Chasing the Outsiders - Audio
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
We're going to be getting a series in kings, the book of First Second Kings next week. So today is a little bit of a preview, a little taste of what it'll sort of be like. One of the things a lot of secular people have a problem with when it comes to the Bible is they're like, well, this is just a crazy book filled with stuff that's impossible. It's like a bunch of fairy tales, and so as a result, we really shouldn't be paying attention to this. One of the interesting things that happens though is that when you start to read the Bible, you start to recognize that if anything, it absolutely 100% nails human beings. There's no truer, more accurate representation of humanity than you will find in the Bible, and especially in the Old Testament. At our best, at our worst, it's just honest. And in fact, that's one of the reasons why it inclines me to believe some of the stuff that's a little more out there. We don't see people walking on the water all the time. But the fact that the Bible is so amazingly, the way it pierces our hearts, gives me faith, gives me courage to believe that. And so we got a lot of texts today. We're in Second Kings 5. This is the story of Naaman, the Syrian. So we're going to just bunch it and make some points as we go along. But I want you to just be attentive to the way in which this text gets human beings. Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram, another word for Syria. If you don't know, Syria is basically due north of Israel a little bit to the east, but mostly due north. And Syria and Israel are enemies. I mean, well, they're at peace right now, but at any moment they could be enemies, and they have fought in the past. So it's very odd that we're talking about one of their best military commanders. He was a great man in the side of his master and highly regarded because through him, the Lord had given victory to Syria. If you recall, great man is Old Testament language for something like successful, right? It's the kind of language of, hey, because of some good character qualities, this person has done really well in life. So great man, Job was a great man, Abraham, great man. And it's close almost to how we might think about really great famous people, where if you've got met them, you might be a little nervous. Like, oh, wow, I can't believe I'm finally meeting Justin Bieber. He's a great man. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy. Again, if you've grown up in the church, you might have heard that leprosy is a Hansen's disease. That's the disease that it infects your skin and eventually causes body parts to decay and fall off. That is not what leprosy is in the Bible. It's actually a skin disorder. It just, over the years, mistranslations happened. But if you're curious about it, you can look in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, it defines what leprosy is pretty extensively. And if you're wondering, you can see this, is this the right side, my white patch? Is this the white hair? Okay, there's a little bit over here, but it's mostly here. I am starting to get, like, actual legit gray hairs. So middle age is happening. But this right here is not actually gray hair. If I shave completely, which I don't like to do, but if I shave completely,
Transcription truncated.
God loves to confound the "great" people with the "little" people.