How to be emptied and then refilled
Stand and lift up your bible and repeat after me.
This is my Bible.
I am what it says I am.
I can do what it says I can do.
I am going to learn how to be what it says I can be.
Today I will learn more of the word of God.
The indestructible, never ending, living word Of God.
I will never be the same.
I will never be the same.
In Jesus Name.
Not long ago I read about a poor community in Paraguay that is known for two things. First, it’s known for a landfill. That’s not surprising for a poverty-stricken area for there to be a landfill, but this landfill is huge. There is more than 1500 tons of garbage that is dumped in this landfill every day. In fact, there are more than a thousand residents living in this landfill that make a living by finding trash and things that can be recycled and then selling them.
There’s a whole community that lives in this landfill. So, it’s known for a landfill.
The second thing it’s known for is an amazing orchestra. Not what you would expect to find in a landfill. Now I will say it’s not an ordinary orchestra filled with ordinary musicians and ordinary instruments; instead you have children who make up this orchestra, children who come from the dump, and you have instruments that have been made out trash.
Some years ago, Favio Chavez, a young professional musician, saw the horrible poverty, saw the impossible living conditions and decided he wanted to do something to make a difference in that community; and he started a small music school. And it didn’t take long until he had some students—in fact, a lot of students—but he only had a handful of instruments.
He hired one of the trash pickers, one of the people who combed through the dump looking for things of value.
His name is Nicolas Gomez. He hired Nicolas Gomez to try to find some materials in the landfill that could be used as instruments…that the kids could play as instruments.
A cello is made of an oilcan and old cooking tools, and a flute is made from old tin cans; and a drum set uses old X-rays as the skins, and a violin is made of a beat-up aluminum salad bowl. And the orchestra plays beautiful, classical music with kids from the dump playing instruments made from trash.
This just might really be a reminder of what we are in our lives in most cases.
Our focus tends to be on the outside, and we want to look impressive like we’ve got it all together. And we have this habit of putting the best versions of ourselves out there for everyone to see on social media or when we gather in places like this.
But reality is, we’re broken—all of us. With reality we humble ourselves. And it’s in those moments where we acknowledge our brokenness and we humble ourselves that God can finally do something beautiful.
In this message we’re talking about the fact that we want God to do something through us, and that’s good and right and that’s appropriate: That we want to use our lives to make a difference in this world. But what we’ve come to understand is God needs to do some things in us so He can do some things through us.
In order for God to do His work in us, we need to acknowledge our brokenness. The Bible says in Psalm 51 that the sacrifice God wants is a broken spirit.
Do you remember the glow sticks that were popular several years ago?
Someone once said, “Some things are better broken, and that our light shines brightest when it’s broke. That we are all broken people.”
Just like a glow stick. It’s true of all of us. And it’s in acknowledging our brokenness that we create space for God’s power to be demonstrated. We give Him the pieces, and then He says, “Watch what I can do with this,” and He turns it into a mosaic.
We need to humble ourselves. Luke 18 Jesus says, “If you exalt yourself, if you make much of yourself, you’re going to be humbled. But if you humble yourself, you’re going to be exalted. You’ll be lifted up.” Now we tend to think of humility (or being humbled) as something that happens to us.
We are not just humbled; we are to humble ourselves, and that makes all of the difference.
Let us see what God wants to do in us. In order for Him to do His work in us so that He can do His work through us, we need to empty ourselves.
He wants to fill us up, but in order for Him to fill us up, we need to come to Him empty.
Because God loves to fill what’s empty. We come to God empty; He fills us up.
This is one of the things about God’s nature that you’ll see in Scripture or you see in the life of Jesus: He loves to fill what’s empty.
There’s an example of this, a little story in 2 Kings 4.
Turn with me there and say, “Amen” when you are there.
It’s from the life of Elisha. It says, “One day the widow of a member of the group of prophets came to Elisha and cried out, ‘My husband who served you is dead, and you know how he feared the Lord. But now a creditor has come, threatening to take my two sons as slaves.’ And Elisha says, ‘(Well,) what can I do to help you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?’ ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Nothing at all, except a flask of olive oil.’ And Elisha said, ‘(Okay, here’s what you need to do.) Borrow as many empty jars as you can from your friends and neighbors. Then go into your house with your sons and shut the door behind you. Pour olive oil from your flask into the jars, setting each one aside when it is filled.’ She did as she was told. Her sons kept bringing jars to her, and she filled one after another. Soon every container was full to the brim! ‘Bring me another jar,’ she said to one of her sons. ‘There aren’t any more!’ he told her. And then the olive oil stopped flowing.” And we learn something about the nature of God: God loves to fill what’s empty.
But look, what about when there is nothing left to fill? I mean, if we bring to Him a jar and it’s already full…? And what is the role of the jar? The role of the jar is to be filled up. The jar doesn’t fill itself up; the jar just receives. The jar just shows up empty.
Here’s what we want to do. Here is kind of the question we’re going to ask to frame up this message. The question is, “What’s the only thing that must be true of the jar in order for it to be filled?” It must be…? It must be empty. That’s the only thing.
In order for God to fill it, it just…it needs to be empty.
Some of you have come in here with an empty jar, and it’s not been your choice; but your life has been turned upside-down and poured out, and you’ve got nothing left. You are in the right place, and God smiles because He loves to fill up what’s empty.
Today we’re going to learn in the next few minutes about the difference between being full and being fulfilled. God loves to fill what’s empty.
In Luke chapter 7, we see that Simon the Pharisee, and he’s full of himself. Ironically, he’s full of religion and rule-keeping and rituals. And until he empties himself of religion, he can’t be filled with Jesus. How’s that for ironic?
Meanwhile a prostitute, in Luke 7, comes on the scene. She is broken and is a mess. She falls at the feet of Jesus, and the tears start to fall. She washes the feet of Jesus with her tears, and dries them with her hair. Now remember she has this little bottle of perfume around her neck. She opens it up and she pours it out. What is she do? Emptying it. It represents her old life. She empties it—every last drop on the feet of Jesus—and she leaves full.
Jesus told a story about…in Luke 18…about a Pharisee who came to church full…full of himself and his accomplishments. Meanwhile a tax collector shows up at church, and he’s empty. And he empties himself, and he just says, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The Pharisee comes full and just tells God what he has to offer Him. The tax collector comes empty, and he asks God to fill him.
Are you come empty, or do you want to become full?
Jesus was all about filling what was empty. You see this with those who are hungry in John 6. Five thousand empty stomachs (and) Jesus says, “Let’s fill ‘em all.” You see it with the woman at the well, where Jesus fills her soul. You see it at the house of Jairus. Jairus’s daughter has died, and Jesus fills the house with joy, as He brings her back to life. The woman caught in the act of adultery is completely empty. Her life is over. Jesus fills her with hope.
He loves to fill what’s empty.
We read in Luke chapter 14 that the Pharisees are watching Jesus closely. The idea here is that they are trying to trap Him. They’re looking at Him cynically. Jesus is around the table, but they’re not coming with empty cups to receive anything from Jesus; they’re coming with a critical eye.
There are some people have an empty jar. They’re ready to receive.
If you pay attention to the commercials. They show us what you and I are missing from our lives, and if we had it we would feel fuller. We be better. There is a presumption of emptiness. And look, if you could just drive this car, or if you could just wear these clothes, or if you could just go on this kind of vacation or if you could just have this kind of relationship, if you could just eat this kind of food, if you could just drink this kind of beverage—you’d be fulfilled. That’s how our advertisements are geared towards us.
A basic definition of consumerism is the idea that our success and happiness is directly related to our ever-increasing consumption of goods. That’s consumerism. That the happiness that we experience, the success that we feel in life is directly related to our ever-increasing consumption of goods. And if I don’t feel happy, then I need to consume a little bit more.
And if I don’t feel successful, it’s because I haven’t consumed as much as someone else. In our consumer-based culture, our happiness and success are tied directly to our ever-increasing consumption of goods. That who we are and what we do and what we value is centered around consumption.
This is how many of us deal with emptiness in Western culture. We deal with emptiness by living in a constant state of consumption. We are constantly consuming. And we love to get online and shop and buy things. We love to think about what we don’t have but what we’re going to get. And once we get whatever we wanted, we need something more. We’re in this constant state of consumption, and that’s how we’ve tried to deal with much of the emptiness: just consume, consume, consume.
It starts to make us feel like we’re full, but here’s what we’re discovering: There is a difference between being full and being fulfilled. Like, you keep stuffing yourself, or you keep consuming and consuming and consuming, and you feel full. But then it doesn’t last very long, right? You’ve got to consume even more in order to feel full. And we’re constantly consuming.
This is really interesting. New York Times. “Busyness serves as a kind of hedge against emptiness.” “Busyness serves as a kind of hedge against emptiness. Obviously your life cannot be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, and if you’re completely booked, and if you’re in demand every hour of the day. We’re busy because of our own ambition or drive or anxiety, because we’re addicted to busyness and we dread what we might have to face in its absence.”
“Busyness is a hedge against emptiness.” And busyness in our culture is an epidemic. We’re afraid to slow down because of what we might have to face, and so we just go.
And in our consumer-based culture, it’s interesting, because we’re kind of shifting from just a consumer-based culture of goods and products but we’re becoming obsessive consumers of entertainment and information. I mean, we’re constantly filling our time and our minds with entertainment and information. If you’re an average American, you spend about a thousand hours a year watching TV. By the time you’re sixty-five, it’s a little short of ten years of your life will have been spent watching television. If you’re about my generation or younger, you spend about five hours a day online connected to, you know, the internet through a computer, your iPad, your phone. This generation will spend about fourteen straight years connected to the internet. By the time you’re sixty-five, you’ll spend about twenty-five of the years of your life staring at a screen. What are you doing? What are we doing? We’re consuming. That’s what we’re doing. We’re just constantly consuming. We do it obsessively.
I was reading some research from last year. IDC Research found that eighty percent of smart phone users…they check their phones within the first fifteen minutes of waking up—eighty percent of us.
I was reading in the article. Again, it was in New York Times. It was called and I love this., “The Rise of the Toilet Texter.” That was the name of it. And in the article they cited research that said, “Twenty-five percent of Americans said they wouldn’t go to the bathroom without their phones.” They’re not going to do it.
I mean, that is a codependent relationship, right? Like, you’ve got to go to the bathroom, but your phone is still charging. “I’m going to hold it.” I mean, what am I supposed to do in there? I’ve got to have something to do. We are busy. We constantly consume. And what are we doing? What are we doing? Maybe…maybe the busyness is a hedge against emptiness.
In the New Testament letters there is a command, in fact, from Ephesians 5. It’s kind of an interesting way that Paul talks about being filled in this way. He says, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation.” Don’t get drunk. “But be filled with the Spirit.” You see he kind of flips these things, and he says, “Don’t be filled with alcohol. Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Now that seems so odd in some ways, right? Like, okay…but why?
Well, because if you’re already full here, you’re not going to have much room here. If you come to Jesus and your jar is already full of alcohol, then there’s not going to be much room for the Holy Spirit. Empty it out and be filled with the Holy Spirit. If you’re looking to alcohol to do for you what the Holy Spirit wants to do for you, you keep filling up your glass with alcohol, thinking, “Well, the alcohol will comfort me, and alcohol will make me feel better, and alcohol will give me kind of this courage, and alcohol will allow me to be able to sleep at night, and alcohol is going give me peace.” And the Holy Spirit is like, “Well, that’s what I was going to do. That’s what I wanted to do. Empty it out. Let Me fill that cup. Let Me fill the jar.”
And we come and we’re holding something up, but it’s already full. We’re like, “Well, you know, Jesus fill my cup up,” and He’s, “Well, it’s already…it’s already full. It’s already full of relationships. It’s already full of pornography. It’s already full of work. It’s already full of stuff that you’ve bought online. It’s already full!” And we empty it out, and we hold it back up.
And Paul says to “be filled.” That verb is an interesting one, where he says, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit,” because it’s not an option. This is a command if you’re a Christian: to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It’s not just for certain denominations. It’s a present tense, meaning that this is not just a one-time thing that happens to you, but rather it is an ongoing filling; where we continually come empty, and He continually fills us up.
So how do we do that? Well, we empty. We empty ourselves, and we just start praying on a really regular basis, “God, empty me of me so I can be filled with You.”
The great preacher, D.L. Moody, explains it this way. He says, “I firmly believe that the moment our hearts are emptied of selfishness, ambition and self-seeking and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Spirit will come and fill every corner of our hearts. But if we are full of pride and conceit, ambition and self-seeking and the pleasures of the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God. I also believe,” Moody says, “that many a man is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else.”
Before we pray that God will fill us, I believe we ought to pray that He would empty us. There must be an emptying before there can be a filling.
God, empty me of me so I can be filled with you.
The man prepares this banquet. The excuses start to come in. He sends the servant out; they’re not coming. Their cup is already full.
So Jesus says, “Okay, well, go find people who aren’t so full of themselves. Go find people whose lives aren’t so stuffed, and you invite them to come to My table. Invite them to come and be filled.”
Here’s what I’d like us to do: to just kind of spend a few minutes personally taking some time to empty ourselves. Now here’s what’s going to be hard. Like, for some of you, you’re…it’s so full! Like, right now you really need to be going. Right now you’ve got stuff that you need to be doing and things that you’re thinking about. And we just want to spend a few minutes saying to God, “I’m emptying it out. Here’s my jar. Would You fill it up?” We’re going to listen to a song. As we sit and listen, would you do this in your heart? Would you empty it out and would you hold it up? Let’s pray.
