The Faithful Little Slave Girl

S: 2 Kings 5:1-3, 14-19

Now Naaman, captain of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him Yahweh had given victory to Syria; he was also a mighty man of valour, but he was a leper. ² The Syrians had gone out in bands, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little girl, and she waited on Naaman’s wife. ³ She said to her mistress, “I wish that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! Then he would heal him of his leprosy.”

…

¹⁴ Then went he down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. ¹⁵ He returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came, and stood before him; and he said, “See now, I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel. Now therefore, please take a gift from your servant.”

¹⁶ But he said, “As Yahweh lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none.”

He urged him to take it; but he refused. ¹⁷ Naaman said, “If not, then, please let two mules’ load of earth be given to your servant; for your servant will from now on offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice to other gods, but to Yahweh. ¹⁸ In this thing may Yahweh pardon your servant: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leans on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon. When I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, may Yahweh pardon your servant in this thing.”

¹⁹ He said to him, “Go in peace.”

So he departed from him a little way.

O: This is one of my favourite stories in the Bible.

Imagine being a little girl, growing up peacefully with parents who taught you to worship Yahweh, the one true God. They taught you to pray, to trust Him, and to know that He is faithful.

Then disaster strikes.

Syrian raiders invade. Your family is torn apart. Your parents are killed, and you are carried away as a slave into a foreign land.

And not just to any household—you are given to serve in the house of Naaman, commander of the army that may have destroyed your home.

You weep. You grieve. You feel abandoned.

But then you remember Yahweh.

You remember what your parents taught you: that even in calamity, Yahweh has not forsaken you. He still loves you. He still cares for you.

So in a strange land, you remain faithful. You learn the Syrian language. You learn the hard life of a servant. And through it all, you keep praying.

Over time, the household you serve is no longer made up only of strangers. You come to know them.

But they do not know Yahweh.

They worship Rimmon, the god of storm and war—powerful, feared, a god associated with thunder and victory in battle.

Then one day you learn that Naaman, your master, suffers from a terrible disease.

And an extraordinary thought rises in your heart:

The God of Israel can heal him.

His prophet Elisha can be the instrument of that healing.

And so, instead of bitterness, you choose compassion.

Instead of silence, you bear witness.

You tell your mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet in Samaria…”

And wonder of wonders—Naaman listens.

He goes to Israel.

He meets the prophet.

He washes in the Jordan.

And he returns changed.

Not only healed in physically—but healed spiritually.

The conqueror comes home worshiping Yahweh.

The warrior bows before the God of Israel.

And all because a little slave girl, faithful in suffering, spoke one word of hope.

What an awesome epic movie this would make! So I guided AI to make the following movie poster 😁

Naaman was powerful, honoured, and victorious, yet was helpless before leprosy. The little Israelite slave girl was powerless, unnamed, and captive, yet she is the one who speaks the true word that sets healing in motion. God uses the weak to reach the strong, and His mercy extends even to Israel’s enemy.

A: God doesn’t desire the wicked to perish, but that they’d repent and be saved. (Ezekiel 18:23) We are ambassadors for Christ, and we are to be salt and light to the world, sharing His love and salvation with everyone – including those we think of as enemies. (2 Corinthians 5, Matthew 5, Matthew 28, John 13.)

Let the little faithful little slave girl inspire us to go and do likewise!

P: Father, thank You for Your mercy to sinners and enemies through Jesus Christ. Keep me from bitterness, fear, and silence. Make me faithful like this little servant girl, ready to speak one true word at the right time. Use even my weakness to point others to Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Great Jumpin' Jehoshaphat

S: 1 Kings 22:2-5  In the third year, Jehoshaphat the king of Judah came down to the king of Israel. The king of Israel said to his servants, “You know that Ramoth Gilead is ours, and we do nothing, and don’t take it out of the hand of the king of Syria?” He said to Jehoshaphat, “Will you go with me to battle to Ramoth Gilead?”

Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, “I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses.” Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, “Please inquire first for Yahweh’s word.”

O: Jehoshaphat was a follower of Yahweh, but he allied himself with Ahab, who persecuted the prophets of Yahweh. It’s not clear from the text why he did that. Perhaps he was afraid of invaders and wanted allies.

I also find it interesting that he recognized that Ahab’s prophets did not speak for Yahweh, and asked for a real prophet of Yahweh, and they called Micaiah, who prophesied that they would lose. Yet Ahab persisted, and Jehoshaphat went with him, even as much as to wear royal robes while Ahab dressed ordinarily so that the Syrians would attack him instead of Ahab. But God’s word still prevailed, and Ahab was killed. God spared Jehoshaphat, but rebuked him in 2 Chronicles 19:2-3 “Should you help the wicked, and love those who hate Yahweh? Because of this, wrath is on you from before Yahweh.” But it also affirmed, “Nevertheless there are good things found in you, in that you have put away the Asheroth out of the land, and have set your heart to seek God.”

In the end, he let Ahab’s daughter Athaliah marry his son Jehoram, and Jehoram ended up following in Ahab’s ways. Finally, when Jehu brought God’s judgment on the house of Ahab, Jehoram’s son Ahaziah was also killed because he happened to go visit his uncle, King Joram of Israel, and Athaliah usurped the throne of David, and tried to kill all the descendants of David, but God rescued one, Joash, and the Athaliah was executed and the throne of David restored.

Jehoshaphat had enough spiritual discernment to distrust Ahab’s prophets and ask for a true prophet of Yahweh. Yet after hearing Micaiah’s clear warning, he still went into battle with Ahab. This shows that spiritual discernment without obedient separation from evil is incomplete. He could identify falsehood, but he did not fully act on the truth he received. God therefore both spared him and rebuked him. His compromise did not end with one battle; it extended into family alliance with Ahab’s house, and that compromise later wounded the Davidic kingdom through Athaliah.

A: “Do not be unequally yoked” (2 Corinthians 6:14) is usually invoked nowadays in the context of marriage, but it applies not only to marriage but also to serious partnerships that bind us to people who oppose God, like what happened between Jehoshaphat and the house of Ahab.

Not every cooperation with unbelievers is wrong, but alliances become sinful when they require shared moral direction, compromise of obedience, or practical support for wickedness. Jehoshaphat shows that it is possible to love God sincerely and still fail in boundary-setting. True discernment is not only recognizing the word of God, but ordering our loyalties and actions by it, even under pressure.

Discernment is not just recognizing truth — it is acting consistently with it under pressure.

P: Father, help me to be discerning when having to partner with a nonbeliever; when we could legitimately partner with them do to something good, and when it’ll cause us to compromise with evil. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Naboth the martyr

S: 1 Kings 21

O: When we list martyrs, we tend not to think of Naboth. In fact, when many of us, lacking the original context, may not even realise Naboth was a martyr. We might think, “Ah, he was a man who didn’t want to sell his land to King Ahab, and so Queen Jezebel had him framed and executed.”

But Naboth refused not because he was merely attached to his land, but because he was obeying the Law of Moses: Leviticus 25:23 says, “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and live as foreigners with me.”

He might well have allowed King Ahab to lease the land – that was permitted under the Law of Moses – but then it would revert to his family in the Year of Jubilee. But Ahab didn’t ask for that – he wanted to buy the land in perpetuity.

So, Naboth was killed because he obeyed Yahweh.

A: Obeying God can carry a real cost. He does not always spare His people from death in this world. Naboth was killed for obeying Yahweh. In the same way, Christians in our own time have been killed for belonging to Christ, such as the 21 Egyptian Christians, along with one Christian from Ghana, whom Daesh executed publicly on video on a beach near Sirte in Libya in 2015. They called on Jesus even as Daesh filmed them being executed. They became an incredible testimony to the world in their martyrdom, so Daesh inadvertently ended up spreading the Gospel!

As Jesus said in Matthew 10: 28, “Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”

Most of us are not called to martyrdom. But this Good Friday, as we remember Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, let us resolve that we will always stand for Christ and follow Yahweh in both small and big ways.

P: Father, help me to follow you in the little things as well as the big things. Help me to flee temptation and run to you. Strengthen me to obey you whatever the cost. In Jesus’ name, amen.