Gleanings From Elisha: His Life and Miracles by Arthur W. Pink

Author:Arthur W. Pink
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Presbyterian, Christianity, General, Religion, Theology, Calvinist
ISBN: 9788997762378
Publisher: PRISBRARY
Published: 2012-06-17T22:00:00+00:00

Tenth Miracle—Too Simple A Remedy - Chapter 17

In Our Last Chapter we dwelt mainly upon the requirement which was made upon Naaman when he reached the prophet’s abode: "Go and wash in Jordan seven times," seeking to supply answers to, Why was he so enjoined? What was the implication in his case? What beating has such a demand upon men generally today? What is its deeper significance?

We saw that it was a requirement which revealed the uselessness and worthlessness of Naaman’s attempt to purchase his healing. We showed that it was a requirement which demanded the setting aside of his own will and submitting himself to the will of Israel’s God. We pointed out that it was a requirement which insisted that he must get down off his "high horse" (descend from his chariot), humbling and abasing himself. We intimated that it was a requirement which, typically, pointed to that amazing provision of the grace of God for spiritual lepers, namely, the "fountain opened... for sin and for uncleanness" (Zech. 13:1), and by which alone defilement can be cleansed and iniquities blotted out.

"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" (2 Kings 5:11). In his own country he was a person of consequence, a "great man," commander-in-chief of the army, standing high in the favor of the king. Here in Israel the prophet had treated him as a mere nobody, paying no deference to him, employing a servant to convey his instructions. Naaman was chagrined; his pride was wounded, and because his self-importance had not been ministered to, he turned away in a huff. Elisha’s "Go and wash in Jordan seven times" was not intended to signify the means of cure, but was designed as a test of his heart, and strikingly did it serve its purpose. It was a call to humble himself before Jehovah. It required the repudiation of his own wisdom and the renunciation of self-pleasing; and that is at direct variance with the inclinations of fallen human nature, so much so that no one ever truly complied with this just demand of God’s until He performed a miracle of grace in the soul.

Even the most humiliating providences are not sufficient in themselves to humble the proud heart of man and render him submissive to the divine will. One would think that a person so desperately afflicted as this poor leper would have been meekened and ready to comply with the prophet’s injunction. Ah, my reader, the seat of our moral disease lies too deep for external things to reach it. So fearful is the blinding power of sin that it causes its subjects to be puffed up with self-complacency and self-righteousness and to imagine they are entitled to favorable treatment even at the hands of the Most High. And does not that

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