe we think we have life figured out and we're immune to difficulty and chaos, but Naam's story shows us all this. We
all need healing.
We all need healing.
That's what we see in this story here.
Because we all know this.
We all know that we have a deep need that can't be met by anything we found in this world.
A lot of times we just ignore that or we put band-aids on it until it gets too bad that we can't ignore it anymore.
But we all know that the success, the status, the looks, the wealth, all of it is going to run out.
We all know that eventually, eventually, we'll all die.
We've all got a kind of leprosy.
A disease that's put us on a path that is heading toward death.
And man, that is not the way it should be.
That's not the way God created us.
We have a sickness of our own making.
We've rejected God and we've decided to live in God's world our own way.
We've taken the beauty of creation and marred it with sin, death, and brokenness.
And man, maybe you're here today and you've just kind of resigned yourself to it.
You think, well, this is just the way it is.
Everyone dies, and I'm going to die, and that's just part of it.
But even if you've resigned yourself to that reality, no one wants that.
None of us want that.
We all want life and life to the fullest.
We all want joy and peace and health.
And we all want it, but we know that nothing in this world can give us what we want.
C.
S.
Lewis said it this way.
He says, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
We all have this desire of a life that's full of meaning and full of joy and full of health and goodness and peace.
And in this sickness of sin and brokenness and failure, we know that nothing in this world is giving us what we want.
We are all sick and need healing.
And so Naaman knows it, man.
He knows he needs healing, but he hasn't resigned himself to it.
He's not just sitting back and saying, okay, well, this is just the worst thing that could happen, and I guess I'm just going to live as long as I can and be as comfortable as possible.
No, he's going to go after the healing.
The question is, what about you?
Are you going to go after the healing?
Are you going to go after the life and peace and joy?
Let's see how Naaman went after it.
Look at verse 2.
Aaron had gone on raids and brought back from the land of Israel a young girl who served Naaman's wife.
She said to her mistress, If only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his skin disease.
So Naam went and told his master what the girl from the land of Israel had said. Therefore
the king of Aram said, Go, and I will send a letter with you to the king of Israel.
So Naaman went, and took with him seven hundred and fifty pounds of silver, one hundred and fifty pounds of gold, and ten sets of clothing.
He brought the letter to the king of Israel, and it read
When this letter comes to you, note that I have sent you my servant Naaman for you to cure him of his skin disease.
When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and asked, Am I God?
Killing and giving life that this man expects me to cure a man of his skin disease?
Recognize that he is only picking a fight with me.
And so, Naaman, instead of going to the prophet, he goes to the king.
And he gives the king this letter, and the king of Israel says, Oh man, this is no good.
This must be a political device.
This must be the king of Aram trying to pick a fight with me because he knows I'm just a man.
I can't heal anybody of leprosy.
And so he's going to know I can't heal them, and that's going to be a reason for them to attack us.
This is just a political strategy.
Is what the king thinks.
But Elijah, Elish hears it in verse 10. Elish
sent him a messenger and said, or sorry, verse 8.
When Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king.
Why have you torn your clothes?
Have him come to me, and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.
So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha's house.
Elish sees an opportunity for the most unlikely person to encounter God, and he takes it.
And so Naaman rolls up to Elish's hut. Elisha
probably lived in a very simple hut. And now the opposing
army general of the enemy rolls into Elish's neighborhood with basically like his tanks, his chariots.
Rolls up to Elish's hut, and so all of Elish's neighbors have got to be looking, being like, Oh man, there goes our guy Eli. He's
done for, he's toast.
But that's not why Naaman's coming, right?
Verse 10: Elisha sent him a messenger who said, Go wash seven times in the Jordan, and your skin will be restored, and you will be clean.
But Naaman got angry and left, saying, I was telling myself, he will surely come out, stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the skin disease.
Aren't Abana and Phar, the rivers of Damascus, better than the waters of Israel? Couldn
't I wash in them and be clean? And so he
turned and left in a rage.
See, man, Elish doesn't even get off his lazy boy. And,
you know, I'm sure that Naaman could even see him in there when he sends the messenger out. He's
like,
Elish's right there. Like,
I see him. Why
isn he coming out? And so
Naaman's just so mad. He's
in a rage. He's
mad for so many different reasons here.
He's upset because he thinks like Elish is brushing him off, disrespecting him, sending him to a muddy river.
For Naaman, this is not going as planned.
He had a vision for what his healing would look like.
He had his own set of kind of conditions for coming to God.
He said, okay, if I'm going to cross the border into Israel.
And if I'm going to go seek the God of Israel for healing, first, I'm going go to the king.
I'm not going to some lowly prophet.
But second, okay, I'm at the prophet's house.
I guess that's where the king sent me.
But he's got to come out and he's got to do some magic stuff to my liking that fits what I want to happen.
And so when none of that happens, Naam like, that's it. I
'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to go to this muddy out-of-no river. I've
got better rivers that I know of that should be able to cleanse me. So he storms
off in anger.
His vision for how the healing would happen is that he would do it in his way.
But this way seems weak, and so he's out.
Verse 13, though his servants seem to get it.
His servants approach him and said, My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?
How much more should you do it when he only tells you, wash and be clean?
Naam's servants understand. They
're like, man, if Elisha had told you to go climb Mount Everest, we'd be off right now to climb that mountain. But
he didn't tell you that.
He didn't tell you to do something that requires your strength or your money or your wisdom or your power.
He told you to do something that only requires your humility.
So, can you go do it?
See, that's the second key.
The second key, if we want to see God do something incredible in our lives, not only do we need healing.
But we've got to recognize that we can't heal ourselves.
We can't heal ourselves.
There's nothing at all that we can do to heal ourselves.
Naaman's a guy who's used to doing everything on his own, and he's trying to do it on his own here.
Instead of going to Elisha, he uses his status to go to the king of Israel.
Instead of coming in alone, he flexes his power by coming in with part of his army.
Instead of listening to the wisdom of Elish, he uses his own wisdom to decide that rivers in Syria are better.
Later, he's going to try to give Elish a ton of money, but Elish refuses it because Elisha wants to make it clear: your money can't heal you.
Naam's status, his power, his wisdom, his wealth, none of it can heal him. But
man, just like Naam, we try to use everything we have to find what we're truly looking for in life.
We use our money to buy houses and cars and boats and vacations.
We use our wisdom to plant ourselves firmly in our own beliefs about the
This world and about life, and about politics, and about everything else, and we say, I don't need anyone else's advice or anyone else's way, I've found the right way.
In my wisdom, we use our power to keep us confident when we're healthy, our status to convince us that we're in control, but all of it came up short.
For Naam, and all of it's going to come up short for us. Naaman
was using all that he had as this flimsy band-aid on his leprous wounds, but he couldn't cure his disease himself.
He had to come face to face with the truth that he couldn't heal himself, and so do we.
We have to face the reality.
We can't heal ourselves.
And if you just take those two truths, man, that puts us in the worst of situations to need healing, but to be unable to heal ourselves, that means we are totally dependent on someone else to come and heal us.
Well, Naam finally gets it, and so verse 14, he goes down and dips himself in the Jordan seven times, according to the command of the man of God.
Then his skin was restored, and became like the skin of a small boy, and he was clean.
Then Naaman and his whole company go back to the man of God, stood before him, and declared,
I know there's no God in the whole world except in Israel.
Therefore please accept a gift from your servant.
But Elish said, As the Lord lives, in whose presence I stand, I will not accept it. Naaman
urged him to accept it, but he refused.
The miraculous healing.
It took nothing short of an absolute miracle for Naaman to be healed, and he knows it because he doesn't praise the Jordan River.
He doesn't think something happened special from those waters.
He's not bottling the water to take it back to Syria to heal other people or telling people to come and go to that river.
He knows that this miracle came from the God of Israel.
I mean, he goes back and now he's meeting Elisha for the first time, but he doesn't even mention the leprosy, doesn't mention the healing.
Naam just wants to talk about God.
And that's the third key here.
The good news that God has shared with us all throughout the whole Bible, it's that he, God him, is our ultimate healer.
We need healing.
We can't heal ourselves, but God is our ultimate healer.
We can keep putting band-aids on our souls, weak band-aids that are going to fall apart, piling them up until we can't even tell what's wrong anymore, or we can experience a miraculous healing that only God can produce.
And that's something that anyone can experience today.
I mean, if we learn anything from the story of Naaman, it's that anyone can be healed by God.
Naam was as far of an outsider as you can be. He
's not part of the people of God. He
's not part of Israel. He
's an enemy general, an enemy valiant warrior who actually is fighting against God's people.
He's the most unlikely of people to experience God's healing, but God heals him.
God gives grace and mercy to Naaman, and God can give grace and mercy to any of us today.
We can experience a miraculous healing that only God can do in our lives and heal us of our deepest need.
When Naam comes back and is talking to Elish, he doesn't talk about the leprosy, man, because he's been healed of something deeper.
He has faith now.
He knows the truth now.
He knows that there is a God in Israel.
He has God now.
See, what we find is that our deepest need is actually to be healed from the wound we've created in our lives from not knowing God, not worship God, and rebelling against God's design for this world.
We've failed to live in God's world, God's way.
We're guilty of rebellion against Him.
We've run away from our Creator, and it's all left our souls deeply wound.
But we can be healed from that wound, healed from our past failures, healed from our guilt and shame and our sin.
We can be healed, restored, made whole, clean.
And that can happen to anyone today.
And so, listen, I believe you're here because of the fourth point of this story.
The fourth point of this story is this: God is pursuing you to heal you.
God is pursuing you.
See, a lot of times, maybe we think that, man, to come to God, we've got to unlock some sort of way to find him like he exists.
Way up at the peak of Mount Everest, and we've got to get there.
We've got to get there through holy living, we've got to get there through following a bunch of rules, we've got to get there through success or power or unlocking the perfect right doctrine.
We've got to pursue God in order to be healed.
That's kind of the default thinking we all have.
But what we see all over the Bible is this: God pursues us to heal us.
Naaman was saying, man, the Jordan River is not for me.
He was pursuing other ways to be healed in his wisdom.
Maybe that's been where you've been at for a while.
You're like, man, I'm glad that God is out there.
I'm glad that the church works for some people, but for me, I got to try some other things.
I'm going try some other rivers, some other ways to be healed.
And as you're pursuing other things, I want you to know this.
God is pursuing you.
He's pursuing Naaman in two really big ways.
First, he pursues Naaman through having Naaman feel his need for God.
For many of us, we're never going to come to the realization that we need God until our dependence on some of the earthly things that we trust in is removed.
So long as we feel like we can depend on our status or our wealth or our health and so long as we feel comfortable in relying on those things, we're never going to see our need for God and so we're never going to even care about what God says, even if He is pursuing it.
And so for Naaman, man, everything that he's trusted in has been taken away through this leprosy.
God is pursuing Naam through the leprosy, and Elish knew it.
Man, maybe God's pursuing you through some suffering and chaos in your life.
Maybe life has just been turned upside down and you're like, ah man, I been trying to go to a bunch of places to figure this out.
And maybe you wandered in here today just to say, like, man, I don't know.
Maybe God's out there.
Maybe I'll give God a try.
That's kind of what Naaman's doing.
I don't think Naaman has this deep faith or belief.
I think he just has this just barely 1% hope that God might show up and be real.
I don't even know if he has a
Faith when he goes to the Jordan River and dunks himself seven times, he's just like, okay, I'm just gonna go and try.
And maybe that's where you're at today.
You're like, okay, I'm gonna show up and I'm just gonna try.
But man, if you're here, even with that, that means God's been pursuing you.
That God is coming after you to heal you.
Another way that God pursued Naaman is through others.
I mean, think of all the other people that God is using in this story to pursue Naaman.
God's using his wife, the king of Aram, the king of Israel, letting him go see Elisha, Elish, Elish's servant, Naaman's servants. All of
these people are carrying Naaman to the place of healing. They're
pointing him.
Toward God.
And maybe God has some people in your life that have been pointing you toward God, encouraging you to go to church, encouraging you to read your Bible and learn more about Jesus.
But man, there's one person in this story who it all comes back to.
It all started in verse 2, when an unnamed servant girl.
Brought up that there's healing with God.
The wording tells us that she was between 12 and 14 years old, and the king of Aram had just turned her life upside down.
He went on a raid and likely killed her parents and took her as a slave.
She's a victim of human trafficking who's now forced to work in the home of the people who helped murder her family and yet amazingly, miraculously.
God has worked in her heart to forgive Naaman to such a degree that she wants the best for him.
Man, God is pursuing Naam through what seems like the weakest, most insignificant person possible. But
a person who loved him and who was risking her life for him.
And so look how Naaman responds in verse 17 to Elish. Naaman
responded, if not, if I can't give you this money to pay for the healing, he says, please let your servant be given as much soil as a pair of mules can carry.
For your servant will no longer offer a burnt offering or a sacrifice to any other God but the Lord.
However, in a particular matter may the Lord pardon your servant.
When my master, the king of Aram, goes into the temple of Rimmon to bow and worship, while he is leaning on my arm, and I have to bow in the temple of Rimmon, when I bow in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant in this matter.
So Elish said to him, Go in peace. Here
's what's happening. Naaman
asks for a bunch of dirt from Israel. He says,
Can I at least take a bunch of dirt back to Syria with me?
And supposedly, I mean, to spread that dirt out so that he could now worship God on dirt from Israel.
He could worship God on God's dirt.
And now, listen, that's weird.
There's nothing to that.
Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us to do that.
But Naam has been a Christian for about 10 minutes.
And so he's just like, this makes sense to me.
I think I need to do this.
All right?
And so he's, can I just take a bunch of dirt back?
And then he knows, he knows that once he goes back, that his king is going to ask him.
He's going to, Naam, I need your help to go worship.
In the temple of Rem. And
so Naaman's like, okay, I going to have to hold my elderly king up, my elderly boss. I
going to have to help him into the temple and help.
Him bow when he bows.
I'm gonna have to bow.
And he's basically telling Elish, I know that Remon's not God anymore. I
know that Remon is a false God and means nothing. But
so can the real God, can the God of Israel forgive me?
If I'm helping my k, and Elisha tells him, Go, be at peace.
You see, here's what Naaman realizes.
Naaman realizes life is going to look different now that he's been healed.
Life is going to change.
Things are going to change.
It's going to be slow and messy, but Naaman is ready to live in new health that God has miraculously given him.
And that's the last point here.
If you've been healed by God, you've been healed to li in new health. You
've been healed to live a new life.
Naaman knew there is no going back to the old way of life now.
God has healed me and I'm on a path to live healthy.
He's on a path of growing to understand and live out his new faith in God.
And so, man, if you're here today and you've been healed by Jesus, you are on that path also.
You get to live in new health with new faith.
Life will never be the same if you have Jesus.
The way 2 Corinthians 5 describes it, look at this.
It says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away, and see, the new has come.
You're a new creation.
That's who you are.
The new has come, new life, new health.
And maybe that terrifies you because you're like me and you're, man, I've killed every houseplant I've ever had.
That's what I've done.
And so you're, if God has given me new life, maybe I'm going to mess it up.
Maybe you feel like you've already messed it up.
But the truth we get from the Bible is this: you can't mess it up.
You can't mess it up because it is God who works in you both to will and work according to his good purpose, Philippians 2.
What that's saying is this, if God has healed you, he's now working in you to help you walk in new health
Someone who's been healed by God has come into your life to produce a new health in you that you and I couldn't produce on our own.
And so we're just going to start walking and living in new ways.
That's what Kelly Elms experienced.
Kelly's a covenant member at Harbor Church Waip, a church we helped plant a couple years ago. And God
healed her many years ago and put her on a path to display his glory.
In this world.
And so for Kelly, walking in newness of life meant that she could trust God whatever came into her life.
And so check out a little bit of Kelly's story.
My name is Kelly Elms.
And in 2010, I was living the dream.
I was playing softball at the University of Hawaii, and we were the best softball team in UH history.
We broke the home run record as a team.
We beat the number one team in the nation that ultimately got us to the Women's College World Series.
Personally, I did really well.
I hit 30 home runs that season, which was the most in the whole nation.
We actually got nominated for an S. It
was surreal. But
during all of that, I was starting to feel pain at the base of my throat.
Rainbow
Wah, All-American Softball player Kelly Major
Has cancer, had her thyroid removed back in July.
Papillary carcinoma on my thyroid gland.
I was confused.
Why, God.
Why was this happening?
What did I do wrong?
My now husband, Josh, and I were reading through John 9.
And in John 9, Jesus and his disciples walk past a man that was born.
Blind.
And his disciples ask him, who sinned, this man or his parents?
And Jesus answers, neither.
This happened so that the work of God would be displayed in his life.
And that
Ever really sticks with me. Maybe
this was happening because he was going to display his own power. I ended
up having a press conference to let everybody know my diagnosis. I was also
able.
To let everybody know that God was sustaining me.
The next day, on the front page of the sports section, is my picture next to the headline: God thinks I can handle it
This.
Right there in bold letters, God's name was glorified, and I got to be a part of that story.
And so, a lot of times in our life, we go through difficult things, difficult struggles, just like through my camp.
I've realized that God puts these trials in our life so that He may be glorified.
And it's not just physical healing.
God is the ultimate healer.
He heals us from pain.
From fear, from doubt, and now every part of my journey, I point back towards him.
Kelly's deepest healing happened before God healed her of the cancer.
God healed her completely, gave her new life in Jesus so that when the cancer came, she could trust him.
We don't need to wait for the tragedy to come in order to be healed.
You can come to God today, find the anchor in your life as the storms come, and trust him when they do.
And watch how he puts his glory on display through you.
If you need healing today, man, God is ready, able, and stoked.
To heal you.
Naaman's healing started with an insignificant servant girl who loved servant girl who loved him even though he wronged her.
But she told him where to find healing.
Our healing was accomplished through a seemingly insignificant Jewish carpenter who was actually God him on a rescue mission and loved us even though we wronged him.
And who accomplished our healing him. Isaiah
53:5 tells us this: that Jesus was pierced because of our rebellion.
crushed because of our iniquity's punishment for our peace was on him and we are healed by his wound
That's the simple switch right there.
If you want to experience healing, if you want to experience deep, true healing of your soul.
It doesn't come through anything you and I could do, anything we could seek out, anything we could accomplish.
It comes through trusting Jesus.
Jesus took the disease of our sin, our rebellion, our guilt, our shame, our failure.
He took it all on himself.
He loved you so much that he paid that price for you so that you could be healed today and forever.
And so, in a minute, man, if you've never experienced that healing in a minute, I'm just going to give you the space to talk to God and ask Him to be healed through Jesus.
But maybe you're here today and you've already experienced God heal you through Jesus, but you know you haven't been investing in living in new health
You've been trying to act like a leper instead of like a healed new creation.
And so, maybe today is part of God being faithful to his word in Philippians 2, where he says he's working in you to help you grow.
And so maybe today you just know, you know, it's a sin that God is calling you to fight with new passion.
Or maybe you know it's a commitment that God has been calling you to make, but you've been dragging your feet on.
Maybe it's a hard conversation in obedience to God's word, a hard conversation with someone that you've been putting off and saying, no, I don't think I need to do it yet.
Maybe it's obeying God in a way that you just know you need to.
I'm going to pray for you also.
Pray for God's grace in all of our lives that we take a next step with Him and experience our
new life of health more fully.
Let's pray together.