WANTS TO GIVE MONEY
for his cure. How many people want to do the same nowadays. Why it would have spoiled the story of grace if the prophet had taken anything! You may give a thank-offering to God’s cause, not to purchase salvation, but because you are saved. The Lord doesn’t charge anything to save you. It is “without money and without price.” The prophet Elisha refused to take anything, and I can imagine no one felt more rejoiced than he did.
Naaman starts back to Damascus a very different man than he was when he left it. The dark cloud has gone from his mind; he is no longer a leper, in fear of dying from a loathsome disease. He lost the leprosy in Jordan when he did what the man of God told him; and if you obey the voice of God, even while I am speaking to you, the burden of your sins will fall from off you, and you shall be cleansed. It is all done through faith and obedience.
Let us see what Naaman’s faith led him to believe. “And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came, and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant.”
What I want particularly to call your attention to is the words
I KNOW.
There is no hesitation about it, no qualifying the expression. Naaman doesn’t now say, “I think”; no, he says, “I know there is a God who has power to cleanse the leprosy.”
Then there is another thought. Naaman left only one thing in Samaria, and that was his leprosy; and the only thing God wishes you to leave with Him is your sin. And yet it is the only thing you seem not to care about giving up.
“Oh,” you say, “I love leprosy, it is so delightful, I can’t give it up; I know God wants it, that He may make me clean. But I can’t give it up.”
Why, what downright madness it is for you to love leprosy; and yet that is your condition.