June 16, 2024, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
All right, dear ones, we’re going through the Bible, and we’re in 2 Kings tonight. 2 Kings, chapter 2. Elijah taken up to heaven, and his servant Elisha receiving his mantle. So this is good. This is good. So turn to 2 Kings 2. I’m going to read the whole chapter to you. The whole chapter.
Well, we have been going through the New Living Translation, but I left my New Living Translation at the other church, so I got the NIV. This was my car Bible. You said, I’ll have a car Bible.
By the way, if you ever get stuck, right, they always tell you, have a blanket, have water, all that kind of stuff. Have a Bible. Have a Bible in your car. I always have a car Bible. All right.
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 Elisha and asked, “Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?” “Yes, I know,” Elisha replied, “so be quiet.” Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here, Elisha; the Lord has sent me to Jericho.” And he replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So they went to Jericho. The company of the prophets at Jericho went up to Elisha and asked him, “Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?” “Yes, I know,” he replied, “so be quiet.” Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here; the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” And he replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So the two of them walked on. 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. 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 you before I am taken from you?” “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied. “You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours—otherwise, it will not.” As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two. Elisha then picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and struck the water with it. “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over. The company of the prophets from Jericho, who were watching, said, “The spirit of Elijah is resting on Elisha.” And they went to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. “Look,” they said, “we your servants have fifty able men. Let them go and look for your master. Perhaps the Spirit of the Lord has picked him up and set him down on some mountain or in some valley.” “No,” Elisha replied, “do not send them.” But they persisted until he was too embarrassed to refuse. So he said, “Send them.” And they sent fifty men, who searched for three days but did not find him. When they returned to Elisha, who was staying in Jericho, he said to them, “Didn’t I tell you not to go?” The people of the city said to Elisha, “Look, our lord, this town is well situated, as you can see, but the water is bad and the land is unproductive.” “Bring me a new bowl,” he said, “and put salt in it.” So they brought it to him. Then he went out to the spring and threw the salt into it, saying, “This is what the Lord says: ‘I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death or make the land unproductive.'” And the water has remained pure to this day, according to the word Elisha had spoken. From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria. (2 Kings 2, NIV)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our rock, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen.
So this passage is just loaded with stuff. It’s about mentoring, it’s about spiritual fathering, it’s about receiving the spirit or the anointing from God. It is about what it means to walk out the anointing, to walk out the Christian life. And it’s about what happens when the spirit of the Lord comes and revival comes.
And so we’re just going to look at all that quickly in this passage, or maybe not that quickly. We’ll see. But anyway, it is about, what does it take?
Elisha is now going to follow Elijah in his ministry as a prophet to Israel. Elijah is the first of the great line of prophets. You’ve got the Bible. I know Samuel was a prophet, Moses was a prophet, but Elijah is the first of the prophets of the divided kingdoms between Israel and Judah.
Who would go to the kings and be what basically prophets are in the Old Testament, covenant lawyers? They would come and say, this is the covenant that God made with Abraham on Mount Sinai. Here are the conditions of that covenant. You’re violating the conditions of that covenant. Here’s what God is going to do if you don’t repent.
That’s basically, I mean, you read the prophets and they go, a lot of woe is me in there. But that’s what they’re doing.
They’re saying, listen, you have violated the covenant, and here’s what’s going to happen if you don’t repent.
Elijah is a prophet mainly in his life to one of Israel, the northern kingdom. The kingdoms had divided after Solomon. They didn’t divide during Solomon’s reign, but because Solomon committed idolatry toward the end of his life, God said He was going to divide the kingdom under his son Rehoboam. Ten of the twelve tribes of Israel went north. We call them Israel or Ephraim. Their capital was Samaria.
And then two of the tribes, Benjamin and Judah, remained south. They’re called Judah. Their capital is Jerusalem.
In 722 BC, Israel, the ten northern tribes, were exiled by the Assyrians. They were captured by the Assyrians and exiled into Assyria.
In 586 BC, about 140 years later, the southern kingdom, Jerusalem, was captured by the Babylonians and they were exiled to Babylon. They returned and rebuilt the temple.
The northern kingdom, we talk about them as the ten lost tribes, which basically they are. They were lost to history.
Anybody grow up Mormon?
Okay, if you grew up Mormon, you would say, oh, I know where they are. They’re the Indians in America, the Native Americans. They’re not. All right? They’re not. But that’s part of that story. All right?
So Elijah is prophets, that in the northern kingdom, all the kings in the northern kingdom were wicked. They had a series of kings. I forget exactly how many, but over a couple hundred years, a series of kings. They were all bad as you’re reading through your Bibles, right? So and so became king of Israel. And what’s the next line?
He did evil in the sight of the Lord. In Judah, same thing. So and so became king of Judah. But in Judah, you have about seven who did good in the sight of the Lord.
Israel’s ophir. Judah had some good ones, all right. Ahab was perhaps one of the worst. And that’s the one that Elijah prophesied to King Ahab. He prophesied three years of famine because Ahab was so wicked. There were three years of famine. Then he had this dramatic encounter with.
With all of Israel present on Mount Carmel, with the 450 prophets of Baal and Asherah that. Anybody know wicked King Ahab’s wife’s name? Jezebel. I mean, just saying it, right? Jezebel. It just has gone down historically, right? None of you listen, Sidney, Sofia, you know, if you ever get married and have little girls, you’re just not gonna name them Jezebel. It’s just not gonna. You’re just not gonna do it. You know, nobody names their kid. Nobody names her son Pontius Pilate. Nobody names her daughter Jezebel. Jezebel was an idolater. She worshiped these foreign gods.
She was a pagan. And we think, and we, with our modern sensibilities, we think, oh, you’re just pagan phobic. You’re just jezebelian phobic or whatever. It’s like, no. These idols behind these little wooden statues, behind these poles, behind these idols that they would build are demonic powers that are wicked.
These are wicked, wicked cultures, all right? And human beings follow wicked cultures if not restrained and brought under the lordship of Yahweh, under the lordship of the real God. That’s why for Israel, the number one sin with the prophets keep coming.
The prophets don’t come to him and say, hey, you’re not doing the sacrifices right. You’re not doing the Passover right. They keep coming to him and saying, stop worshipping idols. Worship Yahweh, worship God, worship the Lord exclusively, because you become like that which you worship.
And Israel, God tells Israel, I’m going to give you a land. I’m going to be your God. You’re going to prosper. You’re going to be a light to all these surrounding cultures. The only requirement is don’t be like them.
And for the next thousand years, all Israel does is huff and puff to be like the culture. Sometimes I think in the church, we huff and puff to be like the culture. We want to be so culturally relevant, we become irrelevant.
And so that’s the first place that Elijah and Elisha are in, Gilgal. Gilgal is the place where, when Israel originally crossed the Jordan River, all the men of Israel were circumcised before they invaded the land. And that is a place of separation. It is a place of consecration.
What does that mean?
Israel was separated unto Yahweh. Circumcision was a sign of that. You are my people. I am your God.
Let’s see. I forgot. Whose God am I? I got to go to the bathroom. Oh, yeah. Now I remember. I belong to Yahweh.
You have a sign in your life. It’s called baptism. In your baptism, you are set apart unto God. That’s what holiness means. Holiness means we’re set apart. Holiness means we’re different.
Don’t. I know it is troubling to feel like you don’t fit in the culture you live in.
But, dear ones, that is such good news. You’re not supposed to feel like you fit. You’re supposed to feel odd. That’s what it means. Holiness means I am different now. You’re not supposed to be mean and different. You’re not supposed to be holier than thou. You’re not supposed to hold up your holiness as some kind of bad so that you are better. No, you are saved. You have mercy. You have grace. But it is okay to be different. Gilgal is the place that says God’s people are different. We’re different from the world, all right?
And this whole story with Elijah and Elisha, you notice they keep going someplace. And Elijah tests Elisha. He tests him. He says, hey, I’m going there. You stay here. And Elisha says, as the Lord lives, you’re not getting rid of me. As the Lord lives, you’re not getting rid of me. It’s a test. Life is full of tests.
Okay, there’s a. I’ve told you about that nerdy engineer comedian, right? What’s his name? Don McWilliams or something like that? Anyway, I love comedy. I watch comedy all the time. And, you know, it’s YouTube and stuff.
And this one comedian, he’s an engineer. Now he’s a stand-up comic. His whole stand-up comic thing is, you know, kind of like, how did a nerdy engineer become a comic?
He says, you know, I’m an engineer. When I originally got married, you know, what are engineers good at? Problem solving. Engineers are good at problem solving. He says, I’m a good problem solver.
So he says, I got married. My wife came to me, and she said, I’m getting fat.
And so I think she’s asking for solutions. And he said, reduce your caloric intake and get more physical activity. He said that was not the right answer. It was a test, all right? It was a test.
Men, there are only two right answers to that. One answer is, you’re so thin, I can’t even see you. You have to run around in the shower to get wet, honey. Here. Just the other and the easier one, because even that one, you could get in trouble for. The other one is just to feign deafness.
You didn’t hear that just, you know, you just. Because there’s all sorts of times you don’t hear what she says anyway, so that you can just fake it that time and you’re good.
All right. Elijah is testing. Elisha, stay here. But Elisha said, no, no, no. I want everything God has for me. I want the ministry God has called me to.
And let me tell you, the number one quality in getting everything God has for you, the number one quality in that double portion, the number one quality in living out the Christian life is grit.
You want the anointing, then you stay till you get it. You pray till you get the breakthrough. If your prayers aren’t working, pray different. Jesus talks about persistent prayer.
There is something about. Listen, we’ve talked about this before. There are those suddenlies in scripture, and we love those suddenlies. We love when the room lights up and the miracle happens and God shows up in power. I love that. We were talking about when they dedicated the temple and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.
And as we were just sharing that in our Sunday school time, the glory of the Lord started to come. We all started to feel it. It’s like, oh, my gosh, that’s real. You know, the Shekinah glory started to fall. We started to feel it. We started to experience it. We love that.
And that’s a big part of living out the Christian life. God is a powerful God. God is a real God. He’s not just an idea. He’s not just a concept. He’s not just words in a book. He’s alive, he’s present, he’s powerful, he’s real.
But there’s another part of the Christian life, and that is to put your right foot in front of your left and your left foot in front of the right and don’t quit because life is hard and it is discouraging. Can be right. And so the biggest thing that we need is courage.
In fact, in the book of Acts, when it says the Holy Spirit comes upon them, it doesn’t always say they spoke in tongues. So I believe in speaking in tongues. What it almost always says is they were filled with what? Boldness. What’s boldness? Courage.
That’s why, that’s why, you know, I told you my mother-in-law passed away. She was a devout Catholic and she was a devout political conservative. Oh, my gosh. And her line, we’ve every, you know, we’d get in the car with her and, you know, all she’d been doing all day would be watching Fox News. And we get in the car with her and she just, she’d launch, you know, Jesus launched. Democrats have no common sense. That was her line. Democrats have no common sense.
And we were talking about what we were going to put on her little gravestone, and I said, Democrats have no common sense. And everybody goes, yeah, that’d be about right. That’s what we ought to put on there. I think they’re going to put something else on there.
But no, so anyway, I don’t even know what my point was on that. Courage. Yeah, and Democrats have no common sense. Oh, I know what I want to put on my gravestone. I got it. There we go. Thank you. I got back to my bunny trail.
I want to be, I want, on my gravestone, he was a Barnabas.
You know, you identify with characters in the Bible. Some people identify with King David. They just love to worship and they want to be king. Other people identify with Moses and, you know, and we should all identify with Jesus. But that’s, the bar is pretty high.
If you’re a theologian and you love to debate and get it, you know, you might identify with Paul. If you’re a can-do kind of person and you just love to step out and you’re bold and sometimes you speak before you think, you might think Peter. You know, if you just passionately love Jesus and sacrificially want to pour out everything on him, maybe you’re Mary. You identify. But me, it’s always been Barnabas. I want to be an encourager.
I want to be an encourager because I just recognize as I go through my life and as other people go through their lives, it takes courage. And that’s what this is about, by the way.
A big part of why we gather as a community is because there’s this thing that happens where one’s up, one’s down, one’s going through a difficult season, one’s going through a pretty strong season. And we do what? We bear one another’s burdens. We encourage one another. And that’s why it’s no good to be all macho and like, oh, everything’s fine.
Nothing’s wrong with me. No, no. If you’re hurting, we want to know. If you’re, you know, we want to know. We want to help bear your burden, and we want to encourage. We want to give courage. Sometimes we think because we’re christians, that, you know, we have to project this thing. Like, everything’s fine, I’m fine. You know, we sing these songs, oh, God just gives me love, and he gives me peace. Yeah, but life gives you trials, man. And none of us are perfect. Even Jesus on the cross. Eloi, eloi, lama sabaktani.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Even he experienced that dark night, at least for a moment.
And so, dear ones, life takes courage, and courage takes encouragers. Courage takes encouragers. All right.
Gilgal, the place of repentance, separation. Bethel, the house of God, the presence of God. What else do we need for that anointing? I just said we need each other. We need the house of God. We need the presence of God. And God is omnipresent.
And so there’s two things about the presence of God. We need.
We need to know, whether we feel it or not, that he’s present, because you don’t always feel it. And so we need to have that.
My daughter was just sharing about a missionary who spent two years in a Turkish prison. And everybody wants to hear his story. They want to hear him say, oh, but the Lord was with me. He says, you know what? For those two years, the Lord was silent. He said, I felt like my prayers were getting nowhere. And he said, all I landed on was this. All I landed on was this.
Peter’s words, where else am I going to go? You have the words of eternal life. He said that’s what kept him alive for two years in prison. But even then, God was talking right, even if it was just one scripture.
And so we need to know, whether we feel it or not, God’s presence. But let me tell you something. We also need to experience his shekinah glory and his manifest presence. We need to taste and see that God is good.
It just baffles me. We’re talking about this as our friend Julie goes and shares her.
Her testimony in some cessationist churches and how afraid they are of that testimony. It saddens me, right? And a little bit, it angers me. And it’s like we need to know.
At any moment, the room could light up and all the darkness be gone in every corner. And a light so brilliant, confronting us face to face and speaking words that will forever transform our lives. It could happen. It could happen.
Before you leave this room tonight, he could show up to you or to all of us in such a way that we would be undone.
Bethel, the house of God. The presence of God. Both theologically and faithfully. Recognizing his omnipresence, he is always with us, whether I feel it or not, but also yearning and hungering.
Read the Psalms, for goodness sakes. The Psalms say, Lord, as a deer pants for streams of water, so my soul longs after you. Jesus said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God.
Hunger and thirst are experiences. Have you ever fasted? All right. You ever fasted? Your body talks to you when you fast.
I know my body talks to me when I fast. Like, dude, what are you doing? This is our happy time. Rumble, rumble, grumble. But that hunger reminds me. Oh, there’s something more valuable in this life than food.
Bethel, if you want the anointing of God, hunger and thirst for his presence. Don’t be satisfied by mere propositional religion. You will not get into heaven by passing a theology exam. I want him.
What do those cessationists think when they die and meet Jesus? It’s like, wait, wait, wait. Let me. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to meet you.
I just wanted to read your book forever. Look at the book; it points to someone. It points to a person. You know, people who love the book more than the person are like people who read romance novels but never get into a real relationship. It’s all people who read novels or play video games about being heroes but never take a risk in their life. We want the real thing.
Bethel, the house of God. The presence of God. He takes him to Jericho, and Jericho is the place of spiritual warfare.
Jericho is the place where you have to act in faith and where what you do doesn’t seem to be making sense, but God says to do it anyway.
Okay, Jericho, march around this building. March around this city seven times. This is military strategy. And be quiet. When you march around the building seven times, and then on the last day, just for seven days, march around the building, then the last day, do it seven times. March around once a day. And then the last day, do it seven times.
And after the 7th time, blow your trumpets and the town will be yours.
And you read the rest of the book of Joshua. They do all sorts of military strategy. Okay, we’ll set an ambush over here. We’ll do this over here. But in that case, God tells him to do something that won’t make sense. And he says, and then watch what I do. And the walls crumble.
And faith and obedience is the key warfare to spiritual warfare. Do what? The general says, no, but gods.
And again, one of those dichotomies, just like the presence thing, God is omnipresent. Sometimes we don’t feel His presence, and we just simply have to believe and trust in it. Other times, His manifest presence comes.
Let me tell you something. There’s some of you out there, and you are just great salt-of-the-earth kind of people. And doggone it, you love the book of Proverbs, because the book of Proverbs is the book of common sense. Oh, my gosh, I married one of those people. My wife is like Miss Common Sense. She is so responsible.
She does the right thing. She believes in the right thing. She’s a 911 call receiver. And I think it must. I think she loves it because she’s putting wrong things right, which she loves to do.
But I think it also must drive her crazy. Cause I think you can’t give advice that is a 911 call receiver. You can’t say, well, stop doing that stupid. Which I know she wants to do. Stop doing that stupid Jim Carrey and liar, liar. Stop breaking the law. Do you have any advice? Yeah, stop breaking the law.
How can I stay out of jail? And I ought to tell you something. I have benefited greatly by being married to a common sense person. Kept me out of a lot of trouble.
But I’ll tell you something else, and my wife knows this. There’s no hero in the Bible who didn’t have to defy common sense to become a hero in the Bible. That’s faith and obedience for all you common sense people out there.
I’m going to tell you, God’s going to challenge you at some point and say, do this, and you’re going to say, well, that’s just stupid. Why would I do that? That’s because I said—the parents’ answer. Right? Because I said so.
I swore I was never going to tell my kids that. You know, that used to aggravate me because I would, like, argue with my mom. I’d put my clothes—well, first of all, I thought it was stupid to put my clothes away because I was going to wear them again.
Why not just lay them out on the floor? Or I could just pick them up and wear them again. I put them away. My mom would say, put them away. So I put them away. She says, well, close your drawer. Well, I’m just going to have to open my drawer again. I would explain this to her. It’s like this is common sense. Is something ringing true here?
Seth, make your bed. Why? I just have to unmake it again to get back in it. What’s the point of making my bed? All right, see, I told you.
We are brothers, man. We are soul mates. And then I just, like. And my mom would finally just get exasperated, and she’d pull out the I’m your mother card. Why do it? Because I’m your mother. Well, that just doesn’t make sense. It just would aggravate me, you know? And then, you know, if I didn’t do it, she had all this authority, and I was like, dang.
So then I had kids, and they would argue with me, and I swore when I was getting. I’ll never just say because I’m your dad.
But, man, I brought that out of time. Why do I? Listen, we’ve already. All right, here’s why. You do it. Because I’m your dad and you need to respect me and do what I say.
Call the ambulance. You’re going to do it, my son, one time I need you to mow the lawn. You going to pay me? I said, you want to eat? You want the combination to the lock? I’m going to put on the refrigerator. I’m already paying you, boy.
There’s a time, common sense, people. There’s a time.
God’s going to tell you, do it. But, God, that doesn’t make sense. There’s a time. Give away that much money. God, I can’t afford to give away that much money. Do it anyway. Move to that place. God, I don’t want to move to that place. Do it anyway. Go talk to that person. I don’t want to talk to that person. Do it anyway.
Now I’m going to talk to people like me who love adventure and love Holy Spirit. Spontaneous. Listen, just because it’s weird, it’s not God, all right?
99% of the time, the common sense people are right. You need to learn discernment, all right? Everything that floats through your head is not the voice of God.
You know, the Holy Spirit came to our church powerfully, and people were flopping and dropping and things were happening. And then these people that, they’d pray for prophecy, and we believed. You can get prophecy. You can hear the voice of God. But they’d pray one time for prophecy, and they’d just think everything that ran through their little brain was the voice of God.
Pastor. Pastor.
I’ll tell you what. If we all just wear our underwear and march around the church seven times and blow the shofar, his revival’s gonna come. Yeah, I’m gonna have to run that past the big guy myself, all right? I don’t want the who’s coming, the police. That ain’t gonna happen.
Now, that could get confirmed. That could actually be the voice of God, right? David dancing his underwear. For years, I’ve been trying to get a ministry going of the deuce or dancers, and I just can’t get that thing to get going.
But anyway, so maybe it’s not the voice of God, but just because you have to defy common sense to obey God doesn’t mean that common sense is the devil. Common sense is the way God. I mean, the book of Proverbs is in the Bible, right?
People say, pastor, I just need a word from God. Read the Bible. There’s lots of words in there. I got no prophetic word for you, but read the Bible. That’ll work.
All right, pastor, I just believe God wants to bless me with financial prosperity. Good. Cut up your credit card.
That’ll help. Try this. I just got a word. I don’t know if it’s a word from the Lord or not. Spend. You’ll like this one, Brian. It’s a deep truth and it’s mysterious. I went to years and years of seminary to get this. Spend less than you make. What? What is that? A word from the Lord? Well, it’s a word to cure stupidity. Spend less than you make.
I mean, some of you, you need some common sense, and some of you common sense people need some adventure. And here’s the problem.
I don’t always know when which is which. You got to discern that. But that’s Jericho. Jericho is learning when to draw up common sense battle plans and when to trust and obey the word from the Lord. That doesn’t make sense to you.
And we go through that, one side or the other, all of us, we go through that. It’s uncomfortable. It’s not easy. It’s necessary for the anointing to come on a new generation. Every generation has to learn. Everybody has to learn faith and obedience.
Then Jordan is the place of death and resurrection.
What do I mean by that? Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, and the Jordan, remember, the Jordan was the death, the end of the wilderness wandering, and the beginning of the conquest.
The waters parted at the Jordan for Joshua, just as the waters parting the Red Sea was the end of slavery in Egypt and the beginning of the people of God moving to the promised land. Whenever the waters part, there’s an end and a beginning. There’s a death and a resurrection.
In this case, it is the end of.
Of the ministry of Elijah and the beginning of the ministry of Elisha. I have prayed for my children, and here’s what I pray for my children: that my spiritual ceiling will be their floor. That when I end, they won’t start from where I started; they’ll start from where I ended. That’s what Elisha got. He got to start from where Elijah ended. But it was only because he went through the process of experiencing the death of his mentor.
And then he picks up that mantle, he picks up that cloak, and he doesn’t say, the prophets say, where’s Elijah? Maybe we can go find him. Maybe God dropped him off somewhere. Elisha says, you’re not going to find him.
And it’s so telling. When Elisha gets the mantle, he doesn’t say, where’s Elijah? He says, where’s the God of Elijah? I don’t need Elijah anymore. I got everything Elijah could give me. There comes a time in your spiritual development where it’s no longer your mentor.
I remember I had a senior pastor. He was a good senior.
I was blessed with a good senior pastor at a seminary, and I was an associate pastor. He was a good man. He kept me humble.
One time he told me, he said, Kevin, I know you’re an associate pastor, and it’s a tough job. He says, you know, the only job, you know, the only thing worse than being an associate pastor? I said, what? He said, having one.
I said, well, thank you, Harry. I got an answer for you, man. People come. What’s that young whippersnapper doing?
So anyway, but there’s a time when you have a mentor, when you’re a Timothy and you have a Paul. When you’re an apostle, right? When Jesus tells the apostles, I’m leaving. And they all freak out. No, you can’t leave. You can’t leave. And he says, it’s better for you that I leave. Why? I’ll give you my spirit. And now my ministry is going to be multiplied because I’m going to be living in all of you, and it’s going to go throughout the world.
Listen, if Jesus was still just doing it all by himself, that’s a lot of ground to travel. But there’s little Jesuses all over the place. There’s a bunch of them in this room, right?
The spirit of the living God lives in you. You carry Jesus. Wherever you go, you carry Jesus. And so he lives in you. And there comes a time where Jesus dies, and he says, it’s a good thing I’m going to die, but there’s going to be a resurrection. I’m going to raise. But as I raise, I’m going to go to the Father.
I’m going to send you the spirit. There comes a time in life for things that you are doing. They have to die. Seasons come to an end. Things have to come to an end for something new to be born.
There’s going to come a time when your body’s going to die and you’re just going to pass that on. There’s going to be another generation. You know, my mother-in-law was the last of Jill and our parents. Over the last ten years, I’ve realized I’ve had seven grandchildren and buried four parents.
I don’t know, that’s just probably normal for people my age. But I looked at my wife and I said, we’re it now. She goes, what? We’re the oldest generation in our family. We’re the old ones now.
I looked at a young man in the church and I said, I’m an orphan. The Bible says to take care of widows and orphans. I said, so give me some money. He just looked at me, said, what do you mean? Just do what the Bible says, dude. I’m an orphan.
But every time in the Bible, something dies.
Something comes to life. Moses hands it off to Joshua. Elijah hands it off to Elisha. Paul hands it off to Timothy. Jesus hands it off to the disciples. Abraham hands it off to Isaac. Isaac hands it off to Jacob.
Jordan is the place of death and resurrection. So something dies, but something begins. And then the anointing comes. You’ve had grit. Elisha says, I won’t leave till I get it. What do you want? I want the double portion. You got to see me taken away. There’s a distraction. The chariot’s a fire. Elijah does not go up.
I know. We sing the song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Coming to take me home. Actually, the chariot doesn’t take Elijah home. The chariot separates Elisha and Elijah. But what takes Elijah home is the whirlwind.
And the temptation is to look at. Wow, that’s quite the show. But Elisha knew I have to see my master leave. And when I see my master leave, what was on him is going to come upon me. And so he performs his first miracle. Where is the God of Elijah? Not where is Elijah? Where is the God of Elijah?
He strikes the water the same as Elijah had done. He learned, do what your mentor does, but do it with the God your mentor had. And the waters part. And he has the anointing.
The second miracle is he brings revival to Jericho. Literally revival, right? The town has dead water. The water is poisonous. The water is putrid. People can’t drink it. And it doesn’t make the. It doesn’t. It doesn’t work on the. Live. On the. On the agriculture. It doesn’t work on the crops. It’s bad water.
They come to Elisha and they say, the water is bad in this town. The town is beautifully located. It’s a great town. There’s fertile valleys. We ought to be able to grow crops. We can barely grow enough to live. The water’s bad.
And Elisha says, bring me some salt. What does salt represent? The presence of God, right? What does Jesus say? You’re the what? Salt of the earth. You bring. Preserve. You preserve. You bring flavor. You bring salt, you make things salty. Bring the presence.
And he just salts the water, which you think, well, that’ll make the water worse, right? Salt water. Nothing worse than salt water. But he just brings the salt into the water. And what happens? Death becomes life. The springs of water begin to flow with life. And there is revival. Revival.
When God’s hand comes upon what’s already there, he brings life. We’ve been praying our men’s Bible study, been praying the prayer of Jabez. And Mick keeps reminding me, that’s a good prayer, Kevin.
We got to pray that prayer of Jabez and the prayer of Jabez in Chronicles. Jabez was an honorable man. I pray, Lord, make me an honorable man. Make our church an honorable church.
And then he says, and bless me. Bless me, Lord. And people say, oh, you shouldn’t pray. Bless me. Of course you should pray. Bless me. Bless means to bring God’s goodness upon your life and your situations of your life. Bless me, Lord, and expand my territory.
Well, didn’t Jesus say, take this gospel to the ends of the world, expand my territory, o Lord, that your hand would be upon me? Because none of that, the blessing, the honor, the expansion of the territory, it does not happen without the Lord’s hand upon you. Listen, there are only two things that happen in this world. Things that people create out of their own ingenuity and out of their own flesh and in eternity that amounts to nothing.
And things that people do out of the anointing and the spirit of God and the smallest cup of cold water done there has eternal consequences.
We get distracted by looking at impressive things of the world. The world keeps throwing impressive things in front of our eyes and says, look at this. Look at this. Isn’t this great? Isn’t this great?
God is underneath and behind. He said, no, the real life, the real flow, the real blessing is here. Oh, Lord, that life would flow.
God, would you salt this church in Jesus name and salt the churches in Kitsap County? Would you take the water that’s there, the potential that’s there? And would you make it life-giving, Jesus, for crops and for people and for abundance and for harvest?
God, would you make us honorable and bless us? And would you expand the territory of your kingdom through the revival freshness that you bring upon your church?
And, Lord, would you put your hand upon us that we would not cause harm and pain, but we would bring life, that life from heaven would flow through us. Thank you, Jesus.
The headlines in heaven are going to be entirely different than the headlines on your newsfeed when you turn on your computer. Those are not headlines. Those are deadlines. I just came up with that. That was a good little play on word, wasn’t it? That might have been an answer to that prayer. That might have been a flow from heaven. Those aren’t headlines.
Those are deadlines. All right. Yeah. Yeah. You ought to quote me on that, Sophie. You gotta quote me on that. Yeah, that’s a kevinism. Yeah, yeah, right. Right up there. Yeah, it’s a new one. All right.
See, I said the prayer for new life, and we got a new little. All right, so revival comes now. The second miracle is troubling. The second miracle is just troubling.
Elisha goes out and I guess he was bald. And these mockers start to mock him for being bald. Don’t mock a surly prophet. He cursed them.
And two bears came out of the woods, mauled 42 people. Now, we may think it may be one of those passages people read, “Oh, the God of the Old Testament is so harsh, and the Bible is so harsh, and how can this be a God of love? And where’s the mercy and grace in this? And Jesus would never do that. Yada, yada, yada, yada.”
Let me tell you something. Don’t be a mocker of the things of God. These were not one-time mockers, and they weren’t boys in the sense of six or seven years old.
These were young men. They were boys in the sense of their maturity level.
We read Psalm 1 tonight and it says, do not sit in the seat of mockers. Don’t be a mocker of the things of God. We live in a culture filled with mockers of the things of God.
Let me tell you something. You go on YouTube, and there are people who are Christian people, believe the Bible, believe the gospel story, who are mockers of the things of God.
The hardest words Jesus ever spoke in the New Testament were for people who blasphemed the spirit of God, who mocked the things of God. Don’t mock the things of God because your heart will get hard.
And when revival comes, the presence. When the presence of. When the light of God is shining brighter, guess what happens? A lot of good things come. A lot of things that were in the dark get exposed, all right? The creatures of the darkness do not like the light.
When I went to seminary, my wife and I managed an apartment complex in Pasadena. It wasn’t our fault. We weren’t dirty or anything, but that apartment complex had a problem with roaches. We had cockroaches, and we had exterminators out, but they would just come back. It would creep my wife out, you know?
You don’t see them. You don’t see them until what? Until. How you doing, man? Good to see you. Come on in. Hey, we’re just having church. Anyway, you wouldn’t see them.
And then you’d come in at night, and you turn the light on. When you turn the light on at night, right there on your counter, you see something scurry. Just gross, right? But where was it scurrying to? It wasn’t scurrying to the light. It was going back to the darkness. Because the things, the dirty things of this world, they don’t like the light.
And I’ll tell you, it troubles me to no end that in the last couple of years, and just for a long time, but just in the last couple of years, it seems like more and more preachers have been caught in sexual scandal from their past.
But part of that is good news. And here’s what I mean by that. Many of these preachers have prayed to God, oh, God, send revival. Oh, God, bring the light. And God says, okay, okay, I’m gonna turn the lights on.
But when I turn the lights on, things are gonna get exposed. I’m just gonna be exposed to those that haven’t. Yeah, the light comes on.
So, dear ones, listen. Ananias and Sapphira, that’s another tough story in the Bible, right? Acts 5. The time of greatest revival. And the church is growing, and the church is expanding. And you hear all these wonderful stories, and miracles are happening. And Ananias and Sapphira come, and they lie. They lie to the Holy Spirit.
And in that level of presence, lying to the Holy Spirit doesn’t wash. And Ananias drops, and Sapphira drops. And so, judgment is not a bad thing.
Listen, fire. We’re the firehouse church, right? Fire. In the Bible, fire represents the power of God, the purity of God, the energy of God, the revelation of God, the light of God, the passion of God, the warmth of God. What else? Fire represents judgment.
When revival comes, people are gonna fall. People are gonna fall when revival comes. Why?
Because the light’s gonna shine on things that it needs to shine on. And judgment comes. And judgment comes first to the house of God, all right?
God is like my wife. He’s going to clean house. He’s going to clean house, he’s going to get things put in order. And, you know, you pray for revival, you get what you ask for. Revival comes to Jericho. But the mockers of the things of God get the bearers.
Don’t be a mocker of the things. Don’t mock things you don’t understand. Don’t mock things you don’t understand.
They may be good, they may be bad. But if you don’t know, don’t just jump to conclusions. If it’s, oh, that, God would never do that. How do you know God would never do that? Was it against the scripture? Yeah. There are things God would never do. God will never tell you to hate your enemy. God will never tell you to not forgive the person who hurts you.
There’s all sorts of things God won’t do. God will tell you to forgive. God will tell you to love. But there are some things that happen.
They just might seem strange to you, and you just immediately say, oh, God would never do that. Well, I read the Bible. He does a lot of things. He makes the sun stand still. All right? He tells a prophet to walk around naked for several years. He just better be glad he’s not doing that.
I have people who said we were praying for people and they were falling. They were falling in the spirit. Oh, that’s not God. Those kids. The kids were falling. The youth are falling. Those kids are just faking.
It’s like, how do you know that? Don’t say that. Don’t say that. Don’t make that judgment. They might be faking, but don’t say that. You don’t know that. No whole idea. We can’t judge. Don’t say that. You don’t know what’s in their heart.
And then they say, well, we’re uncomfortable with this. We’re uncomfortable with this revival. I said, you know what Jesus did? Jesus would never do this. Jesus spat on people. You’re uncomfortable with us laying hands on people? Wait till the spitting revival starts. How you be with that, pastor? You blew on that person.
That made me feel uncomfortable. Well, come here. I’ll spit on you. That work? No. Okay, listen, don’t be a mocker of the things of God.
I’m a mocker by nature, but I don’t think I’m a bad mocker. I mock for humor’s sake, not seriously. Like, my sister and I were at a vineyard conference, and these people were dancing, and we played a little game called name that dance.
All right, so one lady did this, and she’d spin around, and we go, oh, that’s the martini glass. That’s that dance.
And we’d name the different dances, but we weren’t mocking what God was doing in those people.
But then they sang the song. I don’t know if any of you remember this song. It was a Brian Dirksen song from years and years ago. It was the song that was “Come Now is the Time to Worship.” Remember that song was around 2000 or back then.
We were at this conference, and the first time they broke out that song, and a guy got up and danced, and he did kind of a Native American type dance.
And both my sister and I, we both felt the presence of the Lord on that dance, and we didn’t name that dance. It was like, oh, my goodness. God is on that. God is on.
It was just one man. It wasn’t the whole room. Usually, the whole room would get up and dance. Back then, there’s one guy danced to that song, and there was something about that, and it was like, the Lord is on this song, and the Lord is on that dance.
And I think that was the first time they broke out that song, and it became, you know, a song that the church used quite a bit.
But yeah, you can be a jokester, but don’t be a mocker. It’s simple juice, wine, fruit of the vine. It’s simple bread. It’s the simplest thing in life, just what human beings have been sustained on for years.
And yet, Jesus, you have sanctified that and made it holy. You have filled, as we receive that with faith. You allow us to partake of the life and death of Jesus Christ.
And you say in your blood, our sins are forgiven and we come into a new covenant.
And Lord, week after week we take this meal and say, yes, I am forgiven and I am a new covenant person. And as I eat this bread and I partake of this cup, Lord, your life, I believe it. Sometimes I experience it and it’s great. And other times I feel dry. But I believe that your life is in me.
Your life is in me. I am a temple of the Holy Spirit.
No other religion in the world says that, by the way. Let me tell you two things. No other religion in the world says. No other religion in the world will teach you the way to God. They never claim to.
You say, what about Islam? No, Islam doesn’t teach you the way to God. It says if you follow Allah, you get paradise. You get to go to the good place. Jesus says, if you follow me, you get the Father. Because Jesus teaches something very different.
Our culture believes that the goal is heaven.
Jesus says the goal is the relationship with the Triune God. And where you have the relationship with the triune God, that’s heaven. He says, this food is heavenly food. And so tonight, believe it and take it. You’re a child of God. I want to say that one more time. You’re a child of God. You’re a child of God. Let that sink in. Amen. Amen.
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