Sermon Tone Analysis
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Text: 1 Kings 19:19-21
Title: Leaders for Every Generation
Textual Theme, Goal, Need:
Theme: God raises up leaders for every generation
Goal: to encourage Israel, that God always raises up godly leaders.
Need: Prophets have been killed and some have fallen away.
Many could feel like Elijah, that they are the only ones left.
Sermon Theme, Goal, Need:
Theme: God raises up leaders for every generation.
Goal: to encourage God’s people that he is continually raising up godly leaders.
Need: People often wonder what will come when new leadership comes.
Textual Outline:
Textual Notes:
Sermon Outline:
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Introduction about how leadership is downplayed in the church.
Perhaps it leaves us with no leaders of the future.
That is a problem.
But God raises up leaders for every generation.
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Cloak throwing- yoking to each other.
Training and moving on into leadership together.
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The kiss good-bye- Elijah says it is okay.
Things are more urgent with Christ.
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The Big Barbeque- Elisha was so committed to his new calling he destroyed his past commitments, and replaced them with his new priority.
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Conclusion: Encourage new leaders to take on the yoke of leadership with us together.
To encourage the whole congregation to set their priorities.
Sermon in Oral Style:
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
So my wife and I have set out on a new adventure this year.
We have made a real garden for the first time in our lives.
It is amazing how much work goes into creating a tiny little garden.
Many people here probably have little produce gardens and some flowers as well.
Just working that little garden makes me think of days gone by.
The days when a pair of oxen would do all the plowing in the fields.
It would be tough for the farmer.
Probably even more difficult for the oxen.
This mornings passage brings us right into the fields where the farmers and the oxen are hard at work.
It’s probably one of the most unlikely places to find a message about faith a leadership, but that’s where our passage brings us.
The passages just before this we hear Elijah crying out to God. “God, I am the only one left who doesn’t love this world.
I am the only one left who has stayed truly committed to you.”
Elijah thinks, “After I’m gone, what then?”
*Elijah’s cry isn’t that different from the way we feel as well.
* We’ve gotten to comfortable in our sinful world if we don’t sometimes feel like screaming out, “God!
What is going on here!
Why don’t people trust in you!
Our whole world is going to hell and no one seems to care!”
And like Elijah, we think about the future.
We see how Jesus Christ just doesn’t seem that important any more.
Faith isn’t important.
The church isn’t important.
And being a leader in the church just doesn’t seem all that important.
Our passage gives us encouragement, especially on a Sunday where we ordain new elders and deacons.
God is never irrelevant.
He will always bring people to the faith.
And, for 150 years he has been raising up leaders in the Christian Reformed Church, leaders for every generation.
Back in verse 16 we find that God tells Elijah not worry.
He is going to train a new prophet.
But Elisha isn’t a Levite or a priest or someone else that is familiar with the work of a prophet.
He is a farmer.
He knows farming.
He probably eats, sleeps and breathes farming.
*That’s how we find ourselves out in the middle of the fields to hear God’s message about faith and leaders for the next generation.*
Elijah goes out into the fields to make Elisha the next great prophet to God’s people.
*I say Elisha eats, sleeps and breaths farming because it is obvious that Elisha is part of a huge farming operation.*
His family has 12 yoke of oxen for plowing.
That is a lot.
That means his family is probably constantly busy working expansive fields and caring for these important animals.
*As Elisha is out plowing Elijah goes out to him, and three weird but wonderful things happen.
Each of these weird but wonderful things God uses to promise he will pass on the faith to future generations, and to show that he will always train leaders for every generation*
*The first weird but wonderful thing that happens is this thing with Elijah’s cloak.*
It tells us that Elijah walks up to Elisha in the field.
Elijah has this cloak on.
Without a word, Elijah goes up to Elisha and he tosses this cloak over his shoulders.
Imagine that happening to you, some one sees you working, walks up.
“yeah, how can I help you.”
Whoosh.
Okay, that’s weird.
*Tossing a cloak over someone is like passing on the power.
Elijah is now passing on the power of a prophet to Elisha.*
*There is more to it also.
Just like Elisha was so used to yoking up the oxen to work the fields, Elijah tosses to cloak over him.
Elisha figuratively is yoked to the work of God.*
*Instead of working the fields like his oxen, he is working people’s hearts and souls back to God again.*
Leadership in the church is not easy.
It comes with a measure of authority.
It comes with the respect of others.
*But it is something that you will be yoked to.
It will be something that requires focus, and looking ahead, and pushing hard when there are hard times.*
*The other neat thing about this image of Elisha have a yoke thrown over his shoulders is that a new ox is never just yoked in by itself expected to do the work.*
When an ox is just being taught to plow, it is put in the yoke with another more experienced ox.
One that will bear the brunt of the weight.
One that will be slowed down and less productive for a time.
But the new ox is always yoked in with an experienced one.
With Elisha he isn’t to be yoked by himself, told to just manage on his own.
*He is yoked in with Elijah.
In fact, after this story, you don’t hear of Elisha again for several chapters.
It says in verse 21 that he set out to follow Elijah and be his attendant.
For chapters, Elisha is on the side, learning, being encouraged helped along the way.
Apprenticed into this.*
That is the way we all should treat our brothers and sisters in the faith.
We are always yoked to each other.
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