to 1 Kings chapter 19. We're going to look again. the life and miracles of Elisha.
This will be lesson number one. This is his calling. And Elijah,
the prophet before Elisha, and we'll kind of just touch with
him just a little bit this evening and we'll dab fully in Elisha
as he turns hands over the mantle as it were to him. Elisha is
at Horeb. Elijah is at Horeb in 1 Kings
19 and he says I have Been very jealous for the Lord God in verse
14 of 1 Kings 19 He said I've been very jealous for the Lord
God of hosts because the children of Israel Have forsaken thy covenant
thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword. And I, even I, am left, and they
seek my life to take it away." Verse 15, and the Lord said unto
him, Elijah, go return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus,
and when thou comest anoint Hazel to be king over Syria, and Jehu
the son of Nishai shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel.
And Elijah, the son of Shaphat, of Abel Merlo, shalt thou anoint
to be prophet in thy room. And it shall come to pass that
him that escaped the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay, and him
that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay. And God says, yet I have left
me 7,000 in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal,
and every mouth which hath not kissed him. So Elijah departed
thence and found Elijah, the son of Shaphat, who was plowing
with 12 yoke of oxen before him, and he with the 12th and Elijah
passed by him and cast his mantle upon him. And he left the oxen
and ran after Elijah and said, let me, I pray thee, kiss my
father and mother and then will I follow thee. And he said unto
him, go back again for what have I done to thee. In other words,
he gave his approval, go back and take care of the business.
And so Elijah went back from him and took a yoke of oxen and
slew them and boiled their flesh with the instruments of the oxen
and gave unto the people and they did eat. Then he arose and
went after Elijah and ministered unto him." So that's his calling. Now we'll go to 2 Kings 2. 2
Kings 2. And let's just look at verses
1-8 and then we'll stop. came to pass when the Lord would
take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind that Elijah went
with Elisha from Gilgal. And Elijah said unto Elisha,
tarry here, I pray thee, for the Lord has sent me to Bethel. And Elisha said unto him, as
the Lord liveth and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.
So they went down to Bethel. They went together. And the sons
of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to Elisha and
said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away your
master from thy head today? And he said, Yea, I know it.
Hold your peace. And Elisha said unto Elisha,
Tarry here, I pray thee, for the Lord hath sent me to Jericho. And Elisha said, As the Lord
liveth and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they
came to Jericho together. And the sons of the prophets
that were at Jericho came to Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest
thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head
today? And he answered them, Yea, I know it. Hold your peace. And Elisha said unto Elisha,
Terry, I pray thee, hear, for the Lord has sent me to Jordan.
And he said, As the Lord liveth, And as thy soul liveth, I will
not leave thee." So this is the third time. He says, I'm going.
He says, no, I'm going with you side by side. I'm not going to
leave your side. And they went the two on. And 50 men of the
sons of the prophets went and stood to view afar off. And they
too stood by Jordan. And Elijah took his mantle and
wrapped it together and smote the waters. And they there were
divided, the waters of Jordan, thither and thither, so that
the two went over on dry ground. Let's just keep reading for a
little bit here. And it came to pass, when they were gone
over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee
before I be taken from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee,
let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And the older prophet
said, thou hast asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if you see
me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee. But if not, it shall not be so. So basically, Elijah couldn't
grant that request. He said, if you see me, it'll
be granted. If you don't see me when I'm
taken, it won't be granted. It came to pass, as they still
went on and talked, and behold, there appeared a chariot of fire,
and the horses of fire parted them both asunder, and Elijah
went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried,
My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.
And he saw him no more, and he took hold of his own clothes,
and rent them in two pieces. Then he took up the mantle of
Elijah that fell from him, and went back and stood by the bank
of Jordan. And he took the mantle of Elijah
that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is
the Lord God of Elijah? And when he also had smitten
the waters, they parted hither and thither, and Elijah went
over. And when the sons of the prophets
which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The spirit
of Elijah does rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him and
bowed themselves to the ground before him. And they said unto
him, Behold, now there be with thy servants fifty strong men.
Let them go, we pray thee, and seek thy master, lest peradventure
the Spirit of the Lord have taken him up and cast him upon some
mountain or into some valley. And Elijah said, You shall not
sin. And when they urged him till
he was ashamed, he said, Sin. Elijah said, Just go ahead. They
just kept pestering and pestering and pestering. They sent therefore
fifty men, and they sought three days, but found him not. And
when they had come again to him, for he tarried at Jericho to
Elijah, he said unto them, Did I not say unto you, Go not."
So that's where we'll stop. We'll stop there. So again, we'll
talk a little bit about Elijah and Elisha. And just a few thoughts. Elijah, what that means in the
Hebrew is Jehovah, is my God. Elisha, what that means is God
is salvation. And I think what we have here,
and I didn't really see this very clearly, but as I looked
at it and was reading what some other folks said, I tend to agree
that this is a picture. Elisha is a picture of Christ,
and Elisha is a picture of the Holy Spirit. Okay? Back in our passage in 1 Kings
19. I'll put this down here. 1 Kings 19 and the latter part
of verse 16. The Lord God told Elijah to go
to Elisha, the son of Shaphat, and thou shalt anoint him to
be prophet in thy room." He's going to be prophet in your room,
in your place. Now, when Christ was taken from
the disciples, what did He say? He said, I'm not going to leave
you alone. I'm going to send the Comforter.
The Comforter is going to be with you. And what is He going
to do? What is He going to do? Very, very uniquely, I don't
know how it's worded in the Old Testament, but Christ said, He
will show you the things concerning Me." And when the mantle, which
fell to the ground, he took Elisha, the student, took that mantle,
and they said, He's taken the place of Elisha. He's taken the
place of Elisha. Now I do like, and I don't know
how you think about this, but we'll turn to John chapter 14.
Turn to John chapter 14. The wording here is pretty interesting.
And Tim James makes a comment, he calls the Holy Spirit, our
Lord's other self. He calls the Holy Spirit, the
Lord's other self. Now these are two separate persons
in the Trinity. There's no question about that.
But the three are one. But look at John chapter 14,
and verse 16, 17, and 18. And I will pray the Father, this
is Christ speaking to His disciples, and He shall give you another
Comforter. I'm a Comforter, but He's going
to give you another one, that He may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of Truth, whom
the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth
Him, but you know Him, for He dwelleth with you and shall be
in you." And then Christ says, I will not leave you comfortless
I will come to you. So, Elisha is the picture of
Christ. Elisha, picture of the Holy Spirit.
The two are one. I will not leave thee. It says
of Christ that he had a spirit without measure in the scriptures.
And as I said, there are two separate persons in the Trinity.
But then we have Elisha in 2 Kings 2, Elisha ascends and Elisha
is left behind. Christ ascends, He sends the
Holy Spirit to make known to His people only Himself, the
Lord Jesus Christ. And the Holy Spirit reveals the
Word to us, that which concerns Christ. And what I think is beautiful
in 2 Kings is every time Elisha said, I'm going, you stay here,
he said, nope, I'm going with you. I'm going with you. I'm
going with you. Like the paraclete, I'm going
with you. And then he says these three times, and he says, I'm
going with you. And then the request, the request
of Elisha, He says in 2 Kings 2, what would you have that I
do? I want a double portion of thy Spirit be upon me. And he
said, thou hast asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, he's basically
saying it's not up to me. And this hard thing that Elisha
is asking, it's a hard thing to dictate where the Holy Spirit who it will light upon, who He
will reveal it to. To receive the Holy Spirit is
only given by God, not the works of man. So even in this, now
we're kind of getting away from the type, but he asks this difficult
thing, and he says, it's not mine to give. I really can't
give it to you. So, to receive the Holy Spirit,
the wind blows where it wants to. We just preach the gospel,
which we'll see that in here as well. We just preach the truth.
But God, only He, as in this situation, only He can give the
anointing of the Holy Spirit. God must bestow it to whomsoever
He will. I look at verse 13 of our text
in 2 Kings. 2 Kings chapter 13. He took up
also the mantle of Elijah and that fell from him and he went
back and stood by the bank of Jordan. And Elisha saw what happened,
he says, verse 12, my father, my father, the chariot of Israel,
he saw him no more and he took hold of his own clothes and rent
them in two pieces. The Holy Spirit takes the mantle,
as it were, of Christ and continues the work of glorifying God. Christ
says, I'm leaving, but I'm not leaving you alone. It's as though
the Holy Spirit, in this situation, Elijah, is going to take up the
mantle of Christ and continue to glorify the Redeemer, continue
to glorify God. Now, let's look into the miracle. What is the miracle? Verse 13,
He took up the mantle that fell from Him and went back and stood
by the bank of Jordan. Then He took the mantle of Elijah
that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, where is
the God of Elijah? And when he had smitten the waters,
they parted hither and thither, and Elisha went over." So this
is the parting of Jordan. This is the first miracle that
we'll look at with the story of Elisha. This could represent
how hard it is to conquer sinners' lost and hard hearts. He walks
up to the Jordan. He's like, you know, this is
not going to be something to be done by my works or by my
will or by my worth. Neither is the Gospel. We just
proclaim the Gospel. It's God that will add the increase.
It's God that will divide the seas. With men, this is impossible. With God, through the foolishness
of preaching, all things are possible. We don't speak for
show or for money or for man's praise or applause. we see the
utter impossibility of dividing this Jordan, or as it were, sinners
muddied through their own depravity and sin, sinners by our actions,
God must split open, as it were, the heart, God must show how
muddy and filth we are, and if He is pleased to divide it, He
does so by His own sovereign prerogative. He came there, He
had that mantle, which was I think a cloak, is what I looked up,
it's a cloak, and he said, he petitioned God, the God of Elijah,
and he's preaching the same thing as Elijah. He's aligning himself
with what he's saying, I'm the same as the Holy Spirit, we're
just in the same position as the God of the Son, however,
in this example, this illustration, as the preacher of the gospel,
He said, I'm saying the same thing that was preached to me,
how I heard the truth. And so therefore I say the same
thing. So he takes up this mantle of
Elisha and he goes by the Jordan and he parts the water. Now,
the second thing, the believer is shown here to be fearless
and resolute. Okay, I don't know if he could
swim. Apparently there was no boats. I have no idea. Anyway,
in order to get to the other side where the 50 men or the
prophets were watching all this, he had to cross over the Jordan.
So we see the man of God or believers, any of this could be applied
therein, we are to be fearless and resolute. We walk up to this
challenge and it's like... Or if the spies are sent out
into Canaan, And everybody comes back, but two, Caleb and Joshua,
and they said, oh, we can't do it. There's giants and there's
kings. Oh, it's a land of milk and honey,
but it's just more than we can handle. That's because they're
looking at it with their eyes. But Joshua and Caleb said, We're
more than able to take it. We can take them. And so this
is kind of the mindset of those who, by God-given grace and faith,
this is what we do. We just, whether it's at work
or whether it's at home, whether it's a community, whether it's
every time we gather together, whatever it may be, we have an
impossible task in front of us. Passing over Jordan. Whatever
our task, whatever our trial, whatever our difficulty, we by
faith go forward. I like what Jack Shanks says,
he says, we don't stick our heads in the sand like an ostrich.
We deal with it. We have to confront it. Turn
with me to 1 John chapter 5. In verse 4, 1 John chapter 5
verse 4, for whatsoever, I'm sorry, for whatsoever is born
of God overcometh the world, and this is the victory that
overcome the world, even our faith. Even our faith. We do not, and I know we have
the flesh, I know we wrestle, I know we struggle, but God gives
us grace to just simply walk by faith, not sight, sound, whatever. That's the second point. The
third thing is we use, as Elijah did, we use all lawful means
to preach the gospel. In this case, it was the mantle.
He took the mantle, verse 14, that fell from Elijah to him,
and then he smote the waters and they departed. They departed. That's verse 14 again. We use
all lawful means to make sure the gospel is proclaimed. Now,
we don't idolize his various means. We don't worship the preacher. We don't worship prayer or even
the preaching. We just use his means as he prescribes
and leave it there. Now, you say, well, we wouldn't
do that. Well, I could have you turn to
2 Kings chapter 18. Don't. But remember the serpent
that Moses had built and Aaron had built? Okay, it has been
a number of years since it had been used. And they were storing
it. And then one of the kings, they
were worshipping it. And he says, in 2 Kings 18 verses
1-5, you want to look at it, he says, break it. He calls it
a piece of brass. But they were worshipping it.
So we, still in the flesh, We can take things that normally
would glorify God and idolize Him. We can put too much emphasis
on one thing or the other. Oh, God did this because I prayed
for it. No, if we pray according to His will, He hears us. So that's just something to be
aware of. We use all lawful means to further
to further the miracles of God, which would be the preaching
of the gospel, to save sinners. Be praying for the Lord to save
sinners in the midst of this city, this town, this county. Fourthly, look at verse 15. And
when the sons of the prophets were to view at Jericho, they
saw Elisha, they said, the spirit of Elisha does rest on Elisha.
And they came to meet him and bowed themselves to the ground
before him. Now, this is, you know, we worship
the Lord Jesus Christ, him and him alone, bowing our ground.
There is another point here, and I'll just make a couple of
references. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 1, Follow me in so
much as I follow Christ." So what these men were doing, were
showing reverence for the gospel and the gospel preacher. Follow
me in as much as I follow Christ. And then turn to 1 Timothy. 1
Timothy chapter 5. 1 Timothy chapter 5. And verse 17, let the elders
that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially they
who labor in the word and doctrine. Show reverence to whom reverence
is due. So every time the gospel is preached,
it doesn't really make a difference if I'm up here or not. The person
who's up here behind this pulpit or Bible class, or if we're in
the next room at a fellowship meal and somebody starts speaking
of the glory of Christ, give them your attention. Give them
your respect. Give them your reverence. Because
that's what it, that's, those who proclaim the gospel, the
gospel itself shouldn't be talked flippantly about. But I just
thought that was a very interesting point to bring that out. And
in closing, And we have verses 16 through 18. Now we've got
faith versus sight here. So now these guys, he comes over
and they respect him. They show respect for what he
is, who he represents, the gospel that he's preaching, the miracles
that he's shown. Verse 16, and they said unto him, Behold, we've
got fifty strong men. Like that's, you've got to be
strong. And that's what men rely on.
They rely on their strength. They rely on their youth. their
age, anything but God. We've got 50 strong men. Let
them go, we pray thee, to seek thy master. They just saw what
happened. They saw him taken up. His mantle
came floating down and Elisha grabbed it. They saw what happened. Peradventure, the Spirit of the
Lord hath taken him up and cast him upon some mountain or into
some valley. That sounds like our gracious
Lord, doesn't it? Go up about 10,000 feet and just drop them.
No. But all they had was their strong
men and it looked like they were doing a good deed. Oh, they're
going to find a prophet. And what did Elisha say? You
shall not send them. And usually what happens when
people are walking in the flesh, and not by faith or by sight. They keep on, keep on, keep on,
keep on, and then the person who's walking by faith, it's
a shame because it's like, well, you just respected me, you respected
my message, you respected the gospel, and now you're acting
completely opposite. Opposite. They shamed him, so
he was ashamed, and he said, go ahead and send. They sent
therefore 50 men, and they sought three days. They didn't find
him. The last thing Elisha said is,
did I not say, until you go not, or I told you so, whatever, however
you want to phrase it. So here's the thing. This is
faith versus sight. The flesh, or walking by sight,
Whatever we can see or whatever we think we feel will surely
produce nothing of value. As Tim James said, it's a waste
of time. It's a waste of time to be, oh, this might happen,
and this might happen. And I got something in the bulletin.
I got a quote. We would spend way too much time worrying about
what if, what if, what if, instead of what is. Christ is risen,
he's on the right hand of God, but he can't take care of this
little thing and that little thing. We spend way too much
time, and that's walking by sight. It's a waste of time. It's a
waste of energy. You know, you've heard that before.
You know, stop worrying. It's a waste of your time and
a waste of mine. It is. But we do. We have to keep on
being encouraged to come back to Christ and to walk by sight.
But we do walk by faith. instead of by sight, knowing
God has wrought a good work by grace, and you move on. And this is what Elijah's doing.
He saw everything, he was with his mentor, he loved his mentor.
Matter of fact, he wept when he In verse 12, when he saw him
no more, he took hold of his clothes and rent them in two
pieces. He wept and mourned. When we lose loved ones, we do
that. That's part of human nature. But what does the grace of God
do? The grace of God stands up, takes the mantle, and goes forth
knowing that every single thing is wrought by God. And it's for
the believer's good. Every single thing. So we go
forward. We walk. We move on. We move
on. This is what we do because He's
redeemed us. We do have the flesh. We do walk
by sight a lot. But we walk by faith. And that's
encouraging. Don't do it. Do not send these
folks. Okay, you just keep on, keep
on, keep on. Go ahead. They couldn't find
them. And he said, I told you, did I not say unto you, go not. And that's the end of it. That's
the end of it. Water under the bridge. Let us
go forth bearing the Lord's reproach. Let us go forth bearing his mantle. Let us here at this place go
forth with the gospel of God's grace. How can they hear except
David the preacher? How can they hear? You see somebody
in the grocery store under a mask or without a mask. Tell them.
of the free grace of God. They don't understand what's
going on. But the believer does. The believer does. Only believe. Yes, only believe. Now, the next miracle is He heals
the waters at Jericho. And it's odd how He does it.
But these same men, they're like, OK, we should have believed you.
And then they come in and they're going to ask, we've got a problem.
And the Lord God through his prophet takes care of another
situation, but that's, that'd be for next week maybe. So anyway,
may the Lord honor the opening of his word and reading of his
word and singing of hymns. Nathan, would you close us?