As I said, this entire chapter of
God's Word is devoted to Naaman and the circumstances involved
in the healing of his leprosy. First of all, we know this account
is true because when our Lord came to Nazareth to speak in
the synagogue, he referred personally, himself, to this account. He
said, Naaman the Syrian was cleansed. Christ verified this account. Secondly, our Lord used it as
an example of his sovereignty in healing or saving a person. He was speaking to that synagogue
Sabbath day congregation of Jews, Pharisees and Sadducees, religious
people, who felt that God was obligated to them. They were,
after all, the seat of Abraham and they were of the house of
Abraham. They were the people to whom
God had given the temple and the priesthood and the law and
the mercy seat and the ark. And they judged that they were
God's people forever. And he said to them, to that
gathering, he said there were many widows in Israel in the
days of Elijah. And he fed none of them but a
Gentile, a woman who was a Gentile. The land of Israel was full of
widows. And God fed none of them. But he chose to feed a Gentile.
Then he added, and there were many lepers in the land of Israel
in the days of Elias, Elisha. But God healed none of them.
But Naaman, a Gentile, a hated Syrian. Well, when they heard
these words, they were filled with wrath. And they rose up
and thrust him out of their city. his hometown, thrust him out
and took him to the edge of a cliff and would have cast him over
but he walked through the mist of it. It's a true story and it carries
serious implications and teachings concerning whom the Lord will
save in his sovereign mercy and how he'll save them. Now here's
the third thing, the lessons here. There are lessons here
which are essential to anybody and everybody who hopes to be
a partaker of God's mercy. Naaman, an unlikely prospect,
a most unlikely prospect, received mercy. And the land of Israel
full of lepers, God healed none of them. Christ said that. Now,
two questions arise here. The first one is this. Do the waters of the Jordan River
have power to heal leprosy? That's what Naaman asked. He
said, there are rivers in my country that are more beautiful
than the waters of Jordan. Can I not wash in them? Does
the River Jordan have power to heal leprosy? Did the River Jordan
have anything to do with healing Naaman? No, sir. No, sir. In fact, I judge that he was
the only leper who was ever cleansed in the Jordan. I don't know of
another one. Secondly, would God have healed
Naaman if he had not done what the prophet
told him to do and washed in the Jordan? Could he have been
healed any other way? No, sir. No, sir. No other way. You see, this is
what's happening here. Naaman is an object of mercy. Naaman is an object of grace.
God's grace. An object of God's love and mercy
and grace. And God is going to heal him.
Almighty God has made him his own. And he's going to get glory
out of healing this dying man. But he's got to teach him some
things. You see, our Lord said that. He said, no man can come
to me except my Father which sent me draw him to me." God
uses people and things and means and circumstances to draw people
to himself. My Father must draw him, and
then they shall be taught of God. Every man that hears and
is taught of God will come to me. They've got to be drawn by
the Father. They've got to hear. Here's something,
and it's got to be taught. What does Naaman need to be taught?
Well, number one, he's got to be taught that he's in poverty.
He thinks he's rich and increased with goods, and that's neither
nothing. Naaman thinks he has ability
to get what he wants. That's the reason he came with
his army down there, and all this money, and all this letter
from the king, and he's an influential, powerful person. He's got to
find out he's a nobody, a nothing. That he is nothing, has nothing,
and knows nothing. He's poverty-stricken. He has
no ability to accomplish anything as far as healing is concerned
or salvation. Nothing. He's got to learn that.
Secondly, his pride has got to be destroyed. Utterly destroyed. His self-importance has got to
be destroyed. Naaman must learn that salvation
is of the Lord. that those who will not hear
him, believe him, and obey his word must perish. That we're
shut up to his grace and his mercy and his love and his power. A man's got to be lost before
he'll ever be found. Plumb lost, totally lost, helplessly
lost before he'll ever be found. A man's got to be naked absolutely
naked to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ. He's not going to
patch our garments. He's going to take them away
from us. He's got to take away the fig leaves, slay an animal,
suffering, sacrifice, and clothe us with the righteousness of
the Lamb. He's got to be stripped. Naaman
has to be stripped. He's got to be ruined. He's too
prosperous. He's too influential, he's too
high and mighty. He's got to be brought down.
He's got to be embarrassed. He's got to be humiliated. He's
got to find out he's without help, without hope, without God. He's got to be at his wit's end.
And cry unto the Lord in his trouble, and God will deliver
him out of his distresses. Now that's just so. Now listen
to the scriptures. Christ said, I didn't come to call the righteous.
I came to call sinners to repentance. The Son of Man has come to seek
and to save that which is, not was, is lost. He's come to save
that which is lost. This is a saying worthy of acceptation
by all men, that Jesus Christ came into this world to save
sinners, of whom I'm the chief. Romans 5 says, when we were yet
without strength, without any strength, In due time, Christ
died for the ungodly. If a person misses this now,
this teaching of God, hearing from God, drawn of God, singled
out, set apart, drawn of God, and hears from God, hears from
God, not some colorful intellectual representative of religious ways,
but hears from God Almighty. and taught of God. He'll never
come to Christ. He'll come to religion, he'll
come to profession, he'll come to morality, he'll come to a
certain kind of peace when there is no peace, but he'll never
come to God. God saves sinners. He finds lost
people, helpless people. And if a person misses this experience,
he's going to miss repentance. And Christ said, except you repent,
you'll perish. I mean repent. I'd be sorry I
got caught. But repent, repent of my thoughts,
repent of my ways, repent of who I am, what I am, what I've
done. Repent constantly. Unless we
repent, we're going to perish. If we miss repentance, we're
going to miss Christ. If we miss finding our place
in the dust, He lifted the beggar out of the dunghill. If we're
not there, we're not going to be lifted. He lifted the beggar
out of the dunghill and sets him among princes. And that's
the only people he sets among the princes, those he finds in
the dunghill. That's right. Beggars. Naaman wasn't a beggar. He wasn't a beggar. But he got
to be one. If we miss that, we're going
to miss Christ. If we miss Christ, we're going
to perish. That woman that came to Christ, you think he was ruthless. But he has to be ruthless. We're
so dumb. Our shells are so hard. We're
so wrapped in our tradition, our self-importance. We've got
to be... A fellow doesn't... You don't kill him without resistance.
He don't resist if you try to kill him. And God has to slay us. We've
got to be dead before we can be raised. And that woman came
to him and she said, have mercy on me, my daughter is at the
point of death. He didn't even answer her. The Lord didn't even
answer the woman. And she cried after him and his
disciples came and said, send her away Lord, she's crying after
us. He said, I'm not sent except
to the house of Israel. She wouldn't leave, she kept
coming back. She said, Lord, have mercy. He said, it's not
right to give the children's bread to dogs. Gentile dogs. She said, that's true. That's
true, Lord. You know what she said? True,
Lord, that's true. I'll buy that. It's not right
to give the children's bread to dogs. But I'm your dog. And if you'll just brush some
crumbs off, I'll be happy with the crumbs. Ah, come on. That's where the
sinner's got to come. Approach, my soul, the mercy
seat, where Jesus answers prayer. There, broken, lie before his
feet. Nobody ever perished there. Thy
promise, Lord, is my only plea. With this I venture nigh. Thou
callest sinful, wretched souls to thee, and such, O Lord, am
I. bowed down beneath my load of
sin, by failure sorely pressed, by war without and guilt within,
that I come to thee for rest." Can you? Well, I know this. Every command to come to Christ
presupposes a need. Think about it now. Every command
in the Scripture For we, for us to come to Christ presupposes
a need. Listen. Come unto me, all ye. No, that's not what it says.
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. Rest of
you, stay home. That's what it says. If any man,
if any man thirst, let him come to me. Rest of you, stay home.
I'm looking for the hungry, and the thirsty, and the weary, and
the heavy laden, and the lost, and the burdened down, and the
helpless. You come to me. The rest of you, stay home. For the well have no need of
a physician, but they that are sick. Sin sick, sin weary, sin
tired, sin helpless. But let's look
at this man, Naaman. The Lord put it here and referred
to it for a purpose. Verse 1 says he's captain and
host of the king of Syria. He was a great man with his master,
honorable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto
Syria. He was a mighty man in valor, but he was a leper. There's something drastically
wrong with Naaman. Among men there were many commendable
traits. Naaman was a unusually gifted
man. But he was a leper. That dreaded,
decaying, deadly disease permeated his whole body and was destroying
him. He was a leper within. And every man and woman here
has some distinguishing characteristics among men and women. Honorable,
intelligent, kind, sweet, mothers, fathers, Brothers, sisters, friends,
generous, neighbors. You have commendable traits like
Naaman. Honorable. God's used you and blessed you
to bless others. But you're a leper inside. A sinner. A wretched, defiled
sinner. Your whole being, from the sole
of your feet to the top of your head, inside, is full of dead
men's bones. They'd have turned and they'd
have run him out of town. If they knew what he was, they'd
have, that's right, he's contagious. And if they knew what you and
I are inside, they'd run us out of town or put us in jail. That's right. In Adam we're dead. We're dead. And it's a total
ruin. None good, none that seek after
God. That's right. We're ruined before
God. Before men, commendable. My brother, my only brother,
two years older than I, he had brains. We both went in the service. He, when he was 18, I went when
I was 17, and he immediately went to the naval academy. They
gave him an appointment to the naval academy. He stayed there
during the whole war. When the war was over, I came
back, he came back, and he went into the Army. He decided he'd
make a career out of it. They gave him a West Point commission,
Christ of 1947. He stayed in the Army for 29
or 30 years. He rose to battalion commander. Some of you Army fellows know
what a battalion commander is, don't you? Battalion commander,
the colonel. He used to tell me when he flew
on a plane, everybody stayed seated on the plane until the
colonel got up and walked off. I mean big, impressive, important,
and a nice man. I visited him in Germany when
he was a battalion commander, and his chaplain told me every
Sunday morning he came to church, and because he came and his family
came, everybody came. He said, before your brother
came, I preached to practically nobody. When he came, it filled
the place because he felt obligated to come. Church. He's all that
outside. But in all the years I knew him,
until he died at 48 with a heart attack, I never heard one word
of grace ever falsely or interest in God. He was a leper. He was a man respected and admired,
intelligent, far beyond what I'd ever accomplished or you
or lots of us. He was lost. The leper. And that's just so. And then
I noticed this about old Naaman. He decided to seek healing. But
he brought the wrong things with him. He brought a hundred thousand
dollars worth of silver. He took the wrong things with
him. Look down here at verse 5. And the king of Syria said,
You go, I'll send a letter to the king of Israel. He departed
and took with him ten talents of silver, six thousand pieces
of gold, and ten changes of raiment. What's he got in mind? buying
this healing, exchanging these things for healing. Well, the
scriptures declare we're not redeemed with corruptible things
such as silver and gold. We're not redeemed that way.
We can't do anything about this guilt inside by natural works
and means. Titus said it's not by works
of righteousness which we're done. It's because of his mercy
he saved us. By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified. And yet that's what people are
trying to do today. There are preachers who are preaching
in order to be saved. There are people who are giving
to the church in order to have acceptance with God. There are
people who are going to church and making professions and living
religious lives and going to the mission field, serving God. in hope of being rewarded. In
fact, actually, Christ said, many of them, many people are
going to say unto me in the judgment, Lord, we preached in your name.
We can't be lost. We preached in your name. We
cast out devils in your name. There's no way for us to be lost.
We anointed the sick and prayed for them. We saw some results.
Cast out demons. We did many wonderful works.
We built hospitals and churches and mission fields and and gave
clothes to the poor, and canned goods to the hungry, and we fed,
we did all these wonderful works. I never knew you. Apart from
me. You're workers of iniquity. Self-righteousness
is iniquity. In God's sight, it's the worst
kind of iniquity, to try to buy God. You bribe one of these police
officers, you make him mad. And you will make him mad. Not
all of them, but many of them. Many of them. The honest ones
you would. And God, you do. He gets angry. You bide God,
He gets angry. I'll do this if you'll do that.
You're on the wrong footing when you start that kind of talk.
What God does, He does for His glory. He does motivate it out
of one purpose, and that's His purpose. His will. His glory. Now that's true. And Naaman just
took the wrong things with him. And I'll tell you something else,
he went to the wrong place. Verse 6, he came to the king
of Israel. The directions of the young maiden
were very clear, weren't they? She was a whole lot smarter than
he was. She said, look at verse 3, she said to her mistress,
would God, my Lord, was with the prophet in Israel. Who's the prophet? I know who
the prophet is, don't you? Christ is the prophet, that prophet. Elisha was his representative,
his ambassador. Christ is that prophet. But this
young lady knew if he was with that prophet, he was with God.
If he'd come to that prophet, he'd come to God. And that prophet
would do what God told him to do. But he came to the king of
Israel. Went to the wrong place. But
you know, that's the way folks do today. They're seeking salvation
going to the wrong place. They go unto the Mary, the Blessed
Virgin, pray to the Blessed Virgin, count their beads. They go to
the priest and they sit there and confess their sins. They
go to the preacher. These altar calls are nothing
in the world but in exchange of my doings and duties for God's
favor. Don't come to an altar, come
to Christ. Don't come to one of Christ's representatives,
come to Christ. Don't come to the founts, to the holy water.
Don't come to the counselors, salvations of the Lord. You're
going, the King, the King of Israel is God's King. But Christ
is God's Savior. Christ is God's Savior. No man
cometh to the Father, he said, but by me. Man, we went to the
wrong place. Don't go to the wrong place.
Get to Christ. Of God are you in Christ, who
of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. Get to Christ. I told my Sunday
school class, they tell people, come forward, come to the front,
come down here, do this, and God will save you. I say come
to Christ, but don't move a hand, don't move a hair, don't move
a foot. Coming to Christ is not a movement of the body, it's
a movement of the heart and the will. Thy people are made willing
in the day of thy power. It's not an exchange between
you and me. You come down and talk to me,
and I say thanks to you, and you say thanks to me. No, no,
no, no, no. Call on Him, Lord. Save me. Be merciful to me, the sinner.
I give my heart, my life, my all to Christ. I trust Christ.
Let that exchange be between you and Him, not between you
and me. He went to the wrong place. And
then finally, he got to the door. You know, Elijah sent word, said,
tell him to come to me. Tell him to come to me. Tell
him to come to me. Verse 8, let him now come to
me. And he'll know he's a prophet.
Well, Naaman came, verse 9. He came with his horses and his
chariots, and he stood at the door of the house of Elijah.
I can just see him. Swagger stick and all, can't
you say so? He cut a handsome figure on the outside. On the
inside, he was a rotten, stinking, dying, rotten leper. But on the
outside, he cut a real figure. But he wasn't fixed to go in
that little house, that little hovel. He wasn't going to bow
his head or go in there where that puppet was sitting probably
on the ground or on a box. It's beneath him. It's beneath
him. There are people in this town,
it's beneath them to listen to this kind of preaching, come
to this kind of place. He wouldn't enter. He would not
humble himself. He would not enter that place. You see, Naaman finally came
to the prophet, but he came with the wrong attitude. This man's
a leper. This man is a leper. This man
is a rotten, helpless, dying leper, say, who thinks he's somebody. He thinks this. He thinks, I'm
a great man who happens to be a leper. But he was a leper who
thought he was a great man. That's all. That's all we are.
What he was was a rotting, dying mass of flesh who for a little
while walked across the stage and played a part. And that's
every one of us. By nature, by nature now, I know
we're chosen of God, we're sons of God, blessed, by nature. We're
a rotten, dying flesh who someday, if enough years go by, will be
nothing but a few grains of dust. And not a memory of us left here.
That's right. That's what we are by birth,
by nature. The hymn writer said, I'll go
to Jesus, though my sins hath like a mountain rose. I know
his courts I'll enter in, whatever may oppose. I'll say to him,
I'll to the gracious Lord approach, whose scepter mercy gives. Perhaps
he'll receive my touch, and then the sinner lives. I'll say to him, I'm a wretch
undone without your sovereign grace. But Nahum was not to that
place yet. Not yet. Well, Elisha's not going
to play his game with him. Listen, verse 10. So Elisha didn't
go out to meet him. He sent a messenger, he sent
a servant out there, an old Gehazi. He sent a servant out and said
to Naaman, you go, take off your medals and your uniform and lay
down your swagger stick and take off your high-heeled boots with
the spurs and strip naked. and get in the river Jordan,
that muddy stream, and dip, not once, and run out. Stand there
and dip seven times. Seven times, in front of everybody.
Seven times. Oh my. Humbling, humbling, humbling,
humbling. Seven times. Well, he's not going to do it.
You look at the next, he was angry, verse 11, he was angry.
Well, I said, God's humbling him. God is going to kill that
man's pride and put him down in the dust, a helpless, helpless,
hopeless, bankrupt, broke sinner. And he was angry. He went away.
He said, I thought, and this is man, there's a way that seems
right to man. And that's present-day preaching.
God wants a people so badly. that he'll take about anybody
if they'll just do certain things at Preacher Township. If they'll
kind of clean up on the outside, and change their ways, and join
the church, and send a check every week, you know, or every
month, and come to church when it's convenient, and witness
to a few people, and stay out of the beer joints, you know,
and try to live a halfway decent life. Don't cheat, except in
private, and just do these things, and go to heaven when you die.
Everybody goes to heaven when they die. And God's looking.
He's just dying to save everybody. He died to save somebody. And
that's what Nealman thought. I thought he'd come to me. I
moved into town. I thought the preachers all lined
up outside my house wanting me to join. I thought he'd come
to me. And he'd go through some motions,
you know, and he'd stand in front of me and he'd go through some,
call on God, you know, make a big show out of it and lay his hand
on my head and lay it on the left, make it disappear, just
go through some shenanigans and some things to impress people,
impress people. Get a whole bunch of them lined
up out there and lay hands on them. No, Naaman, he won't come to
you, you're going to come to Christ. He won't stand in front
of you, you're going to bow to Christ. He's not going to call on his
God, you're going to call on your God. And he's not going to cleanse
the leper, God's going to cleanse the leper with blood. Now, here's a wise servant. Oh,
I love this fellow here. Whoever he or they were, they
came to him and said, my father, verse 13, if the prophet did
you do some great thing, some unusual thing, would you not
have done it? Folks are doing great things. I have a preacher
friend holding a meeting in a town one time. He knew the gospel. And how he got in that church,
I don't know. But the pastor invited him, and he's preaching
in the church. And you know, pastors, They arranged for you
to eat dinner with members. Preachers used to hold a meeting
and have dinner every night in a different home. And so there
was a lady in the church who was faithful, loved God, and
she always invited the preacher to her house for dinner when
he came to hold a meeting. But her husband, he owned a tavern,
a beer joint downtown, and he wouldn't come to church. But
when they had the preacher at his house, he'd come to dinner.
And so the pastor and my friend went to dinner at this house,
and here this dear lady served dinner, and here sat her husband,
the tavern keeper, you know, really important fella. And they were eating lunch, and
the tavern keeper looked at the preacher and he said, you notice
I don't come to church? He said, yes, I've noticed that.
But he said, the reason I don't come to church is every preacher
we have here, including this pastor, He tells me I have to
sell my tavern if I'm going to be saved, and I'm not going to
sell my tavern. My friend was a wise preacher. He said, you
don't have to sell your tavern to be saved. I don't blame you. If I was you, and like you, and
making the money you're making, I wouldn't sell it either. He
said, I think I'll come here and you preach. Did you ever read in the Bible
where you sell your tavern, you'll be saved? But that's what these
preachers said. So he came to church every night. And you know, my friend said,
Lord, save that old man. God spoke peace to his heart.
And you know the first thing he did? He sold his tavern. That preacher tells him to sell
his tavern, he'd do some great thing, but that's not the way
you're saved. You're not saved doing great things. You're saved
by a great Savior who did great things. It's a free gift, it's
the grace of God. That's how men are saved. Grace of God. Well, old Nealman
finally did something right. It says in verse 14, then he
went down. That was Psalm 16. I can imagine
it in my mind when he took off that hat and laid her down, and
that scarf, that white scarf. Remember they wore those white
scarfs and laid her down. Off came that jacket and that
shirt with the three creases, two creases in the front and
three in the back, and all those ribbons, those pants, and there
he stood, oh boy. What an awful sight to behold. That's what we are. It's going
to be exposed. He went down in that water and
he washed. Seven times. He came out clean,
like a baby skin. I read a story about, was that the way God saves people,
going down, getting naked and dipping in the river? He did
this one. This one. But he was saved before he ever
dipped in that river. He was saved when he's willing
to dip in the river. Isn't that right? That's when he's saved,
when he's willing. I'm willing. I'm willing for
God to do whatever God does. I'm willing. Because I'm a beggar
and he's a king. I'm willing. I heard this story.
Back in the Civil War, there was a revival going on, not only
among the troops, the revival among a lot of the camps, but
the revival back, God was speaking to some folks. And there was
a black slave who was quite a preacher. And at night, they were having
meetings. And one of the slave owners,
one of the masters, got to going down there listening
to them sing and preach. And God got a hold of his heart.
And after the service, well, he didn't make it known to all
those black people there, but he called a preacher over after
the service was over and called his name, and he said, what you're saying has touched
my heart. I think I'd like to be a Christian, like to say.
What should I do? That old black man said, are
you serious, master? He said, yes, I am. He said,
you see that hog pen over there? You go over there and climb that
fence and get in that hog pen. And that master, he looked at
this pretty suit he had on, you know, and string tie and his
boots, and he said, you're out of your mind. And he went mad
and went home. But he back down there another
time hearing them preach. And it went through the same
thing again, again and again. Finally one night he was just
in distress, just weeping, just broken hearted, just at his wits
end. I need God. And he told that
old black man there, that old preacher. He said, Master, did
you see that hog pen? And the master just turned and
started walking. The black man stood there and he walked and
walked. Finally he got to the fence around the hog pen. And
he put one foot over it. And the black man stopped and
said, Master, are you going to get in that hog pen? You going
to actually get in that hog pen? The master said, my friend, if
it takes getting in the hog pen for God to save this old sinner,
I'm getting in the hog pen. He said, Master, you don't have
to get in the hog pen. You just got to be willing. You just gotta be willing. And
I'm saying that Nehemiah, before he ever hit the water, there's
a work of grace in his heart, or he wouldn't have been there.
Gotta be willing. That's what God is showing us.
Tonight we'll go on with the rest of this, but that's what
God is showing us. He saves helpless, hopeless sinners
who are willing to be saved on his terms, at his time, by his
son through his blood. I'm willing. Are you?