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Numbers 5:17
Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.

A ritual to find out if somebody is faithful, and punish them if they are not, Interesting.

The most meaningful example to me from the OT --- an example of healing and cleansing through water which I make use of frequently in teaching--- is the example of Naaman the Syrian. I love this.

Before I tell this great episode, let me say that God has bound cleansing to the outward sign of the waters of Baptism, but He himself is not bound by His sacraments or His sacramentals.

In context, this is true of all His physical, material outward signs which He uses as signs of His power. We should not adopt an overly legalistic, mechanical, and isolating view of the sacraments. We are called to a life of "continual conversion," and God graciously gives us ways to do this through sacraments and sacramentals, which we OUGHT to do if we understand that we are called by God to do it! But God is ALWAYS free to act in our lives at any time, in any way He wants.

So here's Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5), wanting to be cleansed of the dread disease of leprosy.

He gets the impression from his wife's Hebrew slave girl that there is a prophet in Samaria who can help him. He is a great general, from the important and wealthy city of Damascus, and he carries a letter from the king asking for healing.

(I think it's cool that he first shows his "greatness" being humbled by being willing to take a little slave girl's advice. I'll get back to that point later.)

The king, it turns out, has no faith in the True God. He just says the equivalent of, "I can't cure leprosy. Are you trying to pick a fight with me? Are you trying to create a pretext for war?" He's not even thinking of asking God to work through him, an anointed king!

So Naaman journeys on down and encounters Elisha (sort of): actually Elisha did not come out at all. He only sent word to Naaman, “Go and wash in Jordan seven times and your leprosy will be cleansed."

Here's the pivotal scene:

But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the Name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.

But seeing as he's in desperate straits with the leprosy and all, he listens to his slaves' advice (again) and humbles himself in the eyes of all his armed cohort, and dips himself seven times in this second-rate Jewish Jordan, and --- you know the rest. A miracle. He is cleansed of his loathsome disease.

The point is, of course God could cure Naaman instantly. Or, working through the prophet Elisha, he could heal the man when Ellisa invokled His Holy Name. But! He wanted Naaman to be cured in a better way: in a way that would be definitely humbling, and yet wonderfully effective, and that would not only get rid of his disease but also bind him in a mysterious way to Israel.

Voila! God works through a secondary cause (Elisha) and even through a further-removed secondary cause (Jordan's holy water) to show that His power works anywhere, if you are humble enough to believe and accept His mysterious ways.

The Sacraments--- all of them --- are like that. God can wash us, confirm us, feed us, forgive us and all the rest, but He wants to do it in a way that binds us to the whole Body of Christ which is His Church.

If Naaman had said, "Heck with this, I'm a powerful military commander, I'll go call on the Name of God myself and skip this dumb water nonsense" --- too proud to go to a man who would prescribe a somewhat humbling, physical procedure -- what would have happened to him?

How does God deal with the proud?