(Elijah #6/6)

by Paul Harrison

2 Kings 2:1-22

The last episode in Elijah’s drama-filled life was in character with the rest of
his career. He blew into history like a whirlwind and burned in it like a fire; in
whirlwind and fire he departed from it.

THE DEDICATION OF DISCIPLESHIP

His last journey was taken in company with Elisha. It says a lot for Elisha that
although he knew from the beginning that he had been chosen to step into Elijah’s
shoes, he served him first as a humble disciple.

In chapter 3:11 he is described as the man "who poured water on the hands of
Elijah": it is a choice phrase to describe the attentive, humble and loving service
he gave the older man whose place he was to take (like the N.T. phrase "to wash the
feet of the saints"). He gave himself no airs and graces. He had been chosen for the
highest position of leadership, spiritually, in the nation, and he responded by making
himself a boy apprentice to the man he was to follow in that office. He had done that from
the day he was first called.

It had been a day when Elisha, the young ploughman was guiding a team of oxen in his
father Shaphat’s meadows in the fertile plain of the Jordan. Elijah had come up
behind him and flung his mantle over his shoulders. The young ploughman understood at once
what that meant. He made a fire of his wooden plough and all its tackle, he made a
sacrifice of the oxen that had drawn it, he gave a farewell barbecue to his family of what
was left, and then (1 Kings 19:21), "he arose and went after Elijah and ministered to
him."

He put his hand to another plough that day than his father’s plough of wood, and
from it he never again looked back. He was a model of true discipleship. I wonder if his
story was in the back of Jesus’ mind when He said (Luke 9:62), "no man who puts
his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God."

Elisha never looked back. When his master would have spared him the pain of their
parting, and urged him to remain, first at Gilgal, then at Bethel, then at Jericho,
Elisha’s answer every time was, "As Yahweh lives, and you live, I will not leave
you." There was a truly humble spirit in Elisha, and that wholeheartedness which only
the humble can achieve! In one day he died to the future he might have had on his
father’s estate in Abel-Meholah, and lived only for his new master, the prophet; just
as the Christian disciple, on the day of his baptism, dies to the world, and lives only
for his new Master, the Lord Jesus.

Let us never forget that we have been born anew to a heavenly inheritance that nothing
can destroy or spoil or wither. We can only come to it by following Christ, by steadfast
personal attachment to Him, the way Elisha stuck to Elijah, not letting anything fascinate
us away from our devotion to the person of our living Lord.

Elisha might have been so easily fascinated away; one is tempted to say he might have
been so worthily fascinated away! He knew, as they all knew, that this was his and
Elijah’s last day together. Tomorrow, he must take over from Elijah as No. 1 prophet
in Israel; and at each stage of their journey he might have snatched at it a little early.

Their journey took them from one school of prophecy to another. The fruit of
Elijah’s ministry were those Divinity Schools: they had sprung up all over Israel
like new growth after rain – a spectacular increase on the hundred brave Obadiah had once
hidden away. Elisha might have settled down in any one of them as resident principal, so
to speak, and assumed the leadership there. And Elijah would have let him!

The leadership role was in the plan of God for his life, was it not? Yes, it was. But
woe betide the man who snatches at it before God’s time! He only qualifies for high
office who first learns lowly service. Elisha did learn it, and he did not fail in the
last mile. He served … and served … and served, and never aspired to rise higher than
to serve.

His last request, as we shall see, was made only so that he might continue to serve in
the spirit of his master. Had he stopped off at Gilgal, or Bethel, or Jericho, his
ministry would have ended there, and Israel would have wanted for a man of Elijah’s
stature for God alone knows how long. He resisted the blandishments of those who would
have side-tracked him into the acceptance of merely human honours.

And what beetle-brains they all were anyway! They all shared the latest revelation from
God – that Elijah was to be taken. And what did it mean to them? Did it sober them, with a
sense of Israel’s need for men of God to take his place? Did it make them
compassionate for Elisha in his impending loss? Not a bit of it. All it did was feed their
empty little egos, turned them into twittering bird-brains, prattling all over the place
to show off how much they knew!

There is a rash of them in every generation: popinjay Christians who trivialise the
truth of God and the truth of people by turning it into empty chatter or wretched gossip
just to satisfy their own vanity. They always know the latest theological trend; they
always know about some Christian leader’s or some missionary’s personal tragedy
before anyone else, and bandy it about without any appreciation of its real import just to
advertise that they themselves are ‘in the know.’ God preserve us from them, and
preserve us (more to the point) from becoming one of them.

They buzzed around Elisha in his pain like breakdown vehicles round an accident, not
for pity’s sake, but for their ‘buck’. "Sorrow has sometimes to be
stern so as to be unmolested," (Alexander MacLaren) and Elisha, God bless him, had
the courage to say the one thing that needs to be said to such people: "Shut
up."

And he demonstrated his right to say it by his own attitude to Elijah. He knew Elijah
was to be taken, and he knew Elijah knew, and he said not a word of it to him. With the
courtesy of a humble man, he would not intrude into Elijah’s thoughts and feelings
about it all until he was invited to. He silenced the distracting chatter, and kept his
own silence, and thereby demonstrated how he served his master’s interests above his
own.

That is the spirit of a true disciple: to serve your master’s interests above your
own. And if we do that with Christ, that is what will make a true man of us, a real woman
of us!

He had no ambition but to serve.

In a single sentence in verse 6, there is gathered into brief loveliness all that need
be said of the disciple’s walk with his master: "So the two of them went
on."

Is the recording angel writing that in his little book as he watches us and Jesus? Says
F. B. Meyer, "They two went on; they two stood by Jordan, the river that we all must
cross at journey’s end; they two went over on dry ground; they two still went on and
talked. Apply that to your companionship with your Saviour!"

And remember that it was one step at a time they went. We only ever come to
journey’s end that way. You can feel in a bush walk, as you can in your discipleship
(especially in its middle stages), that the end of the journey is as far away as it was at
the beginning; that all your walking is getting you nowhere, and you will never make it
home by nightfall. What use is it to go on in this futile way, just one step at a time,
with never anything more to be done to get you there than just to take another weary step,
and another, and another? But the end does come … not without even one of the steps!

THE INSPIRATION OF DISCIPLESHIP

As the two of them trod the last mile of their journey, Elijah broke the silence to ask
Elisha what he might do for him. Are we ready with our answer if Christ should ask us
that?

Elisha asked that he might inherit a double share of Elijah’s spirit.

We must understand his request rightly. (The Living Bible has missed the point
entirely.) He was not asking to be twice the man Elijah had been, as though he was greedy
for even greater glory. Elisha’s request must be understood in the light of the
Jewish laws of inheritance as they applied in his day.

By those laws, the eldest son, upon his father’s death, inherited twice what each
of the other sons received. If there were six sons, say, the estate was divided by seven,
not six, and the eldest son got two portions, for it was upon him as the eldest that
responsibility would fall for the management of his father’s estate. It was a
provision for the acceptance of responsibility.

Elisha reckoned himself the first-born spiritual son, as it were, of his father-in-God,
Elijah. His was the responsibility of taking up the work Elijah now laid down.

A deep sense of responsibility had grown in him, and taught him his need. To carry out
the task that now was his, he would need resources far greater than any he possessed in
himself. As far as his career was concerned, he was going up a peg higher. Inwardly, he
climbed down a peg lower. Promotion made him lowly.

It does not always happen. When we are raised up a peg, we most of us hitch up our egos
to match. Not Elisha: he hitched God up to match (if the crudity of the expression may be
forgiven). Many promising Christians’ lives have failed because this lesson has not
been learnt. With each advance their self-conceit becomes a little more inflated, until in
the end it chokes whatever usefulness there might have been left in them. Elisha’s
response is the only response by which we can inwardly grow.

Elijah was asked for a double portion of his spirit. But he knew he could not give it;
it was not his to give. The spirit in which he himself had ministered had been supplied by
God; only God Himself could supply it to another. Much as we might desire it, much as we
might need it, it can be given only as we trust God for it with child-like simplicity. By
no human agency whatever can the Spirit of God be given.

Prophets and teachers may pass on their systems and their methods and their principles,
even their insights, and so produce a tribe of pygmies who give themselves airs and fancy
themselves great as their master was. But the secret has passed them by. In this matter of
becoming a man or woman of the Spirit, only one teacher can pass on His Spirit to His
disciples, and that is He Who breathed over eleven poor men in an upper room and said,
"Receive the Holy Spirit."

But remember to what purpose He is given – to make us like Christ, to nurture in us
wholehearted faith, radical obedience and selfless love like His. And only in the degree
we are willing for these things will His power grow in us.

How far are we willing to trust God?

How far are we willing our obedience should go?

How much are we willing love should cost us?

The measure of our answer to those questions will be the measure of the Spirit’s
fullness we shall know.

No use for Elisha to build on Elijah; he must build on God. As Paul said to the
Corinthians, even apostles are no better than seed planters and hose sprayers: only God
can give the increase. (1 Corinthians 3:7) That is why Elijah answered Elisha, "You
have asked a hard thing; if you see me while I am being taken from you, it shall be as you
ask; if not, it won’t." What he meant was very simple. Elijah’s translation
to heaven would be a spiritual event.

Only men and women of the Spirit have eyes for spiritual realities; unspiritual men and
women are blind to them. If eyes were given to Elisha to see, it would be the evidence
that God had answered his prayer. Elijah said in effect, "I cannot give you what you
ask; only God can. But if you see as only in the Spirit a man can see, you’ll know He
has." "The unspiritual man does not receive the things of the Spirit. They are
foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually
discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14)

The spirit of Elijah was passed on to Elisha; but not by Elijah, by Elijah’s God.
These two became the first in a procession of men who for two golden centuries opened a
window on to the secret of human history. They it was who gave us eyes to see that running
below the muddled surface of events are the currents of God’s purpose, sweeping life
forward toward the triumph of righteousness and love.

To change the figure of speech a little, all of human life is grounded down on God, on
His unchanging character. He Himself is the bedrock of all reality. The proud fling
themselves against that rock only to be splintered into pieces. The humble build quietly
in faith and obedience on that rock, and what they build stands the shock of every storm.

History itself has borne ample testimony to the truth of this prophetic vision.
Whenever men and women have striven to shape our life in society to the revealed will of
God, good order emerges, freedoms grow, and life becomes fulfilling: but wherever they
build society to the urges and ambitions of their own devising, anarchy emerges, freedoms
wither, and life loses meaning.

THE CONSUMMATION OF DISCIPLESHIP

All that we have been taught in these chapters is wonderfully symbolised by the last
scene that unfolds before Elisha’s eyes, the chariot and horses of fire that took
Elijah up – the sight that drew from Elisha the cry, "My father, my father! The
chariots of Israel and its horsemen!"

No sight in those days was more calculated to stir a man’s pride in his
country’s power and greatness than the sight of its charioteers in battle array, rank
on rank – horses straining at the leash, shields glinting in the sun, banners streaming in
the wind. Chariots and horseman were a nation’s proud strength.

Now it is remarkable that Elijah’s translation to heaven must have happened quite
near the place where Jacob had had his vision of the angels of God as recorded in Genesis
32:1, "Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When he saw them he
cried, ‘This is God’s army!’ So he called the name of that place
Mahanaim," which means ‘two armies’." He was given eyes to see the
heavenly hosts who were invisible guardians of his defenceless company of women and
children, as was Elisha’s "young man" later at Dothan. (2 Kings 6:13)

It was experiences like these which had produced the phrase by which the Israelites so
often referred to God as "Yahweh of hosts" (The Lord of Hosts). They were the
invisible spiritual forces "in the heavenly places" by which the power of God
bore upon earthly life. They are immensely more powerful than the merely earthly armies by
which the rulers of this world strive to impose their will on events, and God’s
‘hosts’ work for the overthrow of evil and the establishment of truth and
righteousness. This was the conviction that led the psalmist to cry, "The nations
rage, the kingdoms totter; He utters His voice, the earth melts. Yahweh of Hosts is with
us; the God of Jacob is our strength." (Psalm 20:7)

"The angel of Yahweh encamps around those who fear Him, and delivers them."
(Psalm 34:7) "Some boast of chariots and some of horses; but we boast of the Name of
Yahweh our God. They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright."

"Woe to him who builds a town with blood, and founds a city on iniquity! Behold,
is it not from Yahweh of Hosts that peoples labour only for destruction, and nations weary
themselves for nought?" (Habakkuk 2:12,13)

"Not by power, nor by might, but by My Spirit, says Yahweh of Hosts."
(Zechariah 3:6)

Elisha, as he glimpsed the fiery chariot sweep down out of heaven to gather up Elijah,
knew in that instant where the real strength of his people lay: in the power of that
righteousness and truth which are eternal in the Heavens. That was the power that made him
cry, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" It was in
that army that Elisha, like Elijah before him, knew that he must serve.

Are we serving in it? What matters to us more – the Will of God, or our own good
pleasure?

The Ahabs and the Jezebels of this world who serve their own good pleasure serve it, as
they always must, to their own destruction. The Elijahs and Elishas of this world who
serve the will of God serve it, as they always must, to the establishment of His kingdom.

"Choose you this day whom you will serve."

Rev Paul T Harrison BD

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