Where is the God of Elijah?  part 9

 When You Come to the Fork in the Road?  1 Kings 19:19-21

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- October 15, 2006

19So Elijah went and found Elisha son of Shaphat plowing a field with a team of oxen. There were eleven teams of oxen ahead of him, and he was plowing with the twelfth team. Elijah went over to him and threw his cloak across his shoulders and walked away again. 20Elisha left the oxen standing there, ran after Elijah, and said to him, “First let me go and kiss my father and mother good-bye, and then I will go with you!”
Elijah replied, “Go on back! But consider what I have done to you.”
21Elisha then returned to his oxen, killed them, and used the wood from the plow to build a fire to roast their flesh. He passed around the meat to the other plowmen, and they all ate. Then he went with Elijah as his assistant.
One of the fascinating things about the eagle is how it trains it’s young to become the graceful bird it is. The mother eagle will take it’s young to the air and actually fly with them on her back.

She will do this for a certain length of time until she is sure they have gotten the idea of flying. When the young chicks get old enough to fly on their own, the mother eagle will do something to unusual to encourage her chicks to leave the nest.

The eagle has enormous talons that will often grow to as much as 15 inches in size. With her talons, the mother eagle will begin to rearrange the comfortable nest. Before the chicks were born, the mother eagle prepared the comfort of that nest with grass and straw and her own feathers. And when the chicks were born she used their down to make it cozy and warm.

But there comes a time when the mother eagle will take those talons and break up her cozy nest.
She will throw out the feathers and the straw and the down making the nest uncomfortable for the more mature chicks to live in.

She then will take the chicks back out on a training flight to show the chicks this is to be their new home. This is where they belong. This is where the young eagles are called to live.

This is their new habitat. You would think all of the efforts of the mother eagle would be enough to convince her offspring to leave the nest. But they don’t.

Finally one day the mother eagle decides this enough of all this coddling and nurturing. Something has to change. The mother eagle at this point will take those 15 inch talons of hers and destroy what is left of the nest.

Afterwards she will take the eaglets up for their first solo flight.
The eaglets will climb aboard their mothers back one last time.
Off they go into the wild blue yonder. The mother eagle will then shake the eaglets from off of her back forcing them to fly.

Most of the eaglets adapt to this rejection from mom and they begin to fly on their own. Most of them.
Except there usually is one that just doesn’t get it.
The mother instinctively will swoop down and catch the eaglet before he crashes into the side of a mountain. She then takes him higher yet into the thermals of air to try again.

Scientists have recorded as many as 40 to 50 times that a mother eagle and the eaglet go on with this until the eaglet finally realizes there is no returning to his old nest.

God is amazingly patient with us. He has a plan for us. There are things God wants us to accomplish for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom. His will for us is a definite thing and we can know what it is if we will allow God to show us.
The problem for us is that we often don’t cooperate with what God has in mind.
 Elijah has been given his marching orders from the LORD. He is to do three things, as we saw last week. He is to anoint Hazael King over Aram; to anoint Jehu king over Israel and then anoint Elisha the son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed himself as prophet.
It is clear that this is the will of God for Elijah. And when he has accomplished these three things he will have done what God has intended for him to do.
Notice that the significant thing that the Scripture records is the going to Elisha. He obviously does the other two things, but this one is the significant one that merits being recorded here.
There have always been those in the Church who have believed that the way to overcome sin in their lives was to go into seclusion and either live alone or with a few others of like mind. That is the monastic mentality. But God has never intended for us to go off by ourselves and turn inward to gain victory over sin. No, God has always intended that his people go out to speak, to serve and to witness to a world that is broken by sin.
Jesus declared to his disciples: “As the Father has sent me, so send I you…”
So it is that Elijah is sent off on a mission that will lead him to retrace his journey through the wilderness and burning desert. There will be days and days of exhausting, weary travel, but on he must go because God has sent him.
It is obvious from the inferences of our text that Elisha was from a wealthy family.  He returns to Israel and looks up Elisha. The recent rains had soften the soil and it was suitable for plowing and planting. He is out plowing in the fields with twelve yoke of oxen. He was driving the twelfth pair. Very few families in Israel at that time would have had twelve yoke of oxen much less enough land to require that many animals to do the work needed to prepare the soil for planting.
The fact that he was driving the twelfth pair of oxen also tells us something about this man Elisha. The worst place to be would be at the end of the trail of oxen plowing the fields. It would have been the worst place to deal with the dirt and dust kicked up by that many teams plowing the soil. He was a young man accustomed to work and did not demand special privileges because of who he was. He was willing to work in the lowliest place for his parents.
Without any special fanfare or even formaility, Elijah walks up to Elisha out in the field and places his mantle on Elisha’s shoulders. Elijah then turned away and left Elisha. He was on his way to Damascus to his next appointment.
Elisha has come to a fork in the road of life. From this point on things would not ever be the same again.
Elisha called out to his team to halt. And he ran after Elijah. You can imagine him calling out: “Elijah! Elijah! Wait for me.” He did say, “Let me kiss my father and mother good-by, and then I will come with you.”
Elijah’s response was to ask “What have I done to you?” There are several ways to look at that statement; It could be some thing like, “Hey, I have just delivered a message. Do what you have to do to fulfill God’s call on your life.” It could mean: “Go on home. But consider what I have done to you and act accordingly.”
However we are to understand that response from Elijah; this much is clear:  Elisha has just received a call from God to be a prophet in Israel. This clearly is God’s will for his life. Elisha knew that he, out of all the people of Israel, had been chosen by God for this ministry. That was the meaning of the mantle of the prophet Elijah. This is a serious thing. It is a call for keeps. He had been commissioned under God’s command.
And so, here he is at the fork in the road of life. What is he to do. Well, look at what Elisha does. He unyoked the team of oxen and slaughtered them right then and there. He took the plow and yokes, broke them up for fire wood and used it to cook the meat. He gave it to the men working out in the field with him.
Now, what is the significance of all of this? 
Elisha is burning his bridges, if you will. He has determined to do God’s will with his life. And nothing is going to divert him from doing it. He will make no provisions for anything less than doing what God has called him to do. And so he destroys the means of drawing him back into the life he had before Elijah came and gave him his new calling in life.
When it comes to following God’s will for our lives, we often times find ourselves to be like this:
Walter Knight told of an old Scottish woman who went from home to home across the countryside selling thread, buttons, and shoestrings. When she came to an unmarked crossroad, she would toss a stick into the air and go in the direction the stick pointed when it landed. 
One day, however, she was seen tossing the stick up several times. "Why do you toss the stick more than once?" someone asked. "Because," replied the woman, "it keeps pointing to the left, and I want to take the road on the right." She then dutifully kept throwing the stick into the air until it pointed the way she wanted to go!  Today in the Word, May, 1989.
We keep throwing the stick until we get what we have wanted all along. We work at having our own way regardless of what God wants for us.
But Elisha burns his bridges…he would never again have his favorite oxen to drive across the land he loved. He would never again feel the yoke or the plow handles in his hands, nor smell the sweet fragrance of freshly turned earth.
With this single stroke he separated himself from this way of life because he was committed to God’s call on his life.
This was an incredible act of self sacrifice once the hand of God had gripped his heart and laid claim to his life.
Elijah and Elisha will disappear from the life of Israel for approximately 6 or 7 years. Elijah and Elisha will go off together. Elisha will become Elijah’s assistant. We will see them again in when Elijah confronts Ahab one last time.
Now what are we to make of all of this?
Well, Jeremiah 29:11-14 tells us this:  “For I know the plans I have for you.” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD…”
We will come to a fork in the road of life at some point. And usually, we do several times in our life. And there are choices we have to make.
All we can do is make the best choices we can.
How do we know how to choose?  Well, there is the Word of God that gives us a very clear picture of what our lives ought to be like and how we should live. Let it be our guide. To do that we have to know the Word of God and what it teaches us.
There is prayer. God’s Word to Jeremiah speaks to that: “then you will can upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you.” Ask God to show you his will for your life. He will listen and when you seek him, you will find him and what his will is for you.
Then, of course, there are mature, Godly believers to whom we can go for counsel and advice. When we go to them, we need to remember that they are just people like us who will give us the best advice they can. But it is only that and nothing more. Listen to them. Evaluate what they say in light of what you know God’s Word says. Then make your own choice about what you should do.
And we must not forget that at some point we have to take steps of obedience to what we believe God is showing us that we should do.
God told Elijah to go back the way he came and to do those three anointings. And it was in the going that he once again found himself squarely in the will of God for his life. Obedience led to fulfillment and purpose in Elijah’s life once more. He quit thinking of himself and became useful to the Lord once again. And he was able to be the mentor to the next prophet God would send to Israel.
God was patient with Elijah and restored him to a place of ministry and service. God was faithful to his servant Elijah. He kept his word to him. God never condemned him. He just redirected him.
Where is the God of Elijah when we come to the fork in the road?  Right there with us.
Go back to our illustration of the eagle mother. She would carry her eaglets on her back and then force them to fly. God will carry us as well, all the time giving us the opportuntity to “fly” to do his will.
One last thought about how God works in our lives.  When God bolts the door, don't try to get in through the window.  The will of God never will lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you. Source Unknown.

We can think about  about Moses for a moment: He was created for a purpose, his very calling and destiny was to free the Hebrew people from slavery.
But go back to Ex. 3 and study…when God called him to do it, he didn’t want to. He gave God 5 excuses why not:
1. I have no ability (Lord: “that’s great. I delight in using men of limited ability, ‘cuz then I’ll get the glory)
2. I have no authority, Pharaoh won’t listen to me (Lord: Fine. I’ll stand beside you)
3. I have no eloquence…I can’t talk plain (Lord: that’s ok, I created your tongue, and I can put on it the words which need to be spoken)
4. I have no message…what can I say to Pharaoh? (Lord: no prob. I’ll give you the message)
5. I have no inclination…I don’t even want to go! (and the Lord changed his inclination)

And so Moses entered into the most exciting time of his life, and fulfilled his very destiny!

--Dennis Gleason