2 Kings 22:8-10 - Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.”  He gave it to Shaphan, who read it.  Then Shaphan the secretary went to the king and reported to him: “Your officials have paid out the money that was in the temple of the Lord and have entrusted it to the workers and supervisors at the temple.”  Then Shaphan the secretary informed the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.”  And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king.

Josiah was one of the few righteous kings in the Old Testament.  He ruled in Jerusalem over the Kingdom of Judah new the end of the Old Testament era.  He followed two generations of wicked kings and spiritual backsliding.  Josiah was different – in fact, he is the only person that the Bible describes as turning to God with “all his heart, all his soul, and all his strength” (verse 25), which Jesus later told us all to do (Matthew 22:37).   continue

Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said to himself, “My master was too easy on Naaman, this Aramean, by not accepting from him what he brought.  As surely as the LORD lives, I will run after him and get something from him.”  - 2 Kings 5:20 

Naaman was a pagan Gentile general, who heard about the Prophet Elisha in Israel and went to him seeking a healing.  We have a separate lesson on Naaman’s healing, and the reason he needed to wash seven times in the Jordan River.  This lesson focuses on Elisha’s servant, Gehazi. continue

2 Kings 5:10-12 -”Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”   But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.  Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.” 

“Wash yourself seven times.”  This story begins with a man who was not an Israelite. He was a Syrian, of a high position in his country. He was a general in the army of Syria, a country that Israel feared at the time.  Even so, this man was a leper. continue