The Double Portion

*(I do want to add at the beginning here, I did not read all of the scriptures that are in this, I just like to list my references in my notes so that I can better go over the story with the congregation. I also shortened some of the stories as needed.)*

Hello, how is everyone?

I have been thinking a lot about a couple of questions: Am I doing all I can for God? What does that look like? Why should I work hard for God? I think of all of those questions whenever the thought of being a servant of the kingdom comes into my mind.

Here lately, I have been thinking of this more often. This led me to the story of Elijah and Elish, but particularly the story of Elisha. Both of these men were prophets before the time of Jesus and they dedicated their whole lives to God. Elijah came first, and most of his story is found in I Kings, then towards the end of that book, Elijah is sent to find and anoint Elisha as a prophet. I just wanted to tell you that as a little bit of background on our text for today.

Read- 2 Kings 2:1-15

Now something a little bit funny that I think about after reading is about how fast food restaurants used to have the upsize options to get a little extra food. You had a Biggie size from Wendys, King Size from Burger King, and probably the most well known was the SuperSize option from McDonalds. Unfortunately for me, this all went away before I made my own money and could have purchased it. The SuperSize Me documentary was showing how bad this amount of fast food was and ultimately ruined it for everyone else. This led to it disappearing before I could experience my “Double Portion”.

Teaching:

All jokes aside, this portion of scripture is key in answering the questions that I began with today. In order to understand how it answers those questions, we need to dive a little deeper into the stories of these two men.

Who were they and What did they do?

So who were Elijah and Elisha? Well, there were some kings that came after King David, and most of them would eventually turn their back on God. Eventually, during the reign of King Ahab, Elijah shows up and prophecies in the name of God and all of the things that he prophecies happen. Guess they wouldn’t have been prophecies otherwise. Well, Elijah continues in his prophetic ways and also performs some miracles, most notably he resurrects the widow's son, keep that in mind because we will discuss it more later. Also, he challenges the prophets of Baal and through calling fire from the skies, proves that God is the only God. Ahab’s wife hears of this and decides that Elijah needs to be dealt with, this leads Elijah to flee. During the time when he was fleeing, God sends him to anoint Elisha as a prophet. Elisha then serves God through his service of Elijah up until our passage we just read. Then Elisha continues on in the same way as Elijah. Miracles, prophecies, these were all in a day's work for Elisha.

That is a little more of a background on these guys to better help us understand our passage for today. Kings were steering people from God, so God sent some people to get them back on track. Both of these men were really incredible men of faith, and in order to answer our questions, we can look to their lives as an example. I’m not saying that we need to perform miracles or anything like that, but we can model their walk. Everything that they did, they did for God and we need to have that same framework and mindset.

Truths/Points:

I have a few truths that we can draw from the lives of these men and the passage we read to start.

1- Follow Like Elisha-

My first truth is that we need to follow like Elisha. Whether it was in the way he followed Elijah, or in the way he followed God, he followed diligently. Let’s look at some examples of how he did this.

a) Left his old life behind

The first thing Elisha did was leave his old life behind. He literally got rid of everything. The bible tells us that Elisha slaughtered his livestock and burned his plowing equipment. He lived out the “Burn the boats” mindset. Speaking of that mindset, I’m sure you have all heard that saying, but to better understand it, I’d like to tell you where it came from.

Hernan Cortez was a Spanish conquistador who famously burned down all of the ships in his fleet in an attempt to motivate men. Initially, the men were angered by this. They thought he had basically just signed their death certificates because their only way home was just destroyed. Cortez then explained to them that their only way to get back home was to be victorious and seize the enemy ships. This unorthodox motivation led their mission being successful because the men fought harder and more courageously in order to be able to return home.