365 Days of the Great Names of God, Day 214: God of Naaman

God of Naaman

"Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel." (2 Kings 5:15 NIV)

Naaman was a guy with two big problems. He was only aware of one of them, though, and it was the lesser of the two.

The problem Naaman knew about was that he had leprosy. In any other context, this would have been the biggest problem. Leprosy was a death sentence...not only of eventual physical death but also the death of life as part of normal society.

Naaman's bigger problem—the one he wasn't aware of—was that he did not know God. But God knew about both Naaman's problems and, at the point we pick up the story in 2 Kings 5, He's about to do something about both of them.

Before we get to that and to what it has to do with us and our lives and our problems, we need to unwrap one of the many gifts God's Word has for us: its "hinge" moments, when God reaches down and picks a story up off the path it's been on and turns it in a different direction. From a literary standpoint, this is called a "peripety" (from the Greek "peripeteia," meaning "a turn right about, a sudden change"), and it's one of my favorite tools the Divine Author uses.

Naaman doesn't know it, but a peripety is in his future.

The prophet and "man of God" Elisha has heard about Naaman's leprosy problem, and so he sends word that Naaman should come see him. This Naaman does, but when he arrives at the door of Elisha's house, he is greeted not by the prophet himself but by a messenger, who delivers this instruction from Elisha: "Go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed" (2 Kings 5:10).

At this point, Naaman—"great man" and "valiant soldier"—throws a tantrum.

"I thought that [Elisha] would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy" (2 Kings 5:11). He goes on from there to fume that there are nearer and "better" rivers than the Jordan that he could have been instructed to be cleansed in.

Note the "his" between "the LORD" and "God." Yahweh is never satisfied to be someone else's God; He wants to be our God.

Next, El  Elyon, the Lord Most High, uses those in lowly positions to speak truth to one in an exalted position: "Naaman's servants went to him and said, 'My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?'"

"So" (a word often attached to a peripety), Naaman "went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy."

We might be inclined to think this is the plot shift, but the real directional about-face comes next: "then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, 'Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.'"

Now. I. Know.

How often do I, like Naaman, want God to tell me to do "some great thing"? And when He tells me to do something that doesn't look "great" at all, don't I, too, throw a fit?

Some washing in a dirty river may be what it takes to bring me to the place where "now I know" that there is no God in all the world except the one God who can make me truly clean.

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God, show me the thing you want me to do, however un-great it might appear to me, that I might know how great You are.