An Unseen Impact: Nameless Servant Girl

All right. Well, again, welcome to Hope Lowertown and glad you're able to worship with us this morning. In case I forgot, my name is Brian and lead pastor here and if I haven't met you, I'd love to be able to do that at some point this morning. We have been in our summer series called Cloud of Witnesses, and we've just been looking at different characters and I've been trying to take some minor characters, people that maybe we just aren't familiar with and whether we are familiar with the Bible or not, and see how do they point us to Jesus. That's really what this whole idea, this cloud of witnesses is. We've been kind of based it off of Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 through 3. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, these are people that are just pointing us to Jesus, whether they realized it or not, whether it was explicitly pointing to Jesus or not, that they live in a way that is such that shows us and gives us a greater bigger picture of who Jesus is and that he is a greater fulfillment of that. And we see that even in verse three. Consider him that is Jesus, who endured such opposition from sinners that you will not grow weary and lose heart. So today we are going to be looking at someone so obscure, they're not even named. So we're going to be looking at this nameless servant girl or slave girl that we are introduced to in 2nd Kings chapter 5. We're going to be looking at verses 1 through and looking at this is an unseen impact. And the story, if you read through 2 Kings chapter 5, is about a general by the name of Naaman, and he's an Assyrian general. And we don't. There's just not a lot said about this girl. But she has a major impact. Matter of fact, as I was kind of studying this week, I remembered one of our kids, the Jesus Storybook Bible. I've mentioned that many times here at Hope, but it's written by Sally Lloyd Jones and it's just kind of a paraphrase of the stories. I remembered that she had this story of Naaman in there, and I was like, oh, I bet she doesn't even mention this slave girl. Nope, actually, she really does. So the whole title of that section is A Little Servant Girl and the Proud General taken here from 2 Kings chapter 5. And so the story itself is about Naaman, but none of it happens. The rest of the story doesn't take place without what this servant and the slave girl actually does. So let's read Here I'm reading out of Niv, but you can follow along in your notes there or I'll have everything up on the screen as well, if you want to follow along that way. So 2 Kings, chapter 5. We're introduced here to Naaman. Now, Naaman, which let me just pause for a second. There's also not a whole lot written about Naaman. This is really about it. Even extra biblical text of trying to find, hey, what do we know about this guy? There's just not a whole lot more other than what we have in this text. So who is he? Naaman was a commander of the army of the king of Aram, or now what is Syria. He was a great man in the sight of his master, that is the king of Syria and highly regarded because through him the Lord. And remember, when you're reading your Bible, if you're coming across the word Lord and it's in all caps, this translation doesn't necessarily do that, but it is if it's in all caps. That is the covenant name for the Jewish God of Yahweh. And so God uses this Assyrian general, Naaman as and actually to fight against the Israelites. But hang on a second, isn't he the God of the Israelites? Why is God using this guy? Why is he blessing this Gentile? It says that he had given victory to Ram, that Syria, and he was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy. So what is this again? Leprosy? This is just some kind of skin disease. But leprosy was a very broad category. But it could be, especially when it seems like it's pretty serious with this, with Naaman. And so he goes to great lengths to try to get healed. And so as we're going to read about. And so most likely this was the kind that caused your body to decompose while you were still living. And it was eventually going to kill him. And he knew that. And so anyway, so what we see though from just these couple verses is that God moves in ways that we might not ever understand that you've got God, Yahweh, who shows up, who's blessing an enemy nation, a gentile nation, to even vanquish the Israelites. So we might not ever understand that, but God is doing things that we can't ever begin to see. And again, maybe we'll never fully understand. So then let's look at this servant girl, this slave girl that we see. So going into verse two here in second Kings, just says now bands of raiders from Ram had gone out and had Taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. This was a very common practice in that time of just the history, unfortunately, of humanity, that when you have somebody in a position of power and authority and there's somebody who they've conquered, they've vanquished, that they say, you're my property, you're weaker than me, I'm in power. And therefore I will take from you what I please and I will do with you whatever I want, and you can't do anything about it. So this young girl, we don't know her age, we don't even know her name, but she's taken from her home and she's likely traumatized yet as we're going to see, she still is going to remain faithful to Yahweh, even though she's in this position. And she's going to be others focused, which is wild. Let me just read from the Jesus. Oh, no, sorry, sorry, I skipped ahead of myself. And so here we have this now, so Nebuchadnezzar. Sorry, this is. Okay, Sorry I skipped ahead of myself. My notes. Why are we in Daniel all of a sudden? Okay. Because it reminded me of Daniel. This little servant girl that she's taken, she's. She's ripped away from her home. She's captive now, she's turned into a slave, most likely her family is killed and executed. And Daniel and his buddies go through the exact same thing with King Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, that they are attacked by the Babylonians, they're destroyed, and now they are brought in as slaves. And so we have a lot more information from Daniel, but you'll see that there's gonna be some similarities because that's exactly what happened at that time. So here, let me read this from Daniel, chapter one. It says now the king, that is King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king's service some of the Israelites and the royal family and of nobility, young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. And the king assigned them daily amount of food and from the king's table. And they were to be trained for three years. And after that they. They were to enter into the king's service. So they were going to learn the language, the culture, their gods, everything about it. And then they would be able to enter into the king's service. And among those were chosen some from Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. And the chief officials gave them new names to Daniel, whose name literally meant God is my judge. They changed the name to Belteshazzar, which means Bel's prince. So what is that all about? Bel is kind of the. Is the shortened word or the way that we might refer to God as Lord. Bel was the name that they used for their kind of their other name instead of saying God or specifically the God of Marduk. He is bells Prince. And if you. And again, I've mentioned this false God of the Babylonians before, but don't Google Murdoch, it's awful. Pagan child sacrifice God. And so he goes from God, Yahweh is my judge to now Bell's prince, this wicked demonic deity. So what do we see then about this girl? What does she do, this servant girl, in a very similar way, like Daniel, who's ripped out of her home, oppressed, enslaved. What does she do? She points her enemies to God. Going back to 2 Kings says now bands of raiders from Aram had gone and taken captive young girl from Israel. And she had served Naaman's wife. And she said to her mistress, if only my master, my owner would see the prophet who is in Samaria, who's in Israel, he could cure him of his leprosy. Again, she's taken from her home. She's most likely traumatized and yet she's still others focused. It's wild. Let me now get back to where I thought I was in my notes. Let me read here about this is from the Jesus storybook Bible. It says this. Now, there was a little slave girl who worked for Naaman and she knew someone who could help him. But there was a problem. Naaman was her enemy. Not long before, Naaman had led an army raid to her home in Israel. He had killed her whole family, carried her off to Syria and made her into his slave. Every night she cried herself to sleep. She had lost everything. Why would she of all people want to help Naaman? Didn't she hate him and want to hurt him back? Didn't she want to make him pay for the wrong he'd done? That's what you would expect. But instead of hating him, she loved him. And instead of hurting him back, she forgave him. I feel like this is a very. It's not the response I would have. It's not the response I would have if somebody came into my home, killed my Family and then took me as a slave. My best interest wouldn't be, I want them to thrive, actually, when I see them sick, I want them to be healed of that sickness. That's exactly what she does. I would actually want to see them suffer. I would want to see them in pain. I wouldn't want to see them cleansed. It reminded me of as a. Again, maybe I should have done this on a fifth Sunday when all the kids are in here this morning doing a lot of kids things. But at VeggieTales, there's a movie called Jonah. I've actually never seen it, but my kids, they watch it in the van when we go on long trips. And so I hear it, but I've never seen it. So I'm not even sure if this is the right scene. I think it is. It looked like it was the right scene. But you have Jonah. Who's the cucumber there? I think it's a cucumber. I'm not sure. Is Jonah cucumber? Oh, asparagus, sorry. He's that asparagus there, and he's sitting underneath that. That. This. This little gourd, this tree. And what is he doing? He's looking down at Nineveh and he's saying, God, destroy this. They are pagan, they're wicked. They have oppressed our people. They've killed, Killed Israelites and God, you should judge them. You should wipe them off the face of the earth. And this little gourd starts to grow and gives him shade. And then this little worm comes and destroys the gourd, and the gourd dies. And he is lamenting and he's screaming and crying out to God, God, how could you take this gourd from me? And in this adaptation of the Veggie Tales, that little worm says, are you more concerned, you're more concerned for that gourd than you are for the people, the actual human beings who live in Nineveh. But I think, again, you put ourselves into that situation. I would act a lot like Jonah. Some of these people have been oppressing me. They've been attacking me. They've been hurting me and my family and my people, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, God, you should wipe them from the face of the earth. But here we have this slave girl who says, actually, let me show you what he should do. He should go to the prophet of the God of Yahweh. And so we see this servant girl who points her enemies to God and her love ends up leading to healing. So let's read here in First Kings, chapter 5, it says, Now, Naaman, that's all we have with the servant girl. That's it. That's all the information we have. But now everything that's going to happen to Naaman is a direct result of what this little girl did. Naaman went to his master, that is the king, and told him what the girl from Israel had said. By all means go. The king of Aram applied, replied, I will send a letter to the king of Israel. So Naaman left, taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold, and 10 sets of clothing. And a letter that he took to the king of Israel. Read. With this letter, I am sending my servant Naaman to you that you may cure him of his leprosy. So again, the little girl says, you need to go to this prophet. Naaman says, hey, there's someone in Israel, this prophet, who can heal me. And then the king of Aram says, why would you go to this prophet? No, you don't go to the prophet. You go to the king of Israel. And so he brings these 10 talents of silver, which I googled it and looked it up, and assuming Google is right, talent is about 75 pounds. So he brings 750 pounds of silver, or roughly $300,000 worth equivalent today of silver. He brings 600 shekels. Again, I'm assuming Google's right, a shekel is 0.4 ounces. So then a total of 2,400 ounces. And at a conservative $2,000 an ounce, that's $4.8 million. All right, so about over $5 million worth that he brings to the king to say, I want you to heal me. And then I've got these 10 sets of clothing. I don't know what that adds to the value, but sure, maybe back then it was worth a lot of money. I don't know. It was actually $1 billion worth in money. Because of the clothes? No, I don't know, but a lot of money, right? This isn't just a small thing that he's doing. He's saying, I want to go and I'm gonna buy my healing. So then he goes to the king, and as soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, am I God? Can I kill and bring back life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he's trying to quarrel? Pick a quarrel with me. He's trying to start a fight. This is the general of my Enemies. And he's coming, saying, cure me of my disease. And the king's saying, oh, I get it. Because when I say I can't do that, he's gonna. He's going to attack. This is what's happening. But then when Elisha, the man of God, heard the king of Israel had tore his robes, he sent this message, why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me, and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha's house. Elisha sent a messenger to him to say to him, go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan and. And your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed. Can I read the rest of the story? I'm not even going to do that because this isn't about necessarily about Naaman. But it takes him a while. He tries to again buy his health. And Elisha says, no, you can't do that. You need to go dip yourself seven times in the Jordan River. And he argues back, well, no, there's better rivers where I'm from. Why would I go into the Jordan? He says, no, you need to. You're going to do that. So he ends up, though, obeying and having faith, and he is then cleansed of his leprosy. But here we have in the story, this little girl and her seemingly small but wildly loving and generous, radically gracious act saves her undeserving master. And that should remind us of somebody that we call Jesus. It should remind us of somebody whose gracious love and radical mercy saves an undeserving recipient. That is how, in a very small way, this seemingly insignificant character in the Old Testament points us to Jesus and says, we need a radical rescuer. We need somebody else that can save you. You can't buy it. You can't earn it. It's faith. The fourth point I have on here is called Scaredy Cat Christians. This is from. Because when I was looking at Daniel, there's a book by a pastor named Larry Osborne out in California, and he wrote a book that's called Thriving in Babylon. It's a good book. And it's about this whole idea is how do we as Christians engage in culture that we might say, well, it's a wicked world, worldly culture, and we are called to be holy, we're called to be separate. How do we engage in that when we are living in Babylon, if you will? And that's why it's called Thriving in Babylon. So let me read this quote here from Pastor Osborne, he says, this scaredy cat, Christians forget that Satan is a liar. The father of lies and deception is his native tongue. They believe his boast. He can boast all he wants. The fact is he can't touch us without the Lord's permission. Look at the story of Job. And Satan comes to, and God is the one who brings up Job. Have you considered my servant Job? And it's basically like a dog on the leash saying, you can go so far but nothing else. You cannot go any closer to Job. You can't attack his own health at the start. And then he said, you're not gonna. You can't kill him. You can only go so far and no further. He can only act without the Lord, with the Lord's permission. He's only powerful when we believe his lies. He has no power otherwise, he doesn't gain a foothold. When we participate in, hang around or touch something that was once his. He gains a foothold when we sin. And he's basing this off. He tells this whole story about he went to some random village in. I think it was in Brazil and goes, there's some witch doctor. And who they. Everyone, you know, everyone was there was like, I'm pretty sure he's demon possessed. And so Larry was like, I really like his spear. I'm gonna take his spear home with me and put it in my office, okay? It's wild, right? And everyone's like, no, no, no, you can't take that spear. That spear is demonic. And he's like, no, it's not. It's a. It's a piece of wood with a stone on it, right? This obviously must have been pre 9 11, because I don't know how in the world you bring a spear on a plane. But either way, he does this, right? And his whole point is, this is a piece of wood and stone. There's nothing evil about this thing unless I give in to sin, unless I give into it. So the thing around me, even if it once was his, can be redeemed. It says that he only. The devil only gains a foothold when we choose to sin. And that's why, when it comes to worldly things, the apostle Paul even says this, that a lot of times people will look at something that might be considered worldly or secular and say, no, no, don't look at that. Don't touch that. Don't listen to that. Don't taste that. That's bad. So he continues here, evil is not some sort of contagious Disease. It's a conscious choice. I don't know how many times I've said that. When we choose to sin, we choose to suffer. It is a conscious choice. I don't just, oops, I just sinned. I just fell into that sin. No, you chose to do that. We don't have to worry about being accidentally contaminated. Scaredy cat Christians make two mistakes that Daniel never made. They add extra rules to Scripture and they run away from anything they perceive to be spiritually contaminated. He then says this. Unfortunately, both of these behaviors sabotage our ability to infiltrate and influence the world we live in. They make a Daniel like impact impossible. So how do we, in our context, see the gospel thrive in St. Paul or wherever we live in Maplewood or Shoreview or Roseville? How can we point people to Jesus if we're afraid of sinners and their gross sins? As if we don't have any sin, we don't want ourselves or our family, we might get contaminated. Going back, Pastor Larry, you mentioned kind of the two sides of the same coin that we either start to add rules and then with that, we then quarantine ourselves off from people that don't have the same rules and values as we do. And it reminded me of the M. Night Shyamalan movie the Village, right? This came out 20 years ago, and I'm not gonna give any spoilers' cause it is a great movie. But it's this idea that the elders, these people are afraid. They're traumatized by something that happened in the outside world. And they say, we're gonna make up our own set of rules and boundaries and we're gonna become our own super conservative people with these rules that red, the color red is evil and you don't leave the property and all these different things. And ultimately it becomes its own captivity, right? It becomes, hey, we got to get away. We're being influenced negatively. So then we're now in captivity by moving into our own conservative little commune. But as I say, every week we have been set free to be free. So why do we go back and submit under the bondage and the slavery to rules and laws and regulations when we've been set free? So let's look at maybe some practical ways. How are we scaredy cat Christians when we live as Christians, when we live in fear of contamination, we forget the cross. We forget what Jesus did on the cross. We forget that when he died, the veil was torn in two and the holy of holies now infiltrates everything and it can all be redeemed. So how are Some. What are some personal ways in which we do this? One is we might make emotional rules. We might make internal boundaries in the sense that we might say I'm never going to cry in front of that person ever again or I'm just not going to cry in public. I can't open up like that. There's no way. I got, I got really hurt last time I did. The last time I tried to be open with somebody, I got really hurt. Or I'm not going to reach out to them. I'm going to just put them at a distance. I'm going to keep them at an arm's length. But if they reach out to me, then maybe I'll consider it. But I'm not going to make the first move or I'm never going to trust church again. I got really hurt by that church and I got really hurt by the church leadership. You may have gotten actually hurt by a church or by church leadership, but you haven't been hurt by Christ. You haven't been hurt by the head of the church. And when we start thinking like this, it seems protective again, just like the village. But it often leads to isolation or relational standoffishness. I don't think that's a word, but I'm going to use it. You know what I mean? The second way that we can do this is by social separation. We can withdraw from certain groups or settings that we might find ourselves in. Maybe it's just small group. I don't want to go to small group anymore. I just can't. I can't be around those people. I can't. They ask me personal questions and it makes me uncomfortable and I just can't be in that setting anymore. I can't be around any non Christians. They're just a bad influence. When I'm in that situation there might be, there might be a temptation that's there. But their evil isn't rubbing off on you because you are evil. You are already a sinner. You need Jesus the same way that they do. I only want to hang out with people who are in the same season of life as me. Again, these hard lines that we, that we make socially in these, Some of these areas keep us from opportunities to love and to serve one another. To take all the one anothers that we read about in the Bible, how to love one another. And it separates us from that. We might be hyper spiritual. We might set up extra rules and laws that can creep in and take our eyes off of the freedom that we have in Christ. We might Say things like, if I miss my quiet time, God will be distant from me. Or we think, if I always have my quiet time, God will love me more. It's not how this works. Or God won't bless me if I'm not tithing a certain percentage or flip it. God will bless me if I tithe a certain percentage or I don't listen to that, I don't watch that. Therefore I am more holy. The desires, when it comes to spirituality and spiritual disciplines, which are good, those are really good desires, and I encourage that. But the result often can be burdensome. It can be its own form of rules and regulations and a yoke to say, look at me, look how good and spiritual I am. And you're under a just a different kind of yoke. You're in your own kind of captivity. We lose grace and we become performance based. The fourth and final one that I was able to come up with is this preconceived judgment, right? These unspoken rules that we have for ourselves on other people or towards other other people might be people who vote for that person or that political party. They cannot be trusted. They can't be. I can't take advice from that person because they don't parent the way that I parent. They don't even have children. That person is single or that person isn't single. That we think that we cannot help and be the body of Christ to build and edify one another upon because we might be in a different stage of life. Oh, that person, they struggle with that specific sin. So I really don't want to get too close to them and I for sure don't want them around my family. Often these, all of these, these four different aspects here stem from maybe some wounds that we've had, some past wounds, maybe some from fear and real or pride, right? But in Christ we are not called to a spirit of fear, but one that will engage with grace and hopefully point people to redemption as we become all things to all people in order that we might win them. And so what we see is that Jesus sets us free to enter into places and people's lives that we might otherwise be afraid of. We see this explicitly in Mark, chapter one, and a very fitting with the story of Naaman that a man with leprosy came to Jesus and begged him on his knees. If you are willing, you can make me clean. Jesus was indignant. Don't get hung up on indignant. That's a whole story that just kind of where Jesus is in his ministry in Mark, chapter one. And says Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. I am willing, he said, be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. This is radical grace and rethinking of unclean. To clean that Jesus goes to somebody who would have in that culture had to yell out, I'm unclean. Don't come near me, don't touch me. I'm unclean. And if Jesus or anybody else is touched by that leper, they become maybe diseased and become physically unclean, but they become ceremonially unclean. And they need to now be unclean for a week until the priest can say, yep, now you're, now you're clean. But instead of the uncleanness transferring to Jesus, his cleansing ness transfers to them. That's radically different. Grace and love and mercy win in this case, that he's not afraid to enter into that area in that place that is unclean. In Luke chapter 15 we see in verses 1 and 2 it says now the tax collectors and sinners. Again, these are, these are like, I don't know, like titles or names of a group of people. You know, like we would say, oh, that is the middle class, right? These are the tax collectors. And they were traitors. They're rebels because they're Israelites who are collecting income and taxes for their occupied. The occupied Roman armies. They're tax collectors. They're the bottom of the barrel and sinners. These are people who were known in their community for their sin because they weren't adherence to the religion of the time within Judaism. And they're tax collectors and they are sinners. And we're all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. He sits down and communes with people who are sinful. This is a radical change. Second or the third aspect of this is 2 Corinthians 5, 21, it says, God made him Jesus, who had no sin, to become sin for us that listen, we have spent too much time in the church. If that phrase doesn't blow our mind that the one, the Holy One, the pure One, the becomes sin so that what? So we can just be cleansed so that we might become the righteousness of God. That is radical. That is wildly different. That is radical in the sense that just like this servant girl or Daniel, that they enter into a place that's gross and dirty by all standards and says, let me save you, let me show you grace and mercy. Let me enter into that, even if it makes me uncomfortable. Even if it hurts me, even if my past and experiences of my life, it makes me uncomfortable. I can enter into that place and I can love. And so we see that this servant girl, she points us to Jesus. I entered in, you know, cloud of witnesses in the chat GPT. This is what it came up with. A bunch of random old dudes and some girls just pointing at Jesus, right? This is what it is. This is what this girl does. She points us to Jesus. I couldn't end it any better than how Sally Lloyd Jones does in her storybook Bible. Let me says this Naaman wanted to pay Elisha. God healed you, you can't pay. Elisha said, it's free. And so it was that a very sick man was healed, all because of a little servant girl who forgave him. God knew sin was like leprosy. It stopped his children's hearts from working properly and in the end it would kill them. Years later, God was going to send another servant to forgive as she did, to forgive all of God's children and to heal their terrible sicknesses. And their hearts, their hearts were broken. But God can mend broken hearts. So just in closing in gospel application, are you pointing people? Are you willing to point people to Jesus? Even people you don't like, Even people you might not even regularly associate with? I think Sarah brought up a good point. International students, I don't know. I don't really know their culture. I don't even speak their language really. But can I point them to Jesus? Can I just be a helping hand like she said, that's low hanging fruit. People that I don't like or maybe even people I don't approve of. Don't be a scaredy cat Christian. But how do we. It's not just, hey, just stop that. Just stop being scared. No, don't. Just stop setting up rules. What we do is we remember the cross. We remember what Jesus did on the cross. That he sets us free. He tears that veil in two. We remember Jesus and his life. And we get a chance to do that this morning. We do this every week at Hope Lowertown. As we get to remember that cross, we get to remember what Jesus did on that day thousands of years ago for our sins. That he said that it's finished and the veil is torn in two. That he enters into our space, our gross sinfulness. He becomes sin so that we might become cleansed, that we might have the righteousness of God. And so then it gives us the ability to go into places that we might think are unclean and make them clean because of who he is, not because of who we are. And so we get to remember that. We get to take the elements, the bread that represents the body of Christ, that's broken for us. There is a gluten free option on my left, your right, if that's a dietary restriction or need, and then the juice that represents his blood that was shed for us. And so if you're a follower of Jesus, we'd love for you to take these elements with us. You do not need to be a member of this church. You don't need to be a member of any church. But if you say, yes, Jesus, that one who took my sins, my grossness, and entered into my life, who cleansed me, who saved me, yes, I wanna follow him and I wanna point people to him. I'd love for you to take these elements with us. The worship team's gonna come back up, they're gonna play two more songs. And so feel free to grab these elements as you see fit and pray and stand and sing when you feel moved. Let me pray and then we will conclude with communion together. Father, thank you for our time to gather together again this morning. Just thank you that you are you. Thank you that you took on flesh and through the power of your spirit, enter into our grossness, our worldliness, our sinfulness, and you save us that you become our sin so that we might have your righteousness. What Martin Luther called this great exchange. That my grossness goes on you and your purity goes on me. Thank you. So I pray that as we remember that sacrifice on the cross, that you'd be honored and glorified, that you would just help us all to walk out of here more like Jesus and be more willing to point people that we might not even normally associate with or want to associate with, that we would point them to Jesus. We love you and it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.