Water in the Wilderness, Part 5 Healing Waters

[00:00:01] Well, what do you think of Naaman? [00:00:05] Did you figure out what his disease was? [00:00:09] Yeah. What was it? [00:00:10] It's called leprosy. We don't see leprosy so much anymore. At least not around us. Although there are places in the world where people who have leprosy live all together. It's called a leper colony. [00:00:26] And one famous one is in Hawaii. You don't really ever get to visit it. There's a better places to visit in Hawaii, right? Anybody been to Hawaii? [00:00:36] Yeah, lots of you. [00:00:38] So Naaman had leprosy. And I got to tell you, leprosy's hardly ever curable. So he was kind of stuck with it for life. [00:00:51] Now, we learned a few other things about Naaman, didn't we? We learned he was a mighty warrior and a great general, and God Almighty had given him great victory in battle. [00:01:07] But he had leprosy. [00:01:09] But he's a great man, but he has leprosy. [00:01:14] Do you see the problem? [00:01:17] It's kind of a problem, isn't it? [00:01:20] So he hears from this little slave girl. Now, some of you young ladies that are here might have been just in that condition where you get carried off as a slave girl to a whole new land, but you get a job in somebody's house. Well, in that house, this little girl was able to tell about Elisha, the prophet of God. The very man who God spoke his words through to God's people. [00:01:51] And he said, if you could get around Elisha, he could heal your disease. [00:01:56] This little girl. [00:01:57] So Naaman gets all excited and he goes to his own king and he says, I think I need to go visit this Elisha guy. [00:02:05] And the king says, I'll send letters and I'll send tributes, and we'll see what can happen. And so Naaman goes off to Samaria where this prophet is, this prophet Elisha. By the way, who's heard of Elisha before? Raise your hand. You probably study Elisha in your Bible studies, don't you? And in fact, oh, I'll say this to the teachers. You know what a good time is to Open up Samuel, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles, and read all those cool stories that are in there. This is one of them. [00:02:42] And you just get to kind of, oh, I don't know, see how God works, all kinds of problems out. So it's a lot of fun in case you have a snow day sometime and you just really need to dig into something that's kind of cool. That would be something to do. Well, anyway, Back to Naaman, off he goes. And he encountered Elisha, the man of God. [00:03:10] And right at Elisha's house, Naaman shows up with horses and chariots, and he's standing at Elisha's door. [00:03:21] Now, I gotta tell you, remember, he's a great warrior. [00:03:28] Say it with me. But he has leprosy. [00:03:33] Great war. Well, listen, I think he's kind of full of himself. Do you ever meet somebody like that? [00:03:39] Yeah, you know, I mean, he just. He really thinks he's all it, but he shows up at Elisha's door, and Elisha said, but go dip yourself in the Jordan river seven times. [00:03:54] What? [00:03:56] What? [00:03:59] What am I gonna do that for? I'm a great warrior. [00:04:04] And he starts complaining because he's a great big smart alecky, know it all. [00:04:13] And he says, well, I'll read it to you. I thought that this Elisha guy would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord and wave his hands over the place and cure my leprosy. In other words, he wanted a big sign and a big show, didn't he? Huh? Oh, that'd be so great. And he could go back and say, yeah, they did a big show over me and he cured my leprosy. [00:04:42] It's not the way it went. [00:04:44] Had to go dip himself in the Jordan river, which was pretty. It's a pretty good river. But as Naaman points out, it's nothing like, you know, the plat or the pooter that we have around here. [00:05:01] You know, it's nothing like our great rivers back home. [00:05:05] He wants me to go dip in the Little Thompson. [00:05:09] That's how we would kind of put it. [00:05:15] Then his servants say, didn't he say he was going to heal you? [00:05:20] Didn't he say so? Why don't you just listen for once in your life? Listen to somebody else. [00:05:28] So he does it. [00:05:30] Now, here's the neat part of the story. [00:05:32] He gets healed, doesn't he? [00:05:38] How did he get healed? [00:05:40] Yeah, say it again. [00:05:44] No, that's the other story. [00:05:47] How did Naaman get healed? Yeah, Go dip in the river seven times. [00:05:58] That's water, isn't it? [00:06:03] And he was washed clean. And leprosy, the way I understand it is it kind of makes your. Your skin turn all white and. And parts fall off sometimes, too. Is that the way you understand leprosy? [00:06:19] Yeah, it's bad. [00:06:21] So he's healed. [00:06:25] Not just water, though. [00:06:28] What else? [00:06:29] Huh? [00:06:32] Did you say dirt? [00:06:34] No, water. And the word of God, actually, does that remind you of anything? [00:06:45] It reminds you of baptism, doesn't it? Because in baptism, God washes us clean and he wants us to see water here on earth because he uses means. He uses stuff, doesn't he? [00:07:01] But he also comes with his word. [00:07:04] And in his word he says, I forgive you all your sins and I heal you and I give you eternal life and I give you faith to hold on to me. That's what happens in baptism. [00:07:17] Well, all of that happened for Naaman, because did you hear what he said at the end? [00:07:21] He returned to that man of God after dipping in the river seven times, and he says, now I know. Behold, there is no God in all the earth but in Israel. [00:07:30] So he suddenly had become an evangelist, hadn't he? [00:07:37] He was telling the good news about the power of God to heal and to save. [00:07:43] Well, that's the first story we had. And it has water and it has the word, right? Okay, second story. Ooh, did you hear this man? [00:07:57] He was wild, wasn't he? [00:08:02] He had unclean spirits that had come to live in him. And those unclean spirits made him crazy. [00:08:09] And he would take in rocks and try to cut his skin open. And if they tried to bind him up with chains or shackles, he would just burst them loose. [00:08:21] That's a lot of power, isn't it? [00:08:24] Just break all of that stuff. And nobody wanted to get around him. [00:08:28] Nobody wanted to get around him. He was scary, dude. Well, Jesus comes along. [00:08:37] Is Jesus afraid of him? [00:08:40] Nope, not Jesus. [00:08:42] Jesus comes along. And pretty soon we find out that Jesus is talking to those evil spirits. We find out their name. Did you hear it? What was their name? [00:08:55] Legion. Legion means a whole bunch. [00:09:00] So it was a whole bunch of these evil spirits. And they don't want to get kicked out of this man. But they know Jesus has the power to do it. So they know it's going to happen. [00:09:12] And so they say, don't. Don't just send us into another country. [00:09:19] Don't do that to us, Jesus. And it says that a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged Jesus, saying, send us into the pigs. [00:09:30] Let us enter them. [00:09:32] And so Jesus gave them permission. And those, by the way, if Jesus gives the evil spirits permission, who's more powerful? [00:09:41] Jesus, of course, he is more powerful than a legion of evil spirits. [00:09:47] So they get sent into the pigs, and the pigs run down a hill and drown themselves in what water? There's the water in this story. [00:10:00] And I will tell you, there's the word of God there too, right? Because Jesus is God and he speaks this man is healed. [00:10:13] Now it's kind of like baptism again, because what we learn in baptism is that we drown in the waters of baptism. But then Jesus comes and raises us up to new life. So those pigs, they got drowned in that sea. [00:10:31] But that reminds us that that waters of baptism is healing for this man as well, because all those evil spirits, the legion, were drowned, were taken away. [00:10:49] So there again we have water and the word of God. [00:10:55] Now, two different stories, right? [00:10:58] But I got to thinking about it, and in both cases there was a man who was in great need, right? [00:11:08] Both cases, Naaman and this wild man. [00:11:15] And in both cases, we saw water involved, didn't we? [00:11:20] And in both cases, we heard God's word being spoken, didn't we? [00:11:30] And in both cases, we got to witness the compassion of God. [00:11:37] Do you know that word? Compassion? [00:11:41] Compassion. [00:11:42] It means God really feels for these people and he really wants them to be healed and he really wants them to, well, to overcome the problems that they're having. [00:11:58] And in both cases, those people that were healed went and told the good news to other people. Now, we didn't hear that part in our reading, so I'm going to read it to you from here. Oh, by the way, the people that owned those pigs, the story tells us they were not too happy and they asked Jesus to go away. [00:12:22] So he did. [00:12:23] He went and he got in his boat. Now here's where it gets interesting. As Jesus was getting into his boat, the man who had been demon possessed had those evil spirits begged to go with him, but Jesus would not let him, but said, go home to your own people and tell how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy upon you. [00:12:49] So the man went away and began to tell in all of his land, the Decapolis, how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed. [00:13:03] So in both cases, those healed people went and told others. And I think that's maybe one of the lessons for us. [00:13:10] You know, Matt, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, because you believe in Jesus, you. You can tell other people. Just like that little, that little girl, that little slave girl who said, oh, I can tell you how you can get healed. He just told the story. [00:13:29] And Naaman, after he was healed, he just told the story. Everybody knew he had been a leper, and now he wasn't. [00:13:38] Who did that? God or this man with the evil spirits. Everybody knew how crazy he was once, and he's not crazy anymore. What did he do? He just told his story. [00:13:55] And you can tell that same story as well, can't you? [00:14:00] You can tell, Jesus forgives my sin. [00:14:04] Jesus is always there to help me in any situation. [00:14:08] And if we get sick, we can pray and ask God to come and heal us or anything else that's going on in our lives. If there's a situation that just makes you uncomfortable, you can pray about it and you can ask God to help you. I think that's another great lesson. [00:14:26] And then I really appreciate that you guys put it together that these two stories remind us of our baptism, don't they? [00:14:36] Because baptism is something where God works all the verbs. [00:14:42] Baptism is where he forgives our sins. [00:14:45] Baptism is where he gives us the promise of living with him forever. [00:14:51] Baptism is where he gives us faith to hold on to him and trust his grace. [00:14:59] Those are all really good gifts, aren't they? [00:15:03] And he promises to be with us forever. [00:15:05] That's what happened to you in your baptism. And I might just ask, if you're not baptized, that might be something that you would want to bring up with your mom or your dad, because I don't know if you are, but you probably know that, or if you aren't. And you could bring it up with your mom or your dad or Pastor Vanderheide or one of. One of your teachers and talk about that, and that would be a really exciting thing to do for you. Well, I think we should pray about that. Would you bow your heads and close your eyes and let's pray?