Turn with me, if you would, to
2 Kings 2. Chapter 2, last Sunday morning
we were in 2 Kings 7 where Elisha declared the end of a famine
and how the Lord was going to make that happen through four
leprous men who went and fell on the king of Syria, fell on
the one who had control of them for mercy, fell on them for mercy. Being there made me want to look
at the life of Elisha just a little bit. His his ministry is right
here at the beginning of Second Kings chapter two, and we're
going to do that a little bit today. I don't I don't know if
we'll continue looking at his story or not, but for this Bible
study, we're going to look at a request that he made. At the beginning of his ministry,
And my goal for this is to not make it complicated. I want to,
I feel that this Bible study is extremely important. And I want to encourage you to
ask the Lord to give you an open eye and open heart, cause you
to really see this. This is so, so important. I want
to be as to the point as I can possibly be. But I have a lot
to say. I was talking to a brother who
came by my office while I was working on it and I said, I need
about three hours to say everything I need to say here. But maybe
the Lord will just help us to go through it. And I hope that
we'll truly understand something of what Elisha requested come
the end of this study. Elisha is first mentioned in
First Kings 19 when the Lord told Elijah, you got Elijah and
Elisha, and the Lord told Elijah, that Elisha was going to take
his place as God's prophet. And Elisha heard the call of
the Lord, and he got rid of all of his stuff, he sold everything
he had, and he followed Elijah. And he stayed with him, and he
was under his instruction, and under his ministry. And that's
what happens when God calls a man to preach. He puts him under
a true preacher, and he learns by example, and he learns by
his teaching. That's how God calls and prepares
his preachers. So here we are now, Elisha has
been with Elijah ever since the Lord called him to do that. And
if you look with me at 2 Kings 2 verse 1, it says, It 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 hath 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. Elijah said, You stay here. The
Lord's calling me to Bethel. Elisha said, I'm not leaving
you. So they went down to Bethel. Verse three, 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 thy master
from thy head today? And he said, yea, I know it.
Hold your peace. They said, do you realize that
the Lord's going to take Elijah away from you today? And he said,
I know that. Verse four. And Elijah said unto him, Elisha,
tarry here, I pray thee, for the Lord hath sent me to Jericho.
And he said, as the Lord liveth and as thy soul liveth, I will
not leave thee. So they came to Jericho. 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, Yea, I know
it. Hold ye your peace. And Elisha said unto him, Terry,
I pray thee here, for the Lord hath sent me to Jordan. And he
said, As the Lord liveth and as thy soul liveth, I will not
leave thee. And they too went on. And fifty
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 smoked the waters, and they were divided
hither and thither, so that they too went over on dry ground."
Now I will tell you that there is much spiritual significance
in what we just read. I'm just reading right through
it. But the names of the cities, if you study all this, the names
of the cities they went to, the fact that Elisha would not leave
Elijah, Elijah's mantle being taken off. That was his cloak.
It was his robe. And the word translates glory. He took his glory off. And he
smoked the river Jordan. That's where our Lord was baptized. That's, you know, people talk
about crossing over Jordan in reference to death and that,
you know, great gulf between here and eternity. And our Lord
there in Jordan symbolized being immersed into union with his
people. And that mantle divided and made
a straight way. through every bit of it. So we
can see a picture of Christ in all this. Elijah is about to
ascend up. We know that Elijah was taken
up into heaven. He's about to ascend up. That's
a picture of the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I don't
want to pass all this by without pointing that out, but there's
something I want us to see, something I want us to get to here. Verse
nine. 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 away from thee. And Elisha said,
I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. Elijah said, before the Lord
takes me up, ask what gift you would like to receive. From him,
Elijah said, ask what you'd like for me to do for you. But every
good and perfect gift is from above. It's all from God. And
Elisha said, as the spirit of the Lord has been with you. I
pray that a double portion of God's spirit might be with me. He said, I am praying for I'm
asking for a double portion of God's spirit. What a wise thing
that is to ask for. I would encourage everybody here
to ask the Lord God for that. Seriously, I would encourage
us to really get that into our vocabulary and heart as we're
praying to Him. A double portion of the Spirit
like Solomon He didn't ask for riches. He didn't ask for fame.
He didn't ask for long life. He said, give me your spirit,
a double portion of God's spirit. May a double portion of God's
spirit be to us and in all of God's people. Well, verse nine
says, 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
away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee,
let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, thou
hast asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if thou see me
when I'm taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee, but if
not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass as they still
went on and talked that behold, there appeared a chariot of fire
and horses of fire and parted them both asunder and Elijah
went up by 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.
He took up also 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 Elisha went
over. And when the sons of the prophets,
which were to view at Jericho, saw him, they said, The spirit
of Elijah doth rest on Elisha. And they came to meet him, and
bowed themselves to the ground before him. Now, what I want
us to look at this morning is what does a double portion of
God's spirit mean? What does that mean? To answer
that, I want us to find out what does any portion of God's spirit
mean? What is it to possess God's spirit
at all? What is it to possess God's Spirit
at all? John chapter 3 says Christ has
the Spirit of God without measure. And here's the reason why this
is the reason why if we're going to talk for a second about the
Spirit, let's start right here. Romans 8 verse 9 says God's Spirit. Is the Spirit of Christ? Second Corinthians 317 says the
Lord. And if you were reading it, you
would see it's capital L lowercase O.R.D. That's the body image
of Jehovah. The bodily image of the Lord
Jesus Christ, it says the Lord is that spirit. And where the
spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. Galatians 4 verse 6
says, God hath sent forth the spirit of his son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. So the Holy Spirit of God is
the spirit of Christ himself. Now, what is the evidence of
possessing his spirit? To get right to the point, I
want to say this. And I want to interject again,
this is so important. This has this has been good for
me. This has been helpful for me.
You're going to need this. You're going to run into this
and you're going to need this. All right. To get right to the
point. What is the evidence of possessing God's spirit? We got
to start here. That which is flesh. Is flesh. All right. Think about when you
think about flesh, get that image in your mind and put that over
there. And that which is spirit is spirit. If we are going to understand
something of what it is to possess God's spirit, we are going to
have to get the flesh out of the way. We're going to have
to first remove the flesh if we're going to really know what
it is to have God's spirit. God is a spirit. They that worship
him must worship him in spirit and in truth. And if we're going
to know what it is to have God's spirit, then we are going to
have to turn our eyes away from our flesh first. The spirit is
not evidenced in the flesh. It's evidenced in the heart.
Meaning the soul, the Not that fleshly muscle that's beating.
The spirit is not evidenced in the mind. It's evidenced in the
heart. The spirit is not evidenced in
our deeds. It's evidenced in the heart.
Let me explain this. Obviously, Elijah and Elisha
could perform miracles. OK, God gave them that ability.
Some people see having the Holy Spirit as having the ability
to perform miracles, healings and things like that miracles.
That is not the evidence of possessing God's spirit. Moses and Aaron,
OK, I'm talking about Elisha and Elijah, let's go back to
Moses and Aaron. They performed miracles in Egypt,
Aaron's rod turned into a snake. All right, right after they did
that, Pharaoh's sorcerers did the same thing. They did miracles
and they didn't have God's Holy Spirit. John chapter 10 tells
us that John the Baptist never performed one miracle. And Luke
chapter one tells us that he had the Holy Spirit from his
mother's womb. So performing miracles is not
the evidence of possessing God's Spirit. I'll just say the ability
to perform miracles was given to the prophets and to the apostles
to confirm the Word of God that this is indeed the Word of God. And that Word has been confirmed. And we don't have miracles anymore.
There are no more miracles anymore. We have a sure more sure word
of prophecy. Than miracles, that's over, that's
not anymore. So miracles is not it. Some people
see having the Holy Spirit. As having an uncontrollable charismatic
movement in the body. That is not the evidence of having
God's Spirit. There was a Gadarean man in Mark
chapter 5 that had an uncontrollable movement in his body. He was
possessed with spirits, just not the Holy Spirit. But when
the Lord cast those evil spirits out of him and put the Holy Spirit
in him, the moment that happened, he sat down was clothed and in
his right mind. So charismatic chaos is not the
evidence of the Holy Spirit. Now, listen to this. Listen to
this, see if the Lord will open your eyes to this, this is just
Galatians 5 talks about the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace,
patience, meekness, humility. Love for this world. Love for the things of this world,
love for the people of this world, love for our families, love for
our children, love for our friends, love for our neighbors. Love
for this world is not the evidence of love for Christ. It's not. All right, now we just
said a minute ago that if we're going to really understand this,
because you hear about love and peace and all those things and
and you think, well, let me grab somebody and give them a hug.
If we're really going to understand this, we're going to have to
get the flesh out of the way. We'll have to remove the flesh. We try to associate the spiritual
things of God with the flesh, and that's not it. That's not
it. Finding joy and happiness in
this world and in the things that we've been given in this
world, that is not the evidence of joy and happiness in Christ. It's just not. Patience in this
world is not the evidence of waiting on Christ. A man could be meek and humble
in this world and shake his fist in the face of our sovereign
Christ. Little old ladies who even wear
doilies on their heads, you start to tell them about their sin
and about God choosing a people and about all those things and
they get mad at that. They don't want to hear that
God. So worldly, fleshly fruit is not the evidence of God's
Spirit. Now, will love for Christ produce
love for others? Yes, it will. But love for others does not
produce love for Christ. Only God's Spirit produces love
for Christ. So it's not in miracles. It's
not in physical deeds. It's not in any physical show. It's not in any physical emotion. And it's not in any physical
knowledge. You're going to need this. Knowledge of true facts concerning
God. I'm talking about true facts.
Is not the evidence of God's spirit. I will say this again,
knowledge of true facts concerning God. Is not the evidence of God's
spirit. Can a man or woman know that
God is sovereign? We have the word sovereign on
our sign. Can somebody read our sign and agree with it? Can a man or woman know that
God is sovereign, all powerful, sovereign in election, in redemption,
In the call of salvation, can a person know that there is only
one God, there's only one God, one sovereign God, and still
end up condemned in eternal damnation? Can that happen? Here's the answer.
Absolutely. Absolutely. A knowledge of truths
is not the evidence of God's spirit. Oh, we could take so
much time and I could show you people who spoke truths throughout
the scripture, didn't know God, didn't have God's spirit. Is he sovereign? Yes, he is. Will God's people know that he's
sovereign? Yes, they will. Lord willing,
we're about to preach his sovereignty in just a minute. Absolutely. But this is what James chapter
two, verse 19 says, OK, it says, you believe there's only one
God. The devils believe that. The devils believe that and they
tremble. They know there is only one all
powerful God. They know that he cast them out
of heaven as a bolt of lightning. They came to him one time and
said, we know who you are. Have you come to torment us before
the time? They said, we know that there
is a sovereignly appointed time. We know what our end is. Believing correct doctrine is
not the evidence of God's Holy Spirit. Everybody ought to see
God's sovereignty in his word. When we read these verses, everybody
ought to see that everybody ought to see election. How many times
is the word election, elect, elected, chosen? How many times
is that in the scripture? Everybody ought to see that.
Will God's people know correct doctrine? Yes, they will. Yes, they will. But knowing correct
doctrine is not the evidence of having God's spirit. OK, then
what is it? What is it? I'm going to tell
it and then I'm going to show it. What is the evidence of God's
Holy Spirit in a person? I'm going to just tell it right
now. It is a crying out to the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy. It is a desperate, desperate,
desperate, desperate looking to Christ. A desperate need for Christ. Blind Bartimaeus cried, Jesus,
thou son of David, have mercy on me. That was a spirit-filled man. He couldn't even see, and he
was looking to Christ. That publican in the temple smote
upon his breast, crying, God, be merciful to me. That was a spirit filled man. He had one desperate need. Mercy. Mercy. Mercy. Forgiveness in the blood
of a savior. Isaiah crying, woe is me. David crying, according to thy
tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Those were spirit filled men. Doctrine does not lead men to
Christ. If you've ever heard that and
wondered, what does that mean? You ever heard that statement?
It's true. Doctrine does not lead men to
Christ. Doctrine does not lead men to
Christ. Doctrine does not lead men to
Christ. What does lead men to Christ?
A desperate need of mercy. A desperate need of mercy. That's
what leads men and women to Christ. A desperate need of mercy. A
desperate need of mercy. When a desperate need for mercy
is there, men and women know they're totally depraved. I need
mercy. When a desperate crying out is
there, men and women see God has mercy on whomever he chooses
to have mercy on. When a sinner has no choice but
to turn to Christ, it's because he knows there's only one remedy
for my condition. Blood. Righteousness. And it has to come from Him.
It has to come from Him. One man wrote, a sinner is a
sacred thing. The Holy Ghost has made him so.
When God's spirit comes to a man or a woman, he convinces that
person of his or her sin. Sin. And he convinces them of
the only remedy that there is before God, and that's the blood
and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've got one hope,
and I need it. He convinces them of the fact
that their only hope of enduring God's judgment is standing in
that blood. standing in that righteousness,
covered in the blood, poured the blood on me, robed me in
that righteousness. And with that spirit filled,
convincing the child of God cries, Lord, Master, Savior, Owner,
God, be merciful to me. Please, please have mercy on
me. Mark this down. You're going
to run into two situations where You know, well, they say a lot
of correct things. They're talking about election.
They're talking about this. Mark this down. Where there is
no desperate cry for mercy, there's a problem. Something's wrong. There may be a zeal of God there. The doctrine may sound very,
very close, but when there is no desperate, desperate cry for
mercy, God's spirit is not there. It's not there. John 16 says
when God's spirit is there, he convinces of sin, righteousness,
and judgment. All right, now I'm done. But let me just point out that
this request that Elisha made. Elijah, who went up, represents
Christ. Who said, I must go that the
Comforter may come, which is the Holy Spirit. I'm going to
go and the Spirit's going to come. And when Elisha asked for
God's Spirit, This is what Elijah said to him. He said, if you
see me go, then you'll have it. If you see
me, if you see me, you'll have it. And Elisha said, when it
happened, he said, I see. Elijah went up, he left his covering,
his mantle, his robe, which represents the righteous covering of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the blood that covers his people. And when
God's Spirit came to Elisha, at the end of verse 12, if you
look 2 Kings 2, the end of verse 12 says, He took hold of His own clothes
when that Spirit came to Him, His own covering, His own worthiness,
and His own righteousness before God, and He ripped them into
pieces. And that's what all of God's
people do. They rip their own filthy self-righteousness into
crying, I'm a sinner, oh wretched man that I am. Verse 13 says
Elijah laid hold of them. Elisha took up the mantle of
Elijah, laid hold of the mantle of Elijah. And that's what God's
people do. They lay hold, they take up, they are graciously
allowed to wear. The righteousness of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the covering of Christ, covering of mercy. And
then with that covering, he said, where is the God of Elijah? And that's what every child of
God will cry. I'm a sinner. I need that covering. My only hope is that Christ gave
it to me, robed himself in my sin, robed me in his righteousness
and in his blood. And then we went to meet God
in our coverings and God judged us accordingly. To have God's
Spirit is to see our need of Christ and to cry out to Him
to supply it. To have a double portion of God's
Spirit, and maybe this will be a help to all of us. As I get older,
I don't see less of my sin. I don't. To have a double portion
is to get a double look at our sin. It's to get a double look
at Christ's righteousness. And a double look at the judgment
that has already been endured in His blood. A double look. A double look. In Isaiah 40,
the Lord said, You cry to my people that her warfare is accomplished?
Her iniquity is pardoned for she hath received of the Lord's
hand double for all of her sins, double mercy, double righteousness,
double forgiveness. Lord, give us double. Give us
a double portion of Christ for his sake. All right. I pray the
Lord will make that a blessing. You're dismissed.