The Irrational Deliverance

Introduction:

story: an imperfection among the perfect

There is always an imperfectness in our perfect life.

The “but” in Naaman’s life - his only imperfectness among his greatness (v1)

Namaan - great, important, highly regarded, a man of substance, exceptionally rich. He has great achievement in bringing victory to the king, and occupied a high position in the service of the king. He has great military ability.

leprosy - infectious skin diseases marked by swellings, scabs, white spots, bright or dark patches or flaking skin.

There is always a “but” in our lives.

No man’s greatness, or honour, or interest, or valour, or victory, can set him out of the reach of the sorest calamities of human life; there is many a sickly crazy body under rich and gay clothing. (2.) Every man has some bit or other in his character, something that blemishes and diminishes him, some allay to his grandeur, some damp to his joy; he may be very happy, very good, yet, in something or other, not so good as he should be nor so happy as he would be. Naaman was a great as the world could make him, and yet (as bishop Hall expresses it) the basest slave in Syria would not change skins with him.

How would we respond? We might choose to ignore the minor defect among all our perfectness.

the problem with Naaman

relies on human power (v4-6): letter from the King of Aram & money. He relies on money. preparing 340kg of silver, 70kg of gold and 10 sets of clothing, he was like hiring the best doctor. v15 tells us the purpose of him bringing all these things - as gift to king of Israel.

relies on instant power/religious ceremony (v11) . It was anciently, and still continues to be, a very prevalent superstition in the East that the hand of a king, or person of great reputed sanctity, touching, or waved over a sore, will heal it. He was angry because none of the religious ceremonies which he had expected were perfomed.

carries with our expectation on how God should work (v11, 12). “I thought, he will come out to me and stand and call upon the name of Jehovah his God, and go with his hand over the place (i.e., move his hand to and fro over the diseased places), and take away the leprosy.” and if God does not work in the way we expected, we become angry and walk away.

relies on logic and rational (v12). The “rivers of Damascus” are streams of great freshness and beauty. The principal one is the Barada, probably the Abana of the present passage, which, rising in the Antilibanus range, and flowing through a series of romantic glens, bursts finally from the mountains through a deep gorge and scatters itself over the plain. One branch passes right through the city of Damascus, cutting it in half. Others flow past the city both on the north and on the south, irrigating the gardens and orchards, and spreading fertility far and wide over the Merj. A small stream, the Fidjeh, flows into the Barada from the north. Another quite independent river, the Awaaj, waters the southern portion of the Damascene plain, but does not approach within several miles of the city. Most geographers regard this as the “Pharpar;” but the identification is uncertain, since the name may very possibly have attached to one of the branches of the Barada. The Barada is limpid, cool, gushing, the perfection of a river! It was known to the Greeks and Romans as the Chrysorrhoas, or “river of gold.” We can well understand that Naaman would esteem the streams of his own city as infinitely superior to the turbid, often sluggish, sometimes “clay-coloured” (Robinson, ‘Researches,’ vol. ii. p. 256) Jordan. If leprosy was to be washed away, it might naturally have appeared to him that the pure Barada would have more cleansing power than the muddy river recommended to him by the prophet

the senseless but necessary deliverance

wash yourself seven times in the Jordan (v10). what is the problem with this order?

it is the humility that settles. He was angry becaue he expected respect. It is losing face for him to jump into a dirty river. The house of Elisha, before the door of which Naaman stood (ver. 9), was certainly not a palace, but rather a poor hovel, so that the “great man” did not go in, but waited for the prophet to come out to him, and receive him in a manner befitting his rank

it is the faith that saves. As a great man, he expected some great thing, but God seems to test him with small things. faith requires action. The nearest point on the course of Jordan was above twenty miles distant from Samaria. Naaman is to go thither, to strip himself, and to plunge into the stream seven times. The directions seem given to test his faith. To repeat a formal act six times without perceiving any result, and yet to persevere and repeat it a seventh time, requires a degree of faith and trust that men do not often possess

it is the obedience that solves. the requirement to immerse in the river for seven time requires complete obedience. the number seven is a symbolic perfect number. Naaman had imagined a striking scene, whereof he was to be the central figure, the prophet descending, with perhaps a wand of office, the attendants drawn up on either side, the passers-by standing to gaze—a solemn invocation of the Deity, a waving to and fro of the wand in the prophet’s hand, and a sudden manifest cure, wrought in the open street of the city, before the eyes of men, and at once noised abroad through the capital, so as to make him “the observed of all observers,” “the cynosure of all neighbouring eyes.” Instead of this, he is bidden to go as he came, to ride twenty miles to the stream of the Jordan, generally muddy, or at least discoloured, and there to wash himself, with none to look on but his own attendants, with no éclat, no pomp or circumstance, no glory of surroundings. It is not surprising that he was disappointed and vexed

humility leads to our faith in Christ, and our faith leads to obedience. Naaman was “a great man” (ver. 1), with a high sense of his own importance, and regarded the prophet as very much inferior to himself. He expected to be waited on, courted, to receive every possible attention. As a “great man,” the lord on whose arm the king leant, and the captain of the host of Syria. Naaman was accustomed to extreme deference, and all the outward tokens of respect and reverence. He had, moreover, come with a goodly train, carrying gold and silver and rich stuffs, manifestly prepared to pay largely for whatever benefit he might receive. To be curtly told, “Go, wash in Jordan,” by the prophet’s servant, without the prophet himself condescending to make himself visible, would have been trying to any Oriental’s temper, and to one of Naaman’s rank and position might well seem an insult.

However, it is not by Naaman himself that he was able to do these. God has been gracious to him. In this chapter alone, we have seen how God has prepare grace for him in several ways. First, in verse 1, we are told that it was the Lord who had given victory to Naaman. As a Syrian, he was blessed. Second, he was saved by an Israelite girl who was brought captive to Syria and served Naaman’s wife. It was this girl who linked him to Elisha. it is quite surprising that being a proud great soldier, he took the word of this little young girl. Naaman took notice of the intelligence, though given by a simple maid, and did not despise it for the sake of her meanness, when it tended to his bodily health. he did not say, “The girl talks like a fool; how can any prophet of Israel do that for me which all the physicians of Syria have attempted in vain?”

because of his faith, his obedience and his humility, he became the only leper that was healed by Elisha. Luke 4:27, Elisha had not clansed any leper in Israel.

Conclusion

the changes of Naaman - not only physically, but spiritually.

v17??? why asked for soil?? to make an altar (Ex 20:24) to the God of Israel. What his motive or his purpose was in this proposal—whether he thought that God could be acceptably worshipped only on his own soil; or whether he wished, when far away from the Jordan, to have the earth of Palestine to rub himself with, which the Orientals use as a substitute for water; or whether, by making such a request of Elisha, he thought the prophet’s grant of it would impart some virtue; or whether, like the modern Jews and Mohammedans, he resolved to have a portion of this holy earth for his nightly pillow—it is not easy to say. It is not strange to find such notions in so newly a converted heathen.

v15 change of temperament - At the Jordan, Naaman was on his way home, had accomplished a fourth part of his return journey; in three more days he would be in Damascus, in his own palace. But he feels that it would be an unworthy act to accept his cure and make no acknowledgment of it, having turned away from the prophet “in a rage” (ver. 12), now, without apology, or retractation, or expression of regret or gratitude, to return into his own country under the obligation of an inestimable benefit. His cure has wrought in him, not merely a revulsion of feeling from rage and fury to thankfulness. And came, and stood before him; i.e. descended from his chariot, and asked admittance into the prophet’s house, and was received and allowed an audience—a striking contrast with his previous appearance before the house, in expectation that the prophet would come down and wait upon him

v15, 17 change of belief - no longer worship other God. This is an acknowledgment of the sole supremacy of Jehovah on the part of a heathen, such as we scarcely find elsewhere. The general belief of the time, and indeed of antiquity, was that every land had its own god, who was supreme in it—Baal in Phœnicia, Chemosh in Moab, Moloch in Ammon, Rimmon in Syria, Bel or Bel-Merodach in Babylon, Amun-Ra in Egypt, etc.; and when there is an acknowledgment of Jehovah on the part of heathens in Scripture, it is almost always the recognition of him as a god—the God of the Jews or of the Israelites, one among many (see Exod. 10:16, 17; ch. 17:26; 18:33–35; 2 Chron. 2:11; Dan. 2:47; 3:29; 6:2, etc.). But here we have a plain and distinct recognition of him as the one and only God that is in all the earth. Naaman thus shows a greater docility, a readier receptivity, than almost any of the other pious heathens who are brought before us in Scripture

v18 change of his attitude towards sins - acknowledge his own sins

v19 have peace. “go in peace” is an acknowledgment that Naaman is in covenant relation with Elisha and his God.