Crossing borders...

Huw Williams | 16:44, Friday 15 July 2016 | Turin, Italy

I have spent the week in 2 Kings 5, preparing my latest sermon in our series on the life of Elisha. The healing of Naaman is more familiar territory than other parts of 2 Kings for many of us, and it puts forward some huge challenges for the attentive reader and the contemporary church.

Elisha’s ministry takes place against a dark backdrop of deep spiritual decline in Ancient Israel. If there has been any significant growth in the number of people who remained faithful to God from God’s numbering of 7,000 in 1 Kings 19, the text of Kings doesn’t tell us. Thus, when we see spiritual decline and opposition to the good news of the gospel on the increase in many parts in the world, we need to remember that, however bleak we think things have become where we are, it was certainly looking bleaker in Elisha’s time. Yet it is in these times that God emblazons His heart for the nations in bold letters right across 2 Kings 5, in the healing and calling of Naaman the Aramean.

So it is strange that many in the Western church are holding such a defensive posture at the moment with regards to missions.

So it is strange that many in the Western church are holding such a defensive posture at the moment with regards to missions. There is an increasing trend in many quarters, where the battle is seen to be raging the fiercest at home, the hatches are being battened down, the drawbridges being pulled up and church members are being kept close while we wait for more fruitful, more peaceful times to think about sending them to the nations. (I have even come across a few instances where this is described as a ‘vision’ for ministry.)

The narrative of 2 Kings 5 is set up to highlight the shocking nature of Gehazi’s actions in v19-27. Consider the role of servants through this chapter – the young Israelite servant girl in Naaman’s home offers him hope in the prospect of an encounter with God’s prophet, while the Aramean servants talk Naaman down from his rage and persuade him to obey Elisha’s instructions. And yet Gehazi, the servant who spends his days seeing Elisha up close, sees this momentous occasion merely as an opportunity for personal profit.

Elisha sums it up neatly in v26:

“…Is this the time to take money, or to accept clothes, olive groves, vineyards, flocks, herds, or menservants and maidservants?”

... this is a time to celebrate, to marvel, to rejoice in God’s love, mercy, forgiveness and life going to the nations.

The answer to the rhetorical question is obvious – no it is not. But this is a time to celebrate, to marvel, to rejoice in God’s love, mercy, forgiveness and life going to the nations. Elisha’s words are an invitation to meditate on the overwhelming love of God which is crossing borders and producing wholehearted worshipers, the like of whom are in very short supply in Elisha’s Israel.

Had Gehazi caught that vision, he might have been a little less interested in the jangling money bags and designer suits that he noticed on Naaman’s convoy. But in the event, all Gehazi sees is an opportunity to get rich and to get comfortable. And yet can’t we be much the same? With all the wonder of the post-Petecost days we live in, the good news of Jesus is going out into all the world, and men and women from all nations are being drawn to Christ.

Do you see the world with Elisha’s eyes, or with the eyes of Gehazi? “...Is this the time to take money, or to accept clothes, olive groves, vineyards, flocks, herds, or menservants and maidservants?” Or is this a time to gaze on the heart of the God of the nations, to wonder and be thrilled by His love for men and women which sends His Son to save us, and to be sent out, in the power of His Spirit, as we see His glory, to go and make the good news known?