The Way of Naaman's Salvation, Part 1

Driving home: God again and again in the history of redemption delights to set forth spiritual realities in the theater of material and tangible realities.

God uses material and tangible realities (like Naaman's physical healing) as a 'theater' to display spiritual truths (like salvation), accommodating Himself to human weakness.

Now tonight, we return to the passage to consider its contents in greater detail, but with one great concern as the organizing principle of our study, namely, we will consider the passage as demonstrating the way of salvation in the events that occurred with respect to Naaman the leper being healed of his leprosy. God again and again in the history of redemption delights to set forth spiritual realities in the theater of material and tangible realities. A man's sinnerhood, forgiveness, the work of the Spirit, faith, and these other graces that lie at the heart of all true and saving religion, ...

6:17 - 7:42 Read in full sermon

Driving home: God again and again in the history of redemption delights to set forth spiritual realities in the theater of material and tangible realities.

Jesus' physical feeding of the 5,000 became the platform for His declaration that He is the bread of life, illustrating how physical acts point to spiritual truths.

You'll remember this with regard to the feeding of the 5,000 in John's Gospel. Our Lord's multiplying of the bread and then feeding men physically became the platform of His declaration that He was the bread of life and that salvation was like that activity of eating. And He said, Whosoever eats of My...

7:42 - 8:06 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Here was the man who in spite of all of the privileges and all of the honor that would come to him in his place as a military leader, he is afflicted with that living death, called leprosy.

Leprosy is described as a 'living death,' a gradual dissolution of the body while alive, to emphasize its insidious and hopeless nature, mirroring the spiritual death of sin.

Here was the man who in spite of all of the privileges and all of the honor that would come to him in his place as a military leader, he is afflicted with that living death, called leprosy. That frightening disease that by degrees eats away a man's very flesh so that in a sense the grave is brought into his own present existence. What usually awaits the grave, the gradual dissolution of the body as decay sets in in the earth, in a very real sense you see, leprosy is that very process of the process going, going on while a man is yet alive. And so this mighty man of valor is afflicted with this...

11:23 - 12:50 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: This section details Naaman's high status and valor, contrasted sharply with his incurable leprosy, which rendered all his worldly advantages useless. This desperate condition…

The pagan idea of having many gods is likened to wanting multiple parachutes when jumping from a plane, highlighting the human tendency to seek backup plans rather than trusting one true God.

You don't want to be caught with just one parachute jumping out of the plane. You want a backup chute and another backup to your backup chute. Well, you see, all of this was strange to the mind of Naaman. But something disposed him to listen to the report, to be willing to make a long journey into that strange land, and after he is, in a sense, put off by the despair of the king, to go and stand before the house of Elisha to come as a suppliant, and when he is insulted, and for a time he even blows his cork, loses his cool, and is about to blow the whole thing, he's willing to reconsider.

18:17 - 18:56 Read in full sermon

The point: If you have no raw nerve endings crying out in the felt misery of sinnerhood, don't pride yourself; weep for yourself and consider your true state before God.

A missionary friend's account of lepers inadvertently burning their hands because nerve endings were dead illustrates how sin dulls the soul's nerve endings, preventing awareness of its own malady.

Well, my friend, if your heart does not echo an amen from the depths of its beat, if it is not a matter of felt consciousness, don't pride yourself, for in you one of the tragedies of at least leprosy in its modern manifestations, and there's no evidence that modern leprosy is precisely the same as the leprosy described in the Bible, but I'll never forget a missionary friend of mine telling me the tragedy that he saw in working with lepers. One of them is this, that when the nerves die and all feeling is gone, the ability to have a proper sense of nourishing and cherishing one's own flesh is g...

26:45 - 27:52 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Shifting to God's activity, Martin highlights how God sovereignly brings a message of hope to Naaman through a little captive maid. This report, based on Elisha's proven identity…

Martin dramatizes the conversation between Naaman and his wife about the little maid's report, emphasizing the unexpected source of hope and Naaman's initial resistance to anything from Israel.

And the Syrians had gone out in bands, we would call them commando units, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maiden, and she waited on Naaman's wife. And she said unto her mistress, Would that my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria, then would he recover him of his leprosy. Now can you feel something of the tremendous drama of this situation? Naaman, mighty man of valor, Naaman, confidant of the king, having gone through all the rigmarole of the pagan ritual and having gone through all of the incantations of the priests and all the rest, one day his wife ...

31:04 - 32:13 Read in full sermon

Driving home: For a sinner simply to know something of what he is as a sinner and to have no word of a way of deliverance, I say, is to bring near the despair and the terrors of hell and to bring it into the very present moment.

The message of hope brought by the little maid is likened to a 'star of hope' breaking upon the 'midnight' of Naaman's despair, illustrating the sudden light of the gospel.

And now convinced of his need, he's prepared to listen as God brings to his ears this little ray of hope. No longer does he need to stare up into a sky that has no stars. No moonlight but is nothing but dense, deep, inky blackness. A star of hope breaks upon the midnight of that sky.

33:32 - 34:03 Read in full sermon

The point: Be encouraged in your simple, artless, unprogrammed witness, knowing that God can use it powerfully.

Martin speculates that the little maid's witness was spontaneous, perhaps while dusting or on a tea break, flowing from a heart full of Jehovah, illustrating natural, unprogrammed evangelism.

Well, I wonder if she was in Mrs. Naaman's bedroom doing the dusting that day, and because she was a true Israelite and her mind and heart were full of thoughts of Jehovah, the God of His people. While her hands were busy, her mind was full of the glory and power of Jehovah, the God who had sent His true prophet there to Israel, that prophet in Samaria, Elisha. And you see, this was not an artificial, structured, wooden kind of technique, saying, Now Mrs. Naaman, can you sit down for ten minutes while I give you four things or ten things God wants you to know? Maybe they had just broken for mo...

40:20 - 41:12 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not try to manufacture 'shekels of holy grief' or bribe God; come naked, stripped, and empty-handed, clinging only to the cross.

The idea of trying to 'manufacture some shekels of holy grief and holy mourning' is used to describe attempts to earn salvation through self-effort or penitence, which God shatters.

Now this is precisely the problem with some of you. You're waiting until you can manufacture some shekels before you'll ever believe God will graciously heal you of the leprosy of your sin. And so in the mint of your own endeavor you're trying to produce some shekels of holy grief and holy mourning and holy seeking and if only you can bring a handful of the shekels of your own penitence and your own seeking and your own mourning, you think then God will wave his hand and say, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. And you've heard from this pulpit again and again and again and again and oh that God w...

50:47 - 51:48 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not try to manufacture 'shekels of holy grief' or bribe God; come naked, stripped, and empty-handed, clinging only to the cross.

The hymn lyric 'Nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling' is quoted to illustrate the posture of coming to Christ empty-handed, relying solely on His mercy.

Now this is precisely the problem with some of you. You're waiting until you can manufacture some shekels before you'll ever believe God will graciously heal you of the leprosy of your sin. And so in the mint of your own endeavor you're trying to produce some shekels of holy grief and holy mourning and holy seeking and if only you can bring a handful of the shekels of your own penitence and your own seeking and your own mourning, you think then God will wave his hand and say, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. And you've heard from this pulpit again and again and again and again and oh that God w...

50:47 - 51:48 Read in full sermon