2 Kings 5:10-11

2 Kings 5:10

I. God's cure puts us all on one level. Naaman wanted to be treated like a great man that happened to be a leper; Elisha treated him like a leper that happened to be a great man. Christianity brushes aside all the surface differences of men, and goes in its treatment of them straight to the central likenesses, the things which in all mankind are identical. In wisdom and in mercy, Christianity deals with all men as sinners, needing chiefly to be healed of that disease.

II. God's cure puts the messengers of the cure well away in the background. 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 word of command and promise, and then to vanish.

III. God's cure wants nothing from you but to take it. 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."

A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth,Sept. 24th, 1885 (see also Sermons in Manchester,3rd series, p. 241).

References: 2 Kings 5:10. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 146. 2 Kings 5:11. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1173.