Transcript
2 Kings 2:11:
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.
And 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.
Then they said to him, “Look now, there are fifty strong men with your servants. Please let them go and search for your master, lest perhaps the Spirit of the Lord has taken him up and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley.”
And he said, “You shall not send anyone.”
But then they urged him till he was ashamed. He said, “Send them!” Therefore they sent fifty men, and they searched for three days, but did not find him.
And when they came back to him, for he had stayed in Jericho, he said to them, “Did I not say to you, ‘Do not go’?”
Then the men of the city said to Elisha, “Please notice, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord sees. But the water is bad, and the ground barren.”
And he said, “Bring me a new bowl, and put salt in it.” So they brought it to him.
Then he went out to the source of the water, and cast in the salt there, and said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘I have healed this water. From it there shall be no more death or barrenness.’”
So the water remains healed to this day, according to the word of Elisha which he spoke.
Then he went up from there to Bethel. And as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!”
So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
Then he went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.
They called him Yankee John because he was born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. His real name was John Orner. And in September of 1961 his body was found in a ditch along a country road only a few hours after his blood-stained taxicab was discovered in Columbia, South Carolina.
John Orner had been shot through the head. And investigators believed that robbery was the motive for this. But they were unable to connect enough evidence to charge anyone with the crime. So the murder of Yankee John went unsolved for many, many years.
But in September of 1999 the case was reopened by a retired military policeman from Fort Jackson. And this military policeman served as the volunteer head of the cold-case squad in the sheriff’s department. He looked into the archives. He re-interviewed the witnesses. And in particular he interviewed a seventy-five-year-old Tennessee highway patrolman.
This highway patrolman had stopped an eighteen-year-old soldier named Edward Freiburger for hitchhiking on the night of the murder. He had found the gun. But the ballistics tests were unable to make a positive identification of the gun as the murder weapon.
The new investigator retested all the evidence. He said, “They did the best they could with what they had back then.” He said, “But modern-day forensics is tenfold better than what was available forty years ago. They were ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent sure back then. But you can’t just go and say this is the gun. You have to prove it’s the gun.”
But the tests now proved that this was the murder weapon. And guess what? Edward Freiburger is now fifty-eight years of age. He was living in Columbia City, Indiana. I think it was a week ago last Monday when he found out that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. And he turned himself in to the authorities.
Sadly, he is married and has three grown children. And in a real touch of irony he has a daughter who is actually an investigator with the Fort Wayne, Indiana, police.
The caption that ran as the headline over this article when it appeared in USA Today carried its own punch. It said, “After forty years, man is charged with murder of South Carolina cab driver.”
Now I really have no idea what went through the mind of Edward Freiburger during the forty years that his crime went undetected. I do not know the extent to which, if at all, he was bothered by feelings of guilt and remorse and shame. But of one thing I am sure.
In February of 1961 he made a decision that seriously damaged his future. It seriously damaged his future.
One of the things we find it very easy to forget is that the decisions that you and I make today and tomorrow and next week and through the remainder of the year will affect our future. And they will affect our future either for good or they will affect our future for evil.
That brings me to the challenge and exhortation that I want us to think about for a few minutes this morning. My exhortation is this: Protect the future.
And as you may already have guessed, my exhortation is also the title of my message this morning. And I always repeat my title to try to fix this on your mind. So my exhortation, the title of my message to you today is: Protect… Protect… Protect the future.
Now I suspect that most of you would probably agree with me that one of the greatest men who ever walked on the planet Earth was the prophet Elijah. And the case can be made that with the exception of Moses and John the Baptist and our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, nobody has ever lived in the world who was any greater than Elijah.
And yet when we reach this passage of Scripture today we find that Elijah is a man of the past. He is a man of the past. Oh yes, his departure from this earth is one of the most spectacular and sensational departures that anybody has ever had from the world.
Elijah doesn’t die. He gets on board a chariot of fire pulled by horses of fire. With the thrust of a whirlwind he is caught up into the presence of God. And Elijah is gone. And a new age has begun.
And here is an amazing fact. The future, the immediate future of God’s testimony to His chosen people of Israel will now rest in the hands of Elijah’s servant. If you want to put it this way, it will rest in the hands of the traveling butler that Elijah had, and the man who followed him around and did everything that Elijah needed him to do.
And one place, it is said, that he poured water on Elijah’s hands. So if Elijah wanted to wash His hands, His servant was there with the water. And as far as we know, up until this point in time this man has never uttered a single word of prophecy. He has never performed a single miracle.
And yet at this point he is beginning the career of a prophet that is so great that his greatness will rival even that of Elijah himself. And please notice that this man is ready for this. His name was Elisha, which means “God is salvation.”
And no sooner is Elijah gone than Elisha picks up the cloak that has fallen from the shoulders of Elijah. He must have rolled it up somehow. He went to the edge of the Jordan River and smote the Jordan River. And in a bold appeal to God for help he said, “Where is the God of Elijah?”
No sooner does he say that than the waters of the River Jordan part. And Elisha walks over in the pathway that has been opened before him. And on the other side of the Jordan the sons of the prophets are watching.
And these men could be loosely compared to seminary students. They were probably young men preparing for a career as prophets of God. And they see what has happened and they are awed by this. And so they say, “The spirit of Elijah rests upon Elisha.” And they come to meet him. And they lower themselves down to the ground.
A new day has begun. And if it weren’t written right here on the pages of Scripture, I would hardly believe what happened next.
Here are the sons of the prophets. And listen to what they say. They say, “Look now, we have fifty strong men with us. Let us send them and look for your master. Maybe the Spirit of God has thrown him on a mountaintop or down into a valley.”
Now I think if I had been Elisha, I might have had trouble keeping the sarcasm out of my voice when I responded to these men. Now I might have said to them, “What’s wrong with you guys? You remember when I came here with Elijah, you were the fellows who said to me, ‘Don’t you know that God is going to take your master away today?’ And that’s what he’s done. He’s gone to heaven. You can search all you want to, on the mountains and in the valleys. But it won’t be any use. Forget it.”
Now maybe Elisha said some of those things. But the only words recorded in the Bible are these: “You shall not send anyone.”
Now that should have ended it. Right, folks? But it didn’t. And although the conversation that followed is not recorded in detail, it’s not hard to imagine what it was like.
The sons of the prophets said, “Well, please at least give us a chance to do this.” And Elisha says, “No, don’t send anybody.” And the sons of the prophets say, “Please.” And Elisha says, “No.” And they say, “Please, please, please.” And finally Elisha is so embarrassed. He keeps saying, “No.” He says, “All right. Go ahead.”
And so he waits for them at Jericho. And they searched the mountains. And they searched the valleys. And they don’t even find a trace of Elijah.
And when they come back, in a very gentle way Elisha says, “Told you so. Did I not say to you, ‘Don’t go’?”
Now listen very closely. In this interesting incident there is an important lesson for each of us. And the lesson is this: If we are going to face the future the way God wants us to face the future, we must accept the past.
May I repeat that? If we are going to face the future the way God expects us to face the future, we must accept the past.
It was over two decades ago when my brother David died suddenly and unexpectedly and went home to heaven. He was the first member of our very tight-knit family to be taken away. And it was a tragic experience for my mother and father, and for myself.
And some of you have heard me say that for a period of time, maybe six months to a year, I had dreams about David. And I met David in all sorts of different places and circumstances in my dream. And almost the first thought that would go through my mind whenever I saw David in a dream was, “He’s not dead. He’s still alive. David didn’t really die.”
And a psychologist would probably say to me, correctly, that though I had accepted the death of David intellectually, in my head, emotionally I had not yet accepted the reality of his death. And then the dreams stopped. As far as I know, I haven’t had a dream like that for many, many years.
And now I can look back to the day of the death of David. And I realize that it was more than the end of David’s earthly life. It was for me a new beginning.
You see, from my portion of David’s estate we got the money to found the little publishing company called Redención Viva. And we have now sold somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand books over the years that we have been in operation. And through the grace of God, just this past week we were able to put out a new book.
And you know, I can kind of sympathize with the sons of the prophets, because they had lost a great leader. “How are we going to function without Elijah the prophet? How are we going to handle things without him to lead us?”
But they had already answered the question, hadn’t they? For the spirit of Elijah rested upon Elisha. And God could lead them into the future.
Make no mistake about it, my friends. If we are going to allow God to lead us in the future that He has planned for us, the irreversible realities of the past must be accepted.
Now I told you that Elisha stayed at Jericho while the search party hunted for Elijah. Right? And maybe it was while the fifty men were out there looking that the following incident occurred.
The men of Jericho came to Elisha. And they said, “Please notice, the situation of this city is pleasant. But the water is bad. And the ground is barren and unproductive.”
Now if I had been Elisha, I probably would have said something like, “What is wrong with everybody around here? Nobody can face reality. I mean, I’ve got fifty men out there hunting for a man who’s already in heaven. And now you’re coming to me and telling me this is a great place for a city. But the water is bad. And the ground is barren. Well, common sense should tell you that this is no place for a city. And so what I advise you guys to do is to pack up your belongings and move somewhere else where the water is good and the ground is productive.”
But that’s not in our Bibles, is it? I might have said that. But Elisha didn’t say it.
And instead he said, “Bring me a new bowl with salt in it.” And they did. And he went out to the source of the water. And then, for the first time in his prophetic career, he says, “Thus says the Lord: ‘I have healed this water. There shall be from it no more death or barrenness.’”
And listen closely. Yes, to face the future we have to accept the past. But to face the future we must also believe that God can change the present.
May I repeat that? We must believe that God can change the present.
Don’t you see that Jericho is a kind of a tiny picture of the nation of Israel? Israel was in a pleasant situation in the land that God had promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. But the spiritual life of Israel was like poisoned water, contaminated by idolatry and immorality and disobedience. And instead of being a fruitful field for God, Israel was barren and unproductive.
But Elisha was God’s new hope. And Elisha was the bearer of the wonderful healing and transforming power of the word of God. And God was able to change Israel if Israel would listen closely to His prophetic word.
And dear Christian friends this morning, wherever there are human beings who are drinking the poisoned waters of sin, who are living lives that are barren and unfruitful, God can change them.
John Newton had a mother who was a godly woman. But in July of 1732 his mother died when he was just thirteen days away from his seventh birthday. After his mother’s death, with only three years of formal schooling, John Newton went to sea with his father, who was captain of the merchant vessel. That began a long and horrendous slide into a life of degradation and sin because he had turned his back on all that was holy and right.
His life was plagued by dangers, by near escapes from death, by abuse, by depression. And when he became a grown man, somehow or other, despite his youth, he became captain of a slave ship. But his behavior on the slave ship was so wretched that even his crew thought he was little better than an animal.
And once when he fell overboard they refused to throw a boat to him. Instead they threw a harpoon at him. And they dragged him back to the ship on the harpoon.
Well, eventually John Newton had an experience that made him think seriously about God. He was on board a ship that was loaded with lumber, livestock and beeswax. It was struck by a violent storm. All of the livestock was washed overboard and the crew had to lash himself to the ship to keep from being washed overboard as well.
Almost all of their waking hours were spent at the pumps trying to get rid of the water that the ship was taking on. Their rations were low and starvation was a possibility. When they finally made it to port in Ireland, John Newton began a search for God.
My search ended on an island off the shore of North Africa. Newton had become seriously ill. He was running a fever. He was almost delirious. But he somehow already got up from his bed. He went to a secluded part of the island and there, with nobody to listen to him except God, he believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for his eternal salvation.
Could God do anything with a life as barren and wasted and empty as that? Listen to this. Two years later he married his teenage sweetheart. He spent fourteen years preparing for the ministry. At the age of thirty-nine he became a pastor in Olney, England.
In 1779 he published a book of hymns, two hundred and eighty-one of which he himself had written. And one of those hymns is a favorite right here at Victor Street. It wonderfully and beautifully expresses the experience of John Newton.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come. This grace has led me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.
Make no mistake about it. However barren and wasted the human life may be at which you are looking, God has the power to change him.
Well, Elisha finally left Jericho. And he retraced his steps to the city of Bethel. And on his way into the city or on his way out of the city he met a big bunch of young men. The Hebrew word here, I think, does not refer to children but probably to teenagers or men in their early twenties. I’m assuming it was young men only and not any young ladies.
And as Elisha goes by them they begin to mock him and taunt him. And they say, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And if we put that into modern English it would be something like, “Get out of here, baldy! Get out of here!”
And mind you, Elisha doesn’t say to himself, “Well, these are teenagers. What do you expect? And when they get older they’ll know better. And I’m just going to ignore this and just pass them by.” No way.
No, my friends, Elisha turned and he looked at them. And he pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And it isn’t very long before two savage she-bears come out of the woods. And I think the Hebrew text intends to tell us that forty-two of these young men were killed by the she-bears.
I can just hear someone saying, “Oh, how awful! These might have been just teenagers. And all they did was to call Elisha ‘bald.’ And they get killed for that.”
Hey, wait a minute. Did you know that what these young men did was a flagrant violation of the law of Moses? The law of Moses says, “You shall rise up before the gray-headed and honor the presence of the old man, and fear your God: I am the Lord.”
And this blatant disrespect for this elderly man, whether they knew he was a servant of God or not, this blatant disrespect showed how far these young men were from the fear of the Lord.
Don’t you see? By calling God’s judgment down upon them, Elisha was protecting Israel’s future. If these young men could do this now, what would they do years from now? And Israel needed a graphic message that disobedience to God’s word and irreverence for God and for people would seriously damage the future of an individual or a nation.
Does that apply to America? Yeah. You know, when I was growing up nobody even considered the possibility that a student at a public school would come to public school with a weapon and then would pull the weapon out and shoot at his fellow classmates or at the teachers. Nobody imagined that that could happen. And now it happens with sad frequency in our country.
We live in a country that has lost respect for other people and respect for the laws of God and respect for God Himself.
All you say, “Well, that doesn’t apply to us here at Victor Street.” Oh no? I’m going to tell you something. Within the last few months someone came to me and they said, “We have some people in our morning audience who laugh and joke while somebody is up in the pulpit trying to preach the word of God.”
That’s horrible! Don’t you see, my friends, that when our hearts are possessed by a lack of respect for others, a lack of respect for God’s servant, a lack of respect for God’s word, and finally a lack of respect for God, we are heading down a path that will end in disaster.
And make no mistake about it. If you are going to face the future into which God wants to lead you, not only must you accept the past, not only must you believe that God can change the present, but you must ruthlessly uproot from your hearts and lives any aspect of disrespect, any failure to have reverence and fear for God. And by doing this you will protect the future.
Seventeen-year-old Lindsay was scheduled to receive a citywide award for good character. She was a senior at a local high school. She was one of six young people chosen for this award. She had been selected by the Dallas Coalition for Character and Values and by the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas.
Her mother sent her roses. The YMCA issued a press release. The Dallas Council for Caring for Children, which had nominated her, threw a party. And then Lindsay told them, she told them that a week before she and her boyfriend had been among one hundred and fifty teenagers that were ticketed at a party down in Deep Ellum.
She said that she and her boyfriend were not drinking at that party, but they were cited because they were in the vicinity of an open container of alcohol without their parents present. The sponsors of the award considered that a very serious matter. And they withdrew the award. It was never presented to her.
That was a blow to Lindsay. And so she sat down to have a chat with her father. And to her father’s credit her father said to her, “Could Lindsay think of any reason why an organization would want to give an award to a minor who had been to a party like that the week before?” And Lindsay couldn’t think of any reason.
And she said, “Everybody was giving me this empathy and pity.” But she said, “My father decided to tell me the way it was. And that’s what I needed to hear.”
The hardest thing, according to Lindsay, was not losing the award. It was telling everybody that she had lost it and seeing the disappointment in their faces. And then she said this. She said, “I have never made so lightly a decision that had such serious consequence. I have never made so lightly a decision that had such serious consequence.”
What decision are you making this morning? And how will they affect your future?
Can you join with the songwriter who says, “I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.”
Shall we pray?
Help us, Father, by Your grace, by the wisdom of Your word, by the strength of Your Spirit, to make the decisions we need to make to protect our future. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.