Sermon Tone Analysis

Change

There isn’t a whole lot of things that are sure in life, but one of them is change.

The question isn’t so much, will there be change?

But rather, how much will change and how fast will that change happen?

Our bodies change.

Our bank balance changes.

Our home lives change.

Our relationships change.

Some are going to be changes for the better.

Other… not so much.

The question then becomes, how do we deal with change?

Now there is a bit of a spectrum here.

On one end you have those who just love change.

They’re the ones you will hear saying things like - a change is as good as a holiday.

Change is exciting.

It all part of this wonderful adventure called life.

I usually have a bit of a tendency towards this.

At the other end, we have those where change is bad.

They like the comfort of knowing how everything happens.

Without change, it becomes much easier to plan and organise because it is all so familiar.

Now in part, where we lie on this spectrum is just part of who we are.

I think it is good to have people on both sides.

If everyone were change lovers, well we might never have stability.

If everyone hated change, well things might become stale quite quickly.

But regardless of where you are the idea I want to explore today is trying to see God in the midst of these changes.

You see, a easy tendency for anyone is to see how God worked in the past but to somehow assume, well, he might have acted like that once, but he doesn’t act like that now.

Church scenario

Now into this discussion, I want to draw our own potential change that we’ve been looking at here at Tanilba Bay Baptist.

You see, just like in our own personal lives, things always change in churches as well, whether we like it or not.

And there are a lot of reasons for this.

People come and go.

Trends come and go.

Society around us changes.

If you look back through our history books and you judge purely on numbers (which I recognise should not be the only measure), then you could conclude that this particular church was at it’s healthiest during the 1990’s, when I’m led to believe that this room here was pretty full most weeks.

Well, one things for sure, and that is that we will not get back to those days by trying to replicate precisely how things were done then.

Those days are gone.

Whether that’s good or bad is really beside the point.

But we can rightfully ask, why was God bringing people along then when we struggle to get past 50 people today.

Of course, there are many factors involves and it’s not my intention to investigate the specifics of them in this message.

The question I do want to ask however is: can we rightfully expect God to work in this church today like he did 20 years ago?

Or maybe even more to the point: can we rightfully expect him to work in even more powerful ways?

It is easy to loose faith.

God worked in a certain way back then, but not today.

I want to suggest however that God is not finished here yet.

Not by a long way.

I believe God has exciting things in store for us here at Tanilba Bay.

Link with Elijah/Elisha

Well today we continue our series on Elijah and Elisha.

What we witness today is actually a quite dramatic change from the leadership of Elijah to Elisha.

So my plan this morning is first to explore the specifics of this episode, before coming back to explore some lessons we can think about when it comes to change.

Background

Well, we’ve been exploring the background to this story over the last month or two.

For this chapter, the main thing for us to know is that Elijah has been chosen by God to deliver a very important message at a very critical time in the history of Israel.

Israel’s at a low point with regards to its relationship with Yahweh, and Elijah has come in to help set things straight and set up a new platform for God to continue his big plan to save humanity.

It really is quite a critical point in this whole plan.

Well, if I go back to , Elijah was on Mount Horeb and God revealed to him what would happen next.

The important part for today’s context is that God revealed to him that his ministry would be passed on to Elisha.

Now when I actually looked at that passage, which was just before the school holidays, one of the aspects I explored was the connection that we can find between the ministries of Moses moving to Joshua.

And the ministry of John the Baptist moving on to Jesus.

I’m not going to have a big focus on that this morning, but we will see some interesting things that continue those connections.

Well, after that chapter, what became quite clear was that the change was not to happen immediately.

In fact, there is a lesson in that for us.

Don’t get caught up in your own timing.

Trust God that his timing is perfect.

It doesn’t always feel like it at the time, but he delivers in his timing, and it is always perfect.

Well, the immediate background to the story we have today, is that Ahaziah’s very shortlived reign has now been succeeded by Joram.

Last week we looked at Ahaziah’s death as recorded for us in the first chapter of second kings.

If you’ve been following carefully however, than you might have remembered that at Mount Horeb, when I just mentioned that we had Elisha’s succession foretold, we also heard that Jehu was to become king of Israel.

Well, he didn’t get the gig after Ahab, because it first went to Ahaziah.

But he wasn’t the next either.

Because at the end of chapter 1 it tells us that Joram then became king.

Well that just reinforces that idea I just mentioned that God’s timing is not always what we expect, but it is perfect.

Elijah’s end

Well, into chapter 2, and the end of Elijah is almost upon us.

It tells us that in the first verse of the chapter.

As we read the chapter it also becomes clear that the Holy Spirit has not been shy in letting his people know.

You see, Elijah and Elisha travel together down to Bethel, and when they get there, a company of prophets come out and say “Do you know that the Lord is going to take your master from you today?”

This has also been revealed to Elisha and so he acknowledges that he does know, but it would seem he didn’t want to talk about it, so he tells them not to talk about it.

Now it’s hard to know exactly what is going on in the mind of Elisha here.

Is this a sign that he is wanting to resist the upcoming change?

Or is it that he is just wanting to stay in the moment, knowing that Elijah will not be with him much longer and he just didn’t want people who are going to worry about it affect the moment?

Or maybe Elisha is concerned about to many people finding out before it actually happens.

Well, we don’t really know, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Whatever the case, Elijah and Elisha continue their journey down to Jericho.

At Jericho, the same thing happens - some prophets remind Elisha of what is about to happen, and Elisha responds by asking them to keep quiet about it.

At verse 6, we’re told that Elijah has a word that he is to continue on to the Jordan, but he asks Elisha to stay.

That doesn’t suit Elisha, and so the two of them travel together to the Jordan.

At the Jordan

And it’s at the Jordan where the action really starts to take place.

Now, notice verse 7. It tells us that fifty men from the company of the prophets were also present but that they stopped as a distance and watched.

They will come back into the story shortly so just keep that at the back of your mind.

Now the Jordan river plays a significant role in the Biblical narrative.

I reminded you earlier about the connection between Moses to Joshua, and John the Baptist to Jesus with this story of Elijah to Elisha.

Interestingly, the Jordan features in all of them.

Shortly after Joshua is placed into leadership, we see him enter the promised land.

He does this by getting this now large nation of Israel to cross the Jordan into the land.

It’s at this point that we get the miraculous crossing.

Just like Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea, Joshua too has his own parting which we can read about in .

I’m going to come back to this water crossing, but if I just briefly jump over to John the Baptist, it also becomes significant where he is baptising people - that’s right, the Jordan.

And it’s while he is baptising in the Jordan, that along comes Jesus, to be baptised, and thus starts his ministry.