Jesus
If we only learn one thing from Naaman’s story it’s that our
need is far greater than men’s ability to fix.
If our greatest need is food, we just need to work harder in
agriculture and farming. If our greatest need is education and knowledge, then
off to school we go. If it’s an earthly enemy, we only need advanced tactics
and weapons. If it’s money, we just need the right career, or investment
strategy, or rich friend. But there are certain needs on this earth that have
long been incurable apart from God, and one that will remain so.
Leprosy and Sin
Leprosy was incurable until the 1940s. In the Old Testament
you can count healed lepers on two fingers, and those were the very specific
and clearly supernatural cases of Miriam and Naaman.
Leprosy is the perfect symbol for sin, it doesn’t kill
immediately, it is not even the cause of death, it just helps you to descend
deeper and deeper into pain and despair. The thief comes only to steal, kill,
and destroy (John 10:10). The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). When sin is
fully grown it brings forth death (James 1:15). The steps of temptation lead
down to death and hell (Proverbs 5:5).
Not only will leprosy eventually lead to your demise, it is
also highly contagious. It estranges you from people, and if and when you share
it with your loved ones it will curse them as well. The author of Hebrews
warns, “See to it…that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble,
and by it many become defiled…” (Hebrews 12:15). God “will by no means clear
the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the
children's children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:7). Sin
has defiled everything and everyone. Sin came into the world through one man,
and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned (Romans
5:12).
Leprosy is a vivid illustration of our spiritual need.
Consider yourself before you knew Christ. If you’re reading this and don’t know
Christ, especially pay attention to this next paragraph.
While your body may have looked intact, what did your soul
look like? Truth be told, your heart and mine was and is deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked; compared to my heart a leper could win a beauty
pageant. Can you think of anyone you hurt deeply? My life before Christ was
littered with people I tore down and/or buttressed in their idolatry. I
remember one girl in high school specifically I bullied to the point of tears.
I can think of many other people that I encouraged to sin. I can think of
friends who died far too young and I wonder why I didn’t care enough to reach
out. The swath of destruction in my path before meeting the Lord Jesus Christ is horrendous and I
proved the proverb, “in their paths are ruin and misery” (Romans 3:16, Isaiah
59:7).
Like leprosy, sin also destroys relationships. Jesus
promised, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”
(Matthew 5:9). A leper, if he cares about his friends, is going to keep a vast
distance from them to safeguard them. No more handshakes, no hugs, no pats on
the back, no more handholding.
Because of the impurity of the heart, the sinner becomes a
peacebreaker. Because of the impurity of the skin, the leper loses human
connection. And the ultimate relationship that suffers is with God. Jesus also
said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).
This is mirroring the language from Psalm 24, as well as other verses, and it
reminds us that heaven is holy, pure, undefiled, unstained, and perfect.
Imagine for a moment that the angels guarding the way to the
tree of life were to let a leper through the gates. What would happen to
heaven? Within days, if not moments, it wouldn’t be heaven any longer, it would
be just like earth. No, it would be worse because of the distance it had
fallen. Remember Penelope Judd from Shai Linne’s song? The angel bars the way when
she approaches the door,
A huge
angel answered, looked her up and down,
She knew something was wrong because he had a big frown,
‘Can I help you ma’am?’ ‘Yes, I’m here for the party!
I have invitation!’ He said, ‘I’m so sorry!
There’s no way that I can let you through these doors,
the King won’t let anyone dirty up His floors.’
How would you feel if you destroyed heaven? How would you
feel if you were a leper and you knew that your carelessness had led to someone
else contracting the disease? How much worse would you feel if you knew your
example or inaction had led someone to hell for eternity?
Pain and Conviction
“Feel” might not be the right word, beloved, because what
Hansen’s disease does is attack your nervous system. Often the damage you see
done to a leper’s body is self-imposed, they cut themselves and don’t realize
it, so no bandage was applied. They picked up a blazing hot pot from an oven
with bare hands. They scratched their nose too hard and too often. They didn’t
feel anything, but the damage was done. Dr. Paul Brand, world renowned leprosy
physician said, “I cannot think of a better gift I could give my leprosy
patients than pain.”
One of the great gifts God has given us is the gift of shame:
of “feeling” and understanding that we are guilty and in need of forgiveness. Naaman
had sought a cure for his skin condition, but in so doing he found what he
really needed: a cure for his soul condition. Naaman’s leprosy ended up being
the greatest thing that ever happened to him–eclipsed only by when his leprosy
was healed and he met the living God. Jesus sent his promised Holy Spirit to
convict us of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7–11).
What a joy when the Spirit shows us our need, because
Jesus tells us, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who
are sick. I came not to
call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). John Newton put it this way,
‘Twas
grace that taught my heart to fear,
and grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear,
the hour I first believed.
Apart from God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, do you see the despair
that a leper would feel? Hopeless, alone, shameful, destitute, forsaken by God
and afflicted: irredeemable.
Hope and Healing from Heaven
But then the God of heaven chose to send his only begotten
Son into the world. He prepared a body for him to wear–nothing majestic or
noteworthy–and Jesus dwelt among us and faced our infirmities and understood
our suffering.
And he touched lepers. He touched lepers regularly and on
purpose. The bacteria that causes leprosy doesn’t care if you touch a leper on
accident or on purpose, it is highly contagious and just cares about that
opportunity for transfer.
Haggai backed the priests into a conundrum by asking if a
holy garment could make food clean that was carried in it. The answer is
obviously not. But what if that garment has been on or touched a dead body and
food is carried in it? Then the food is obviously defiled (see Haggai 2:10–14).
I wouldn’t want to eat it, and obviously neither would you, and God certainly
wouldn’t accept it as holy. Men can defile everything, but they cannot make
anything holy or acceptable.
But Jesus is about to turn that principle upside down,
proving that he’s not just a good man, he is the holy God. When Moses
approached the burning bush, God’s presence had made even the dirt holy (Exodus
3:4–5). When Isaiah’s unclean lips were touched by a coal from God’s altar, his
lips were sanctified (Isaiah 6:6–7). And in the New Creation every cooking
vessel will be just as holy as if it were set-apart solely for temple use
(Zechariah 14:21).
Jesus remains holy, innocent, unstained, separated from
sinners, and exalted above the heavens (Hebrews 7:26), despite touching lepers
regularly and on purpose. When a woman with an incurable bleeding disorder
touched him, he was not diminished though something magnificent happened,
“Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.” His
holiness and his power were infinite, and his ability to heal, redeem, and
restore were likewise. The woman was healed in body and soul and Jesus was not defiled
in the least (Luke 8:43–48).
Jesus did not have to touch people to heal them, he could
say the word and they would be restored, made whole, and cleansed. A military
commander had recognized this when he saw the authority in Jesus but was sure he
was not worthy for Jesus to enter his house, so he asked Jesus to heal his
servant from a distance, which Jesus promptly did (Matthew 8:5–13). J. C. Ryle
summarized this story with, “Christ’s Word is as good as His presence.”
If Jesus didn’t have to be in close proximity to lepers, and
he certainly didn’t have to touch them, then why did he? Couldn’t he have just
said the word from his throne in heaven? Remember, no one touched lepers, they
had felt no embrace nor no human warmth because their condition had cut them
off from human interaction.
Even when they had the understanding as the military
commander from above, and knew Jesus just need to say a word, he still touched
them (Matthew 8:2–4). There were strict guidelines for what a leper was
supposed to do after cleansing, found in Leviticus 14:2–32, but it had lain
dormant and unused for thirteen-hundred years. If anyone needed proof that
Jesus was the Messiah, this should have been it, that healing for leprosy had
arrived. The healing of lepers was sent as a sign to John the Baptist as evidence
that Jesus was indeed the promised Messiah (Matthew 11:5). There is no evidence
that this passage had ever been obeyed by any leper or priest prior to Jesus
beginning his ministry.
The Healing of Body and Soul
If leprosy, the incurable disease, was being cured, what
else could be cured? Cancer, HIV/AIDS, dementia, diabetes, rabies; certainly,
all of these and more could be healed by Jesus. This is a light thing in the
sight of the Lord.
There is one tragic twist we must consider, illustrated
when, near the end of his worldly ministry, Jesus approached ten lepers in a
village near Samaria and they begged him to heal them. After he healed them, they
went off rejoicing, but only one returned to worship him (Luke 17:11–19).
Remember, Naaman sought the cure and found the Christ. It is
more than possible to receive the cure and miss the Christ, as evidenced by
these nine lepers. We’ve previously considered medical doctor D. Martin
Lloyd-Jones who left medicine because he wanted to see people truly saved and
transformed, and not merely healed to go back to a life of sin. The miracle of
modern medicine is healing bodies left and right while doing nothing for the
soul. HIV was a death sentence just thirty years ago, but now with the right
treatment it’s just a major inconvenience. What a shame that the body can be
healed and the soul left untouched.
So how do we get to the point of healing soul and body? It’s
not in taking care of people’s worldly needs, though there is certainly a place
for charity. Naaman needed nothing of material value, and if he did need
something, he would not have asked the Israelites. God is in the practice of
using all things for good to see his saints saved, he’s not willing that even a
single one of them should perish, but that they would all come to repentance.
God is using all things? All things. Even leprosy? Even leprosy. Remember,
Naaman
was as great as the world could make him, and yet the basest slave in Syria
would not change skins with him. ~ Matthew Henry
The Great Exchange
I don’t often argue with Matthew Henry, but I have to make
an exception: someone did switch places with Naaman.
Paul tells us, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew
no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians
5:21) and “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for
us…” (Galatians 3:13).
Peter tells us, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the
tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you
have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). And Isaiah drives the point home,
Surely
he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned–every one–to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. ~ Isaiah 53:4–6
Jesus loved Naaman in this way, that he went to a Roman
cross to be abandoned by God and men, to face the full consequences of sin and
to pay the wages of sin, so that we can receive eternal life in him (Romans
6:23). Surely the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus came
to give life and life abundantly (John 10:10). Horatius Bonar illustrates the
great exchange this way,
Upon a life I did not live, upon
a death I did not die, I stake my whole eternity.
For reasons that I cannot comprehend, God loved Naaman and
chose to save him despite his sins and idolatry. I find it equally perplexing
that only Naaman was healed of leprosy in the days of Elisha. God’s hand was
not shortened, but like Gehazi they would not seek the cure or the God who
heals.
Zechariah promised a day of mourning was coming and that “On
that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness” (Zechariah
13:1). That day happened two thousand years ago, and that fountain is still open
and cleansing today. Jesus doesn’t just cleanse the outside, he washes us in
our inward parts, he makes our hearts new, he transforms our souls, he makes us
new creations. He works in his greatest enemies, he worked in the Syrians, he
worked in the Assyrians, he worked in the Babylonians, and chiefest of all, he
works in you and I.
A leper was hopeless, but you can be a leper and know God
intimately and have an expectation of eternal healing. A sinner is more
hopeless, they are without God in the world and have no hope of redemption in
themselves. Take a moment to consider the worst, most debased, most hopeless,
most irredeemable sinner you know…maybe they’re looking at you in the
mirror, and know that God is able to cleanse them, even them, from sin.
Now there are some incurable
diseases, but sin is not one of them! ~ S. M. Lockridge
Washed in the Blood
Three days later Jesus defeated death, proving he had laid
down his life so that he could take it back up again and open the gates of
heaven to people who heretofore had been banned from entry.
In heaven there will be one man with scars, and it won’t be
Naaman or Paul or Isaiah, it will be the one we call the “Lamb who was slain.”
You’ll be able to see the nail pierced hands that are healing nations, the
bruised heal that crushed the serpent’s head, the scar where his broken heart
was revealed, and his head where the Lord
of all was crowned with scorn. You’ll also be able to see his
navel which proves he was and is fully God and fully man.
For the rest of us, who have a multitude of scars on earth,
we must realize that it’s not just leprosy that’s banned from heaven: scabs,
scars, deformities, all of these will keep a person out of heaven. If you think
you haven’t been afflicted by the fall, just consider your bellybutton which
proves you need a Saviour. Even if you somehow kept yourself entirely from sin,
the effect of the curse of sin would be enough to bar you from the
presence of God:
He shall not go
through the veil or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may
not profane my sanctuaries, for I am the Lord who
sanctifies them. ~ Leviticus 21:23
Heaven, the ultimate sanctuary of God, is closed to you.
Even though Jesus has opened heaven’s gates, we have this continuing guarantee,
“its gates will never be shut by day–and there will be no night there. They
will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean
will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false”
(Revelation 21:25–27)…But, if you’ll come to Jesus, you can partake in a
wonderful promise, just one more reason to love the Lord Christ,
Christ loved the
church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed
her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church
to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might
be holy and without blemish. ~ Ephesians 5:25–27
If your hope of sanctification is
in a law, it is useless,
For on the one
hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness
(for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is
introduced, through which we draw near to God. ~
Hebrews 7:18–19
There is one hope that saves,
Christ in us, the hope of glory.
We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the veil, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf. ~ Hebrews 6:19–20
If you’re in a place where you can sing, then sing William
Cowper’s magnificent hymn, There is a Fountain Filled With Blood (if
not, just read),
There is
a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
