Our Incurable Disease

You have an incurable disease. All humans do. We inherited this disease from our parents, and they from their parents – all the way back to Adam and Eve.

There is no human help for this disease. Oh, we can alleviate a few of the symptoms through discipline, through accountability, through learning more self-control – but this disease is similar to the hydra of Greek mythology. When anyone cut off one of the hydra’s heads, two more immediately grew. When you learn to control one part of your disease – say, bursts of anger – more symptoms of the disease pop up – say, pride and arrogance.

But God in His grace and mercy offers you a cure. The question is: Will you accept it?

Scripture provides us with an apt picture of the way we are prone to resist this cure through telling the story of a leper in 2 Kings 5.

In the ancient world, leprosy was incurable. Naaman, a general in a powerful army, comes down with this disease. An Israelite servant girl in his household tells his wife of a prophet in Israel who can cure the disease. So Naaman’s king writes a letter to the King of Israel, telling him to cure Naaman of his leprosy.

The Israelite king is distraught, thinking the other is looking for a pretense to go to war. But when the prophet Elisha hears of the events, he tells the king to send Naaman to him.

Naaman arrives at Elisha’s place, bearing many gifts – he is a wealthy man and thinks he can pay handsomely for this service. He is an important man, and thinks this prophet will be impressed by his presence.

But Elisha doesn’t even come out to see Naaman. He simply sends a messenger, who instructs the general to go wash in the Jordan River seven times, and he will be cured. Hear Naaman’s response:

But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage (2 Kings 5:11-12).

Naaman’s pride almost causes him to miss this grace from God. But God shows him even greater grace, as He leads Naaman’s servants to appeal to him to try this simple task the prophet gave him. He washes seven times in the Jordan – and is cured.

Just so with us. God offers us healing of our incurable disease if we only turn to Jesus and trust Him with our lives. But so often we are like Naaman: We don’t like God’s plan. We want to prove our worth through some great deed we do for God. Or we want God to perform some grand visible miracle that will call attention to us. Or we want God to cure the disease in a different way, a way that seems better to us. “Just trust Jesus? Why? Why not some other way? Why not many other ways? How simplistic!”

Like Naaman, we can turn our backs and miss God’s grace because of our pride, because of our preconceived ideas about how God should work.

But praise God that He persists in the offer of the Gospel. As in Naaman’s case, He sends others to us to say again and again, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

Don’t despise the miracle of simple faith. Admit you are diseased. Confess that you cannot cure yourself. And throw yourself on God’s mercy offered to you through Jesus Christ.

When you, like Naaman, humble yourself before the One True God, He will save you – through the death, resurrection, and reign of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you will discover the love, joy, and peace you have so deeply desired.

Thoughts on a Snowy Day

Snow and sleet cover the ground this morning. All is white. Clean. Pure. And brilliant, should the sun ever poke through the clouds.

So I turned this morning to Scripture, to see how the biblical authors refer to snow.

Only in one incident in the Bible is snow referred to in a weather report – Benaiah kills a lion in a pit on a snowy day (2 Samuel 23:20, 1 Chronicles 11:22). The other occurrences speak of characteristics of snow, or use snow figuratively. Six ways of speaking of snow stand out:

First, as we would expect, the biblical authors use snow as an image of purity. So God, Jesus, and an angel are pictured as having hair or clothing as white as snow (Daniel 7:9, Revelation 1:14, Matthew 28:3). And after David’s adultery and murder, he cries out to God, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7). Similarly, God calls to His people through the prophet Isaiah, telling them their rebellion against Him is stupid and foolish:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; . . . learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.  Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.  If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 1:16-20)

So in this sense, God’s people should be like Him, white as snow. We should be pure, spotless, undefiled. Like the new-fallen snow around us this morning, there should be no speck of dirt, no hint of rebellion in us.

But, secondly, Scripture also uses the image of snow in a negative sense. Three times leprosy is pictured as “like snow” (Exodus 4:6, Numbers 12:10, 2 Kings 5:27). And leprosy ironically is an image of deep-seated sinfulness in us. So we are to be white, pure as snow; yet skin which shouldn’t be pure white becoming pure white indicates our rebellious, fallen nature.

Third, snow can be dangerous. We are all conscious of that today as we stay at home and avoid the roads. For the ancient Israelites, the danger was especially from exposure to cold. But the excellent wife of Proverbs 31 is not fearful of the snow; she has clothed her family not only with practical warmth but also with beautiful adornment (Proverbs 31:21).

Fourth: Isaiah 55 speaks of snow as the source of fruitfulness. Snow, like rain, is the necessary source of water for nourishing crops and forests. God’s Word similarly produces fruitfulness:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11)

Fifth: Two passages refer to snow having its place; we humans similarly should have our place:

Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, so honor is not fitting for a fool. (Proverbs 26:1)

Does the snow of Lebanon leave the crags of Sirion? Do the mountain waters run dry, the cold flowing streams?  But my people have forgotten me; they make offerings to false gods; they made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient roads, and to walk into side roads, not the highway. (Jeremiah 18:14-15)

In these verses, the authors say: Snow belongs in winter, especially in deep fissures in mountains. Snow doesn’t belong in summer, and just so honor does not belong with fools. The people of God, on the other hand, have a purpose and a place: They are to love God, honor Him, and walk in His paths. But God’s people in Jeremiah’s day were rebelling against the purpose for which God had chosen them.

Finally, God’s control of the snow is evidence of His majesty, His authority, His awesome power (Job 37:6, Psalm 147:16). When Job raises questions about God, the Almighty turns the table and questions him: “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail? (Job 38:22). Indeed, the psalmist calls on the snow (together with fire, hail, mist, and stormy winds) to praise the Lord! (Psalm 147:8).

So look out on this weekend’s snow and reflect on these truths. You are born with a leprosy-like disease, deep within you, disfiguring you, making white what should not be white; but through the blood of our Savior and the power of the Spirit, you can be properly white as snow. There are dangers around us – but God grants us wisdom and resources to protect ourselves from those dangers. And as the snow itself will melt and be God’s provision for forest and field, just so His Word will nourish us and build us up to become what He intends us to be. In this way we can find our rightful place, we can fulfill His plans, delighting in the place and function He grants us.

And then as you look at the snow falling and hear of the blizzards further up the coast, stand in awe: Our God controls it all. The power of the storm is one minuscule part of His majesty. There is no power that can stand against Him. May the snow praise the Lord!