Oct 24, 2019
A summary of Sabbath morning’s message
By Nicholas J. Kersten
Text: 2 Kings 6:8-23
When I was asked to preach on the topic of identity by our Conference President, my first impulse as a preacher was to search for cultural references I could use for an introduction. Because I’m a child of the late 1980s and early 1990s, I remembered many seminal moments from my early life that drove the point home, but as I continued to think of examples, I realized there was one example that was best: the life and work of Fred Rogers.
Mister Rogers has had a second boom of popularity recently, years after his death in 2003, which seems to correspond to a cultural desire for kindness and civility. A new movie starring Tom Hanks is in production, and a recent documentary film released two years ago did surprisingly well. The documentary film and the interviews have driven home to me one overarching theme of Fred’s life and work: he believed that God had made each child in our world special, and they had important work to do which he believed he aided best by affirming that he valued them. This valuing was expressed often by him as he spoke into a camera to tell his audience that they each made the world a better place, “…just by your being you.”
Mister Rogers is not the only historical person to act from his biblical convictions to deliver this message. In the text of 2 Kings 6:8-23, the prophet Elisha seems to act from a similar conviction for his own life. We also discover that Elisha is a conduit for the work of God by being who God made him and called him to be. When a follower of God grasps their identity, the power of God can be unleashed in a place—and the power of God is released in His Church when His people both know and live from their identity. Elisha will teach us about our identity in four specific ways in this text.
In it, we find Elisha is caught in a bit of international intrigue between the nations of Aram (Syria) and Israel. Elisha is receiving information from God about the military actions of the Syrians and he is giving it to the King of Israel. In this way, the King of Israel is being repeatedly saved from certain destruction (6:8-10). This understandably frustrates and angers the King of Aram, to the point where he accuses his own advisors of treason (6:11-12). When he is informed that Elisha is “the leak,” the King makes plans to locate and capture him (6:13).
Having discovered his location, the King of Aram sends troops to surround the city of Dothan at night. In the morning, when Elisha’s servant goes outside, he discovers the city is surrounded and is understandably alarmed (6:15). Elisha then informs his servant that, “…those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” He prays for God to grant sight to his servant to see the armies of God, who are encamped in the area. God grants this request (6:16-17). When the Arameans attack Dothan to capture Elisha, he prays again, this time for the advancing soldiers to be struck blind, and again, God answers Elisha’s prayer. With the now-blind army seeking guidance, Elisha leads the entire force straight into Samaria, the capital of Israel (6:18-19). In Samaria, Elisha prays for the soldiers’ sight to be restored, and this prayer is answered. The King of Israel, upon seeing the enemy soldiers delivered to him, asks what he should do, ostensibly because he expects to destroy them (6:20-21). But instead of commanding destruction, Elisha suggests that the King of Israel hold a feast, and send the invading troops home. The King of Israel does this. When the King of Aram gets his attacking force back unharmed from the party, the raids on Israel stop temporarily (6:22-23).
This is an incredible story in which God uses his servant, the prophet Elisha, to achieve an amazing and improbable result: a ceasefire is achieved without a drop of blood being spilled or a single person being hurt. How? Through a single obedient man, the prophet Elisha. But how does Elisha facilitate this result? Look at the list of things that Elisha does in this story:
• He relates messages from the Lord to the King
of Israel.
• He rolls out of bed.
• He prays 4 times.
• He walks to Samaria.
• He attends a feast (assuming he stayed for the
party).
Nothing that Elisha does in this story gives any indication that something great would be achieved through him by his actions—nothing he does screams, “HERO!” All of the things he does are standard parts of what it means to be an Old Testament prophet. That is precisely the point— God (the actual hero of this story) achieves a God-sized result through one single man doing what God gave him to do. God does the heavy lifting in this story. The only thing that was necessary to achieve this outsized result was for Elisha to be who God made him to be.
The truth that we only need to be what God made us to be—to do what God has made us to do—has powerful applications for our lives. But in order for us to fully apply this truth and live it, we need to know our own identities. As you think about this truth for your own life, who has God made you to be? What is your identity?
To aid us in understanding our identity, I have devised four self-tests we can use to help us find or recover our God-given identities in Christ.
TEST #1: Can you clearly articulate your identity? Is it distinguishably yours?
If you can’t articulate your identity, you probably don’t understand it. Likewise, if your identity isn’t clearly yours, you probably haven’t dug deep enough to discern it. Obviously, there are parts of our identity that we share with all people made in God’s image. Likewise, as followers of Jesus Christ, there are aspects that we share. Can you articulate those from the Scriptures? Beyond those things which are true of us broadly as humans and believers, what is most true of you specifically? If you can’t articulate it, it’s time to go back and study and pray. Begin there! In our text, Elisha clearly lives from a clear sense of identity. He does what a prophet does—which is what his calling is!
For SDBs particularly, this is an area of struggle. Out of fear, many of us (both individually and corporately) have retreated from a strong sense of identity for fear of who may not share it. This is a hopeless strategy. Our identity as Seventh Day Baptists can’t be that we don’t have one. The same God who called the first SDBs is still operational and has saved us and called us so that we can be us—not so we can pretend to be someone else! But a strong sense of identity requires us to articulate it clearly.
TEST #2: Is your identity distinctly yours, or just you coveting someone else’s?
Too many of us think it is holy to covet someone else’s identity or calling. While few of us would say outright that we wish we were someone else or had their gifts, there are clearly identities and callings that some Christians never seem to want. Our real identity in Christ is always something we want once we have it. Many of us spend our lives seeking our identity and purpose by trying to approximate someone else’s, all the while blind to the fact that seeking God honestly and obediently will lead us to the identity that will bring us the greatest sense of fulfillment and purpose, as well as the one which leads to us having the greatest impact for God’s kingdom in the world. It’s tragic to seek purpose, fulfillment, and impact by looking at another person or thing when all we really need to do is to seek God. When we do that, we find our real selves in Him and we get everything else along with it. As we find ourselves in God, the world can also find God through us in our obedient service to Him.
One day, all of us will stand before the throne of God and we will have to give an accounting of what was given to us. But we will not have to give an accounting for something we were not given—a gift we weren’t given, a ministry we weren’t appointed to, a resource we never had. In our text, Elisha doesn’t attempt anything outside the normal roles of a prophet: he gives no military orders; he doesn’t pick up a sword; he doesn’t try to rule a kingdom or install himself as a leader. He just does his job. In Christ, we aren’t saved by what we do, so our salvation isn’t at risk here, but the power of Christ’s church to reach the lost depends on us playing our part.
TEST #3: Does your identity describe you now, or the way you want to be?
Identity is never aspirational—it describes what you are now in God. It’s not wrong to want to be sanctified in the Lord, but if you’re not fully sanctified now, you need to own that reality on some level—not that being a sinner fully defines us as redeemed followers of Jesus, but we have to acknowledge we’re not perfected yet. This is especially a problem in the realm of competition and comparison. Too often, we talk about our identity and claim an identity we wish we had or one we will have in the future, while we judge other people by a single thing they’ve done in their past. Elisha in our story very clearly acts from a strong sense of what he already is. We should to do the same.
TEST #4: Does your identity point towards your eternal future or does it keep you
bound up in your painful past? Does it needlessly reduce you to less than God made you to be?
While identity is never aspirational, our future eternal reality is an important part of who we are. We aren’t less than eternal beings at this point. Perfect? No. Eternal? Yes! Anything that keeps you tied to a painful past or reduces you to the sum of your worst moments is not your identity. Our painful pasts and brokenness are precisely what Christ died for when He made us eternal. The mercy and grace and love in that forgiveness are not only the most important parts of our identity, they are also the primary things we have as a church to offer a broken world. This world constantly reduces people to less than God made them to be, and sometimes far less. As believers in Christ, we shouldn’t join the world in that behavior, either for ourselves or others. Two main temptations are culturally the most obvious examples of overreduction at this point: our politics and our sexual ethics. No person made in God’s image who Christ died for should be reduced to how they vote. No person made in God’s image who Christ died for should be reduced to how they use their sexual parts. We need to keep the first things (and the first Kingdom) first in how we engage our world. We are not reducible to sins we commit. If you claim something as your identity that Christ died for, you are saying that the sacrifice of Christ is of no value.
Our witness to the saving work of Christ is tied to our willingness to own both our sins and our redemption in Christ. We don’t have to be trapped in our past and present sins because our present reality is also to be fully redeemed and restored and empowered in Christ. Too many Christians attempt to fight sin in their lives by focusing on their sin—that’s exactly backwards. If your identity is in Christ, you don’t fight sin by focusing on it—you run from it to Christ and let Him obliterate it.
Jesus is the source of our true identity. We are most us when we are with Him and He’s already at work in the world. Like Elisha, we can see God-sized results independent of our size or sin simply by being what God made us to be. When we do that, we will be able to do what we are called to do individually, in our churches, and as a Conference. Jesus Christ is waiting for you in His Word, in prayer, and in the world. Seek Him and find yourself in that seeking so that we can actively advance God’s kingdom together.
