LAST week we were reading about “a little maid” who told her mistress where her husband could be cured of his leprosy. We will now look a little at the way in which he was cured.
Now this Syrian captain was a great man, and the king of Syria was anxious that he should be healed. And so he wrote a letter to the king of Israel, asking him to heal Naaman of his leprosy. But the little maid had not said the king could heal the Syrian captain. She had spoken of God’s prophet as the one who could heal. And the letter only made the king angry, so that he “rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man cloth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?” The King of Israel knew very well that only the power of God could cure leprosy, and he thought the Syrian King was only seeking a quarrel. But “when Elisha the man Of God had heard that the King of Israel rent his clothes,” he sent to him, saying, “Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman came to Elisha, with his horses and with his chariot, and with silver and gold and changes of raiment, and stood at the door, thinking he could pay well for the cure, and that the prophet would come out, and show-him a great deal of honor, and call upon the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the leprosy, and recover him. But in all this he was disappointed, for the prophet did not come out of his house; and, besides, his money could not have bought the cure. Such a cure could not be bought with money. Like all the gifts of God it must be free. The prophet simply sent word to him, saying, “Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.”
But Naaman was a proud man, as well as a great man, and he was very angry because the prophet did not do as he expected, and he thought the rivers of Damascus were better than the rivers of Israel. “So he turned, and went away in a rage.” His servants were wiser than he, and said to him, “If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, wash and be clean?” How very simple it was! Nothing great to do! Only to dip seven times in the water of Jordan! And when he yielded to the simple directions of the prophet, the healing was soon accomplished. “Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God; and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”
This is just a little picture of the way God recovers a poor sinner from the leprosy of sin. None but God can heal the sinner, and He does it just as simply as Naaman was healed of his leprosy. The waters of the Jordan point us to the death of Christ. Naaman was healed when he dipped himself in the Jordan seven tunes. And the healing power of Christ’s death is applied to us when we believe in Jesus. Elisha did not sell a cure to Naaman; and God does not sell salvation to us. We could not purchase it for money. The price would be too great. Christ, through His death, has purchased it for us, and God gives it to us freely, when we believe in Jesus. We are not asked to “do some great thing.” It is only to believe in Jesus, to accept salvation freely as the gift of God, through faith in Jesus and His blood which was shed for us.
Have you believed in Jesus who died for you? If not, oh! come to him now as a helpless sinner, and He will save you; He will heal you of your leprosy. A. H. R.
The Lord attends when children pray; A whisper He can hear;
He knows not only what we say, But what we wish or fear.
‘Tis not enough to bend the knee,
And words of prayer to say;
The heart must with the lips agree,
Or else we do not pray.
He sees us when we are alone,
Though no one else can see;
And all our thoughts to Him are known,
Whatever they may be.
ML 12/03/1899