History – 2 Kings 1-5

We will witness the passing of an era today as the work of Elijah, the mighty prophet, comes to an end.  But God did not leave His people without a worthy successor.  And very quickly, we start to see that Elisha was a true prophet of God – working miracles and caring for the people of God.

Bible Passage:  2 Kings 1-5

Chapters 1 & 2 were the last few events in Elijah’s life before he was taken up to heaven.  Although Elijah knew that his master was leaving him, he was determined to follow him to the very end.  And his actions showed him to be that faithful disciple.

After Elijah went up to heaven, the people were wondering if Elisha was to be the one that is appointed to take over Elijah’s role.  And events from Chapters 3 to 5 proved that God has indeed accepted Elijah to be his true prophet.

Many of the familiar childhood lessons on miracles can be found in these few chapters – the jar of oil that saved a widow and her sons; the Shunemite Woman whose son died and was brought back to life; the posion stew that was made whole; and the great miracle of the cleansing of Namaan from leprosy.

Many of these events provide great lessons but I would like to follow up on a theme that was raised in our reading of Philippians 3-4.

We talked about following the examples of our leaders and adopt their patterns of faith.  And also whether we are examples for others to follow.

From today’s passage, it gave me an added perspective of what being an example means and how we should respond when we see such examples.

Passing On The Mantle

Elijah was the major prophet who battled against the false prophets and the strong opposition of King Ahab and his wife Jezebel.  And everyone recognised clearly that God was with him – even though he dressed funnily.

Elijah knew that his time was up but a successor was needed.  So in 1 Kings 19, he chose Elisha.  After that, we do not hear much about Elisha until 2 Kings.  But obviously, he was a good teacher and teacher.

In fact, he was more of a mentor to Elisha… showing him what a true prophet of God could, would and should do.

In the New Testament, we are told to “make disciples” (Matthews 28:19).  Closely relaed to the making of disciples is the mentoring of leaders.

Discipleship and Mentoring are something that we do not talk about a lot in the church but these are actually very important and did not start during the time of Jesus but even as far back as Elijah’s time.

Take the relationship between Elijah and Elisha as an example.  When Elisha literally took up the mantle of Elijah (2 Kings 2:13), he was taking over Elijah’s role as the main prophet of Israel, a role for which Elijah helped to grrom him (1 Kings 19:16).

And after Elisha took over the mantle and became the main prophet, he also had his assistant Gehazi who followed him in his prophet duties.

The Mentor

What is a mentor?  Someone told me that a mentor is “a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.”  Sounds about right.

But being a mentor is not easy.

It requires you to voluntarily invest in others for their growth, development and success.  You need to believe in the value of the person you are mentoring and that the end goal is the gain of the one being mentored – even if the mentor does not benefit at all.

Mentoring requires love and sacrifice.

But mentoring is of great importance in our life of faith and you can see many of such examples in the Bible: Jethro and Moses;  Moses and Joshua; Eli and Samuel; Samuel and David; Mordecai and Esther.

Obviously Elijah was a good Mentor.  While the Bible does not explicitly state how he trained Elisha, from the actions and determination of Elisha to follow his master to the end showed that he had a great impact on the life of Elisha.

And Elisha’s subsequent work as a prophet showed that he had absorbed the many lessons of faith and compassion of his master.  In fact, you marvel at how Elisha was like Elijah in dealing with the poor widow and sons who were at their wits end.

In Church today, we certainly still need mentors.  Lots of them.

Being an example is a start.  But besides showing others a good example in our faith, conduct and service, we can actually take it one step further and nurture others by being their mentors.

But many shy away from this because of many different reasons.  Some feel that they are not qualified.  Some think that they do not have the gift.  But many do not do it because they are not willing to invest in the time and effort to nurture the younger and those who truly seek guidance.

I am blessed that I have had some good mentors in church.  Amongst them was this brother I mentioned that refused to give up on me despite me breaking all my promises every week to him to attend campus bible studies.

If ever there was someone who willingly invest his time and energy and offered biblical counseling, it was he.

At the start of every week when I was in JC 2, I would receive a phone call from this brother telling me about the week’s campus bible study.  He would offer to come and pick me up from school.  And when I declined his invitation, he will persist.  And then I would tell him I will be there.  He would then describe exactly where the meeting will be.

And naturally, when the time came, I would not be there.

Then when he sees me in church, he was never angry and just said something along the lines that he missed me during the Bible Study and asked me to join in next week.  I will smile and nod in agreement… and the whole cycle would start again.

But he never stopped asking.

And when my grandfather brought me back to church and helped me be regular in church services again, it was this brother who started to get me involved in areas of service together with him.

He would asked if I could help him do certain things that he was doing.  And after working together with him on it for a while, he would slowly leave it for me to do it alone.  And he would always offer encouragement and good biblical advice for the various things I was facing in life.

And in that way, I grew spiritually and in service to the Lord.

I was not the only one he mentored in this way.  Through the years, I see him doing the very same thing towards other brothers and sisters.  And we are all thankful for this.

Years later when I told him that he was this great influence to my life in church and a great mentor – he remarked that he did not even remember doing it!

He was a mentor to me and others and yet he did not know it.

We need more mentors in the church today.

We need members who are willing to invest themselves in others to help them grow spiritually and in the service of God.

Pretty much like this brother. And very much like Elijah… who made sure that Elisha was ready to take over his mantle.

We all can be mentors to others in our own little area.  If you have been arranged to clean the church – do so faithfully and lead others to do so as well.  If your role in church is to cook – you can also inspire others to also help in this area.

You can all be examples and more in your service to God.  You can also guide them to serve God with the right attitude and faithfulness.  You can also encourage and correct where necessary.  You can lead them all to serve and love the Lord God with all their heart, mind, soul and might.

The Mentee

The Mentee, in case you are wondering, is the person being mentored.

In today’s passage, there 2 mentees that I would like to highlight – Elisha and Gehazi.

Elisha

We all know Elisha turned out very well.  Of course he had a good mentor.  But I believe that it was not the only reason.

For a mentor to be effective, the mentee must be willing to learn and also invest the time and effort to make sure the efforts of the mentor do not go to waste.

And you can see that Elisha certainly was a good mentee.  Immediately after Elijah was gone, he proceeded to carry out his role as the main prophet, doing all the right things in the right way – God’s way.  In these 5 chapters, you can see consistently that he was always focused on God and did what God wanted him to do.  He also had the heart of God – His loving kindness and compassion – in his handling of the poor widow with the jar of oil and the Shunemite Woman with her plight.

So Elisha responded to the mentoring of his master by actually making the lessons part of his life as he grew to become a man of God.

Gehazi

Gehazi had also the good opportunity to work with and follow Elisha.  And you could see that he was quite a prominent assistant as he featured quite prominently in these few chapters.

You would have thought that Elisha was also grooming him and guiding him.  And Gehazi must have felt extremely blessed.

I mean, who wouldn’t want this opportunity?  It’s like being one of the disciples of Jesus and following Him around when He was preaching.  It’s like being Mark – being able to follow two great evangelists around.

I know I would.

Despite this great grace – Gehazi spurned it.

What happened?

We may never ever truly know why Gehazi did what he did.  But an obvious point was that he did not put the lessons from his mentor into his heart.  Although he was schooled in ‘prophet’ – he was not tuned to the heart of God.  His heart was still looking at the world.

God was not the centre of everything and he clearly did not learn to have the heart of compassion and kindness like his master.

So the point I am trying to make is that we may also be nurtured and brought up in the Church by well meaning mentors and teachers.

But the onus is still on us to actually respond and do something with what we have learned.

Our hearts must be changed.  Our thoughts must be renewed.  Our actions must show our growth in the Lord.

And if we do not, and we fail – the fault is not in the mentor but in us.

The Kings

Since we are doing the book of Kings, it will be wrong not to mention them.

We know that most of the kings that ruled after the time of King Solomon were not very good kings.  They led the people away from God to false idols and unstable alliances with the very enemies that God warned them about.

Despite all this – God continued to raise prophets and sent them to warn the kings to turn from their evil ways.  This shows His great love and forebearance for His people.  But the people (especially the kings) continued to turn a deaf ear to the warnings of the prophets.

So it was in these first 5 chapters of 2 Kings.

We all know the ending for the northern and southern kingdom because of their disobedience and wickedness.  And they serve as warnings to as well.

What happens when we hear warnings and teachings from the preachers and ministers today?

Do we also ignore them and continue in our blissful state of doing exactly what we want?   Or are we like Elisha – who was fully aware of his role in life and consistently did things according to God’s commands?

•