When You Can't Solve It…

I want to read to you from Second Kings, chapter five. It's a long passage. It's a story. See if you can get into the story with me for a moment.

Second Kings, Chapter five says, now Naaman is captain of the army of the king of Aram, Aram, Syria. He was a great man with his master and highly respected because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man was also a valiant warrior, but he was a leper. Now the Arameans had gone out in bands and they had taken captive a little girl from the land of Israel. And she waited on Naaman's wife.

She said to her mistress, I wish that my master were with the prophet who's in Samaria. Then he would cure him of his leprosy. Naaman then went in and he told his master, saying, listen. Thus spoke the girl who is from the land of Israel. And the king of Abram said, will you go now, and I'll send a letter to the king of Israel?

And he departed, and he took with him 10 talents of silver and 6,000 shekels of gold and 10 changes of clothes. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, and now as this letter comes to you, behold, I've sent Naaman my servant to you that you may cure him of his leprosy. When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and he said, am I God to kill and to make alive that this man is sending word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? But consider now and see how he's seeking a quarrel against me. And it happened.

When Elisha, the man of God, heard the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent word to the king, saying, why have you torn your clothes? Now let this man come to me, and he shall know there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horse, horses and his chariots, and he stood at the doorway of the house of Elisha. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh will be restored to you, and you will be clean. But Naaman was furious and he went away.

And he said, behold, I thought he would surely come out to me. And he'd stand and he'd call on the name of the Lord his God, and he'd wave his hands all over the place, and he'd cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abanah and Parfa, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not have washed in them and be Clean. So he turned and he went away in a rage.

Then his servants came near to him and they spoke to him and said, my father, had the prophet told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more then when he says to you, just wash and be clean? So he went down and he dipped himself seven times in the Jordan river according to the cross word of the man of God. And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child. And he was clean.

This morning I want to talk to you about what do you do when you can't solve it? And many of you know this week that we.

That we had a sudden and tragic loss of one of ours. Kayden and Clay died in a car wreck on Tuesday night. And I say we not just the Clay family, because as a church, we are a family. And in varying ways, we all feel the gravity of losing Kayden. As I sat with the family throughout the week, this week, I listened.

I tried to be a good listener, reflected. And I've asked the same question, everyone. I've asked it internally. I've said, why God? Why?

Why this kid? Why now? Why like this? And I've answered the question very quickly in my own head, theologically saying, well, it's because we live in a broken world, and bad things happen in a broken world until Christ comes and makes all things new. This stuff is to be expected.

And it's not, you know, to teach someone a lesson or become. Because God wanted to test someone's faith. There'll be plenty of faith being tested, and there will be lessons learned throughout. Throughout a lifetime missing him. But God didn't say, I want to teach you a lesson.

That's not how God works.

It was an awful and terrible accident. And there's good news. The good news is Caden loves the Lord. If you knew him. I mean, hide your light under a bushel.

No.

Caden shined very brightly. And from a young age, very young age, he loved the Lord and he served. And every place he went, he turned it to serving. He started with a group of students. Prosper, kids.

Prosper. And they came here and, like, made this great presentation. How do they benefit the community? Every environment he went into is like, how can I bring life and healing and good into the world?

Because of the grace of Jesus, because of what Jesus did on the cross for Caden and for everyone who trusts in him for life, now and forever. Caden lives. He's resurrected with Christ. Christ.

And he sees him in the flesh. He knows him in the flesh. Now, remember, in Philippians, Paul said, I'm torn between the two. I desire to depart this life and to be with Christ because that's far better for me. He said, but to remain in the flesh is necessary for now.

That's because Paul was still using being used by God for a specific purpose and a time. So he would have to wait for what was far better for him. And Caden doesn't have to wait for that anymore. Something Heather said one day this week. She said, you know, some people, it takes them a lot of years and a very long life to learn how much God loves them.

But Caden didn't need that much to be convinced of the love of God and to love him back.

We thank God for cadence, salvation, the life that he now lives and the life that our souls long for, even though that's not sometimes what we realize is going on when there's a wrestling within us, that our souls are longing, like Paul said in 2nd Corinthians 5, to be free from this earthly tent that is decaying every day, to be set free and to receive a house not built with hands that is eternal. That's what our souls are longing for. With every broken moment and every. Every feeling of disgust or fear or anxiety in our life, it's our body craving to be set free. And we wait.

But Caden doesn't. But this keeps coming up, and it's going to keep coming up, and it will. How do they move on? How do you. How do you face something as awful as this in your life in these days and continue to move forward?

Because there is a pain that demands to be felt and heard, and you can't skip it, and you can't ignore it, and you can't fix it. Some of you have been through this.

Some of you have been through other things. All of you can probably think of situations and things in which you have. You've looked at it and you've said, I just don't know what to do. Why, God? I don't know how to deal with this.

So what do we do when we can't solve it? That's what I want to talk with you about this morning. Would you just pray with me for a moment?

God, we have in this world many troubles. And there are situations and there's pain in our life, and times where we felt helpless and helpless can turn to hopeless pretty quick.

And so in this moment, as your people made by you, called by you, dependent upon you, we open our hearts, we open our minds.

We ask you to speak to us.

Holy Spirit, help us to Be open, and I pray that we'll never be the same because of it. In Jesus name, amen.

Here's what I know about us in this life, and here's what I know about Naaman in this story that we just read. We all come to moments in life where what we're facing, we don't have a solution to it. Sometimes it's, I don't have a cure. I don't have a solution to this overwhelming feeling I have that just haunts me. Or I don't have a affix to this relational problem where I go, I don't know how it'll ever come together again.

And so much has happened and so much time has passed and I don't know how it'll ever be okay. And sometimes it's a parenting thing. I go, God, I just throw my hands up. I don't know. It can be a lot of things in our life.

But here's also what I know about us. When we don't have a solution or an answer or a fix to something, sometimes we will try to manipulate things to try to force an outcome, our direction, the way we think things should go. Sometimes what we'll try to do when we don't have a solution or a cure is that we will just begin to try to bypass it. We'll try to skip it or run from it or hide from it, get around it and just say, I'm fine. Everything's fine.

Everything's gonna be fine. I'm okay. But deep down, there's brokenness inside, and you're just not okay. A friend of mine this week texted and said, how are you? And I said, I'm okay.

She goes, no, Evans, no, you're not okay. It's not okay. But we'll do that. When we don't have an answer or a solution to a problem, or sometimes when we don't have an answer, we'll just have feelings of bitterness that will rise up from inside of us and those feelings of bitterness will grow when we might start to feel defeated sometimes because of an issue in our life. Remember when the apostle Paul talked about trouble in his life, and he said, I'm pressed but not crushed.

I'm struck down, but I'm not destroyed, right? When we don't have a solution, when we don't have an answer, when we don't know what to do, we may never get to the but not destroyed part. We might never get to the but not crushed part. We might be pressed, and pressed might get to depressed. The Depressed might get to defeated, and defeated might get to dysfunctional.

And that's what our enemy really wants for us. The thief comes to steal, to kill and to destroy. Don't forget there's a war for your soul going on every day.

What do we do when we can't solve it? Second Kings Naaman, he's a soldier. He's serving under the king of Aram, Syria. They're not a part of the nation of Israel. They're not children of God.

It says Naaman was a great man with his master, the king. He's highly respected by the people because by him the Lord had given a victory to Abram. The man was also a valiant warrior, but he was also a leper. He's highly successful. How many of you know what it's like to be like?

I feel like I'm going in the right direction, I'm doing the right things, and yet there's this one thing in me that just keeps going the other way. And I can't contain it, I can't control it, and I can't explain it. Everything I do seems to be the right thing, but this thing is happening to me. Do you know what that's like? Let's be honest.

A lot of us, if there's enough visible things going on that are good, and this guy's successful, he's winning on all fronts. All he does is win, right? He has all of the right things going on. When there's enough good things visible in our life, it's easy for us to try to hide the bad things and pretend like everything's okay, while that thing that's going on still has a hold of our heart, a hold of our soul, and it just torments us. But we try to pretend it's all gone and it's okay.

And this is Naaman, he's winning on all fronts. He's highly respected. But he has leprosy. It's an incurable disease. And it's not something that he can hide from because it's on the outside.

It's visible, it's open sores, it's open wounds. As a military captain, he is a prominent figure in their community. But he has this incurable disease that puts him as a social outcast, right? Can't hide from it. So Naaman, as a military captain, they have a defeat over Israel.

And as was the custom, what they would do is they would take people from the conquered people back home with them to be their servants. And he takes this one girl, comes to live in his home. And it's a little girl who will be a servant, a slave to Mrs. Naaman, to his wife. And so she's living with them in their home.

She sees what's going on with Naaman and something in her. Certainly the Lord gives her a compassion for her, one who conquered her and took her from her home and forced her to serve in his home. And she says to Mrs. Naaman, I wish that my master were with the prophet who's in Samaria, then he would cure him of his leprosy. So she tells her husband, and Naaman goes to the king and he's like, this is what this girl said.

And the king says, okay, well this is what you're going to do. You're going to go to the king of Israel, I will write a letter and you're going to go and get your healing. And so he departed, verse five. And he took with him ten talents of silver and 6,000 shekels of gold and ten changes of clothes. And this is all a gift of honor.

It's a. It's a kind of to buy the solution from the king that Naaman thinks he needs or that he wants. But no matter who you know or how many shekels you have, no matter how hard you try, there's some things that earthly power and earthly wisdom just cannot solve in your life. Can I get an Amen? King of Israel receives Naaman.

He reads the letter, verse seven. Here's his response. When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes. He said, am I God? I can't do this.

To kill and make alive. And this man is sending word to me to cure a man of his of leprosy. And he supposes that this is a trick. It's a trap. The king of Aram has sent him this incurable problem so that he can't solve it, so that it will give them another reason to attack.

It will give him another reason to hate him and destroy them. At least he had in his sense enough clarity of mind to go, I can't solve this. Rather than trying to fix it on his own. How many of you are fixers? Problem solvers?

A lot of problems. I'm a problem solver. If you're a problem solver. Do you like solving problems? Yeah, I love solving problems.

I love the act of solving a problem. I love trying to help. I love the feeling it gives me when I've solved a problem and helped someone. Some of us who are fixers need to have at least enough sense as the king had here to go. There's some things I can't solve and we need to be careful to not try to fix things in our strength that are only able to be handled by the Lord our God.

Elisha, the prophet. He is called here the man of God. What's a prophet in the Old Testament? Do you know what a prophet is in the Old Testament? It's a person through whom God speaks to his people.

A man or a woman. They didn't have this in their pocket on the phone. They didn't carry this with them or have it on their shelf at home. Maybe they had some scrolls in the temple. But mostly for most people it was just a oral tradition, a word of mouth of what is known so far, of the nature and the character and the desire and the will of God for his people.

So God would raise up prophets, men and women through whom he would speak his desire and speak his will to a people in a time and a place and a situation. Elisha is, is one of these prophets. He's called a man of God. And he speaks not his own words, but he speaks the unmistakable words of God. A prophet never speaks on his own behalf.

I've got an idea. This is what should be done. But he speaks only that which God speaks through him. And so he calls out, he writes a message and has it sent to the king and says, send Naaman to me. Because what a king cannot do, our God by his word can do.

So the great commander of this foreign army who has conquered these people comes to Elisha's house. But Elisha doesn't come to the door. He sends a servant to the door. And the servant gives a message and says, okay, Naaman, seven times I want you to dip into this river. Seven times dip into it, and then you will be healed.

And from one perspective, I think about this and I go, why didn't Elijah just come to the door? And this is what Naaman is thinking. He's going, what on earth. What an injustice. What disrespectful act.

In fact, he says, Naaman was furious and he went away. He walked away from the house and said, forget it. Behold, I thought, he will surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God. And he'd wave his hands all over the place and cure my leprosy. From one perspective, why didn't Elisha come to the door?

But from another perspective, Elisha didn't want Naaman's faith to be in Elisha make sense. So he sent a word so that Naaman's faith, as it grew, wouldn't be in the giver of the Word. It would be, it would be said in the word of the Lord himself. And Naaman, he's not happy. He says, forget this.

He starts to leave. And it's funny because his servants go, father, Master Naaman, if this guy had said, climb a mountain or jump over your horse, don't you think you would have tried to do anything? Why are you so upset about just going and taking a bath in the river? He said to do it. Why don't you just give it a shot?

And so he did. Naaman did, according to the word of, of the man of God. And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child. And he was made clean. I want to give you three quick thoughts on what it means to be open to God when there are things in your life that you just can't solve.

Three thoughts. The first is this. You have to discard your assumptions. The Bible says that Naaman, Naaman's servant, said, why don't you just go ahead and do the thing? And he's got to go and dip in the Jordan river seven times.

Naaman's response when he got the word was, I thought it would work like this. I think so many of us are missing the work that God wants to do in our life because we're consumed with the thing that we think is going to be done in our life. I thought it would be done like this. This is how I want the thing to be done in our life. Ephesians 3:20 says, God is able to do a man immeasurably more than all we ask or think.

But I thought God would do this in my life. I thought this was the story and how things would work. But God is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or think. And some of us are missing what God wants to do in our life because of our assumptions about what God will do or what we want God to do in our life. We look at the things, the problems, the troubles of our life.

God, I just want you to pursue, restore this marriage in this way. And I want you to take this child that is so difficult. It just keeps going in these directions that are destroying them and destroying our relationship. But you got to fix it like this. And God, I want you to give me back the thing that I lost.

And this is how it must be done. Because I thought or I think or I want. And these are. Look, I know these are hard and heavy things. These are things.

By no means do I mean to make light of these things in our life and the gravity of them. But if we could only see as God sees, and if we could only know what God knows, and if we could only believe what God may do, if we would open ourselves to God's working in our life to experience his good intention in our lives. Think about this. If Naaman had not gone to Elisha's house, if he hadn't listened to the message, go to Naaman's house. Think about this.

If his servant, this little slave girl, has been ripped from her home and she's being forced to be a slave in his home, if she in her compassion didn't say, I wish he could go to the prophet and be cured, right? And if Naaman hadn't discarded his assumptions about what he thought Elisha would do, he'd wave his hands over me and say a prayer and I'd be healed. If he didn't throw that aside, he wasn't willing to do what God's word had called him to do. He just would have turned and gone back home with his body covered in leprosy. God will surprise you.

God can bring and he will bring redemption in the broken places and the hurting places in your life. But oftentimes it won't come in the way that you expected. He can do immeasurably more than all the you ask and all that you may seek. You got to discard your assumptions. Second thought, a lot of times, to be open to God and experience his healing hand, you got to do the uncomfortable look at verse 12.

Are not Abana and Far par the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters in Israel? Could I not wash in them and be made clean? And so he turned away in a rage. My swimming pool pump broke a month ago and I've been waiting on parts. And with these storms it has been like a swamp.

The Jordan river doesn't look like the waters in Cozumel. It looks like my swimming pool. It is not clear and not clean looking. It is awkward, uncomfortable. For Naaman to be told, go, get down in the Jordan River.

This isn't swimming in the ocean. This is an uncomfortable command. And I give you four reasons why he shouldn't do it. He's highly respected. This seems like an undignified thing.

He's the captain of the army. He's not used to taking orders. He is being told to do this by someone who is his enemy and who he looks down upon. He's being Told to do this uncompromising thing, and he is surrounded by all of his servants. There's four reasons he should not do the uncomfortable thing.

And yet Naaman was standing in front of awkward and uncomfortable. He's very vulnerable, yet he was open. And so God did the unexplainable. He had a lot of reasons to not do it. And here's the thing.

He was told to dip not one time, but seven times. I think this is pretty amazing because for me, sometimes I will work up the courage to do one thing. If I feel God leading me, I'll one time dip in, or three times dip in. And every time I dip, I'm going to be looking at my arms, I'm going to be looking at my skin saying, is it looking better yet? First time in, out I go.

Does it look like it's faded? Maybe I'll try a second time. By the fourth time, if I haven't seen a clearing of my skin, I'm losing faith. I think a lot of us are like this. We feel God calling or prompting or leading in a direction, and we're willing to take a step or two in that direction.

But if we don't see it working, if we don't see the results that we're expecting in our timing, we will give up and we will miss out. And in this story and in this situation, it wasn't until there was complete obedience, until a miracle was experienced. How many of you have done that? You've begun in a direction that God is calling, but you stopped short because it didn't seem like it was working. It was awkward, it was uncomfortable.

And what, What a strange way that God worked a miracle here. You know, he blew away any expectation or any assumption that Naaman might have had. He called him to do something very uncomfortable and very. Just awkward. Go and take a bath, go dip in the water seven times.

And yet the whole way through, God was present and God was working and his hand was on Naaman and he was working for his good. Sometimes when we get to situations in life when we're throwing up our hands and we're going, I don't know.

We have to press through our assumptions and set them aside. We got to press through the feelings of, I don't know what this is like. I don't know what it's going to do. It doesn't seem right. It feels awkward.

I don't want to do that. If God sends us there to begin to experience the healing hand of God, can I tell you this? The fear of man and what people will think of us when we do an uncomfortable thing. The fear of the unknown and the fear of just giving up and trusting God, giving up my control and trusting God will keep us bound.

But on the other side of uncomfortable, if God has sent you through it, that's where healing lies. If God has sent you there. One last thought.

To be open to God's healing, to be open to his blessing, to be open to his comfort and his mercy in your life. You gotta discard assumptions. You gotta do uncomfortable things that requires of us. Maybe the most difficult thing that we ever do in this life is to really accept our brokenness. Remember the Beatitudes we studied earlier this year?

It's a poverty and spirit thing. It's the I have nothing without God. It's coming to that place of saying, God, I got nothing, and crying out for help, saying, I fall on your mercy, God. There is no solution and no answer in my life or among men that will bring restoration and healing and good to my life. You alone are God, and I fall upon your mercy and your grace.

And like Thessalonians says, then we begin to grieve in the brokenness of this world. Not like those who have no hope, but we grieve as those who have hope. Because we have a Savior who left the heavens and came to earth and gave his life so that we could have real life. And he promises that just as he rose from the grave, he defeated the grave. He brings all who are in him restoration in him.

And he wipes away every tear and every pain and every depression and every anxiety and every disappointment in this world is no more. And that's the bigger part of your life.

So we grieve as those who have hope. And that means we have to be empty. We have to empty ourselves so that he can fill us up with his hope. What Naaman did was physical, but it is metaphorically what all of our hearts have have to do. And that is to empty ourselves of trusting in ourselves, of our pride, of our dependency upon ourselves, of our dependency on others.

We have to humble ourselves. And for Naaman, finally getting in that river was letting go of everything else. You see that? He's letting go of his reputation and his pride and his power and his position. He's letting go of everything.

It was, okay, I surrender. And he's not surrendering to Elisha. He's never met Elisha. Elisha didn't come to the door. He's never seen the man with his.

With his eyes. He's not emptying himself to Elisha, he's emptying himself to the word of the Lord. And he steps into the river and the Lord fills him up. He brings healing. When he returned healed, he returned to the man of God with all of his company, his servants.

And when he came, he stood before Elisha and he said, behold, now I know there is no God in all the earth except here, the God of Israel. Naaman discarded his assumptions. He did the uncomfortable. He emptied himself and he experienced God. He experienced the power of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God, the healing hand of God.

He found that there is one God on the earth. He is real and he is with us, that he is for us. And he is good. And healing is in his hands now. Naaman is new to this.

He's new to experiencing God. He's new to the grace of God. He's new to the mercy of God. He's new to the comfort of God. And like all of us who have come to know Christ, there's a moment when you first turn to Christ and experience the reality and the truth of his mercy and grace.

There's a lot for us still to learn. We're kind of young and dumb in that moment. Naaman's a little young and dumb spiritually in this moment. So he goes back to Elisha and he tries to reward Elisha for the healing he has received. And Elisha won't receive it.

One if he had received it, it might have robbed God of some glory. Maybe Elisha would have taken some of that glory for himself. Or maybe Naaman would have taken that glory because he had something to give in order to get a healing. May have left an impression upon Naaman. That's how the world works.

That's how God works. That God does something but you got to pay God back. Which would not be the gospel, right? That would be anti gospel. It's not something that we can earn.

It's a free gift of God. His grace and his mercy is a gift. He gives it as he chooses to give it. In the New Testament, the Gospel tells us that all who are in Christ Jesus, all who give up everything and fall upon Christ, receive the gift of life and life abundant in Jesus. It's not something you can earn or learn, it's something that that is given.

And so if Elisha had received that gift, he would have given an anti gospel message. And so Elisha says, as the Lord lives before whom I stand, I will take nothing from you. And so Naaman, then all he wants is to take Home some dirt. I love this part of the story. He wants to take home a bunch of dirt because guess where Naaman goes from here?

He goes back home to Syria. He goes back to being captain of the army who likes to destroy Israel. He goes back to a people who are broken in their beliefs, broken in their worship, broken, and their habits and their practices. They're broken in every way. He's going back to a broken society, to a broken role.

He even says to Elisha, I'm going to have to go back to the temple of worship of false gods because of my position in society. The king is going to look upon me to be there by him when he's worshipping false gods. But I want you to know I have been so changed by the one true God that when I go, I will no longer offer burnt offerings, nor will I sacrifice to other gods. My whole life is bound up in the Lord. I will worship him alone.

I gotta go back into brokenness, but I'm not going back the same. I'm going back changed and it will be a mess. I'm going back to a mess. I'm going back to chaos. I'm going back to fear.

Figure out how to live as a person who worships God and yet deals with brokenness every day. This is what I want so badly for my life and this is what I want so badly for your life. That until the day that Jesus returns for us or brings us home, that in the midst of the many troubles of this life that you would have an experience with God, you have a relationship with him that changes the way you see things and changes the way you feel about things. So that as you go back into brokenness, you will have experienced him in such a way that he will hold you fast.

He will hold you fast through it all. The answer to everything and all that you have to know. I pray this is your testimony.

I once was lost, but now I'm found.

I once was full of anxiety, but God has given me his peace.

I got Paul in the New Testament. I once was a person was hurting people all the time. But now I love people and have compassion for them. I once was about to fall apart. Everything was taken from me, but I'm now being restored, right?

I once was bound, now I'm being set free.

That life comes from Jesus. He says I am the way, the truth and the life. And no one comes to the Father, the One who healed Naaman, except through me.

I pray that you will know him and experience him in such a way all of the losses and all of the hurts and all of the pains, all the things that we can't solve in this life. Life that you will receive life from the one who gave his life so that you could have real life. Not one that offers no peace, not one that offers no. No restoration, not one that offers no hope in the midst of the trials of life, Jesus said, there are many troubles in this world. Take courage.

I have overcome the world. Believe in me. Trust in me. My life I give to you.

I don't know what you're holding today. I don't know what your question of why is. I don't know what problems you've had that you've either given up on because you go, there's no solution to this, or you're just at a moment where you're at the bottom. Maybe you're at the bottom and you're scraping and you're going. I don't know.

Whatever you're holding this morning, if you just bow your heads, whatever you're holding this morning, I pray this over you.

May the God of Elisha, May the God who healed Naaman.

May the God who sent his son, his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. May the God of Caden Clay, who resurrected Caden with Jesus.

May that God of all mercies and all comfort speak to you now.

God, the Holy Spirit, you are present with us. The truth.

Would you help us to have open eyes and open ears and open hearts to hear what you have for us?

The hardest part of our living is letting go. It seems so. Would you help us to let go that our hands would be empty to receive from you? Would you help us to conceive the love the father has is greater than we could imagine? Matthew 7.

If an earthly father gives his son bread when he's hungry and not a rock, how much more our heavenly father has for all of his children? God, would you help us to believe that this morning and help us to receive from you that which you have prepared for us.

We pray for our friends who are hurting right now. Across this room, those who are at home. In particular this morning for the Clay family, for Kennedy, for Heather and for Billy.

Holy Spirit, would you hold them in Jesus name, Amen.