GOD'S WORK (SUMMARY OF A READING)
GOD’S WORK (SUMMARY OF A READING)
We see in this chapter how God will work for His own name’s sake even when things are in a sorrowful state amongst His people. God cannot be other than what He is, whatever His people may be. If it is a question of God acting because of what He is, and no one deserving blessing more than another, the Syrian can be blessed on the same ground as Israel. One can understand the Lord having pleasure in referring to this incident in Luke 4. The little captive maid is an example of what God would use in such circumstances. She was one who had a distinct link with God, a true knowledge of Him apart from any experience, for she had never seen or heard of a leper being cured. But her thought of the prophet that was in Samaria was a divinely given thought. Elisha was the expression, in the midst of departure, of what God was in grace, a blessed type of Christ as the salvation of God. And the little maid was imbued with that grace herself, for she desired the good of her captor.
If the people of God come into captivity to the world power in any way we may be sure that it is in some way to serve the divine testimony. In accepting conditions of captivity our exercise should be that it may turn to testimony (see Luke 21: 13). What weight Jehovah gave to the testimony of the little maid! It affected Naaman and it [p. 175] affected the king, but we see that when men are affected by the testimony they do not take it up rightly. Naaman and the king and the king of Israel all had to come into line, with the little maid. Each one of us should be a model of what people have to come to to get blessing.
A leper represents one in whom is the working of sin in the flesh, not in bad actions but sin in the flesh coming out, as it did, in thinking that he knew better than the prophet. Cleansing is provided for us in the death of Christ, but we have to take advantage of it.