2 Kings 5:19-20 “After Naaman had traveled some distance, Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said to himself, ‘My master was too easy on Naaman, this Aramean, by not accepting from him what he brought. As surely as the Lord lives, I will run after him and get something from him.”

Gehazi wanted to profit from God’s work. It’s not wrong to expect to receive support for doing God’s work. The Apostle Paul writes in the New Testament, “The Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.” Elisha almost certainly received some kind of financial support for his work as a prophet, much as ministers are paid today. Believers in Israel gave gifts that helped support his ministry. In some sense, then, Gehazi, as his servant, was also receiving his living from the gospel.

But this was different. Gehazi was no longer concerned about gifts given to support gospel work, though he lied about that to Naaman. “Two young men from the company of the prophets have just come to me from the hill country of Ephraim. Please give them a talent of silver and two sets of clothing.” Gehazi’s deceit, his treatment of Naaman as though he was someone to use for his own gain, like a greasy salesman making up a story to close the sale, was pure selfishness. For his efforts he got a chunk of silver worth about $25,000 that day. He also got more than he bargained for when he got home.

It’s not wrong for us to want our church to stay afloat financially. It’s not wrong for me to want to support my family from my work as a pastor. But we need not to let this sully our motivations or influence the way we interact with our community as a church. We don’t want to start seeing our neighbors as a mark whom we target for a sale. They are souls to be saved, people to love and add to our family. The church sale may be a long way from what Gehazi did to Naaman, many of them carried out with the purest of intentions. Sometimes it may even be a way to meet people. But let’s police ourselves, and not let money concerns ever get in the way of our concern for souls. Let’s not contribute to the suspicion so many already have: that preachers and churches are just interested in your money.

Gehazi learned about God’s concern the hard way when he got home. “When Gehazi came to the hill, he took the things from the servants and put them away in the house. He sent the men way and they left. Then he went in and stood before his master Elisha. ‘Where have you been, Gehazi?’ Elisha asked. ‘Your servant didn’t go anywhere,’ Gehazi answered. But Elisha said to him, ‘Was not my spirit with you when the man got down from his chariot to meet you? Is this the time to take money, or to accept clothes, olive groves, vineyards, flocks, herds, or menservants and maidservants? Naaman’s leprosy will cling to you and to your descendants forever’” (verse 24-27).

The key to understanding Elisha’s rebuke is in the phrase, “Is this the time…” On another day, from another person, in other circumstances, receiving gifts, even extravagant ones, to support God’s work might be appropriate. But taking advantage of Naaman in the flood of his emotion and excitement over being healed and finding the true God; potentially corrupting his understanding of God’s free and gracious treatment of us; seeking personal profit over another man’s spiritual welfare–this was Gehazi’s sin.

God’s gifts are not a commodity to be sold. They are not to be used to satisfy our greed. He takes seriously the importance of communicating his gifts are free.

2 Kings 5:17-18 “ (Naaman said) ‘Please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the Lord. But may the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I bow there also–when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this.’ ‘Go in peace,’ Elisha said.’”

God’s grace can’t be bought, but it can and does create a complete makeover of the human soul and inspire a response of praise. Naaman’s desire to worship God illustrates the point.

Some people see worshiping God as an incidental part of their faith and morals, a less important side effect, if you will. The details of how they worship, where they worship, if they worship aren’t very important to them. What really matters is how you live your life. Are you honest? Are you kind? Do you respect others and their things? These are the things, they say, that really matter. These are the things that truly display your faith.

This is backwards. Honesty, kindness and respect are good things. But virtues like this are a dime a dozen. I know plenty of atheists who live this way.

The one thing that distinguishes believers in the God of Scripture from any others, or from those who believe nothing at all, is that the Bible believers gather to worship the God who revealed himself to Israel and sent his Son Jesus to save us. They do it on a regular basis. He included this in his 10 commandments. Love God comes before love your neighbor. People who get God’s grace get why worshiping him is important, too.

Naaman certainly did. From now on he would worship only the Lord, the God of Israel. As a way of making it clear this was his God, he would worship only on soil he dug up and carried back from Israel. And just to be clear, if his knees had to bend a little in the temple of the false god Rimmon while Naaman was fulfilling his state duties, he was not worshiping that God anymore. He worshiped the Lord, whose gifts can’t be bought, but they can inspire a response of worship and praise.

2 Kings 5:14-16 “So he (Naaman) went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy. Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, ‘Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. Please accept now a gift from your servant.’ The prophet answered, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept anything.’ And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.”

You recognize we are picking this up in the middle of the story. If you went to Sunday School regularly as a child, you probably remember that Naaman was the commander of the Syrian army. He had leprosy, and after trying everything else, he came to the prophet Elisha to see if he could cure it. Elisha didn’t even come out of his house to talk to him. He sent a servant to tell Naaman to wash himself in the Jordan seven times and he would be cured.

Naaman was furious. He was used to VIP treatment. He felt like Elisha was blowing him off. He was about to turn around and go home when his servants convinced him to give it a try. So, we are told, he “dipped” himself in the Jordan river seven times–a kind of grudging, half-hearted performance of the prophet’s instructions. But true to the prophet’s word, Naaman came out of the river completely healed of his leprosy.

God’s grace is all over this story. Not only was Naaman’s body healed, he came back to Elisha a changed man. “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel,” he confesses. He is convinced. He is humbled. He is grateful.

But he is also a little confused. “Please accept now a gift from your servant.” But Elisha is adamant: He won’t accept a thing. He says so with an oath. Why was this so important?

It’s not that Elisha was necessarily against ever taking any gifts or pay for his work. As prophets go, he seems to have been a more prosperous one. He lived in his own house and had servants.

But he also knew that Naaman had come to him with a small fortune. Earlier in the story we hear that Naaman had come with nearly 10,000 ounces of silver, and nearly 2000 ounces of gold. At today’s rates (converted to the troy ounce) the silver would be worth over $455,000, and the gold almost $7.5 million. That wasn’t just a little traveling change to throw in the toll booths along the way. Naaman thought that he was going to buy himself a miracle. It appears now he thought he was going to pay for his cure.

God’s gifts don’t work that way. They are not for sale. Elisha wasn’t going to reinforce that kind of misunderstanding, even if it would benefit him personally. Grace, the kind of love you can’t earn, deserve, or purchase, is the single most distinguishing feature of the God we worship. It is what sets Christianity apart from every other world religion. It makes our faith counter to every human culture.

There is nothing so powerful for working faith, for changing hearts, for securing allegiance, for inspiring commitment to God than the truth that he forgives the guilty, loves the unlovely, befriends his enemies, seeks those who want nothing to do with him, who have nothing to offer to him, who are so broken they can’t be fixed, humanly speaking. Grace, by its very nature, is not a commodity you can buy, and Elisha had no intention of jeopardizing that understanding for the infant faith of Naaman. He did not want to cloud the enormity of the gift Naaman had been given, the love he had experienced, by letting him pay for something that cannot be bought.

Mark 10:13-16 “People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.”

Jesus wants your children. Like the disciples, adults often stand in the way of this, even parents. Jesus’ disciples likely felt that Jesus’ time was too valuable to waste on children. This was the Messiah, the rightful leader of Israel. He should be rubbing shoulders with the powerful. He should be gathering a mass of followers to help usher in his kingdom. Why should the Master waste his time on a bunch of runny-nosed, half-witted little children? They didn’t put much value on the little ones.

Today, parents often turn this around. They don’t put much value on Jesus. They spend hours watching their children practice soccer. They cough up big money to get their little scholars into the right schools, and their hearts swell with pride at each graduation they attend. But take their children to hear God’s word? How did that ever help the kid make the team or get into college?

Still, Jesus is their Lord just as much as he is yours or mine. “The kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Our children are real sinners in need of real forgiveness. Some Christians question this, but funny how the parents that do still treat their children’s misbehavior like it’s real and it counts when they have to deal with it themselves. They don’t wait for some unbiblical “age of accountability” before they start handing out discipline, putting the kid in time out, or taking away privileges at home.

Our children are real believers, who have received God’s real grace. They have a real relationship with Jesus as their Savior. Some Christians don’t consider a little child’s simple faith a real faith. Jesus says the children’s faith is the only kind that truly is. “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” It’s the adults we have to wonder about, with all their questions and skepticism. The child who simply trusts Jesus’ every word is the kind of believer Jesus seeks. He is Lord of their hearts with a hold he struggles to achieve in your typical grown up.

We can rightly envy the special place children have with Jesus. While the adults were bickering about whether the children could see him, “…he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.” No doubt Peter was too big to sit in Jesus’ lap anymore. But each of these little ones had Jesus wrap his arms around them and hold them close. Each received a blessing spoken just to them.

This is why we want Jesus to be Lord of our families, and Lord of our own hearts: because where Jesus is Lord, he rules not with fear and threats and judgment. He rules with grace and love. He embraces the people who belong to him and blesses them.

Mark 10:3-9 “‘What did Moses command you?’ he replied. They said, ‘Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.’ ‘It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,’ Jesus replied. ‘But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.’”

Do you notice the word play going on? Jesus asks about a command. The Pharisees come back with a permission. They are skipping past the rule to get to the exception. Jesus himself offers exceptions to the rule in other places. He recognizes that unfaithfulness kills a marriage and provides grounds for divorce (Matthew 5). He inspired Paul to write about desertion and the freedom to end a marriage (1 Corinthians 7). But exceptions don’t make the rule. They should not become the rule. They are the exceptional cases.

Jesus recognizes what Moses wrote. But even that is a call to repentance. “‘It was because your hearts were hard.” Not everyone wants to live like a child of God. Sometimes I don’t want to live like a child of God. Our hearts are hard. But then the problem is not with God or the commands he has given for the human institutions he has created. The problem is with our hearts that won’t accept what God has given us.

So Jesus takes us deeper into God’s purpose for marriage, so that we can understand. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

Where Jesus is not Lord of the family, or Lord of a marriage, many people cannot even recognize rudimentary truths. How many genders there are, or how many genders does it take to have a real marriage? Jesus makes it clear that the answer in each case is “two.”

So why did God create these two genders and then bring them together in marriage? Why did he have men and women leave the homes where they were loved and nurtured all through childhood and loosen their attachment to mothers and fathers? Because marriage is a unity, two joined together as one flesh. Marriage is not just a commitment between two people, though commitment is certainly important for making it work. It is not just a relationship of love, though love is usually a foundational feature. It is far more than a contract between independent parties laying out obligations and expectations for them to get along.

Marriage is a union of body and life. It is the union of the two genders, with their unique gifts and strengths and inclinations. More than a new relationship, it is more like a new entity. It’s stability and endurance are necessary for the purposes for which God invented it: not only the production of children, but a secure environment for their development; the quintessential training grounds for teaching and learning sacrifice and selflessness; the foundation on which any functional society can be built.

Even more, God often uses marriage as a picture of his love and grace to us. We are the bride, Christ is the groom. He sacrifices himself to make us holy. He doesn’t abandon us because we have sinned. He bonds himself to us forever.

Why would you want to mess with that? This is the rule according to the Lord of marriage: What God has joined together, let man not separate.

Mark 10:2 “Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’”

People, maybe men in particular, like to tinker. Computer geeks will overclock their processors, add special cooling systems, upgrade their memory and graphics cards, to give their systems an edge when they are gaming. My dad was constantly tinkering with the house in which I grew up: building a deck, finishing the basement, re-siding the house, putting on an addition.

Tinkering with some things is okay. Tinkering with others can get us into trouble. In 1979 China began enforcing a “one family, one child” policy in an attempt to control its population. After a couple had a child, they would be forced to abort any future pregnancies. But the nation’s leaders did not take into account the strong cultural preference for male children. Parents often ended pregnancies when they learned they were expecting a girl so that their one child could be a boy. Today this has created a shortage of women in their country, and this is creating a whole new set of problems that the communist government is scrambling to correct.

Tinkering with human inventions may not do serious harm. Tinkering with God’s work is a recipe for disaster. God created the family to work a certain way. Sinful humans have tinkered with it almost since the beginning of time. The Pharisees questioning Jesus were not so much honest truth seekers looking for an answer to a hard question about marriage and divorce. They were skeptics looking for problems with Jesus’ position.

The institution of marriage suffered in their day much the way it suffers in our own. It is hard for two people to unite their lives, share everything, and create a family together for the rest of their lives. It takes tons of patience, forgiveness, and sacrifice.

Jewish people 2000 years ago were looking for loopholes, for escape routes, for ways to get out of their commitment, just like people do today. Even among the Pharisees there were two positions about what it takes to end a marriage. But that is not the main issue in this story.

The Pharisees tinkered because they did not recognize the Lord of their families, or their marriages. They tried to make God’s word say what they wanted it to say on the topic rather than listening to what he said on the topic. They wanted to justify their bad treatment of God’s good gift.

Divorce has touched the majority of families I know, including my own. I am not here to beat anyone up today for their family’s failings. Divorce always involves sin on someone’s part, but it is not the unforgivable sin.

But let’s not come to Jesus like the Pharisees did. Let’s not come full of defensiveness and excuses, ready to test him and challenge him. If Jesus is Lord of our families, and Lord of our marriages, can we just listen to him? If his words confront something sinful or broken in our past, or in our present, can we just repent, and tell him we are sorry?

He did not come to condemn us, or embarrass us, or make us pay. He came to save us. He came to forgive us. And if we listen to him, maybe he can save our marriages, too–if not the ones in our past, then those of our present or yet to come.

James 4:11-12 “Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment over it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you–who are you to judge your neighbor?”

James isn’t talking about going to someone who has offended you personally to talk about their sin. He is talking about making them the object of your gossip to others. You can talk against the people who make you mad. You can sit in judgment and condemn the people you think have hurt you. You can choose to stew and brood and be angry. But does it do any good?

It certainly doesn’t help them. They are no closer to changing and treating you better when you are talking behind their backs or just carrying around a chip on your shoulder. It doesn’t help us. Unless there is something seriously messed up about us psychologically, it doesn’t make us feel better to go around with a belly full of resentment towards someone else. It only adds to our stress and indigestion.

Worse yet, it puts us at odds with God and his law, which is essentially, “love your neighbor,” even “love your enemies.” We are silently saying, “I think God’s way is stupid. My genius idea of carrying my anger and resentment around with me all the time, driving up my blood pressure and ruining my sleep, makes much more sense.”

Do we hear ourselves? Can we see what we are doing? Is there any way to judge others, and judge God’s law, and still think we can submit to God and humble ourselves before him?

James tells us no. “There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you–who are you to judge your neighbor?” Let it go. Let God be God. We aren’t qualified to stand in his place, and we don’t really want the job anyway.

He can save and destroy. If we need saving from someone else, and that means destroying them, there is One Lawgiver and Judge qualified to make that call. It is not you or me. It is the One who already let himself be destroyed to save us all. We act in self-interest. He acts in self-giving love.

And if the person with whom we have our quarrel can be saved, too, no one knows better than our Lord if that is the case and what he must do. Dealing out proper judgment to people who upset us is above our paygrade as God’s people. Confront their sin and lead them to God’s grace? Yes. Verbally condemn them to others and carry a grudge? No. Let it go. Leave that kind of judgment to God, and find God’s cure for our discontent in the grace he has shown to you and me.

James 4:8-10 “Come near to God, and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

The Lord wants to be with you and on your side. Go to him and he will stick with you. But where is that? We find him where he has promised to be found: in the promises of his word. Paul wrote the Romans, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (That is to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ (That is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming.” We find Jesus, we come to him, in his word, and through that word he comes to us and lives in us. And you can be sure that Jesus is not content to live in an old fixer-upper. He doesn’t live in a place without tearing it apart and improving just about everything about it.

So you recognize who has to change if you aren’t happy with the people around you or with the content of your life. James doesn’t egg us on to go after the other guy. He is pointing you and me to ourselves. “Work on yourself,” he is saying, “if you want me to lift you up in your life.”

That work assumes a life of repentance. The Apostle does not mince words. “Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” Some might complain about James’s negativity. “I want to feel good and be uplifted when I worship, not beaten down,” I have heard people say. “You can’t tell people they are bad,” one false teacher on TV has said to defend his greasy smile and sermons composed of shallow flattery.

James makes it clear there is still a place for genuine regret and tears in the believer’s life. He is not saying there is no place at all for joy or happiness. But we still mistreat other people. We still want what God says we can’t have. Our hearts still waver between God’s way and the devil’s. We tell our children to say they’re sorry when they misbehave. That’s what James is telling us here.

“And he (the Lord) will lift you up.” You see, he is not interested in seeing us spend our lives with a frown on our face and tears in our eyes. He replies to our repentance with his grace. He let’s us see our sins, every last one of them, sent to the cross with Jesus and obliterated. He raises us with Jesus to new life now and eternal life to come. He fills our hearts with peace. He fills our lives with meaning and purpose. He promotes us to the dignity of being the sons and daughters of the King, the distinguished members of his royal family. He exchanges this tar-paper shack we call our home for his glorious kingdom.

Yes, we repent. We humble ourselves. But we don’t lose. We win the most fantastic prize ever won. We end up with the immeasurable blessings of his grace.

James 4:7 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

If non-Christian behavior goes against Bible teaching; if they have priorities wildly out of line with the ones Jesus taught; if their understanding of right and wrong is vastly different than that of Biblical and orthodox Christianity; there is really no surprise. They are non-Christians. They have decided to go a different way. Of course their standards are going to be different.

It’s different for the Christian. Jesus isn’t just a casual friend and a good guy. Believing him isn’t the same as believing my golfing buddy when he tells me about his kid’s success on the football field. We believe in him. We attach ourselves to him as a person. We trust him with our soul’s salvation for all eternity. That’s not like finding a good insurance agent or a reliable mechanic. We follow Christ. We give up our own ideas, our own desires, in favor of his. Or, as James urges, “Submit yourselves, then, to God.”

I don’t have to tell you how hard this is. If it seems easy to you, I have to wonder whether you have ever really taken this call seriously. It means that what God tells you in his word always overrules your own ideas–no exceptions. You don’t get to privately disagree, “Well, the Bible says this, but I think…” It means the Lord gets everything you have–no exceptions. If he wants your child, he can take him. If he wants your health, he can take it. If he wants your life, he can have it. He doesn’t have to explain himself. “Submit yourselves, then, to God.” Because we have not lost the old self, the sinful nature with its desires, we will struggle with this until the day we die.

This also means that we have clearly chosen sides in a cosmic battle between heaven and hell, God and the devil. But here we get some promises. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” I have personally met a few men who played professional football. I have shaken hands with Cowboys hall-of-fame quarterback Roger Staubach. I have met former Cowboys backup QB Babe Laufenberg. On TV they looked like the little guys out on the field. In person, I’m sure if I ever had to face them in a fair fight, I would be crushed. They towered over me and weighed twice as much.

I have seen the work the devil does on the pages of Scripture and in the souls of the people I have served as pastor. In a single day he destroys Job’s life with foreign attackers and natural catastrophes. He gets great heroes of faith like Abraham, David, and Peter to fall into horrifying sins and temptations. He has snatched colleagues in the ministry, elders and life-long Christians in my churches, away from the Christian faith altogether. He doesn’t fight fair, but if I had to face him alone, I would be crushed.

Yet James can say, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” How can this be? There is a scene near the end of the C.S. Lewis movie Prince Caspian, in which Queen Lucy, a little 9 year-old girl, comes marching across a bridge toward an entire army of enemy occupiers of her country. She draws out a little kitchen-knife sized sword, and stops the army in its tracks. Why? Behind her, and then beside her, is the miracle-working lion Aslan, the Jesus-character in the story.

It works the same way with the devil. Resist him and he will run away, like the little coward he is, because behind you and beside you is your Lord Jesus, and the devil knows he is outmatched.