Month: March 2025

A Double Portion

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2 Kings 2:7-10 “Fifty men of the company of the prophets went and stood at a distance, facing the place where Elijah and Elisha had stopped at the Jordan. 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. When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Tell me, what can I do for your before I am taken from you?’ ‘Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,’ Elisha replied. ‘You have asked for a difficult thing,’ Elijah said, ‘yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours–otherwise not.’”

In an ancient Israelite inheritance, a double portion of the inheritance went to the true successor of the one who died. It was a way of saying, “This is the new leader in the family.” It had as much to say about position and leadership as it did about money or property.

Elisha wasn’t interested in Elijah’s stuff. We don’t know that Elijah owned much. Elisha wanted to be a courageous, faithful, powerful prophet like Elijah had been. When God builds a faith that produces fruits like courage, faithfulness, service, and power in a person, that happens in our soul or spirit. It is a spiritual thing, more than just information in our head or physical strength in our bodies. Elisha wanted these things like Elijah had them so that he could serve God’s people the way Elijah had.

More than that, he wanted the double portion. He wanted to be the true successor, the new leader of the prophets and people of God. And in order to do this, he would need a spirit of faith like Elijah had.

This wasn’t a greedy or prideful request from Elisha. It wasn’t going to get him anything materially speaking. It was an invitation to rejection, persecution, and heartache. But he asked for it because he loved God’s word, his people, and his work. It was an important thing not so much for him as for the people he would serve.

It was also something only the Lord himself could give. “You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said. You don’t “inherit” someone else’s faith. You don’t “inherit” someone else’s ministry. God gives them through is word, and through his call. Elijah had taught God’s word and preached God’s word to Elisha, the thing that would make it possible. But the rest was up to the Lord himself.

Most of you aren’t called to a prophetic ministry like these men. As a pastor, my life might be a little closer, but I am not a leader of exactly the same type either. A double portion of Elijah’s spirit may not be so much what we need. But to have the same kind of priorities, the same kind of love for God’s word, the same kind of desire to serve God’s people, the same kind of faith–that would be as useful and dear a gift for you or me as it ever was for Elisha.

As a parent, I would like to leave a nest egg for my children after I am gone. I hope that we have passed along a little of their mother’s work ethic, and my interest in learning and education. These would all serve our children well. But what I desperately want them to receive above all else is a faith in their Lord Jesus as their Savior from sin. I want them to see him as the very center of their lives and their purpose for living. I want them to live every day in the certainty and peace that God sees them washed clean in Jesus’ blood and claims them as his very own. I want Jesus to be the very highest priority in their lives, and for this to show itself in the way they live their lives and their devotion to their churches. Then, when my last day comes, I can face death like Elijah, and so can they, because we share the most important things.

We Are Not Alone

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2 Kings 2:1-3 “When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Stay here: the Lord has sent me to Bethel.’ But Elisha said, ‘As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So they went down to Bethel. The company of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elijah and asked, ‘Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?’ ‘Yes, I know,’ Elisha replied, ‘but do not speak of it.’”

This scene plays itself a second time. Elijah leaves and goes to Jericho. He tells Elisha to stay behind. Elisha won’t do it. When they arrive the prophets in that place come out and tell Elisha that this is Elijah’s last day. Elisha doesn’t want to talk about it.

There are a lot of things going on here. Everyone knows something big is about to happen. No one seems to know exactly what to do about it. Should Elisha leave, or should Elijah and Elisha stay together? Should we be talking about what’s going to happen, or shouldn’t we?

It’s hard to tell what everyone is thinking. Does Elisha want to stick close to Elijah for himself, because he can’t bear to leave him, because he wants every last moment with his friend he can get? Or does he stay with Elijah to support him, because what is coming seems a little scary, and he doesn’t want Elijah to face it alone? Does Elijah ask Elisha to stay behind because he wants to spare Elisha the trauma of thinking about this all day long, and having to see Elijah’s final moment? Is he trying to help him get started on resolution and closure? Or is he personally burdened by the grief he senses in Elisha, and he doesn’t want to drag this around with him his last day? “Just leave me alone.”

I don’t know that I can answer those questions for you. It may be a mixture of all the above. How to act as death approaches confuses us. Family members get on each other’s nerves. Selfishness often rises to the surface. The emotional pain makes some people bossy. Others withdraw into themselves. We are tempted to believe the worst about others. An elderly woman to whom I was close believed that the rest of her family was interested only in her money as her last days approached. The truth was, no one I knew even cared about an inheritance. But sometimes that is a big issue in a family. It’s sad that at a time when both the dying and those around them may need each other the most, we easily end up pushing each other away. Just when “Love your neighbor as yourself” is most needed, it suddenly becomes all about me.

If we are going to face death like God’s people, this is what we can take away from this part of the story: This is the time to support each other. Maybe that seems too simple. But this involves a facet of the gospel we don’t talk about so much. It is important at a time like this. Regardless of the current condition of our earthly families, God has made us part of a family of faith. Jesus died to cleanse us of our sins and to make us his brothers and sisters by faith. That makes us brothers and sisters to each other as well. One of the prayers in the funeral liturgy reminds us of the blessing when someone dies. “In our earthly sorrows, help us find strength in the fellowship of the church…You give us family, friends, and neighbors to help us when there is loneliness now and in the days to come.” We are not alone. That’s good news.

That You May Live

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Deuteronomy 4:1 “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you.”

Some people are worth listening to. Your doctor is generally someone worth listening to. Take ALL the medicine in the bottle until its gone, even though you feel better, and you won’t end up with a relapse twice as bad as the original illness. Take it easy for a few weeks after surgery, even though you feel no more pain, and you won’t land yourself back in the hospital with complications.

Your parents–your parents are people worth listening to. How many of us had parents who told us not to jump on the bed? But how many of us banged our heads on the headboard, the floor, or a sibling because we were jumping on the bed?

The Lord God is one person always worth listening to. Others occasionally steer us wrong, even the doctor, even our parents. But when we listen to the Lord, we always come out smelling like a rose.

One reason to take God’s word seriously is that he takes it so seriously himself. It’s not so obvious in our English translation, but the word “decrees” literally refers to something carved or etched into something solid. That makes us think of the ten commandments which were carved into stone. What was God telling us about how he felt about his commandments when he chiseled them into two sheets of rock? They could have been written on scrolls like the rest of the five books of Moses. But even after Moses broke the first set of stone tablets in the golden calf incident, the Lord insisted the commandments be carved into stone again. In stone they would not fade, they could not be erased, and they could not be changed. We still use the phrase “set in stone” to refer to something which cannot be changed. God is serious about his word!

If there was any doubt about that among his people, look at the conditions he placed upon following his commands. First, he says follow them so that you might live. By “live” he is not talking about having an enjoyable lifestyle, a desirable standard of living. By “live” he means the difference between life and death. He was giving his people a choice: “Follow my commands, and I will permit you to stay alive. Break them, and I will wipe you out.” God means serious business!

Then the Lord conditioned their earthly happiness upon keeping his commands. He told Israel to follow them “so that you may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.” The last time Israel had a chance to take possession of the promised land had been forty years earlier. When they disobeyed him, they ended up wandering in the desert for forty years. Again, when God says, “Listen,” he wants to be taken seriously.

The Lord is no less serious about his commandments today. They are not “voluntary initiatives,” as one humanist has called his set of ten replacements. Choosing to break what God has commanded still invites his anger. Those who insist on living in some sin only add to their own misery and that of those around them. The Lord designed each commandment to take care of us in some way. Breaking them may result in short term pleasure, but it leads to long term pain.

Though we take God’s word seriously, none of us keep his commandments perfectly. All must confess their failure. For Jesus’ sake the Lord does not condemn us. As Paul preached to the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch: “Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:39). God’s word also teaches that he is loving and forgiving. That makes us desire to take his word all the more seriously and keep his commands. People to whom God has revealed himself as their Savior and Redeemer find in him the power to do so.

Listen, and Live!

A Better School – A Better Teacher

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John 7:15 “The Jews were amazed and asked, ‘How did this man (Jesus) get such learning without having studied?’”

The question of the Jewish leaders does not suggest that Jesus was illiterate. Like most Jewish boys of his time, he had likely attended a synagogue school where he learned how to read.

But Jesus had never studied in one of the rabbinical schools. These were something like our seminaries. You may remember that the Apostle Paul studied in the school of the well-known rabbi Gamaliel. But Jesus had no college level degree in theology. He was a tradesman, a carpenter by training, who had a brilliant grasp of the Scriptures. His teaching did not come from what he had learned in a classroom.

Likewise, the test of true teachers of God’s word is not about the school they attended or the number of degrees they have earned. These may not be bad things. We don’t want ignorant or lazy preachers and teachers who have not worked at learning Scripture and prepared themselves for serving God’s people. Continuing study is a healthy thing for one’s ministry. But theology degrees from prestigious institutions do not necessarily make a better teacher of God’s word. Many things that could be learned from some theological schools would be serious problems today. In spiritual things, academia has often produced a skepticism that gets in the way of knowing God’s word.

Jesus himself prayed, “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children” (Matthew 11:25). Paul made this observation to the Corinthians, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:20-21). In the test of the true teacher, the right answer to the question, “Where does his teaching come from?” is not, “From some respected school.”

Where, then? “Jesus answered, ‘My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me’” (John 7:16). With these words Jesus does not deny that he agreed with his own teaching, believed it, and claimed it for himself. He is talking about the source. His teachings were not new teachings he made up independently during his earthly ministry. Truth is never something new, though it may have been forgotten and rediscovered. Truth has a long history behind it. In fact, truth is eternal.

We live in an age that idolizes the new and the trendy. Christians also suffer from this disease. When people make some preacher or teacher popular, because, “Here’s something we haven’t heard before,” we can be too quick to jump on the bandwagon. Has he dusted off some Biblical teaching that has been neglected for too long? Then feel free to follow. But is his teaching some creative new idea spun out of his own imagination? Through Jeremiah God complained about the prophets who “dream their own dreams.” That is the wrong answer to “Where does his teaching come from?” in the test of the true teacher.

Instead, it needs to come “from him who sent me.” Jesus was a true teacher because his teachings agreed with those of his heavenly Father, the one who created the world. His words lined up with God’s revelation to the Patriarchs, and Moses, and the Prophets. Jesus’ claim that his teachings come from the one who sent him was not a claim that defied contradiction because there was no way to investigate it. Everyone present knew the way to check it out: compare Jesus’ teaching with the Scriptures.

When testing to see if someone is a true teacher, “From God through his Holy Scriptures” is still the best answer to the question, “Where does his teaching come from?”