Sickness in the Mansion
2Ki_5:1 : ’93A mighty man in valor, but he was a leper.’94
Here we have a warrior sick; not with pleurisies or rheumatisms or consumptions, but with a disease worse than all these put together. A white mark has come out on the forehead, precursor of complete disfigurement and dissolution. I have something awful to tell you. General Naaman, the commander-in-chief of all the Syrian forces, has the leprosy! It is on his hands, on his face, on his feet, on his entire person. Ulcers! Ulcers! Get out of the way of the pestilence! If his breath strikes you, you are a dead man. The commander-in-chief of all the forces of Assyria, and yet he would be glad to exchange conditions with the boy at his stirrup, or the hostler that blankets his charger. The news goes like wildfire all through the realm, and the people are sympathetic, and they cry out: ’93Is it possible that our great hero, who shot Ahab, and around whom we came with such vociferation when he returned from victorious battle’97can it be possible that our grand and glorious Naaman has the leprosy?’94 Yes. Everybody has something he wishes he had not. David had an Absalom to disgrace him; Paul, a thorn to sting him; Job, carbuncles to plague him; Samson, a Delilah to shear him; Ahab, a Naboth to deny him; Hainan, a Mordecai to irritate him; George Washington, childlessness to afflict him; John Wesley, a termagant wife to pester him; Leah, weak eyes; Pope, a crooked back; Byron, a club-foot; John Milton, blind eyes; Charles Lamb, an insane sister; and each of you something you never bargained for, and would like to get rid of. The reason of this is that God does not want this world to be too bright; otherwise, we would always want to stay and eat these fruits and lie on these lounges and shake hands in this pleasant society. We are only in the vestibule of a grand temple. God does not want us to stay on the doorstep, and, therefore, he sends aches and annoyances and sorrows and bereavements of all sorts to push us on and push us up toward riper fruits and brighter society and more radiant prosperities. God is only whipping us ahead.
The reason that Edward Payson and Robert Hall had more rapturous views of heaven than other people was because, through their aches and pains, God pushed them nearer up to it. If God dashes out one of your pictures it is only to show to you a brighter one. If he sting your foot with gout, your brain with neuralgia, your tongue with an inextinguishable thirst, it is only because he is preparing to substitute a better body than you ever dreamed of, when the mortal shall put on immortality. It is to push you on, and to push you up toward something grander and better, that God sends upon you, as he did upon General Naaman, something you do not want. Seated in his Syrian mansion’97all the walls glittering with the shields which he had captured in battle; the corridors crowded with admiring visitors; music and mirth and banqueting filling all the mansion, from tessellated floor to pictured ceiling’97Naaman would have forgotten that there was anything better, and would have been glad to stay there ten thousand years. But how the shields dim, how the visitors fly the hall, how the music drops dead from the string, and how the gates of the mansion slam shut with sepulchral bang, as you read the closing words of the eulogium: ’93He was a leper!’94 Ulcers’97dripping, loathsome, excruciating ulcers.
There was one person more sympathetic with General Naaman than any other person. Naaman’92s wife walks the floor, wringing her hands and trying to think what she can do to alleviate her husband’92s suffering. All poultices have failed. The surgeon-general and the doctors of the royal staff have met, and they have shaken their heads, as much as to say, ’93No cure; no cure!’94 I think that the office-seekers had all folded up their recommendations and gone home. I think that most of the employees of the establishment had dropped their work and gone out to look for other situations. What shall now become of poor Naaman’92s wife? She must have sympathy somewhere. In her despair she goes to a little Hebrew captive, a servant girl in her house, to whom she tells the whole story; as sometimes, when overborne by the sorrows of the world, and finding no sympathy anywhere else, you have gone out and found in the sympathy of some humble domestic’97Rose or Dinah or Bridget’97a help which the world could not give you. What a scene it was!’97one of the grandest women in all Assyria in cabinet council with a waiting-maid over the declining health of the major-general! ’93I know something,’94 says the little captive maid, ’93I know something,’94 as she bounds to her bare feet. ’93In the land from which I was stolen there is a medicine-man by the name of Doctor Elisha, who can cure almost anything, and I shouldn’92t wonder if he could cure my master. Send for him right away.’94
’93O hush,’94 a Syrian courtier might have exclaimed: ’93If the highest medical talent in all the land cannot cure that leper, there is no need of your listening to any talk of a servant girl.’94 But do not scoff, do not sneer. The finger of that little captive maid is pointing in the right direction. The slave might have said: ’93This is a judgment on you for stealing me from my native land. Didn’92t they snatch me off in the night, breaking my father’92s and my mother’92s heart? and many a time I have lain and cried all night because I was so homesick.’94 Again, flushing up into childish indignation, she might have said: ’93Good; I’92m glad Naaman’92s got the leprosy; I wish all the Syrians had the leprosy.’94 No. Forgetting her own personal sorrows, she sympathizes with the suffering of her master, and commends him to the famous Hebrew doctor.
Ah! how often it is that the finger of childhood has pointed grown persons in the right direction. Christian soul! how long is it since you got rid of the leprosy of sin? You say: ’93Let me see. It must be five years now.’94 Five years. Who was it that pointed you to the Divine Physician? You say it was my little Amy or Fred or Charley that clambered upon my knees and looked in my face and asked me why I didn’92t become a Christian, and all the time stroking my cheek, so I couldn’92t get angry, insisted upon knowing why I didn’92t have family prayers.’94 There are grandparents here who have been brought to Christ by their little grandchildren. There are hundreds of mothers who are Christians. How did you get rid of the leprosy of sin? How did you find your way to the Divine Physician? You say, ’93My child, my dying child, with wan and wasted finger, pointed that way. I shall never forget that scene at the cradle and the crib that awful night. It was hard, hard, very hard; but if that little one on her dying bed had not pointed me to Christ, I do not think I ever would have got rid of my leprosy.’94 Go into the Sabbath-school this afternoon, and you will find hundreds of little fingers pointing in the same direction, toward Jesus Christ and toward heaven. Years ago the astronomers calculated that there must be a world hanging at a certain point in the heavens, and a large prize was offered for some one who could discover that world. The telescopes from the great observatories were pointed in vain; but a girl at Nantucket, Massachusetts, fashioned a telescope, and looking through it, discovered that star, and won the prize and the admiration of all the astronomical world, that stood amazed at her genius. And so it is often the case that grown people cannot see the light, while some little child beholds the star of pardon, the star of hope, the star of consolation, the star of Bethlehem, the morning star of Jesus. ’93Not many mighty men, not many wise men are called; but God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty; and base things, and things that are not, to bring to naught things that are.’94 Do not despise the prattle of little children when they are speaking about Christ and heaven. You see the way your child is pointing; will you take that pointing, or wait until, in the wrench of some awful bereavement, God shall lift that child to another world, and then it will beckon you upward? Will you take the pointing, or will you wait for the beckoning? Blessed be God that the little Hebrew captive pointed in the right direction. Blessed be God for the saving ministry of Christian children.
No wonder the advice of this little Hebrew captive threw all Naaman’92s mansion and Benhadad’92s palace into excitement. Good-by, Naaman! With face scarified and ridged and inflamed of the pestilence, and aided by those who supported him on either side, he staggers out to the chariot. Hold fast the fiery coursers of the royal stable while the poor sick man lifts his swollen feet and pain-struck limbs into the vehicle. Bolster him up with the pillows, and let him take a lingering look at his bright apartment, for perhaps the Hebrew captive may be mistaken, and the next time Naaman comes to that place he may be a dead weight on the shoulders of those who carry him’97an expired chieftain seeking sepulture, amid the lamentations of an admiring nation. Good-by, Naaman! Let the charioteer drive gently over the hills of Hermon, lest he jolt the invalid. Here goes the bravest man of all his day, a captive of horrible disease. As the ambulance winds through the streets of Damascus, the tears and prayers of all the people go after the world-renowned invalid. Perhaps you have had an invalid go out from your house on a health quest. You know how the neighbors stood around and said: ’93Ah! he will never come back again alive.’94 Oh! it was a solemn moment, I tell you, when the invalid had departed and you went into the room to make the bed, and to remove the medicine phials from the shelf, and to throw open the shutters so that the fresh air might rush into the long-closed room. Good-by, Naaman! There is only one cheerful face looking at him, and that is the face of the little Hebrew captive, who is sure he will get cured, and who is so glad she helped him. As the chariot rolls out, with its escort of mounted courtiers, and the mules laden with sacks of gold and silver and embroidered suits of apparel went through the gates of Damascus and out on the long way, the hills of Naphtali and Ephraim look down on the procession, and the retinue goes right past the battlefields where Naaman, in the days of his health, used to rally his troops for fearful onset, and then the procession stops and reclines a while in the groves of olive and oleander; for General Naaman is so sick’97so very, very sick. How the countrymen gaped as the procession passed! They had seen Naaman go past like a whirlwind in days gone by, and had stood aghast at the clank of his war equipments; but now they commiserate him. They say: ’93Poor man, he will never get home alive; poor man!’94 Later the whole procession brightens up at the prospect of speedy arrival. They drive up to the door of the prophet The charioteers shout, ’93Whoa!’94 to the horses, and the tramping hoofs and grinding wheels cease shaking the earth. Come out, Elisha, come out; you have company; the grandest company that ever came to your house has come to it now. No stir inside Elisha’92s house. The fact was, the Lord had told Doctor Elisha that the sick captain was coming, and just how to treat him. Indeed, when you are sick and the Lord wants you to get well, he always tells the doctor how to treat you; and the reason we have so many bungling doctors is because they depend upon their own strength and instructions and not on the Lord God, and that always makes malpractice. Come out, Elisha, and attend to your business. General Naaman and his retinue waited and waited and waited. The fact was, Naaman had two diseases’97pride and leprosy; and the one was as hard to get rid of as the other. Elisha is humbling General Naaman, so he sits quietly in his house and does not go out. After a while, when Naaman, he thinks, is humbled, he says to a servant: ’93Go out and tell General Naaman to bathe seven times in the river Jordan out yonder five miles and he will get entirely well.’94 The message comes out. ’93What!’94 says the commander-in-chief of the Syrian forces, his eye kindling with an animation which it had not shown for weeks, his swollen fist clinching until the bloody ichor issues from the cracks, and his swollen foot stamping on the bottom of the chariot, regardless of pain. ’93What! is not he coming out to see me? Why, I thought certainly he would come and utter some cabalistic words over me, or make some enigmatical passes over my sores. Why, I don’92t think he knows who I am. Is he not coming out? Why, when the Shunammite woman came to him, he rushed out and cried: ’91Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child?’92 and will he treat an untitled woman like that and let me, a titled personage, sit here in my chariot and wait and wait? I won’92t endure it any longer. Charioteer, drive on! Wash in the Jordan? Ha! ha! the slimy Jordan’97the muddy Jordan’97the monotonous Jordan. I wouldn’92t be seen washing in such a river as that. Why, we watered our horses in a better river than that on our way coming here. The beautiful river, the jasper-paved river of Pharpar. Besides that, we have in our country another Damascene river, Abana, with foliaged bank, and torrent ever swift and ever clear, under the flickering shadows of sycamore and oleander. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?’94
I suppose Naaman felt very much like we would feel, if by way of medical prescription some one should tell us to go and wash in the Danube or the Rhine. We would answer: ’93Are not the Connecticut and the Hudson just as good?’94 Or, as an Englishman would feel if he were told by way of medical prescription he must go and wash in the Mississippi or the St. Lawrence. He would cry out: ’93Are not the Thames and the Shannon just as good?’94 The fact was, that General Naaman needed to learn what every Englishman and every American needs to learn’97that when God tells you to do a thing, you must go and do it whether you understand the reason or not. Take the prescription whether you like it or not. One thing is certain: unless General Naaman does as Elisha commands him, he will die of his awful sickness. And unless you do as Christ commands you, you will be seized upon by an everlasting wasting away. Obey and live’97disobey and die. Thrilling, overarching, undergirding, stupendous alternative! Well, General Naaman could not stand the test. The charioteer gives a jerk to the right line until the bit snaps in the horse’92s mouth, and the whirr of the wheels and the flying of the dust show the indignation of the great commander. ’93He turned and went away in a rage.’94 So people now often get mad at religion. They vituperate against ministers, against churches, against Christian people. One would think from their irate behavior that God had been studying how to annoy and exasperate and demolish them. What has he been doing? Only trying to cure their death-dealing leprosy. That is all. Yet they whip up their horses, they dig in the spurs, and they go away in a rage. So, after all, it seems that this health-seeking excursion of General Naaman is to be a dead failure. Poor, sick, dying Naaman! Are you going away in high dudgeon and worse than when you came? As his chariot halts a moment, his servants clamber up into it and coax him to do as the doctor said. They say: ’93It’92s easy. If the doctor had told you to walk for a mile on sharp spikes in order to get rid of this awful disease, you would have done it. It’92s easy. Come, my lord, just get down and wash in the Jordan. You take a bath every day anyhow, and in this clime it is so hot that it will do you good. Do it on our account, and for the sake of the army you command, and for the sake of the nation that admires you. Come, my lord, just try this Jordanic bath.’94 ’93Well,’94 he says, ’93to please you I will do as you say.’94 The retinue drive to the brink of the Jordan. The horses paw and neigh to get in the stream themselves and cool their hot flanks. General Naaman, assisted by his attendants, gets down out of the chariot and painfully comes to the brink of the river and steps in until the water comes to the ankle, and goes on deeper until the water comes to the girdle, and now standing so far down in the stream, just a little inclination of the head will thoroughly immerse him. He bends once into the flood, and comes up and shakes the water out of his nostril and eye; and his attendants look at him and say: ’93Why, General, how much better you do look.’94 A second time he dips into the flood and comes up, and the wild stare is gone out of his eye. He bows the third time and the shriveled flesh has got smooth again. He bows the fourth time into the flood, and the hair that has fallen out is restored in thick locks again all over the brow. Now he splashes the fifth time into the stream, and the hoarseness has gone out of his throat. He bows the sixth time and comes up, and all the soreness and anguish has gone out of the limbs. ’93Why,’94 he cries, ’93I am almost well, but I will make a complete cure,’94 and he plunges the seventh time into the flood and he comes up, and not so much as a fester or a scar or an eruption as big as the head of a pin is to be seen on him. He steps out on the bank and says: ’93Is it possible?’94 And the attendants look and say: ’93Is it possible?’94 And as, with the health of an athlete, he bounds back into the chariot and drives on, there goes up from all his attendants a wild ’93Huzza! Huzza!’94 Of course, they go back to pay and thank the doctor. People ought always to pay the doctor. When they left the prophet’92s house they went off mad; they have come back glad. People always think better of a minister after they are converted than they do before conversion. Now we are to them an intolerable nuisance because we tell them to do things that go against the grain; but some of us have a great many letters from those who tell us that once they were angry at what we preached, but afterward gladly received the Gospel at our hands. They once called us fanatics or terrorists or enemies; now they call us friends. Yonder is a man’97I speak a literal fact’97who said that he would never come into the church again. He said that two years ago. He said: ’93My family shall never come here again if such doctrines as that are preached.’94 But he came again, and his family came again. He is a Christian, his wife a Christian, all his children Christians, the whole household Christian, and I shall dwell with them in the house of the Lord forever. Our undying coadjutors are those who once heard the Gospel, and ’93went away in a rage.’94
Now, you notice that this General Naaman did two things in order to get well. The first was’97he got out of his chariot. He might have stayed there with his swollen feet on the stuffed ottoman, seated on that embroidered cushion, until his last gasp; he would never have got any relief. He had to get down out of his chariot. And you have to get down out of the chariot of your pride if you ever become a Christian. You cannot drive up to the Cross with a coach and four, and be saved among all the spangles. You seem to think that the Lord is going to be complimented by your coming. Oh, no; you poor, miserable, scaly, leprous sinner, get down out of that. We all come in the same haughty way. We expect to ride into the kingdom of God, but never, until we get down on our knees, will we find mercy. The Lord has unhorsed us, uncharioted us. Get down out of your pride. Get down out of your self-righteousness and your hypercriticism. We have all got to do that. That is the journey we have got to make on our knees. It is our infernal pride that keeps us from getting rid of the leprosy.
Dear Lord, what have we to be proud of? Proud of our scales. Proud of our uncleanness. Proud of this killing infection. Bring us down at thy feet weeping, praying, penitent, believing, suppliant.
For sinners, Lord, thou camest to bleed?
And I’92m a sinner vile indeed.
Lord, I believe thy grace is free,
Oh, magnify that grace in me.
But he had not only to get down out of his chariot. He had to wash. ’93Oh!’94 you say, ’93I am very careful with my ablutions. Every day I plunge into a bright and beautiful bath.’94 Ah, there is a flood brighter than Croton or Ridgewood. It is the flood that breaks from the granite of the eternal hills. It is the flood of pardon and peace and life and heaven. That flood started in the tears of Christ and the sweat of Gethsemane, and rolled on, accumulating flood, until all earth and heaven could bathe in it. Zachariah called it the ’93Fountain open for sin and uncleanness.’94 William Cowper called it the ’93Fountain filled with blood.’94 Your fathers and mothers washed all their sins and sorrows away in that fountain. O my hearer, do you not feel like wading into it? Wade down now into the flood, deeper, deeper, deeper. Plunge once, twice, thrice, four times, five times, six times, seven times. It will take as much as that to cure your soul. Oh! wash, wash, wash, and be clean.
I suppose there was a great time when General Naaman got back to Damascus. The charioteers did not have to drive slowly any longer, lest they jolt the invalid; but as the horses dashed through the streets of Damascus, I think the people rushed out to hail back their chieftain. Naaman’92s wife hardly recognized her husband; he was so wonderfully changed she had to look at him two or three times before she made out it was her restored husband. And the little captive maid, she rushed out clapping her hands and shouting: ’93Did he cure you? Did he cure you?’94 Then music woke up the palace, and the tapestry of the windows was drawn away that the multitude outside might mingle with the princely mirth inside, and the feet went up and down in the dance, and all the streets of Damascus that night echoed and re-echoed with the news: ’93Naaman’92s cured! Naaman’92s cured!’94
But a gladder time than that it would be, wherever this sermon shall be read, if the soul should get cured of its leprosy. The swiftest white horses hitched to the King’92s chariot would rush the news into the eternal city. Our loved ones before the throne would welcome the glad tidings. Your children on earth, with more emotion than the little Hebrew captive, would notice the change in your look and the change in your manner, and would put their arms around your neck, and say: ’93Mother, I guess you must have become a Christian. Father, I think you have got rid of the leprosy.’94 O Lord God of Elisha, have mercy on us!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage