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[ Silence ] [MUSIC - "I AM LORD"] (SINGING) See me. I am Lord, if you take your hand from me.

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I am blind without thy light to see. Lord, just always let me thy servant be. Lead me, O Lord. Oh, just lead me and guide me along the way.

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♪ For if you lead me ♪ ♪ I cannot stray ♪ ♪ Lord, let me walk ♪ ♪ Each day with thee ♪

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♪ Lead me, O Lord ♪ ♪ Lead me ♪ [ Music ] [ Background noise ]

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>> I've heard students say from time to time, "Well, you know, D is passing." >> Good. Explain that. >> Yes, sir.

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>> But that is not acceptable. >> That's right. >> Amen. >> Amen.

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>> It wasn't acceptable to our parents, and I trust not to the parents of our new generations. we want to aspire to the best. So we seek to celebrate that which is extraordinary,

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that which is unusual. So as we come today in celebration of what may be considered the climax or the apex of Black History Month, we focus on the fact

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that we belong to a holy company of saints. Many of them look on us today and bid us run on the race that is set before us. We are on a journey from here to eternity. journey fraught with blood, tears, sweat, and blood.

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So we look back today over the road that we've traveled and resolve not to relinquish the struggle until the last battle is fought and the victory won. So let us consider this account of one of the most outstanding servants of God that we have in the Old Testament, Elijah. In this particular passage of Scripture, he is meeting with persons

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in several places, celebrating his departure from this life. So as we consider this account, Elijah says to Elisha, who is his successor, stay here, for the Lord has told me to go to Bethel. First the Lord tells him to go to Gilgal, and then to Bethel,

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then to Jericho, and then to Jordan. Each one of these may represent a level of life, one superseding the other. But as we listen to these instructions,

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given he is asked to stay close to Elijah. Elijah has the privilege of succeeding one who has had a rather illustrious career. And we are succeeding persons who've gone on before us,

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who've made outstanding contributions to the freedom struggle. And the struggle for freedom, full freedom, is not over. We still sing, and rightly so, God of our weary years,

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God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far along the way. Thou who has by Thy might led us into the light, keep us, keep us, keep us forever in the path we pray. So we need strength for the journey.

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We need the bread of heaven to give us the power that we need for the struggle. Elijah says to Elijah as they leave Gilgal, "Stay here while I go to Bethel." Bethel. Bethel represents bread, house of bread, strength that we need for the journey that confronts us. And Elisha replies, "I swear to God I will not leave

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you." So they went up together to Bethel, where the young prophets of Bethel came to meet them. They asked Elijah, "Did you know the Lord is going to take Elijah away today? This strong man, this spokesperson for the eternal, this man who stood up against the wickedness of King Ahab and the power of Jezebel, did

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Did you know that the Lord is going to take him away from you today? He says, "Be quiet." Of course I know it. Then said Elijah to Elisha, "Please stay here in Bethel, for the Lord has sent me to Jericho."

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Elijah replies again, "I swear to God that I won't leave you." So seminary students were gathered on the scene, and he says to them, "I do not know what Elijah said, but I like to think that when he went to Jericho that he possibly spoke to the seminary students using as his text that

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experience in the Battle of Jericho and the walls came coming down. But this is the part of a pilgrimage from one place to the other various stages I don't know all the stages that may be represented here as we celebrate today our liberation struggle, but we have people of all ages and all stages of our

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pilgrimage. We, some of us, at an older stage, we're at the last period of our earthly existence, others are making new beginnings. But Elijah came and made his appearance giving sort of a goodbye, a farewell of all of these from Gilgal to Bethel, Bethel, Jericho, Jericho, to Jordan. Let me ask where are you today? What stage of your

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life are you in? And the time comes when God is taking away His servant. We only have so much time to serve and many times we wait until something in the form of a catastrophe occurs before we come to ourselves and take those steps that are necessary to make the best use of the privileges that God has given us. But we

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We come at last, just as Elijah does, we come at last to the crossing of the Jordan. Every one of us has a Jordan to pass. He comes down to the Jordan. This is the last stage of the journey.

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He has been successful in overcoming all of these various stages. We have still certain things to overcome in our struggle. I was interviewed by a student from Keeling, a Hispanic student, and one of the questions He asked me this past week when he was interviewing me,

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had I had any experiences based on the fact that I was colored? [LAUGHTER] What experiences have I had related to that? Well, all my life-- and all of you can say the same--

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Most of us remember times when we went to water fountains that had white only and others marked colored. And we were to follow that sign. And it says colored, and when we color,

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we're supposed to drink that. One little child looked at it and thought it was something that should produce some colored water. But that's been something we have been surrounded with.

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As a boy, I had to go far around to the school I was to attend. But I was staying right near the white school. But that was not the school I was to attend.

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So we suffer from what Arnold Toynbee calls the twin diseases of class and war. We still suffer from these twin diseases. And we notice that Elijah and Elijah, the older minister and the younger one, the successor, are walking together and talking together.

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And Elijah does not run out of steam. He's active, he's faithful to the very end, and God has promised him that he will have a safe journey through the end. When we look at our lives, we wonder what miracles God has performed and how he has performed them to bring us to this point. What if, this is the title of a book I recently received written by Robert Cowley, What If?

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And it's based on historians who give response to what would have happened if the course of history had been changed. In other words, what if Alexander the Great had not died at the age of 33? What if? What if Abraham Lincoln had not signed the Emancipation Proclamation?

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What if? Because of our lives, what if? What if Hitler had won the war? What if the South had won the Civil War?

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What if? What if? What if you had not been born and I had not been born? What difference would it make?

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What if? What if? Well, we can read what various historians speculate about how life would have been if this had not happened.

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But we have God. And if God, if God be for us, who can be against us? So while we are celebrating black history, you know, when I came here 30 some years ago,

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we were celebrating one week, one week for black history. Now we're celebrating a month. And maybe after a while,

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we'll be celebrating the whole year. After a while. after a while. So the difference in our struggle is made by God who is with us. He is with us as our guide. He is beside us and he helps us so that we can make a

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a new and meaningful history. He is with us. He's been there all the time. When we were taken from our tents in Africa

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and brought to the seashore and placed on slave ships, stacked like sardines in a can, and brought to a country we had never seen before. God was with us.

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He was with us when our forefathers were out in the cotton fields and sent up the wailing cries. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. God was with us.

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He's been with us all along the way. And the wonderful thing about it is God is with His people, enabling them to perform the extraordinary. We read our history.

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It's not just an ordinary history. It's extraordinary. God has enabled us to do difficult things and impossible things. So God was with us when we received our emancipation, what we call the emancipation.

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One account is that Lincoln wrote it and put it in his desk and let it stay there for a long time. and there were times when he thought he would not take it out of his desk. But God is in control of history. He is at work.

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No matter what men may do, God is in control of history. So God not only is with us, But He is there in every condition and circumstance.

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God is there. So, as we read this passage, we notice that there are places where God appears. He's behind the scenes and he's working and he does the extraordinary, the very fact that Elijah is asked by Elisha to give him a double potion, a double potion. Not just an ordinary potion, but a double potion.

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And he's not to go home an ordinary way because he hasn't had an ordinary ministry, but he is to go home caught up in a whirlwind. That's extraordinary. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. A whirlwind. This is the way he used to travel home. So he, he, he has the miraculous hand of God at work in his life. Amen. Not only from the beginning when we, we know the story how he went to this widow and this widow provided for him and, and we have miracle after miracle.

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so that when we look back at Old Testament history we find Elijah towering high above all the others and now God gives him a special escort home extraordinary extraordinary God pays the way and he not only makes the journey to the Jordan, but there at the Jordan where there are barriers, God steps right in.

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Water is not a barrier here because God pushes back the water and He crosses Jordan. And we sing I Won't have to cross Jordan alone. I Won't have to cross Jordan alone

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My sins to atone I I won't have to cross Jordan alone So he wants to double potion Not not just ordinary and so we all not want to be just ordinary

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Ebenezer just is not ordinary. We don't aspire just for the ordinary, but we aspire for that which is Extraordinary and the wonderful thing about it all is that God is an extraordinary God And he will use us as we are open to him to do

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extraordinary things So he said I want I want

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Says the last year a double potion a double potion of your spirit not not just an ordinary potion. I want a double potion a double potion

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He said well if you see me when I go if you there You can receive so they journey on and when he comes to the Jordan God pushes back those waters and Rises above it caught up in a whirlwind and

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As he goes up he throws The mantle Throws it down Throws it back

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the waters were parted and Elisha picks up the mantle of Elisha. Whose mantle are you picking up? Whose mantle?

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And he takes the mantle and he... Has it picked up? It's picked up by Elisha. And he says, "Where is the Lord God of Elijah?" Where is this God that has fire in his life?

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Where is this God? where is this God that stands up through his servant before keys where is the God Lord God of Elijah where is the God that has the flame of the spirit on his heart so that he's able to stand up against overwhelming odds where is the

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Lord God of Elijah. Well the Lord God of Elijah is here today. He's never left this world. He's always here. He's always there to lift this sermon. He's always there to comfort us in distress. He's always there when we face steep hills of difficulty. He's always there. And we can say thanks be to the Lord God of Elijah. Thanks be to God that he is with us in our struggles. Stony may have been the road that we trod, but God is there.

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Underneath the chasing rod, he's there helping us. Where is he? Well, thanks be to God he's with us here today and every day of our lives.

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And he picks up that mantle and goes across the Jordan. Pick up the mantle. And so we say, pick up the mantle. Because we still have problems.

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Pick up the mantle. Well, we still have problems with health care. More of us die at a rate more than others. Hispanics and blacks, blacks are worse off than Hispanics now.

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We have struggled, a problem not only with health care, but with education. Education still have problems. And sometimes these problems are due to ourselves.

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We want to take the easy way. When I was in school, they said, "Don't take Spanish, that's easy. take that that's the difficult thing and so I took that and because I wanted to

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try to be extraordinary not to take the easy way out and some go through college and come out and don't have a job because we prepare parents for jobs that do not exist. When I was a boy, came out of college and one summer I got on the elevator and said third floor please and the elevator didn't move and the

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no one was in the elevator but me and I became afraid and did something so why don't you read and I looked around and I saw I saw there a sign that says push desired floor so I pushed it is not floor and I went a little thought about that later that's a job used to be open for us fine-looking young people were

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given the job of being the elevator that job is gone and we look around there many others that are gone no longer there so we still have we have problems about jobs and we prepare take courses that are easy to get the degree that we prepare for jobs that are not available I said to our oldest daughter I said you

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You know what? You may not be an outstanding pianist in great demand and all that. Then what you gonna do if that's all you prepare for? And it so happened that the first job she got was a job teaching in high school in Boston. And she, but she had to be prepared for that.

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She had to take some education courses before she was ready for that. So many times we prepare for jobs that do not exist, or will not be existing when we are ready for them. So we still have education.

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The SAT test, who scores lowest on that? Us. And God has given us the ability. You know, he didn't just put all the smart people

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in a certain race. He said they're sprinkled all through humanity. And so we still have to pick up the mow and to go. Our fathers, our forefathers paid a great price

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for education. They had to hide to learn to read, in some instances. And we have it with the doors open, and all we have to do is go through them.

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So we must pick up the mantle. Pick up the mantle and go over this Jordan. And God will bless us. He will bless us.

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So, our forefathers were out there in the cotton fields, and they sang, "Swing low, sweet chariot, "coming for to carry me home.

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"If you get there before I do, "tell all my friends I'm coming to. "Swing low, sweet chariot." Well, the chariot is coming for us someday.

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And the question is, will we be ready to step in the chariot? And will God be able to say to us, or will he say to us, that our reward is sure? You've been faithful over a few things.

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Now make you rule over me. That's the challenge. That's the challenge. That's the challenge for us.

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Health care, education. I wish I had time to talk about the prison population. Every now and then I go down to the courthouse and I sit there and it's a shame to see how many are just

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being railroaded into our prisons. So that we have the largest prison population in the world. And many times when we sit and sing, we can sit and sing, but we've got to get up and stand up and continue this race that is set before us. Thanks be to God that he's coming. He's coming. He's coming for those who fulfill the work that he has assigned to our hands.

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coming sing swing low sweet cherries and someday somewhere we will all receive an extraordinary welcome that God has prepared not just for the ordinary but for those who are extraordinary people who decided that they're going to live a a life that is made for peculiar people who are extraordinary in his service.

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[Music] He makes the road an object of his care. He guides the eager through the pathless air. And surely he, he remembers, remembers me.

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My heavenly Father watches over me. I trust in God. I know he cares for me. On mountain bleak or on the stormy sea,

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The billows may roll, He keeps my soul. My Heavenly Father watches over, over me. ♪ I trust in God ♪ ♪ I know ♪

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♪ He cares for me ♪ ♪ On the mountain peak ♪ ♪ Or on the stormy sea ♪ ♪ The Lord's role ♪

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♪ He keep my soul ♪ ♪ My heavenly Father ♪ ♪ Watches over me ♪ ♪ Over me ♪

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[Music] [silence] [MUSIC] keeps my soul.

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[MUSIC] My heavenly Father watches over, over me. I trust in God. I know He cares for me.

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