simplicity of the means enjoined and the absence of any human agency,
which at first staggered the sensuous nature and offended the pride of
Naaman, at last led him to see and confess that there was no God in all
the earth but in Israel. Therefore the prophet keeps in the background.
His part is not to cure, but to bring God's cure. He is only a voice.
He brings the sick man and God's prescription face to face, and there
leaves him. Naaman would have liked to force him into the place of a
magician, in whom miracle-working power resided. Elisha will only take
the place of a herald who proclaims how God's power may be brought to
heal. So men have always sought to turn the messengers of God's cure
into miracle-workers. Making the ministers of God's word into priests
who by external acts convey grace and forgiveness, is a superstition
that has its roots deep in human nature. It is not that the priests
have made themselves so much as that the people have made the priests.
Here is an instance in a rude form of the tendency which has been at
work in all generations, and has been the corruption of Christianity
from the beginning, and is doing mischief every day - the tendency to
place one's confidence in a man who is supposed to be, in some
mysterious manner, the bearer of a grace that will cure and cleanse.
And the prophet's position in our story brings out very clearly the
position which all Christian ministers hold. They are nothing but
heralds, their personality disappears, they are merely a voice. All
that they have to do is to bring men into contact with God's own word
of command and promise, and then to vanish.
Christianity has no 'priests,' Christianity has no 'sacraments.'
Christianity has no external rites which bring grace or help except in
so far as by their aid the soul is brought into contact with the truth,
and by meditation and faith is thus made capable of receiving more of
Christ's Spirit. Our only commission is to bring to you God's message
of how you may be healed. When we have said, 'Wash, and be clean,' as
plainly, earnestly, and lovingly as we can, we have done all our
appointed office. We are heralds, and nothing more. Our business is to
preach, not to do rites, or minister sacraments. Our business is to
preach, not to argue. We are neither priests nor professors, but
preachers. We have to deliver the message given to us faithfully. We
have to ring out the proclamation loudly. The virtue of a town crier is
that he make people hear and understand. The virtue of a messenger is
that he repeats precisely what he was told. And a Christian minister
has to lift up his voice and not be afraid, to see to it that his
speech be plain, and that it do not overlay the message with fripperies
of ornament, or affectations, or personalities, and to plead earnestly
and lovingly with men to come to the divine Healer. John Baptist's
description of himself is true of them. With rare self-abnegation, he
would only reply to the question, 'Who art thou?' with 'I am a voice.'
His personality was nothing. His message was all. A musical string
cannot be seen as it vibrates. So the man should be lost in his
proclamation. We are heralds and nothing more, and the more we keep in
the background and the less our hearers depend on us, the better. If
you want priests who will 'call on the name of their God, and wave
their hands over the place,' and convey grace and healing to you by
anything that they do for or to you, you will have to go beyond the
limits of New Testament Christianity to find them. So men quarrel with
their medicine because their cure is purely a spiritual process,
depending on spiritual forces, and sense cries out for sacred rites and
persons to be the channels of God's healing.
III. And now, lastly, God's cure wants nothing from you but to take it.
Naaman's servants were quite right: 'My father! If the prophet had bid
thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?' Yes! Of
course he would, and the greater the better. Men will stand, as Indian
fakirs do, with their arms above their heads until they stiffen there.
They will perch themselves upon pillars, like Simeon Stylites, for
years, till the birds build their nests in their hair: they will
measure all the distance from Cape Comorin to Juggernaut's temple with
their bodies along the dusty road. They will give the fruit of their
body for the sin of their soul. They will wear hair shirts and scourge
themselves. They will fast and deny themselves. They will build
cathedrals and endow churches. They will do as many of you do, labour
by fits and starts all through your lives at the endless task of making
yourselves ready for heaven, and winning it by obedience and by
righteousness. They will do all these things and do them gladly, rather
than listen to the humbling message that says, 'You do not need to do
anything - wash!' Is it your washing, or the water, that will clean you?
Wash and be clean! Ah, my brother! Naaman's cleansing was only a test
of his obedience, and a token that it was God who cleansed him. There
was no power in Jordan's waters to take away the taint of leprosy. Our
cleansing is in that blood of Jesus Christ that has the power to take
away all sin, and to make the foulest amongst us pure and clean.
But the two commandments - that of the symbol in my text, that of the
reality in the Christian gospel - are alike in this respect, that both
the one and the other are a confession that the man himself has no part
in his own cleansing. And so Naamans, in all generations, who were
eager to do some great thing, have stumbled, and turned away from that
gospel which says, 'It is finished!' 'Not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us.' Dear brother, you
can do nothing. You do not need to do anything. It is a hard pill for
my pride to swallow, to be indebted to absolute mercy, which I have
done nothing to bring, for all my hope, but it is a position that we
have to take. Hard to take for all of us, very hard for you who have
never looked in the face the solemn fact of your own sinfulness, and
pondered upon the consequences of that; but most blessed if only you
will open your eyes to see that the stern refusal to accept anything
from us as working out our salvation is but the other side of the great
truth that Christ's death is all-sufficient, and that in Him the
foulest may be clean.
'Nothing in my hand I bring.'
If you bring anything you cannot grasp the Cross. Do not try to eke out
Christ's work with yours; do not build upon penitence, or feelings, or
faith, or anything, but build only upon this: 'When I had nothing to
pay He frankly forgave me all.' And build upon this: 'Christ alone has
died for me'; and Christ alone is all-sufficient. 'Wash and be clean';
accept and possess; believe and live!
NAAMAN'S IMPERFECT FAITH
'And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came
and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no
God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a
blessing of thy servant. 16. But he said, As the Lord liveth, before
whom I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him to take it; but he
refused. 17. And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be
given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will
henceforth offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice unto other gods,
but unto the Lord. 18. In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that
when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he
leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon: when I bow
down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this
thing. 19. And he said unto him, Go in peace. So he departed from him a
little way. 20. But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said,
Behold, my master hath spared Naaman this Syrian, in not receiving at
his hands that which he brought: but, as the Lord liveth, I will run
after him, and take somewhat of him. 21. So Gehazi followed after
Naaman: and when Naaman saw him running after him, he lighted down from
the chariot to meet him, and said, Is all well? 22. And he said, All is
well. My master hath sent me, saying, Behold, even now there be come to
me from mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets: give
them, I pray thee, a talent of silver, and two charges of garments. 23.
And Naaman said, Be content, take two talents. And he urged him, and
bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of garments
and laid them upon two of his servants; and they bare them before him.
24. And when he came to the tower, he took them from their hand, and
bestowed them in the house: and he let the men go, and they departed.
25. But he went in, and stood before his master. And Elisha said unto
him, Whence comest thou, Gehazi? And he said, Thy servant went no
whither. 26. And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee, when
the man turned again from his chariot to meet thee? Is it a time to
receive money, and to receive garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards,
and sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants? 27. The leprosy
therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever.
And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.' - 2 KINGS
v. 15-27.
Like the Samaritan leper healed by Jesus, Naaman came back to give
glory to God. Samaria was quite out of his road to Damascus, but
benefit melted his heart, and the pride, which had been indignant that
the prophet did not come out to him, faded before thankfulness, which
impelled him to go to the prophet. God's gifts should humble, and
gratitude is not afraid to stoop. Elisha would not see Naaman before,
for he needed to be taught; but he gladly welcomes him into his
presence now, for he has learned his lesson. Sometimes the best way to
attract is to repel, and the true servant of God consults not his own
dignity, but others' good, whichever he does.
I. The first point is the offer and refusal of the gift. The benefited
is liberal and the benefactor disinterested. Naaman was a convert to
pure monotheism. His avowal is clear and full. But what a miserable
conclusion he draws with that 'therefore'! He should have said,
'Therefore I come to trust under the shadow of His wings.' But he is
not ready to give himself, and, like some of the rest of us, thinks to
compound by giving money. When the outward giving of goods is token of
inward surrender of self, it is accepted. When it is a substitute for
that, it is rejected. No doubt, too, Naaman thought that Elisha was,
like the sorcerers of heathenism, very accessible to gifts; and if he
had come to believe in Elisha's God, he had yet to learn the loving-
kindness of the God in whom he had come to believe. He had to learn
next that 'the gift of God' was not 'purchased with money' and the
prophet's acceptance of his present would have dimmed Elisha's own
character, and that of his God, in the newly opened eyes of Naaman.
Elisha's answer begins with the solemn adjuration which we first hear
from Elijah. In its use here, it not only declares the unalterable
determination of Elisha, but reveals its grounds. To a man who feels
ever the burning consciousness that he is in the presence of God, all
earthly good dwindles into nothing. How should talents of silver and
gold, and changes of raiment, have worth in eyes before which that
awful, blessed vision flames? A candle shows black against the sun. If
we walk all the day in the light of God's countenance, we shall not see
much brightness to dazzle us in the pale and borrowed lights of earth.
The vivid realisation of God in our daily lives is the true shield
against the enticements of the world. Further, the consciousness of
being God's servant, which is implied in the expression 'before whom I
stand,' makes a man shrink from receiving wages from men. 'To his own
Master he standeth or falleth,' and will be scrupulously careful that
no taint of apparent self-seeking shall spoil his service, in the eyes
of men or in the judgment of the 'great Taskmaster.' Elisha felt that
the honour of his order, and, in some sense, of his God, in the eyes of
this half-convert, depended on his own perfect and transparent
disinterestedness. Therefore, although he made no scruple of taking the
Shunemite's gifts, and probably lived on similar offerings, he
steadfastly refused the enormous sum proffered by Naaman. 'The labourer
is worthy of his hire,' but if accepting it is likely to make people
think that he did his work for the sake of it, he must refuse it. A
hireling is not a man who is paid for his work, but one who works for
the sake of the pay. If once a professed servant of God falls under
reasonable suspicion of doing that, his power for good is ended, as it
should be.
II. The next point to notice is the alloy in the gold, or the
imperfection of Naaman's new convictions. He had been cured of his
leprosy at once, but the cure of his soul had to be more gradual. It is
unreasonable to expect clear sight, with the power of rightly
estimating magnitudes, from a man seeing for the first time. But though
Naaman's shortcomings are very natural and excusable, they are plainly
shortcomings. Note the two forms which they take, - superstition and
selfish compromise. What good would a couple of loads of soil be, and
could he not have taken that from the roadside without leave? The
connection between the two halves of verse 17 makes his object plain.
He wished the earth 'for' he would not sacrifice but to Jehovah. That
is, he meant to use it as the foundation of an altar, as if only some
of the very ground on which Jehovah had manifested Himself was sacred
enough for such a purpose. He did not, indeed, think of 'the Lord' as a
local deity of Israel, as his ample confession of faith in verse 15
proves; but neither had he reached the point of feeling that the Being
worshipped makes the altar sacred. No wonder that he did not unlearn in
an hour his whole way of thinking of religion! The reliance on
externals is too natural to us all, even with all our training in a
better faith, to allow of our wondering at or severely blaming him. A
sackful of earth from Palestine has been supposed to make a whole
graveyard a 'Campo Santo'; and, no doubt, there are many good people in
England who have carried home bottles of Jordan water for christenings.
Does not the very name of 'the Holy Land' witness to the survival of
Naaman's sentimental error?
The other tarnish on the clear mirror was of a graver kind. Notice that
he does not ask Elisha's sanction to his intended compromise, but
simply announces his intention, and hopes for forgiveness. It looks ill
when a man, in the first fervour of adopting a new faith, is casting
about for ways to reconcile it with the public profession of his old
abandoned one. We should have thought better of Naaman's monotheism, if
he had not coupled his avowal of it, where it was safe to be honest,
with the announcement that he did not intend to stand by his avowal
when it was risky. It would have required huge courage to have gone
back to Damascus and denied Rimmon; and our censure must be lenient,
but decided.
Naaman was the first preacher of a doctrine of compromise, which has
found eminent defenders and practisers, in our own and other times. To
separate the official from the man, and to allow the one to profess in
public a creed which the other disavows in private, is rank immorality,
whoever does or advocates it. The motive in this case was, perhaps, not
so much cowardice as selfish unwillingness to forfeit position and
favour at court. He wants to keep all the good things he has got; and
he tries to blind his conscience by representing the small compliance
of bowing as almost forced on him by the grasp of the bowing king, who
leaned on his hand. But was it necessary that he should be the king's
favourite? A deeper faith would have said, 'Perish court favour and
everything that hinders me from making known whose I am.' But Naaman is
an early example of the family of 'Facing-both-ways,' and of trying to
'make the best of both worlds.' But his sophistication of conscience
will not do, and his own dissatisfaction with his excuse peeps out
plainly in his petition that he may be forgiven. If his act needed
forgiveness, it should not have been done, nor thus calmly announced.
It is vain to ask forgiveness beforehand for known sin about to be
committed.
Elisha is not asked for his sanction, and he neither gives nor refuses
it. He dismissed Naaman with cold dignity, in the ordinary conventional
form of leave-taking. His silence indicated at least the absence of
hearty approval, and probably he was silent to Naaman because, as he
said about the Shunemite's trouble, the Lord had been silent to him,
and he had no authoritative decision to give. Let us hope that Naaman's
faith grew and stiffened before the time of trial came, and that he did
not lie to God in the house of Rimmon. Let us take the warning that we
are to publish on the housetops what we hear in the ear, and that, if
in anything we should be punctiliously sincere, it is in the profession
of our faith.
III. The last point is Gehazi's avarice, and what he got by it. How
differently the same sight affected the man who lived near God and the
one who lived by sense! Elisha had no desires stirred by the wealth in
Naaman's train. Gehazi's mouth watered after it. Regulate desires and
you rule conduct. The true regulation of desires is found in communion
with God. Gehazi had a sordid soul, like Judas; and, like the traitor
Apostle, he was untouched by contact with goodness and unworldliness.
Perhaps the parallel might be carried farther, and both were moved with
coarse contempt for their master's silly indifference to earthly good.
That feeling speaks in Gehazi's soliloquy. He evidently thought the
prophet a fool for having let 'this Syrian' off so easily. He was fair
game, and he had brought the wealth on purpose to leave it. Profanity
speaks in uttering a solemn oath on such an occasion. The putting side
by side of 'the Lord liveth' and 'I will run after him' would be
ludicrous if it were not horrible. How much profanity may live close
beside a prophet, and learn nothing from him but a holy name to sully
in an oath!
The after part of the story suggests that Naaman was out of sight of
the city before he saw Gehazi coming after him. The cunning liar timed
his arrival well. The courtesy of Naaman in lighting down from his
chariot to receive the prophet's servant shows how real a change had
been wrought upon him, even though there were imperfections in him.
Gehazi's story is well hung together, and has plenty of 'local colour'
to make it probable. Such glib ingenuity in lying augurs long practice
in the art. If he had been content with a small fee, he needed only to
have told the truth; but his story was required to put a fair face on
the amount of his request. And in what an amiable light it sets Elisha!
He would not take for himself, but he has nothing to give to the two
imaginary scholars, who have come from some of the schools of the
prophets in the hill-country of Ephraim, thirsting for instruction. How
sweet the picture, and what a hard heart that could refuse the request!
Truly said Paul, 'The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.'
Any sin may come from it, and be done to gratify it. 'Honestly if you
can, but get it,' was Gehazi's principle, as it is that of many a man
in the Christian Churches of this day. Greed of gain is a sin that
seldom keeps house alone. Naaman no doubt was glad to give, both
because he was grateful, and because, like most people in high
positions, he was galled by the sense of obligation to a man beneath
him in rank. So back went Gehazi, with the two Syrian slaves carrying
his baggage for him, and he chuckling at his lucky stroke, and
pleasantly imagining how to spend his wealth.
'The tower' in verse 24 is more correctly 'the hill,' and it was
probably there where the little group would come in sight of Elisha's
house. So Gehazi gets rid of the porters before they could be seen or
speak to any one, and manages his load for a little way himself,
carefully hides it in the house, and, seeing the men safely off,
appears obsequious and innocent before Elisha. The prophet's gift of
supernatural knowledge was intermittent, as witness his ignorance of
the Shunemite's sorrow; but Gehazi must have known its occasional
action, and we can fancy that his heart sank at the ominous question,
so curt in the original, and conveying so clearly the prophet's
knowledge that he had been away from the house: 'Whence, Gehazi?' One
lie needs another to cover it, and every sin is likely to beget a
successor. So, with some tremor, but without hesitation, he tries to
hide his tracks. Did not Elisha's eye pierce the wretched hypocrite as
with a dart? and did not his voice ring like a judgment trumpet, as he
confounded the silent sinner with the conviction that the prophet
himself had been at the spot, though his body had remained in the
house? So, at last, will men be reduced to stony dumbness, when they
discover that an Eye which can see deeper than Elisha's has been gazing
on all their secret sins. The question, 'Is this a time to receive?'
etc., suggests the special reasons, in Naaman's new faith, for
conspicuous disregard of wealth, in order that he might thereby learn
the free love of Elisha's God and of Jehovah's servant, both of which
had been tarnished by Gehazi's ill-omened greed. The long enumeration
following on 'garments' includes, no doubt, the things that Gehazi had
solaced his return with the thought of buying, and so adds another
proof that his heart was turned inside out before the prophet.
His punishment is severe; but his sin was great. The leprosy was a
fitting punishment, both because it had been Naaman's, from which
obedient reliance on God had set him free, and because of its
symbolical meaning, as the type of sin. Gehazi got his coveted money,
but he got something else along with it, which he did not bargain for,
and which took all the sweetness out of it. That is always the case.
'Ill-gotten gear never prospers'; and, if a man has set his heart on
worldly good, he may succeed in amassing a fortune, but the leprosy
will cleave to him, and his soul will be all crusted and foul with that
living death. How many successful men, perhaps high in reputation in
the Church as in the world, would stand 'lepers as white as snow,' if
we had God's eyes to see them with!
SIGHT AND BLINDNESS
'Then the king of Syria warred against Israel, and took counsel with
his servants, saying, In such and such a place shall be my camp. 9. And
the man of God sent unto the king of Israel, saying, Beware that them
pass not such a place; for thither the Syrians are come down. 10. And
the king of Israel sent to the place which the man of God told him and
warned him of, and saved himself there, not once nor twice. 11.
Therefore the heart of the king of Syria was sore troubled for this
thing; and he called his servants, and said unto them, Will ye not shew
me which of us is for the king of Israel? 12. And one of his servants
said, None, my Lord, O king: but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel,
telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy
bedchamber. 13. And he said, Go and spy where he is, that I may send
and fetch him. And it was told him, saying, Behold, he is in Dothan.
14. Therefore sent he thither horses, and chariots, and a great host:
and they came by night, and compassed the city about. 15. And when the
servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an
host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant
said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? 16. And he answered,
Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with
them. 17. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his
eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man;
and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots
of fire round about Elisha. 18. And when they came down to him, Elisha
prayed unto the Lord, and said, Smite this people, I pray Thee, with
blindness. And He smote them with blindness according to the word of
Elisha.' - 2 KINGS vi 8-18.
The revelation of the angel guard around Elisha is the important part
of this incident, but the preliminaries to it may yield some
instruction. The first point to be noted is the friendly relations
between the king and the prophet. The king was probably Joram, who had