Wash and Be Clean (2 Kings 5:1-14)

“Wash and Be Clean”
2 Kings 5:1-14

INTRODUCTION:
Three principles work to make our free enterprise system successful and the envy of the world: division of labor, gains from that division, and gains from trade. I could learn to do my own plumbing and electrical work. But my mind is not geared toward that nor my interests; so, I focus on what I am good at and hire someone else who is good at other things. That’s division of labor.

When we divide up labor so that each of us does what we are good at, we are able to excel. That’s “gains from division.” Then, we gain by trading our skills. I preach for the plumber and electrician’s brother (which helps their relationship) so they contribute to my livelihood. When they service my home, I either reimburse them for my time or recommend their services to others. In 1776, the Scottish economist Adam Smith called the “give-and-take” of these principles in a free society the “Invisible Hand.”

A couple of years ago, Thomas Thwaites decided he wanted to dramatize the power of “gains from division of labor” in a striking way. One choice he could have made was to pay a store $20, to be divided up among all those people who had specialized at various tasks to make a toaster. Instead, Thwaites decided he would make his own. It took him nine months, traveling 1,900 miles, and $1,837.36 to buy the raw materials to produce his own toaster. But, even after that, he acknowledged that he only got warm bread and not toast (The Toaster Project).

You and I cannot pay the penalty for our sins. Not only are we not specialized for that; we are not even qualified for that great task. Moses tried to pay the penalty for Israel’s sin, after they made the golden calf, but God stated a profound spiritual truth: “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book” (Exo. 32:33).

That fundamental spiritual law makes two things necessary: 1.) The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God-in-the-flesh, who knew no sin to become sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21); 2.) Our immersion / unity with Christ in baptism to take advantage of that sacrifice (Rom. 6:3-4).

We can’t pay the penalty for sin. But we can obey Jesus Christ and be freed from sin. I want to begin our study in 2 Kings 5.

THE WITNESS OF A CHILD - 5:1-5:
Verse 1 introduces us to a military leader named Naaman. Naaman was a great warrior for the nation of Aram; your translation might have “Syria.” Their capital was Damascus. Israel had had troubles with Aram all the way back to the days of King Solomon. In an ironic choice, God has the Arameans conquer Israel in the days of King Jehoram to punish Israel for worshipping false gods, including the idols of the Arameans!

Naaman, being a great warrior, no doubt led many of those campaigns against Israel. But, there was a problem. Naaman was a leper. The biblical word for leprosy included many different kinds of skin diseases. Some of those diseases were extremely contagious and dangerous. Today, we limit the word “leprosy” to that type of skin condition. None of the gods of the Arameans could cure Naaman of his leprosy; you know he tried.

But there was a little girl (we have no idea how old she was) who was taken captive by the Arameans and, by God’s providential love for all mankind, she ended up being a servant-girl for Naaman's wife. That little girl could not do everything, but she could do something: she recommended to her master, Naaman’s wife, that Naaman go see the prophet of the God of Israel! All of us are specialized at doing something and the prophet of God, Elisha, was specialized at presenting the message of God.

So, Naaman talked to his superior, probably the king of Aram, who gave him permission to go and even sent a gift to entice the prophet to do something for Naaman. This gift is exorbitant! Ten talents of silver equals 30,000 shekels of silver which was about 750 pounds of silver! At $14.65 an ounce, this gift of silver would be worth $7 million today! To look at this another way… a typical salary for your average Israelite at that time would be about 10 silver shekels a year! So, it would take the average person 3,000 years to save up 30,000 shekels!

Six thousand shekels of gold… would be about 150 pounds of gold. At a price of $1,657 per ounce, this gift would be the equivalent of $4 million in today’s dollars. To give you a different perspective one shekel of gold could buy one ton of grain! As to the ten changes of clothes… in a day when clothes were made by hand, from the beginning of the process unto the end… ten changes of clothes also represented a sizable investment of time, energy, and skill, plus the money to purchase the raw materials.

Yes, this was an exorbitant gift which the king of Aram was offering to the prophet of Israel’s God to do something to cure his military commander. Naaman took the gifts and some servants and headed south to Samaria.

THE SPECIALIZATION OF GOD - 5:6-9:
Naaman arrived in Samaria and presented himself to the king of Israel with the letter written by the king of Aram. The king of God’s people is not a spiritual man. He does recognize, as all people did, that it would take divine help to cure a man of leprosy. But, the king of Israel does not have a good relationship with the prophet in Israel, Elisha, because the king of Israel practices idolatry. King Jehoram blows things out of proportion and accuses the king of Aram of seeking further war with Israel!

But, the prophet, Elisha, hears that the king tore his clothes out of fear of another war with Aram. So, Elisha sends a message to King Jehoram and says, “Calm down. Just send Naaman to me and he will know that God has a prophet, a spokesman in Israel.”

God specializes in cures. Back in Exodus 15:26, God told Israel, “I, the Lord, am your healer.” God specializes in cures, especially spiritual cures, the spiritual virus we know as sin. In fact, God cured, in Bible times, physically so people would trust and obey Him when it comes to the spiritual cures.

Naaman comes to Elisha (verse 9) with his great entourage - his horses, his chariots, his servants… can you imagine this huge group of people coming to the small hut in which the prophet of God lived?

THE POWER OF OBEDIENCE - 5:10-14:
Elisha, to test the humility of Naaman and perhaps to guard himself from the temptations that those expensive gifts would give him, does not even come out to meet Naaman. Elisha sends his servant, Gehazi, out to meet Naaman.

The command of God was extremely simple: “Go wash in the Jordan river seven times, and your flesh will be clean.”

Naaman responds with the stereo-typical way we often associate with military officers. He was arrogant, cocky, and brash. He was furious because he thought Elisha would come out personally, and do some kind of ritual, some kind of incantation that Naaman was familiar with among his pagan neighbors. Elisha would call on his God with special mantras and wave his hands over the leprosy and Naaman would be cured.

In fact, Naaman reasons with his “worldly wisdom,” that the rivers in Aram, in Damascus, were cleaner than the Jordan! He could immerse himself in those instead of the dirty filth of the Jordan! It was extremely unusual in the ANE not to have reciting of incantations and elaborate gestures as a part of a healing ritual. You know, even today, people believe that worship really needs to be more kinesthetic than what we typically have in worship - raising of the hands, swaying back and forth, you know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen it. Certainly that type of behavior is found among pagan worship but not in Christian worship in the Bible.

Anyway, Naaman went away in a huff and puff, in a rage. Thankfully, and again ironically, his lowly servants have more common sense than the great military general himself. Notice how respectfully they talk to him, “My father,” they say, “if the prophet had told you to do something great, wouldn’t you have done it? Why not do the simple thing: ‘Wash and be clean.’” “Out of the mouths of babes!”

Verse 14 shows the power of obedience: Naaman went down to the Jordan river and he dipped himself seven times, just like the prophet of God said. You know that with each dip, Naaman looked at himself to see if he was clean or not. Perhaps after the fourth, or fifth, or sixth plunge, he was asking himself what was he really doing!? But when he completed his obedience, when he did just what the prophet of God told him to do, Naaman was cured of his leprosy.

Of course, the power was not in the waters of the Jordan River. The power of was not in Elisha, the prophet of God. He was just the spokesman. The power to heal was in Jehovah God, attached to the condition of obedience: dip seven times in the river. God is specialized to heal. Naaman could only offer complete obedience.

The story does not end there with Naaman; this afternoon, read the rest of the story. But, I want to shift to some Christian teachings for the rest of our time together this morning. However, the one thing I want to point out before we leave 2 Kings 5 is this: the reason why Naaman’s story is told in the Bible is because we see here God’s miraculous power work on someone who was not an Israelite! That’s the power of this story! Naaman was a Gentile and there were lots of other lepers in Israel at that time. But Naaman was the one who came to God to be healed and who obeyed God and was healed! That’s the power of this story in its 2 Kings context (cf. Luke 4:24-27).

Now, let’s talk about getting rid of this virus we call “sin” and how Jesus Christ was qualified, specialized, to take away that sin…

THE WITNESS OF AN APOSTLE - Romans 6:1-5:
First, let’s take a look at this text. Paul tells us that, as Christians, we do not live in sin because we have died to sin (6:2). When did we die to sin? When we were baptized into Christ because we were baptized into His death.
We were buried with Him when we were baptized (6:4), buried into His death. In that way, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious Father, we, too, can become new, with flesh cleaned from the leprosy of sin, with souls cleaned from the virus called sin.
Notice in verse 5 that when we are baptized, we are “united with Christ.”

Paul himself was baptized for the forgiveness of sins (incidentally, in Damascus!) and he tells us his story back in Acts 22. A Jewish Christian, named Ananias, had come to Paul to give him his eyesight back so that Paul would have confidence in the message that Ananias was giving him. After Paul received his eyesight back, Ananias told Paul: “Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (22:16).

There are, unfortunately, people today who get so mad when you tell them they need to be immersed in water for the forgiveness of their sins. They have been deceived by people who tell them that “baptism for forgiveness of sins” is a work to earn salvation and you can’t earn salvation, therefore baptism is not necessary. Some have been taught that baptism puts you into a certain denominational church but baptism itself is not necessary to go to heaven. But both of those ideas are false. They are not biblical. It’s like Naaman going to the pagan priests back in Damascus.

THE SPECIALIZATION OF CHRIST - 1 Peter 3:20-22:
But the specialization of Christ is that He takes away sins when we obey Him! Before we talk about obedience, let’s talk about another passage that discusses baptism: 1 Peter 3.

This whole context deals with people criticizing Christians for living different lives (3:13). In the middle of the coronavirus quarantine, perhaps someone has asked you: “Why aren’t you afraid to die?” Whether its persecution or a pandemic, Peter says in verse 15 that we Christians need to be ready to give people an answer. The one-word answer is: hope. That hope is joined together with a “good conscience.”

Let’s talk about the “hope” first. In verse 18, Peter says Christ suffered (the Greek word; not “died” because “suffering” fits the theme of Peter’s letter) for sins to bring us to God. There’s the source of our hope! Christ has brought us to God!

Just as Noah’s hope in God led him to obey the command to build the ark, our hope in Christ leads us to be baptized into Christ. In verse 21, Peter clearly says that “baptism now saves us.” As with Naaman in the Jordan River, it is not the water itself; Peter says baptism is not the “removal of dirt from the flesh.” But, and here’s where the “good conscience” comes into play…

Peter says that baptism is “an appeal to God for a good conscience” (notice) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is now at the right hand of God, having “gone into heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been subjected to Him” (3:22).

When we are baptized into Christ, we can have a good, pure conscience because we have done what God told us to do. Since this is “Easter” Sunday, you were wondering if I was going to talk about the resurrection, weren’t you? When Jesus rose from the dead, He brought diseases under His power. The coronavirus will not stop us from going to heaven. Cancer cannot stop us from going to heaven. The diseases that take our physical life are under Christ’s control because He reigns over them in heaven. That’s why Christians are not afraid to die.

THE POWER OF OBEDIENCE:
It was the death of Christ that paid the penalty for sin. The apostle John writes in Revelation 1:5 that we are “released from our sins by the blood of Christ.” Christ’s blood was shed on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins (Matt. 26:28). Christ’s death on the cross paid the penalty for sins. Christ’s miraculous resurrection from the dead proves to us that He is telling us the truth: His death was for the forgiveness of our sins.

Now the command to us is to repent of our sins and be baptized into Christ for the forgiveness of our sins (Acts 2:38). The power is not in the water; it’s not in the preacher. The power is in Christ’s hands to take away sin. All we can do is obey what Christ commands us to do.

Take home message: Christ’s resurrection from the dead was to convince us that His blood washes our sins away. Be washed in His blood through baptism ASAP!