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Hello and welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m your host today, Bryan Broome, and I’m joined by Emily Maxson and Greg Uttinger.

Today we’ll be continuing the story from last episode of Naaman. It’s really kind of a straightforward concept for this episode, there is only one way, so Greg, why don’t you start us off, give us the context again, and lead us into this.

Last time we saw that there is this Syrian general named Naaman, a powerful, valiant, intelligent warrior, but he’s a leper. Somewhere along the line his men had brought captive from northern Israel a little girl, a maid she’s called. We don’t know her name. Her village had probably been sacked and burned, and her family was probably dead, so she has been taken prisoner and made to serve with them, the bad guys, the other side, the aliens, the invaders, the monsters.

We talked last time about the sweet temperament and kind spirit that God gave this little girl in that she says out loud, “Would God my lord Naaman was with the prophet that’s in Samaria, for he would recover him of his leprosy.”

We saw last time that God rarely healed people of leprosy, and he had never done it through a prophet, and in fact our Lord during his ministry said there were many lepers in Israel and none of them were healed by Elisha, except this man, so the little girl was unusual in her faith and in her scope for love and her understanding of the grace of God.

Anyway, what she says leaks out and eventually it makes its way to the king, and the king says, “Well, this would enhance my guy and me, so if this is what it takes, we’ll do this.” He sends Naaman with a train of pack animals with gold and treasures and stuff down to the king of Israel, because in those days if there was a prophet he would be working for the king. Naaman comes with a letter that says, “Here’s my servant Naaman. Heal him of his leprosy, and here’s stuff for you,” and the king of Israel tears his clothes and says, “Am I God to kill and to make alive? He’s obviously trying to provoke a quarrel.”

This was not unheard of. There’s the story of I believe the Assyrian king, but some king from some place in Mesopotamia who sent a letter to the Egyptian Pharaoh saying, “Your royal hippopotamus in the Nile is snoring so loud at night that I can’t sleep. Do something about it or it means war.” Far-fletched claims were not unknown, so the king of Israel assumed, “This is ridiculous. How can I heal this guy? Obviously this is just a step toward war.”

At this time we’ve moved past Elijah to Elisha, his protégé and replacement. Elisha sends a note to the king, and it’s amazing how much Elisha is in the background. He sends a note that says, “Why have you rent your clothes? Let him come to me and he shall know that there’s a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman is given presumably Google maps or something and goes off with his chariots and his horses and pack animals and comes before this little house. It's probably a hovel. Pastors probably were not paid any better then than they are now. He stops there and Elisha sends out a messenger. We find out later his name is Gehazi, and the message he sends is very simple.

Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.

That’s it. Well, Naaman is a citizen of Syria, a pagan land, and he knows how religion is supposed to work. He knows what a good magic show looks like. There’s ceremony and there’s pomp and there’s trances and there’s a lot of screaming and yelling and there’s calling on the gods. That’s how this is done, especially in the case of someone as important as he is. “He just tells me to go wash in this muddy river?” and Naaman throws a little tizzy fit.

Naaman was wroth, and went away and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the LORD his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage.

“This is too simple, too vulgar, too common, too easy. Give me something hard to do. Have me climb the highest mountain, swim the deepest ocean, pass the dragons of eternity to come to the Caves of Forever and solve the seven riddles, something that’s worthy of my stature as a general, something to stroke the flesh, and I would do that. But simply submit to a bath in this muddy river? Who does he think I am? Does he not know with who he reckons?”

One thing about Naaman is he employs cool people around him, like the little girl, and some of his servants come to him later and say, “Father…” It’s interesting they call him father. They have that kind of relationship with him.

My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather then when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?

You can hear the echo of the gospel in their words. “It’s that simple. Wash and be clean.”

This reminds me too of something you said at school graduation last night, which reminded me of something my mom said years ago when I was going through a very difficult time. She said, “You can’t always try your best. You just can’t.” It’s really hard to try your best and to do it for everything – you can’t do it.

For me the temptation is always, “Well, I need to do my best at this thing, so I’m going to put it off until I have time to do my best,” and then it never gets done because obviously what I would do right now would not be good enough, so I shouldn’t, because you know, my best is clearly worth waiting for. That’s the arrogance behind it.

I’ve had a few students like you.

And one of them was me.

True. I love something you said once before, and I hope this does not embarrass you. Well, I don’t care that much actually, because I’m going to say it anyway. You said once, “I know that this thing is not required; however, hey, it’s me so I need to do better.”

That is the arrogance that dwells in my heart.

And that’s a story that’s going to be told until I retire probably, because it is not characteristic of you alone. I’ve had a great many students, and I have some right now, who are “I’ve got to do better. I have to do my best. I have to get every point on the test, and every bonus point.”

I had a young lady come to me the other day and say, “These things were not on the study sheet that you gave me.” My first thought was, “So what?” but I didn’t say that. I did say, “I just reviewed these with everybody at the beginning of class because I was afraid that might be so.”

“But I was in another teacher’s room talking to her,” and she’s shaking and almost going into tears.

I said, “Look, does it matter that much to you? Is it that important?” and she had to think about it. It didn’t take her long, but she had to think about it and it was hard for her. It was really hard to admit, “No, it doesn’t matter at all.” When she did admit it I said, “Fine, I’ll just mark that these don’t count against you,” just to be nice to her and not prolong the stress too long, but I see this a good deal.

Of course, there’s the other side of, “Hey, none of this really matters in light of eternity. Why should I even try?” No, that’s the wrong lesson, too.

“God gave this to you to do. It does matter in eternity.”

It does matter in eternity, so you do need to do it, but trying to do your best – whatever in the world that means – to sacrifice all their time commitments and loyalties and chores and responsibilities so this one thing can be perfect, that’s ridiculous. Only God is perfect.

There was a thing like that I found this week and I showed to my wife Emily. It was like, “What people thinking showing up every day means,” and it was like 9 circles and they were all filled to the brim, each one of them.

What it actually looks like is the first one is filled, the second one is half-filled, one is about 1/3 filled, one is 75%, another one that’s 100% filled, and it’s like all of this is representing your effort on a given day, your energy that you have to put into it. It matters more that you actually show up and do something on the day than it does that it’s 100% of your energy in that particular thing.

Absolutely. Bringing us back to the text, here we have a man who was used to doing his best and always surviving and always winning and always being the center of attention, never making a mistake. So when he’s asked to do something, he expects that he has to do something hard, not something anybody could do. “That’s for the common rabble. I’m special. I have to be challenged with something very difficult.”

Now, leprosy was not what we know as leprosy. It was some kind of skin disease. It probably didn’t hurt that much, probably just uncomfortable. Mostly it was socially unacceptable, but it was something obviously that was getting in the way of his career and his place in the palace, and the king wanted it taken care of. It wasn’t that huge a thing, but it was huge enough that it needed to be dealt with, but he wants to deal with it on his terms, and he is frankly insulted.

The irony here is we saw the little girl get sent to them, and now one of them has to come back to her people and ask a favor. They start at the top with the king and all kinds of treasures, and now they’re down to pulling up beside some hovel and not even talking to the prophet, talking to a servant, a young man, a seminary student. He just comes out and says, “Here’s what you have to do. Bye.”

This is beyond this guy’s level. He’s been humiliated into going to the other side and asking a favor – well, asking for something to be done that he’s going to pay for, then finding out it’s not what he thought and there’s no payment involved.

How many people come to the gates of the kingdom of God offering their filthy rags of righteousness and being incensed – “You don’t smoke. You don’t do drugs. You’ve never been with another woman. You know what? That counts for nothing.”

Think of Paul in Philippians. “Here I was, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, keeping the law blameless, and I counted all things but loss. No, I counted them as dung, that I might win Christ, because they all get in the way.”

And dung is kind of a nice word compared to the Greek.

Yeah. I remember a Greek student at college saying, “I didn’t know that Paul ever used the word @*%” and he points to the passage. Yeah, he does actually. That’s exactly what it means. It’s not a polite term, but that’s what God thinks of our righteousness. “Yeah, but I come in at the upper level, right? I come in through the high-flyers door. I’m special. I don’t hob-nob. There’s got to be a First Class for me someplace.”

“No, it’s the same door for everybody, the same path.”

Everyone gets the same crown.

Eternal life. It’s the same for everybody.

With the context of Paul, thinking of Romans, “What advantage then hath the Jew?” It’s like, “Yeah, you were supposed to come in through the same door as everybody else, but you also had the job of holding it for them.”

Yes, and pointing toward it, and you screwed it up royally. Those advantages, as Paul testifies in I think Philippians 3, became disadvantages because you’re tempted to trust in them.

So Naaman is upset and his servants come and say, “Look, if you’d just been asked to do some little thing you would have done it. Why not go do this?” The sense of it and the patience and kindness of his servants win him over and he goes.

Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan…

The word is not necessarily ‘dipped.’ The word is he washed the way he’d been told to wash.

…according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

A couple things. First of all, Jordan itself we need to talk about.

Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?

Well, if you’re talking about chemical analysis they’re probably better, because the Jordan at times gets really muddy. That’s not the point. The point is the promise of God and the word of God and the commandment of God.

Jordan has a long history and has a long future. When the children of Israel came to Jordan at the beginning of the conquest, they were told that everyone who wants part of this inheritance – regardless of which side of Jordan it’s on – has to cross Jordan. You can’t stop on the east bank and, having disposed of giants over there, just stay there and let your brethren cross over and fight their battles on the other side. If you want part of this, you have to cross Jordan. And when they come to Jordan, Jordan opens up.

God separates the waters, just as he had for Israel at the Red Sea, and Paul says of that that the children were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. The conclusion we should make then is that they’re baptized into Joshua in crossing the Jordan. They’re put into covenant submission to Joshua (Jesus) and all he represents, so this is the only way. This is the only river. You cannot be part of God’s covenant people if you do not pass here.

We skipped the story, but when it was time for Elijah to go to heaven, he crossed Jordan backwards. He came and it opened up for him, and he and Elisha went through the parted waters, and the image there is the reverse.

“Wait, this is the man who has the word of God. This is God’s fiery chariot of his word, of the Spirit, and he’s leaving.” Elijah is leaving the building. Anyone who heard this part of the story should be terrified. “God is giving up on the Promised Land?” It’s like Christ telling the churches in Revelation, “I’m going to take your candlestick away.”

It looks like it’s all over, but then Elijah goes to heaven, leaving his mantle behind. Elisha picks it up and crosses and he comes back to Jordan, rolls up the mantle and smites the water and says, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” and the waters open and he crosses back over again. So he returns and begins a spiritual re-conquest of the land, and the very places he starts are the very places that Joshua and Israel started on their conquest. So the image was, “God was this close to deserting you, but he’s back in a new powerful and saving way, but don’t push it. If he came that close to leaving, he can leave you altogether,” and again it’s wrapped up with Jordan.

And of course, one day, John the Baptist will stand in Jordan and announce the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and calls everyone to his baptism, and most of his baptisms were done in Jordan, including Jesus’ own baptism, where the Father speaks from heaven and the Spirit descends and Jesus is anointed to be our prophet, king, and priest.

So that’s part of what’s going on here. God has purposes with Jordan and this is one more step in that direction of saying, “This river means something and you must submit to the meaning contained in that.” In other words, “You don’t get to invent your own religion. You do things my way. You don’t need to understand why.”

Naaman probably did not know the whole history of Israel. He certainly couldn’t foresee what God was going to do with John the Baptist and with Jesus. It doesn’t matter. If God says, “Do it this way,” you do it this way. This is the way, walk ye in it.

The other thing that Naaman almost certainly did not know, and that unfortunately most Christians don’t know, is when you hear of a leper being washed seven times, our minds should go back to Leviticus and to the laws for diagnosing and cleansing a leper.

God put them there, and there was no evidence that any Hebrew who contracted leprosy ever was cleansed and ever went through that ceremony. The first time we hear it actually used was when Jesus, right at the beginning of his ministry, cleanses the lepers and says, “Go offer the sacrifices the law requires.”

It’s almost as though God has put that there and left it silent on the pages of scripture for 1500 years until Jesus should come and pick it up off the shelf, as it were, dust it off and use it, because the priests are just sitting there waiting decade after decade, century after century. They all know this cleansing ritual, and none of them gets to use it until Jesus shows up, and then there’s much embarrassment.

I didn’t realize until a few years ago that healing and cleansing are not interchangeable in that context. You have to be healed before these cleansing ceremonies can even be applied to you. It’s not the things to follow in order to heal the leper. It’s after God miraculously heals the leper you can do this.

The one thing though is that it’s said Jesus never heals a leper, he always cleanses a leper, and although he requires the ceremonies of the law, requires that they be fulfilled, he’s already done the basic work. They are cleansed, but the public testimony and conformity to the requirements of external law he still insists on.

For those of you who don’t know the difference, sicknesses need to be healed, but some things rendered one unclean, which means very simply you were unfit for fellowship with God and his people in worship. You couldn’t go to synagogue, you couldn’t come to the temple, you couldn’t offer sacrifices, you could not participate in Passover, which effectively meant you’d been excommunicated. In the case of leprosy, you could not live within the city. You had to live out of bounds and no good Jew could come near you. If they even tried you were to yell “Unclean!”

Most of that was irrelevant to Naaman, as so much of the Old Testament was seemingly irrelevant to all the Gentiles. “Oh, that’s just a Jewish religion. It’s interesting that they believe those things, or weird or whatever, but it doesn’t touch me.” Well, it turns out, yeah, it does actually, and the fact that you don’t understand that is part of the problem.

So Naaman comes without exactly a sense of sin, just the recognition of “I’ve got this disease thing and it needs to go away,” and he’s told that it needs to be washed away. That’s got to get him thinking. “I’ve taken hundreds of baths and it doesn’t do anything.” No, it’s not that kind of cleansing. It’s not that kind of washing. It’s something the Jordan points to.

When he gets back, he probably spends some time with the little girl saying, “Now, tell me the great stories of your people,” until finally, “…and the Jordan parted and God’s people passed through.”

“You mean that’s why I had to go there?”

“Did I say something?”

“Yes, young lady, you did.”

But at this point he doesn’t completely get it.

The leprosy cleansing ceremony involved a number of sacrifices, so Elisha has scaled it way back, but it does involve the sprinkling of water upon the leper seven times. It’s a restoration of the Israelite who is ceremonially dead in sins. That’s what leprosy is a picture of, like a zombie, the living dead. He’s restored to life because the waters bury and resurrect, and then the man is free once again to be a prophet, king, and priest.

He goes through much of the same ritual and anointing as the priest does, the anointing oil on the right ear and the right thumb and the right great toe, because he will now hear the word of God, do the word of God, and walk in the ways of God. It’s a huge complicated ceremony.

Elisha slices through most of it, but just enough to say, “Even Gentiles need to hear something here. They need to get this picture, and God’s people as they read this story need to realize that this is not just some random thing God invented, but there are deep roots here that they need to be aware of.”

Leprosy is like sin. It’s a living death. It needs to be cleansed, not merely healed, and the cleansing involves something that buries and resurrects, something that comes from outside the dead man because the dead man is dead.

The other thing the leper had to go through was he had to shave all the hair off his body. That means a human being who has no hair on his body. Well, short of cancer treatments maybe, there’s only one sort of human being who has no hair. It’s called a baby.

And they come through the waters, don’t they?

They come through the waters. “His flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child and he was clean,” not simply healed, clean. He’s been born again, because resurrection to life and new birth are similar images that are wrapped up in each other. So the gospel has been preached to him.

However obscure the terms may be, he gets at least this – there’s a God in heaven who associates himself with Israel, whose word can do what no other gods can do, no other magician. It’s a sovereign word. It’s a powerful word. It registers in time and space, this local place where I’m required to do something that I don’t want to do, and yet it’s something that anyone could do, and I am, as it were, a new man because of the power of this God. He was kind to me when I have been cruel to his people. That’s a God I want to know about. That’s a God I want to follow. That’s a God I want to be thankful to.

So he comes back, bringing his entourage, and comes to the prophet.

And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came and stood before him, and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel.

He understands that Yahweh is not only the greatest God, he’s the only God. There is no other god who can do this, and therefore there is no other God. You can’t halfway do something like this. A God who can do this is absolutely sovereign. His word is sovereign, and he doesn’t care a whit about what I think or feel. And yet he was kind to me.

Now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant.

This was not necessarily a wrong thing if it is sheer thankfulness. “God did something great for me and I want to express my thankfulness.” That’s fine, but Elisha realizes that given Naaman’s pagan background, this could be misunderstood, that he could misunderstand this, and he needs desperately not to misunderstand right now. It could seem like he’s paying for it. “God gave me this and now I will pay my bill.” So lest Naaman gets that, Elisha says nope. And certainly he wants to make it very clear that he himself is not in this for the money. You don’t pay the preacher to get God’s blessing. That’s not how it works.

As the LORD liveth, before whom I stand, I will receive none.

Notice his claim. “I’m a messenger of God. I’m a lawyer of the covenant. I stand in the very presence of God. Yes, I’m that close to him, and in his name I tell you I/we will take nothing of you. You can’t pay for this.”

Consider this over against Simon the sorcerer.

I was just going to make that comparison.

Go ahead and make it, for people who may not know Simon.

I forget exactly which city he was in…

Samaria.

That’s right. He was a warlock, for lack of a better term, and when the gospel came he apparently was convinced. He was baptized with new believers and at least by word made his allegiance with Jesus. When the apostles then later came and showed their works of power in the Spirit, he approached them and said, “I’ve got to have this. How much? How much can I pay you for this new magic trick?” because it was something along the lines of, “I’ll be the top dog in town again like I used to be, when I had so much money.”

Peter confronts him and is like, “No, and also you have the devil in you, you monstrous man. You cannot pay for this kind of thing. It is entirely a gift of grace.” And if the writings of the church fathers are anything to go by, Simon became a thorn in the side of the early church for many years after that.

Peter’s words were, “Your money perish with you, Simon.” You and your money can both go to hell, is what he says, and he does not say so lightly. That is not taking the Lord’s name in vain. That is a divine pronouncement, because the apostles rank even higher in God’s kingdom in terms of what they knew and what they could do than the prophets did.

Peter sees clearly. “You’re trying to corrupt the gospel and replace it with one of salvation by works,” and Elisha to some extent understood that, and therefore he refuses absolutely the gift. Naaman then says –

Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the LORD.

Now, this might be a little superstitious or it might be a purely symbolic thing on his part, and Elisha does not inquire after this. He is a new believer, a weak believer, an uninstructed believer. Somebody wrote the first several verses of this chapter, so someone had talked to the little girl or talked to someone who knew the little girl. Maybe it was Elisha. Maybe word got back later.

As I’ve said before, yes, God could have just popped the knowledge into Elisha’s mind, but more often than not the accounts come to us as first-person eyewitness testimony, so Elisha would know, “Somebody sent you here. Somebody can instruct you. Yes, it may be a 7-year-old girl, but that’s worked pretty good so far. There will be time for you to grow.

“You want to offer your sacrifices on Israeli soil because you understand that covenantally the land is significant? Fine. I’m not going to say anything about that because your goal is to worship only the one true God, and you want to recognize that his covenant promises have historical touchpoints – this time, this land, this water, this place. In a word, you’re renouncing Gnosticism for a God who works and operates in history, so I’m not going to complain about that. Could your faith be more mature? Yeah, but so could everybody’s.”

In this thing the LORD pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the LORD pardon thy servant in this thing.

He’s the king’s right-hand man, literally, and when the king goes to worship, the king has to bow before the image of Rimmon, and in order to facilitate this Naaman on his right hand has to bow down with him, in the sense of going down on his knees to help his king bow.

He realizes that bowing down to an idol is wrong. “Will God understand that I’m not bowing down to the idol. I’m simply helping my king, doing something that’s wrong, yes, but it’s my job to help him here. He’s going to do it one way or another. Will God forgive me and not count it as idolatry when I do what my job requires?”

Again we could be very picky and say, “Well, you’re helping somebody else commit idolatry. That’s completely unacceptable.” We could go, “It doesn’t matter what you’re thinking. What matters is the position of your body.” He’s not bowing with reference to the idol. He’s bowing with reference to God, but there we go again. Kings shouldn’t be doing this. You shouldn’t help another man commit idolatry.

Interesting enough, Elisha simply says, “Go in peace.”

Now, I’ve heard people say Elisha just doesn’t want to push the point and is willing to… “You want to go commit idolatry? That’s your business.” That’s not the meaning of “Go in peace.”

The prophet of the Lord wouldn’t use it in that way anyway.

No. He’s saying, “You’ve asked that God pardon this thing. Go in his peace then.” Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Elisha accepts that this man’s faith is sufficient at that time in history under these circumstances, to be reckoned as true justified faith.

He doesn’t understand much. He understands there is one God who saves people who do not deserve it, and that this Naaman is throwing himself wholly on this God and wants to be thankful and wants to obey him, knowing that his obedience will be imperfect. Will God accept such from a Gentile? And Elisha’s word is Shalom, peace, wholeness, health, salvation.

You would think the story would end there, and it would be glorious.

Can I jump in before you go on? It reminds me of a conversation my church had in Sunday School recently about the command to worship. It’s so easy to have the question be, “Well, what can or can’t we do on Sundays? Or what’s different about Sunday? Is there something spiritual about Sunday as opposed to Saturday or Monday or Thursday?”

The answer is that’s the wrong question. Once we start focusing on the means as though there’s something special in them, we’ve missed the point. It wasn’t that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a special tree, except that God had said it was. It was God’s word that set this thing apart. It wasn’t special except that God had ordained it. So when we separate the means of God from the words of God, that’s when we fall into the magical mindset.

What is the line from our Lord? “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man.” You don’t prioritize the very good blessing of a day of rest as something magical in itself. It’s the rest in the Lord, in remembering what he has done for you, in his graciousness of gifting that to you.

So the same way that the water of the Jordan was just water, and kind of muddy water at that, but it was the river that God had specified, and this is the gift of God. The worship of God is what God defines it to be. It’s not because your bowing was special or your washing was special. It’s that it was according to the word of God.

What happens next is Naaman and his entourage are leaving, and Gehazi, the servant, the minister, the man who probably was in line to be the next prophet if he proved to mature in the faith properly, sees this and says –

Behold, my master hath spared Naaman this Syrian, in not receiving at his hands that which he brought: but, as the LORD liveth, I will run after him and take somewhat of him.

He just swore in God’s name that he’s going to go commit sacrilege by taking from this man something that Elisha has refused. Gehazi has no claims on this, but there’s some kind of rationalization going on here, and we’re good at this sort of thing. “Well, this man is the enemy. He brought the wealth to give it to us. Elisha may not want it, but I have good uses for it, and certainly anything I do with it is going to be better than anything he would do with it because he’s a wicked Gentile. So we should at least spoil him a little bit, and I’m sure I’ll find some useful thing here.”

So he runs after him, in the name of the Lord, and Naaman sees him coming and stops the chariots and goes down to meet him. He says, “Is all well?”

“All is well.” It’s interesting the King James says “All is well.” The Hebrew is “Shalom.”

Did he go in peace?

Yes. “Are you coming in the peace that your master just pronounced on me, or has something gone wrong here?” But Gerhazi says, “Shalom. All is well.”

My master hath sent me, saying, Behold, even now there be come to me from Mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets [two seminary students]. Give them, I pray thee, a talent of silver and two changes of garments.

This sounds like a nice spiritual explanation for why he would now ask for something that he previously declined, and Naaman is very anxious to give thanks to God, some kind of thank offering. So without sensing the duplicity, which in such a man is a little strange, but he is dealing cross-culturally here and probably through a translator…

And Naaman said, Be content, take two talents.

“I’ll go even above that.” He probably could have given him a lot more, but he also probably realizes, “If I give too much the prophet’s going to be upset, but I’m sure he won’t mind if I throw just a little more, because then one talent for each and one change of garment for each, that seems fair and everything. I’m sure God will be pleased with this.”

And he urged him, and bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of garments, and laid them upon two of his servants; and they bare them before him.

Two changes of garments doesn’t mean much to us now, but in the ancient world that was huge. That’s a second wardrobe. It was not unusual in the ancient world and up through the Middle Ages for someone to have one change of clothing, and you went down to the river or creek and washed them and immediately put them back on because you didn’t have anything else. Or maybe you just had a couple bits of scraps here and there.

And clothing was so incredibly labor-intensive to obtain in the ancient world.

Yes, and that would have been that designed for royalty, or at least for military of a high rank, so these were princely gifts, as was silver. Notice he doesn’t give gold, nor does anyone ask for gold. By keeping it at the level of silver it’s not enough of a request to raise eyebrows, but a talent of silver was a lot of money. A talent, of course, is a weight of silver, and I can never remember how it weighs out, but even in our money it would have been a lot. So these guys carry it back.

And when he came to the tower, he took them from their hand, and bestowed them in the house: and he let the men go, and they departed. But he went in, and stood before his master.

So he checks in, as was no doubt his responsibility.

And Elisha said unto him, Whence comest thou, Gehazi?

This is mom and dad looking at little kids – “What have you been doing?”

“Nothing.”

And he said, Thy servant went no whither.

Blatant lie.

And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee, when the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee?

This is one time when God did show him in a vision exactly what was going on. This at first seems huge and overly done, but we need to consider what’s at the root.

Is it a time to receive money, and to receive garments and olive yards and vineyards and sheep and oxen and menservant, and maidservants?

I’m sure Gehazi is nervous on the first two, but then thinks, “Wait, wait, I didn’t ask for that, or that, or that. Oh, I didn’t realize I could ask for that one.” Whatever the case, he can legitimately say, “I didn’t ask for all that. Just the first two – you got me, yes I did. I mean it just didn’t seem right that he should get away with all this stuff when God was so gracious to him. Obviously it should come to…me.”

“People will take advantage of you if you give stuff away for free, Elisha.”

Yeah, but what is this about Elisha escalating? Because he sees the ocean in the drop of water. “Will you do this if I give you the world?”

“No, not for the world!”

“How about for Las Vegas?”

“No, no no no.”

“How about Los Bonas?”

“Hmm.”

“How about your neighbor’s swimming pool?”

“Okay, you got me there.”

It doesn’t matter how big the thing is for which you will sell out the kingdom of God. You do it for just a chance to sit down out of the sun for a few moments, or you do so that you can receive all the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof. There’s no difference.

This may not be very polite, but I’m going to use it anyway. There’s an old joke where a man is hitting on a young lady and asks if she will yield to him for $100,000. She says, “Oh, of course.” He says, “How about for $25?”

“Oh, what kind of girl do you think I am?”

“Well, we’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price, aren’t we?”

It’s something like that. If somebody offers a million dollars, that’s significant, but this is nothing. That’s the point. You’ll sell the kingdom of God for nothing? If you’ll sell the kingdom of God for nothing, you would sell it for a million dollars. It’s just a question of how big is your greed? How much do you think you can get away with? How much can wash over your conscience and you still feel you can do this thing?

So he pushes all the way to, “In this thing you’ve opened the door for everything. People will sell the kingdom for whatever they can get out of it. They’ll sell the gospel and make merchandise of the truth. So what you have done, even as small as it is – and that’s the problem, as small as it is, and for this you would betray the gospel.”

The last verse says –

The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee and unto thy seed forever. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.

So Gehazi will not be the next prophet. He will not minister to Israel. He will be a leper for the rest of his life, and apparently if he has any children they will be lepers. The judgement is very hard and very harsh because what’s at stake here is the gospel.

Is there another way? Is there another stream? Is there another fountain? Is there some other name under heaven whereby we may be saved? Is the gate actually pretty wide after all, or at least are there alternate gates if I don’t like this one?

In our generation, this is a huge issue. Even Christians are willing to say, “Well, yes, I came to Christ, but not everyone has to come my way, do they?”

“Um, yeah.”

“About that – yes.”

You both I’m sure remember the seventh Chronicle of Narnia, the one that never happened.

I’m not familiar with that, actually. What?

I wish he’d written a seventh book in that series.

Yes, I wish he had – in that series, yes. The young pagan shows up in heaven and feels out of place because he’s never worshiped Aslan. He’s always served the god Tash. But Aslan appears and says, “No, no, no, you’ve misunderstood. The kind of worship you gave was not the kind that one gives to a demon. It was the kind that should be given to me. It was full of love and good works and service, so therefore although you rendered it you thought to his name, I took it as to myself and therefore you’re entitled to heaven.”

I’m sorry, Jack. What were you thinking when you wrote that? I do not understand.

Once upon a time I was writing something, and I don’t even remember which article it was now – I think it was for Chalcedon – where I did that line. There are some series that have episodes or books that never really happened that I mention that, among other things, and whatever I was writing about I got a sweet letter from a nice lady who said, “Oh, I really liked your article except this one thing,” in referencing Lewis in The Last Battle. “Isn’t it possible that there are other ways to come to God than through Jesus? Because think of all the people who have never head of Jesus.”

I’m thinking, “What in the world are you thinking? You say that you read Christian materials, you’re familiar with Christian ideas, and you think there’s some other way? A small child raised in a broad evangelical church who’s given his heart to Jesus knows there’s no other way. There’s no substitute. There’s nothing you add on. There’s nothing you can alter. You can’t rewrite Jesus to fit your social agenda. He is God, the Savior the Bible describes.”

This is why John at the end of his first epistle, after arguing for who Jesus must be, says, “Little children, keep yourself from idols.” To redesign Jesus is to make an idol out of your Jesus. “Well, my Jesus would never…”

“Well, your Jesus ain’t the real one, obviously, because our Jesus did exactly what the Bible says he did,” and that is offensive to people.

Back in the late ‘70s or ‘80s there was a movie called Oh God starring George Burns. I do not recommend it to anybody.

Just from the title I can imagine why.

Yeah, and the idea is that God wants to reassert himself in the modern world and he wants people just to start thinking about God. The young protagonist who he fastens on to be sort of his prophet, although at least I don’t think he’s ever called that – I think he was played by John Denver, of all people – at one point he’s just curious and he asks George Burns the question that is inevitable. Someone had to ask it and so he does. “So, is Jesus your son?”

And this man who claims to be God says, “Yes, Jesus was my son…and Mohammed was my son, and Buddha and Confucius, they were all my sons. I have many sons.” That’s the way of the world. We will allow Jesus to be a savior among many, as long as he’s not the one we have to pick.

“You want Jesus as your savior? That’s your business, but don’t tell me he has to be my savior, not the way you describe him, because like Naaman he leaves no place for my goodness, for my will, my choices, my ceremonies, my personal goodness, my loving heart. He nixes all of that and hangs it all on his own merits. I don’t want that savior. You want that? That’s your business, but you want to alter him a little, make him a different kind of Jesus? Maybe we can work with that.”

There’s a strong gospel presentation here right in the middle of 2 Kings. There is only one way.

I think back to a family that I became acquainted with and friends with when I was at Sierra Community College. They were raised Mormon, and at some point in the past their parents had left the church, and they were still very close friends with people from their local temples or whatever, but I remember talking with them at one point about faith and about the orthodox Christian doctrine.

They were still very much stuck in the common LDS framework. You are saved by grace – after doing all you can do. You’ve got to do everything you can first. I think one of them specifically asked about Christology, who Jesus is, and I said, “He’s the God-man. He’s the eternal Son of God come in human flesh. He’s pure man and pure God, fully man fully God, and this was necessary for our salvation” – sort of the Anselm “Why the God-Man?” argument in a nutshell.

I was talking to just one of the daughters at that point and she was like, “I don’t know if I like that, because why should it all come down to what someone else did?” I was like, “That’s kind of the point!”

I remember hearing of a seminar professor and some student was saying, “Well, what do we say when people ask, ‘What about the people who have never heard of Jesus? What about these people who are sincere but believe differently? Can you blame people who have never heard the gospel for not believing it?’”

The professor says, “Yes, they can be blamed for not trusting in Jesus. That’s why you have a job to do, to go tell them about Jesus so that they can trust in him.”

There’s this desire to excuse other people because it really takes the heat off us and our responsibility to tell them. It’s so much easier to say, “Well, the Lord will excuse them,” when what’s really behind that is, “The Lord will excuse me from making disciples.”

“I have five brethren. Send Lazarus back and they’ll believe when one speaks to them who’s come back from the dead.”

“They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear it.”

“No, but if one rises from the dead…”

“No. If they will not hear Moses and the prophets they will not believe, though one rises from the dead.”

And of course in that scenarios the man in hell doesn’t care a thing about his brethren. He’s in hell. There’s no love in him, but he was trying to find wiggle room. “If I can get them to admit that my brethren haven’t had enough evidence, then it works for me too.”

The heathen – God will surely let them in. Anybody who’s sincere, anybody who’s good, anybody who’s nice.

That means my sincerity, my goodness, my niceness are enough.

Because mine is obviously better than theirs. It’s the attempt to insert our own good works, our filthy rags of self-righteousness, where only the blood of Jesus counts, and that’s what makes people very angry.

Paul in writing I believe to the Galatians says, “If I yet preach circumcision, why do I suffer persecution, for then is the offense of the cross ceased. If I could tell them, ‘You absolutely have to trust in Jesus – and do this one thing’ no one would persecute me. I give them one thing that they have to do, then I’m good. I’m golden. They’ll buy me tickets. They’ll feast me. They’ll give me all kinds of stuff. The moment I say there is nothing you can do…”

That’s when people get mad.

That’s when they want to kill you. That’s why Cain killed Abel and why the Jews killed the prophets and why they killed Jesus, because there’s only one way, and that is the most unpopular message in the history of the world, even though it amounts to the simplest thing. “So what must I do to be saved?”

“Believe.”

“That’s too easy.”

And too impossible, unless God opens your heart.

“I don’t get any credit for that.”

Yeah, no credit.

“I want credit for what I’ve done. I want to be recognized. I want the accolades. I want Jesus to pat me on the head and say, ‘You did really good, better than those other people.’”

Yeah, you’re better than those people. This is the kind of message that shouldn’t offend any of our listeners, but it will be interesting to see if it does.

I hope it doesn’t, but if it does, it would be the kind of people who need it.

I hope it’s more comforting, because there’s comfort for us.

And those of you who are listening, this would be a great one to share with some of your unbelieving friends, whether they go to church or not. Then they can hate us, and then they can hate you secondly.

Well, they can talk to you about how much they hate us, and then we can have that conversation.

There’s your opportunity. Go for it. We aim to be of service.

Excellent service, guaranteed.

With that, I think it’s time to move on to recommendations. Do either of you have things you’d like to recommend?

Sure, but you should go first, Bryan.

You know what? I’m going to recommend having ducks. Funny story – every time my wife shares something about what the ducks have done – we’ve only had them since Wednesday, but she’s been super excited about it – I have been too, admittedly, but every time she mentions anything to do with the ducks I always respond, “Quack.” Wherever we’re talking, in person, in a messenger group chat, it doesn’t matter, I just go “Quack.” I type it out.

We got two ducks. They’re currently relaxing about 6’ to my left in a rubber container. I’ll show you when we’re done recording.

These are little ducks?

They’re ducklings. They’re Indian Runners, which means that when they grow up they will be awkwardly gangly and tall, and then they’ll just kind of lean forward at a 30-degree angle and bolt. They look so weird. They’re so cute.

Can they fly or do you have to clip their wings or something?

They’re flightless. They’re bred to be that way, thankfully. But they’ll provide lots of eggs.

Mmm, duck eggs.

Emily?

I recommend wagons. I think wagons are great. When we started putting together a gift registry for Gretchen – because apparently when you’re having a baby, people want to give you gifts, so you have to tell them what you want, and then you’re like, “Oh goodness, what do I want? I don’t know!” – but one of the questions you have to answer is, “Do you want a car seat that clips into a stroller, because that’s fancy and convenient, or do you want this stroller or that stroller?”

I was like, “I don’t want a stroller. I want a wagon,” so we found a wagon and it’s super great. You can carry your baby in it. You can carry your laundry in it. You can carry your groceries in it. The church ladies were kind enough to band together to purchase this wagon for us and it’s an all-terrain wagon, so I can take it to the park and drive it over the lawn, and Gretchen loves it and it’s super fun, so wagons are great. It’s so much better than the hand truck that I used to use to carry the laundry.

I still have my wagon from my childhood. Our children played in it when they were little. Now that they’re not, it becomes the hauling device for outside for all kinds of garden work, soil, dead plants, whatever. We now have a wheelbarrow too, but for a long time that was it. That’s all we had.

The nice thing is that it does have the handle that when you pull it back it becomes a steering wheel, minus the wheel, so someone can get behind you and push you, and you can use the handle to steer and it becomes a little car for you, so I’m with you on that. Wagons are good things.

I’m going to recommend summer, because God made it and therefore it is beyond question a worthy and blessed thing, more so for some of us than for others. For those of us who are teachers, there are two different mindsets for non-teachers who look at teachers in the summer. Some say, “Wow, you don’t have to work at all for those three or four months or whatever.” Okay, you’re out of touch with reality. What do you want? Because that’s when we have to do a lot of prep.

First of all, we have to do a lot of catch-up from the previous year. We get report cards done and clean up our rooms and all that stuff we should do. Then at some point we have to start getting ready for the next year, because hopefully – one hopes, I should say – we want to do a better job the next time around. We want to refine our notes, come up with new ideas, talk to people about what they’ve done, find new books, read new books, outline new books, and in general work at becoming better for next year, getting as much as we can all set so that it doesn’t take as much out of us during the school year.

And yet, there are some people who think, “You never stop working!” Yeah, we actually do a little here and there. We do have a little time for our families and for gardening and such like that.

There was a time when I was growing up when even for families where mom and dad kept working during the summer, there was something magic about summer. Kids would go out and play and swim. I don’t know how it was in your generation. In my generation, so I am told – my parents were far too protective – in my generation kids were just kicked out at the beginning of the day, maybe given an apple or something to carry with them, or candy bar, and they weren’t seen again until suppertime.

Mom didn’t have to worry about them because no one was going to snatch them, no one was going to abuse them, no one was going to hurt them, and what’s the worst that could happen? They fall out of a tree and break an arm – big deal, take them to the doctor. Everybody in the neighborhood knew everybody.

One of my quintessential memories that defines that era of my life, and indeed that era in small-town America, is one summer evening the sun was still up in the sky but it was cool. My cousin lived down the street, and somehow the neighbor girl who was younger than me brought over her whiffle ball and whiffle bat. My cousin was a few years older than me, so probably in his 20s or so, and got out there and started playing whiffle ball with us, no big deal, but it was summer so kids were just moving up and down the street, moseying from Point A to Point B with no purpose in mind.

One kid saw us and said, “Hey, that looks like fun, can I join?” Then the next kid comes along, “Hey, that looks like fun, can I join?” And pretty soon a ton of kids from all over – some of whom I didn’t even know – were all in my cousin’s front yard playing whiffle ball as the sun goes down.

It was just one of those sweet memories of this is what small-town America used to be like, but only in the summer when you didn’t have anything to do and you could be anywhere and everybody knew everybody.

Zechariah speaks of the kingdom of God as a time when there will be boys and girls playing in the streets of Jerusalem, and old men and old women hobbling along on their staffs at every age. Summer can, and used to be in America, kind of a little picture of that. I’m sorry to see so much of it go, but I think it behooves us to try to find some of that peacefulness and usefulness of free time, and not be completely overwhelmed by all the demands of modern life. So my recommendation is to rediscover the possibilities of summer.

That reminds me of the movie The Sandlot, the way my dad talked about growing up. I think it’s a good thing. It’s not something that I have particular memories of in quite the same way, and I know my husband certainly doesn’t have that kind of childhood summer memory in quite the same way, but to see a glimpse of that and to see, “Ah, there’s an idea,” not a perfect one but a fun one certainly with a great soundtrack.

It’s also funny that you say it’s missing so much, because I was looking out my window just now and there are about seven kids playing basketball on my street here.

There’s a book that I haven’t read, but I want to recommend. I do recommend books that I haven’t read, but I always tell you that I haven’t read them. It’s Playborhood. There was an interview of Art of Manliness about intentionally going about trying to form the kind of neighborhood where kids can go out and play, where that’s a normal thing that’s expected, and the intentionality that it takes in these days to cultivate that.

Thank you so much, both of you, for joining me. Thank you to our listeners as well. If you’d like to follow us, if you’re not already, you can do so at our YouTube channel or on Rumble. You can Like our Facebook show. If you like the show and want to subscribe, we’re on pretty much all the podcast catchers, all the RSS feeds, so if you can’t find us let us know.

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