2025-05-01 ILC Chapel — The Best Gift is the…
2025 Chapels -The Best Gift is the Holy Spirit
Date : 2025-05-01
Speaker : Lawrence Bade
2 Kings 2:6-15
(EHV) Then Elijah said to him, “Stay here because the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.”
But he said, “As surely as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, I will not leave you.” So the two of them went on.
Then fifty men from the sons of the prophets came and stood and watched them from a distance, while the two of them were standing at the Jordan. Elijah took his cloak, folded it together, and struck the water. The water divided to the right and to the left. Then the two of them crossed on dry land.
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask me for whatever I can do for you before I am taken from you.”
Then Elisha said, “Let there be a double portion of your spirit on me.”
He said, “You have asked for a difficult thing. If you see me being taken from you, it will surely be yours. But if not, then it will not.”
While they were walking and talking, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire came and separated them. So Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha was watching and crying out, “My father! My father! Israel’s chariot and its charioteers!” Then he did not see him anymore. He grabbed his clothing, and he ripped it into two pieces.
Then he picked up Elijah’s cloak, which had fallen from him. He returned and stood at the edge of the Jordan. He took Elijah’s cloak, which had fallen from him, and he struck the water and said, “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah? Yes, where is he?” As soon as he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left so that Elisha could cross.
When the sons of the prophets, who were watching him from Jericho, saw this, they said, “Elijah’s spirit is resting on Elisha.” They went to meet him and bowed down to the ground in front of him.
Hymn: TLH 396, st. 1,4,6 : Oh, For a Faith That Will Not Shrink
1. Oh, for a faith that will not shrink
Tho’ pressed by many a foe;
That will not tremble on the brink
Of poverty or woe;
4. That bears unmoved the world’s dread frown
Nor heeds its scornful smile;
That sin’s wild ocean cannot drown
Nor Satan’s arts beguile;
6. Lord give us such a faith as this;
And then, whate’er may come,
We’ll taste e’en now the hallowed bliss
Of an eternal home.