The Works of God

And even talking about healing could get Jesus into enough trouble that people wanted to kill him!

(Jesus said,) “And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff.  But passing through their midst, he went away.  Luke 4:27-30

The full account of Naaman’s cleansing can be found in 2 Kings 5.  It is one of my favorite stories in the Bible, and I come back to it often.

I love 2 Kings 5 because I was Naaman (and you probably were as well) – proud, violent, quick to take offense, idol worshipper, not a natural member of the people of Israel.  Yet God, in his kindness, freely gave this unrighteous man a gift.  And that resulted in this glorious statement from Naaman’s lips:

Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel (2 Kings 5:15).

And that is what made them so angry at Jesus, this acknowledgment that even people like us could be freely cleansed by God.

To God be the glory!