Refusing to Change

Never Going Back  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  27:53
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NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
Engagement
When we gathered together a year ago on the first Sunday of January, I don’t think any of us could have possibly imagined what the year 2020 was going to look like. Every area of our life looks different today than it did then, including how we operate as a church. Roughly half our church family continues to join us remotely each week, which is certainly a prudent and wise decision for many of you.
When we experience this kind of upheaval in our lives, it’s only natural to wish for things to go back to “normal”, whatever that might be. I certainly know that I have wished for that on many occasions. I wish that our entire extended family could gather together again without having to worry that someone might contract COVID. I wish that our church family could all meet together in person again and that we could open the coffee bar and even share a meal together. I know that most of you parents wish that your kids could return to a school classroom where the kids don’t have to wear masks. But most of all, I want things to get back to normal so that I can eat samples at Costco again.
Tension
But what if the “normal” that we knew before the pandemic isn’t the “normal” that God is leading us to next? What if the God who is who is always moving forward and defined by resurrection and new beginnings doesn’t want us to go back to the way things were before? What if God has something new and better in store for us?
This morning, we begin a new six week sermon series titled “Never Going Back”. We are going to be looking at six Old Testament passages that remind us that God wants us to go forward, not back. We will see how God’s people were tempted, like us, to want to go back when things got hard, even though God wanted them to go forward. And we’ll learn how we can, with God’s help, overcome some of the barriers and hurdles that might prevent us from going forward because we’re stuck in the past.
This morning’s sermon is titled “Refusing to Change”. I am quite certain, that at least to some extent, most of us are reluctant to change. That is why the idea of returning to “normal” is so attractive. But, as we’re going to see this morning, God often forces change in our lives in order to direct us to new opportunities for us to grow in our relationship with Him. This week I was watching a message from Pastor Kyle Idleman and he shared these thought-provoking words:
What makes a tragedy truly tragic is when it doesn’t change the trajectory of our lives.
If our only goal is to survive this season so that we can go back to the way things were, then we may very well be missing out on a big opportunity to take our relationship with God to a whole new level.
Truth
This morning, we will look at the story of a man who also found himself in a desperate situation. And because of his refusal to change, he almost missed out on a great opportunity to experience the supernatural presence of God in his life. Many of you probably aren’t familiar with the story of Naaman, which is found in 2 Kings chapter 5. You’ll find the books of 1 and 2 Kings in the Old Testament after the books of Joshua and Judges and 1 and 2 Samuel. I’ll begin reading in verse 1:
2 Kings 5:1 ESV
Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.
This event likely occurs during the reign of King Ben-hadad of Syria and King Jehoram of Israel. During this time, Israel was largely in subjection to Syria. Naaman was the commander of the Syrian army, second in command only to the king himself. He had distinguished himself in battle and was held in high regard by the king and his fellow countrymen. But he had a problem. He suffered from leprosy. And even though he was powerful and wealthy, there was nothing he could do to cure himself.
2 Kings 5:2–3 ESV
Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”
There was a young Israelite girl living in Naaman’s house who had been taken away from her family by the army that Naaman commanded. She had every reason to be bitter against Naaman, his family and his people, but instead she was looking out for their good. She urged Naaman to change things up and go to Samaria, where Elisha, the prophet of Israel, could help him.
2 Kings 5:4–5 ESV
So Naaman went in and told his lord, “Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel.” And the king of Syria said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten changes of clothing.
Naaman went to King Ben-hadad and was given a letter to give to King Jehoram of Israel. He then gathered up a bunch of gold, silver and clothing. Some commentators believe that would have amounted to over one million dollars worth of precious metals and clothing in today’s dollars.
This is apparently how Naaman had always addressed any problems he encountered in his life. He was a proud man who thought he could solve any problem in his life with his considerable power and wealth. So he just assumed that He could persuade the God of Israel to heal him that same way. But instead of going to Elisha directly, he first goes to King Jehoram.
2 Kings 5:6–7 ESV
And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me.”
When Jehoram read the letter, he appears to think that this was some kind of trick from Ben-hadad in order to give him an excuse to make another raid on Israel. So understandably, he wants nothing to do with Naaman. But, on the other hand, he doesn’t send Naaman to Elisha either.
2 Kings 5:8–10 ESV
But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king, saying, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha’s house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.”
Elisha the prophet heard about Naaman’s situation and he invited Naaman to come visit him. But when Naaman arrived, Elisha didn’t even come out to greet him. Instead, he sent his servant, a man named Gehazi, with a message. I think that Elisha snubbed Naaman intentionally like that because he knew that Naaman was going to have to first deal with his pride before God would heal him.
The command from God through the prophet Elisha was simple: “Go wash seven times in the Jordan River and you will be healed”. You would think that Naaman would have figured that was a pretty easy solution to his problem and that he would immediately head down to the Jordan River and follow Elisha’s instructions. But Naaman doesn’t do that, at least not immediately.
2 Kings 5:11–14 ESV
But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage. But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, it is a great word the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.
Here we see the main idea that we are going to focus on today:

God and the gospel do not change, but sometimes we must

Naaman did not want to change the way he had always approached his problems. So when Elisha presented him with a plan that was so radically different, even though that plan was actually much simpler and easier than his own plans, Naaman actually got angry. He must have thought he had completely wasted his time and resources. After all if washing in the muddy Jordan River is all he needed to do, there were the beautiful clear streams back in Syria that could have served the same purpose.
Fortunately for Naaman, one of his servants convinced him to do what God had commanded him to do. He basically says to Naaman “You came here willing to do some great thing to get God to heal you. You were willing to make a long trip and give up a great deal of your wealth. So if all God is asking is for you to wash seven times in the Jordan River, don’t you think you should at least give it a shot?” And sure enough, as soon as he dipped himself seven times in the Jordan River, his leprosy was immediately cured.
Before we consider what we can learn from Naaman about how we can change when we need to, I want to take a moment to consider how Naaman’s story is also a great picture of the gospel.
Naaman’s leprosy was a picture of the kind of devastation and destruction that sin brings to our lives. And just like Naaman couldn’t cure that leprosy on his own, there is nothing we can do on our own to get rid of the guilt and shame of our sin. We also see here that he was a proud man who thought he could come to God on his own terms and earn God’s favor by something he did. It was not until he humbled himself and agreed to do things God’s way and accept God’s free gift that he could finally be healed.
That is also true for all of us. There is nothing we can do to earn or deserve God’s favor. The only way we can have our sins forgiven and be healed from the devastation that sin brings to our lives is to accept the free gift of God and put our faith in Jesus. If you have never done that, I want to encourage you to do that today.
Action
If you’re joining us online, there is a link to a Connection Card at the top of the screen and if you’ll click on that, you can let us know you would like to talk to us more about how to do that. If you’re here in person, you can either talk to me after the service or we have some blue Connection Cards at the information center in the lobby you can use to let us know you’d like to talk some more. And after the message, I’ll also be sharing some other ways you can connect with us.
But this passage is also relevant to all of us who have already made that decision and I want to use the time we have remaining to explore what we can learn from Naaman about...
Application
HOW TO CHANGE WHEN I NEED TO
Acknowledge the need for change
Naaman couldn’t be healed until he humbled himself and admitted that he needed to change the way he was approaching his problems.
The same thing is true for us in many areas of our lives right now. From what I’ve observed, the people who are struggling most during this pandemic are the ones who are still holding on to their old ways and on to their desire that things will return to “normal” soon. I know that because I was one of those people in the early days of this pandemic.
But fortunately, it didn’t take too long for me to realize that things weren’t going back to “normal” anytime soon and that therefore I was going to have to make some changes in the way that I live my life on a daily basis. And it was only after I acknowledged the need for change that I was able to move on with life.
Listen to godly counsel
That counsel often comes from the least expected places. For Naaman, it came first from a young girl from a foreign country who got him to consider that he might need to change something if he wanted to be healed. And later it was one of his servants who urged him to do what God had commanded through Elisha.
We’re all facing a new and constantly changing landscape right now and it certainly wouldn’t hurt any of us to get some wise counsel. Rather than just getting stuck in a rut, we should take advantage of the opportunity to learn from others, to see how they are approaching the challenges of this season. But in order to do that I have to be humble enough to admit that I don’t have all the answers and seek out the counsel of others.
Ask for help
Like many of us, and I’m one of the worst offenders, Naaman was a self-sufficient person who was reluctant to ask for help. He thought he could save himself. But in order to be healed, he had to seek out help from an unlikely source - a prophet from a country who was an enemy of Syria.
There are some of you joining us today who need to swallow your pride and ask for some help. You need to ask someone to go pick up some groceries or your prescription from the store because you shouldn’t really be doing that yourself. You need to ask for some financial help because you’ve lost your job or your hours have been cut at work. From the very beginning of this pandemic, our church has been offering to help with those kinds of needs, and we have yet to hear from anyone who has been willing to ask for help even though I am pretty sure there are some of you who could use it.
Let God be God
From a human perspective, it didn’t make sense for Naaman to go wash in the Jordan River. Certainly there had to be something more that he could do, some big sacrifice he could make. Or maybe he could buy the cure with his riches.
God’s plans are often like that. They don’t make a lot of sense from our perspective. But we need to remember a couple of things about God when He leads us to make changes that just don’t make sense to us:
Only God has the ability to see the big picture. Because He is sovereign over the affairs of this world, only God has the ability to understand how His plans fit into the big picture.
God has promised good to those who love Him. He has promised that even when things are difficult and even when we don’t understand them, He is using them for our good.
So that means that we need to be obedient to God even when He has chosen not to reveal all the reasons for the changes He is leading us to make.
These principles not only apply to us as individuals, they also apply to the church as a body. When the COVID crisis hit early last year, we certainly had to make some changes as a church. And so did every other church I know of. But unfortunately, at least from my perspective, there have been some churches and some Christians who have been so opposed to change of any kind and so intent in hanging on to their old way of doing things that they have ended up damaging their testimony for Jesus.
I certainly don’t claim to know exactly what God has in mind for the church right now, but I think we need to at least consider the possibility that God is using this COVID crisis to get churches to change the way they “do church”. While God and the gospel never change, it may very well be that the methods that we use to share that gospel will need to change, maybe dramatically.
We’ve certainly seen that right here at TFC. When we had to transition to online only worship gatherings earlier this year, we initially had over twice as many people joining us online as we typically had joining us in person each Sunday previously. And while that certainly presented some challenges, it also presented us with some amazing new opportunities, too.
We’re already starting to see evidence nationwide that even when we are able to all meet together in person again, there are going to be some people who will probably never return to the church building, at least not as frequently as they did in the past. I guess once you’ve gotten used to going to church in your pajamas, it’s hard to get up and actually get dressed and drive to church.
So we have a choice. We can either say to those people, “Sorry, we’re not going to change anything to accommodate you. If you want us to minister to you, you have to show up to our building” or we can say to them, “You matter to God and you matter to us. So here is what we’re doing to minister to you where you are.” I’m pretty sure I know which of those two options God wants us to choose.

God and the gospel do not change, but sometimes we must

Inspiration
I think Mark Twain was right when he said:
The only person who likes change is a wet baby.
But when we refuse to change, we often miss out on a great opportunity to take our relationship with God to a whole new level and to be even more effective in bringing His kingdom near to others.
None of us know what the year 2021 is going to bring, but the one thing we can be sure of is that there are more changes in store for all of us. Will you join me in praying that we will be open enough to let God use those changes to make us more like Jesus and bring glory to Him?
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