Taking Up The Mantle Series

2 KINGS 2: 8-14

TAKING UP THE MANTLE

[2 Kings 2:1-7]

Elijah has been called the grandest character that Israel ever produced. [Robert Young, Analytical Concordance to the Bible, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1936, p 295.] But like all of us he needed a friend. Elisha had been Elijah’s servant, his disciple for many years learning what ministry was all about. But Elisha had not only learned what ministry was all about, he had a powerful desire to serve also. He had a desire to serve God, for the supreme object of the human heart is to seek God and glorify Him in service. But Elisha had also learned how to serve others and demonstrated it through his long service of Elisha.

Elisha also knew that his desire to serve would be nothing without a call to service and the anointing which is the power of Almighty God that He confers on His choice willing servants that enables them to glorify Him. For as Elisha knew, and we who would serve God and man learn, it is a vain thing to serve God and man without the touch of God upon us. So Elisha asks to be what his heart told him to be for God and for the power that would enable him in ministry and prove God’s calling.

Those moving into a new position of ministry or some new work or some new experience must have the desire Elisha demonstrated to have God’s anointing upon their life. Elisha knew that God anoints people in a special way that are ready to step up to special service. Elisha had proven himself faithful in being Elijah’s disciple. He was now ready for a new ministry, an expanded ministry, an anointed ministry.

I. REQUESTED ANOINTING, 9-10.

II. THE FIRES AND THE WHIRLWIND; 11-12a.

III. TAKING UP THE MANTLE; 12b-14.

Our message begins in 2 Kings chapter 2 verse 8 where, rolling up his mantle into a kind of rod, Elijah struck the water, and the Jordan divided itself as it had done for the children of Israel crossing into the promised land (Josh. 3:17). “Elijah took his mantle and folded it together and struck the waters, and they were divided here and there, so that the two of them crossed over on dry ground.”

Elijah having arrived with his companion at the brink of Jordan, does not tarry there as if he doubted how he was to pass over the river. He had not forgotten Moses, who, with one stroke of his rod, parted asunder the water of the great deep, that the ransomed of the Lord might pass over and that the God of Moses was also Elijah’s God. A miracle similar to that of Moses now ensues. What a spectacle! The stream is divided. On one side it flows rapidly away; on the other it piles itself up like a wall of crystal, and the two prophets pass over, dry-shod, to the opposite shore. As soon as they are over, amazingly, the watery wall rushes down the channel as the invisible bonds are removed and the river flows on again filling its banks. How great a God is our God. At His rebuke the seas dry up, and well-watered lands become a desert, even the winds and the sea obey Him.

Can’t you just hear the fifty prophets who were left on the other side marveling as they raised upon their toes straining for a better view. “Wow, look at that!” Praise, too no doubt lifted from their lips. The dividing of Jordan formed the last in the chain of wonders which ran through the prophetic ministry of Elijah; and it shows that this man, with all his trials and fatigues, had not become feeble in his faith, but from the beginning of his call until the end continued His walk of faith.

When Elijah folded his mantle, the symbol of his authority or office together to smite the waters of Jordan, he already seemed to anticipate a princely dominion over the earth and its elements. This act of his faith seems the effort of a soul aspiring to higher degrees of advancement, to full emancipation and liberty. He seems no longer to be bound to the elements and natural laws of this world. He appears like one advanced to the dignity of a seat in the heavenly places with Christ; his faith would cast mountains into the sea, and pile up the sea to mountains were it necessary. What is miraculous in the eyes of man, appears to have become almost familiar to his faith. A new region must shortly be opened to his soul, for which this earth has become too narrow and contracted. The dominion of heaven unfolds! The boundaries of earth and time retreat, for his abode is no longer below.