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"Now what's wrong with Naaman? Naaman was a commander-in-chief of a section known as Aram. He was a soldier. He was a... He was a big-time soldier. He commanded a set of troops that were always raiding Israel. They would come across the border and they would fight and they would terrorize and raid Israel and they would take prisoners and haul the prisoners back to Syria. He was a Gentile. He was a Gentile and worse than that, he was a leper, he had leprosy, he was unclean, he was despicable on every count. On one of his raids he took captive, this is in the stories in 2 Kings 5, first fourteen verses, you can read it yourself, he took back this girl, one of his captives and she became a servant in his house to help his wife. She had a great attitude, she knew about his leprosy and she said to him, "You need to go find the man of God, Elisha, because God can heal you." And you know what happened? He began to believe in the power of the God of Israel and so eventually through some situations, I won't go into all of it, he wound up meeting Elisha. Here is an enemy, a Gentile, somebody who has sacked and attacked and killed and plundered Israel and he's a leper. This is the outcast of all outcasts. And Elisha says to him, "The God of Israel is willing to heal you. All you have to do is go over to the river and go down seven times." One preacher titled a sermon on this, "Seven ducks in a dirty pond." That's essentially...that's essentially what he told him to do. Go over there in this dirty river and just duck yourself seven times. And he said..."I'll..." he was furious, he was a man of honor and a man of stature and a man of dignity and a man of nobility and he isn't going to humble himself in some kind of humiliating deal and go dump himself down seven times in some dirty river. He even says, "We have clean rivers in my area, I'm not going in your dirty river."

So he goes back and his servant says, "Well, better a dirty river and a clean Naaman, huh?" And he starts to think about it and he had second thoughts. And he realizes his desperation and he realizes there's no relief and there's no cure and there's no healing and there's nothing except the God of Israel. Is the man of God really the man of God? Is God really truly God? Is this really His prophet? How will I ever know that? How am I going to know that that's true unless I do what He says? I have to take my desperation, my destitution, my disease, I have to go over there. I have to do what the man tells me to do. If I do what the man tells me to do, then I'll know whether he's the man of God, right?

So he goes over there and he does his seven ducks in the dirty river and guess what? Clean! Oh boy, you're sitting in the synagogue, you're saying, "This is not going well. So we are worse than a Gentile widow from Jezebel's hometown. We are worse than a Syrian Gentile leper. This is intolerable."

In verse 28, "All in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things." Let me tell you something, there's nothing worse than spiritual pride, is there? You know, the Lord had said, "You know, I come to save, this is it. But I can only save the poor, and the prisoners, and the blind, and the oppressed. That's all I can save and it doesn't matter whether they are a Gentile woman or whether they are a Syrian leper, it doesn't matter who it is, it just matters that they see their bankruptcy, their destitution, and they come to Me like the man who said, 'Lord, I believe, but could You help my unbelief?' And they may not know everything there is to know and their faith may not be full, but if they'll just come in their desperation and say, 'I don't have a choice, here's all I have and see what I can do with it.' Then they'll know that I'm the Messiah, right?"

You didn't know either and neither did I until I gave Him my life. Then I knew. And you could have paraded before me an infinite number of miracles. They wouldn't have proved anything. You will never know whether Jesus can save your soul from hell, give you new life, recreate your soul, plant His Holy Spirit there, forgive your sin and send you to heaven until you give your life to Him.

All they could think about was that they were below Gentiles. They didn't even want these stories to be rehearsed again, they didn't like these stories. And they're so angry with Him because He's insistent on the fact that unless they humble themselves like a Syrian leper, unless they see themselves as no better than a Syrian leper, no better than a pagan Gentile woman, unless they see themselves as no better than outcasts, they aren't going to get saved. And that is absolutely intolerable to them, to go to someone who is a life-long Jew, a life-long attender of the synagogue, a serious devout Jew and say, "You're no better off than a pagan, you're no better off than an outcast Gentile leper," is unthinkable because they're so committed to the self-righteousness that's a part of a works system.

And so, it says in verse 29, "They rose up." All of a sudden bedlam broke loose in the crowded synagogue. They cast Him out of the city. They grabbed Him and in mob violence like a lynch mob, they roared out of the city, led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built. Nazareth sits on a hill, many hills on the hill but it's up a slope. We don't know what brow of it. They found a place, a brow of a hill in which the city had been built in order to throw Him down the cliff. Deuteronomy 13 said that if you have a false prophet, you can do that, kill him. They were so entrenched in their self-righteousness, so unwilling to see their sin that when Jesus, the Messiah they had waited for for so long, the Savior of the world came, they tried to kill Him because He threatened their self-righteousness. There's only one reason why people who know the truth of Jesus don't believe. It is because they do not see themselves as the poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed. You see that? Because you can't be saved if you don't. God offers nothing to people who are content with their own condition, except judgment.

from John MacArthur's sermon.