Getting Your Feet Wet

So he steps into the river and feels the water flowing over his sandaled feet. He steps farther and farther until the waters are high enough for him to take that first dip. Then he takes another. And another. And another. And another. By now, the fifth dip, he hasn’t noticed any change in his condition. He doesn’t feel any different. Not even a tingling. Is he about to look like a big idiot when he takes two more dips and comes up still leprous, while the man of God laughs at his gullibility in his little hut? Another dip. “Man,” he must be thinking to himself, “Did he come all this way for nothing?” One last dip to go. Maybe he hesitated for a moment. Maybe he didn’t. But he takes that final plunge and immediately everything changes.

For the first time in his life, he knows for a fact that the power of God is real. He looks at his hands, they’re clean! He feels his face, it’s smooth as a baby’s bottom! He jumps for joy! Nothing even remotely like this has ever happened to him before! And before he heard of the man of God, he couldn’t have dared to hope for so much! It’s not just his skin which is healed. He is a new man. He knows for a fact now that the God of Israel is real in a way that no other gods are, and that He cares even for prideful Syrian commanders. He wasn’t converted through logical arguments, and he doesn’t know a thing about theology. He has had a real, personal encounter with the power of God and that alone is what changed him. But the story isn’t over, and vv. 15-27 tell us what happened next.

[Read 2 Ki. 5:15-27]

NOT IN IT FOR THE MONEY

Overcome with joy, Naaman rushes out of the river, embracing his men and commanding them to take the gifts which had been meant for the king of Israel to the man of God. But just as Elisha isn’t in it for the show, he also isn’t in it for the money. It’s not that ministers shouldn’t be paid or earn a living wage. It’s that Naaman is a brand new believer in the power of God and he needs to know that God’s grace is freely given and not earned or bought.

But Elisha’s servant sees things very differently. Despite being part of the “in crowd” and a member of the man of God’s congregation and his trusted servant, Gehazi swears an oath that he is going to get something from this foreigner and correct his master’s “mistake.” Maybe he couldn’t stand to see the grace of God poured out on a foreigner who had oppressed his people. Or maybe, unlike Elisha, Gehazi was in it for the money. In any case, his greed and hatred blinds him to the power of God present in Elisha and blinds him to the grace of God present in Naaman. It twists him and corrupts him so much that he feels compelled to swear the exact opposite oath in v. 20 to Elisha’s own oath in v. 16.11 By swearing an oath and praying something in opposition to God’s will and character, he breaks the third commandment and takes the Lord’s name in vain.(12)

That’s the real meaning of that commandment. It isn’t simply using God’s name frivolously or carelessly (though I think it encompasses that), it means to pray something God would never desire, to put our own desires before His, and then to emplore Him to feed our selfishness instead of seeing to the needs of others.