Shall we pray? Father, we're glad to be here this morning, and we're thankful for the many blessings that we can enjoy and reflect upon that you have brought into our lives in the past year, that we know there are those here this morning who have had suffering, and who have had difficulties in hardship, and distress, and stress, and many things that have shaken some individuals. And we pray that by your spirit, there would be recovery, and by your grace, there would be prosperity in Christ, so that in the coming year, we might have the power to serve you, and nonetheless, the power to love you by your spirit, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
The last time I was with you, we talked about prophet, priest, and king, and the beginning of my message this morning is going to be to do with these things, in some sense, by way of review. We know that these things are portrayed for us very clearly in the Old Testament, and as I had said about a month ago, that we know that the prophet is a man who cares little for his appearance, cares little for what men think of him, and is very concerned with revealing the mind of God. He is concerned with bringing out the truth in a timely manner. Sometimes that means that he brings people back to what they should already know.
Sometimes it means that God is revealing something new. But whatever it may be, it pertains to God's truth. He has a moral role. He has a role to sometimes be a conscience.
Sometimes the earthly children of God act as if they had no conscience, and God raised up men to say, this is wrong. You may not realize it, you may not feel it in the midst of your sin, but it is wrong. He was like another conscience, bringing to the attention of God's earthly people important moral issues. These prophets often dealt with situations with passion and intensity, and certainly Elijah, who was the first of the two prophets this morning, was very, very much a case in point.
And we all remember what happened on Mount Carmel in the prophets of Baal, that Elijah, you might say, stood up for God, stood up for God's principles. And he did so with passion. The enemy was actually internal. Is that not usually the case?
For us, the enemy is often internal, an internal enemy. In Israel's case, the sin and the idolatry, and the loss of the heart, love for God had crept in. And it was time that it be dealt with in a very clear manner. And God raised up Elijah and other prophets to do that.
What about us? We can think about the saints of old, and the Old Testament, and the age of the law. We live in the age of grace. What about the age of grace?
How do we then live, as one Christian philosopher put it? How should we then live? Well, we are people. We are the children of God with resources.
We have the word. And when we read John chapter one, we are told that the Lord Jesus is the logos. That is not the Ramata, the word for a typed word with letters is Ramata. That's just a word on a page.
The word logos is a much deeper, broader word in that. It encompasses the idea of meaning, of meaning. That's so important. You look out there and you wonder what the world is living for.
What's the meaning of life? Well, if you know the Lord, that question is answered for you. The meaning of life is to know the Lord Jesus Christ, and to live by his spirit. This is what it means to have the word.
Psalm chapter one speaks of the law. That was the word that was available at that time. And the king, David, he says, you know, if you are in the word, it's like being a tree planted near a river. Your roots will never be dry.
You will never be in a situation of drought and deprivation because your roots are in the right place. They are in the word, in the person of Christ, in the meaning of Christ. And even the Ramata, the written word, the communication of God on the page, we have the Bible. We have the complete Bible.
And as we take in the Bible, we are not left on our own, as Jesus promised, we have the comfort, the parrotly, the one who comes beside us, to guide us, to fill us, to comfort us, and to reveal to us the meaning of these things and to apply them to our situations and to our lives in a way that is, in fact, unique to us, unique to you and I as individuals. That is the Holy Spirit, bringing home to us, the word of God in our day-to-day lives. The commonality is the mind, the truth from the prophet and the mind. And I was reminded of a couple of passages from the Old Testament, pertaining to the mind.
We should seek the mind of Christ. This was something that the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about. He said, for who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? Rhetorical question.
Does anybody have the complete mind of the Lord? No, neither you nor I. Rhetorical question. As an apostle, as in a selected apostle, who encountered the living Christ personally and who had the scriptures and the truth and the word of God reveal to him and put it on paper, on papyrus, he could say we have the mind of Christ.
He was reminding them of his apostolic authority. But it is also, I think, for us, something to aspire to. If we have been given the word by apostolic authority, as received by Paul through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that enables us to have something that is more like the mind of Christ, what do you think about? What concerns you?
What do you meditate upon? Do you rejoice in God's truth, as you can read in Psalm 1? Is this sort of what makes you tick internally? As you think about your life and your circumstances day today, we need that mind of Christ.
That is something very wonderful and profound to aspire to. And we have, there in John 16, I alluded to the parrot lead and to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And how that spirit brings home the truth of God. That's a wonderful fact.
Jesus said this, how be it when he the spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth, for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mind, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine, therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and show it unto you. The Holy Spirit can take God's word, and help you to have something that is closer to the mind of Christ.
That is a wonderful thing to aspire to in seeking the truth. What about the office of priests? He was the one who interceded for God's people in a mediatorial capacity with redemption in view. He portrayed redemption in the Old Testament, a future final redemption.
He portrayed it pictorially in the sacrificial system that God gave to the Jews. He literally stood before God in the holy of holies, and in front of him was the Shekinah glory over the Ark of the Covenant, as he did that. I'm sure that he was filled. That high priest in that holy place was filled with a combination of awe and fear, holy fear.
That is something that is so far away from the world in which we live. We read in Psalm 2, why do the heathen rage? Why does the world rage against the sun? Every day that is what we see.
The world in its system rebelling and raging against the sun of God. That is not what should characterize us. We, as it says, can know what it means to kiss the sun, to worship him as it says in Psalm 2, because we have been redeemed. We know what it means for the Lord Jesus himself to be our mediator.
This high priest was a visible illustration of worship, of true worship. The entire book of Hebrews has as its theme. I would say the word better. Better, better, better, everything better.
Because the work of Christ is finished. It is not an annual and repetitive portrayal or illustration or allegory. It has been done. It has been done.
The work of Christ is finished. And unlike that human high priest, the person of Christ is ours as the son of God. He can live in our hearts so that we can worship him. The worship of Christ in the New Testament is portrayed as a personal thing and as a corporate thing.
And going forward into 2018, I suggest to you that these are things that we all need to work on, that we should not neglect, that at a very, very great price, our redemption has been purchased. And we have the personal option of coming before God and of worshiping God at a very personal level, but also in a corporate manner. The writer to the Hebrews says, don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is. Don't do that.
Don't do that. The New Testament portrays for you corporate worship. That is very important. It is something that you need to build into your life.
As well as personal time with the Lord. Both of these things are laid out. In the New Testament. And I find that as I prepare this, that these concepts and these principles, they greatly overlap.
There's a great deal of overlapping here. And what you suffer from when you look for verses is kind of an abundance of riches, that so many of the verses of the New Testament pertain in some way to these principles of the mind of Christ and the affections of the inner man, being such that they worship the Lord Jesus Christ. You'll remember that when the Lord Jesus talked to the woman at the well, he reminded her and all of us that worship, worship is something that must be done in truth. And that in spirit and in truth, this is the kind of worship that God desires, that she would come to know, but that everyone everywhere would come to know what it means to worship God in spirit and in truth.
But the hour come as he said to her and now is, when the true worshipers will shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship him. That is God's desire for you in 2018, that you would know what it means to worship God personally in spirit and in truth. And if your mind is moving toward a greater grasp of the mind of Christ, then the truth part will can become stronger and stronger.
The priesthood, as we know, has been set aside. Hebrews 10 says, Having therefore brethren boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated, consecrated for us, through the veil that is to say, his flesh, and having an high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. What a lovely pair of phrases with a true heart and full assurance of faith. I trust that you have that assurance, that in your heart, you have the assurance that comes from faith, that you can come before God with your requests and with your worship in 2018.
Wonderful things that are ours. These are our birthright. These are the inheritance of the children of God, of you and I who know the Lord Jesus as our Savior. This morning during the breaking of bread, many of the hymns and thoughts related to the royalty of the Lord Jesus, his kingship.
And that is a very dear topic I find as I scan the Bible and try to get the panorama of scripture. One sees a Savior who is a king. What about those earthly kings? Some were bad, some were terrible, and some were good.
And the bad ones outnumbered the good ones in the earthly economy of the age of the law. But the goal, the purpose of a king, as you would expect would be to lead God's people. Not to reveal the mind of God necessarily, not to intercede like the priest, but pure and simple to lead God's people. This is something that we individually acutely feel the need for, is it not?
And in that leadership role, he gave earthly, political, and sometimes even military guidance. The Christian walk and the implications of these things are not for the timid and faint-hearted. This is not some kind of board game we're playing with, with a winner, but actually the person who wins the board game has no significance, it has no meaning. It's not like that.
As Ephesians 6 tells us, there are evil powers and evil influences in this world that want to destroy us, that want to affect us, that want to push us in directions that are totally wrong. We need to be serious. We need real leading and real guidance. We need the kind of king who demonstrates godly behavior.
What better king could you ever ask for than the Lord Jesus Christ? When you read the accounts and the gospels of his life, what more wonderful and perfect and glorious a king can we see there than in the person and character of the Lord Jesus Christ? What a king. He should be the king of your heart.
We don't need a political king. In our Christian lives, what we really need is King Jesus to sit on the throne of our hearts, the Lord should reign in our hearts. And the thing that I think encouraged us again this morning in the breaking of bread was that as Hank gave out of him. He's coming back.
His kingdom is not visible at this time. He came, he worked redemption for us, and he has gone back to the Father, but he is coming back. And all of this chaos and all of this raging is going to stop. The Lord Jesus will set it right.
No more will men abuse his name. I imagine that as you walk through your life in this world, many things pain your heart. Many things cause you to shudder. Do we need to let those things kind of seep into our souls and destroy us?
No, we don't. We have the Lord reigning in our hearts. Let him be on that throne. Let him lead us.
And we have that hope and that knowledge that he is going to return and reign on this earth. This has to do with allegiance and decisions and the use of our will. We need to exercise our will and make choices that honor King Jesus. I love that verse.
And I shared it last time Romans 814 that had such an impact on a man who made a great choice. And that was Martin Luther. He simply couldn't reconcile the religious experience that he had been trained in with what the Bible was teaching for as many as are led by the Spirit of God. They are the sons of God.
I trust you as a child of God. No, that leading. That is also your birthright. That is also what God wants for you to know, his leading, as his son, the king, sits on the throne of your heart.
So that is all by way of review. Let's think for a few minutes about Elisha, the prophet. As you would remember, Elijah passed his mantle onto the young man who he was mentor to. And as I look at those closing chapters of First Kings in the beginning of Second Kings, I think there are a number of things there for us.
I will just touch on three of them. Let's stick in my mind. I trust that as you move forward in the coming year, perhaps some of these things will stick in your mind as well. These three things that I've contrived to start with the letter D, especially delays.
But you have in the Old Testament portrayal, that this man Elijah in many ways is a picture of Christ. He was a man who worked alone. He caused a watershed in the society of the day. And he was taken up to heaven.
In these various ways, he is a picture of Christ. He has followed with some overlap with Elisha. And in passing on the duties of the prophet to Elisha, certain things happened. Some commentators will say that Elisha is actually something like us.
Some will say that he's something like the Apostle Paul, that in carrying on the ministry given by the Lord Jesus, Elisha is a picture of that. Well, that's very good. That's very useful. And that's interesting to think of when we look at his life and this transition.
So I'll just look at three aspects. The address, the delays, and the double portion. I find it interesting that even the English language with its various metaphors and sayings and proverbs often has in it things that simply come from the Bible. They are from the Bible.
And I deal with people who are 23 years old, day in and day out by the dozen. And they don't even know that. So many of these ideas for them, they haven't got the foggiest idea or that saying or that proverb or that concept that metaphor comes from. A mantle, something like, I guess, an overcoat of some kind.
And we read in 1 Kings 19 that Elijah passed by. He was always passing by. And he put this mantle on Elisha and identified him as his successor, that mantle, that overcoat. Elisha in that portrayal looks rather surprised.
I think it did happen as you read it in a somewhat surprising manner. How will you, funny question, how will you clothe yourself in 2018? With what will you cover yourself? What will characterize you?
The New Testament takes this sense of what you are clothed with in a couple of ways. And one of them is very much emphasizing what a Christian person, what a Christian character, should be like. Elijah was a man of passion and intensity. And he passed on his mantle to this man Elisha.
And Elisha took that on and began to serve God with some measure of trepidation, just as we would. What's going to characterize your life? This idea of covering, this idea of accepting the character of Christ, receiving from him that responsibility to portray him reminds me of this idea of taking on a mantle, a mantle of Christ. That is what the Lord wants us to do.
What will characterize your life in 2018? Characterize. Characterize. What's in the middle of that word?
What's the root of that word? Character. It's inevitable. The Lord Jesus said that out of the treasure of the heart, the mouth speaketh, what will characterize you?
What will characterize you and me in 2018? Is and what comes out and what people see and hear? It will be a reflection of what we are. What will characterize us will be an indication of our character, of our character.
What is your Christian character like? Is the Lord Jesus truly sitting on the throne of your heart? The New Testament encourages us in multiple places about this idea of taking on Christ. For example, be renewed in the spirit of your mind that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and holiness, true holiness.
Put it on, put this on. It's kind of paradoxical because one might say, well, I don't like this. It's almost like I'm not so good inside, so I have to kind of cover that up with, it doesn't work, you see? Because righteousness, as it says, and holiness, you can't fake those things.
If the new life in Christ is founded and based in righteousness and holiness of the King, then what's needed is that the outward reflects the inward reality. This is a very good verse from 1 Peter 5. Likewise, you younger submit yourselves unto the elder. Yay, all of you will be subject to one, to another, and be clothed with humility.
For God, resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Do you ever meet anybody who said, you know, I can't stand Joe Blow, he's so humble. What? Nobody ever says that.
You know, we sometimes say it takes one to know one. You know, if someone is conceited, a bit arrogant, boy, oh boy, that person sure seems to have a lot of sensitivity toward people who are conceited and arrogant. Isn't that true? What about humility?
It's so rare, it stands out like a sore thumb. Humility. Be clothed with humility. I'm telling you, you can't fake it.
If you put on false modesty and false humility, people smell it 100 miles away. Doesn't work. Forget it. Let the Lord Jesus be king of your heart.
Look at the humility of his life, the majesty of his person, and humble yourself before God, and let your outer life reflect that inner reality. The other kind of clothing is actually not clothing at all in the Christian life. It's armor. It's armor.
Because like it or not, we are in a war. This is serious business. Paul says in Ephesians 6, finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. It's not fanciful talk.
If you pretend that it isn't true, you can be affected by the tricks and plans and wiles of a very clever being. Satan. If you were to sit down with Satan and play chess, who do you think would win? Like 100 times out of 100, 1000 times out of 1000.
Satan, because he's smart and he's evil. And he hates the fact that you love the Lord Jesus Christ. He hates the fact that you want to serve him. He wants to undo you and sidetrack you and distract you and make you waste your time.
Be aware of these things. And so we read about a breastplate of righteousness. We read about our feet having the shoes of the gospel, being active and spreading the gospel, carrying the sort of the spirit which is identified in that verse as this, the Word of God. This is what we need.
We can't pretend otherwise. We cannot pretend otherwise. This is, you know, the Old Testament is full of types and I think this might be a case of an anti-type. But it's most interesting.
This Elijah, I like this guy. In many ways we have in second Kings too at the beginning of this ministry and this transition. Elijah says, uhm, Terri, uh, Elijah is a Terri here in Bethel. No, no.
And he sticks to Elijah. And then a couple of verses later Elijah says, Elijah, it's a Terri here in Jericho. No, no, I can't leave you. I have to stick to you.
And then two verses later Elijah says to Elijah, Terri here in Jordan. No, I have to stay with you. I have to stay with you. Isn't that odd?
The way I like to think of it, this anti-type, is that this new prophet is very dependent and doesn't want to try to do things on his own. His Lord has said, start your ministry. He doesn't have the confidence. He doesn't have the confidence.
I wonder if that is also your experience sometimes. You just lack the confidence. Confidence has a big effect on how we behave. Anyone can tell you that.
We often lack confidence. But graciously the Lord says, okay, come along. And you know something, you don't go wrong when you stick to the Lord. If the Lord Jesus is pictured here by Elijah, and Elijah is pictured here and we are like him, sometimes we don't really do what the Lord explicitly asks because we lack confidence.
But the Lord doesn't say, that's it, we're done. We're done. Goodbye. I'm looking for somebody else.
I didn't do that. Okay. You're sticking with me. You can't go wrong on sticking with the Lord.
We often lack confidence. But you can't go wrong sticking with the Lord. The third one, this is most interesting. Elijah asks for something because Elijah invites him to ask, what did the Lord Jesus say in Matthew?
Five, ask, seek, knock, ask. We don't. And here you have Elijah saying to Elijah, I'm going up to heaven soon. What would you like?
Is there something that you need? And Elijah, it reminds you of Solomon asking for wisdom. Elijah says, I want a double portion of your spirit. Wow.
One of the reasons I like that is that it shows godly ambition. It shows some desire to have the power of God to serve God. We don't need to be little milk, sops and wall flowers and have no spiritual ambition. We can serve the Lord.
It's true. We need the spirit of God. It's true. Well, ask for it.
Ask for that power. Ask for that spirit of God to serve the Lord in 2018. He tells you to ask. James 1 talks about the Lord will not abrade, but will give the needed wisdom.
You find yourself unsure of what to do next? Ask. Ask. I love this ambitious spiritual man Elijah who asks for that double portion.
And the difficulty that Elijah says, you know, that's a tough one. It reminds me of the Apostle Paul. He says, you know, in me, I know that there's a part of me that doesn't honor God. And then there's the part of me in God and of God that says, no, I'm going to go with what God wants.
And Paul is writing about that at a very personal level, that inner conflict. There is the reality of that inner conflict. Do you think that in all of this, you just sort of go, well, it's just going to be all hunky dory and there's not going to be any stress and there's not going to be any challenges and there's not going to be any tears. That's just not the case.
That's not going to be the case. If you have inner struggles, you're alive. If you have inner struggles, the Lord is working. The Lord is working in your life.
It's good to have some spiritual ambition to say to the Lord, give me more of you. By that means I trust that you and I will be able to better serve him in 2018. I thought we might close with him, a song from the old course book, the, actually, the new course book that Falacame has and others have compiled number 19 by Wendy Churchill talking about extolling the king. May the king of the universe, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, reign on the throne of your heart in 2018.
May you know his leading. May you know what it is to worship him and may your mind become more like the mind of Christ. Shall we stand and sing? Have we got the words?