Many times in our Christian experience, we want to cry out — “If only I had been there, I would be able to believe far better than my current situation.” There seems to be a quest of attempting to renew our experience over and over again in order to validate our salvation. Thus icons become very meaningful & very powerful. Icons, by themselves, are neutral. We fully understand them to be earthly objects containing nothing whatever of any ethereal or divine material. Yet, we impute in them — or we give to them — the power that these objects do not naturally, inherently, & by themselves contain. We give to them the stature of divine-like essence in order to feel both validated & perfected. This was never the intention of God, that we would displace & misrepresent anything in heaven or on earth of possessing such virtue. We were always & forever to believe in God & Himself alone without having to impute divine attributes that belong to Him alone.
Therefore, we must be careful in our spiritual experiences that we do not displace God; that we do not misrepresent Him in any way by holding to objects & even spiritual experiences as THE object for our sanctification. He mercifully grants awesome experiences for us to have; He allows these feelings & emotions to overcome us & overwhelm us. BUT they are not meant for the chase nor the pursuit. He has granted these things so that in them & through them we may be led to Him. Such is the same as the Cross, the Bread, & the Cup. These are strong powerful icons & images that display the glory of the risen Christ in His fullness & in His excellence. But, lest we forget, they are NOT Christ. They lead us to Christ; they speak about Him; they bring us to the person of whom we are really supposed to be honoring. These objects, themselves, do not have any power to save & contain no power of themselves for sanctification. They are signs & symbols of His most marvelous Grace. And as signs & symbols they point to the person of Christ — He is the One we are meant to celebrate & glorify!
In the light of this encouragement, let’s read the following —
2 Kings 2:14
14 Then he took the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him and struck the water, saying, “Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?” And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.
There are three (3) parts to this verse :
1. Then he took the cloak of Elijah that had fallen from him
The imagery is evocative. It is meant to stir the imagination as if we were there with Elisha. We are to be whisked away in that moment of pure exhilaration when the joy of seeing with our own eyes the moment Elijah is taken up into heaven & at the same instant feel the loneliness & emptiness of the loss. Elisha is alone. But he has as a possession, Elijah’s cloak. This is the moment; the nexus of Elisha’s ministry begins right here — will he now take the cloak & impute unto it the pure divine quality that we all think Elisha does in this circumstance. Or will he choose to accept the obvious — it is Elijah’s cloak; it is not Elisha’s decision to impute unto the cloak divine powers.
But there is something else that also stirs the Christian Mind — and that is the powerful imagery of Christ, who He, Himself, transfigured on the mount to His disciples, James, Peter, & John. They saw for the first time what Jesus had been saying all along — that He is the Christ the Son of the Living God. It is through His message of His Gospel that we understand that all blessings flow from the Bounty that is IN Christ Jesus. Literally, He indwells believers into their hearts such that we possess Him in our bodies inasmuch as we are surrounded by His presence.
This aspect of our Christian reality is why the Apostle Paul can write :
Ephesians 4:21-24
as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
To Put Off our Old Self, like a cloak & to Put On our New Self, like a new cloak. This imagery brings us back to that point in Elisha where he is holding onto Elijah’s cloak & the analogy fits the description. Here, Elijah is the Christ-figure fore-shadowing that day when all believers of Jesus would do spiritually that which Elisha is doing physically — to take hold of Jesus as their cloak & reality & put Him on. He is their new mentality; their new reality; their new identity.
2. ”Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?”
Does He exist in the present? Is He here, right this moment? Is He here with me? Or is He someone that only lives in heaven & cannot dwell with earthly beings? It seems quite innocuous to ask especially for us modern contemporary people where we do not routinely observe large bronze statues of gods in the middle of our cities & town halls. But someone like Elisha, idols were everywhere & every place as routine & as common as the community well to fetch drinking water. So routine & so common in fact that to not have an idol & especially to believe in a god that does not have an image was both ludicrous & preposterous. Why was this so? Because everything in the observable universe is supposed to have an image, including gods, so they reasoned. Their image was important so that the people would know what the gods looked like & to also feel that the gods were with them. It made worship a lot easier & people knew for certain where the gods were living & residing.
On the flip side to this rationale, the people wanted to control persons & circumstances. By creating idols, you can control the gods with the palm of your hand — with one blow you can destroy the idol or through mastery of a craft you can create a pantheon of gods in your image. Elisha knew by watching his ‘father’ being taken into heaven, Elisha was dealing with something totally different — this is THE God you do not deal with in the customary manner. As an Israelite, what Elisha just witnessed was something special & he knew it — after all, in the previous verses, we find that Elisha asked for this grand spectacle as a sign that God would grant his wish — a double portion of Elijah’s spirit.
3. And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.
Elisha struck the water with Elijah’s cloak — or Elisha hit the water with Elijah’s cloak. What is going on here? The language used here is similar to Moses striking the rock in order for water to gush forth in two (2) situations : Numbers 17 & Numbers 20.
In Numbers 17, God commands Moses to stand on the rock & strike the rock in order to spring forth water. In this circumstance, the Lord God is teaching a powerful & moving imagery of what salvation looks like. God will strike the Rock in judgment & because of that judgment satiated or satisfied or propitiated the anger & wrath of a Righteous God, the Rock will spring forth the blessing of water unto the congregation of the people who believe in this Rock. That Rock is Christ. And it is He that the Apostle mentions in the following :
1 Corinthians 10:1-4
1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
The second situation in Numbers 20 was different. In this passage, Moses strikes the rock twice in disobedience to the Lord’s command, which was initially to stand on the rock with his brother Aaron & to speak to it. The Lord God was furious against Moses for this disobedience & barred him from entering the Promised Land. But why was this so? Was God being petty? Not at all. If the imagery in Numbers 17 was to display how salvation was to occur through the judgment of God upon the Rock, which would then release its purifying waters unto the congregation of the people, then what Moses did was a disruption of that imagery by signifying & teaching the congregation that God would have to pronounce judgment & salvation continuously, not once for all. As a result, Moses displayed that following the Law sufficed for salvation but God was teaching that salvation came through faith. Thus it was Joshua, whose name means, Salvation, that led the congregation of the people to the Promised Land & in this way, God was teaching them that it is God once for all & always that will be leading the congregation unto salvation.
Elisha strikes the water, signifying judgment upon the water on Elisha’s behalf. The cloak signifies the Christ & it is He that strikes the water allowing the water to part in the same way that the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. The Exodus narrative is analogous to our Christ on the Cross as the reference point for salvation. And thus, Elisha quite literally crossed over from death to life; from not believing & having faith in Yahweh God to believing & having faith in Yahweh God.
How often do we regard our salvation as the crucial point in our lives that we can look upon that day fondly? And I am not speaking about your day of salvation — that moment in your life that you accepted Jesus. Rather, that moment in Biblical history when Christ died on the Cross & rose again on the third day. After all, this is the moment we celebrate the Bread & the Cup during the Communion. We do not commemorate everyone’s special day when they received Christ. We bring glory, honor, worship, & praise to the One whom we celebrate that saved us & given us the bounty of heaven through His Body.
Thus, contrary to Elisha, we no longer have to ask — “Where is the Lord?” — because we ought to know through the renewal of our hearts & minds to Him that He dwells within us by His Spirit. We have a Fellowship with Him & with the Triune God-head forever both now & into eternity. So how often do we reckon that day for ourselves? We should do so everyday, both as a remembrance & as a reminiscence, for the Apostle Paul writes that we were there with Him on the Cross, when we received Him into our hearts & we were there with Him when He arose, when we received the salvation of our souls unto Him.
