LIFE LESSONS
THE PROPHETS: ELISHA
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
2 KINGS 2: 1-15
JANUARY 11, 2004
The YMCA was founded in London, England in the year 1844 by a man named George Williams. George Williams wanted to provide a place where young men, Christian young men, while traveling, could find safe lodging and in a context where there could be Bible studies and Christian fellowship. The YMCA movement came to the United States of America in 1851. In 1856, the YMCAs built their first swimming pools and exercise and athletics became part of the programming of the YMCA. Today the YMCA has 25 million members in 90 nations of the world. There are 2,000 YMCA facilities here in the United States of America and 13 million American members of the YMCA.
I have the privilege of working at Crescenta-Cañada YMCA in La Canada, California for two years, and my brother Greg was privileged to serve at the Glendale YMCA in Glendale, California for many more years and in far more significant capacities. The YMCA to this day continues to offer wonderful programming for the whole family but the YMCA has changed. YMCA stands for Young Men’s Christian Association but today YMCAs serve people of all ages. They serve people of both genders. They serve people of all religions and all faiths and of course today many YMCAs no longer offer any programs that are explicitly Christian. The YMCA has ceased to be an evangelical movement.
Why is that? It all has to do with mentoring. You see, somewhere along the way, they forgot to mentor. One generation of leaders forgot to pass the baton. They forgot to mentor the next generation of leaders, passing on their vision, passing on their faith. This is an old story. We see it in many arenas of life and we see it all over the world. Of course, in institutions of higher learning, in the world of academics, we see many colleges and universities that were established by Christians and by evangelicals which today are wholly secular. This is true of many Ivy League schools including Harvard and Princeton and Yale Universities. They were founded by Christians. They had evangelical beginnings but today they are wholly secular. It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when the two mottos of Princeton University were “Christos et ecclesiae” and “In Christos glorium,” that the Princeton University existed to serve the glory of Christ and His church.
Today, many professors at Princeton University actually attack Christ and attack the Church because somewhere along the line there was a failure to mentor. One generation did not pass the baton to the next generation, a failure to mentor. Of course, we see this same situation with regard to education all over our country, including right here in Denver. Denver University was established by Christians. D.U. was established by evangelical Methodists. Today it is virtually secular, a fine academic institution to be sure, but it’s left its evangelical roots and many professors at D.U. would attack Christianity. All that remains of their original vision statement is Illiff Theological Seminary and Illiff provides a tragic illustration of religious pluralism and theological syncretism.
And so, we see this failure to pass the baton everywhere, even in the churches. You can look at mainline Protestant churches and many of them have moved theologically from conservative to moderate to liberal, and now you do not even hear the Gospel in many mainline Protestant churches; a failure to mentor and a slide into apostasy. Of course, this is also true of families. Many families where the faith of the parents is not passed on. There’s a failure to mentor and the baton is simply not passed.
This morning we come to Elisha. The story of Elisha is a story of mentoring. Elisha was a man of faith. He was a man of great character, and he was faithful to God and faithful to God’s people and he was faithful because he had been mentored by Elijah. Then Elisha himself was faithful to mentor the sons of the prophets.
This morning we have two life lessons and the first life lesson concerns maturity. You see, mentoring is all about maturity. You may have heard of Sir James Matthew Barrie. Sir James Matthew Barrie was born long ago. When James was six years old, his 13-year-old brother died. James Matthew Barrie was devastated. He’d lost his older brother who he had looked up to and who he had loved. Now, James’ mother was also devastated, so much so that she went into her room and she closed the door and just cloistered herself in that room. She’d lost her first-born son.
James loved his mom and he wanted to comfort her and so he began to do a kind of strange thing. He began to try to take his brother’s place. He began to act like his 13-year-old brother had acted, using the same gestures, the same mannerisms, the same vocal intonations. He began to laugh like his brother had laughed. He began to whistle like his brother had whistled. He began to take his brother’s place and his mother liked it. It seemed like her first-born son was still around the house as long as James imitated him. She liked it.
James grew up. When he was 10 years old, he was still acting like his 13-year-old brother. When he was 13 he was acting like his 13-year-old brother had acted. When he was 20, he was still acting like his 13-year-old brother had acted and his mother told him never to grow up. She said, “Don’t grow up. You don’t want to ever be an adult. Remain just as you are. Stay a child. Don’t grow up because adults have to deal with pain. Adults have to deal with sorrow. Adults have to deal with grief and loss and death. Stay a child.” James internalized all of this and James Matthew Barrie lived like a child all the days of his life. Even when he was 77 years old, he was acting as his 13-year-old brother had.
It was easy for James to live in a child’s world because James wrote children’s stories and he spent most of his time with other children. He rarely spent any time with adults. He went to St. George’s Church in Edinburgh. He accepted Christ and Alexander Whyte who was his pastor encouraged him to spend more time with adults but James just didn’t want to do it. He somehow couldn’t do it. He lived in a children’s world. In 1904, James Matthew Barrie wrote his most famous children’s story and he called it “Peter Pan.”
Of course, there’s yet another version of Peter Pan in the movie theaters right now as we’re gathered here. In a sense, the story of Peter Pan is the story of James Matthew Barrie himself because Peter Pan was the boy who never grew up. Peter Pan lived in Never Never Land, the place where boys never grew up. Of course, Peter Pan took George and Mary and Michael from the real world into Never Never Land. They had many adventures with Tinker Bell and with Crocodile and with Tiger Lily and Captain Hook. Many adventures. But of course eventually John and Mary and Michael were able to return to the real world and they grew up, but Peter Pan never grew up.
Today, psychologists refer to the Peter Pan Syndrome. The Peter Pan Syndrome is when people just remain immature and people don’t grow up. That’s the Peter Pan Syndrome. It’s a tragic thing. It’s tragic when people don’t grow up. It’s tragic emotionally when we don’t grow up. It’s tragic relationally when we don’t grow up, and it’s tragic spiritually. God wants you to know that if you’ve embraced His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you’ve entered the family of God. You’ve become children of God, sons and daughters of God, and He wants all of His children to grow up. He wants all of His children to grow into maturity. He wants us to attain the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ. Because He seeks to see us grow up and to reach maturity, He has provided mentoring.
This word mentor comes from Greek mythology. Mentor was the name of the elderly man who counseled Odysseus, The Greek hero who was in Homer’s Odyssey. The Latin form of Odysseus is Ulysses. Of course, Ulysses or Odysseus was counseled and taught by Mentor. When Odysseus went off to the Trojan War, he asked Mentor to raise his son. He said, “I may never come back but I want you to raise Telemachus. I want you to raise my son and bring him to maturity.
Mentoring is all about maturity. The Bible calls us to mentoring in various forms, and if we would grow in our Christian faith, we need to be mentored by books. That’s why we have the Inklings Bookstore right here at the church and we invite you to go and to take advantage of so many wonderful Christian books that are designed to help us grow. We receive mentoring from books. we also receive mentoring from proclamation, from preaching and from teaching. Part of the purpose of Sunday morning worship is mentoring, but we also receive mentoring relationally.
Jesus mentored His disciples relationally. Paul mentored Timothy relationally. Elijah mentored Elisha relationally. Sometimes we need relational mentors in our lives. We need to be mentees and we need to be mentors. We need to be involved in these relationships of growth. Of course, we look at Elisha. Elisha was a great man. He was called the “miracle worker.” In world history there have been three great periods of miracle working. The first was the time of Moses. The second was the time of Elijah and Elisha. The third was the time of Jesus and the Apostles. Three great periods of miracle working. In the Old Testament, the greatest miracle worker was Elisha. He did twice the number of miracles that Elijah had done. He was able to part waters. He was able to heal waters, to make bitter waters sweet, to freshen them. He was able to summon waters and to draw water out of dry earth and dry ground. He was able to make an axe head float on water. He was more entertaining than Water World.
Of course, he could do other miracles. He could heal. He could heal men and women and children of disease and he could afflict with disease. He could make the barren fertile, and he could raise the dead. He was Elisha. He was Elisha, The Miracle Worker. He also was able to transform flour and oil. He had all kinds of miracle-working power, but what made him great was not his miracle working. What made him great was his character. He had a godly character. He was a man of faith and he was a faithful man. He sought justice and he brought oppressors to justice. He had love and compassion for the poor and for the afflicted and for the oppressed. He was a great man of great character. Why? Because he had been mentored. He had been mentored by Elijah.
We do not know exactly that that mentoring consisted of. We do know that it was very successful and it extended over a long period of time. We know that Elisha was on his farm plowing the fields with 12 yoke of oxen when Elijah suddenly appeared, Ely¬ yahoo-ha-nah-vee, Elijah the Prophet. Everybody had heard of him, and suddenly he was on Elisha’s farm and he had come by the will of God. Elijah took his coat and he put it on the back of Elisha and Elisha was stunned because he knew what that meant. Elijah was passing the baton to him. He would first mentor him. Elisha was surely stunned but he was faithful and he left everything he had that he might go and be mentored by Elijah. He asked only that he be allowed to return to his house and kiss his mother and father goodbye. Then he went off with Elijah and for ten years he was mentored relationally. He grew in maturity. He grew in character.
We want you to know that here at Cherry Hills Community Church we believe in mentoring. You are being mentored. You’ve been paired with a mentor and you’re a mentee. A hundred of you are receiving this relational encouragement, this relational support, this friendship that produces growth both in the mentee and the mentor.
After January 25, we will have more mentors and we can serve more of you. All of that is headed up by Marcia Schultz, and she’s doing a wonderful job. The men’s ministry also encourages mentoring. And in our Family Life Department, we offer marriage mentoring. You can be paired with another married couple for mentoring. We encourage you to become mentors. That’s why we have programs in the inner city such as Save Our Youth. You can go into the inner city and you can become a mentor for the sake of Christ. You can go with younger kids and work with Whiz Kids as a tutor. Tutoring inevitably involves some mentoring, but you see, this is so important as we seek to mature in Christ.
Well, secondly and finally, we have this life lesson and it concerns Christ Himself. He’s the ultimate mentor. We need to understand that if you really want a mentor, the ultimate mentor is Christ. There are many counselors in this world but only Jesus is Pele Yoez, the Wonderful Counselor. There are many shepherds in the world but only Jesus is called the Chief Shepherd. There are many friends and you all have many friends but there’s no friend like Jesus. He’s the friend of sinners. He’s the friend, the Bible says, that sticks closer than a brother. The prelude today was “What a Friend We have in Jesus.” There’s no one like Him. He is the ultimate mentor. I think, in a sense, Elisha understood this. He understood that ultimately his mentor was God.
We have that incredible request that Elisha made of Elijah by the River Jordan before Elijah was taken into heaven. Elisha said, “Let me inherit a double share of your spirit.” Bible scholars debate the meaning of this because in the Jewish culture family inheritance gave a double share to the firstborn, so if you had two sons, the firstborn son would receive a double share which amounted to two-thirds of the inheritance so some Bible scholars believe that Elisha was asking for two-thirds of Elijah’s spirit. Other Bible scholars believe that he was asking for double the spirit of Elijah. We really don’t know but we do know this. He was asking for divine anointing. He was asking for divine anointing and he knew that only God could give it. When he saw Elijah translated into heaven like Enoch, he went and took the mantle of Elijah and he struck the waters and shouted out, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” It was God he sought. It was God’s anointing. It was God’s power. God would be his mentor.
It’s an amazing thing when you look at the differences between Elijah and Elisha. In many ways they were very different. Visibly they were very different. Elijah, the Bible tells us, had a great deal of hair and it was kind of wild and was typical of the image you would envision when you think of a prophet. Elisha was bald. Very, very different. He was sometimes called “the bald one.”
Of course, Elijah was a poor man, a man who had very little materially but Elisha—there’s every indication that he was a wealthy man. Elijah went around in poor prophetic garb, the traditional garb of prophets but Elisha wore normal everyday clothes. Elijah lived in the wilderness but Elisha lived in the cities and he had his own house, something that Elijah never had. And so, you see these great differences between them but in matters that count, they were the same. They both had the character really of Christ. They had God-like character. They were both men of faith and they were both faithful. They were both men of justice, men of compassion, men of mercy and men of love. They had both found maturity through mentoring. Ultimately they understood that it was all about God and becoming like God. We as Christians understand the ultimate mentor is Christ.
As we conclude this message and before we come to the table, I want to tell you a story, a story about a woman whose name was Jenny Lind. Maybe you’ve heard of her. In her day she was a household name, one of the most famous women in the world. Jenny Lind was called the Swedish Nightingale. She was considered to be the greatest vocalist of the 19th century. She had the greatest soprano voice in the world. Her voice was clear and it was angelic. Kings and queens and presidents and governors all came to hear her. All over Europe when she was in her 20s, she sang and she filled stadiums and arenas and opera houses. The people came en masse to hear Jenny Lind sing.
The year was 1850 when P.T. Barnum, the famous showman, brought Jenny Lind here to the United States of America. He signed a two-year contract with her that she would perform across America for two years. She arrived in New York Harbor by ship and the people, 40,000 people, went out onto the dock to get a glimpse of her just walking off of the ship. Forty thousand people. Tragically, 50 of them were stampeded to death, just trampled to death.
Jenny Linda began her tour and went all across America to various cities. She was well received everywhere in the United States. Everywhere she went, she required that she have two rooms, a changing room and a prayer room. She wanted no furniture in her prayer room. She wanted to get down on her knees and just pray for God’s anointing before she went out on stage. She was as popular in her day as any superstar today and she was a Christian.
In the year 1852 when Jenny Lind was 32 years old, just 32, an amazing thing happened. She quit. She just quit right after her American tour. At the age of 32 in the year 1852, she quit. She never ever sang professionally again. She never ever sang for money ever again. When she was very old, she was sitting in a beach. chair looking out on a sunset with her Bible in her lap. A reporter came to her, a newspaper reporter. He just said, “Why? Why did you leave in the prime of your life? Why did you leave all of the money, all of the fame, all of the glory? Why did you turn your back on all of that?” Of course, she had heard that question countless times. She pointed to her Bible, and she said, “Because every day it was making me look less at this.” She pointed to heaven and she said, “Every day it was making me think less about Him.”
For Jenny Lind, she had made that tough choice because she knew that for her everything was about discipleship and being mentored by Christ. She gave the rest of her life to being mentored by Christ, spending time in His Word and in prayer. The anointing was so strong in ministry as she shared her faith with other people, and she ministered to the poor and the oppressed and as she served Christ all over the world… The anointing was so great because she had grown in maturity through the mentoring of Christ.
I honestly believe that there are a lot of us in this room this morning who need to make a tough choice. Some of you really need to make a tough choice, a tough choice because you don’t have time. You feel like you don’t have time for the Thursday night· prayer meeting this week. You don’t have time to join a small group. You just don’t have time. You don’t have time to volunteer in Christian ministry. You don’t have time to teach Sunday School. You don’t have time to go into the inner city and mentor or tutor another child, another person. You don’t have time to sing in the choir. You don’t even have time to come to church every Sunday. You don’t have time for a devotional life. You don’t have time to spend with Jesus every day in prayer and in the word. You just don’t have time.
You see, you need to make a tough choice and it might be pretty radical. You’re going to have to decide that nothing is more important than being mentored by Christ and mentored in whatever way Christ would lead you—through books and proclamation and through relational mentoring—but ultimately through Christ. You’ve got to make that choice, that it would be more important to you than anything and that would produce lifestyle changes but oh, would we ever be used by the kingdom of heaven, would we ever be anointed if we could be mentored as Elisha was. We would then have that anointing, that double share, and we would serve God mightily on this earth.
As you come to the communion table and you partake this morning of the bread and the cup, you want to thank Christ for His mercy, His grace, His atoning death, but you also want to remember the life you’re called to. Maybe this can be a time of new commitment, new consecration. As you resolve you’re going to make some changes and you’re going to seek the mentoring of Christ in whatever form of mentoring He would lead you to, you’re going to seek that double share, that anointing that comes with maturity. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.