3. The Character of Elijah

The Character of Elijah In the call of Elisha we see the ungrudging character of Elijah. It is a lovely sight to see when we see a lack of envy amongst the Lord’s servants in relation to each other. Elijah does not look upon Elisha as an upstart, but ungrudgingly, according to the command of the Lord, he goes and puts his mantle upon Elisha. And as far as we can see from the narrative he gives him every encouragement to take up this service for the Lord, so when the call of God came through Elijah to Elisha we find this wonderful attitude of lack of envy or jealousy. I believe this comes out distinctly in the life of the New Testament servant, Paul. Oh, how he commended the service of others. Timothy? Paul said he was a man after his own heart, he knew no man so like-minded as Timothy (Php 2:20). Epaphroditus? Oh, this man was ready to give his life (Php 2:30), and there are many others (e.g. Romans 16:1-27). As he writes his epistles, unjealously he commends others for their work for the Lord. This is a good lesson for us all, not to be marked by any spirit of envy in relation to the work of others, but rather to commend what we see. So very often we put aside the service of others because of something that we see in the servant, and we discount all that is worthwhile and all that is valuable. Paul did not do that. Paul commended the servants of the Lord for what he saw.

Having briefly considered Elijah we now want to look at Elisha following in his footsteps. So if we were to write a heading over our simple message this evening it would be:- ’The servants choice, the servants call, and the servants testing’.