Introduction
A few
years ago, someone told me about a British agriculture business that conducted
a study on efficient farming methods around the world.
·
How do you maximise efficiency?
·
How do you get the best out of the soil and livestock?
·
How do you control costs?
·
How do you farm sustainably?
And part
of this research took their R and D manager to the Australian outback, home to
one of the biggest farms on earth.
Apparently,
there’s a sheep farmer there with a holding about the size of Wales. His staff
have to travel up and down the farm by light aircraft. How on earth do you
manage a business with a land surface as big as that? How can you possibly keep
an eye on everything that’s going on?
When he
got there, to his astonishment, he found that there are no physical boundaries
on this farm! So, you’ve basically got a 20,000km2 sheep pen
without a single yard of fencing. How does that work? So he asked the people on
the ground there, “how do you stop your livestock from wandering off?”
The
Australians just laughed. They said, “Why would you want fences? We don’t need fences.
The sheep always gather around the water. They only go where they can drink.
All we need to know is where the wells are. That’s where the sheep will
be.”
When I
look at the spiritual landscape of Britain today, I come to the same
conclusion. Where are the sheep? Wherever the water is. And where and what are
the spiritual wells that people head for? Is it canon law, or church dogma, or
liberal theology?
Maybe
some of those wells used to hold water, or probably not to be honest, but
they’ve all been dry for eons and the sheep aren’t there. They headed for the
river of the Spirit years ago.
There are
wells and springs of spiritual life and blessing all over the world; there is a
river whose streams make glad the city of God; that’s where God is at work and
that’s where you will find the church healthy and growing.
Spiritual
Deserts and Wells
When you
look at the story of God’s chosen people down the years, you find it is
peppered with deserts and rivers. Deserts – prolonged periods of dryness and
lifelessness. Rivers – sudden flows of blessing and life.
And so a
timeline of the history of Israel would not show you a rising graph that goes
up and to the right in an even slope. It would look more like an
electrocardiogram. There are regular and frequent troughs and occasional high
peaks, representing times of ruin and revival.
The
period of the Judges and Kings are the dark ages of Scripture. The leaders
don’t get it, they don’t understand God’s ways and the nation goes nowhere,
getting constantly raided and attacked.
But then,
some begin to call on the Lord. And the Lord moves in mighty power. God out of
nowhere anoints a David, a Hezekiah, or a Josiah and the nation turns back to
God and a new river of blessing flows. Or God raises up prophetic schools and
centres of renewal; signs of hope and carriers of God’s favour.
Elijah
and Elisha arrive on the scene as one of these unpredictable, out of the blue,
revival movements. During the dismal reigns of evil kings like Ahab and Jehu,
God unexpectedly breaks in and brings light.
I’ll come
back to Elijah and Elisha in a moment, but I just want to say first of all that
church history follows exactly the same pattern as Bible history.
God
hasn’t changed. Time and again, for the last twenty centuries, God says,
“enough of this!” and he raises up men and women of faith and authority. He
pours out the Holy Spirit in power. And, against all expectation and beyond all
previous experience, a river of blessing bursts its banks and floods the land
once again.
I read a
fascinating book earlier this year called “The Second Evangelical Awakening” by
J. Edwin Orr. It documents in forensic detail the tremendous 1859 revival in
the United States. You can trace its origin back to one New York City missioner
who gathered people to pray. Within twelve months, about one million people had
been converted and added to the church there.
Revival is
contagious. From the USA it spread to Ireland, then Scotland, then England and
finally Wales. Theatres up and down the land had to be hastily turned into
prayer venues because churches weren’t big enough to contain the swell.
There was
a great wave of awareness of sin in the nation and powerful conviction came on
the preaching of the word. Over a million people were added to the church in
our nation in just a couple of years.
It’s what
God does. May he do it again in our day. We cannot be content to marvel at
great stories from the past.
The
director of New Wine Paul Harcourt once said, “We have an inheritance from the
past. Where rivers have flowed in the past, but flow no longer, there are still
pools around if you look for them. We love the pools. But we cannot live off a
legacy. Water in pools goes stagnant in the end. Living water, moving water, is
found only in the river. Ask the Spirit to overwhelm the land again. Ask for
signs and wonders. Ask for a new and mighty work of God the likes of which our
generation has not seen.”
Elijah
and Elisha
Well,
let’s come to Elijah and Elisha. Elijah is an Old Testament superstar. In 1
Kings 17, he abruptly enters on the scene. In 2 Kings 2, he’s gone. One of the
commentators said, “He arrives out of nowhere and disappears in a whirlwind.”
And in the 8 short chapters between his appearance and his departure he lives
by faith.
For
years, in a time of famine, by faith he is fed a balanced diet by ravens which,
by nature, horde for themselves. By faith, a dying widow’s last meal lasts
for months. By faith, he prays that God will raise a child from the dead;
something God had never done up till that point in time. By faith, he
strikes the Jordan and the water divides to the left and the right.
And of
course, by faith, Elijah challenges 450 prophets of Baal to a showdown, to
prove who really is the living God, calling down fire from heaven. And the
spiritual battle in that confrontation is so fierce that Elijah spirals down
into something like a nervous breakdown.
In 1
Kings 19, God says to Elijah, “Go and anoint Elisha as your successor.” So off
he goes, and he sees a young man out ploughing a field with his 11
siblings.
I need to
explain something here to help you understand what’s going on. In that culture,
you ploughed in order of seniority.
The
stronger, more muscular, elder brothers go first and they break the hard soil.
Elisha is the 12th, which means he’s the youngest, the weakest, so his job is
to plough ground that’s already been turned over 11 times. He’s the underling
who picks up the rear.
But when
God calls into his service here, he overlooks the experienced ones, the
strapping lads on top of the pile, and picks out the nobody at the back.
How many
times does God do this in the Bible?
Abraham
is as good as dead. Isaac is younger than Ishmael. Jacob is younger
than Esau. Moses has a bad stammer. Samuel is just a schoolboy. David
is the runt with the rubbish job out in the fields. Mary is a teenage
nobody. Peter never catches any fish. James and John need an anger
management course. And the first witness to the resurrection Mary
Magdalene has a past so dark, Jesus had to drive seven demons out of her.
No matter
how lowly you are, how disadvantaged you are, how little known you are, how young
you are, how old you are, how ordinary you are – God can use you.
Do you believe that?
1 Kings
19.19: Elijah finds Elisha out ploughing and he throws his cloak around
him.
In Bible
times, when a senior figure goes to a younger one and puts a cloak around their
shoulders, it means this: one day, not now, not today, but when the time is
right, I want you to take over the family business. One day, you’re going to stand
in my shoes.
(That’s
why Joseph’s older brothers were so offended about the cloak of many colours
given to him by their father. It’s not that Joseph wore nicer clothes than
them; it’s that Joseph, the younger one, was being given the inheritance. It
was a public humiliation for them).
What I
love about Elisha is his enthusiasm, his availability. This is always what God
is looking for. You can see Elisha’s eagerness because in v20 he says, “Let’s
not wait till sometime in the future. Let's do this now. I’ll just say goodbye
to my mum and dad and we’re good to go.”
Remember
when Jesus calls people to follow him and someone says, “First, let me bury my
father.” And Jesus says, “No.” The reason is that his father is still alive and
well. He is saying, “I’ll follow you Jesus once the old man’s dead, at some
vague point in the future.” And Jesus says, “That’s not good enough.”
But
Elisha here is saying, “I’ll start today. Start the engine. I’m ready.”
That’s
why Elijah says, “No, go back. What have I done to you?” In other words, it
doesn’t have to be now. Just some day.
But Elisha
burns his bridges. He slays his cattle and sets fire to his plough, making sure
he will never be tempted to return to the farm. This guy really means
business.
In answer
to God’s call he is utterly ruthless. It’s a total and wholehearted response. He
says, “I’m all in. There’s no going back.”
Jesus
calls Matthew; he leaves his tax booth and follows him right then. Jesus calls
Peter, James and John. They leave their boats and nets on the shore and off
they go.
John
Wimber used to say, “Remember, the economy of the Kingdom is simple. Every time
we come to cross a new threshold; it costs us everything we now have. Every new
step may cost us all the reputation and security we've accumulated up to that
point. It costs us our life.”
Jesus
said that in order to get into the kingdom of God you have to be like a child.
In fact, he said you have to be born again. It’s radical. You have to become a
learner from scratch.
Are you a
disciple? If Jesus said, “Drop everything, follow me” to you today, what would
stand in the way of you saying, “All right, let’s go”?
In v21
Elijah and Elisha go off as partners. One senior, one junior. But just like
Jesus sending his disciples out two by two, they minister together… This is a
season of preparation. This is a programme of training, not as far as we can
tell, formal, academic tuition. It’s one-to-one, relational mentoring.
Commentators
suggest that there were probably ten years of overlap where Elijah invested in
and guided his successor Elisha. In all that time, Elisha is content to do
menial tasks.
It says
here “he became his servant.” He did no preaching, he performed no miracles. He
just carried Elijah’s bags and watched how he did it. He was an
apprentice.
The
dictionary definition of apprentice is “One who is bound to another to learn a
craft.” So, you get apprentice joiners, electricians and plumbers. They are
coached by someone older who passes on the skills of the trade.
Even
Jesus worked in the background, in obscurity, in a carpenter’s workshop for
about 15 years, working under instruction before he was anointed by the Holy
Spirit and preached his first sermon.
The
church, when it’s working properly, is where life skills get passed on from one
to another. Couples with good marriages can pass on some of what they’ve
gleaned to younger couples who are getting the hang of it. Because marriage is
actually pretty hard work, as statistics show.
So is
managing money. How do I handle money better? I keep getting into debt.”
Raising children is challenging. Being a really positive presence on social
media is hard. There are so many life skills to learn.
The Bible
says, “Let the older women teach the younger ones.” The church is where people
can say, “You seem a bit further ahead in God than I am. How do you do that?
Show me how you do it.”
I’ve
noticed how this works when a new baby is born. You hear young parents asking
more experienced ones, “How do you get them to sleep when they’re teething? How
do I stop them snatching other children’s toys?”
This is
why God has designed us to be part of a church and not isolated individuals.
It's part of why we have Life Groups. Some of us have prayer partners. Are you
connected?
My life
has so often been enhanced and enriched by people a bit further on in God than
I am. We so want to encourage an apprenticeship culture at All Saints'.
Anyway,
after that ten-year period, Elisha still wants to be Elijah’s successor.
2 Kings
2.9. They know Elijah is about to leave this earthly life. Elijah turns to his
younger assistant and asks, “What can I do for you before I am taken from
you?”
What
would you ask for? Elijah is a miracle worker, remember. He can arrange an
unlimited food supply. He can control the weather. He can raise the dead. He
makes royalty cringe before him. If a person like that asks you, “What would
you like me to do for you?” what would you say? It’s like the three wishes of a
genie.
Elisha
says, “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit.” When I hear mention of
double portions, I think of... well, rhubarb crumble, custard, fruit cake,
trifle… But this isn’t about pudding. What is it about?
Does it
mean, “I want to be twice the person you are”? Or perhaps, “I would like to be
two times more spiritual than you have been”? Or, “I want double the blessing
you’ve had”? Actually, he isn’t asking for more of anything! So what is it?
The key
to this business of the double portion lies in the word, ‘inherit.’ “Let
me inherit a double portion of your spirit.” Back in Elijah's
time, when a father died, his estate was divided up according to the number of
sons he had.
If there
were three, the estate was divided into four parts. If there were six, it was
seven parts. If there were ten, it was... eleven parts. Why was there always
one more share than there were sons?
Because
the eldest (or the firstborn) was given two shares (a double portion), because
he was also given the added responsibility of having to manage the family business.
So,
Elijah says, “Elisha, what do you want?” And Elisha replies, “I want to do what
you’ve been doing. I want to follow in your footsteps. I’m ready now to take
that responsibility on my shoulders. I don’t want to just look on and watch
anymore. Let me be a man of faith, just like you are.”
And
Elijah looks at Elisha and says this, "You have asked a difficult
thing." In other words, "Are you sure? Do you think it’s easy to have
to step out in faith, time and time again, when the whole world is against you?
You still want the double portion?”
So often,
the man or woman of faith has to stand out in the family. Or the workplace. It
takes faith to not join in the office gossip. It takes faith to be kind to
colleagues when people see that as weakness. It takes faith to resist corporate
pressure to do something dishonest. I have friends who have lost their jobs
because they did the right thing.
Ending
Elisha
will go on to be twice as fruitful as Elijah his mentor. He will preach twice
as long and do exactly twice as many miracles.
Who
do you want to be like? Who do you look up to? Who are you
learning from? Who are you teaching and training and mentoring? It doesn’t have
to be a formal arrangement.
In fact,
it’s better if it’s just natural and instinctive. In your stage of life, in
Christian service, in ministry, in the workplace, do you have an apprentice,
someone you’re investing in? Someone who will inherit a double portion of your
spirit?
Let’s
pray…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 29 September 2019
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