Transcript
If awards were given for books of the Bible containing the largest number of unusual, remarkable, and interesting stories, the Book of Kings would be a candidate for such an award. And we are going to be reading, today, another of the very interesting and remarkable stories contained in this book. Second Kings, chapter 2. Second Kings, chapter 2:
And it came to pass, when the Lord was about to take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. Then Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Stay here, please, for the Lord has sent me on to Bethel.’ But Elisha said, ‘As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you!’ So they went down to Bethel.
Now the sons of the prophets who were at Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Lord will take away your master from over you today?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I know; keep silent!’ Then Elijah said to him, ‘Elisha, stay here, please, for the Lord has sent me on to Jericho.’ But he said, ‘As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you!’ So they came to Jericho.
Now the sons of the prophets who were at Jericho came to Elisha, and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Lord will take away your master from over you today?’ So he answered, ‘Yes, I know; keep silent!’ Then Elijah said to him, ‘Stay here, please, for the Lord has sent me on to the Jordan.’ But he said, ‘As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you!’ So the two of them went on.
And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went, and stood facing them at a distance, while the two of them stood by the Jordan. Now Elijah took his mantle”—his cloak, I would presume—“rolled it up, and struck the water, and it was divided this way and that, so that the two of them crossed over on dry ground.
And so it was, when they had crossed over, that Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Ask! What may I do for you, before I am taken away from you?’ Elisha said, ‘Please, let a double portion of your spirit be upon me.’ So he said, ‘You have asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if you see me when I am taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if not, it shall not be so.’
Then it happened, as they continued on and talked, that suddenly a chariot of fire appeared, with horses of fire, and separated the two of them; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. Now Elisha saw it, and he cried out, ‘My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen!’ So he saw him no more. And he took hold of his own clothes and tore them into two pieces.
He also took up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood by the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him and struck the water, and said, ‘Where is the Lord God of Elijah?’ And when he also had struck the water, it was divided this way and that; and Elisha crossed over.
Now when the sons of the prophets who were from Jericho saw him, they said, ‘The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.’ And they came to meet him, and bowed to the ground before him.
When a man and a woman stand before a minister of the gospel, and in the sight of God and men, they promise to take one another for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part, what are they promising to each other? Well, the simple one-word answer is, they are promising loyalty. They are promising to be loyal to their spouse until death itself intervenes to separate them.
Now, I don’t need to tell you that the heavy traffic in our divorce courts reminds us that, very often, a short time after those vows have been exchanged, they’re forgotten, they’re violated, they’re dumped in the trash can of life. And when we consider the America that has entered into the 21st century, a very relevant question would be, what does America know about loyalty? Do American people really know about loyalty? Fifty percent of our marriages end in divorce court.
And I’m not just talking, this afternoon, about loyalty to one’s spouse or to one’s family. I’m talking in a broader sense than that. I’m talking about loyalty to friends, loyalty to the person who pays your paycheck, loyalty to your church, loyalty to your brothers and to your sisters in the Lord. What do we really know about loyalty? And for just a few moments, I would like to challenge all of us to look at ourselves squarely in the mirror, to eyeball ourselves, and to ask this question: am I a loyal person? Am I a loyal person?
And it may come as a surprise to you to be told that the passage of Scripture that we read a few moments ago is a magnificent passage about loyalty. Please remember that when we first met Elisha, God had instructed Elijah to anoint him, and to lead him into a role as a future prophet. And after he had had a feast for his family and friends, that’s exactly what Elisha did.
And at the end of First Kings, chapter 19, we read these words about Elisha. We read that he arose, and followed Elijah, and served him. Listen to those words: he arose and followed Elijah, and served him. And then we don’t hear anything about Elisha in chapter 20, and we don’t hear anything about him in chapter 21, or 22, or in Second Kings, chapter 1. But when the curtain of Scripture rises again on this man, Elisha, guess what he’s doing? He’s doing the very thing we last saw him doing. He’s following Elijah, and serving him.
Now a momentous day has come, and apparently God has revealed to Elijah that He’s about to take him to heaven in a whirlwind. And Elijah has obviously shared this with Elisha, and also the men who were called the sons of the prophets. These are probably younger men, who were the pupils of Elijah in various places, and who were in training to become prophets, hopefully, in the future. Apparently, the sons of the prophets are also aware of this.
And on this very momentous and important day, Elijah says to Elisha, as they are leaving Gilgal, “Stay here, please, because the Lord has sent me to Bethel.” And I do not think for a minute that these words were taken by Elisha as a command from Elijah, mind you, because if he had taken them in that way, I’m sure that he would have stayed exactly where Elijah suggested that he stay. I think, rather, that Elisha correctly understood them as Elijah giving him permission to stay. There’s no need for you to go with me. This is a journey that God has sent me to make. You can just stay here.
And Elisha replies, in words that are a very strong affirmation, because they involve an oath. He says, “As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you.” And so they go on to Bethel. And at Bethel, the sons of the prophets who are at Bethel confront Elisha, and they say to him, “Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from over you today?” And unless I’m missing my guess, the subtext of this little remark is, why are you hanging on to Elijah? Don’t you know what’s happening today? God is taking Elijah. Why are you tagging along? What are you doing, still clinging to Elijah?
And Elisha says, “Yes, I know. Keep silent. I know what I’m doing. Don’t talk to me about this.” And so they go on. And so they are at Bethel, and Elijah turns again to Elisha, and he says, “Elisha, stay here, please, for the Lord has sent me to Jericho. You needn’t come with me. This is my journey. This is God sending me to this place.” And once again Elisha says, “As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you.”
And they get to Jericho, and there are the sons of the prophets again, with the same question, to which Elisha gives them the same answer. And now Elijah turns again to Elisha, and he says, “Stay here, please, because the Lord has sent me to Jordan.” And for the third time, with a solemn oath, Elisha says, “As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you.” Now I hope that you realize that what you’re looking at here is very, very beautiful.
Do you remember the background of the call of Elisha? You remember that Elijah had been on Mount Carmel and called down fire from heaven. He had presided over the execution of the 450 prophets of Baal. And the next day Jezebel sent him a message, and she says, “You’re going to be dead, just like my prophets are, by tomorrow this time.” And big, brave, bold Elijah runs for his life, and he winds up way down south at a place called Horeb, in the Sinai desert, perhaps Mount Sinai.
And God finds him standing out in front of the cave, and God says, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” And Elijah lets loose with a flood of self-pity. He says to God, “I have been very zealous for the Lord my God, but the children of Israel have torn down Your altars, and they’ve killed Your prophets with the sword, and I alone am left, and they’re seeking my life.” Don’t You see me? I’m all by myself. It’s Elijah against the whole nation here. I’m alone.
And among the instructions that God gives to Elijah on that occasion is, go and anoint Elisha to be the prophet in your place. And He didn’t say this to Elisha, but He was also saying to Elijah, I’m going to give you somebody who will never leave you, not until the very moment when I take you to be with me in heaven. He will never leave you. You will never be alone. “As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, I will not leave you.” In this beautiful story, it seems to me, Elisha moves into what I have called the Loyalty Hall of Fame.
Who else is in that hall of fame? I bet you could name a couple of them. One of them was a Moabite woman named Ruth. And her mother-in-law had lost her husband. She was a widow. She lost her two sons. She was going, destitute, back to Israel, and she says to her daughters-in-law, you two stay here, get married, and have a family. And one of her girls, Orpah, does that. But Ruth refuses to do that.
And in one of the most beautiful utterances that is to be found anywhere, I think, in human literature, Ruth says,
Entreat me not to leave you, nor turn back from following you; for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if anything but death separates me from you.
Ruth is in that hall of fame.
Another person that is in the hall of fame is Ittai the Gittite, the commander of 600 forces, a foreigner, apparently a Philistine, who had gone into the service of David as a mercenary. When David is driven out of his palace and out of Jerusalem by the rebellion of his son Absalom, Ittai is prepared to go with him and his 600 men. And David confronts him. He says, “There’s no reason for you to go with me. You’re a foreigner. Why don’t you go back and serve this new king? And I don’t know where I’m going. I’m going to be up and down. There’s no reason for you to be bothered by all this.”
And Ittai the Gittite replies,
As the Lord lives, and as my lord the king lives, wherever my lord the king is, whether in death or life, there will your servant be also.
Loyalty’s hall of fame. And now Elisha. And that leaves us, doesn’t it, with the question of the afternoon: what do we know about loyalty? Are we loyal people?
I’m not even going to talk to you about being loyal to your spouse. I’m not even going to talk to you about being loyal to your children. If you can’t be loyal to people like that, something is seriously wrong. But let me talk to you about loyalty to your brothers and sisters in the Lord, loyalty to your church. How much of that do we know about?
Now, as all of you know, I’ve been working in this ministry longer than some of you have been alive, which is to say, a rather long time. To be more precise about it, I’m working on my 47th year of ministry here. And one of the things that I have observed is that there are, literally, I would say, hundreds of people who’ve gotten saved, either directly or indirectly, through the testimony of Victor Street over the 47 years that I’ve been here.
And one of the greatest tragedies that I have observed is children growing up in our church, and they owe their salvation to the testimony of this church, and to the godly people who prayed for them, who taught them the word of God. They may owe the salvation of their brothers and sisters, their mothers and fathers, and some of their own children, to this church, and yet many of them have simply walked away, with no sense of obligation, no sense of responsibility, to the place, to the people, where God has met them in His grace. What do they lack? They lacked loyalty. They lacked loyalty.
Now please observe that whether we think of Ruth the Moabitess, or whether we think of Ittai the Gittite, or whether we think of Elisha, clear in all of these stories is the fact that God had in mind the loyalty of these people. “The Lord do so to me, and more to me also, if anything but death separates me.” “As the Lord lives, and as my lord the king lives.” “As the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, Elijah, I will not leave you.”
And it ought to bother us if we’re not loyal people. The chances are good that we need to repair our loyalty in terms of our relationship to God, first of all. Because if we are loyal to God, if we are appreciative of the things that God has done for us, if we value the people who ministered to us, it’s going to affect our loyalties all down the line.
One of the things I could wish for Victor Street, for the years ahead, is that more of our young people, who have found the Lord here in this place, will discover a spirit of gratitude and loyalty to God that will translate into loyalty to His people and to His work. So he goes with Elijah to Jordan. Just like Jordan divided for Joshua when the children of Israel were coming in, at the stroke of Elijah’s mantle the waters part, and they go over on dry ground.
And now Elijah says something to Elisha that I don’t think Elisha was expecting. After he gets across the Jordan with Elijah, he says to Elisha, “Ask, what shall I do for you before I go? Do you have a favor I could do for you?” Notice, he didn’t ask him that at Bethel. He didn’t ask him that at Jericho. He didn’t ask him that on the other side of the Jordan. He asked him when it was evident that Elisha was going all the way. Do something for you? What would you like?
Now there are other things that Elisha could have asked for. He could have said, you know, we’ve spent several years on the road, and it’s been a hard life. I wouldn’t mind having a little farm to settle down in, you know, some land to grow crops, or a flock of sheep. None of that appeals to me, but it might appeal to somebody to whom, in that day and time, that would mean a lot.
Or he could have said, you know, behind you, we prophets, we have a really tight budget, because we depend on what people give to us, and our food has not been the very best in these years that I’ve been following you, and our clothes are certainly sort of worn out, and you know, what would really, really be great, is if you could leave behind a bag of gold or a bag of silver. I think I could raise my lifestyle considerably by now.
Well, even in our Lord’s day, later on, Elisha has a servant, and Elisha has a servant who thinks that way. Or Elisha could have said, hey, you’re going to be gone now. I guess it’s time for me to settle down, marry, raise a family. You know, I’ve got to be looking after my own life, you know. None of that. What is it that Elisha wants? And Elisha said, “Please, let a double portion of your spirit be upon me.”
Now, don’t read this wrong. He’s not asking Elijah for twice as much of the power of the Spirit as Elijah had. Elisha’s talking in terms of the Jewish law of inheritance. When a man was a father, and he had several sons, and he died and left his inheritance behind, each son got a portion of the inheritance, but the firstborn son got a double portion. He got twice as much as any of the other sons.
And Elisha says to Elijah, you know, I would really like to be your firstborn son, and to have a real experience of the working of the Holy Spirit in me that is like the working of the Holy Spirit in you. Don’t you see that this man of loyalty is also a man with spiritual ambition, spiritual ambition? His service to Elijah had given him a ringside seat to observe one of the greatest prophets who has ever walked the face of the ground. And my last request to you, says Elisha, is to be a lot like you, and that God use me as He has used you.
And what’s wrong, a lot of times, with Christians? No spiritual ambition. Zero. Zero. Zero. Spiritual ambition. If I can just have a happy home, if I can just have enough insurance to cover my expenses and a little extra money for a rainy day in the bank, if I can just raise kids that’ll stay out of trouble, that’ll be enough for me. How tragic. And it certainly seems to me that if our loyalty to God, to His work, and to His people is everything that it should be, we will be fired by an ambition to be used significantly by God.
We don’t all have to become prophets, or preachers, or even elders in a church. But may the Lord help us if we don’t have an ambition to be richly used by Jesus Christ our Lord. People of ambition grow out of people who have loyalty. “Well, that’s a hard thing you’ve asked for,” says Elijah. “I can’t guarantee it to you. The only Person who can do this for you is God. But I can tell you this”—he’s speaking as a prophet—“if you see me when I go, that’s the way it’ll happen to you. And if you don’t, that’s not what God wants to have happen.”
So they go on talking, and lo and behold, all of a sudden there’s a chariot, like no chariot that Elisha had ever seen before. Fiery. And the horses that pulled the chariot were fiery, and there were what are called here horsemen, probably the charioteers who guided the horses. And they separated Elijah and Elisha. And Elisha got to see one of the most remarkable events in the history of mankind, a man who didn’t die. He saw him go up to heaven in a whirlwind, into the presence of God.
But what is remarkable here is Elisha’s response to that. And Elisha cries out, apparently for the first time ever, in reference to Elijah, “My father, my father.” He realizes that he has become his spiritual firstborn son. And then he says, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen!” How did he know that? I don’t think there was a sign hanging on the chariot of fire that said, you know, Israel. I really don’t think so.
I think that what Elisha has here is his first spiritual, prophetic insight. And he realizes that the chariot that carries Elijah into the presence of God is, for all intents and purposes, the chariot of God for the nation Israel. Or, to put it another way, I think for the first time in his career Elisha realizes that Israel had supernatural, divine transportation. And just as surely as Elijah would reach the presence of God with this chariot, so also the nation of Israel, despite its many failures, despite its many problems, would be carried by the divine chariot to its appointed destination.
What a vision to get of the people of God. Had you, too, looked at Israel in that age and time, you would have said, well, if there’s a chariot somewhere, man, it’s probably wrecked, the wheels have come off, and it’s stuck in the mud, and the horses have all got arrows in them. Idolatry, and the enemies of God. This is a mess. But through prophetic insight, the prophet sees beyond that, and he sees that Israel is a nation that is being borne to its destination by supernatural agency and by the power of God.
I don’t know whether you realize this, but we’re watching the chariot of Israel in motion today. We can’t see it visibly. We can’t see it with the naked eye. But it’s there. For many centuries that chariot seemed to be standing still. And then, some of you can’t remember this, but I can, in 1948 the Jewish people fought a war of independence, and they established an independent Jewish nation for the very first time since the captivity into Babylon. The chariot began to roll.
And the next thing we knew was the 1967 war, the so-called Six-Day War, and Israel recaptured Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. And now the chariot was really rolling. And we watch our newspapers today. The focus of attention is what is going to happen to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. What a wonderful opportunity for Elisha to see the nation to whom he is going to minister, as a prophet, as a nation that is carried forward by God to its ultimate destination.
Someday that nation will be in the presence of God, as Elijah already is. Someday it will be in its kingdom, and the Lord Jesus Christ will be reigning, and God will be dwelling in the midst of His people. Why? Because the divine chariot will carry Israel there. So Elisha sees this, and he takes his own garment and tears it in two. This is a great severing of his life. Gone is his role as a mere servant of Elijah. Now he becomes mighty prophet Elisha, of whom we will read many things in the following chapters.
And he picks up the mantle of Elijah, and he goes to the Jordan River, as the sons of the prophets watch, and he smites the Jordan River and he says, “Where is the God of Elijah?” I don’t think this is, you know, no doubt You’re always arguing somewhere around here. No. This is like saying, show Yourself, God. Act as You have showed me already that You will act. And the Jordan parts for Elisha, and he crosses it.
And with a sense of awe and reverence, the sons of the prophets say, “The spirit of Elijah,” the Holy Spirit, “the spirit of Elijah rests upon Elisha.” And they fall to the ground in respect for him, because he has begun his career as a mighty prophet of God. But who was this man? Let me wrap it up by telling you this. He was, first of all, a man of loyalty. He was, secondly, a man with spiritual ambition. And then he was a man with a vision of Israel as divinely borne to its ultimate destination.
Let me add this in closing. Does Victor Street Bible Chapel have a chariot? We don’t even have a bus, much less a chariot. And you will understand, of course, that I’m talking in figurative language now. I’m not talking in literal language. I think Victor Street Bible Chapel does have a chariot. I think God has been carrying this church for years and years and years, all the way back to the days when Mrs. Humphreys and Mrs. Llewellyn taught the kids under the trees.
And then they had their first building, a little clapboard building, where I think Lewis found the Lord. And then the chariot carried us to some storefront buildings, and to an upstairs apartment across from the Gills on Manette Street, then to the other side of my duplex apartment in North Dallas, and then for many years to Leno Street, where Mrs. Dean was our host, and finally to this building. People have gotten saved. People have learned to walk with the Lord.
And it hasn’t been a smooth ride. This has not been a smooth sail down a four-lane highway. There’s been a bumpy ride. It’s more like a roller-coaster ride, you know. And I still remember vividly the day I stood up to preach at our little building on Hickory Street, and after all the kids had gone to the back, I had two ladies, two elderly ladies, if my memory serves me right. One was Mrs. Segura. The other was Mary Castillo. Talk about giving preachers depression. I got it on the spot.
And then I said to myself, they deserve my best shot. And I tried to give them that. And I don’t care how bad it gets, that’s nearly as bad as it can get. The only thing worse than that is one, and if you eliminate the one, you have to save your message for next time. But that’s the history of our church, up and down. But all along the way God is finding out who’s loyal, He’s finding out who’s spiritually ambitious, and He’s finding out who will ride this chariot to the end of the route.
My bottom-line advice? Yeah, Victor Street does have a supernatural chariot. Get on board. Stay on board. There’s going to be a great ride.
All right, questions? Comments?