Kids Sermon
So he departed from there, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he was with the twelfth. Then Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle on him. 1 Kings 19:19 NKJV
Elijah needed a replacement and God sent him to a young man named Elisha.
That meant that Elisha was going to have to leave everything he knew and follow Elijah so he could learn all he needed to learn to be a prophet of God.
Did you know that we are all called to follow God and do things for Him?
How can you prepare yourself to do things for God?
We can obey our parents, be careful to do all of our chores around the home as unto the Lord, do our best in school, serve others, and tell others about Jesus. As we learn to be faithful in all of these things, the small tasks we are called to do now, the Lord will continue to bless us and use us for greater things.
God has wonderful plans for our lives.
So Elisha turned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen and slaughtered them and boiled their flesh, using the oxen’s equipment, and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he arose and followed Elijah, and became his servant. 1 Kings 19:21
When Elijah cast his mantle, the insignia of his office, upon Elisha, it was the call to the office of prophet. Though a mantle was simply a piece of clothing that went over Elijah’s shoulders, it meant that Elijah had the call of a prophet on his life. By casting his mantle onto Elisha, Elijah made it clear that the calling of God to be a prophet was now being passed on to Elisha.
So Elisha left his farm and followed Elijah for 7 or 8 years.
Have kids follow you through the church.
God is looking for people who are willing to follow Him and do what Jesus did. And if you chose to follow, He has wonderful plans for you.
That is why He says in Jeremiah 29:11, For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster. To give you a future and a hope.
Today we not only have your activity bags, but we also have a mini mantle for you to take home to remind you to follow God and serve him.
In my sermon today we will learn how to do that by Believing Big, Dreaming Big, and Representing Big.
PRAYER
Father, open my eyes to see Your Word.
Open my ears to hear.
Open my mind to understand.
And open my heart so I may receive Your Word today. AMEN
Today we are going to see how you can level up in your walk with God by looking at Elisha, the prophet who replaced Elijah.
Elisha wanted to go to the next level. He wanted to experience more of God’s power, strength, wisdom, provision and love. Elisha was not satisfied with the status quo.
We grow up with the goal of getting to the next level embedded deeply into each of us.
Just play Angry Birds or Candy Crush and you’ll see how important it is to get to the next level. Or my personal favorite, Hill Climb Racing, I have been trying for weeks to get to level 5 in the ice cave.
When we are born we are rooted on by our parents and grandparents to crawl. And then once we crawl we are cheered on to get to the next level so we can walk.
You get to kindergarten and you work to get to first grade. Then after 6 years you get to that next level. Middle School! And then High School! Always leveling up.
Then after high school you are encouraged to move to the next level, either get a job or go to college. Regardless of which choice you make, once again you are forced to go to the next level, to get through college or get that promotion at work.
The same thing holds true in just about every aspect of life.
In our relationships for example. When I met Debbie I knew I had to get to that next level. I had to become her friend, then I had to become her boyfriend, then engagement, till we got to the level of marriage.
Now after nearly 30 years we can almost read each other’s minds.
Even in our spiritual walk we are always being encouraged to get to the next level.
You give your heart to God through Jesus and then you are encouraged to grow, to mature, to get to a point in which you are not just getting by with the milk of God’s Word but rather feasting on the meat of His Word.
So often however, in our Christian walk we become comfortable. Trust me, it happens to the best of Christians.
We become comfortable with our spiritual walk and that bleeds into every area of our life, especially our daily life.
When we stop growing spiritually we stop growing every in all areas.
We get comfortable phase of life.
Some of us are there right now. Some of us are comfortable with our daily lives. We have nice cars and homes. We have nice clothes and even some of our kids are nice… for the most part.
Some have become relaxed in our spiritual lives and relaxed in our daily lives and you don’t think about the next level, you don’t think anything needs to change.
That may be OK for your daily life but I guarantee you it isn’t going to work in your spiritual life.
Because eventually if we stop trying to attain the next level in our spiritual life, that part of us will become boring and mundane.
Then we start to lose momentum. We start to lose that drive to get closer to God.
And when that happens we start to separate ourselves from the power source.
We start to separate ourselves from the provider.
We start to separate ourselves from the healer.
We start to separate ourselves from the counselor.
It may not cost us our salvation. At least not at first.
But I have seen it happen too often. People who become satisfied with their walk with Christ and stop trying to get to the next level in that walk, those people end up walking away from the church and walking away from God.
Something similar happened to the Israelites in the Old Testament after God brought them out of Egypt.
Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights and the Israelites became comfortable. After they became comfortable, they became restless, and when they became restless they turned away from the God who delivered them.
They had the bread. They had the water. They had the presence of God leading them day and night and yet they decided to not take it to the next level.
It is time for the church to take it to the next level!
Yes, there are going to be problems that we need to overcome. There are going to be trials in our lives but we need to make sure that we are not becoming too comfortable in our relationship with God.
If we become too comfortable the enemy is ready to strike and take away all that God has given us.
God doesn’t want us to get comfortable and lose any land. He has much more planned for you as individuals and for us as a church.
In the book of Deuteronomy God inspired Moses to write a reminder to the Israelites and to the church about who really loves them, what really matters in life, and what is right and wrong.
In the beginning chapters of Deuteronomy Moses gives us a history lesson.
He writes about how the people of God wandered in the desert for 40 years. He reminds them of all God had done for them. He reminds them of how comfortable they had become in God’s provisions. He reminds them of how God had saved them time and time again.
Basically God is reminding them and us of some things before we can go to the next level.
He reminded the Israelites why they had to wander in the desert for 40 years. They had a chance to go to the next level 40 years earlier but they didn’t do it.
Why? Because there were enemies in the way. And because of those enemies Israel had to wait to go to the next level.
Many of us fail to go to the next level for the same reasons. The enemies get in the way. Too often we forget that greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world!
God has a purpose for each of us on this earth and He expects us to fulfill that purpose and yes He expects us to keep moving up to the next level.
I want to give you three things today that will help you move to the next level no matter where you are at in your walk with God.
Believe Big
So he departed from there, and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen before him, and he was with the twelfth. Then Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle on him. 1 Kings 19:19 NKJV
Why did God pick Elisha to be Elijah’s replacement?
He did so because Elisha believed big. We see why in two places.
We see it in Elijah’s request for some help. In 1 Kings 19 we see Elijah being chased by his enemies, the rest of the prophets are presumed dead and Elijah feels all alone. So he is crying out to God for some help.
God found a young man who was like Elijah. He found a man who was as zealous for God as Elijah was. He found him Elisha because he believed in a big God.
Elisha’s name means God is Savior. He was busy working when the prophet found him. He was not just sitting around waiting for God to use him, Elisha was working.
This tells us something else about why God chose him.
Those who learn to be diligent and devoted to the tasks God has called them to today, doing whatever they do “…heartily, as to the Lord” Colossians 3:23, will be those who are best prepared for any ministry God may call them to tomorrow.
The work of building the Kingdom of God requires constant self-sacrifice and tireless devotion to our duties.
People who believe in a big God are people like that. And that is the kind of person Elisha was.
Elisha believed big. The Word of God gives us great direction in regards to what believing big is all about.
We need to believe in God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. We need to believe in the Holy Spirit. We need to believe in the new life God has given us through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
We need to believe in the forgiveness of sins.
We need to believe that Jesus is coming back again. We need to believe that the gates of hell will not prevail against us. We need to believe in God’s healing and provision.
We need to believe that God’s Word is the truth.
That is believing big and we need to believe big so that we can get to the next level.
Dream Big
So Elisha turned back from him, and took a yoke of oxen and slaughtered them and boiled their flesh, using the oxen’s equipment, and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he arose and followed Elijah, and became his servant. 1 Kings 19:21 NKJV
Elisha followed Elijah for 7 or 8 years. Waiting for that day when the same power of Elijah was available to him.
When you want something bad enough you will dream about it. It will captivate your thoughts. Elisha dreamed of a double portion of what Elijah had.
What do we dream big for? A new car? A new house? A new pair of shoes? A new boyfriend or girlfriend? We need to dream bigger. We need to dream dreams that are so big that only God can fulfill them.
Our dreams are not just the things that happen at night when we are asleep after eating some spicy food!
Our dreams are the goals and the visions that fire our heart. They are the visions of our lives being at the highest level of fulfillment through Jesus Christ.
A big dream is a magnet that pulls us to the next level.
We need to be careful though because not all of our dreams come from God. Jesus said that apart from Him we can do nothing. Our dreams must flow from God because when our dream is God’s dream nothing can stop us.
When our dream is not God’s dream we find the dream hollow and unsatisfying.
What does a big dream look like? A big dream always involves building the Kingdom of God. It always involves bringing sinners to Christ.
There are not many in our world who would see the value in dreaming this big. The world says dreaming big means having a steady job, paying the bills, and keep moving forward without making too many waves.
The fulfillment of big dreams has nothing to do with what our society sees as success but rather it has everything to do with the success of reaching people for the Kingdom of God.
We need to dream big.
Represent Big.
Adults, do you remember when we were children?
When we were children the world seemed like a perfect place. When we were young we had no worries. We did not worry about the bad news stories. We did not worry about the crime rate.
When we were young we did not worry about God not answering our prayers. We prayed and we believed that God was hearing us. We dreamed about doing big things and we never feared telling anyone about our beliefs and our dreams.
When we were young we had no trouble believing that the Bible was truth. It was God’s Word that was taught to us at church and in our homes.
When we were young it was easy to believe big, dream big and represent big.
When we were young no one could tell us that God did not exist and that God did not hear us. We knew it and we were not ashamed of it.
Just before God was about to take Elijah to heaven in a whirlwind we see how big Elisha’s resolve was to represent big.
7 Fifty men from the company of the prophets went and stood at a distance, facing the place where Elijah and Elisha had stopped at the Jordan. 8 Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up and struck the water with it. The water divided to the right and to the left, and the two of them crossed over on dry ground. 9 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?” “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied. 2 Kings 2:7-9 NKJV
Elisha, believed big, he dreamed big and nothing held him back he represented big. He received a double portion of what Elijah had and the result was twice as many miracles and time and time again he stood up against the enemies of God.
Elisha represented God and was used by God to make a difference. Do represent God big? Are you speaking the truth of God to others? Are you honoring God with your life, loving people, serving people, loving God and serving God? Do you represent God big with your attitude? Do you represent Him with the Fruit of the Spirit?
If we are going to represent God big we need to be filled with His spirit and exhibit His fruits in our lives. We will never adequately represent God in this world unless we are following Him wholeheartedly sold out to Jesus.
Church we need to level up. We need to believe big, dream big and represent big.
We were not created to be stagnate. God wants us to be constantly growing and rising to new levels in this life. He wants us to flourish and excel at whatever we set our hand to.
Too many people stay right where they are, day in and day out, settling for less than God’s best simply because they’ve grown accustomed to their circumstances, and they are comfortable.
If we are going to experience all that God has for us, we can’t just stay where we are; we have to be bold, we have to stretch, and we have to step out of our comfort zones. In order to do that we must believe big, dream big and represent big.
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