2 Kings 5:11-12 But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand… 1. How often are these words employed with regard to the dealings of Providence. In the midst of mysterious dispensations which befall us, whether as individuals or as communities, how apt are we to impugn the Almighty's faithfulness, question the wisdom of His procedure, and set up our wills in opposition to the Divine. Is not this oftentimes the silent utterance of the misgiving heart, — "Behold, I thought" — it were better had such an event been ordered otherwise? What is the answer to these and suchlike unworthy surmisings? "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord" (Isaiah 55:8). To the eye of sense, however baffling and mysterious be the ways of the Supreme disposer, it is not for us to "think," but to believe; not to question, but like Job, to kneel and to adore: not to say, "Behold, I thought" that Thy judgments are right, and I have been deceived; but, I know that they are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me: not, "I thought" that "all things are working together for good"; but, "I know" they are so. 2. But these three brief words admit of more solemn interpretation, and more solemn lessons still, if we connect them with the sinner and with an eternal world. Let us anticipate the scene. Let us conjure up some of those "thoughts" which, up to that moment, may have deluded and deceived, but which will then dissolve like a rope of sand. (1) "Behold, I thought," we may suppose one to say, "that I was as good as my neighbours. I saw no reason for curbing passion and leading an overstrict life. I brought myself to regard the tendencies and vices of a corrupt nature as pardonable weaknesses, too readily crediting the condoning verdict of my fellows, as they laughed at my scruples, and told me that there was no great harm after all in indulging these failings and foibles — that I was but a child of Adam at the best, and that no perfection was to be looked for here." And is not this the very dream which many are daily cherishing — the false and fatal casuistry which is luring them to destruction? They are content to measure themselves by themselves, and to compare themselves among themselves. With blunted moral sensibilities, and confounding moral distinctions, they invoke upon themselves the doom of the prophet — "Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness!"(2) Another, we may suppose, will then be ready to say, "Behold, I thought" I might with safety procrastinate. I thought I could presume on a strong pulse and vigorous arm and unwrinkled brow. I thought I had a long future yet to build upon; not an autumn-tint seemed to be on the leaf; the sun was yet far from the western sky; I was floating down the stream with arms folded, apparently secure in my barque, little imagining that the cataract was at hand. I was convinced of my folly, when I found myself suddenly in the swirl and vortex of the dark waters. I am here to bear awful testimony to the truth often listened to, but listened to in vain, that "as men live, so do men die!" And is not this, too, the daily reasoning of multitudes? Why, it may be asked, revert so often to this unwelcome theme of the peril of postponement? Just because it forms the submerged rock that has strewn the sea of life with more of mournful wrecks than any other. (3) We may imagine the avowal of another to be this — "Behold, I thought" that God would be too merciful to punish. "I thought" that He would never surely visit such stern retribution on the creature of His own hands; "I thought," when I came really to confront His bar, that He would either modify His recorded threatenings, or else, perchance, by a great affluent exercise of His love, grant a universal reprieve and amnesty. "I thought," when I gazed on His outer visible creation, I saw no hieroglyphic of wrath. I saw love pencilled on every flower; I heard it murmured in every breeze, sung in the chorus of birds, proclaimed by the gleaming sun by day, and serenaded by the silent stars at night. Moreover, in looking around me on the moral world, I imagined some dim foreshadowings might be seen of the Divine oblivion of sin and reluctance to punish. "Sentence against an evil work" was not, in the earthly economy, "executed speedily." I saw, ofttimes, virtue languishing unrewarded, and vice raising unrebuked her brazen forehead. When the Almighty did these things, and "kept silence," "behold, I thought" that He was "altogether such an one as myself!" To refute similar "thoughts," to which, it is feared, multitudes are clinging, and who, in doing so, reduce the unchangeable Creator to a level with the vacillating creature, — it is enough, surely, to point to the Incarnation and Passion of the Divine Redeemer, and the awful lessons which cluster around them. (4) From another crowd in that great day of retribution, there will be heard the utterance of a more fearful "thought" still; — "Behold, I thought" that the whole world of spiritual realities was a myth — that religion was a falsehood — that God and heaven were illusions of fond fancy — that hell was a tale and nightmare of priestly terror — Revelation a repertory of artful and antiquated forgeries which superstition had palmed from age to age on a credulous world. "I thought" that there was light enough in my own intellectual nature to guide me. I heard the priests of the Temple — the recognised interpreters of the oracles of God — proclaim truths which were unaccredited and unauthenticated by any other testimony. External nature seemed to belie them. They spake of "the end of all things"; the dissolution of the existing economy; the coming of the Son of God in the clouds of heaven. I looked abroad on the material earth, with its canopy of firmament; it seemed to anticipate and echo my own sceptic thought — "Where is the promise of His coming?" All things continued as they were. Why practise a life of self-denial, as I see others do, on a mere peradventure? The visible testimony of the globe I live on is more reliable than the averments of some old parchment scrolls and devout dreamers. I shall take my chance of these alleged premonitions of coming wrath. Reason shall be the priestess of my altar, and Pleasure the enshrined goddess. Mine shall be the happy creed, of death an eternal sleep, and the grave a last, long home, whose slumbers no fictitious trumpet-peal of Judgment shall ever break! How many, in this age of rampant infidelity and unbridled licence, are deluding themselves with these very "thoughts"? The Divine injunction, with reference to those sceptic imaginations, is "message of tender compassion and love — Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and unto our God, and He will abundantly pardon" (Isaiah 55:7). (5) What is the great lesson to us all from this subject? Is it not now to take God at His word? Like Naaman, we "think," and pause, and hesitate, when the Divine injunction and exhortation is, "Only believe." (J. R. Macduff, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the LORD his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. |
    |