A God of No Bounds
3/2/26 Bible Thought (2 Kings 5)
Main Idea: There is but one true and living God, and His rule knows no bounds.
A Look at the Text:
In today’s chapter, we see again that Elisha is one of the key figures. Yet, we are first introduced to a Syrian man—Naaman. Naaman was a successful military commander to whom Yahweh had given victory (2 Kings 5:1).
However, while a great fighter and a man of valor, Naaman was plagued with a skin disease that kept him an outsider. To this, his servant encouraged him to go visit the prophet in Samaria (Israel’s capital city).
While the exact circumstances can be hard to deduce. It seems that there was a bit of an “uneasy truce” [1] between Israel and Syria. Apparently, Israel was the lesser of the two at the time. For when this Syrian commander showed up on the king of Israel’s doorstep, demanding a miracle, the king of Israel tore his clothes. Certainly, he was well aware of the fact that he could do nothing to help this man, no matter how much money Naaman had brought.
It was at this moment that Yahweh’s prophet came into the story. Elisha had heard of both the king’s problem and the commander’s disease. So he offered a solution to Naaman. A sevenfold washing in the Jordan River would heal him right up.
While Naaman was initially insulted, he ended up humbling himself in faith, and God healed him of his incurable disease.
As a result, this foreigner cried out, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel” (1 Kings 5:15a). To prove his newfound faith, he took two loads of earth from God’s Promised Land back to Syria, possibly to construct an altar for Yahweh with His own clay. [2]
Bringing it Home:
The story of Naaman’s healing is once again a display of God’s power. However, even more, it is a display of God’s sovereign rule. Naaman recognized that Rimmon, his former god, was a phony. Truly, Yahweh was the living God who ruled heaven and earth.
Let us rest assured today that this God is still ruling and reigning over His creation and, truth be told, all dirt is His dirt.
Naaman thought that the actual earth from the land of Israel would have some special qualities as Yahweh’s possession. While it is certainly true that Israel was chosen by God, that does not exclude the rest of the earth from His ownership.
As the psalmist once cried out in praise:
In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. 5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land (Ps. 95:4-5).
Challenge:
How does seeing the universality of God’s rule encourage me to rest in the hope that He can do all things and that He has no geographical boundaries to respect?
[1] Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 653.
[2] John H Walton, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary (Old Testament): 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 135.