Morning, everybody. If you'd
like to turn over to 2 Kings chapter 4. 2 Kings chapter 4. Once you get there, just pick
up in verse 1. Let's read the first seven verses. Now there cried a certain woman
of the wives of the sons of the prophets, meaning her husband
was a disciple of Elisha, unto Elisha, saying, thy servant,
my husband, is dead. And thou knowest that thy servant
did fear the Lord, and the creditor has come to take unto him my
two sons to be bondmen. And Elisha said unto her, what
shall I do for thee? What do you want? Tell me, what
hast thou in the house? And she said, thine handmaid
hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil. This woman
only had one thing. Then he said, go, borrow thee
vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels. Borrow not
a few, get a whole bunch of them. And when 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. And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she
said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her,
There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed. It didn't
run out. Keep that in mind. That's an
important point. It just stopped flowing. That pot was still full.
Verse 7, 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. Now the Gospel teaching in this
story is very simple and is actually two-fold and I'm going to give
it to you up front and then we'll talk about it. But here's what
it is. Here's the first part. If you have Jesus Christ, you
have everything. You are absolutely full. You
lack nothing before God. Nothing else could possibly be
required of you. Nothing has been left undone. You are complete
now. Here's the second thing. If you
have Christ, this is one thing that all those who have Christ
have in common. They don't have anything else.
What do you have in the house? She said, thy servant has nothing,
just one thing, one pot of oil, but nothing else. That's what
everybody who has Christ has in common. They have absolutely
nothing else. Now, do we see that here? Let's
talk about this widow for a second. Now this widow, my heart goes
out to her, but also to her husband, and it's for this reason. So
her husband is dead. He was a disciple of Elisha.
And he had to die with this knowledge. He knew that they were poverty
stricken, his family. He knew that he had racked up
a whole bunch of debt. He knew that once he died, they would
have no way of income. And he knew that to pay off those
debts, his sons would become slaves. be forced to work off
that debt, and they wouldn't be released until the debt was
worked off, and he had to die with that knowledge. And this
is a man who feared God. This is a man who knew God. I'm
sure there was faith there at the very end, but there still
would have been a very hard circumstance to die with. Worse off, though,
is the wife. She actually has to live through
it. The man does not. And so she has no source of income,
she's completely destitute, there's no one to provide for her, no
way of getting money, but it gets worse. She's in debt, right? She's in the rears. What's very
interesting is she's in debt through her union with somebody
else. She didn't borrow the money, her husband did, but now she's
inherited the debt. And the consequences of that
debt are relatively simple, bondage. Now she's got to watch her two
sons be taken away and put into slavery because we can't come
up with the goods. Now, it's a very sad story. My
heart goes out to her. But the gospel's there, especially
in this right here. You go all the way back, you
go back to the fall. What happened in the garden? All men, every
man to ever live, we all share a union with one man, and that's
Adam. And just like this woman's husband died, what happened in
the garden with Adam disobeyed God? Clare said it. He died. He didn't die physically,
he died spiritually. He lost all his spiritual faculties.
His spirit died. He became a sinner, incapable
of doing anything but sin before God. That's what he became. And
everybody who came through him, which is the entire human race,
we all share a union with this man and we inherit that debt
through that union. I love the way the Lord creates.
Who would have ever thought creating an entire race of creatures,
and you start with just one, and the entire race is built
up in that one man? When He created Adam, He created
the entire human race. When He disobeyed God, the entire
human race disobeyed God. And here's the consequences of
that disobedience, bondage. bondage to a nature that can
do absolutely nothing but sin. It cannot receive Christ. It
will not believe the Gospel. It cannot love. Completely and
utterly dead in trespasses and sins, and in bondage to a law
that we can't keep." Bondage is the consequences, just like
that. And somebody says, and this is
a legitimate question, is that fair? Is that fair? Adam sinned, I was in him, and
now I suffer the consequences? Well, All I can do is give you
what the scripture says. That's all I need to do. This
is what it says, Romans 5.12, it says, Wherefore, as by one
man, Adam, sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and
so death passed upon all men, and here's the really important
part, for that all have sinned. This thing of union, this thing
of me being stored up in Adam, how does that work? I have absolutely
no idea. I'm a cop. I do not know, but I know this.
I know that God says is, in Adam, I did it. And we recognize what
Adam is. He's a vehicle, folks. He's a
vehicle for the entire human race. And when Adam sinned against
God, all of us collectively got together and said, we will not
have this man to reign over us. We want separation. We want separation
from God. We want to be our own gods. You
did that. I did that. We did that in Adam.
That's what God's Word says. That's all we need. And now we
suffer the consequences. We're born in this world with
these dead, sinful, evil natures and there is absolutely no one
to blame but me. That's it. And you for yours. Can I blame the sovereignty of
God? Absolutely not. Although the fall was completely
and utterly according to His will and purpose. No. Can I blame
Adam? No. The fault rests with me. I did in fact do it. But this
woman who is like everyone else, like everyone I just described,
she had one thing going for her, this destitute, in debt, bondage
stricken woman. And it is found in verse 1 there,
look at 2 Kings verse 1 again, or 4 verse 1. says, "'Now there cried a certain
woman.'" Now we see that word over and over in the Scriptures.
The Lord came to a certain man. He sought out a certain man.
She's a certain woman right here. I have never once before looked
up that word. I want to see what it meant this time. Overwhelmingly,
over 687 times in the Scripture, it is translated into this one
word, one. She's a one woman. She is one
whom God loved from the foundations of the world. She is one who
Christ agreed to be for her particular surety. She is one for whom Christ
bore her sins in his body and put them away on the cross. She
is one in Christ. She only has one thing going
for her. She's a one. That's absolutely
it. But if you're one, you got everything you could possibly
need. This is what John 1, verse 12 and 13 says. It says, but
as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons
of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born,
spiritual birth, spiritual life, which were born, not of blood,
not according to my relationship with somebody else, nor of the
will of the flesh, my power over my flesh to do better or to stop
sinning, nor of the will of man, not up to your choice, but of
God. What's the difference between
a saved man and a lost man? What's the difference between a believer
and an unbeliever, a wicked man and a righteous man? What is
the difference? You're either of God, and always have been,
and always will be, or you're not. That's it. Now, this one
who is of God, what did she do? Well, it's very simple. Verse
one tells us, she cried. And this is what everybody who
is of God does, they cry. They cry out for mercy. God be
merciful to me, the sinner. The question is though this,
on what grounds? God is just, God is holy, God
is also merciful. Those two things must meet. He
cannot show mercy at the expense of His justice. On what ground
should this mercy be shown? If you notice, this woman approached
by merit, but the merit wasn't her own, it was her husband's.
Look again, verse one. 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. She came on the grounds of merit,
the merit of her husband. He feared God. And we come on
the exact same grounds of merit, the merits of our husband, the
Lord Jesus Christ. He feared God. What does that
mean? God feared God. Christ feared
God. What does that mean? It means
he did exactly what his father told him to do, and he believed
him every step of the way. The father said, take these people,
save them. They're completely your responsibility.
He did what the father told him to do. He said, if you die, you
will satisfy my punishment. You will satisfy my perfect sense
of justice, and I will raise you up from the dead. He believed
His Father perfectly and that's the merit under which we came
and we come. Christ and Him crucified, He
did what you told Him to do and that is the grounds of my merit.
Look to Him for it, don't look for a reason in me. Now look at 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. Two questions
are asked. He says, first this, what do
you want? And I find this interesting.
She didn't answer the question. He says, what do you want? Provided
no answer to that one right off the bat. Why? It was very simple. It was because her need presupposed
what she wanted. We had an interesting encounter
last weekend, something we're not used to. We were actually
around a whole bunch of religious people, people from the world. And during
this encounter, we heard some of the wildest stuff, all things
you would imagine, but some pretty wild stuff. And at the end, we
were trying to figure out what worldly denomination some of
these people were from, and we were looking up their charters
and such, right? It was amazing to see the hills
that these people were trying to die on. One was saying, we
believe that the Lord created the earth in six literal days.
It has to be six literal days. We will accept nothing less.
It must be six literal days. And they kept on going through
this. And here's what I thought, I don't care. I don't care if it was six days.
I don't care if it's six minutes. I don't care if each one of those
days represents a million years, and it was six million years.
However the Lord done it, I bow to it. It's glorious. It's great.
But here's the issue. I don't care because my needs
are much greater than that. I do not have time for those
things. My needs are just like this woman.
All these people who are of God, they have the exact same needs
as this woman. What were her needs? Well, it's
very simple. She needed what was necessary
to live. She could not produce. She could
not come up with what she needed to live. What do I need to live? What is God's standard? Well,
this is what is said by Peter in 2 Peter 2, 5, considering
Noah, concerning Noah. He's referring to as a preacher
of righteousness. I find that interesting because
you read through the book of Genesis you don't find one sermon by Noah
as far as I can tell. But he says he is a preacher
of righteousness. What does that mean to preach
righteousness? Does that mean you better be
righteous? You better get your life straightened out. You better
stop this sin business. You better get up with the law
and make your peace with God? No. He was a preacher of righteousness. What does that mean? God is righteous.
That's what I need to live. I need a righteousness before
God, a perfect righteousness that can stand the test of time,
that can stand the test of the law. Inwardly, outwardly, I must
have a righteousness. Where am I going to find one
of those? I'm not going to find it in me. Can't keep the law,
not even once. The first verse here tells us
that. Where am I going to find it? Look into Christ. and his
righteousness alone. For his people, he is the fulfillment
of the law and the end of the law for righteousness. The second
thing she needs, she needed her debts paid. That's what I need. I need a kinsman redeemer. I
need a Boaz. I need one who is bone of my
bone, who is flesh of my flesh, who is both willing and able
to restore everything that I lost. What did we lose in the fall?
We lost everything. We lost our uprightness, our innocence, our
walk with God. We lost all that, plunged into
a sin and sinful nature. I need somebody to come along
and restore everything I lost in Adam, but make it to where
it's better, even better than that, to where I can never lose
it again. It must be this time immutable,
to where it cannot be changed. And here's the final thing I
need. This is the final thing this woman needed. She needed
freedom from bondage. I need these things. My debt's
paid. My sin's put away. A righteousness before God. And
I need it without bondage, which means I need it without any strings
attached. I need it without God requiring
anything from me. Just have it freely given. That's it. And that's what every
empty vessel finds in Christ. All debt's paid. enemies put
down. Righteousness restored completely
and utterly before God with absolutely no strings attached. Nothing
left for you to do, no works to perform, just rest. Now here's the second question
he asked. He said, what do you have? What do you want? Presupposed
by need. What do you have? This is how
she answered. Thy handmaid hath not anything
in the house. Say one thing. Save a pot of
oil. I only have one thing and I don't
have anything else. Well, all these folks who are
of God, they all have this in common. They have one thing.
They have Christ and him crucified. That is their only hope of salvation.
And they have absolutely nothing else. And if I have Christ and
my best intentions to do better, and if I have Christ in my Bible
reading, and if I have Christ in my church attendance, if I
have Christ in my work at a soup kitchen, if I have Christ in
anything else, understand I do not have Christ, but everyone
who has Christ has this one thing in common. I don't have anything
else. Lock, stock, and barrel. No reserves, no retreat, I have
one thing, I have Christ in Him crucified and He's promised that
to sinners He is enough and He is everything. And if He's all
you got, He's absolutely all you need. She had nothing, just
one thing, Christ. The Lord says this in a parable.
I enjoy reading this. Turn over there to Luke chapter
14. You call this what you would,
a principle, a doctrine. I don't know what the exact term
we would use for it is. I'm going to call it a principle here today.
But if there's a gospel principle that I enjoy more than anything
else, that I enjoy hearing more than anything else, it is this.
It's that this gospel, this Christ, this salvation, it's for sinners. It is my favorite, absolute favorite. To be told, sinner, come eat. Christ is for you. And it's not,
if you do this, He'll be for you. He's either always been
for you or He was never for you. And the question is whether He's
for you or not. That's it. If you're a sinner, He's for
you. He always has been and He always will be. Look at what
the parable says here in Luke 14 verse 12. He said, this is
the Lord speaking, then said He also to him that bade him.
A Pharisee had invited him over for a lunch on Sabbath day. He
said, when thou makest a dinner or supper, call not thy friends,
nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors,
lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. And he says here, here's who
you don't invite to the feast, people who can pay you back.
People who you invite them over and the expectation is they're
gonna treat you the same way, they're gonna invite you over
here in a couple weeks and put on the same feast for you and recompense
you. Quid pro quo, I do for you, you do for me. That's not who
you invite. Verse 13, but when thou makest
a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and thou
shalt be blessed for they cannot recompense thee, for thou shalt
be recompensed at the resurrection of the just. This feast of Christ,
who is it for? Those who can do something for
him? Somebody who can make his work effectual? Somebody who
can make a good decision? No, that's not who it's for.
Poor, they don't have anything. I don't have any ability, they
don't have any righteousness, they're absolutely bankrupt. Lame and main, impotent,
have to be carried everywhere they go, and blind, can't see
one reason would God be merciful to them. That's it. Those are
the people, they're not invited to the feast. It's much more
powerful than that, and thank God it is. The better word is
dragged. They are dragged to the feast.
The Holy Spirit calls out, and He grabs ahold of him, and He
drags him to the feast of Christ, and He's called to eat. The entire
time, the man isn't doing exactly what he wants to do, because
he's being given a new will. Now, go back to your text. Look
at verse 3. Elisha speaks. He says, Go borrow
thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels. Borrow not a few. And this is
the one prerequisite to be a vessel that would be filled. You had
to be empty. You have to be a sinner. You
have to have nothing in you. No water, no oil, no nothing,
bone dry. That was the one prerequisite
to be a vessel. That's it. What's a prerequisite
for salvation? You're a sinner. You got nothing.
That's it. Verse four, and when 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." Now here we have a command and a twofold
promise. Elijah says, you go get a bunch
of empty vessels, get a whole bunch of them. He didn't say
how many, he just said a lot, that's it. And you bring them
in, you shut the door, and you start pouring that oil out of
that pot, right? You start filling up them vessels,
and you just set each one of them to the side, just like that. And here's the promise. It's
twofold. Fullness. Every empty vessel
you've got is going to be filled completely and utterly to the
brim. There's a promise of creative activity. What do I mean by that? This woman had a pot of oil,
right? She opens the top, I don't know what the pot looked like,
I don't know what they were like back then, but she looks inside, and there is
a finite amount of oil inside when she looks. And I don't know
how much that would have been, it could have been a gallon,
it could have been a couple liters, it could have been a couple pints,
I have no idea. But as far as she could tell, And the fact
of the matter was, there was a finite amount of oil in there.
And so she gets the first vessel and she starts pouring. And she
fills it up to the top and she sets it aside. And she keeps
on going, she keeps on going. And after a while, common sense
kicks in and she says, I have poured more oil out of this pot
than was ever originally in it. I'm looking at like 16 gallons
of oil here and we started off with two pints, right? There's
a promise here in salvation, the promise of creative activity,
creating in a man what was not there before. This is the new
man in Christ Jesus, a holy man, a perfect man, a man who loves
God, a man who believes the gospel. That's the creative activity
of salvation, creating something that was not there before. David
said this in Psalm 5110, he said, and create in me a clean heart,
O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Create, do not fix
up the old. not try to renovate or modify
the old man, the old heart, the old nature. No, something brand
new must be given, the very Spirit of God dwelling in a man. The
promise of creative activity. And here is the second one, the
promise of fullness, being completely and utterly filled, you being
that empty vessel. There is a psalm that deals with
that and you are all incredibly familiar with it, Psalm 23. Turn
over there. I'd say a lot of you could probably
recite this psalm, but let's look at it again and look at
it through these eyes, right? Look at verse one of Psalm 23. David says, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He is not everybody's shepherd,
but he is the shepherd of empty vessels. Keep that in mind. He
is the savior of sinners. Keep that in mind. Who is our
shepherd? The Lord, the one who can be
absolutely trusted, that one who cannot fail. If he purposes,
it must be. And David says, this one who
is my shepherd, this creative one, this one who cannot fail,
he's going to fill me and I shall not want for anything. I'm going
to have absolutely everything I need. Plum full. In what way,
David? Verse two. He maketh me to lie
down in green pastures. I'm not going to want for rest.
I have full rest because Christ has done absolutely everything
that is necessary to make me fully acceptable by the Father.
There's nothing left for me to do. Just trust Him. Just have
rest. We have fullness of rest. He
leadeth me beside the still waters. I shall not want filled with
peace. true peace between every believer,
every member of the elect, and the Father because the Lord Jesus
Christ has made our complete peace with God. By owning our
sin, by paying for it, and putting it away through His death there
is now peace. There is no reason for the Father
to be angry with us because of what Christ has done we have
full peace, not lacking in any way. Verse 3, He restoreth my
soul. I have fullness of restoration.
Everything we lost in Adam, fully and utterly restored, but way
better. We said that, right? It has to be better. It can't
be like it was before. It has to be better. It has to
be immutable. It has to be unchangeable. And that's exactly what we have
in Christ, the fullness of immutable righteousness. He leadeth me
in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. full of
righteousness because Christ is my righteousness before God,
not lacking anything before the law. The law that once said guilty
now says justified. Got nothing to say about that
one right there, completely and utterly justified in Christ. Verse 4, "'Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. full of comfort in death. Now
you think about that, that is one thing this world, everybody,
you can say this about everyone, everybody fears death in some
way, shape, or form, right? But every believer has absolutely
no reason to fear death. There's comfort in death. It's
actually gonna be the best day of our life. This old man gets
put away. We are conformed perfectly to
the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. This one who we see with an eye
of faith, we hear with a hearing of faith. But it still seems
far off. Faith is going to go away. It
is going to be gone. And now we are going to have
sight. We are actually going to be with Him. Doesn't that
sound good? No more sin. We talked about that in Sunday
School this morning. Don't you long for good. I am tired of
evil. I'm tired of the evil in me.
I'm tired of the evil of this world. And I will say this again,
I am tired of watching this world rip each other's shreds. I'm
just tired of it. for good, so thankful that Christ
is in fact good. But that good day is coming.
It is this day of death. This day that everyone else in
this world fears. Everybody collectively fears.
It is actually the very best day of our life. Those of us
as empty vessels. Verse 5, Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of mine enemies, Thou anointest my head with oil,
my cup runneth over, full of protection from my enemies."
I love how the Lord puts this and David puts this here because
it speaks to our experience. My enemies, my sins, where are
they? They're gone. The Lord Jesus
Christ said he bore them in his body, he paid the debt of those
sins, he put them away, and they are as far as the east is from
the west. They are gone. Really gone, right? Where are
my sins? All around me. In me. Staring them right in the face,
right? That's our experience even though they're all defeated
enemies and they're all enemies that have been put as far as
the east is from the west. What he's saying here, those
are just illusions. Those enemies are dead enemies. Now, calm down,
sit down. My cup of mercy is never going
to stop overflowing for you because of who your savior is. Verse
six, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days
of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Full of what? Full of goodness. And that's what everything's
going to be. From now to the day we pass, whether it feels
good, whether it seems good, that's what we can expect, and
that's where we'll all be goodness. We will have fullness of goodness
and of mercy. Once again, why? What was the
merit that this woman came on? The merit of her husband. He
feared the Lord. That's why. We will always have
that mercy from God. Why? Because Christ feared God. That's it. full of all these
things in that list do we like anything does an empty vessel a sinner
lack anything before God not if he has the one thing Christ now go back to your text and
look at verse 5 So she went from him, from Elisha,
and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who brought the
vessels for her, and she poured out. Now, I think this is interesting. There's a little detail of the
story that it's kind of hidden there. He told her, you go in
there and you shut the door on you and your sons. And she did
exactly what Elisha told her to do. She went in, she shut
the door on her and her sons. You know what I thought about?
I thought about Noah. Lord said, get in the ark, and they got
in the ark, and the Lord shut them in. You know what that is
talking about? It is talking about eternal security. It is
talking about the eternality of salvation. That if the Lord
has purposed to show you mercy and show you grace that purpose
has always been there. Fact is, if you're of God, you've
always been of God. You always will be of God. And I recognize there's a change
in experience. There's a time when we know the Lord, there's
a time we don't. Or you flip that over, there's a time we
don't and a time we do. But in these things of eternity, everything
is always in the now with the Lord. I enjoy reading the book
of Revelations, and it's for this reason. Many reasons, but
I think this is interesting. The book of Revelations has absolutely
no respect to chronological order whatsoever. None whatsoever. It'll start telling you about
something that actually happened in time, and then it'll go forward to
something that's going to happen in eternity future, and then
it'll flip back to something that happened in eternity past.
No respect whatsoever to chronological order. Why? Because God is without
time. He deals only in eternity, in
the now. Everything is always in the present
with Him. If I'm a justified man, I've
always been justified in the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the world, and always will be. I can't get out. I can't
mess this thing up. Christ died for you, you can't
mess it up. Isn't that the best news you've ever heard? You're
stuck. It's a good place to get stuck,
but you're stuck. And it came to pass when the
vessels were full, that she said unto her son, bring me yet a
vessel. And he said unto her, there is not a vessel more in
the oil state. The oil flowed as long as there
was an empty vessel. What's going on right now? What's
going on in every other generation? Well, it's very simple. Lord's
been calling out His chosen empty vessels, emptying them out, pouring
them out to where they have nothing, and sitting down and pouring
them into Him, into them the oil of His grace, taking something
that was empty and making it full up with His grace. And then
He takes it and He sits it aside in death. And He grabs the next
one. empties them out, pours into
him, sets him aside in death. And he does this over and over
and over again. And that oil, it's going to keep
flowing as the Lord has one elect in this world. But the very moment
that that last one comes to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and that oil is poured into him, and he's filled up, this thing's
over, folks. That's it. That's what God is
doing. You don't wonder, what is God doing? He is glorifying
Jesus Christ and He is saving His people. And everything else
is just semantics. That's it. But that oil is going
to continue to flow until the last one. He calls out that last
one. And then this is all over. And I long for that day. But
you look at this. Look at the last verse again
and we'll wrap up. Verse 7 it says, 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. She had one thing. She had many needs and one thing. She needed that which was necessary
to live, she needed her debts paid, and she needed freedom
from bondage. And the one thing, the one thing
she had, It provided everything she needed to live. It paid all
her debts and released her from bondage. If you're one, if you are of
God, if all your hope is in Christ and Him crucified alone, if all
you have is Him, nothing else. Know this. you have everything,
completely and utterly full. And this scripture speaks of
you. Colossians 2, 9 and 10, for in him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him, which is
the head of all principality and power. Empty vessel, you
have Christ. You have everything you need.
We'll stop there.