Have you ever experienced a time in your life in which you were going through trials and hard times? Probably everybody has. Perhaps during this time you felt distant from God and spiritually dry. Dwight L. Moody used to say, “The only way to keep a broken vessel full is to keep it always under the tap,”(1) and that’s what I am going to talk about this evening – keeping our vessels, or our spiritual lives, full and overflowing by presenting our vessels unto the Lord for His use and service in His kingdom; therefore, I have entitled our message “Presenting Our Vessels.” We will gain an understanding of this spiritual concept by studying the Old Testament account of Elisha and the Widow.
Sometimes We Encounter Difficult Situations (v. 1)
1 A certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord. And the creditor is coming to take my two sons to be his slaves.”
Here we find a woman, or widow, who had been married to the son of a prophet. Who the son’s father was, or who the prophet was, we don’t know; but what we can likely conclude is that this woman served the Lord.
So, we see here a God-fearing woman who had somehow gotten into debt, and now the creditor, or the bill collector, was coming to take away her sons to pay off her debt. We don’t know how this woman got into debt, and we can’t sit here and judge her and say that those who serve the Lord shouldn’t get into debt. Today, we can try our very best to stay away from credit cards and not purchase what we can’t afford; however, life sometimes has a way of creeping up on us, with cars breaking down and unplanned hospital stays, or what have you. Perhaps this woman could not help what happened to her. Maybe she was responsible for her husband’s debt after he passed away.
What I wish to point out here is that even if we serve the Lord with all of our heart and we know Jesus as Savior and Lord, all of us encounter difficult situations in life at some time or another. Not one person in this world is immune from trials and difficulties. In Matthew 5:45 we read that the sun rises on the evil and on the good, and that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. The question we must consider is this: “How will we respond to our trials?” We see here in verse 1 that this widow turned to one of the prophets (Elisha); which shows us that she was looking unto God for help.
Give unto the Lord Whatever You Can Give (vv. 2-3)
2 So Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?” And she said, “Your maidservant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil.” 3 Then he said, “Go, borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors—empty vessels; do not gather just a few.”
The woman turned to Elisha, meaning that she was seeking help from the Lord. And what was the reply? Elisha basically asked, “What do you have to give?” or “What do you have in the house?” When we are going through a difficult time, probably the last thing we want to hear is that we need to give. We often feel that we have nothing left to expend – no energy, no passion, and no enthusiasm. How in the world can we give when we feel as though we are being drained and that the very life is being sucked out of us? But that’s what the Lord will often ask us to do – to give.
We can see here that this woman responded like many of us. We look around us, and all we see are the basic necessities of survival – the last amount of groceries, the last amount of money, or perhaps the last amount of our health or energy – and we respond, “I have nothing left but this one little thing.” And this widow was probably thinking, “I need this oil to survive.”
Oil was used in making bread. If we look back in 1 Kings 17 we see that the prophet Elijah asked a widow to prepare for him some bread and she replied, “As the Lord your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar; and see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die” (1 Kings 17:12).
Elisha was asking this widow here to give all that she had left. The Lord will oftentimes ask us to sacrifice all that we have remaining in order to determine if we are truly dependent on Him, and to see if we are really willing to trust Him with our current situation.
Elisha then told the woman, “Go, borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors – empty vessels; do not gather just a few.” If we truly have very little to give, then we might have to get creative and think of ways to give more.
For example, the Lord might ask us to give financially to a mission organization, and we don’t have much to contribute, and the only way to acquire enough financial support is to do some fundraising. Some missionaries have to do this. Perhaps we have never felt comfortable in asking people for money, but then we have to do it anyhow in order to give to the Lord.
The Lord is trying to get us to step out beyond the boundaries of our own securities, to walk by faith, trusting the Lord to provide what He is asking of us. Elisha was asking this woman to lower her pride and ask her neighbors for help as another test of her faith and trust in the Lord, to see if she was willing to give it all to God.
I want to point out that this woman’s empty jar, or empty vessel, was also symbolic of her life. 2 Corinthians 4:7 says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” Paul said that the power and the life of God are found in earthen vessels, meaning it is contained in our bodies; therefore our bodies, or our lives, are viewed as vessels to be filled.
The Lord desires for us to give our lives as an offering before Him. In Romans 12:1 Paul declared, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”
This widow woman was asked to do these outward activities of gathering jars to be filled, when really it was all about the inward activity of her submission to God, and allowing her life to be filled with the oil of grace, which I will talk about in a moment. The Lord wants us to present our lives – or our vessels – unto Him and He wants us to give whatever we can give.
Shut the Door behind You and Focus on God (vv. 4-5)
4 “And when you have come in, you shall shut the door behind you and your sons; then pour it into all those vessels, and set aside the full ones.” 5 So she went from him and shut the door behind her and her sons, who brought the vessels to her; and she poured it out.
In verse 4, we see that Elisha told the widow to close the door behind her and her sons. When we are going through a time of difficulty in our lives, the best thing we can do is to close the door on our problems. We need to put them behind us, and look straight ahead to God. If we focus too much on our problems it can paralyze us from service in God’s kingdom; therefore, abandon your problems behind and continue on in obedience serving the Lord.
Through Elisha the Lord told this widow woman to begin filling the vessels with oil, and she did as she was told without giving another thought to her situation. When the lady was obedient and focused on God, her oil (or her resources) began flowing and multiply miraculously; and “likewise, God’s power will flow through our lives continually as we make ourselves available to Him.”(2) Availability is the main key that we discover here. What we must understand is “God can provide [us] with the abilities [we] need to complete the tasks at hand, but [we] control [our] availability to begin them.”(3)
Whenever we make ourselves and our resources available to God, then His power and grace will flow through our lives and pour into our situation. We read in the New Bible Dictionary that “oil was prominent among the [Old Testament] first fruit offerings (Exodus 22:29) and . . . during the daily sacrifice (Exodus 29:40).”(4) First off, oil is symbolic of sacrifice. However, once we make a sacrifice to the Lord then we receive the oil of the Holy Spirit, for oil also represents the power and presence of the Spirit (Zechariah 4:1-7).
We discover in Zechariah 4:6-7 that the Holy Spirit provides us with grace and mercy to help us in our time of need, and to help us overcome the difficulties and obstacles we face in life. That is why people are anointed with oil whenever they receive prayer for healing, for it represents God’s grace and mercy, and God’s power over the illness. Whenever we focus on serving the Lord in obedience, instead of focusing on all our problems, we receive grace and power from the Holy Spirit and a breakthrough in our situation.
God Will Fill Our Jars and Meet Our Needs (vv. 6-7)
6 Now it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” And he said to her, “There is not another vessel.” So the oil ceased. 7 Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debt; and you and your sons live on the rest.”
Whenever the widow made herself available to God, the Lord came through for her and met her needs. We observe here that she gave her all in what she was doing. She filled jars until she could fill jars no more. She served the Lord until all of her resources were expended, and God honored that. The Lord didn’t make the woman go out and find some more jars after that. Once she had demonstrated her faithfulness, she was provided for.
It wasn’t just her basic needs that were met either. Her entire debt was paid off, and she had a surplus or an abundance to continue living on. We read in Luke 6:38, “Give, and it will be given to you: [a] good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”
If we present our vessels to the Lord, then He will make sure that our cup runs over with abundance, and we can declare as David in Psalm 23:5-6, “You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”
Time of Reflection
If you are here this evening seeking a breakthrough in your life, then willingly give your vessel unto the Lord for His use and for service in His kingdom. When the Lord sees your faithfulness He will pour out His oil of grace and mercy upon your life, and His provision and blessing.
And if you are here this evening and you realize you have not accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, to forgive you of your sins, then I wish to invite you to surrender your vessel, or your life, to God’s love and forgiveness and to submit to Jesus’ Lordship over your life. Wherever you are in your standing with the Lord this evening, I invite you to present unto Him your vessel.
NOTES
(1) Paul Tan, Encyclopedia of 7,700 Illustrations (Garland, Texas: Bible Communications, Inc., 1996), taken from Logos 2.1E on CD-ROM.
(2) Taken from the Internet in June 2006 at http://www.knowjesus.com/Dev_boat.shtml.
(3) Ibid.
(4) “Oil,” The New Bible Dictionary (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1962), taken from Logos 2.1 on CD-ROM.
