I would rather see people get angry than see them go to sleep. I would rather see a man get as angry as possible at any utterance of mine than to see I had sent him to sleep. When a man is asleep there is no chance of reaching him, but if he is angry we may get at him. It is a good thing for a man to get angry sometimes, for when he cools off he generally listens to reason.
So Naaman’s servant came to him and said: “Suppose Elisha had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?”
Probably, had Elisha told Naaman to take cod liver oil for ten years, he would have willingly done it. If he had told Naaman he wanted as much money as the leper brought along, that would have been all right. But the idea of literally doing nothing—just to go down into Jordan and wash himself! It was so far below his calculations that he thought he was being imposed upon by some charlatan.
But Naaman’s sensible servant said to him: “If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? Hadn’t you just better go down and wash in Jordan?”
Possibly, Naaman answered: “If I go down into Jordan and am not cured, what will my enemies say of me when I get back to Damascus?”
But he was influenced by the servant, and he went. That was one good point in Naaman’s character—he was influenced by an humble messenger. A good many people will not accept a messenger unless he is refined and cultured and educated. But it is the message you want—not the messenger. It would be the message I would want. And so it was with Naaman.
She was a little Hebrew girl who first told him to go to Samaria, and now he was told to wash by his servant. So Naaman goes down and dips into the waters. The first time he rose he said: “I would just like to see how much my leprosy has gone.” He looks, but not a bit has left him. “Well, I am not going to get rid of my leprosy in this way; this is absurd.”
But the servant persisted. “Do just as the man of God tells you; obey him.”
And this is just what we are told to do in the Scriptures—to obey Him. The first thing we have to learn is obedience. Disobedience was the pit Adam fell into, and we must get out of it by obedience.
Well, Naaman goes into the water a second time. If some Chicago Christians had been there, they would certainly have asked, sneeringly: “Well, how do you feel now?”