Steven Furtick — Pound the Ground
So, I want to share with you tonight a passage that may be familiar to a lot of you, and it's in 2 Kings 2, and I want to share with you about a transitional moment in the life of Elijah the prophet, and I'm going to try to weave two things together. I hope they make sense when I'm done. But kind of go with me here.
I want to preach a message to you called "Strike the Water". At the beginning of Elisha's ministries, we see Elijah's ministry end and Elisha's begin. I want to read a fair amount of context. So, try to just stay with me 'cause it will pay off if we do. There's an incident, an inciting incident, that gets Elisha's ministry started, and I guess we'll just pick up and read it in Verse 1, and the background will fill in itself.
2 Kings 2:1, Scripture says, "When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. And Elijah said to Elisha, stay here. The Lord has sent me to Bethel, but Elisha said," and these are the kind of people you want around you, "As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you."
There are some people who are so tenacious about the destiny that God has called them into that you can't stop them from pursuing the purpose of God even if you try to run them off, and you can't run them off because it's a calling deeper than commitment.
Verse 3 says, "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 replies, "so shut up. I'm sad about it. I don't want to hear about it." The Bible is just funny. I didn't even make any commentary. You're laughing. I love the Bible. People say the Bible is boring. No, you're boring. I read the Bible. It's not boring.
Elisha is heartbroken. This is the man who called him out to do greater things from a predictable life into a life of unimaginable significance for the kingdom of God, and now, Elijah is about to leave. He's about to be taken up in dramatic fashion. Elisha knows this, and he's sad, and he's torn.
Yet, some of the most incredible things that God will do in our lives will come at the time when we're the most confused and the most bewildered and the most disoriented. So, if you feel any of those three ways tonight, congratulations. That means you're set up.
Verse 4, "Then Elijah said to him, stay here, Elisha. The Lord has sent me to Jericho. You can come, 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, shut up. And 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, you're not getting rid of me."
Verse 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." The Jordan River always represents transition in Scripture. This river is central to the transitional history of the people of Israel.
Joshua had crossed the Jordan River, and now, that story, the story that began long before Joshua, the story of God claiming a people for Himself, and the story of God sending His people into a land of captivity for a season, but then bringing them out into their own land. Now, that story is colliding with Elisha's story, and there is an intersection happening, and they're standing at the Jordan River.
Verse 8 says, "Elijah took his cloak and rolled it up and struck the water with it, and the water divided to the right and to the left, and the two of them crossed over on dry ground. And when they crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, tell me what can I do for you before I'm taken from you? You've been with me 13 years. You've packed my suitcase and carried my briefcase, and you've been by my side. What is it that you want?"
And you've got to love Elisha because he does not care. He is not scared to ask something ridiculous. God likes people like that. "Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit, Elisha replied." Whoa. "You have asked a difficult thing." Not that we read this verse wrong. I mean, a lot of people have preached on these verses. It usually makes it sound like Elijah was saying I can give you a double portion of my spirit, but it would be kind of hard for me to give you a double portion.
He wasn't saying it will be hard for me to give you a double portion of my spirit. He's saying it will be difficult for you to carry it. The burden weighs the same as the blessing. If you want the heavy blessing, there's going to be a heavy burden. And that's what I told the teenagers today.
I said everybody isn't going to like you if you live for God. You're not going back to your school to change your school with people who necessarily know they need to be changed or want to be changed. "You've asked a difficult thing. Yet, if you see me when I'm taken from you, it will be yours. Otherwise, it will not."
You choose how closely you want to follow, how passionately do you want to pursue. "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." A lot of great stuff here.
Verse 12, "Elisha saw this and cried out, my father, my father, the chariots and the horsemen of Israel, and Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore into two, thus sadness. But then Elisha picked up Elijah's cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan, and he took the cloak that had fallen from Elijah, and he struck the water."
Everybody says strike the water. "And he struck the water with it." Here's what he said, "Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?" I could tell you what he's thinking while he's doing this 'cause the cloak is like a hairy garment animal skin, and while he's got it up in the air just like he saw Elijah do, I can tell you exactly what he's thinking.
Dear God, I hope this works. That's what he's saying. Have you ever been standing to do something for God that you think he told you to do? Don't act like you know He told you to do it? And you saw somebody else do it, and it looked real good when they did it, and it was so effective when they did it, and then you get out there in the Jordan in transition, and you kind of throw up in your mouth a little bit and have to swallow it back down.
But watch. Watch how faithful God is to anybody who will trust Him with the relentless, persistent, dogged faith. The Bible says that when he struck the water, he said where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah? God, please come through for me. God please don't leave me out here in this transition by myself. God, please back this up. I'm trying my best to do what I think you want. God, please show yourself strong. God, Elijah, is gone. What I knew is no more. Please make it work.
And the Bible says when he struck the water it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over. Everybody clap for Elisha. It's a big deal. And Verse 15, the Bibles that when they saw Elisha cross over the same way Elijah had crossed over, Verse 15, 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, and his ministry began.
But I can tell you something else that's not implicit in the text, but we know it to be true. Elisha had the spirit of Elijah on him before these 50 men recognized it and affirmed it. And Elisha goes on to do magnificent miracles. He throws some salt into the water, very first public miracle that we read about, and the water, the springs that were contaminated and brought forth death were purified and brought forth life. He commanded rain to come through the power of the prophetic word into the desert where the Israelite armies were dying of thirst.
Amazing. He multiplied a widow's oil supply. Incredible. He prophesied that a woman who was barren would give birth. When that child some time later, raised that child from the dead. And I could go on and on about how he made an ax head float to the surface of the water, but that's not nearly as cool as raising somebody from the dead. So, we'll skip that one. That's a deleted scene. On and on it goes. But can I say something to you?
I believe that the primary significance of Elisha striking the Jordan River had less to do with the activity that he would go on to and everything to do with the identity that God wanted to establish. Here's why. Identity always comes before activity in the order of God, and before Elisha could go on to do greater things, he had to have a baptism, if we can call it that. In the affirmation of God that the same God who worked miracles through Elisha, that same character, was residual inside of him and that's what happened in the water that day.
So, when you know who God is, and He shows you who you are, you will know what to do. Identity then activity. That's why I love how God said about Jesus, "This is my beloved Son. With Him, I'm well pleased," before He did any miracles. It's so cool to me how Elisha struck the water, and you know what's amazing about it? The mantle was his before he did any miracles. That mantle hid his shoulders before he did anything to earn it.
I was thinking the other day how most of us spend our whole life auditioning for a part that God has already given us to play. You know what though? That's not even really the thing I wanted to tell you. I'm not going to be much longer.
Don't get nervous, but I wanted to show you something 'cause I was reading through the Bible in a Year. I'm reading through the Bible in a Year right now, and I was reading about Elisha, and I came across this the other day, and I thought it was so significant. At the end of Elisha's life, he's very sick and there's a king in Israel who is worshipping other gods and the nation is in trouble.
And so, trouble often causes you to turn to God at a different level with a different intensity. And so, this king comes to see Elisha, and we're going to pick it up in 2 Kings 13:14, "Now, Elisha had been suffering from the illness from which he died. Jehoash, King of Israel, went down to see him and wept over him. My father, he cried, the chariots and horsemen of Israel," we've seen this scene before.
We saw it when Elijah was taken up. That was Chapter 2:12, but now Elisha after all the ministry he's done, he's being taken up. He's going on. Verse 15, "Elisha said get a bow and some arrows, and he did so, and take the bow in your hands he said to the king of Israel. And when he'd taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king's hands. Open the east window, he said, and he opened it. Shoot, Elisha said, and he shot. The Lord's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram, Elisha declared. You will completely destroy the Arameans at Aphek. And then he said take the arrows and the king took them. Elisha told them strike the ground, and he struck it three times. [Thump, thump, thump]. And he stopped, and the man of God was angry with him, and he said you should have struck the ground five or six times. Then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it, but now, you defeat it only three times."
And Verse 20 says, "Elisha died and was buried." How strange. The last time we see this guy. Remember, he raises the dead. It's his day job, and the last time we see him, he's giving an archery lesson to some wicked king, and he's mad, and I can't figure out why he's mad 'cause all he told the man was take the arrow, strike the ground.