Amen.
This is the passage that I planned on preaching out of this morning, 2 Kings chapter 5.
The Bible reads in verse number 1, Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria,
was a great man with his master, and honorable, because by him the Lord had given
deliverance unto Syria.
He was also a mighty man in valor, but he was a leper.
Now this story is a very famous story.
It's one of the most beloved Bible stories of the Old Testament.
Of course, there are so many great stories in the Old Testament, it's hard to pick a
favorite or even a top 10 list.
But this is a pretty popular story, and one of the things that I love about it right
away in verse number 1 is that we see something that we see throughout the Old Testament,
God caring about people from other nations.
God is the God of the whole earth.
He's the God of the whole world.
He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
A lot of times people get the attitude that He only loved Israel in the Old Testament,
and that the New Testament is some radical new concept to open things up to the rest
of the nationalities as a plan B or something like that.
But that's not true.
Even in the days of Israel and Judah, we see many examples of God specifically sending
prophets to go to other nations and preach to them, similar to the way we would send
out missionaries.
God wanted people to hear His word and to hear the truth, and He loved and cared
about people of other nations.
And in this example here, we see Naaman, who it's clear at the beginning of this
story is not a believer in the Lord.
How do we know that?
Well, if you look at verse number 11, when Naaman gets mad, partway down the verse there
it says, He will surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord His
God.
So he's referring to the Lord or Jehovah as His God.
It's not our God.
It's not my God.
He's talking about Elisha's God.
So this is clearly not His God.
Yet in verse number 1, it says what?
Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his
master.
Who's his master?
You know, the king of Syria that he's employed by.
And he was honorable.
And watch this.
Because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria.
So God is still working in this guy's life.
Any success that this guy has, it's because the Lord gave it to him.
And you know what?
Even people that are not saved should be thankful to God because just the fact that
they can get up in the morning and go to work and eat food and have a bed to sleep in.
You know, it's God who sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
It's a God who gives everything to everyone whether they're thankful for it or not.
And so even though this man does not know the Lord, he's not thankful to the Lord,
he doesn't understand the Lord, he's a good guy.
He's a nice guy.
He's a good worker.
His boss is happy with him.
He's a valiant man.
It says he's a mighty man of valor.
And he's honorable.
And it was God, the true God, the God of the Bible that gave him deliverance.
That allowed him to win.
So God cares about this foreigner.
The Bible says in verse 1 at the end there that he was a leper.
Now leprosy is a horrible contagious disease.
It's not super contagious, but it's contagious enough to where you want to stay away from
people that have leprosy.
It's this horrible skin disease that will eventually kill you.
A slow and painful death.
It says in verse 2, and the Syrians had gone out by companies and had brought away
captive out of the land of Israel a little maid.
And she waited on Naaman's wife.
And she said unto her mistress, would God my Lord, who's her Lord there, that's referring
to Naaman, her boss, her master, would God my Lord were with the prophet that
is in Samaria, for he would recover him of his leprosy.
And one went in and told his Lord saying, thus and thus said the maid that is of the
land of Israel.
And the king of Syria said, go to and I will send a letter unto the king of Israel.
And he departed and took with him ten talents of silver and six thousand pieces of gold.
I don't know how big those pieces were, but even if they were a pretty small piece,
that's a lot of money, right?
Any amount of gold is a lot.
Six thousand pieces of gold and ten changes of raiment or ten changes of clothes.
And he brought the letter to the king of Israel saying, now when this letter is
come unto thee, behold I have therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee, that thou mayest
recover him of his leprosy.
Now when the king of Israel gets this letter, he thinks that the king of Syria is messing
with him.
Like here I'm giving you this huge amount of money, six thousand pieces of gold, I'm
giving you silver, I'm giving you changes of clothing, and I want you to heal this
man of leprosy.
That's not something that he can do.
So what he thinks that he's doing is just trying to pick a fight with him, just mess
with him.
And then say, all right, you dishonored me.
You didn't do what I told you to do.
I paid you to fix this and you didn't fix it.
All right, because kings are often just looking for an excuse to do what, you know,
to invade, to go to war.
So that's what the king of Israel thinks.
It says in verse number seven, it came to pass when the king of Israel had read the
letter that he rent his clothes, he tore his clothing, and said, am I God to kill
and to make alive that this man descend unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?
Therefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me.
And it was so when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had rent his
clothes that he sent to the king, saying, wherefore has thou rent thy clothes?
Let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.
So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot and stood at the door of the
house of Elisha.
So get the picture here.
This man shows up.
He is the top general of Syria, which is a powerful nation.
He's the head guy.
He's a powerful man.
He's got his whole entourage here at the door, right?
He's got his horses, his chariot, and he's got tons of money, gold, silver, garments.
I mean, this is an impressive guy with an impressive entourage and an impressive gift.
But what happens?
The Bible says in verse 10, he's at the door.
He's at the door of the house of Elisha, right?
I don't think Elisha lived in a huge house.
I can't picture Elisha being like a Kenneth Copeland or something in a big fancy house
because no man of God in the Bible, you know, who's a prophet of God is going to
be, you know, just living that life of luxury because we see, you know, later on in
this passage, he turns down all the money.
So this guy's not into money.
And if he turns down all the money, he's not into money, he probably doesn't have
some massive house, right?
So I mean, this guy's right at the door.
And it says here, I love this, he's at the door and Elisha sent a messenger unto him
saying, go and wash in Jordan seven times and thy flesh shall come again to thee and
thou shalt be clean.
So Elisha doesn't come in person.
He just sends a messenger, go tell him to go wash in the Jordan River seven times
and he'll be healed.
Now this makes Naaman really mad.
He feels like this is disrespectful because he wanted Elisha to personally come and
talk to him face to face, you know, and so he's wrath.
Wrath is the adjective of the noun wrath, right?
So he's wrath and went away and said, behold, I thought he'll surely come out to me
and stand and call on the name of the Lord is God and strike his hand over the
place and recover the leper.
Are not Abana and Farpar rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel?
May I not wash in them and be clean, you know, don't just tell me I need a bath.
I'm here for a miracle.
So he turned and went away in a rage and then, you know, his servants begin to talk
him down.
But you know, this story here reminds me of a lot of experiences that I've had in
my life as a pastor.
You know, I've been a pastor for almost 13 years and this is why I want to talk
to pastor Anderson.
Pastor Anderson is busy right now.
It's an emergency.
You know, and I was thinking about changing our voicemail of our church.
You know, hi, thank you for calling faithful word Baptist church.
If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911.
You know, cause I know it's an emergency, right?
I need to talk to pastor Anderson.
And then also another thing I've noticed about people that aren't saved is that they're
experts on how to pastor people that aren't saved.
Have you noticed how well atheists know the Bible in their own mind?
Of course, they don't know anything about the Bible, but atheists will tell you, well,
here's what Jesus Christ would have done.
Here's what Jesus would do.
Aren't agnostics and atheists the first to jump in and tell you, well, that's
not how a pastor is supposed to act.
That's not what Christians are supposed to do.
That's not what the Bible says.
So here's this guy.
He doesn't even know anything about the Lord.
The Lord's not even his God.
He knows nothing about this religion, but he just shows up and starts saying, well,
here's what I think Elisha ought to be doing.
Here's how he ought to be preaching.
Here's how he ought to be pastoring.
He needs to be more available when people show up and you know, people are constantly
rebuking me for not being available enough.
Well, let me just do a little simple math for you.
If 300 people show up on Sunday morning and I spend one minute with each of them,
That's one minute.
That's five hours.
You know, and, and here's the, you know, when I go to preach somewhere, sometimes
like when I preached in Jacksonville, there were like 240 people who showed up when
I preached at steadfast Jacksonville.
And you know, I was just trying to spend like five minutes with each person cause
people would come a long way and I want to spend time with people and say, I don't,
but I mean, I was there for just hours and hours and hours.
And I was enjoying it, meeting people, spending time with people, doing the best I can,
but it's just, there's only so much time that you've got.
There's only so much one person can do.
And so it's just not possible for any pastor to just be able to personally do everything
himself.
So therefore the pastor has to sometimes delegate things to other people.
You know, this is just part of being a pastor.
You can't do everything yourself unless you have a really small church.
And listen, when we first started, the church was small and you know what, I did everything
myself.
I cleaned the building.
I did, you know, it was pretty much my wife and I were the only soul winners at first.
We were the only ones doing any soul winning.
We, you know, you make the bulletin, you make the invites.
I mean, we, we did all that stuff and we did every single thing.
And you know, it's pretty easy for people to talk to us before or after a church service
because when there are only 15 or 20 people total in the church, 25, 30 people, yeah,
it's pretty easy to just walk up and you know, people have complaints that, why
I had to wait in the line of like four people to talk to you or something when I came to
church or I left a voicemail and I live in Timbuktu.
Why aren't you calling me back about my emergency?
You know, that's what the local church is for.
You got to have your own local church for that, you know.
But I remember when I was a church member, I can remember being at Regency Baptist Church
in Sacramento, California.
And I can remember waiting in line to talk Pastor Nichols there, you know, and that
church only had like 150 people in it.
And you know, you'd have to stand around for an hour after church sometimes to get to
Pastor Nichols.
It's not because Pastor Nichols was prideful or something.
Pastor Nichols was not prideful at all.
It's just that Pastor Nichols is talking to people and there's 10 people that want
to talk to him, so he's got to talk to those 10 people and you know, you might
have to wait a while.
I mean, doesn't that just make sense?
Isn't that just simple math, right?
And you know, there are some times when Pastor Nichols just had to leave or something
and he's just not available.
He's got to go somewhere.
He's got to do something else.
And you know, if you go to an even bigger church, like for example, I went to First
Baptist Church of Hammond for a while where there were like 5,000 people in the auditorium.
You know, if you want to talk to the pastor, I mean, you wait in line for hours
to talk to the pastor, okay.
Now there are a lot of people who have this philosophy that says, oh well, you know,
the church is too big.
The church has to be tiny so that the pastor can hold my hand and coddle me all the time.
But that's not the right answer.
The answer is not for the church to get smaller.
The answer is for things to be delegated, for jobs to be delegated and for you to
understand that everything doesn't have to be done by Pastor Anderson.
Other people can do it as well, right?
And it's the same thing in the Book of Acts where the widows were complaining because
they were being neglected in the daily ministration.
And what did the apostles say?
Well, it's not meat for us to leave the Word of God and serve tables.
They said, we need to choose seven men that will take care of this business but
we will give ourselves continually to the ministry of the Word and of prayer.
You know, so the pastor has certain things that only he can do, things that he needs
to focus on.
Other things often have to be delegated to other people.
Now I explained this to somebody recently and here's what they said, yeah, but those
people who come to your church, they're coming to see you.
Then you're coming for the wrong reason.
They're not coming for brothers and girls, they're coming for you.
Then they're coming for the wrong reason because they ought to be coming for Christ.
And you know what?
I'm not the only person in this church who knows the Bible.
I'm not the only person in this church who can answer questions.
There are many people in our church who are very capable in answering all manner of Bible
questions and explaining Bible truths.
So if somebody has a question, there are lots of people that can give that answer.
There are lots of people that can give that help or advice or whatever the situation
is.
And in fact, the Bible teaches that different people in the church have different spiritual
gifts.
And if we go and flip over to Romans chapter 12, let's look at a few of those spiritual
gifts and understand that some things are going to end up being delegated to other people
or other people besides the pastor can step in and meet certain needs and take care
of certain jobs.
And look, we see this all throughout the Bible.
Moses tried to do everything himself and his father-in-law took him aside and said,
hey, you need some help.
You're going to waste away.
You're going to get burned out.
Look, I don't feel burned out.
I feel great.
I'm ready to keep going and keep preaching and keep serving God.
But you know what, if I had to do everything myself and deal with every problem myself
and talk to every person myself and answer every question myself, I'd be burned out.
I'd be like, I'm done.
I quit.
It's too much.
God doesn't want us to overdo it.
And that's why Moses had to get 70 elders in order to lighten the load.
And we see it in the book of Acts as I already mentioned.
But look at Romans chapter 12.
It says in verse number five, so we being many are one body in Christ and everyone members
one of another.
Having then gifts differing according to the grace given to us, whether prophecy, let
us prophesy according to the proportion of faith or ministry, let us wait on our ministering
or he that teacheth on teaching or he that exhorteth on exhortation.
He that giveth let him do with simplicity.
He that ruleth with diligence.
He that showeth mercy with cheerfulness.
Now, you can see that there are a lot of ors here, or ministry, or teaching, or prophecy,
right?
Why?
Because not everybody is going to be able to do everything.
So it's not reasonable to expect the pastor to have every spiritual gift and to be able
to do every job, right?
I'm not the whole body here.
I'm part of the body, but you're part of the body too.
And so other people in the church need to use their spiritual gifts to minister to
one another so that the body can edify itself in love.
That's what the Bible teaches.
So one person can't be expected to meet everyone's spiritual needs.
Different people are better at certain things.
So if someone other than me visits you in the hospital, or if someone other than me
visits you in prison, or if someone other than me sends you a card, or gives you a call,
or gives you a ride, or whatever the case may be, you know what?
You ought to just thank God that the work of God is being done.
And it doesn't matter who does it so long as the job is getting done.
The emphasis ought to be on the Lord, Jesus Christ, the work of God, not on which person
carried out the work.
It's more about which work was performed, what needs to be done.
You know, if you see a need that you can step in and fill, step in and fill that need.
And you know what?
There are certain people that are better at certain things than I am.
And maybe it'd be even better for them to fill that need than for me to just try
to do every single job myself.
You know, there are other people that have other abilities.
You know, my ability is to get up here and preach the Word of God.
To study the Bible, to know the Bible, to preach the Bible, and to do that.
You know, to run soul-winning programs and to do the work of an evangelist.
You know, these are the things that God has called me to do, right?
But there are other things that other people can do and we all work together and we all
edify the body of Christ, not just a one-man show.
So Elisha had every right to delegate something, if you want to go back to 2 Kings 5, Elisha
had every right to delegate something to someone else.
Now Elisha was not a respecter of persons.
He's not impressed by horses and chariots.
This guy is a spiritual guy and people that are spiritual, they don't get excited about
celebrities.
They don't get excited about money and fancy cars and things like that.
It doesn't mean anything to them.
I mean, this is a guy who's very close with the Lord and so he's not super impressed
by that stuff.
So he just decides to just delegate Naaman.
Oh, that meeting with Naaman, you handle that.
Just tell him I said to go dunk in the river seven times.
He wasn't just making that up.
I mean, that was the right answer.
That was God's plan to heal Naaman.
Naaman had to take this step of faith.
He had to be humble enough, right, in front of his whole entourage and everything to
go do those seven rock jumps into the river.
He had to, you know, he had to go do it.
But of course, you know, before he gets saved, before census talked to him, he's the expert
on church, even though he's never been there.
He's an expert on being a pastor, even though he's not even saved, right?
So he, you know, he can't believe in this whole delegating thing.
You need to do it yourself, Pastor Anderson.
You know, you need to do it yourself, Elisha, or whoever.
And then he brings up these other rivers, Urbana and Farpar.
They're better.
Well, then go there.
Then go dunk there, buddy.
But thankfully, he had some servants that were smart that talked him down.
And they came near and spake at him and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee
do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?
How much rather than, when he saith to thee, wash and be clean?
Then when he down and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, 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.
Now, obviously, this is symbolic of salvation.
Leprosy pictures sin.
Sin when it is finished, brings forth death.
Leprosy, when it's finished, brings forth death.
And all throughout the Bible, leprosy is a picture of sin.
And him being washed of his leprosy is a picture of us being washed of our sins
in the blood of Jesus Christ.
And also the fact that when his skin came back to him, it was like the skin of a child.
That's the picture of the fact that when we get saved, we're born again.
And so we're babes in Christ.
And so when he dunks in the river seven times, that's a picture of him being saved.
This is a great passage on salvation because he is told by the servants, you know, if the
prophet would have told you to do some great thing, you would have done it.
How much more wash and be clean?
Now think about that.
A lot of people think the gospel is too easy, don't they?
I can't be that easy just to believe in Christ, just call upon the name of the Lord.
I mean, that's just too easy.
But what his servants are saying to him is that you should be happy that it's easy.
Be thankful that it's easy.
I mean, how much better is it that he's not asking you to do some great thing?
All you got to do is jump in the river seven times.
That's it.
Just seven dips.
It'll be fun.
Let's go.
Now a lot of people today, they think they have to jump through all kinds of hoops to
be saved.
They ought to be happy that it's easier than that, that it's just by faith.
Imagine if Elisha would have sent him on some quest.
He would have been happy with that and he would have done it.
I mean, if Elisha would have come out to him and personally met with him and said,
listen, Naaman, here's what you have to do.
You have to travel far west, far west into a land that you've never even seen.
You're going to go far west and you're going to finally get to these giant islands
off the coast of Europe.
One of them is called Ireland.
You got to go to Ireland.
When you get there, you must seek out and find a four leaf clover.
When you find a four leaf clover, you bring it back to me and you will be healed of
your leprosy.
You know, Godspeed on your quest, my son.
You know, he probably would have done it.
I got to go get it.
You know, I got to do this.
I must go on this quest.
I must travel to this distant land of Dublin or whatever, you know, or just whatever the
crazy quest that he, or if he told him, hey, here's what you got to do, Naaman.
I know you're a mighty warrior.
I want you to go down to the land of the Philistines and I want you to kill a hundred
Philistines and bring me their foreskins, right?
Like Saul told David to do.
He would have said, all right guys, you know, we're warriors.
We're soldiers.
We'll do it.
This is what the Lord is asking us to do in order for me to be healed, but how much
more just wash and be clean, right?
So a lot of people today, they think that they have to work really hard to be saved.
The good news is that it's easy, but then you tell them that and they get mad.
They get mad.
They don't want to accept it.
And so we need to be like Naaman's servants and gently say to those people like, you
know, they were gently, they were, they did it gently.
They were respectful.
We need to be like that and gently explain to people, hey, look, wouldn't you do anything
to escape hell?
Wouldn't you do anything to live forever?
Wouldn't the rich men of this world pay any price to live forever?
How much more wash and be clean?
And that's what the message of the gospel is.
Just wash and be clean.
Christ's blood cleanses us from all sins.
Then when he down, verse 14, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according
to the saying of the man of God, and his flesh came again unto, like unto the
flesh of a little child, and he was clean, and he returned to the man of God, he
in 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.
Now therefore I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant.
And he said, as the Lord liveth before whom I stand, I will receive none.
And he urged him to take it, but he refused.
Elisha didn't have any interest in money.
He just wanted to make sure that Naaman knew that he was being healed out of love
and that it wasn't something he needed to pay for.
The gospel's free.
But Naaman said, 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.
So a lot of people in the ancient world had strange ideas about worshiping God.
They thought that there was a God for each area.
And that's why the Bible keeps hammering in the Old Testament that God's the God
of the whole earth, you know, he's the God of all nations, and that all the other
gods are false gods, because a lot of people had this idea of, hey, if you're in the
land of the Philistines, you got to worship the gods of the Philistines.
When you're in the land of Israel, you worship the Israeli God.
If you're in the land of Syria, you got to worship their gods.
This was the mentality that the devil had got a lot of people believing and thinking
in those days.
And we see examples of that in the Bible where people thought that way.
For example, when the Israelites of the northern kingdom are taken captive and the
Assyrians move in, they say, hey, we don't know how to worship the gods in this region.
We're having all kinds of problems, lions are ripping people apart and everything,
because the god of this area is mad at us, and we don't know, you know, how to
worship him.
You know, we're coming from a different land.
So basically, Naaman the Syrian, he's probably been affected by that philosophy.
So he thinks to himself, you know, I want to only worship the Lord, because this
is obviously the only true God, is the God of Israel.
This is the only God.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to fill up two mules with Israeli dirt.
This is the first, you know, Bill Grady fan, you know.
He said, I'm going to load up some of this holy ground, some of this dirt, and
he's going to bring it home with him so that he can worship the Lord on the Lord's
turf.
But what he doesn't realize is that the whole world is the Lord's turf, right?
But he's like, I got to worship God on his own turf.
So he's bringing the literal turf, he's bringing the literal dirt home with him.
And he says, hey, I'm never going to offer any burnt offering or any sacrifice
unto another God, but unto the Lord.
Now look, his heart's in the right place, and he's doing the right thing.
But this dirt is unnecessary, bringing all the dirt's unnecessary.
But people in the Bible, you know, are not perfect people.
And in fact, in this story, you know, you see a lot of people who are not perfect,
you know, that are good in some ways and bad in other ways.
And the characters in the Bible are very complex.
Why?
Because they're real people.
It's not just some fable where the good guys are just 100% good and the bad guys
are just all rotten to the core.
You know, in the Bible, we see a lot of good people who are wrong on some things
or they make some mistakes, right?
So in this story, we see that Naaman, before he was saved, had a real bad attitude.
After he gets saved, he's got a great attitude, he wants to serve the Lord.
Does that mean he just instantly knows the Bible?
No.
I mean, he has to learn.
He just got saved five minutes ago.
He doesn't necessarily realize how it works with worshiping the Lord,
that he doesn't have to bring all that dirt.
But what I like here is that we don't see Elisha jumping down the new convert's
throat and just rebuking him and ripping on him and telling him how stupid he is
and how wrong he is.
You know, we see Elisha being patient with him.
And when people get saved and they're a brand new believer, don't just expect them
to know everything about the Bible right away.
Don't just expect them to be right about everything.
You know, they might bring in some worldly philosophies or some stuff that they picked
up in a false religion, and they may bring that stuff in.
It doesn't mean that they're not sincere or that they don't love the Lord.
They're just babes in Christ.
And so they need to learn, and so we should be patient with people who just got saved
so that they could learn the ropes of the Christian life.
It's a lot to learn.
It took us a long time to learn, amen?
And so here we see that he's got some wrong ideas.
And then in verse 18, we see Naaman has another wrong idea where he's already going
to be a compromiser in certain areas of his life.
But again, we can't expect a babe in Christ, a brand new convert to get everything right.
It says in verse 18, in this thing, the Lord pardoned thy servant.
He's basically admitting right there, what I'm doing is wrong, because otherwise he
wouldn't have to ask the Lord's pardon.
But he said in this thing, the Lord pardoned thy servant that when my master goeth into
the house of Reman to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in
the house of Reman, when I bow down myself in the house of Reman, the Lord pardoned thy
servant in this thing.
And he said unto him, Go in peace.
So he departed from him a little way.
So basically what he's saying is, I'm only going to worship the Lord.
I'm only going to do offerings unto the Lord.
I'm only going to pray to the Lord.
But because of my job, I'm going to have to go into this false temple, and basically I'm
just going to be there with my master.
I'm just going to be like, he's going to be bowing down, worshiping him.
I have to just be there and bow down.
I'm not going to be worshiping the false God, but I'm going to be there bowing down
with him.
And I hope God will forgive me for doing that, even though I know Reman is a false
God and I don't believe in him.
So again, you know, obviously this is not the right thing for Naaman to do.
Naaman needs to take a stand here and not bow down himself to other gods, because the Bible
says thou shalt not bow down thyself before them.
It's pretty clear.
And even he knows that, because he even says, well, the Lord pardoned me, meaning
I know it's wrong, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Now has Naaman repented of all his sins here?
No, he hasn't, has he?
He's already premeditating the next sin, but that doesn't mean that he's not saved.
He's still clean.
It's not like, oh, the leprosy's coming back.
He's still saved.
He's just compromised.
Okay, now look, I don't want you to compromise.
I don't want to compromise.
God doesn't want us to compromise, but people are human and they make mistakes and
they do wrong.
We need to do right.
We need to take a stand boldly and not bow down to other gods.
But you know what?
If someone went to a Catholic church to please their spouse or their parents and just went
along with it, even though they don't believe in it, it's wicked to do that.
It's wrong to bow down to those idols, but they can still be saved.
But somebody who believes in those idols, somebody who believes in the Roman Catholic church
is clearly not saved.
But some people could go through the motions and look, let me say it again, they shouldn't
be going through the motions.
Naaman shouldn't have been doing that.
But Elisha's just glad that he's only going to worship the Lord.
Elisha's not ripping his head off because of the fact that Elisha knows this guy
just got saved.
He's a foreigner.
He's living in another country.
He doesn't know any better.
And Elisha's just trying to be a blessing to this guy, right?
So verse number 19, he just tells him, go in peace.
So he departed from him a little way.
But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God, said, Behold my master at spared
name in the 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.
Now this is a rotten guy, isn't he?
This guy didn't even do anything here, and he just wants the money.
He just wants to get paid.
And he's covetous.
All he can think about is that money.
Instead of just getting excited, wow, I've just witnessed this amazing miracle.
I've just seen this man recovered of leprosy.
Isn't God good?
Isn't the Lord so powerful that he did this?
Isn't this so great?
This guy's going to go home and tell all his friends about it.
And a lot of people in Syria will hear about the God of Israel and so forth.
That's not his mind.
All that's on his mind is just profiting.
It's just financial gain.
Now remember that Elisha has been delegating stuff to Gehazi.
In chapter 4, we see him delegating stuff to Gehazi.
He says, hey, go put my staff on this dead body so that God can bring it back
to life.
He brings the staff, puts it on the dead body, nothing happens.
So then Elisha has to go there himself and do it himself.
And he ends up raising the dead body back to life.
And then in chapter 5 here, we remember originally that Elisha sent a messenger.
It's not explicit whether that was Gehazi or somebody else that he told this message
to.
Probably not Gehazi just because it might have said Gehazi.
But maybe it was.
Maybe it wasn't.
That's not the point.
That is definitely a guy who Elisha's been delegating stuff to.
I mean this is definitely Elisha's main servant.
Just like Elijah's main servant was Elisha.
You know when we see Elijah, we've got Elisha as his personal assistant pouring
the water on the hands of Elijah and so forth.
And then we see Elisha has a main assistant that is Gehazi.
Now Gehazi ends up being a rotten person.
Now this is going to happen in our lives.
Amen?
Now a lot of people will say, oh well, you know, you're an idiot because you hired
people that turned out to be bad.
Well you know Jesus had Judas Iscariot as one of his disciples.
And Elisha's number one main servant that we see turned out to be a rotten person.
So rotten that God cursed him with leprosy from head to toe and he was a leper for the
rest of his life.
And he's even told, hey, if you even have kids, they're going to have leprosy.
I mean it's going to be on you and on your seed forever.
I mean that's a major curse, right?
So this guy ended up being a rotten guy.
Here's the true story.
The truth of the matter is you don't know who's going to stab you in the back.
You don't know who turns out to be a rotten person.
You don't know who the Judases are.
You don't know who the thieves are or the covetous are or the people with secret false
doctrines and heresies that you never knew that they believed.
When they lie to you and tell you that they believe the truth, you don't know who
the wolves in sheep's clothing are.
Now everybody seems to think that they're smart enough to know that.
But until they see people around them that they thought were good people that turn out
to be rotten people.
And so it's easy to be all high and mighty, oh well I would never be fooled.
I'm just going to stand up here right now and tell you I have been fooled many
times in my life.
Many times in my life.
I can list for you many, many people that I trusted, that I, preachers that I listened
to and loved, people that I reached out to in friendship, employees that I hired,
and people just say, oh well you don't have any discernment, you're an idiot or whatever.
Well you know what?
I just give people the benefit of the doubt.
And what do you do when people are constantly lying to you, constantly stabbing you in
the back, constantly betraying you or whatever.
What do you do at that point?
Because I guess what I could do is I could just say, well I'm just never going to trust
anybody again.
I'm just never going to have friends again.
I'm just not going to open up to people ever again.
I'm just never going to hire anybody ever again.
I'm just never going to be friends with another pastor ever again.
I'm never going to help anybody out again.
Is that what we're going to do with our lives?
No.
Well I'm just never going to ordain and send out anyone to start a church because
what if they turn out to be rotten?
I don't even want to ordain anybody.
Sorry brother Shelley.
I'm just done ordaining people.
Wouldn't that be stupid?
You can't just sit there and say, well we just can't trust anybody.
We just can't.
You know what?
You're right.
We can't.
But you know what?
We still need to keep loving people and keep making friends and keep giving people
the benefit of the doubt.
I'm not just going to go around just on a witch hunt and just looking at everybody and just
assuming everybody's a fraud.
You know what?
I'm just going to keep giving people the benefit of the doubt.
And if people want to call me an idiot because I didn't see that coming, well then you know
what?
I'm sorry.
That's what I'm going to keep doing.
I'm just going to keep on assuming that people are telling me the truth.
And just loving people and giving people the benefit of the doubt.
And you say, well but you need to be able to smoke these people out.
But you know what?
The apostles, they couldn't smoke out Judas.
And you know, Elisha had to require supernatural intervention to figure out that Gehazi was lying
to him.
Right?
Because I mean look, the average person doesn't just send their spirit with Gehazi when they
send him to do a job.
But look what the Bible says here in this story.
Let me find the place here in 2 Kings, oh I'm in chapter 6, 2 Kings chapter 5.
And it says in verse number 25, and he went in and stood before his master and Elisha
said to him, Whence comest thou, Gehazi?
And he said, Thy servant wither.
And he said unto him, When not my heart with thee?
When a man turned again from his chariot to meet thee, is it a time to receive money
and to receive garments and olive yards and vineyards and sheep and oxen and manservants
and maidservants?
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.
His rottenness that was on the inside was exposed on the outside so that everybody
could see that decay and death of him.
It's interesting the next time we see Gehazi he's in the king's court hanging around with
the king like a royal storyteller telling stories about Elisha, talking about the good
old days.
That's a perfect place for him because that's what he loved, the good life, money,
you know, fame, he liked that respect I think.
So that's where he pops up again in chapter 8 in 2 Kings.
We see here that Gehazi is exposed through a divine intervention where Elisha miraculously
is able to see God showed him that his heart somehow went with him when he followed Naaman
and took the money.
We don't all have that kind of clairvoyance to see those things and to find those things.
But what can we do?
What we could do is decide to just become a loner and a commando and just, I'm just
going to do it myself.
You know what I mean?
I'm just going to take my sons and we're going to go up to that Indian reservation
and we're going to go soloing, we're going to knock doors and we're going to do it
ourselves and we're going to knock doors in Phoenix and we're just going to do it
ourselves and, you know, we don't want to bring anybody with us because we don't know
if some of them are phonies or not, if some of them are bogus.
You know, I mean, is that what God has called us to do?
No, God has called us to operate in the local church.
And when we operate in the local church, when we join together hundreds of people
in the local church, some of those people are going to be bad people.
Why?
Because God has ordained it to be so.
This is God's plan.
God's plan is that we operate in the local church and that there are tares among
the wheat.
The Bible says there must be heresies among us so that they which are approved
can be made manifest.
It's a test.
When that person comes to you, as it says in Deuteronomy and says, hey, let's go
worship other gods.
What's the Bible saying?
Well, the Lord is testing you.
By allowing that person to be there that says, come, let's worship other gods.
Come, let's deny the Trinity and believe in the Jesus that comes in his own name.
Right?
It's a test.
Why is the devil even allowed to exist?
I mean, couldn't God just snap his fingers right now and just send the devil to hell?
If God is truly omnipotent, all powerful as the Bible says he is, if he's truly
the almighty God, he could easily cast the devil to hell.
He's going to do it in the future.
Why is the devil allowed to exist?
The devil is allowed to exist to go around and deceive the world.
That is his job to deceive the world.
It's a test.
Why was the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden?
Couldn't God have just left that tree out and just created a perfect place where
there's no, it's a test.
It's a test.
Why is God, after he's already defeated the devil, thrown him into hell, locked him up
for a thousand years, why after a thousand years does he say, all right, let's let
the devil out?
Let's release the devil out of his prison.
What in the world?
Why would you do that?
Well, yeah, we got to release the devil from the bottomless pit so he can do what?
So he can go out to deceive the nations, which are in the four quarters of the earth,
Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, the number of whom is at the sand
and sea.
You know why?
Because of the fact that God needed to take out the trash.
At the end of the millennium, there was some trash that had accumulated.
Even under a perfect government, a perfect system, trash had accumulated at the end
of the millennium and God wanted to gather them together to battle of Gog and Magog.
Why?
To wipe them out so that he can burn the trash.
But in order to get all the trash together at that battle, he's got to do what?
He's got to loose the devil from his prison to go out to deceive the nations.
So look, don't think that you're smarter than God.
God's thoughts are not your thoughts.
God's ways are not your ways.
God has a plan and part of his plan is to allow the devil to exist and to do his
thing.
Ultimately, the devil carries out a purpose even that glorifies God.
Even though the devil is wicked and evil and is going to be punished for all eternity,
God is allowing him to exist.
In fact, he only has the power that God allows him to have.
In the book of Job, we see God restraining the devil and giving him exact parameters
of what he's even going to let the devil do.
Anything the devil does, he's being allowed to do it by God.
The devil is on a leash today.
He is not just having free reign to do whatever he wants.
So we see why the devil exists and this is why the tares are allowed to grow amongst
the wheat.
Do you remember when the servants in that parable said, should we go ahead and gather
up the tares, master?
An enemy has done this.
Well the Bible says the tares are the children of the wicked one.
And he said, should we gather up the tares?
What are tares?
What's the modern vernacular?
Weeds.
Should we gather up the weeds?
And he says, no, no, no.
Let both grow together until the time.
And at the time of harvest, I will say unto the reapers, gather ye together first
the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them but gather the wheat into my barn.
We're not there yet.
We're not to the time of harvest yet.
The harvest is the end of the world, the Bible says.
We're not there.
At this time, the tares and the wheat must grow together.
This is what God is learning.
And he said in 2 Peter 2, there shall be false prophets among you.
They will feast with you.
They will feed with you.
They will be among you.
And yet, we're shocked when it happens.
And you know what?
We ought to be shocked.
I mean, you know, you love people, you trust people, you're friends with people.
And then they just, all of a sudden it's like, whoa, you believe all this heresy?
You believe all these false doctrines?
What in the world?
Where is this coming from?
It's coming out of the pit of hell.
And I'm here to tell you tonight that this is not the first time and it's not going
to be the last time.
And it's going to keep happening.
This is life.
I've seen it my whole life.
Now, some people, they get discouraged by this, they quit, they just don't even go
to church, or they get so disgruntled or jaded that they just decide they don't want
to be friends with anybody.
They just want to kind of show up to church and leave and I don't want to be friends
with anybody because too many people let me down.
But you know what?
You need to keep loving people.
You need to keep fellowshipping with the church.
You need to keep reaching out and being people's friends.
And you know what?
They're going to be people.
You reach out, you're their friend, you do things for them, you help them, you give
to them, you know, you give of your heart to them, right?
You give of your love and affection and friendship and they're going to turn around and, you
know, stab you in the back.
And that's what Judas did to Christ.
And that's what David had some of his closest friends and advisors do to him.
You know, foreshadowing Christ.
Even King David was stabbed in the back and had people turn on him and stuff like
that.
Look, it's just part of life.
Now some people aren't going to be able to handle it.
But you know what?
You have to be able to handle it.
In order to be a part of the church, in order to serve God, in order to be a part
of a team or a group, you're surrounded by sinners.
And not only are you surrounded by sinners saved by grace, which are the wheat, there
are also going to be even rotten people, tears amongst the wheat.
And you can't tell the difference.
And you know, if you think you're smart enough to tell the difference, well then
you're smarter than the apostles, you're smarter than Elisha, and you're certainly
smarter than me because I've been fooled many times.
You know, I remember when I went to Hyles Anderson College, I was fooled by Jack Scopp.
You know, I sat and listened to Jack Scopp preach in those early years of his ministry,
when he was just repeating a lot of the same stuff that Brother Hyles had taught.
And I sat and listened to Jack Scopp, and you know what, I'm not going to go back
retroactively and say, oh, well I knew all along there was something wrong with
that guy.
No, I didn't.
I sat there in the sincerity of my heart thinking, hey, this Bible college is a great
place, and Jack Scopp's a great preacher, and you know, this is great, I'm happy.
You know, thank God for it, this is a great ministry.
But then, eventually I came to realize, this guy's a wolf in sheep's clothing.
And I was fooled, right?
And once he started preaching heresy, I didn't go back, I didn't say, well, you know,
he can't be a heretic, because what about all those sermons I liked?
You know, I realized, like, this guy was obviously a devil from the beginning, he just
was saying all the right things.
And I realized, whoa, Jack Scopp is a false teacher, and I got out of that place, I left
that church, and I was preaching against Jack Scopp nine years before he got arrested
and caught being a predator, and a statutory rapist and everything else.
So you know, that's a shock, it was a shock to me at the time.
It really shook me.
It rattles you when you're looking up to somebody, and you know, you have somebody
that you're listening to and looking to, and he's your pastor, and then he just starts
preaching lies and heresy, because I left over the heresy that he was preaching.
And then later, of course, he was found to be a predator.
Other times, you know, I can think of a lot of other examples in my life of just
pastors and preachers that I looked up to, friends that I had, church members at
this church, church members at other churches, it's going to happen.
But we can't just get so, what's the word I'm looking for, disillusioned, you know,
that we just don't, we don't put ourselves out there anymore.
You know, I'm going to keep putting myself out there.
You know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to look at you cross-eyed because somebody
else betrayed me.
I'm not just going to be like, well now I just, I can't have any friends, I can't
trust anybody, I can't love anybody, I'm going to keep on doing that.
And I'm going to keep giving people the benefit of the doubt, because everybody's innocent
until proven guilty.
You know, give people the benefit of the doubt.
Now that being said, we don't want to trust people with our kids, because it's
the last people you would suspect sometimes.
You don't want to drop your little kids off with people, oh yeah, they're church
people, they've been here for years, you know.
You don't want to, you don't want to open yourself up and be that vulnerable, but
you've got to have friendship, you've got to love people, you've got to fellowship,
you've got to be a part of the team.
We can accomplish way more as a team than we ever could by ourselves, even if we got
some bad players on the team.
And you know what, when we had the Soul Winning Mega-Marathon, a lot of people said, well
how can you make sure that in all these different 99 or 100 events going on all over
the world, that everybody who's out Soul Winning is giving the right gospel and that
everybody's doing it right.
And I'm just thinking to myself, I don't know that.
And there probably are a few bozos out there preaching weird stuff.
But you know what, if 98% of people are out there preaching a right gospel, I'm okay
with that.
Because you know what, if somebody goes out and preaches some false, that's on them.
But should we not send out thousands of good people to go Soul Winning because we're
afraid of a couple of tares amongst the wheat?
Tares will be amongst the wheat, deal with it.
It's just life.
And you know, just because Gehazi was rotten, that doesn't mean Elisha is never going
to train another preacher, he's never going to have another servant again.
No, he's going to keep on training, he's just going to move on and train the next guy.
And I'm sure Elisha was pretty disappointed that his best buddy, Gehazi, turned out to
be bogus.
I'm sure, but you know what, you don't see him really crying about it here.
You just see him rebuking the guy and cursing him with leprosy.
And then in the next verse, he's just got new followers.
In chapter 6 verse 1, the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, behold now the place
where we dwell with thee is too straight for us.
You know, so what happened?
Did the church shrink in chapter 6 verse 1 because Gehazi got fired?
Did the church get smaller?
Or did they knock out a wall and expand the auditorium?
You know, in chapter 6 verse 1, they're still expanding the auditorium.
You know, what happened when Judas got exposed?
Did the church shrink and die?
Or did it grow?
It grew.
Why?
Because the church isn't based on Gehazi and Judas and everything else.
You know what, it's built on the rock of Christ.
The difference between us and the old IFB is that when we have somebody who turns
out to be rotten, we admit it.
And we execute judgment.
Judgment begins at the house of God.
We execute judgment, we're candid about it, we're open about it, and we move on with
our lives.
And we keep on serving God.
We don't lie about it, hide it, and sweep it under the rug.
We face it head on.
Now, you know, I remember back when I was a church member, when I was in the pew,
and people would just disappear, and no one would tell you where they went.
And you're like, what's going on?
Where's my youth leader?
Where's the deacon?
Where's the assistant pastor?
Nobody will tell you.
And that irritated the fire out of me.
That's why we don't do things that way around here.
You know, we just put it out there in the open.
This is what happened.
This is the way it is.
And you know what?
Here's the thing.
Every church has this.
Every Bible-believing church, every Christian church that truly loves the Lord has tears
among the weak.
It's just that some churches just allow a free-for-all doctrinally.
Some churches just allow predators to just continue, even when they're found out.
And some people allow, you know, just anybody to just do whatever the doctrine, whatever
the activity, or they just get rid of the people quietly.
The difference with our church is that we're open about it.
Everything's done above board, where everybody can see what's going on.
And so don't get discouraged by the Gehazi's.
Be encouraged by the Naaman's and the Elisha's.
There are plenty of good people in this world.
And you know what?
Our church is filled with good people.
There are a lot of great people in our church.
And 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, there's still going to
be a lot of the same people that are right here still serving God if Christ has
not yet returned.
So don't get down about the people who don't pan out.
Why don't we just get excited about the people who did pan out?
Why don't we just get excited about, instead of talking about the failed, aborted church
starts or church plans, why don't we just get excited about Brother Romero?
You know what I mean?
Why don't we just get excited about Brother Jimenez?
Why don't we just get excited about the guys that are succeeding and doing well?
And why don't we get excited about Brother Shelley going to Houston and starting a church
and not get an attitude of like, I don't know, is Brother Shelley going to be next?
Why don't we just get excited and just say, you know what?
Brother Shelley's a great guy.
We like Brother Shelley.
You know, he's doctrinally sound.
Let's send him out.
He's going to do great work.
Let's pray for him.
Let's not hold back our support just in case or something.
You know what I mean?
When there's no indication to do that, you see what I'm saying?
Just because we're just once bitten, twice shy.
That's not the right attitude, friend.
We need to keep sending people out.
We need to keep on trying.
We need, you know, what else can we do?
But just keep on going and keep on doing the same thing.
And you know what?
I guarantee you, I'm just telling you right now, and this hasn't happened so far,
thank God.
Someday we're going to send somebody out to start a church, actually ordain someone
and send them out to start a church, and that person will preach heresy and be just
a total reprobate.
Now thank God that hasn't happened.
Thank God, you know, before these oneness people were sent out, they were actually found
out before they were sent out.
So we never sent out a oneness guy, amen?
We caught him in the nick of time.
We dodged that bullet.
Isn't that true?
We did send out a guy who started a church, and you know, the church closed its doors
a couple months later.
But you know what?
At least he didn't preach lies and heresy.
You know what I mean?
He's still a brother in Christ, you know.
He's not a horrible person, you know.
He picked himself up, and the just man falls seven times and rises up again, and he's
still serving the Lord.
You know, he's still a godly church member, right?
So we've never sent out a heretic yet, but I'm telling you right now, it's probably
eventually going to happen.
Just based on what I read in scripture and based on the lessons that life has taught
me.
You know what?
It's not going to be our fault.
Because the Bible says they went out from us, but they were not of us.
For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us.
But they went out that they might be made manifest, that they were not all of us.
And I would like to hope and tell myself that we will never ordain and send out
a pastor who becomes a damnable heretic.
But you know what?
Chances are if we end up sending out a hundred pastors over the next few decades, which
I believe that that's possible.
If we ordain twenty, thirty pastors over the next ten, fifteen years or whatever, chances
are one of them is going to be a rotten person.
But you know what?
Why don't we just focus on all the good ones that we sent out?
All the good guys.
And you know what?
A lot of pastors from the old IFB have become our friends.
And a few of them turned out to be rotten.
One of them turned out to be a psycho killer.
Does that mean we just don't want to be friends with any pastor anymore?
Look.
And if you didn't hear that story, well, just go on YouTube.
But anyway, it's out there.
And I'm not saying that figuratively speaking.
I'm saying literally a psycho killer.
But that was not figurative.
That's not hyperbole up here.
But I'm saying that what about all the new friends of pastors we have that have great
fellowship with us?
Let's not just get all bent out of shape about those couple of guys that were rotten.
Let's just focus on the ones that we like.
You don't want to just become an angry person or a negative person or a gloomy person.
The joy of the Lord is our strength.
I don't know about you, I'm going to go home tonight, I'm going to eat some good food,
I'm going to read my Bible, I'm going to praise God, I'm going to go to bed, I'm going
to wake up tomorrow morning, I'm going to have a great day.
And I believe that those of you who are going to White River tomorrow, I think you're
going to have a great day up there.
And those of you who can't go, say a prayer for them.
And have a great day down here.
And just move on with your life.
It's not the end of the world.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for this great passage of scripture, Lord, and we love the
Bible, Lord.
Thank you so much for giving us this wonderful book, Lord, the greatest treasure that we
own is our Bible.
And Lord, I just pray that you would just encourage everyone, Lord, strengthen us and
help us to continue to do great works, help us to be Elisha's and not to be Gehazi's.