In Naaman we get man at his best without God. He must have been the world’s envy, the great favorite of the day. He was made much of by everyone, by the king himself, and all the nation. The Lord, in endowments and providence, had greatly blessed him. But “he was a leper.” There was a stain on all his glory which no hand but God’s could remove. Let the world flatter him as it might, it was a constant witness that all was not right.
And such is man. Let him have every advantage in circumstances, or set off by embellishments and attractions, there is a witness against him still. He carries it in himself; he is conscious of it, though he may be silent about it.
In the little captive, whom we next see, we get just the opposite of Naaman. All was against her in circumstances. She had been dragged from friends and home, and was a bond-servant in a stranger’s land: but she carried a secret, the very opposite of Naaman’s secret. She had the witness of God for her, as he had His witness against him. She knew the healing, while he felt the sore. This was a mighty difference–all the difference, if God is considered. To have Him for and not against us, is surely the grand secret after all.
So it is with every true Israelite like her. In the knowledge of the same secret, in the knowledge of the healing of God, they can say, “If God be for me, who can be against me!” She reminds one of Paul before Festus and Agrippa. There the apostle was poor in circumstances, but rich in God, and, like this dear young captive, desired all good for those who had bound him.
These are valuable lessons in this parable. But we have others. The king of Syria is next introduced; and he represents man in his loftiness of thought and self-esteem, even in religion. He judges that for the divine healing of his favorite captain, his own resources and great influence must be used. Who but the king was the language of his heart. He therefore prepares his silver, his gold, and his raiment, and writes a letter with his own hand on this business to the king of Israel–a king to a king. For nothing less than such patronage can give fair promise.
All this is man’s thoughts about God’s ways. But there is nothing that the king of Syria does that is not simply “labor lost.” His own personal patronage and gifts, and the countenance he sought of a brother king, all is vanity. Is it not always the thought of the natural man that the “gift of God” has in some way to be purchased? If not exactly “purchased with money,” as Simon Magus thought, yet by some compensation on our part by which God may be induced to bestow the gift. The king of Israel, however, who had the advantage of God’s revelation in his country, refuses to act his part, in this purpose of the king of Syria.
There is one higher than the king in all this, though the Syrian knows nothing of him. Elisha had, of course, passed the notice of this great man of the earth. But Elisha, who is now also, in turn, introduced to us, is Naaman’s only hope in the day of his leprosy. And Elisha, conscious that the power of God was with him, makes no stir, or difficulty, as the king had done. He has not, like One afterwards, the authority of his own word to cleanse away the stain, but he is in the secret of God’s ordained remedy, and can, with authority, preach that to the leper.
Here we notice how Jesus shines above all. When the leper comes to Him, it is not as with the king, “Am I God, that I should heal a man of his leprosy?” nor as with the prophet, “Go wash in Jordan, and be clean.” No; He reveals Himself as having the power of God. “I will; be thou clean.” Elisha was but a preacher to Naaman; Jesus was the cleansing, the healing God. Elisha did not venture to touch the leper. This would have defiled him. But Jesus “put forth His hand and touched him;” for Jesus could consume and not contract the defilement.
Now watch the poor convicted leper passing through his cleansing. At first, nature is strong in Naaman. He resents the remedy which grace had provided–a remedy most simple, but most humbling. So simple that there was no mistaking it, and no difficulty in applying it; saving, indeed, the difficulty which man’s pride and previous thoughts had opposed to it. And these give battle at once. Grace, however, can plead with such a slow reluctant heart. Grace can use a ministry, as well as open a fountain, for sinners. And that ministry, like the remedy, is simple and artless.
Naaman’s servants, in their way, met the risings of nature in their master, and their ministry is blest; the proffered fountain is tried, its virtues are proved, and the flesh that was leprous became like that of a little child. It is more than restoration. It is resurrection. He dies and lives again, he is buried and rises again, and comes forth, not merely as a healed, but a new creature.
And what is the fruit of this new condition in which he finds himself? Here we trace the parable still, and get the principle of God’s way still illustrated.
1. He stands before Elisha with all his company. It is not now the proud, but the humble, Naaman. Sweet fruit this of the new man that Naaman had become! He had been led to take the way of humility to be washed; he now takes the place of humility before the God of Israel, because he is washed.
2. He makes a goodly confession to the only God. He takes Him for his God: he had learned Him through the health and salvation He had given him. And this is the way that the new creature ever learns Him–the only way He can be learned, or known, in this world.
3. He presses his gifts, whatever he had, on the prophet–not now, as the king his master thought, to purchase the healing, but because of the healing. He had been forgiven, and therefore he loved. He was relieved and happy, and therefore he could be generous.
4. He will henceforth know no other God–he seeks materials to raise Him an altar. God must be his God, even in the midst of infidel Syria, where he is returning. Him and Him only will he worship. For this “mule’s burden of earth” was to bear witness that a citizen of that country belonged to the God of Israel–like Ruth the Moabitess, trusting under His wings.
5. He gets a renewed conscience, sensitive of the least, even apparent, departure from the God who had blessed him. He dreads the appearance of evil. He would not have it thought that any attendance of his on his master was recurring to the old principles of the house of Rimmon. Such he had left forever, through God’s grace, and would now, at the very entrance of his new creation in Christ Jesus, enter a protestation against everything that might even look otherwise. Naaman feels an inconsistency to be found in the temple of Rimmon where his position is required, But God’s grace through His prophet waits on faith’s fuller development. The prophet sends him away in peace.
This narrative which occupies an important place in the ministry of Elisha, and is the scene referred to by his divine Master afterwards (Lk. 4), is one of extensive value to us. Let us, with all simplicity of heart, assure ourselves that all was written for our learning–that our God has from the beginning been allowing things to happen to others, that we might be admonished and comforted by them, through the records which His Spirit has given us of them.
But there is one other object in this scene to observe: Gehazi. The prophet (v. 26) does not challenge him on the ground of his having lied to Naaman, but on quite another form of evil in his conduct. And there is, I believe, great force in this. “Is it a time,” says Elisha, “to receive money, and to receive garments, and oliveyards and vineyards, and sheep and oxen, and men servants and maid servants?” This was an ingredient in the sin which belonged to the Spirit to notice–the lie was of common moral apprehension.
The Gentile had just been learning the grace of the God of Israel. The silver, gold and raiment had been despised by the prophet, and Naaman was bearing back all, to the utmost “shoe-latchet.” He had gone to the waters without money and without price, and was witness that the gift of God was not to be purchased.
How terrible, then, to have this testimony confounded. Well might the prophet ask, Is this a time to take the Syrian’s money? Could anything be more grievous to the Spirit? The lie was abominable–first to Naaman, and then to Elisha. But what shall we say of this sad counter-testimony, this clouding of the brightness of the grace of God? This was the offense which the Spirit noticed, and the prophet challenged. Gehazi had sold the honor of the rich and free grace of the Lord to the reproaches of an injurious world. His money must therefore perish with him. He must be put outside the borders of the camp; for he who could thus falsify the God of Israel was unfit to be of the Israel of God.
This is the serious feature in this otherwise happy picture. This part of the story, however, brings out what, on the other hand, is encouraging–that the soul of the Syrian, on his journey to his distant home, has not lost the generosity of that first hour. He alights at once on seeing the prophet’s servant behind him, and without suspicion or reserve, lays his treasures at the servant’s feet, as he had, at the first moment, offered to do at the master’s! Oh that on our journey the power of the first hour, the fervor of first love, may continue to be felt!