The broadcast read that in Matthew
21, and it said others cut down branches from the trees and strewn
them in the way. Wikipedia is not lying to me.
That's Palm Sunday. They hand out palms. Kimberly
went to pick up my jacket, and the lady there self-proclaimed
Christian, really important to her church, she told us about
it. She tried giving Kimberly a palm. I said, do you want one
of these? She said, no, I don't have a use for that. That's fine.
They actually changed the rules for that. It was hard to come
by for their ceremonies. They could use a different type
of tree for a while. I think now they're back to having
to use palms. Anyway, I had a conversation today. It's that time of year.
told my friends as if we had a sign up front saying that we're
having a Passover service. This place packed to the gills. They may not be happy about time
they leave. I had a friend of mine grew up
in. in the Jewish community, went to Hebrew school in high
school, and I called him. He always has questions for me.
He'll probably listen to this in a couple weeks, and I'm going
to be in trouble, but he'll get over it. I said, today's the
Passover, and it's the Sabbath. Which one do you do? And he said,
that's a good question. And so there's a lot of rules.
And he had to dig deep. And it's something up to 6 p.m.
and then after that, but you have to cook the food beforehand.
And then you can heat it up, but you can't turn the knob.
And he said his parents would have a TV set when he was growing
up, and they would set a timer on the outlet so that way it
would come on on the Sabbath so they could watch the news
and stuff, but they couldn't go push the button in fear of going to hell. Kimberly
found out that they were talking about that and that for the first
time in 800 years, they're allowing rice and beans to be part of
the Passover meal. They voted it back in, but what's
all that fuss for? So long it's been contested,
this work, but that's what it is. It's a work. There's so many
people debating this and they're voting on rules after several
thousand years, but there's only a few people that know what really
took place. Israel was in bondage for 430 years, exactly the time
that the Lord said they would be. And he sent the plagues to
Egypt over and over to turn Pharaoh's heart, but he kept hardening
his heart afterwards until that last one came. And he instructed
them. He spoke through Moses, and he
said he's going to kill the firstborn of everything in the land. That's
how all the people, all the beasts, the animals, everything. And at the end of it, the Egyptians,
they told him, they're going to beg him to leave. Please get
out of here. But then after that, the Lord
talked to Moses and Aaron only. He didn't tell this to all of
Egypt. He told Moses and Aaron only. He said, you take a lamb,
and the whole house get together, and you kill it. And then the
elders are going to take that blood, and they'll mark it on
the lintel, and they'll put it on the side post. And that night,
the Lord's going to come through, and if He sees that blood, He
won't let the tormentors get to you. He'll pass over you.
And it's the Lord's Passover. And after that, He told them,
he said, you're going to have this feast. This is an ordinance.
And from here out, you'll perform this ordinance. And anywhere
in the Bible, we're given an ordinance for the Lord. We're
not given an ordinance for His birth. We're not given an ordinance
for His resurrection, for tomorrow. were given an ordinance for his
death. That's what we're to look to, to see what that is. They
gave that feast, they would eat a lamb that was roasted with
fire and you don't have to turn there, Exodus 12, 13 says, but,
and the blood shall be for you a token upon the houses you are,
where you are. It's a token. And it says in
this day shall you be unto you for a memorial. It's a token,
it's a memorial. And in verse 26 in Exodus 12,
it says, And it shall come to pass when your children shall
say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say,
It is a sacrifice of the Lord's Passover, who passed over the
houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians
and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head
and they worshiped. See, it was a token. It was a
memorial. But of what? It was a token of
Christ. It was a picture of Christ. And
that's what I was trying to show you last time I was here in Job,
that that first story, historically in the Bible, was a picture of
Christ. That lamb for today that everybody is observing, the Passover,
that's a picture of Christ. The resurrection, it's Christ's
resurrection. That's what we need, those palm
leaves that do nothing. They were preparing the way.
They were excited and they wanted to make His way straight so He
could accomplish the goal. It was for Christ. That's what
the whole book's about. But we stand on these scriptures
alone. And if we believe that this book is the inspired Word
of God, and if we believe that God is gracious towards His people,
not that we're gracious towards Him. We're doing Him favors,
that He's doing something for us. And that through that grace,
God's just and the justifier. How'd He do that? Well, he justly
poured out his wrath for our sin on a substituted board. He
bore the punishment. And in turn, He justified the
elect. He was just towards Christ for our sins, that's how serious
it was, which in turn justified us. Then, if we see those things,
we have something to rejoice in. We don't rejoice in a ceremony.
We don't rejoice in complicated laws and rules and timers on
a television. We rejoice in that token, that
memorial, what it stands for. We rejoice in Christ. So that's
what I would like for us to look at again tonight. And that's
what, hopefully, if the Lord gives me the grace every time I preach,
if I stand here or I stand anywhere else, the title of that sermon
could easily be, Look to Christ. Christ did it all. That's what
I hope I'm able to preach to you. So, that was an odd introduction. If you will turn to 2 Kings chapter
4. 2 Kings chapter 4, we'll read verse
1-7. Now there cried a certain woman
of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha, saying,
Thy servant, my husband, is dead. And thou knowest that thy servant
did fear the Lord. And the creditor is come to take
unto him my two sons to be bondmen, to be slaves. And Elisha said
unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou
in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid
hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil. Then he said,
Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty
vessels, borrow not a few. And when thou art come in, thou
shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and thou shalt
pour out into all those vessels. and thou shalt set aside that
which is full.' So she went from him, and shut the door upon her
and her sons, who brought the vessels to her, and she poured
out. And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she
said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel, give me another one.
And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more, and the oil
stayed. Then she came and told the man
of God, And he said, go, sell the oil and pay thy debt and
live thou and thy children of the rest. So I hope tonight I'm
going to go through this text verse by verse. I want us to
see a few things. I'd like for us to see who we
are turned to during times of trouble. The state we're in when
we are turned, the one thing that we have of any worth, and
that one thing that we have, the twofold blessing that it
brings us. So this story here in 2 Kings is the story of every
chosen child of God. It could be Abel, Moses, Abraham,
Matthew, Mark, Calvin, Spurgeon, Mahan, Fortner, you, me. It could be any of us. It's an illustration to us and
about us and what Christ did for us. So we'll look back at
verse 1. Now there cried a certain woman
of the wives of the sons of the prophet unto Elisha. So anytime
you see in scripture a certain man or a certain woman, it means
one of two things. Either one, it distinguishes
a man of God from the world. It's an elect child of God that
he sent. Or it shows mankind's true nature. It's contrast. Fleshly person
to a believer and a believing person to a fleshly person. It's
one or the other. But don't ever forget that this
entire world, all of mankind will be judged on two certain
men. It will either be the works and
the nature of Adam, that certain man, or it will be the works
and the nature of Christ. That's the only thing the Lord's going
to see. Now this believing woman, she was married to one of the
sons of the prophets and he's died. Now she's a widow. She's
unable to defend herself. She's unable to provide for herself.
She was destitute, especially being in debt. This is me and
you, brethren. We're not just in a little bit
of trouble. We don't need a little bit of
help. We need saving. We're in debt. We have iniquity. A friend of mine from Alaska,
he couldn't say iniquity, he would say unequity. And I was
like, you know, that's exactly right. We are unequity. We have less than zero. We have
no worth to us. This widow, she pleads with Elisha,
and she knows that her husband was a faithful servant of God,
but like all true servants of God, we're trapped in this flesh.
He had racked up some debt. We don't know what the debt was.
Some think it was obadiah, took those men of bread and water
in the caves. But anyway, he had left with
her. She had this debt. And they were
going to take her two sons as bondmen. There was going to be
a payment for this debt that exceeded herself. Think about
that. She no longer had any worth,
but those boys did. They could be put into slavery
and pay off that debt of their father. But that would be so
much worse for her than if she had went. If I could go in the
place of my sons or daughters, if they just went into slavery,
I'd have a little bit of consolation from that. I'd have a little
bit of peace I could lean on. But no, it was everything that
was of worth of her was being taken away from her because of
this debt. So who's this creditor? And what's
this creditor in the picture of? The creditor is the law that
we've offended. Now, each of us not only fell
on Adam as our federal and our seminal head, but we fell by
ourselves, too. And a lot of people, where I'm
from, especially in the Southeast, they want to argue, I want the
Ten Commandments in our schools, and we want to have the Ten Commandments
on this and that. They forget the whole Levitical
law. They don't know they've got to watch that as well. But
that's to physical Israel. That was given to the Jews. It
wasn't given to the Gentiles. What did I break? People are
like, I've been called an antinomy. I'd go Google that. I've been
called words I have to look up. They're saying you have no law. What laws were given? We have
to believe God. That was Adam's problem. He said,
don't touch that tree. It wasn't that he touched trees,
that he didn't believe God, that he would die if he did touch
it. Now, What does this poor, meek,
hopeless, needy vessel do in this situation? Does she scream
to the creditor that it ain't fair? Does she argue that it
wasn't really her debt, it was her husband's debt, so they should
go after a corpse? She said it wasn't her own. Did she try to make a payment
schedule? Did she get a 30-year mortgage on it? No, she didn't. She goes to the prophet of God.
She goes to the person that represents God between her and the Almighty. And that's what the Lord's children
are given hearts to do. When we are shown that we have
a debt that we cannot pay and we're hopeless, we plead to Christ. So how does Christ deal with
the sinners that come to Him? Let's look here in 2 Kings 4,
verse 2. And Elisha said unto her, What
shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou in the
house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house
save a pot of oil. Elisha, as a picture across here,
doesn't scold her, doesn't get on to her for her habits or for
her husband's spinning habits and say, I was right, you were
wrong, it's what you should have done. No, what's his attitude? He said, What shall I do for
thee? Talk about this today. He's a servant, isn't he? Matthew
20, 28 said, Even as the Son of Man came, not to be ministered
unto, but to minister, to serve, and to give his life a ransom
for many. So Lash asked, What shall I do
for thee? She doesn't even answer. She doesn't get a word out. She
doesn't accept Elisha. She didn't walk at all. She didn't
have a prefab prayer that she has to say. He asked, what shall
I do for thee? And then he asked her again.
Tell me what thou hast in the house. Now look what she says
here. Thy handmaid hath not anything
in the house. She has nothing except a pot
of oil. She came to the only one that
could help her, confessing that she had absolutely nothing except
one thing, some oil. She had a little pot of oil.
So what's this oil? Plainly, the oil is Christ. It's
the simplicity in Christ. It's not Christ and your baptism. It's not Christ and you keeping
a holy day or handing out palms or any of those things. It's
not Christ and how strong my faith is. It's not Christ and
my faith in Him. It's my faith of Christ. Believers have one thing of worth,
and that's Christ. So let's turn to Exodus chapter
30. We'll see if this oil is Christ. Here the Lord instructs in Exodus
30. The Lord is instructing Moses how to set up the tabernacle,
and he tells him what the anointing oil would be. He said, go get
a hen of olive oil, about a gallon and a half. And Exodus 30, verse
25. And thou shalt make it an oil
of holy ointment, and an ointment compound after the art of apothecary. This oil is made specific, like
in a pharmacy. It shall be a holy anointing
oil. And it tells all the things there to put the oil on. In verse
29 it says, And thou shalt sanctify them that they may be most holy. Whatsoever touches them shall
be holy. Everything in that tabernacle
that was touched by the oil was considered holy. It was set apart.
It was made exactly the way that the Lord told them to. They told
them how to make the candlesticks. Everything in that place. And
then, everything was normal. Candlestick is just a candlestick.
But when that oil touched it, then it was holy. That's how
Christ makes His preachers too. It's kind of odd for me to tell
you about preachers if I'm preaching, but it's the truth. We don't
make ourselves. Pastors don't make themselves.
The Lord makes themselves. Christ comes down, that oil of
gladness touches them, and then they're made what they are. Just
like sinners are. They come down, He touches them,
then they're made holy. Look at verse 30. And thou shalt
anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may
minister unto me in the priest's office. Christ, that oil, is
what makes things holy, and only him. Then verse 33. Whosoever
compoundeth, or add to, liketh, or whosoever putteth it, any
of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people.
So who adds anything to this oil that was cut off? That might
be a little long-winded, so we'll get a shorter verse. Look back
in Exodus 27, verse 20. Exodus 27, 20. And thou shalt
command the children of Israel that they bring the pure olive
oil beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn always. This oil is pure, and it's beaten,
and it causes a lamp to burn always. Christ is the light of
the world to every believer, isn't He? He was beaten, and
He was pure. He's the holy thing that's between
us and God, and whomever He touches in the heart is made holy. Now
this widow woman, she has some oil, but she has nothing else.
She has debt and oil. And she can't pay that debt.
So what she told her to do, look back in her text, 2 Kings 4,
verse 3. Then he said, Go, borrow thee
vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels. Now italicized
words in the script from the translators are added to help
us read through it. In this case, you can just leave
that out. He says, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy
neighbors, empty vessels. Borrow not a few. That means
get a bunch of them. Get all you can. This is what
she was. She was an empty vessel. That's
what I am. I'm an empty vessel. I have no worth. And a lot she
tells us to gather all the vessels that she can, but they had to
be empty. And if there was anything in
those, they couldn't be used. They couldn't bring anything
with them. You see this in the Beatitudes as well there in Matthew
5. It says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. Empty vessels have nothing in
them. They're poor. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall
be comforted. You mourn because you're missing
something. You're left empty. Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth. Empty vessels don't have anything
to offer and they know it. They are meek and lowly. And
blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,
for they shall be filled. That's what empty vessels...
You have to be empty to be filled, don't you? That is who the church
is for. Men and women who have nothing
in themselves, nothing but death, inability, meekness, unworthiness,
sinners. That's what, on the website,
the first sentence says, this is a church for sinners to come
hear the gospel of Christ on. That's what this place is for.
That's whatever church is telling you the truth is for. We're a
bunch of empty clay pots and this is the place where we're
filled. And what's she going to do with these hungry jars,
these empty jars? They're going to get filled,
aren't they? Look in verse 4. And while thou art come in, thou
shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt
pour out into all those vessels. And thou shalt set aside that
which is full. So she went from him, and shut
the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the vessels
to her, and she poured out. Christ deals with us privately.
When the words preach, He makes it effectual, and it's in the
heart. It's a heart work. We don't baptize people on pay-per-view. We don't put out big banners
and try to have activities for the children to get them in.
We don't put on a show. We're not looking for publicity.
We're not looking for acknowledgement for what we've done well and
our neighbors and all that stuff. We look to tell sinners about
who God is, who they are, and what Christ did for them. When
Christ began teaching this way, you want to turn to Matthew chapter
6. And Christ was teaching what we call the Lord's Prayer. So this is Matthew 6 and verse 5.
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are,
for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the
corners of the streets that they may be seen of men. Verily, truly,
I say unto you, they have their reward. They've got what they
wanted. They wanted to be seen, and that's exactly what happened.
Verse 6, But thou, when thou prayest, he's speaking to his
children, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door,
pray to the Father which is in secret, and thy Father which
seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. So when this oil
of gladness is applied to the hearts of God's people, it happens
right where you're sitting. There's not a big commotion.
Nothing terribly obvious about it. People don't fall on the
floor or start jumping up and down and dance. You may want
to. You may feel like it if the Lord shows you something. But
it's a heart work. It's not for everybody to see.
So this woman was told to go into her home and shut the door privately
with her children. And that's where the Lord is
going to deal with her. So did she get half filled? She had
three quarters of the way full, and then she had to come up with
the rest, and he'd meet her halfway, and she had to finish the work.
No, we were filled to the brim, those pots, where we are, too.
And how many vessels were filled? All of them. Every one that was
brought. So look back at our text, 2 Kings 4, verse 6. And it came to pass,
when the vessels were full, that she said to her son, bring me
yet a vessel. Give me another one. This oil's
not going away. This little pot. And he said
to her, there's not a vessel more, and the oil stayed. Now
she kept filling those empty pots, asked for another one,
but there's no more. They're all filled. And it says
there the oil stayed. Now that small pot of oil that
she started with, it stayed. That means it remained and it
stopped. No more oil was coming out because
all the vessels were full, and there was still the same amount
of oil she started with. So what would that mean? Christ fills the oil of gladness
into us empty vessels, into his elect, and only those elect,
only those empty vessels. Not more, that it's not spilling
over, and it doesn't take anything from him. It's made exactly for
them. And in the end, when that last vessel is full, that oil
is going to stop. It's going to be stayed. It doesn't
evaporate. It doesn't go away. It's going
to be like that forever. And that's for us. And when that
last saint of God was given to Christ before the foundation
of the earth, whenever he hears of Christ and knows of Him, that's
it. This world's over. Wrap it up and throw it away. It's done. Judgment's coming. So here, beyond that one, Christ
quickens that spirit in a new man and we come to see that we're
justified and sanctified through Christ. We are bought and made
holy. That's what comes with it. So
look in verse 7. Here's the two-fold purpose of that whole. Then she
came and told the man of God. That's what happens whenever
you hear about it, isn't it? The Lord does a work in your heart.
erect a statue, or go running around town acting like a fool,
you go to the Lord and you thank Him for it. She came and she
told the man of God, and he said, go, sell the oil and pay the
debt, and live thou and thy children on the rest. Believer, if you
have Christ, your debt's paid, and there is plenty to live on
afterwards. The Rock of Ages says that. Let
the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed
be of sin the double cure. Save from wrath and make me pure. Whenever Christ was on the cross
and his side was pierced, water and the blood came out. What
does that mean? That blood bought you. Now he owns you. That sets
you back at zero, if you will. He purchased you. He owns you.
And that water comes out and gives you righteousness. That's
both. That's what that oil did. It paid our debt. and it gave
us something to live on. We have life after that. And
Christ said there in Matthew, we read it earlier, that the
Father who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. How does that work? How does
the Lord reward me openly? What does that look like? We
say it's in a heart, something that works. That's something
that you don't even know. A fruit tree, if I have apple
trees and peach trees at my house, that fruit does not benefit that
tree at all. If all that apples fall and it
sits there on the ground and rots and they try to spring back
up, it's just going to choke themselves out. That fruit's
a benefit to something else. And then the tree keeps making
more. But that's the fruit. So how does that look openly?
Well, Whenever I go to work, I tell people, you know, I'm
here Monday through Friday or whatever. They say, oh, it's
Thursday evening, can you come? We have services on Thursday evening.
I don't miss church for that. If your freezer ain't working
or your air conditioner ain't working, I hate that for you,
it'll have to be tomorrow morning. And that guy's rigid. He's stony,
isn't he? He's setting his ways. People
notice this at a funeral home and notice it in hospitals whenever
a child is born and the comments that you make that you don't
know you're making. Sometimes. Sometimes we acknowledge that
openly and the Lord blesses us, but we hope those children grow
up and hear Christ. That's what's needful. They need
that oil put in them. I hope they're made to know,
I hope my children know that they're empty vessels and they're
waiting for that oil to be put in them. And at funeral homes,
whenever people go, that's the Lord's providence coming to pass. He takes people home. Every man
has an appointed time. And we pray that those that we
knew profess to be empty while they're here, we know we're comforted
knowing that they're filled with that oil and are forever in their
state and have plenty to live on. So brethren, if you're here
and you think your Lord's given you a heart to know that your
vessel's empty, don't bring anything to him. Come to Him with that
debt, and that oil, He'll apply it to your heart. He'll put it
in you, and it'll pay all your debts, and you'll have plenty
to live on. You'll have life everlasting.
That's what's given to us. So, I hope that was a blessing
for you. Let's close in prayer. Father, we thank You for the
ability to gather together and worship, gather with Your saints, Lord, we thank you for saving
us. We didn't deserve it. We're thankful that you put us
in Christ before the world was and he accomplished everything
you required and lived perfectly for you. Show us that we're just
empty and anything that's in these old vessels we have, Lord,
let us cast it out. Let us see the one thing needful.
Let us look to Christ always and give us a heart that prays
to know Him more. Praise that our loved ones, they'll
hear of him and be led to him. Thank you for this church here,
Lord. Thank you that you've given them a heart to continue this
work and you've sustained them as a beacon of light in this
dark side of the country, Lord. Keep them lit up so those other
empty vessels will come and you can fill them until that last
one comes and we can finally meet you face to face. and be
made like Christ. Forgive us, Lord, while we're
here. Forgive us of our sins. Whenever you look at us, just
see your Son. It's in His name that we ask it. Amen.