Elijah won’t be around forever.
His strength of body and mind were ‘tapped’ at Mt. Carmel. Somewhere between enduring a famine, executing 400 Baalite prophets, praying down fire then rain, and outrunning a chariot, Elijah told the Lord he had had enough. The Lord didn’t rebuke him. Instead he is fed, protected, allowed to rest, and then given orders for his replacement.
Where is the Laborer?
Elijah found a young man working extremely hard to break up fallow ground. Elisha plowed his father’s field with twelve yoke of oxen. That’s 24 oxen! Whether they were yoked in tandem, or tied to twelve separate yokes I cannot tell, but one thing I know: Elisha was no stranger to manual labor!
God always calls a man who is busy working. Even Jesus at the age of 12 said, “I must be about my father’s business.” We are working amid the “sunset skies” and working “for daylight flies.” Are you laboring in God’s service? If not, why not? Lying around until you die is no way to live!
Elisha walked away from that field to begin a new work. His new vocation would leave him longing for ‘relaxation’ at the working end of a plow. Being a prophet was work, labor, and effort. He left to preach against the sins of his nation. He saw how Elijah had been treated in his calling, yet he decided to go.
Where is the Loyalty?
Elijah was a tough act to follow. He had been raised up to resist wicked Ahab and Jezebel through a sample tribulation of 3 years of no rain. They tried to kill him many times. Once, when he came to accuse Ahab of the murder of Naboth the Jezreelite, Ahab said, “Has thou found me, O mine enemy?” (1 Kings 21:20) You could say Elijah had been hunted, hated, and hungered.
But Elisha stuck with him.
Through these trials and more Elisha plodded with the old prophet. In due course, Elijah’s day came to fly away. After all they had been through together, He made Elisha one final request:
“And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee.”
2 Kings 2:9a
Here was the offer many wait their whole lives for. So many drool over the possibility of finally being ‘the man in charge’ that you can’t stand to be around them. Their ambition is like chicken pox– the more they scratch the more it itches! Many my age are ‘suppressed’ or ‘held back’ or ‘not reaching their full potential’. They can’t wait to be asked for their input or their idea on things! What a change they will make! How different will things be when they are finally in control!
Where is the Learner?
What would Elisha change? Certainly he had an opinion. He saw all the flaws of Elijah. Scripture testifies that Elisha’s ministry would be set apart from his mentor’s in both miracles and messages. Elisha’s brilliance would inevitably outshine Elijah’s. Here, at the beginning when he is asked, “what I shall do for thee,” we have a front-row seat of how that great ministry started:
“And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.”
2 Kings 2:9
It began with a hard-working, servant-hearted, God-fearing man seeing the tears, temptations, trials of his predecessor and saying, “I’ll have what he’s having. Make it a double.”
With all the reinventions of Christianity for a modern age, let us remember to stick to the old paths. What the pastors of yesterday did was WORK… and it WORKED. Bible-believing Christianity still works. Let’s have some more of the same.
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