'And Elisha sent a messenger unto Naaman, saying, Go and wash in Jordan
seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be
clean. 11. But Naaman was wroth, and went away.'--2 KINGS v. 10,11.
These two figures are significant of much beyond themselves. Elisha the
prophet is the bearer of a divine cure. Naaman, the great Syrian noble,
is stricken with the disease that throughout the Old Testament is
treated as a parable of sin and death. He was the commander-in-chief of
the army of Damascus, high in favour at Ben-hadad's court; his
reputation and renown were on every tongue, _but_ he was a leper. There
is a 'but' in every fortune, as there is a 'but' in every character.
So he comes to the prophet's humble home in Samaria, and we find him
waiting, a suppliant at the gate, with his cavalcade of attendants, and
a present worth many thousands of pounds in our English money.
How does the prophet receive his distinguished visitor? In all the rest
of his actions we find Elisha gentle, accessible, forgetful of his
dignity. Here his conduct would be discourteous if there were not a
reason for it. He is reserved, unsympathetic, keeps the great man at
the staff-end, will not even come out to receive him as common courtesy
might have suggested; sends him a curt message of direction, with not a
word more than was necessary.
And then, naturally enough, the hot soldier begins to explode. His
pride is touched; he has not been received with due deference. If the
prophet would have come out and chanted incantations over him, and made
mystical motions of his hands above the shining patches of his leprous
skin, he could have believed in the cure. But there was nothing in the
injunction given for his superstition to lay hold of. His patriotic
susceptibilities are roused. If he is to be cleansed by bathing, are
not the crystal streams of his own city, the glory of Damascus, better
than the turbid and muddy Jordan that belongs to Israel? So he flounced
away, and would have sacrificed his hope of cure to his passion if his
servants had not brought him to common-sense by their cool
remonstrance. He would have done any great thing which he had been set
to do; he had already done a great thing in taking the long journey,
and being ready to expend all that vast amount of treasure, and so
surely there need be no difficulty in his complying, were it only as an
experiment, with the very simple and easy terms which the prophet had
enjoined.
Now, all these points may be so put as to suggest for us
characteristics of that gospel which is God's cure for our leprosy. And
the whole story shows us as in a glass what human nature would like the
gospel to be, and how we sick men quarrel with our physic, and stumble
at those very characteristics of the gospel which are its main glory
and the secret of its power. My only purpose in this sermon is to bring
out two or three of these as lying on the surface of the story before
us.