2 Kings 5:20-27 But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, Behold, my master has spared Naaman this Syrian… It is at once most surprising and most saddening to know that some of the best works that have been done on earth for God, and some of God's most eminent workers, have been defamed and lowered, if their influence has not been actually counteracted and nullified, by inferior workers and by unworthy men. This defiling of God's work has generally come from one source, and is the result of one vile lust or passion, covetousness — the desire for the means of gaining power or wealth, or place, or self-indulgence; the desire for dominion or money as the means of self-exaltation and aggrandisement. As illustrating this I need only mention the repulsive histories of Balaam, of Achan, of David's impious numbering of Israel, the story of Gehazi now before us, and the dark atrocity of the life and death of Judas Iscariot. 1. The action and duplicity of Gehazi are of singular unworthiness. Like so many other histories they show that intercourse with good men and association with God-like work may become only the occasion of worse vileness in a man. The followers of Luther were seldom worthy of him. The followers of Calvin have not been true to their master. The adherents of the hallowed Wesleys did not take their sacred work only. The converts of Paul almost broke his heart. And the followers and servants of Jesus — where is there one of us who is worthy of his Master? Too often has it been found that one of the most repressive influences about the work of great men and good servants of Jesus Christ is in the fact that some of their nearest followers have had unworthy souls; and could turn their Master's greatness into the service of their own inferior aims and into the means of advance in this world. Do not many of us come to Christ with selfish feelings and serve our God for hire? Being with the good and great will not necessarily make us similar; otherwise Gehazi would have been a better man. 2. Gehazi's covetousness was of a gross, material kind — the love of money; and the miserable influence of it upon him is seen in this: that it produced inability to appreciate Elisha's spiritual motives. All that Gehazi let himself see was, that with the departing Naaman so much money went away too. More especially, however, notice that, as with Gehazi, so, generally, the covetous and unprincipled man lowers himself to a level on which he is unable, in daily life and business, to appreciate other motives than those of getting gain; or to measure anything in life's movements and enterprises by any other gauge than that of the money that can be gained or must be lost. Because of this abasing and prostituting of nature, Paul earnestly declares covetousness to be practically idolatry, and has its legitimate consequences on man's inner life, in antipathy to Jesus, and self-mutilation, with much sorrow. Gehazi could not feel the power of Elisha's spiritual motives in sparing Naaman and letting him go free of payment. He rather thought — why should my master not have taken the money? What good was it to let the talents of silver and gold and the beautiful Syrian robes go? The fair damask raiment of Damascus — why should it be lost? Naaman could afford it; and it would be far less than the equivalent of what he had received from Elisha. Look which way he would, the money that had been lost, the gain that had not been made, was ever alluring his debased soul Elisha's noble determination that the mercy of his God should, in Naaman's case, be had literally "for the asking": his resolve that the goodness of God should be then, as we say now, of grace, and not of buying or deserving, either before or after it had been obtained, — this to such a soul as Gehazi's was useless, fanciful, intangible. 3. In several other ways Gehazi's covetousness involved him in sin, and further defiled the good work that had been wrought by Elisha. To notice these is to see a testimony to a law of God that the young cannot heed too much — the law that forbids the possibility of solitary sins, isolated transgressions. There are no lonely, single sins. Sin needs sin to help it along, to buttress it, to back it, and give it success. One deception leads to another, and needs it. One lie begets another, and requires it to succeed. And it may be well for us all to remember that all the good and gains of this grand world are not worth one little lie. 4. Now we come, as men say they have so often in daily life and business, to face this misery — the success of the lie. The falsehood has thriven; to deceive has been found to be the short road to wealth; to insult God, to defame His work, to misrepresent Elisha and plunder Naaman, these things have "paid," as men say. (G. B. Ryley.) Parallel Verses KJV: But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, Behold, my master hath spared Naaman this Syrian, in not receiving at his hands that which he brought: but, as the LORD liveth, I will run after him, and take somewhat of him. |
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