The Methodology of the Kingdom

Let us turn to the Word of the Lord in Second Kings, chapter 5, the story of Naaman. How many of you have heard about Naaman, the distinguished military commander of the kingdom of Syria—Naaman? He is also one of my favorite characters, one of the outstanding men in Scripture, one of Scripture’s revealing and interesting characters, and he teaches us many things.

I want to join, to connect this meditation on this moment in the history of the Hebrew people—and, indeed, of the people of God throughout history, because these things were written for our edification, instruction, and imitation—I want to connect this meditation with the sermon I preached two Sundays ago about healing. I was unable to continue with this subject then because Meche and I were away last Sunday, but I also believe that Pastor Gregory Bishop, by preaching to us about this call to the nations as well, and about having an expansive, ambitious mindset for the Lord, also connected it, in a way, with this element of the God who wants to move powerfully in the midst of His Church.

And I believe this meditation on Naaman and his relationship with the prophet Elisha is a way of bringing those two themes together. The theme of healing, which we are now going to see in action—what I presented as a theoretical theological teaching about healing—you are now going to see in action, exemplified here in the encounter between Elisha and Naaman.

But also, as you know, this year we have been meditating on evangelism and on God’s call to His Church at this time to share the Word of the Lord, to be evangelistic in our conduct, to be contagious people and evangelistic people—a missionary Church, a Church that uses the gift God has given us. As the apostle Paul says to Timothy: “I advise you to fan into flame the gift of God that is in you.”

God has placed us here in the city of Boston as salt, as divine leaven—how many believe that, amen? And God has imparted a gift to us, not because we deserve it, but because it pleases Him to do so. Now we have to use the gift. Paul says to Timothy: “For God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power, love, and self-control.”

Amen. God gives you the gift, but it is not for you to hide it under the table like the unfaithful servant. It is not so that you can say, “Oh, people are too hard; we live in a post-Christian world.” May the Lord rebuke that lie of the devil. We do not live in a post-Christian world; at the very least, we live in a pre-Christian world. It is not so that we will be timid, nor so that, under a supposed sense of respect for privacy—did you know that the devil has instilled a false respect for privacy and for other people’s rights? I am not saying that we should not respect those things, but there are many people who want to hear the Word of God, and we are the ones putting up barriers, not they.

I have found that if you share the Gospel respectfully and discern God’s timing, people are willing to listen, and sometimes you are very surprised by people whom you never expected to receive the Word, yet when you speak to them, they come to the Lord and receive the Lord. And so God does not want us to keep our talent to ourselves. As a Church, God has given us a calling in this city. God placed us here in the heart of Boston, and we originally came here precisely because it was a “bad” place, so to speak. It was a place of corruption, high crime, and decay, and look at what God has done in the approximately fifteen years we have been here, how God has brought change.

Not necessarily through us alone, because I know there are many churches that pray, but to the glory of God, our arrival coincided with a move of God, and this city is getting better every day, as is this neighborhood; there is a great blessing, isn’t there? Because many people would have said, “No, this Church is crazy, moving from Cambridge to this place full of crime and violence, leaving a church building they had been given in order to build one of their own.” But God prospered and blessed us, and we have seen His blessing.

Because when you dare, like Abraham, as Gregory was preaching, right? God tells you, “I am going to take you out of your land, away from your relatives and from what is comfortable to you, and if you are willing to make yourself uncomfortable and take risks in My Name, I will bless you and give you a family, and I will make you a king and a leader, and you will bless the nations, and you will use My gifts, and I will appoint you as My representative among the nations.” That is what God wants to make of His Church. When the people of God believe Him, God can use you if we dare.

And so God is moving at this time. That is why this year we have meditated again and again on how to be an evangelistic people, and we have been studying the different dynamics of how God moves evangelistically in the world. That is why healing comes to represent the gifts of the Spirit, because the Bible speaks of gifts such as healings, but it also speaks of gifts of knowledge, faith, different kinds of gifts, and signs that God gives.

But to be powerful in evangelism, we must move in the supernatural power of God—how many believe that, amen? We cannot do it merely by, oh, teaching people theory and theology; people need more than that. They need the warmth of the power of God; they need the fire of God in our lives. That is why the Lord told the disciples, “Do not leave Jerusalem to preach the Gospel until you have received power from on high. I am going to baptize you with My Spirit, I am going to impart gifts, and then you will move in the Power of My Spirit to carry out the work I have entrusted to you through the Great Commission.”

So here we see the gifts of healing on the one hand, the power of God’s supernatural moving, and also the call to evangelize the nations and to be ambitious about what God can do. These themes come together in this text, in the story of Naaman and Elisha. Reading the entire text would take a long time; it is 27 rather substantial verses, each one of them, so I am simply going to read a few verses and will be revisiting this story, which many of you already know anyway.

But let us begin with verse 1. It says: “Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man before his lord.” In other words, he was a very important man, highly esteemed and extremely valuable to the king of Syria. He was a commander, not just any commander; he was like a five-star general, the supreme military leader who commanded the army of the king of Syria. And this man enjoyed the confidence and esteem of his king, his lord.

And his lord held him in high regard because through this man the Lord had given victory to Syria. Here in my Bible—which is well worn—I have, though I do not know when I put it there, because I have read this text many times, an exclamation mark beside that statement. Why might I have put an exclamation mark beside that statement? I do not want us to overlook it.

Notice that it says that through Naaman, God had given victory to Syria. Wow, I find that interesting because Syria was a nation hostile to Israel. Many times throughout Scripture, we see the Syrians at war with and oppressing Israel. It was an enemy nation; it was a pagan nation that did not know the living God. I always love it when I see those ways in which God moves in the world beyond our limited frameworks.

I say that when we get to heaven, we are going to meet people whom we would never have imagined would make it there. Indeed, if we were not glorified, we would lament, “Oh my God, I have to spend eternity with this guy I couldn’t stand down there.”

God moves in strange ways in the world and among the nations, and in this case it says that God had used Naaman to give them victory. Do not ask me what God was doing with that nation at that time, but we see it many times, as with Nineveh, when Jonah preaches to Nineveh and says that God loves those people who cannot discern their right hand from their left. And so, brothers and sisters, I tell you: one of the things we need to cultivate in order to be truly evangelistic people is a merciful heart that loves people.

I believe there are many Christians who want God to send fire, judgment, and punishment upon the world. They would feel disappointed if God did not send an earthquake that killed 150,000 people somewhere in the world in the next two or three months. And yet God calls us to love unbelievers, to love people who do not know God, to desire that the nations be saved, and to believe that God moves in strange ways and that God moves with whomever He wants, however He wants.

And I believe that at this point in history God wants to do something great among the nations, and I am not yet ready to hand the world over to Satan. We must be ambitious and believe: No, God still wants to save nations; God still wants to save this city. God wants to save gang members; God wants to save the junkies who are shooting up right now. God wants to save homosexual people; God wants to save adulterers; God wants to save alcoholics; God wants to save the resentful, the vengeful, and the violent.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, “I have come to seek that which was lost.” One passage says that when the Lord was going to pass through Samaria on His way to Jerusalem, the Lord sent His disciples to a Samaritan village to tell them that He was going to pass through there. They were surely not Jews, and perhaps He wanted to ask permission out of respect for the authorities. But when the Samaritans saw that Jesus was Jewish, they forbade Him from passing through that village.

And the disciples came to the Lord, rubbing their hands together: “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down and destroy them, just as Elijah destroyed the soldiers who came looking for him?” The Lord said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. I have not come to destroy man; I have come to save him.” God wanted to save those Samaritans, didn’t He?

So we must ask the Lord to give us a compassionate, merciful heart, a heart that places no limitations on Him. I ask Him, “Lord, fill my heart with compassion for those who oppose You, and fill my heart with courage to believe that, even in these times, You can move in places that appear to be closed to You,” just as God was moving in strange ways in Syria.

And that is why I believe God put it in my heart to place that question mark there, because God moves in strange ways. He was moving in Syria because He wanted something glorious to happen there: for His Word and His Name to be magnified in that enemy city and for there to be a testimony to the power of God there.

Because that is something else as well, brother—did you know that evangelism is spiritual warfare? The Syrians served a strange god; it was not the Lord. And they looked to that strange god for their material prosperity, the cultivation of their land and crops, and all these sorts of things—their food and their victory. But God wanted to prove: “No, that god is not the true God. I am the true God, the God who can heal this man who represents his nation.” So God was devising a plan to provoke an implicit confrontation of powers between that strange god and the true God, who was the Lord.

Then it says here: “This man was exceedingly valiant, but he had a problem: he was a leper.” How God sometimes uses illnesses and the problems of life to glorify and exalt Himself! Naaman did not know it, but Naaman was going to be a blessing and an inspiration to countless generations throughout the centuries. He was even going to be a testimony to his nation, but everything begins with a great crisis in his life: a terrible, shameful illness.

Imagine a military man accustomed to wearing his general’s uniform, with God knows how many decorations. I do not know whether they wore medals in those days, but I am sure that when Naaman was a young military man, in the prime of his life and health, he walked the streets embodying the strength and daring of a martial, military man. So this man, now possessing all his glory, all his triumphs and decorations, had everything he needed: money, influence, prestige, and the esteem of his lord—and yet he was a leper, afflicted with the most terrible, most disfiguring, and most alienating disease, because a person with leprosy was an outcast, and no one wanted to touch or even go near a leper.

I do not know how he managed all of that in his military life. The fact is that God was preparing his suffering so that He might be glorified and so that Naaman might experience the glory of seeing the living God at work in his life. Let us never throw in the towel, brothers and sisters. Let us understand that God wants to use even the sufferings of our lives for His Glory. You do not know who may be watching you while you endure something and continually give glory to God, maintaining your attitude of serving the Lord, seeking Him, praying, and serving Him; it may inspire many people.

Then it says: “Armed bands had gone out from Syria and had taken captive from the land of Israel a young girl, who served Naaman’s wife.” Another character is introduced into the story: a young slave girl who had been taken captive in a raid, a military attack, an incursion by the Syrian army. They were like guerrilla bands that entered Israelite territory, took away whomever they could, kidnapped them, and sold them into slavery.

This young girl had been torn away from her family and taken to Naaman’s house. How many believe that God placed her there to be a witness, just as He placed Joseph? You see? God moves in mysterious ways. One of the things we have to ask the Lord is: Lord, open my eyes so that I can discern Your moving in the different circumstances of my life.

This young woman had been taken away and kidnapped, I believe, in one sense, for a kairos moment, a pregnant moment that God had appointed so that the plan, the drama He had devised, could continue to advance. Then one day this young woman says to her mistress, Naaman’s wife: Ma’am, do you know that in Israel, where I come from, there is a prophet who can heal your husband? Wow. I pause here for a moment before the importance of our bearing witness to the God we know, brothers and sisters, wherever we may be, and finding a way to redeem whatever circumstance we find ourselves in.

When something negative and terrible happens in our lives, do you know what the tendency is? As Job’s wife said, to curse God and ask Him to kill us, or to die and turn our backs on God. This girl used her opportunity; she used her tragedy to testify about the God she knew. If God has worked in your life in any way, if you have seen the power of God in your life, testify about it. If God has healed you, if God has delivered you, if God has done something in your heart, communicate it to others and let them know: look, I know a place where there is power for your need.

People from many different situations come to our church. I could tell many stories of people who come here sick, with problems in their marriages, suffering from depression, with serious spiritual problems, and, to the glory of the Lord, they have found deliverance, healing, hope, and counsel for their lives in this place, to His glory. The Church has to be a place of power, brothers and sisters; the Church has to be a place of transformation.

That is why we have to devote time to cultivating the power of the Holy Spirit; it takes time, it takes effort. It is not a matter of a little half-hour service here and then everybody goes home; we have to cultivate a sense of the Lord’s Presence, as we did this morning. How wonderful it is when we come fully energized to worship the Lord and glorify Him. We have to work at it.

When you leave here at two or three in the afternoon on Sunday, you are burned out like a little matchstick because it is work; it is hard. It is not a matter of bringing a sermon and reading it here for twenty minutes—no. People work hard here; those who serve here have to make an effort. On Friday we were here until eleven thirty at night, and our worship team did not stop worshiping for a single moment from practically seven o’clock in the evening onward. It is a lot of work.

And people often come and say: Why don’t these people—look, half an hour is already plenty for worship. God wants us to cultivate His Presence because, as we cultivate His Presence, God—the power of God—is released, and God does things. We sing, “When the people praise, God does things,” but many times we do not know what we are saying; nevertheless, that is what we believe, amen?

The Church—your life—has to be a repository of the power of God, so that people who need to come into contact with that power will come into contact with the power of God when they touch your life in some way. People are not going to come and say, “Oh, look, that church has incredible theology; oh, that church has very good teaching.” No, people want a solution for their lives; they want encouragement; they want something that tells them: yes, God is alive, He is real, there is hope for my life.

And that is why we have to—this young woman did not say to him: look, go over there to Israel because they have a tremendous seminary where they teach a lot of theology, where you will learn the names of all the prophets and this and that. No. She told him: there is a prophet there who has the power of God, and he can heal your husband.

Glory to the Lord. Brothers and sisters, I pray that every day our church may become more and more a place where people can receive what they need for their lives. Our churches have to be that, and we have to exemplify this, and our lives have to be lives of power. That is why we have to take time to pray, to fast, to sanctify ourselves, to study the Word, and to put our lives in order so that the power of God can be manifested through us, because that is what will change people; nothing else will.

Then she tells her: well, go over there; our lord Naaman can receive healing there. “She said to her mistress, ‘If only my lord would appeal to the prophet who is in Samaria, he would heal him of his leprosy.’” So when this man learned what the girl had said, he wasted no time. Notice: Naaman must have been extremely desperate to follow the advice of a poor servant girl, but Naaman said: well, let’s go over there. I have already tried everything I could, and nothing has worked. Who knows?

And then it says that “He entered the king’s court and told him, saying,” such and such is what a girl from the land of Israel has said. And the king of Syria told him: go, and I will send letters to the king of Israel. I will send letters. It was not some little note saying: dear king of Israel, how are you? It is a pleasure to meet you. Would you do me a big favor? No, it was a letter bearing authority. Syria was a very strong kingdom; it was a power in that region, and the king of Israel was afraid of the king of Syria.

It says here that “Then Naaman departed, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of clothing.” The man went equipped for anything because, notice, this is the mentality of the world at work. The Holy Spirit guides the writer of Kings to give us these details because He wants to teach us something as well. When God is moving evangelistically in the world, when the power of God is descending—and that is what is going to happen among the nations—it is what happens when a church engages in evangelism and people begin to arrive.

People come to us and come to the Church, and they always have. Wherever there is a powerful evangelistic move of God, we will always see something: the world will come to us, but it will come with its mentality and its system of values, with its expectations, its preconceptions, its view of the world, its worldview. They will come to the Church seeking healing, seeking restoration, seeking the solution to their problem, but they come contaminated by the worldview, believing that we also function the way they function.

And so, when they arrive at the Church, there has to be a clash of power between the values of the Kingdom of God and the values of the world. If the Church compromises its values and allows itself to be intimidated by the world, it loses the fight. But if the Church stands firm in its values, the world has to bow its head and enter into the Church’s vision. And my heart bleeds every day as I see so many churches in this time, here in Boston and in many countries where the Gospel is weak and at a disadvantage in one sense, with many churches surrendering our weapons to the world so that people will come and visit us.

And we believe that if we preach the Gospel as Christ proclaimed it, as the Word proclaims it, they will not come or visit us, and so we remove a host of passages from the Bible, teachings of Scripture, because we do not want to offend people. The Church has to stand firm in its position, and there has to be a clash of power. When the Church stands firm, then the Lord does what He promises He will do. But if we throw in the towel beforehand and say: oh, how wonderful that Professor So-and-so came; how wonderful that Engineer So-and-so came; oh, how wonderful that Banker So-and-so came—he is going to give us the money we need to build the church, so I will not say anything that might offend him—we have lost the battle.

We won it in one sense, but we lost it in the end, because God always wants us to prove that we believe He is the one who does the work, not we ourselves with our techniques and human reasoning. Why do I say that? Because Naaman prepares himself with everything he thinks he has to pay the prophet so that the prophet will do what Naaman wants him to do. He thinks this prophet is going to charge him: okay, what do you want? Well, if you want me to heal you of a headache, that will be three garments and four talents of silver. Now, if it is a matter of a leg that is causing you to limp, well, that will cost you more.

Leprosy! Forget it, man—what do you have at home? Give me the credit card. So Naaman says: well, I do not know how much this fellow is going to charge me, because everything in the world costs money. So he loads himself up with money and provisions and shows up there in Israel. His mentality is one of power, money, and influence, because that is how the world thinks. The world has its values and thinks that the Church functions in the same way, but the Kingdom of God is counterintuitive and countercultural, and it turns the world’s values upside down.

And when people enter, we have to show them: look, I am very sorry, but you are going to have to stoop very low, because you have to become like a child. You have to learn everything all over again, because the values of the Kingdom of God are very different from what you are used to. I do not care whether you are a philosophy professor or a great scientist; the Kingdom of God operates far beyond science, far beyond philosophy, far beyond reason, far beyond art. It is a Kingdom that judges everything.

So he took six thousand pieces of gold, six changes of clothing, and also letters for the king of Israel, authoritative letters that said: when these letters reach you, know from them that I am sending you my servant Naaman so that you may heal him of his leprosy. Period. How do government agencies write when they are going to send, for example, the tax bill for your car to your house? When the excise tax for your car arrives at your house, do you know what it says? Something like: the City of Watertown demands that you pay it ninety-three dollars and fifty cents in taxes.

That is how they put it: they demand. I truly find those letters hateful when they arrive like that, because that is what the world is accustomed to: giving orders. The police officers there at Logan Airport, when you pause for just a second to wait for the loved one who is arriving, yell at you: get out of there! Okay, sir, okay. They insult you. They want to exemplify authority; they do not want to leave you even a moment’s doubt about their authority, because if they show the slightest hesitation, you will take advantage of it. So they are curt, blunt, and to the point.

That is the world: the world of power, the world that comes with that authority, wanting to rule, wanting to control, wanting to impose itself. But they have a need, huh? And if you let them, they will walk all over you. We have to be convinced of what we believe, of what God has told us, of the way we operate, of the way the Kingdom of God moves.

So in these letters he sends him a document saying: heal my servant, or you know what is going to happen to you. After the king of Israel read the letters, he tore his clothes; the man was desperate. In Hebrew culture, tearing one’s clothes was a sign of grief, of mourning: disaster is coming upon my nation; if I do not heal this man, I will have to answer to the king of Syria.

Then, in his desperation, he says: “Am I God, who kills and gives life, that this man sends someone to me so that I may heal him of his leprosy? See now how he is seeking an occasion against me.” What he wants is to declare war on me, and that is why he gives me an impossible assignment, so that when I fail to carry it out, he will have an excuse to come with his army and invade Israel. Desperation. I see something here: the powerless Church.

When people arrive in our churches and a direct intervention from God is needed, but we have no power and do not know what to do, we are biting our knuckles and have no solution to our problem. And unfortunately, that is how many people are in the Gospel, in the Kingdom of God. God needs places; He needs people anointed with the power of the Holy Spirit who know what has to be done.

The king apparently displayed his desperation publicly, and someone there perhaps realized what had happened, and the news reached the prophet Elisha. It says that when the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent word to the king: why have you torn your clothes? Man, that suit you just ripped was far too expensive. “Let him come to me now, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.”

Wow. I believe that if someone spoke that way in our world, we would say: oh, how conceited, how proud. God’s people have authority. When the power of God is in a place, there is no need to go around displaying false humility.

I have learned this: God’s people speak with authority, and we know that everything is by grace, everything is by mercy, not because we deserve it. But we have to know that there is power, and we have to ask the Lord: Lord, give me strong self-esteem so that I will not keep apologizing for the Gospel You have entrusted to me and that You have given us. We have to walk with confidence. God is with us.

God does not want false humility, but neither does He want pride or arrogance, right? He wants you to know that, yes, God is with you, He is in you, and that it is by the grace and mercy of God that He is in you, but the one thing and the other have to be kept in balance. The Church has to know that the power of God is there and that we have the solution to humanity’s problems; we do not have to keep apologizing for ourselves with a false humility, because that bothers God more than it pleases Him.

So he calls: tell him to come, to come here to my house. You know the story. It says that Naaman came with his horses and his chariot; all of this is designed to show us the clash of mindsets. Imagine a television or movie screen, and Naaman arrives there making noise; you can hear him coming from four blocks away because he is coming with his entire entourage, his horses, his chariots, the load of riches he is bringing—a man accustomed to traveling like that, with many bodyguards and all sorts of things.

And he arrives there expecting all of that to impress the prophet and force him to do what he wants him to do, right? It says, “Then Elisha sent a messenger to him.” He did not even let him reach his house. Here is the clash of power, right? Elisha has the prophetic spirit and discerns this man’s mindset, and he knows that Jehovah cannot be forced to do anything. He knows that this man needs to be confronted; he needs to be broken.

Brothers and sisters, for God to do something in our lives, He first has to break us and make us anew. If we say—do you remember what I was telling you the Sunday before last, that God heals when He wants, how He wants, and whomever He wants, because He is God? He heals in different ways; sometimes He heals instantly, sometimes He takes His time, sometimes He heals through a prayer, sometimes He heals through the laying on of hands—hundreds of ways—and what we have to do is submit to His Will, do whatever He wants, and become like children.

That is why I like Pastor Machado, who was with us on Friday, so much, right? Because you look at him and sometimes he looks homeless, right? I love John because he is a humble and simple-hearted man. Yes, I say it with great respect and with great—thank God he is not here and does not speak Spanish, two good things (laughter). No, I actually say it to honor him, you know? Because many people see these people with their long, slightly bristly hair and think, “Can anything good come out of—where is it, Bethlehem or Nazareth?”

But I have learned that Jesus uses humble and simple vessels. He does not care whether you have a doctorate in theology, whether you dress in a three-piece suit, or whether you put on a little Pierre Cardin cologne. He does not care about that; He cares about what is in your heart, and He delights in using the little things of the world.

Never look at yourself and say, “Oh, I have no education; I am a housewife.” No, look: you can witness to the boss whose house you clean. God can use you, and I want our Church to be a simple Church, humble in heart, so that wherever the anointing of God is, we will go there; and if God wants us to stand on our heads, we will all stand on our heads. If God wants us to look crazy, if He wants it, we will do it because it is for His Glory. Now, it is not as though our being crazy will make God work either, right? There are people who believe that—no. If it is from God, right? But I have learned not to put obstacles in the Lord’s way.

One of the themes running through this text is God working through the little ones. He works through the maidservant, and He also works through Naaman’s servant. When Naaman goes toward Elisha’s house, Elisha sends him a servant, an attendant. The first thing I imagine is that when Naaman was stopped, he must have said, “But why are they stopping me? I want to get to the house; I want to speak with the prophet himself.” This man is accustomed to being treated with deference; he always wants to go straight to the big cheese, the person in charge, right?

He does not want to speak with a subordinate, an intermediary, or the secretary to the congressman’s secretary; he wants to speak with the boss. But Elisha, discerning the condition of this man’s heart, knows that for him to be healed, the first thing he must do is become broken before God. And that is why churches can often serve as prophetic places where, when we express ourselves in certain ways, people come who are not accustomed to those things: shouts of praise, somewhat longer worship, people falling, people laughing in the Spirit, people crying, the screams of a demonized person or of someone in a state of emotional crisis because God has stirred up a powerful movement in their soul.

People come from outside who are accustomed to another style of worship, and when they come here, they still do not know how we worship, so they bring in the way they worship in other places, and sometimes that can shock us too. So you are always worrying: goodness, look at these people; look at so-and-so, how well dressed he is—he seems like a well-educated person. Let us behave ourselves so he does not leave us. Many times, at that very moment, God wants something to happen that scandalizes that person, to see whether that person is worthy of the Lord’s Grace in their life.

It has happened to me many times: when I most want people to behave themselves, that is when strange things happen here. The brothers and sisters begin doing things they should not, and I say, “Well, Father, amen.” I close my eyes and say, “Father, You know what You are doing.” People say, “Pastor, how do you manage not to gain weight?” You help me by the way you behave here; sometimes I lose pounds just sitting there suffering.

I have learned that we have to—sometimes we must scandalize people’s pride and expectations, and we must confront them. Do you know that Christ is a stone of stumbling? The Bible says He is a stone of stumbling, and He causes the proud to stumble. I believe that sometimes, for the power of God to be manifested, our rational pride has to be humbled, along with our expectations about how things should be done. That is why I am never going to change the way we are just for people’s sake. No, people need to be confronted; sometimes people need to be scandalized so they can say, “You know what? Let us keep going; I am going to continue.”

A North American woman came a few weeks ago—I am not going to say her nationality; she does not even speak Spanish. She is European, in fact, and she came on a Wednesday night. On Wednesdays, as you know, the service is a little humbler, a little simpler, and this sister invited her. I do not know whether the sister who invited her is here, because I said. I thought to myself, “It would have been much better if they had invited her on a Sunday, when there is a service in English, a more substantial service,” because this is a foreign person who has not been evangelized or cultivated or anything; she comes from a foreign country. But this sister brought her, and God moves however He pleases and uses humble and simple people. I respect humble people, brothers and sisters.

If someone tells you that Lion of Judah is for elegant people, firmly rebuke the devil, because that is not true; our Church loves. There is no favoritism here; I declare that as a value in our Church. So this sister came here, God touched her, and God moved that night. There was a situation in her life, and since then this sister has not stopped coming to Church every Sunday as well. And not only that, but there was a situation; her husband was also here on Friday. They do not speak a single word of Spanish, but they were moved, touched by God’s unusual movement, and they watched with great respect. I know this because I had the opportunity to speak with them about how God is working in their lives and impacting them, because they are seeking the Lord.

Because God is the One who does things. Where the Lord’s anointing is, where the Presence of God is, what people are seeking is an inner experience. Spirit speaks to spirit; it bypasses reason and reaches the emotions, the heart, the mind, and the need directly, and people feel that, yes, God is speaking to them. Where the power of God is, things happen.

So we do not have to apologize. Of course, we also have to be sensitive, and that would take a long time to explain. But certainly, what God is telling me to communicate to you today is this: we have to be bold; we have to be confident and secure in the methodology of the Kingdom of God, even if it is scandalous to reason. Elisha first wanted to humble this man and show him: “Look, if you want to be healed, you first have to leave your arrogance at the door, so I am going to scandalize you. First, I am going to send my servant, my attendant, to see to you. I am not going to let you reach my house; I am not going to welcome you; I am not going to attend to you the way you are accustomed to. And not only that, but I am going to send you to bathe in a dirty place, the Jordan River—and in fact, it still is—a little stream. You hear ‘the Jordan River,’ and when you go to Jerusalem, it is a little stream.”

The point is: and you have to bathe seven times. You have to put on a bathing suit and look ridiculous—you, the great general—and not just once, but seven times, so that every time you get into the water you will be looking to see whether you are going to show up on YouTube, your picture on Facebook: “Look at the great General Naaman being taken in by an evangelist, some crazy televangelist there who told him to bathe seven times in some third-rate little river.”

And when Naaman receives Elisha’s command, he is scandalized. Look at the interesting spectacle of the mind of the world being confronted by the mind of the Kingdom. It says that Naaman said, “Behold”—verse 11—“Naaman went away angry, saying, ‘Behold, I said to myself, “He will surely come out, and standing there, call on the name of Jehovah his God, wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy.”’” He had visualized an entire Hollywood-style scene: angels would come forth, heavenly choirs would play, and television cameras would be there to broadcast this image across every international channel.

And Naaman has to leave like a drowned rat—though he is not wet yet. He says, “Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Are there not rivers better than those in my country?” Why did I have to come here, supposedly to wash in some dirty, insignificant little stream? “Could I not wash in them and also be clean?” The mind of man, human reason, wandering and thinking in its rational way.

And he turned and went away angry; he was already going to catch the plane again at the airport. But it says, “His servants”—do you see the ministry of humble and simple people? Because that is one of the themes of this text: it is the humble mind that God uses, the discerning mind. The people have wisdom. I want those little old Pentecostal ladies in my Church because they are a blessing. I want the ordinary people always to be around me and around this Church, blessing us with a simple anointing and with their passion for the Kingdom of God.

“Then his servants came near and spoke to him, saying, ‘My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, when he tells you, “Wash, and you will be clean”?’” How simple the people’s reasoning is. If he had asked you to give him 10 million dollars, would you not give him 10 million dollars to save you from your leprosy? Well, he is telling you to go and bathe in that blessed river, and you are going to be healed, so do it.

“Then he went down.” There is the moment; there is the crisis point of this entire account, when Naaman humbles himself, and you can almost feel his head being broken, his proud neck being broken: “and he went down.” Do you know what it means for us to go down so that the Glory of God may be manifested in our lives? The one who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted, says the Lord.

He humbled himself; he submitted himself to the methodology of the Kingdom, “and then he dipped seven times.” They told him, “Dip seven times,” and he dipped seven times. We have to be obedient; we have to be submissive; we have to obey the Lord’s commandments. It is not the way we want; it is the way God wants. The world has its ways of defining justice, defining human rights, defining the laws of the world, and thinking rationally. It has its scientific methods, its artistic reasoning, and its system of values, but it is God’s system that works; it is God’s reason, God’s methodology, and we have to learn to respect that and be guided by it. If we are guided by it, God will lift up our heads.

We have to let God be God. We cannot improve on God’s plans, purposes, and methodologies; we have to be guided by them. It says that “he dipped seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a child, and he was clean.” Not even Ivory soap does that, brothers and sisters. His flesh became as clean as a baby’s. The dirty river made him as clean as a baby, because that is how God works.

And we know the rest of the story: Naaman turns to the Lord, acknowledges that Jehovah is God, humbles himself, bows his head, and returns home transformed, knowing that from then on he must serve only one God—the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And I know that this is what God is going to do in our time. I do not know how long it will be before Christ comes, but I believe that God wants to convert nations. God wants people like Naaman to be converted and to recognize that He is the King of kings, He is the God of gods, He has the solution to the problems of nations and individuals, and He needs a Church that is clear, convinced, and sure of what it has been given, and that proclaims the Gospel once delivered to mankind—not the gospel that we believe in and construct for ourselves, thinking: this one is better; this is a more advanced model than the one God gave us.

It is the Gospel that God entrusted to us through His Word. If we proclaim that Gospel, people will be converted, God will move, His Power will flow, we will see the Glory of God, and the nations will be impacted by what God wants to do in this time. God is moving, as He is moving in Syria; God is preparing the stage for a great evangelistic movement so that the nations may come into the Church of Jesus Christ before the end comes. That will have to happen, and we must be prepared with the right attitude, the right methodology, the right resolve, and the right determination. We are not going to let the world change us; we are going to change the world.

We have the solution they need. If they want to be healed and saved, let them go through the low doorway and enter the Kingdom of God with humility and simplicity of heart. And if you want God to move in your life, you must do the same: you must humble yourself, you must bow your head, you must become simple; you must say, “Lord, You know what is best, and I humble myself before You.” May the Lord grant that our Church may be an Elisha-type Church, filled with the Power of God, convinced of the divine message we have received, willing to pay the price, and with great love in its heart for lost souls.

Let us bow our heads for a moment now, brothers and sisters, and let us receive. I want to receive from the Lord the anointing that is in His Word. I want God to touch my life with what I myself have proclaimed this morning, and for the spirit in that account in Second Kings chapter 5 to wash over me, to bathe me first and to bathe our Congregation as well. And I ask that everything that Word says be exemplified here in our Church, and that the Glory of the Lord descend upon us so that we may be useful to the Kingdom of God.