So, Bibles with me to 2nd Kings chapter 5 and this morning I want to preach from the story of this man, Naaman, who we read of at the scripture reading in 2nd Kings chapter 5. 2nd Kings chapter 5, but before I do just that, if I ask you to come again with me in prayer and ask God's blessings upon the preaching of the world, let us pray. Almighty God, we thank you again for the privilege to come and receive the word. It's a great thing that the one who rules over heaven and earth and has needed nothing, when he does in his own graciousness decides to reveal himself to man, reveals himself to us in the living word. And yet, Lord, the verses and the chapters of this book cannot come alive but apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. And that is that which we so desperately seek at this hour, that the Spirit of God would work irresistibly in the hearts of all God's people to overthrow those false ideas, to break the hardened heart, that the Word of God will be like a hammer this morning that breaks rocks into pieces, prepare us for the Lord Jesus Christ to rule unchallenged in our souls. Save some this morning, we pray, preach them, speak the gospel to our hearts, Lord. We then pray that you'd use the one who preaches the word, O that you'd give strength, Lord, and a deep conviction of these glorious truths. So may Christ be glorified in the midst of his people this day, we ask in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Well, as I turn with you, as I return again to the book of 2 Kings chapter 5, I want to preach on what we might call the cleansing of Naaman the leper. It's a summary, a good summary of what occurs in these verses that this man called Naaman is cleansed. And yet I want to suggest ultimately that the very contents of this chapter are means by which God would point us to the cleansing that is necessary for our souls. need we have for Christ to free us from our sins. I want to suggest to us that embodied in this chapter, though the very words might not be there, is a testifying to the cleansing power of our Lord Jesus Christ. The contents of the gospel, the good news that Christ comes to save sinners. We understand that to be the case because the scriptures teach us that all things in the word of God point to him. all the things in the scriptures are for him it reminds me friends that in God coming to communicate to us our need for him our need for salvation he has done so in all kinds of various ways even in the Bible itself so in this very Bible I could point you to chapters and passages that remind you of your need for salvation Yet in the context and in the style of a song, I can turn you to another chapter and do the same message, give you the same message in the style of a poem. Sometimes it's in the style of a sermon. Sometimes it's in the style of a conversation. And here in chapter 5, it's a story, it's a wonderful story. It's a story you would read to your children. When I was young, much of the Bible, much of what I learnt of the Bible, I learnt initially from reading children Bible books, you know, books that just had stories. They didn't have all of the Bible, so it was important for me to read the Bible as well, but at least my initial understanding of the Bible came from reading these books. And I'd read one story after another story, and not every story in the Bible was in there because, in fairness to the writers, they thought, there's only some stories that can captivate children. Children have little attention, short attention spans, so you have to give them certain stories. Well, if I had to pick the stories for that kind of book, the story of Naaman would be one I would pick. It's a graphic story, it's a clear story. It's a story that can be easily understood. It has a beginning, it has a middle, it has an end. And God uses this sort of story to tell us about our own souls this morning. To call us to make sure that we, like Naaman, have received the cleansing that is necessary for our own souls. And firstly then, let me turn you to the character himself. As we hear his sort of biographical sketch of who he is in the first verse of 2nd Kings chapter 5. The Bible says, Now Naaman, he was, notice, captain of the host of the king of Syria. He was also a great man in the eyes of the king. So he was a captain of the armies of the king of Syria. But he was a captain who was greatly respected by his king. He was a great man with his master. It's one thing to be a great man with the people. He was a great man with the king of Syria. He was honorable. Because by him, the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria. He was also a mighty man and valour. You see, the initial introduction we get to Naaman is that he is a great man. He's a great man. His name and means beauty in fact in Aramaic. He was a great man. Respected by the people. Well thought of. The kind of man who when he walked in the streets got all sorts of submission, all sorts of well-wishing. He was respected. And he wasn't the kind of man who was in a position he could not fill. He wasn't occupying positions which he could not fill. He was a kind of man who had integrity. You know sometimes you have men in positions, in high positions who they have no integrity for the position. They're not great men. They're not men we reckon with. Not so with Neyman. He was an honorable man. He was a man who had great character. He was a man who you might describe as a role model. He was in his day a celebrity. Now in our days, our celebrities Unfortunately, I'm not always like Naaman. They're not people like, they're not people of integrity. The people we celebrate are people who are not even worth being mentioned sometimes. Not so in those days. The men who were celebrated were men who were worth their weight in gold, you might say. They were men who were worth being celebrated. And you know there's an interesting clause also, an interesting sentence in this verse, which says that he was honorable because by him, so by him, Syria had been delivered from a mighty battle. But not just that, the Bible says by him, the Lord had given deliverance onto Syria. You see, so actually God had made this man's way successful. God had made him successful. He was a great man. He's a great man. And in every walk of life, like in this room, we have different kind of people. Some of you might fancy yourselves as great people, great men. You might not think you're as famous or popular as Naaman, but you might think yourself a great man. A man of perhaps you have great ability. You might be very intelligent. You might be very charismatic. You might be very generous. You might be very kind. You might be a good husband or you think you're a good wife. You might be pretty or handsome, strong, fast. I don't know what talents you think you have. In a sense you fit in to Naaman. Initially, when you think of yourself, the first thing you think of are those gifts you possess. That's what the Bible wants us to realize. First of all, Naaman was a man who possessed many gifts. You know, men either live for these gifts or die for these gifts. There are some men who find out that they have these gifts and they spend their whole lives trying to hone and improve these gifts. Other people find that they don't have these gifts and they spend their whole lives envying the fact that they don't, wondering if they can have these gifts. But don't miss out the last clause, and it's as if the writer of 2nd Kings leaves that there for a particular reason. Because although he was a great king, and he was a great man, and although he was honorable because he had brought about this great victory, he was a mighty man, the Bible says, but he was a leper. But he was a leper. So regardless of how great this man was as a man, there was this great, as it were, this but that was there. As if to say, regardless of all the great things he had done, there was this greater problem that faced Naaman. He was a leper. Naaman was a mighty man, but he was a mighty leper. Naaman was intelligent, but he was an intelligent leper. Naaman was affluent, he was rich, but he was a rich leper. He was respected, but he was a respected leper. There is this condition that permeates all that he is. Regardless of how great he was, he was still a leper. And I think friend is right to say that in the Bible the disease of leprosy is pictured as is a picture of sin. Is a picture of that from which we need ultimate deliverance. So our Lord Jesus Christ when he walked the face of the earth, he was often found touching the leper, cleansing lepers, pointing us to the fact that he was the one who would come to cleanse our ultimate problem, which is sin. I take Naaman's presence here as a leper to be a picture of the truth of sin. That regardless of what we are, We all have this great problem, we are sinners. You could think of the greatest man you know in the world, and you could say so many things he's done. He fought for justice there, he fought for peace there, he fought for love there, but he was a sinner. That is true of every man you come across. Every time I see men who are famous on our television screens, and sometimes we are impressed by their skill, impressed by their art, impressed by their success, and yet you have to say this one thing about every single one of them, but he is a sinner. And that is that sin is the true floor of us all. It's the great corruption of all that we have. It's the great problem that hangs over all of us, regardless of what we achieve. Regardless of what we become in this life, we will never get over the fact that we are sinners. It's always there. You can do what you want. I often read rags to riches stories, and they're moving. And yet, no matter what rags you move from to what riches you move to, but you are a sinner. Some of you, your life story is coming throughout. You came through much adversity. You've shown much perseverance and strength. You've got great strength of character. And you're often impressed by yourself. But, you are a sinner. That's true. That's true, you know, the kind of disease leprosy was, as well in the scriptures, is often as well very helpful in explaining to us what sin was. We're not going to go to the text, but in Leviticus chapter 13 and chapter 14, you read of the sort of procedure that was to be taken in cleansing the leper. And there's different verses, different things there, different statements about the kind of disease leprosy was. Leprosy is a sort of disease that was deeper than the skin. It was deeper than the skin problem. It wasn't just what you saw on the surface. It was deep, it was deeply rooted. That's why Naaman could be such a great man. But he had this deeply rooted disease, leprosy. I know it reminds me of sin in all of us. You can have all kinds of thing on the surface. But there's a deeply rooted problem. Your nature at heart is that you're a sinner. I was speaking to some Muslims yesterday, and one of them said to me, why choose Christianity over Islam? And he said, why do you want to be a Muslim? I said, because as far as being a good Muslim is concerned, what does Islam ask me to do about the fact that I'm a sinner? And he said, Islam asks you to obey the five pillars of Islam, to go to Mecca, to do all these things. And I said to him, and yet it doesn't deal with the root of my problems. If I could go to Mecca all I want, And I could say five prayers a day, but this but that applied to Naaman would still apply to me. I would still be a sinner. Only Christianity gets down into the root and explains to me that it's more than just the surface. There's a problem at root. I can fix the surface if I want and make it look good. I can take off the fruits of the trees that are no longer ripe. I can take them off. The rotten fruit. I can take them off my trees and I can plaster on nice fruit. But at root, I'm rotten. And so eventually, eventually it will come out. And that was also the kind of disease that leprosy was. It was a kind of disease that eventually began to manifest itself outside. At root we're sinners, friends, but it's true for all of us. You would notice that eventually your sin begins to manifest itself. and varying degrees in different people. Some of us, we commit sins that are not open for men to see. It's until the judgment day when it will be revealed. But some of us, our sins take the better of us, even in this life, in a much clearer way. What happens when you see a man who is addicted to the bottle and his alcohol has got the better of him? What happens when you see a man who is addicted to adultery and he can't be faithful to the woman he claims to love? What happens to a couple who have divorced and they just can't bring themselves to be at peace? Well, we look at the surface. That's a manifestation of course, that's a symptom. But it's because of the root. At root we are sinners. Why the rebellion? Why the young people dishonor their parents? Why do we start to lie and to steal? Why all this sin? It's because at root something's wrong. Something's wrong at root. But you are a leper. That's the unfortunate thing, my friends, of being consumed with everything else in this world apart from your soul. You forget that no matter what you achieve in this world, and there are things that should make us happy. We prayed about the students who had their exams. Well, passing your exams should make you happy. As long as you don't forget that no matter how many exams you pass, no matter how many degrees you amass, no matter how much intellect you achieve, but You are a sinner. And leprosy, I'll say one more thing about the disease. It was the kind of disease, you see friends, that it always spread around. It spread across the whole parts of the body. And you know, it's very true with the sinner and sin. In every single thing he does, he's corrupted by his sinful nature. You sit down with a man who's not a Christian, and his mind is corrupted. You watch the way he approaches life, the way he thinks of life, his ideologies. Sin has spread into that. You see his emotions, you look at his feelings and the way he feels. Sin has spread into that. So he has great feelings for all the things of this world, but has no feeling whatsoever for the things of God. Sin has taken hold of him. His feelings. You see his will. His will. His will is corrupted by sin. The things he wants to do, he just can't do them. Or actually, he delights in evil, sin. In the book of Isaiah, the Lord condemns those people who call that which is evil, good, and that which is good, evil. That's what sin does. It spreads. It spreads. Oh friends, I'm not denying that you can find success in some chosen field of life. If you came to Christ today, if you come to the church because you want to pass your exams, that's a waste of time, isn't it? You don't need to sit here for the sermon because you want to pass your exams. You could do that without coming to the church. Most people who pass their exam in the world today don't go to church. If you come to church because you want to have a successful business, you don't need Christ for that. You can do that, outside, apart from Christ. You come to Christ because you must realize there's a deep, ravaging problem. That no matter what you achieve in this life, no matter what field you gain success in, at root, I'm a sinner. So I ought to say to myself, and I don't know what gifts you think you possess. I'm an intelligent person, or I'm a smart, or I'm a kind person, or I'm a good person. I'm a housewife, I'm a good mother, I'm a good son. But, I am a sinner. That's the clearest definition of what we are. It's not whether you're European, or African, or Asian, that really matters. No, what really matters is this, is that last clause. For Naaman, his body was a leper, and I say it's a picture of us saying, but I am a sinner. So that's the first point, we see this man, he has, he's a great man, but he has an even greater malady, an even greater problem. And there's no healing for it, there was no healing for it at the time. And that's what brings him, you see dear friends, to overhear this, that's why the conversation that this young girl, in verses 2 and 3, that they had brought away captive out of the land of Israel. And she was a servant to Naaman's wife. This young girl, she was a slave, she had been captured and her job now was to serve Naaman's wife. And she has this conversation, this bright young girl. She says, Oh, I wish my Lord were with that prophet in Samaria. I know a man who could heal him of his leprosy, she says. And of course, once you talk like that, because of how impossible it was, How impossible it was to heal leprosy. The moment she says that, that's a significant conversation. Everyone's interested. Or sometimes you think if only we knew how impossible it was to fix our own sin, we would never turn from the only remedy for it. But we don't see how impossible it is. So here's this maid, this young maid. I know friends, to me she reminds us of, she reminds me of the gospel preacher. She reminds me of those who communicate the gospel. Whether they do it from a pulpit or they do it in one to one conversation. They have the cure for the uncurable. They can point you to the one who alone can heal you of this great disease of sin. In the whole of Syria, all the great generals, all the great kings had no solution. But here's this young girl. You know, as far as social constructs are concerned, she's nothing compared to Naaman. A young maid, a slave. But she knows this truth. I know a prophet, she says, who can heal you of your leprosy. It reminds me of the gospel message. We say we know of someone who can heal you of your sin. We're not interested in ourselves. The person who shares the gospel is not interested in themselves. I can't heal you of your sin, but I certainly know someone who can. She says, I wish he was in Samaria. Because I know that Prophet would recover him. He would heal him of his leprosy. And we are assured of that. Again, I mentioned that conversation I had with a Muslim. That's why we believe Christianity. There's only one who can heal us of our sins. Only one who can save us from our sins. There's only one who died on the cross of Calvary. There's only one whose blood can make us righteous before a holy God. Only one. Only one who can free me from the bondage of sin. She reminds me of the gospel preacher. So she says those words, she's confident, she knows, she says, listen, I know if he was to meet with this man Elisha, she'll be healed. And so word gets from Elisha, from Naaman's wife, gets round to the generals, gets round to the king, and the king says in verses 5, okay, if it's true that there is someone in Israel who can heal, my trusted commander of his leprosy well we have to get this sorted out so in verses 5 and 6 he writes a letter to the king of Israel and says listen I hear that there is a I hear that you can heal my servant Naaman of leprosy so I want to send him to you and have him healed now notice that the young maid actually says it's the prophet that can heal the leprosy and yet the king sends Naaman to the king because he just can't believe He can't believe that it's a prophet. He says, OK, I understand the king having a cure, but who's a prophet? Or it reminds me of how people take Christianity. It's almost too simple to believe. And that's one of the things we learn throughout this whole story. When you look at the Christian faith, what are we made of? We're made of, we have the Bible, it's faith, it's simple faith. The Christian story can be told to the youngest of children and they understand. And so it looks impossible to believe. So he sends Naaman to the king. And the king of Israel thinks the king of Syria is joking. He says, he's not being serious. Or he's trying to tease me. He's trying to start a war. He wants something from me. He knows nobody can heal leprosy. As he says, am I God to kill and to make alive? This is a work that only God can do. Why is he sending him to me? But of course, really, God was preparing to show that he alone can kill and make alive, that he alone can save and God was preparing to show that through the person of Elisha and Elisha again as we meet him in verses 8 to 11 reminds me again of the gospel messenger and the gospel message so notice Elisha first of all he stands before the king of Israel when he seen that the king of Israel had rent his clothes he was literally weeping he was in despair he said I can't heal leprosy and Elisha says Why are you doing that? Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, and he shall know there is a prophet in Israel. This is not Elijah boasting in himself, dear friends. He's boasting in his God. Oh, and the gospel preacher ought to make the same boast. We say to ourselves, listen, if anyone of you this morning who knows that you are bound by your sin, if only you would trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, he would transform your lives today. He would transform your lives now. He would save you. He would deliver you from your sin now. And Elijah says, if he comes to me, I will let him know there is a prophet in Israel. And the whole picture here also is to point us to the exclusivity of the Gospel. No one else could heal leprosy apart from the God of Israel. The same thing is true, dear friends, about sin. You cannot be saved from your sin. You cannot be saved from the judgment to come. You cannot be saved from heaven and hell apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. We live in a society that wants to advance pluralism. They say there's no difference whether you're a Christian or Muslim or Sikh or Buddhist. And the Bible and Bible-believing Christians says, no. Only one can save your soul. There is no other name on the heaven given to men by which we must be saved. Only Christ can save the soul from sin. Only Christ. No other person walks the face of this earth transformed, their heart delivered from sin, apart from those who have come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So we've met this great man, Naaman, who's got the great problem. And I say it's a type of sin. We've also seen the glorious message that the maid and Elisha bring to, that they bring to Naaman. They tell him simply, you need to come and trust in the God of Israel. He's alone, he alone can save. Oh friends, we preach the same message in a sense this morning. Only God can save you from your sin. Can you see the impossibility of your state? You are born in sin. You're born in sin. Your nature is to do that which is against the Living God. Your nature is to be opposed to Him. And you know there is nothing, nothing, nothing... You're worth nothing apart from salvation. There's nothing very impressive about you before God. What a life to live! What a wasted life to live! To know that all that you amass in this world, all that you can become, is nothing because you are a sinner. What do you prefer? The praises of men or the glory of God? You could be famous amongst men. You could be respected by men. You could be applauded by men. But before God, you're a sinner. Before God, all your fancy robes are like rags. What a life to live. That's why it's not worth being anything in this world but a Christian. Because if all I do in this world is nothing because I'm a sinner. I need that problem solved. Until you come to see that this morning, that you need that problem solved. I need this issue of me being a sinner. I need it to be rectified. And the message is this, believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone can rectify that issue. Trust upon Him. And yet we're going to turn and see one of those, the hindrances, what are those hindrances? Why people don't believe upon the gospel? And we'll look at it in a particular way in which it comes in Naaman. Because Naaman appears to be a man who has recognized his problem. I'm a leper and I need this leprosy solved. The moment they tell him there's someone in Israel who can heal you of your leprosy, he's willing to take it. He goes with chariots, he goes with all the money, he goes with a lot of money. And he appears, verses 9, he came with his horses and with his chariots and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. and Elijah sends a messenger unto him and says, listen, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and in essence, that's it with your leprosy. Elijah says to him, listen, Naaman, your body right now is corrupted, is rotten, is filthy. A man as great as you are and you are nothing because of this leprosy. Now, I tell you this, all you have to do is go to the Jordan and wash there seven times. That's it. You're free. Your life is back again. Simple. The Jordan, you didn't have to pay to use the Jordan. It was a free, free river. And everyone knows how to wash. It's the most basic thing ever. No one has to teach you. You don't need a degree for that. Simple. And yet, look at Naaman's response. He was wroth. He was angry. He was vexed. Why? The Jordan's too far? He's asking me for too much? It's gonna take too long? None of these things. It was the simplest, simplest answer to his question. Here's a problem that Naaman thought was impregnable, a problem he thought was so big and yet the cure is so simple, Elijah says, and yet this man is angry. It seems, it seems crazy. And he says, I thought he was going to 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 me. And Naaman's point in verse 12 is, it's too simple. I could have done this in Syria. I could have washed somewhere else. It's just too simple. This is not going to cure me. It's not going to cure me. Oh friends, it's a bit like the gospel. So simple. All you are meant to do is believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, it appears that the gospel of our Lord is so simple that it's too hard for men. The gospel is so simple that it's too hard. Christ says, trust me, depend upon me, believe upon me, and your soul will be cleansed. And that's why before God saves a man, He humbles him. The reason why Elisha gave name and these directives is because the man had to be humble. He had to be humble and only the man who is humble, humble enough to see how unworthy I am of the least of God's mercies. It's when that humility strikes us, we do anything God says. But once we're still proud, we think we have an equal footing almost. We think we have something to say. If God asks me to leave this behind, I say to Him, you're asking too much. If God asks me to forsake this, I say, how can I forsake? It can't be right to forsake this. We want to think the way we want to think. We're still proud. But once God humbles us, He shows us our need for Him. Dear friends, that might be the reason why some of you haven't come to Christ today. You won't be humble. You refuse to be humble to see how much you need him. You won't humble yourself and search your souls. Another reason why some don't come to Christ is this sort of inquisition. It's what one great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon calls, Mr. Evil Questioning. Naaman hears a solution for his sins and he begins to question. He says, I could have gone here, I could have gone there. What can water do to me? He's questioning God. And you know, I've met so many people, friends, who... When you ask them why they don't come to Jesus Christ, they give you a whole list of questions. You tell them, turn from your sin and trust in Christ. And they present their whole list of questions. They say, well, if God's grace is a gift, why should I even bother trying? They begin to get all sorts of philosophical with you. They say, if God knows everything, that means God knows if He wants to save me or not. Why should I try? The gospel says repent and believe, turn, but they begin to get all philosophical questioning God, wanting to have answers to things that men may not understand. Or they might say, well if God is so loving, I can't imagine Him sending us to hell. I can't imagine God sending so many people to hell. So when you tell them, turn from your sins so that you don't go to hell, they say, oh, I can't imagine God will send me to hell anyway. God is so loving. Are you telling me God is going to send billions of people to hell? Oh friend, that's evil questioning. I want you this morning to believe in a person called Satan. And he's there trying to make sure you don't come to salvation. When you start asking yourself questions like that, be sure, that's where Satan is. He's moving your mind to try and hide away from your need for salvation. God will send sinners to hell. But he will make you question it. You say, if God is loving, if God made the trees, the skies, if He's been so good to me, could He send me to hell? It's evil questioning. Or sometimes you hear them say something like this, or how can I go to church when there is so little unity in Christianity? They say, I would have become a Christian, but you guys have so many denominations. If God was with you, you would all be one. It's evil questioning. It's evil questioning. The point to you is repent and believe. Not try and fix God's church. If God wants his church to be spread in millions of dominations, it's his business. Your call is to depend upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Or they say, well, you know, even the people who call themselves Christians, sometimes you find them sitting in their own little corner. That preacher is not perfect himself. He has his own sin. Once again, it's evil questioning. You are to fall upon the Lord Jesus Christ. You are to call Him and ask Him to save you. Not to look at other Christians. I met a fellow like that the other day. I said, why don't you come to church? He said, I used to go to church. But I've been to too many churches where the pastor just wants your money, he says. He just wants to steal your money, so I don't go to church anymore. I said, well, come to our church. We don't want to steal your money. And then he changes. He says, well, I'm not sure yet. You know, it's really hurting me. I said, oh friend, that's evil questioning. It's evil questioning. It's not your business that some Christians are sitting in their own little corner. It's about your own soul before God. What is your business about the judgment of another man? How about the judgment your own soul must face? Or some will say, if I accept Christianity now, Would I not just be deceiving myself, following the crowd, you know? Some of you here this morning, you say, I would become a Christian, but I don't want to... I don't want to be pressurized into doing it. I would become a Christian, but I want to do it in my own time. I don't want to feel like it's because this creature was so... this preacher was so... he was so kind of boisterous and persuasive. No, I want to do it in my own time. It's evil questioning. Can you see your need for a savior? Some of you would say, am I not doing the right thing by waiting till I am willing to give up sin? You say, I can't be a Christian today because, you know, there's a sin I'm committing and I'm not ready to give up that sin. So I'm going to do this. But when I'm ready, I'll come. It's evil questioning. The Bible commands you to deal with your soul before God now. Friends, the reason why you question whether God can save you is not because you're honest. It's because you are dishonest. The reason why people stumble at salvation and begin to ask all kinds of things is not because they're good, it's because we're evil. And the Lord can see that the reason why you want to bring all kinds of arguments to postpone your need for a savior is because you want to indulge in your sin. Oh friends, the Lord will judge you for that. And this morning, his point to us is, don't question. Don't question. You hear the gospel preached to you plain and clearly. Believe upon Christ for salvation. Believe upon him for salvation. And that's exactly eventually what Naaman does. God is gracious. Because Naaman has some sensible servants who say to him, listen, if he had told you, verses 13, to do some great thing, would you not have done it? All he's asked you to do is to go and be dipped in the water and you'd be clean. It's ludicrous for you. It's ridiculous for you to pass up the opportunity. My friend, the same thing is so true of the Gospel. When we look at the sinner's life and we see how you're wasting your years, every single day, your life meaning nothing because you're living for yourself. It is so ridiculous for you to pass up the free grace of God. He doesn't ask you to pay for this. Some of you spend years studying hard to improve your mind in a sort of temporal way. Some of you work overtime to amass all sorts of wealth. And you don't think that you should bite the hand that offers you the change of your spiritual life for free? For free? God asks you to have your eyes open to see how much you need Him. For you to receive a new heart and receive a transformed life and all these things for free. How dare we pass up that opportunity? But Naaman, eventually, as we say, and that's why we sang Amazing Grace, because it was only by grace, dear friends, that this man was made wise enough to dip himself in the water. And the Bible says that after he did that, oh, he was changed. Verse 14 says, he went down, he dipped himself seven times in Jordan according to the saying of the man of God and his flesh came again like onto the flesh of a little child and he was clean. He was transformed. Nothing like it. The writer is so specific for us there. He says his flesh was like the flesh of a little child. That is to say there was a drastic change. An obvious change. You could see it. You could see it in him. I sometimes think that as Naaman went back home after he had realized what happened to him. And he went to meet Elisha and praised the God of Elisha. And as he got back on his chariots and his horses and he got back to Syria. I sometimes think his wife must have walked past him. I sometimes think she must have walked to the chariots and walked past him and said, where is Naaman, anybody? And they said, that's him over there. And she couldn't believe it. Because he had new skin. No one had seen him like this. And he was like the skin of a child. And dear friends, all that reminds me of what happens when someone comes to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not a belief that is without truth. The organist was playing, the pianist was playing a song earlier and I couldn't help but remember the words. And the words say, he lives, he lives, salvation to impart, you ask me why I know he lives? He lives within my heart. Christians are not Christians simply because they've heard a few words, but Christians because those words have changed our lives. The things we used to do, we do them no more. We can truly say we were once filthy, we are now clean. That's the difference. It's not someone telling me don't speak this way, you see friends. It's not someone telling me don't go here or don't go there. It's the fact that my heart has changed. My heart has changed. The reason why I don't do these things anymore is not because I'm afraid someone's looking at me. It's because I have no delight in them anymore. My heart's been changed. There's been a transformation. I was once like the leper. Filthy, ugly, unclean. Now I've been made clean, I've been cleansed. And the Lord Jesus Christ, He offers the same free gift of salvation to us. He says, come and be clean. He wants us to open our eyes and to see that until we have come to Him, we remain unclean. Regardless of what men tell you, what I'm saying to you is, before God, He sees how filthy you are. Yeah, I can't see, I can't judge your heart. But God sees your heart, and it's absolutely unclean. But friends, the call this morning is this. Come and know transformation. Christ will change your life. He will change your heart. Make you a new person. And you will know that sweet fellowship and communion with God. Oh, my question to you this morning. If you've been asking all those questions that Naaman asked before. Let me add one more question to this. How could you pass this up? How could you reject the grace of God? How could any of us leave here this morning and not be Christians? How could we leave here this morning and still walk in our sin? How could we leave here this morning and have no true fellowship with God? When the offer of the gospel is free. When the offer of the gospel is clear. It's to all men. All of us are on equal footing when it comes to the gospel. And all of us can know the same power of the Lord Jesus Christ. So friends this morning, the word of God is clear. The same God who cleansed Naaman the leper in the past. is cleansing sinners today and he asks you to put your trust in him for such salvation of your souls. Amen.