Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

“Go and Wash”

How a sin-stricken sinner may find healing and peace.

“Now Naaman, the captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance to Syria; he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper. And the Syrians had gone out by companies, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid; and she waited on Naaman’s wife. And she said to her mistress, Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria; for he would recover him of his leprosy. And one went in, and told his lord, saying, Thus and thus says the maid that is of the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, Go to, go, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel. And he departed, and took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, Now, when this letter is come to thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy. And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send to me to recover a man of his leprosy? Wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeks a quarrel against me. And it was so, when Elisha, the man of God, had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, 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 with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger 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 wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the Name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake to him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he says to thee, Wash and be clean? 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 to the flesh of a little child, and he was clean (2 Kings 5:1-14).

A Leper is not a pleasant person to meet. He is an offence both to the eyes and the nostrils, and Naaman was a leper. In many respects he was a great man. He was a successful soldier, and a wise administrator, and Syria had risen to a foremost place among the nations under his leadership. He was valued and honoured by the king, and popular with the people, but he was a leper. He may have done his best to hide the tragic fact from the multitude, but the king knew of it, his own household knew of it, it was talked about by the servants, and what a man’s servants talk about the man in the street surely knows, and he knew of it himself. What pleasure could he find in his medals and decorations, his honours, renown, and wealth, or the admiration and the envy of others, when this foul thing was sapping his life and hurrying him on to a loathsome death?

God uses the dreaded disease as a figure of sin in His Word — of SIN. He wants us all to understand how obnoxious sin is to Him, and how corrupting and menacing it is to us and our fellows, and He would teach us by this foul and incurable disease. We speak of this man or that woman being a moral leper. We mean that their lives are gross and offensive, and they are people to be shunned, but every unrepentant, unwashed sinner is a moral leper, let him hide it or camouflage it as he may. Every life that has not God as its centre and object is a sinful life, a leprous life; it is corrupt in its source and outflow, and those who know themselves the best are the readiest to admit it.

A celebrated American writer was offered £10,000 for his autobiography. He replied (I give his exact words): “A man cannot tell the whole truth about himself, even if convinced that what he writes will never be seen by others. I have personally satisfied myself of that, and have got others to test it also. You cannot make bare your private soul and look at it, you are too ashamed, it is too disgusting. For that reason I confine myself to drawing the portraits of others.”

Have you felt like that? It may be so, and you have been trying to improve your condition and life, honestly, sincerely; but it has been in vain, the foul water has broken out from the corrupted spring within you when you least wanted or expected it, and your life is a record of broken resolutions and frustrated hopes. What will you do? It is worse than useless to hide the truth from yourself, that would be self-deception, and you cannot deceive others, for they know you by what they know of themselves, or they think they do; least of all can you deceive God. Keep not silent as to this matter before Him, tell your inward grief to God, lay bare your soul before Him, even though the very thought of its corruption disgusts you. David, the great king, said: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my roaring all the day long; my moisture was turned into the drought of summer.” But he saw how foolish he was in that, and he did the right thing at last, for he added: “I acknowledged my transgression, and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.” Happy David!

Yes, Naaman was a leper. Fix your eye upon him, for in this respect he is a figure of you as you now appear before God, and it may be that in his story you may learn the way of cleansing and healing.

In Naaman’s household there was a little captive maid. Torn from her home by the ruthless Syrians, she shone as a light in her strange and heathen surroundings. Not hatred but compassion filled her young soul, and she was intelligent, too. She knew of the power of the man of God, the prophet in Israel, and so confident of this was she that she bore testimony to it unwaveringly. She knew also the great need in her master’s life, and she yearned to bring these two together — the prophet with his power and grace, and the leper with his corruption and misery. Hear her words: “Would God my master were with the prophet that is in Samaria, he would recover him of his leprosy.” She was a great evangelist, for of a truth the evangelist needs only to know these two things that she knew — and to know them with conviction and with soul-yearning that others should know them too — the need and the Man Who can meet it.

About a century ago there lived an Irish gentleman named Gideon Ouseley, who was greatly used of God in the blessing of many in his native Ireland, and this was his equipment for the work. In a dream one night he thought he heard the Lord say to him, “Gideon, I want you to preach the Gospel;” and he answered, “Lord, I cannot preach.” But the Lord replied, “You know what is wrong with men.” “Yes, Lord, I know that,” he answered; “they are sinners as I was.” “And you know the remedy, don’t you?” “Oh, yes, blessed be Thy Name, I know the remedy; it is Thyself and Thy Blood.” Then said the Lord, “You know the disease and the remedy. Go and tell them of both.”

This little maid must have been as consistent as she was compassionate and confident, for her word was believed, and what she said reached the ears of the king, and he, like his great servant, was a man of decision. There was no time to be lost. Naaman must go at once, with all the pomp and parade that befitted his fame, and with a fee large enough to satisfy the most grasping of healers. Naaman was a great man, and Syria was a great country, and now was the time to impress this upon their poor and despised Israelitish neighbours. When Naaman moved out of Damascus with his imposing retinue, most of the people, dazzled by the splendour of it all, would forget the chief fact of all, that Naaman was a leper, and probably that is how he wished it to be. How pride makes men push their sinfulness into the background and parade their wealth and works, their goodness and their charity, their amiability and their religion, the high place they hold in the estimation of their friends or the higher place that they hold in their own. None of these things really count in this supreme question, the great outstanding fact for every unregenerate man is that he is a sinner, as Naaman was a leper. Splendid externals cannot alter that fact.
“And facts are chiels that winna ding,
   And daurna be disputed.”

And this is the most obstinate, unbeatable, and least to be disputed fact of all: You are a sinner!

We pass over the folly of the king in sending the leper to the wrong person. He only did what thousands are doing to-day. His folly was that of inattention and ignorance, and perhaps pride. He had not given sufficient heed to the words of the little maid, and this was inexcusable in such a grave matter. Yet it is a common fault. We preach Christ and Him crucified as the one Hope of sinners. We tell them plainly, and the Word of God is our authority, that there is no salvation in any other, that none other Name is given under Heaven whereby they must be saved, and they appear to agree with us, and yet go off to other ways and seek through other names the blessing they need. The prophet was little known and perhaps less respected in those days, and the Name of Jesus is not honoured to-day, He is still despised and rejected of men. They think they can do without Him, and win their way to salvation by other means. This is the popular way, alas! the way that seems right to men; but the end thereof are the ways of death. But the king’s mistake served to bring into striking evidence the only hope for lepers. “Am I God, to kill and to make alive?” cried the king of Israel, when he read the letter from the king of Syria. But he ought to have known the way, he ought to have been able to instruct this heathen soldier in the way of truth. It was a shame to the king of the land that he knew less than the little captive maid. “Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes?” said Elisha; “LET HIM COME NOW TO ME, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.” Enemy of God’s land and people though he has been, pagan though he is, let the poor dying leper come to me, and he shall know! How forcibly we are reminded of the words of our Lord. “Come to Me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

So Naaman came with his horses and his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. What a sensation his coming must have caused in that neighbourhood, but Elisha was not elated. He may have thought that the prophet would have felt highly honoured to have such a visitor at his door, and he certainly expected a great deal of ceremony, but he had to learn that his thoughts were all wrong, and that it was only as a leper that Elisha would deal with him. He would have nothing to say to the great soldier, his honours were of no account in his eyes; but if he would stand forth stripped of all his trappings, a leper, dependent entirely upon the grace and mercy of God, then he would heal him and bless him. It was a hard lesson for a proud man to learn, almost too hard a lesson for Naaman. He resented the prophet’s message. “Go and wash in Jordan seven times.” In his own land there were nobler rivers, according to his estimation of things, than all the waters of Israel, if to wash was the way of cleansing, he would wash in them and be clean. He was enraged. Up to that day he had always been treated as a great man, and never as a leper. It was unbearable; the insult should be avenged. So he turned away to go back to his own land, with his pride, his gold and silver and raiment and his leprosy

But God seems to give an angry man another chance. It was so with Cain, and in the case of the elder brother in the story of the prodigal. Here the servants of Naaman, who surely loved their master, pleaded with him with rare tact, and prevailed. Naaman, a humbler and a wiser man, obeyed the word of the prophet, and went down into Jordan seven times, and his flesh became as the flesh of a child. He was cleansed and healed.

Now, where do you stand? I address myself to those who have sincerely hoped that their “works of righteousness” would cover their leprosy, who have thought that they could cover their soul-sickness by their endeavours and religion, or who have thought that because the disease of their souls is not so manifest as in some others, they would pass muster at last. Where do you now stand? You do not deny that you are a sinner, but does the word, “Go and wash,” offend you? Be assured, there is no other way. If God had bid you do some great thing you would have done it. But nothing you can do can heal your soul or cleanse your sin. “Go and wash” is the word and the way. It is the way for all, and no matter how much a man may resent it in his pride, God can make no exception in His case, for there is no difference in His sight, all have sinned. But where can a sinner wash and be clean? Jordan, as we have already learnt, figures for us death. And it is only through death — Christ’s death that any can have healing and cleansing. Have you not read those great words: “By His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5), and those others in the New Testament: “The Blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses from all sin” (1 John 1:7)?