"Finding Freedom"

SERMON TITLE:   “Finding Freedom”
SERMON TEXT:    2 Kings 5:1-14
PREACHER:           Rev. Kim James
OCCASION:           July 7, 2019, at First UMC
 
 
INTRODUCTION
 
                Since this is still the Fourth of July weekend, I thought it would be good for us to have an Independence Day kind of sermon.  So, in preparation for today, I did a survey of scriptures that talk about freedom.  For example, we could have focused on the Exodus, when God used Moses to lead the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt.  Or we could have gone to the writings of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament.  There’s a passage in Paul’s Letter to the Romans in which he wrote about their relationship with the governing authorities.  In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul turned from politics to personal life and wrote that single persons might choose not to get married so they could stay free from obligations to a spouse.  And, in his Letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul wrote that those who had not succumbed to circumcision should value their freedom in Christ—a freedom from the burden of Jewish law and any other kind of slavery that might entangle them.
                Maybe some other Fourth of July weekend we can focus on those scriptures.  Today, instead, I decided on 2 Kings, chapter 5.  There we see how Naaman, the commander of Aram’s army, went about finding freedom from his leprosy.  We don’t all have health problems, but most of us do have troubles that bind us up in one way or another.  So let’s take a look at Naaman’s story and see what pointers it will give us for finding freedom.

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