Rev. David Holwick
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
June 6, 1993
2 Kings 5:1-18
NAAMAN: A QUEST FOR CLEANNESS
I. People and appearances.
A. Newsweek and report of teenagers getting plastic surgery.
B. Greatest national disgrace - baldness.
1) Cover it with a rug, woven or glued. (Michael Milkin)
2) Rub in Rogaine to get peach fuzz.
3) Spray paint to cover the gaps. (hold up spray paint)
C. People make millions on these attempts to cover up appearances.
1) Tony Campolo:
"God gave each of us only so many hormones. If you
want to use yours to grow hair, that's your business."
D. The things we worry about are probably the last thing on God's
mind.
1) Naaman was in turmoil over his physical appearance.
1) What he really needed was a total change from within.
II. Story of Naaman is about a proud person who wanted to be healed.
A. What Naaman had going for him.
1) High position - leader of Syrian army. 5:1
2) Held in esteem by the king.
3) Held in esteem by others for being a winner.
B. One thing stood against him - leprosy.
1) Some lepers were isolated and reviled.
2) Naaman would appear to have a lesser form, perhaps a
persistent skin rash.
a) He was not shunned.
b) Yet he was willing to go to great extremes to heal it.
C. It's those little things we lack that torment us.
1) Our obsession with weight and looks.
2) Low self esteem: We always see ourselves as a loser.
3) We change the little things, and find something new.
(Michael Jackson)
III. The man's plan.
A. Naaman finds out about a new possibility of solving his problem.
1) A Jewish slave becomes part of his household. 5:2
B. He pulls strings. 5:4-5
1) He gets a letter of recommendation from the king of Syria.
2) He takes a pile of money and gifts.
a) (Compare extravagant amount with exorbitant costs today)
C. He goes straight to the king of Israel.
1) The king is distraught. Trying to make an incident? 5:7
a) Letter says nothing about the prophet.
b) But king also says nothing about God. (idolater)
2) Elisha hears about it, and summons king. 5:8
a) Evangelistic opportunity.
b) This foreigner will know God works through this Jewish
prophet.
IV. God's plan.
A. Naaman's impressive entourage arrives at the prophet's home. 5:9
1) Elisha doesn't even bother coming out. He sends a messenger.
2) Message: Bathe seven times in Jordan River.
B. Naaman is royally ticked. 5:11
1) He is a great man. Where's the respect?
2) Why travel all this way just for Jewish water?
3) He expected a religious ritual from the prophet himself.
C. His servants' good advice - "What have you got to lose?" 5:13
1) He has to go down to the river and take off all his armor.
a) He has tried everything else.
b) People see what he really is.
c) Finally, he is exposed before everyone, with nothing to
commend him but the plan of a prophet.
2) He comes God's way and in complete honesty receives the
gift of healing.
a) Cleansed implies restoration to community.
D. He tries to pay for the healing. 5:15
1) No one will take his money. God's miracles can't be bought.
2) Naaman acknowledges the God of Israel.
a) He will worship only God, on special Jewish soil.
b) He apologizes for appearance of idolatry. 5:18
E. Naaman's change was inward more than outward. 5:21
1) When Gehazi approaches him, he gets down out of his chariot
to greet him, showing humility.
2) He exhibits a generous spirit.
V. Like Naaman, we expect the solutions to our problems to be grand
and all-consuming.
A. Our pride demands huge solutions because our problems must be
huge.
1) People discuss problems and ill-health, and it's a competition
to see who is worse off.
2) We expend much to please God. Self-denial, guilt...
B. All that God demands of us is humble honesty.
1) You must recognize your condition before God.
The greatest evangelist in the 1700's was an Englishman
named George Whitefield.
Benjamin Franklin became a good friend, and estimated he
could preach to 30,000 people and be heard by all.
He was so successful in America that the revival he started
has been called "The Great Awakening" ever since.
Common people loved him, but he also evangelized the
rich and powerful.
He converted the countess of Huntingdon, but the duchess
of Buckingham said he was "repulsive."
She said, "It is monstrous to be told that you have a
heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl upon
the earth.
This is highly offensive and insulting, ... and so much
at variance with high rank and good breeding."
#2520
2) Humility before God goes with humility with people.
a) Christians need to be more open in relationships.
b) Being phony isolates you.
VI. God still cleans people today.
Rev. Ralph Wood was a seminary professor.
A former student, who had become a chaplain, invited him to a
special baptism in a prison.
It would be a small affair- Wood's presence would double the
congregation.
The criminal was in prison not for stealing cars or selling dope but
for the crime our society is perhaps least prepared to pardon.
In a drunken stupor this man had molested his ten-year-old daughter.
Child molesters are the most despised of all criminals and that
their fellow inmates call them "short eyes."
Convicts understand, as many of us do not, that no human motive -
however sinister - could prompt such an act --
It must spring from a blindness made all the more terrible for being
self-inflicted.
Wood's suspicions were instant and numerous.
Was this a convenient jail-house conversion that might lead to a
quicker parole?
A sentimental turning to God because there was nowhere else to turn?
A desperate search for pastoral acceptance when society's rejection
was sure to come?
The Baptist pastor told Rev. Wood something that caused him to doubt
his doubts, however.
He said this criminal did not make his profession of faith amid
abject panic.
His conversion was not prompted by the dread that, unless he
reformed his life, no one - least of all his family - would ever
accept him again.
The real turn had come several days earlier when the man's wife and
daughter had visited the prison in order to forgive him.
It was only then - when freed from the burden of his sin by God's
humanly mediated grace - that the molester got on his knees and
begged for the mercy of both God and his family.
Surely, Wood thought, this is the true order of salvation: our
repentance is always the consequence of, not the condition of
divine grace.
A guard escorted the prisoner from behind a fence topped with razor
wire.
His family was not able to attend because their broken-down car had
failed yet again.
There were just the three of them, with the guard looking curiously
on.
To the strumming of the chaplain's guitar, they sang a croaky version
of "Amazing Grace."
They did not hesitate to declare themselves wretches.
After a pastoral prayer, the barefoot prisoner stepped into a wooden
box that had been lined with a plastic sheet and filled with water.
It looked like a large coffin, and for good reason.
This was no warmed-and-tiled First Baptist bath, with its painted
River Jordan winding pleasantly into the distance.
This was the place of death: the watery chaos from which God
graciously made the world and to which, in rightful wrath, he
almost returned it.
Pronouncing the words of baptism, the pastor lowered the new
Christian down into the water to be buried with Christ and then
raised him up to life eternal.
Though the water was cold, the man was not eager to get out.
Instead, he stood there weeping for joy.
When at last he left the baptismal box, Wood thought he would hurry
away to change into something dry.
He was mistaken. "I want to wear these clothes as long as I can,"
he said.
"In fact, I wish I never had to take a shower again."
"I'm now a free man," he declared. "I'm not impatient to leave
prison because this wire can't shackle my soul.
I know that I deserved to come here, to pay for what I did.
But I also learned here that Someone else has paid for all my
crimes -- my sins against God."
Before returning to the prison yard, the new Christian made a final
affirmation.
He said that he had once doubted he could ever go back to his home
town, so great were the shame and scandal of what he had done.
But now he was determined to return there, to take up his work as a
carpenter, and to become a faithful father and husband.
More important by far, he declared his hope to join a local church
and to live out his new life in Christ as a public witness to the
transforming power of God's grace.
Perhaps this man's conversion is a sham.
He may return to his old habits.
But it is wrong to insist - as many voices would insist- that this
man's family should never have forgiven him, that to do so was to
sanction his violence, indeed to collude in rape.
This mother and daughter brought a dead man back to life.
Their act of forgiveness opened him to the one reality by which our
common slavery to sin can be broken: the power of salvation in
Jesus Christ.
#2500
A. Have you been cleaned by Jesus Christ?
B. Is there anything you need to "take off" to be truly humble?
***************************************************
Naaman outline from Calvin Miller, "Leadership," IV:2, Spring 1983,
p. 12 ff.
