Read 2 Kings 5 and Daniel 9.
This devotional is about 2 Kings 5.
From the time Elijah was taken to heaven in 2 Kings 1, God had been doing many miracles through Elisha. Widows, families who feared God, other prophets, and hungry people who were just standing around received the benefits of these miracles as we read about yesterday in 2 Kings 4.
But the king of Israel, Joram son of Ahab, had seen some of this miraculous power back in chapter 2 when God gave Elisha a message about how to defeat the rebelling Moabites (2 Ki 3). The overarching purpose of these miracles is always to show that Israel’s God is the true God. But, like most unbelievers in the Bible, the demonstrations of God’s power had no affect on Joram’s faith.
Here in 2 Kings 5, Naaman experienced the miraculous power of God through Elisha. God spoke through Elisha and gave instructions that healed Naaman’s leprosy. Naaman was an unlikely recipient of God’s healing grace in this chapter. He was an Aramean and a skillful fighting commander for the Aramean army (v. 1). This made him both an enemy of God’s people Israel and someone Israelites would have regarded as a “heathen.” Yet an Israelite slave girl loved him enough and believed in God’s power so much that she persuaded Naaman to seek God’s power for relief from his leprosy.
The contrasts of faith in this chapter are striking:
- The slave girl had complete faith that Elisha would bring healing to Naaman (v. 3c: “He would cure him of his leprosy.”).
- The king of Israel, however, freaked out when he heard what Naaman wanted (vv. 6-7) even though he knew Elisha (3:11) and how powerfully God was working through him (3:15-27). He had no faith that Naaman could be healed.
- Finally, after Naaman reluctantly obeyed Elisha’s instructions, he came to believe in God and worship him alone (vv. 15-17) because he had experienced complete healing of a fatal disease.
Jesus seized on this story in Luke 4 to make a point about how God saves the unlikely: “And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian” (Lu 4:27). People can see God working up close and directly yet, without the gift of faith, they will not come and worship him alone.
There are many people in our country who don’t believe in God or that he works powerfully in this world today. These people live near churches, know Christians, and some were even raised in Christian families but they are oblivious to the power of God changing lives around them. Instead, it is often the irreligious that God saves and, in national terms, people who live in places with little gospel witness. Many of these people are ready for the gospel and they will eagerly receive God’s grace when you share it with them or when a missionary comes to their land to talk about Christ.
Are there areas in your life where you are missing out on seeing the power of God work just because you lack faith and aren’t looking for God’s works? Are there any people in your life that you don’t share the gospel with because you’ve already concluded that they are heathens who won’t listen anyway?
What does this story in this chapter say about those attitudes?