Steward of God’s Gift of Adversity: A Little Girl Used By a Big God

Passage: II Kings 5:1-14

Our text opens in the foreign country of Syria, north and east of Israel.  Syria was a powerful enemy of Israel.  We are in Damascus, the great and beautiful capital of Syria.  Syria was a pagan nation, full of idolaters, godless people, a land living in darkness.  Here we meet the principal character.

Naaman was the commander and chief of all the military forces of Syria, a five-star general, a Patton, a MacArthur, a Schwarzkopf.  He was second only to King Ben Hadad II.  We are told he was a mighty man of valor; a great man held in high regard.

He was also a man of great wealth.  He had a palace in the nicest suburb of Damascus, with a three-chariot garage, stables, servants and all the rest.  He had no trouble coming up with ten talents of silver and six thousand shekels of gold, 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold.

Naaman was as great as the world could make him and yet there wasn’t a soul in Damascus, even the poorest outcast, that would trade skin with him to gain everything else he had.

But.  One little word changes everything.  But, he had leprosy, he was a leper.  That word hits like a thud in our text, like saying he had AIDS.

But that’s not the most surprising or shocking thing in our text.  Did you hear something else in this story that struck your ears, that got your attention?