Naaman’s Baptism
by Pastor Gary Cox, September 13, 2026
Can you remember a baptism in the Old Testament? Have you ever heard of Naaman? Naaman is an Old Testament baptism in the Jordan River! The background for baptism started in the Old Testament. When baptism came on the scene in the gospels, it was a practice that was well known. People were coming to have their sins washed away. It was a kind of cleansing ritual. In Jewish traditions, they had lots of traditions of cleansing rituals.
The Old Testament was translated into Greek and called the Septuagint. And the word baptism appeared first in 2 Kings 5:14; the story of Naaman the leper. The Syrian army commander who had leprosy. Naaman’s washing in the Jordan River was symbolic of cleansing by baptism. Naaman was the army commander for the king of Syria, and he had leprosy. His country was dominating Israel, and they were idol worshippers who had defeated Israel, and Israel was paying tribute to them.
This passage is about Naaman and his baptism for cleansing in the Jordan River; ‘Naaman the commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria.’
Please note: Psalm 97:1 says, ‘our God reigns’! So here we have a commander, a general of the army of Syria, who wins a great battle over Israel by the hand of sovereign God. Get this picture: right in the middle of Scripture, it was the Lord that had given the victory. Now, the children of Israel were disciplined off and on, and eventually they were carted off to Babylon because they never stopped their idolatry.
‘Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked in the service of Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, “Would that my Lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.’ Wow! A little girl, maybe 10, 12? She's a captive. She's been taken from her home. She's now a slave in the house of this of this nobleman. If you were a captive in someone's household, would you have their best interest at heart? Wow! The tender heart of this child!
Scripture says, ‘Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.’ (Eph. 4:32) So, here she is, a servant girl stolen from Israel as a slave, and she has a faith in God who is real. She wants her master to be blessed by the God that she loves! Now, this is amazing childlike faith. It's remarkable.
When you trust God like a child, you can seek the good that God has in the circumstance you're in without fixing and solving all the problems. What would be a good fix? Well, the poor girl would be taken back to her mom and she could live at home, instead of being a slave! But this little girl was thinking more about the goodness of God and wanting His goodness to be in the life of the general that was oppressing her people, who had captured her in the first place. Amazing!
‘So Naaman went in and told his Lord, “Thus and so spoke the girl from the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, "Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel." So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, [That’s a lot of gold.] and ten changes of clothing. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you might cure him of his leprosy."’’ What an amazing thing!
Do you see the power of kindness? Tenderhearted kindness was reaching out to a heathen for his best interest before God. This tender-hearted girl got their attention!
Your response to your circumstance is everything.
Your circumstances are what God is using in your life right now. You need to have victory in the circumstances you're in right now. You need to pause. Do not give place to wrath. “Lord, what are you doing? What would it look like for me to have a kind, tender-hearted approach to life in this circumstance?" And so, the wonderful letter was sent.
Beware of your negative filters.
‘When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to kill and make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me.” ’
That's the filter of the natural man! The King of Israel should have a little bit of spirituality in him, right? No. He had a negative filter. He looks at everything through the most negative experience, and responds to it accordingly. All the king sees is, “He's looking for a fight! He's going to come and attack us because we can't heal him. Well, that was a nice one.” But Elisha the man of God heard.
You and I as believers have the Spirit of God in us. And unlike in the Old Testament when Jesus said, "You had the spirit with you, but he shall be in you," we have the Holy Spirit in us. You and I are men and women of God.
And through sensitivity to the Spirit, we have the ability in every circumstance to be positive, not negative. “God, what are you doing in this situation?”
Now, ‘the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king saying, "Why have you torn your clothes? [Come on now!] Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel." ’
Psalm 97:1 reads, ‘our God reigns’; that's simple, true, spiritual life! ‘Our God reigns!’
“Let Naaman know there's a God in Israel!”
Whatever your situation is, no matter how negative, difficult, or painfilled, it's an opportunity for you by your faith to let others know there's a God in heaven who saves by the blood of Jesus. That's your opportunity!
A little slave girl sees the unseen. She has no malice, no hatred. She's loving and caring for the man that stole her from her house. She wishes him cured. She’s tender-hearted, kind, forgiving.
Not so the king! The king has this negative filter. He's older. He's been defeated by Syria again and again. He's a little worried about another battle. I get it. But the point of it is he doesn't get it. He doesn't remember there's a God in Israel that's reigning. But the man of God got it. And Elisha’s point was, “Ah, let the man know there's a prophet in Israel.”
‘So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and stood at the door of Elisha’s house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” ’ That's it? Naaman got angry! ‘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." ’ Wow…
How about you? How many times do you get angry and leave the presence of the Lord because you expected something to be done your way and you allowed your puny self-centered outlook to ‘profess yourself to be wise, but instead, you became a fool.’ (Rom. 1:22)
Wow. What an amazing thing! So, as the captain rages, ‘“Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could not I wash in them and get cleaned?” ’ he turns away, and goes off enraged.
The Jordan River is usually kind of muddy. It wasn't a very attractive bathing instrument, so here's this cultural prejudice: “If all it is is washing in water, then we got better water in Syria!” And here's the battle: ‘Am I going to insist that God blesses by my understanding, or I'm not going to obey?’ That's the natural response of a fool, who says “there's no God”, who expects God to do things on his terms.
So, ‘His servants came near to him and said, "My father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?" And so he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan according to the word of the man of God. And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.’
See how powerful of a position you have, when you're just a servant. You have no stature, no nobility, and you have nothing to lose, because you're the servant of the Lord.
That’s what we see this picture, a little servant girl and other servants who were with him. They were pleading with him, to try to get him to see, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute! Didn't he say, ‘dip and you'll be clean’? Why be so proud and refuse to do it? Don't you want to be clean?"
Do you understand what happened to Naaman? I'm going to put it in New Testament terms; he was born again! Yes, he got his flesh cleaned! And when he got his flesh cleaned, he was given this huge birth of faith in the God of Israel.
He brought back earth, so he would have a sacred place to kneel. And then he asked Elisha, ‘I just ask one thing, that God would forgive me, that when my master the king is in the temple bowing before his idol, that that he would forgive me for standing there and holding the king's staff.’
Total transformation! That what's really important! To the king of Israel, what was important? Not having any more battles, not having any more kids stolen from their troops.
To Naaman, what was important? Not being demeaned, not having to dip in a filthy old Jordan river. “I've got rivers to dip in back in Damascus.” And he had an expectation. “Wave your arms, shout to God of heaven, clap your hands, and I'll be healed.” He was expecting a spectacular show!
Here's lesson one on baptism.
Naaman’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He took his pride, and his arrogance, and his unfulfilled false expectations, and he set them aside and admitted one thing; “Yes, I need to be cleansed. And there's been a promise made.” And he dipped seven times. And he was clean.
So, this picture of baptism is carried over to the New Testament.
What about you? You have your stature. You have your gifts! You have your opportunities. Are you going to come to God because you want your life to be fulfilled your way and God has to ‘buckle under’ and honor you? Or will you have childlike faith? That though you're a slave in a foreign land, you know God. And you know God is a powerful sovereign God, that redeems, and that can heal. So your desire for your adversary isn't that you can get even with him, but it's that they could get to know God like you!
Oh Lord, let that be the truth of our lives, help us pay attention, and have, like Jesus demanded, ‘the faith of a little child’. That’s all you need to be saved! In fact, if you don't have the faith of a little child, you'll never see the kingdom of God.
In the end, Naaman had the faith of a little child. He responded to the command because of his need and obeyed because of the promise of God.
That's what faith is.
That's what you and I can do. It's what you and I must do. May we be sensitive to guiding those under our influence with that kind of sensitivity. Be ‘Quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.’ Recognizing that ‘our God reigns’ over all the earth.
Let's pray.
Father, this is such an encouraging picture of childlike faith.
Thank you for the little servant girl who was so in love with you, so, so proud of you, so comforted and confident in who you were that even though she was a slave in a foreign land, she loved you, she trusted you, and she wanted those who had wronged her to know you. That was her greatest desire.
So help us, Lord, to be granted that privilege. To not look on the earthly things, to not look at our earthly circumstance. To not have all negative filters like the king of Israel, imagining that ‘the king of Syria wants another fight!’, but help us recognize that you're on your throne, you are reigning! The circumstances we're in are coming from you, and we need to ask that question. “Oh Lord, what is it that I shall do?
What is it that we need to do to trust you, so that we can walk in your love and be kind and tender-hearted, and not give place to wrath but rather do good?”
Let our lives be a point of light in the world that we live in, and especially, Lord, let us be your servants; happy to serve the needs of the moment and the hour wherever you've called us.
We pray in Christ's name. Amen.