Naaman's Healing: The Simplicity of Salvation

Naaman's story highlights the human tendency to complicate salvation. Pride often leads us to seek complex solutions when the path to healing and salvation is simple: trust in God's provision. This simplicity is a stumbling block for many, yet it is the essence of the gospel. [00:06:17]

The more you consider his circumstances, the more surprise you will feel at his conduct. Why his own vants respectfully expostulate with him, "My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, would thou not have done it?" Ah, he thinks himself great, and therefore only a great thing will be becoming. [00:07:57]

It is a universal rule of the entire family of man, in every place and at every time, that man wants to do some great thing by which to restore himself to the favor of God. If you had asked the ancient Heathen how men could win the favor of the gods, they would have told you that like Socrates, they must drink the hemlock cup. [00:08:48]

The Jews ought to have known better. They had a pure law before them; they ought to have perceived the impossibility of their allog together keeping it, and in their constant sacrifices, there was a very distinct intimation given to them that the salvation of man must depend upon the offering of a sacrifice given by another for his Ransom. [00:10:19]

The main evil there is a superscription written over the gospel, not that the tablet is summarily obliterated, but that the handwriting is written over so that you cannot decipher the original record. This do and thou shall live. Nor less is it the current religion of this exceedingly Protestant country. [00:12:12]

I honestly confess that before I knew Christ and the way of Salvation by his finished work, I would have done anything in order to be saved. Such was my sense of guilt and such my fear of the wroth to come that no pilgrimage would have been too wearisome, no pain too intense, no slavery too severe to appease my troubled conscience. [00:14:45]

We do not like to be saved by charity. We cannot conceive it possible that so simple a thing as relying and trusting upon Christ can save our souls. And yet not only can It save us, but nothing else can. Not only is there salvation in Christ, but there is salvation in no other. [00:16:37]

The Folly of men who will not come and trust in Jesus Christ because they want to be doing some great thing. This is a grievous infatuation, my dear friend, and I will try to show you how the great things you propose to do, these works of yours, what comparison do they bear to the blessing which you hope to obtain. [00:17:32]

If you would but think of it, God's value of heaven and yours are very different things. His salvation, when he set a price upon it, was only to be brought to men through the death of his own dear son, and you think that your good works, oh what mockery to call them so, can win the heaven which Christ the son of God procured at the cost of his own blood. [00:19:47]

The man who is not the work of saving himself to do, the man who feels that Christ has saved him now out of love gives himself up to Holiness, and this is salvation practically Illustrated. When people put water in children's faces and regenerate them, we say, well, if you do it, let us see it. [00:40:11]

When a man really believes in Jesus Christ, he lives to Christ and to righteousness. If he has been a drunkard or unchaste or a swearer, he renounces his former evil cause and becomes a new man. That which satisfactorily and practically saves men from guilt deserves notice and consideration. [00:40:54]

May the Lord show you that your best works are sins, that your righteousness is unrighteousness, that your supposed obedience is essentially Disobedience, and may you be brought to look to God's Own dear son and to the work which he has finished, and then looking to him and finding that you are saved, there will spring up in your bosom a loving life, a holy life, a Divine Life. [00:41:42]