When Ordinary Faith Won't Do Series

Trusting God in really challenging times in your personal life is really difficult to do. When marriages break up, finances fail, and good friends desert you, God’s seeming absence is really difficult to bear. When you are going through a foggy time in life, you want to see God’s bright light to guide your way. When God seemingly fails to provide that light that He’s promised, you are left depressed and despondent.

I want to introduce to you a man of extraordinary faith who lived when few people had faith in the living God. His name is Elisha, and he is the successor in ministry to Elijah. Elisha was a bright light in the darkest of skies. Let me say this at the outset… if you’re like me, it’s hard to distinguish your pronunciation of Elisha from Elijah.

Elisha was the son of a wealthy landowner and farmer. He would go on to be the spiritual leader of Israel for 50 years during some of the darkest days for God’s people.

I invite you to find 1 Kings 19 and put a bookmark there as I ask you to find 2 Kings 2, pages 355 and 362 in your Pew Bibles.

Elisha’s name means “My God Saves.” Elisha is a spiritual light for God’s people in really dark days. When times were the bleakest and hope was the rarest, God put forth Elisha. If you want God to teach us by Elisha’s life, then we learn what it means to provide spiritual and moral light during dark days.

Today’s Scripture

“So he departed from there and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen in front of him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak upon him. And he left the oxen and ran after Elijah and said, ‘Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.’ And he said to him, ‘Go back again, for what have I done to you?’ And he returned from following him and took the yoke of oxen and sacrificed them and boiled their flesh with the yokes of the oxen and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he arose and went after Elijah and assisted him” (1 Kings 19:19-21).

“Then Elijah took his cloak and rolled it up and struck the water, and the water was parted to the one side and to the other, till the two of them could go over on dry ground.

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you.” And Elisha said, “Please let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.’ And he said, ‘You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it shall be so for you, but if you do not see me, it shall not be so.’ And as they still went on and talked, behold, chariots of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and he cried, ‘My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!’ And he saw him no more.

Then he took hold of his own clothes and tore them in two pieces. And he took up the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. Then he took the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and struck the water, saying, ‘Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?’ And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over” (2 Kings 2:8-14).

There is around an 18-year timespan between the two passages we just read together. Elisha “with an s” was Elijah’s “with a j” apprentice for some 18 years. Now, Elijah deserves his own sermon series but that’s for another time.

For the young person who senses you are one of the only believers on your team or in your class, Elisha is a bright light in the darkest of night skies. For the man or woman who clocks into work where there are few other believers and fewer still of anyone with moral convictions, Elisha is a bright light in the darkest of night skies.

1. A Flicker of Light in Dark Times

“So he departed from there and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen in front of him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak upon him” (1 Kings 19:19).

You’re reading about how God calls Elisha into His service. It’s how God moves Elisha from a farmer to a prophet. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind a minute.