Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2596
“And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and struck the water and said, Where is the LORD God of Elijah? And when he also had struck the water, it was divided this way and that, and Elisha crossed over.” 2 Kings 2:14.
THE great objective for our souls is to seek after our God. We love His House, the place where prayer is apt to be made is very dear to us. But the courts of the Lord’s House are dull and dreary if the Lord, Himself, is not there! Our question is not so much, “Where are His courts?” as, “Where is Jehovah, Himself?” Brothers and Sisters, we love beyond expression the ministry of God’s Word—it has been unspeakably precious to our spirits! By it we were called into spiritual life and by it our life is fed and nourished. But still, if God, Himself, is not in the Word and with the Word, what does it avail us? Our spirits must be sustained by the Holy Spirit or else they faint and die.
In reading a gracious book, or in engaging in private devotion, or in coming into the great assemblies of God’s House, our chief question is, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?”—for if we do not find God in all these things, what have we found? Nothing. Or we have mere husks, whereas the precious, priceless kernel is lost to us! Oh, I wish that we always felt in prayer that we would never leave off praying till we found the God of prayer! I wish that, in our singing, we would always feel that we had not truly praised God at all unless our song had found Him, and every note in it had had some one of His attributes to sing. Oh, what an effort it is, sometimes, to really get at God! We are ready to cry with the poet—
“I will approach You—I will force My way through obstacles to You.”
“I will break through gates of brass, I will leap over the highest wall, but I must get to my God, the living God! Oh, when shall I come and appear before God?” I wish that we were always in this state of mind, that our continual cry might be, “The Lord God of Elijah—we must have Him! We cannot live without Him, we cannot be strong without Him, we cannot rejoice without Him. We would not wish even to be in Heaven without Him—it would be no Heaven to us if the Lord were gone from it! “Whom have I in Heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside You.”
Now, this great Truth of God, that our first and last objective should be to seek our God, is peculiarly true when we are called upon to undertake some new office or work unknown to us. Elisha, for instance, has poured water upon the hands of Elijah and been his personal attendant. But Elijah has been taken away by a whirlwind into Heaven and, now, Elisha has to be the Prophet of Israel in Elijah’s place. A great weight of responsibility has fallen upon him. He has to do what scarcely any other man of woman born had ever done before—he has to follow one who seems well-nigh inimitable! He has to be successor of the Prophet of Fire—the man of God, Elijah. “Well,” you say, “he has Elijah’s mantle.” Yes, he has his mantle and there is something in that. If ever I could feel any great reverence for relics, I would like to have Elijah’s mantle. Elisha had it, but what was the use of having the mantle of Elijah unless he could also have his God? Though he is called to take the mantle and with it to strike the waters, yet he knows where his strength must lie, and his prayer, his cry, is, “Here is the Prophet’s mantle; but where is Jehovah, God of Elijah?” If he can get Elijah’s God, then the mantle will mean something! But, if not, it may even be like a garment of fire to him when he puts it on—and he will not be able to wear it becomingly. Men will see that he has Elijah’s mantle, but they will ask, “Where is Elijah’s power?”
Now, dear Brother, you are about to succeed a man of God. You have his mantle. The people have chosen you, so you are entering in by the door. You have not intruded into the office uncalled. You are a fit man, no doubt, to be a successor of the one who has fallen asleep, but do not be satisfied with your succession to the office. Whatever it is that has been bequeathed to you by your predecessor, be not satisfied with that, alone! Above everything else, you need his God. If you have his God, you will do very well, even if you do not have his mantle. If you should turn out to be a very different man from him who went before you—as different as Elisha was from Elijah—you will do very well if your confidence is where your holy predecessor placed his confidence. And you, good Sister, have undertaken the charge of a class, or some special work for Christ, and the dear Sister who went before you was a woman of renown. Her death has made a great gap in the Church and you do not feel fit to fill it. Well, never mind about that—if you can get her God, if you can rest in Him with a simple faith—you may go on without the slightest fear! If you have the same God as she had and have the same faith in Him, even if you do not work exactly in the same way, yet you shall bring glory to God and you shall be a blessing to those round about you! I exhort all young people who are entering upon an untried path to say to themselves, “Where is my father’s God? The dear old man has fallen asleep and I am apt to cry, ‘My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof,’ but I have now to follow him. Oh, that I may have the same Spirit resting upon me! The same God to come to my succor! Then I shall do well enough.” You see, then, dear Friends, this question of Elisha is an important one, but most of all, when you are entering upon some untried work—“Where is the Lord God of Elijah?”