Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3061
“Man/ lepers were in Israel in tie time of Elisha the Prophet; and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” Luke 4:27.
OUR Savior never sought popularity. His ministry was so attractive that thousands thronged to hear Him, glad to catch the accents of His instructive tongue, but He never for a moment sought to preach flesh-pleasing truths, neither did He keep back any Doctrine by which it might be feared that His hearers would be disgusted. On this occasion He was speaking to His own townsmen. The young Man who had left the place for a while and who, during His absence, had acquired great fame as a Teacher and Miracle-Worker, had come home and there was, naturally, much curiosity to hear Him. They supposed that He would make the town where He had been brought up, to be the chief place of His benedictions. They were His fellow townsmen, so surely they had some claim upon Him! But our Lord, knowing right well that if they really understood His teaching, they would not be pleased with it—and knowing that the blessings He came to bring were not such as they desired—at once dealt honestly with them and told them that Elisha did not heal the lepers in his own country, but one was healed who came from a foreign land. And He led them to infer that very likely He would do His greatest deeds of healing elsewhere than at Nazareth, that God might be pleased to bestow the richest supplies of His Grace upon heathens—upon Syrians—and not upon those who seemed to suppose that they had some right or claim to it. Our Lord, in fact, preached to these people the great Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty, the humbling Doctrine of Divine Election of which Paul wrote to the Romans, “He said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him
that runs, but of God that shows mercy.” [See Sermon #442, Volume 8—GOD’S WILL AND MAN’S WILL.] That was the main point of our Savior’s discourse and His fellow townsmen could not endure it, as many since have not been able to endure it—and seeking to end such hateful teaching by murdering the Teacher, they hurried Him from the synagogue to the top of the precipice whereon their city stood, that they might hurl Him down and destroy Him!
I learn, from this incident in our Lord’s life, that it is not the preacher’s business to seek to please his congregation. If he labors for that end, he will in all probability not attain it. But if he should succeed in gaining it, what a miserable success it would be! He must lose the favor of his Master if he should once aim at securing the favor of his fellow men. We therefore ought to preach many Truths of God which will irritate our hearers! We ought to declare to them the doctrines which are for their present and eternal welfare, however distasteful they may be to their carnal reason and natura1 inclinations. As the physician must give bitter medicine to his patients if he would cure them of their diseases, so must the preacher, who is truly sent of God, proclaim unpalatable Truths of God to his hearers and he must preach the more often upon those very bitter Truths because men are so unwilling to receive them. That part of the Gospel which they will readily embrace without any persuasion need not be preached as often—but that part which they will kick at and resist must be enforced again and again, if perhaps at last their judgment should be convinced of its truth and their heart won for its reception!
By the Holy Spirit’s help, I am going to preach to the unconverted with the earnest desire and hope that they will remain unconverted no longer. And my subject is the healing of Naaman the Syrian. There are two points in it that are
especially worth noting. The first is the sovereignty of Divine Grace which was manifest in it. And the second is the unvarying rules by which that Grace works.
I. First then, let us consider THE SOVEREIGNTY OF DIVINE GRACE which was so clearly manifested in the healing of Naaman the Syrian.
And I will observe at the outset that the experience of Naaman equally teaches the freeness of Divine Grace. If our Savior had selected this case as an instance, not of the sovereignty, but of the freeness of Divine Grace, it would have been equally appropriate. Two Truths of God which sometimes appear to be in opposition will often prove, if they are examined more closely, to be nestling side by side with one another. Suppose our Savior had put the case of Naaman thus—“Every person who was a leper who applied to Elisha to be healed was healed, and though one of them came from a foreign country and was a heathen—and a determined enemy of Israel—he was not rejected, for whoever came to the Prophet was accepted and received the blessing.” That would have been a Truth of God and a most blessed Truth, too, and a Truth which we delight to preach and which we do preach incessantly. And that Truth does not clash with the other Truth of God of which our text speaks—that out of all the lepers who were in Israel in the days of Elisha, none were cleansed save this one stranger from the alien land of Syria! The universality of Divine Grace is easily reconciled with the sovereignty of it! Perhaps we cannot reconcile it so that others can see the reconciliation, but we have felt the reconciliation in our own hearts and in our own experience. And for my part it would be as stern a difficulty to see that there is anything irreconcilable between the two Doctrines as it seems to be to others to see how the two Doctrines can possibly agree! I cannot, for the life of me, detect where they clash, just as some others cannot see how they agree. I do unfeignedly believe that Christ will in no wise cast out anyone who comes to Him and I dare to say that to every man and woman of the human race—but I also believe just as firmly that no one comes unto Christ except those whom the Father draws to Him—and that all whom the Father has given to Christ shall surely come to Him. [See Sermons #1762, Volume 30—high