Empty Vessels
Sunday, October 30, 2022 – 10 am
In the prophetic times which we live we see so much of the fulfillment of God’s Word all around us. The Spirit of God is moving in the earth to find as many empty vessels as He can that will be willing to be filled with the Oil of Gladness and will carry that oil of anointing, by carrying their “cross”, or the portion that has been given to them for the cause of the gospel and become faithful servants of the Lord, willing to be poured out in his service upon other vessels that they might be filled also.
It's not hard to find empty vessels! They are all around us because the vast majority of people around you every day are empty. They don’t have the presence of the Holy Spirit within their hearts and they are like lost sheep wandering in a strange land with no hope of finding their way back to the sheepfold.
Every day we all see people in that condition looking as though they are peering into a future with no hope of change for a better tomorrow.
All of us have those moments when it seems that we lose faith for the future. It’s part of the human condition. It’s one of the favorite tricks of the enemy of your soul to have you ever stop in your tracks to consider your future in this world and make you begin to wonder and worry about how you were going to make it another day.
Have you ever felt as though you were empty, drained of all your strength, drained of all your resources, and it seems like there is no end in sight for the demands that are placed upon your life, and you’ve already given of yourself sacrificially, and there seems to be little or nothing to show for your efforts, and yet the circumstances of life just keep piling on more and more?
Those times in your life when that happens can become almost unbearable and there have been many who have given up and just walked away from it all, going to live alone like hermits in the midst of society. They have tuned out, walked out and chosen to care about nothing but themselves and have no hope for tomorrow.
Others have chosen to exit life, to rid themselves of all responsibilities, to cast aside anything and everything that life could ever do to them, or offer them, and they have decided that the battle just isn’t worth it, so they took their life through suicide. They were deceived into believing that to end their life would mean the end of their troubles only to realize that their troubles had only multiplied and magnified and would never go away as they suffered in the fiery pits of darkness and hopelessness that awaits those who die without faith.
If you’re here right now and you’re not facing those thoughts in your life, count yourself as being among the most blessed and fortunate people on the earth. If you can look at your troubles and know that somehow God will work it all out to your good, then you are blessed indeed! If you can look at all that is happening in the world and still know that God will never fail you, then you are surely blessed, for you have a source of strength and provision in you that so many others don’t.
You have the hope of salvation, and the promise of a future that is greater than you can even imagine, and you have the Oil of Gladness that has been poured into your life in a measure that you can’t contain it all, and that oil in you overflows everywhere you go and touches everything and everyone around you, and they are touched by the oil of anointing that is upon you and in you, like a well of living water that comes from your heart and soul after you have been filled by the presence of the Holy Ghost who dwells in you!
That Oil of Gladness that is in you is what makes you have hope when others don’t. It gives you victory when everyone else around you is falling apart. It gives you peace when everything around you is only chaos. It gives you joy when the whole earth is in sorrow. And it gives you eternal life, when everything else around you faces death and an eternity where they will always be continually on the brink of death, but never able to dying, and they live every hour without hope of deliverance from what they see coming.
Those are the Empty Vessels that the Lord is seeking! They, just like us, are the reason that Jesus came from Heaven to be born as a man, so suffer the things of life, and die on the cross to bring us all hope and connect us with the great Love of our Father in Heaven, who desires to fill us all with the Oil of Gladness.
Like the man who was attacked, robbed, beaten and bruised, and left beside the highway in Luke 10:34, Jesus found us all in that hopeless condition, broken, bruised, lost in sin and lying in the gutter of hopelessness.
He came to us and bound up our wounds, poured in the oil and wine, and picked us up, sat us upon his own shoulders. Jesus is the Rock of our Salvation, but he also became “man; a beast of the earth” to carry us, and bring us back to the “Inn”, which is our Father’s House.
Jesus is our Lord, our Great High Priest who now intercedes for us and cares for us, and has paid the debt for our sin, both past, present and future, if we trust him by faith and live in repentance.
And he is coming again to receive us unto himself forever, and the debt of our sin will be fully paid by his blood, until that day when we are forever in our Father’s House and sin will be no more.
Jesus wasn’t just relating a story to teach his disciples how to act toward helping others, but he was revealing the truth of why He came from heaven and what his mission would be. He is always our greatest example to follow in life!
There is a story in the Book of 2 Kings chapter 4 where this message really began as I was reading it.
2 Kings 4:1 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.
This widow is a picture of all of us, the lost condition of all men. We are all born under the sin of Adam, the first man created after the image of God, created pure and righteous and without sin, until he fell into sin and died spiritually. And now the “Creditor”, the “Devil himself” has come to claim us and our children as payment for the debt of sin. We are without hope without someone paying the debt for us. Without Jesus we could never pay the price of deliverance for we are poor and worthless in the eyes of Satan when he is our Father. We are bound by sin and have no hope of freedom, forever to be slaves to sin and death.
2 Kings 4:2 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.
This is our condition before we come to Jesus. We have little of our own that is of value. The only thing that we have of value is our eternal soul, and it is already marked for death when our time runs out.
What shall we give in return for our soul? We are all lost, for there is none good, no not one! We all deserve death! We all deserve eternity in bondage! There’s nothing left that is acceptable to God for the debt of sin we owe.
But that’s when Jesus comes into the picture, to give to us something we don’t have to produce a hope for tomorrow! The only thing that we have to give is our heart and soul. And even that comes from God. So all we have to give is what already belongs to God, that he has placed in us to produce the spark of faith to believe and obey him. We come to Jesus empty, dead and hopeless with nothing to give.
Like the old song says,
“Just as I am, without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me,
and that thou bid me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, with fightings within, and fears without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Praise God, Jesus hears the cry of a sinful heart who seeks his help in repentance!
2 Kings 4:3 Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels; borrow not a few.
That’s not only the duty that we have when are accepted into the salvation of Christ, but I think it’s a picture of what Jesus’ mission was when he came down from Glory!
Go and find those that are empty and bring them in. Jesus came to seek and to save those who are lost!
He came from Heaven as the full vessel of the Oil of Gladness to pour into our empty vessels, and he came so that all men could be saved and filled. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance and be filled!
We must be so thankful that he found us, as empty and dry vessels, and he poured in the Oil and the Wine, to give us life, hope, Joy, liberty and eternal life!
We were those empty vessels that were found! And he filled every one of us by his mercy! We have now become vessels full of the presence and power of God!
2 Kings 4:4 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.
Thank God I came in and was filled! Thank God that we who were once lost, are now found and filled with the Oil of the Holy Ghost!
And we keep seeking for empty vessels to bring in for Jesus to fill! That’s our mission as his disciples, to do as Jesus did, to seek out the lost and empty vessels, bring them in.
And Jesus says bring in as many as you can. Bring in the drug addicts, the adulterers, the drunks, the hopeless, those with shattered lives and those lost in sin. Bring them in, and not just a few, but fill the house with as many as you can find. The oil of Gladness, the Holy Ghost, the power of God unto salvation will never run dry and he will fill every vessel that it is no longer empty.
And when we are filled, then we are set aside, just to abide in the fullness of Christ within us. But we are not going to just be set aside to do nothing. We are going to be poured out eventually, used up for the Kingdom of God. We are set aside for his purposes and to fulfill the call that he places upon us.
2 Kings 4:5 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.
We are to separate ourselves from the world and shut in with Jesus, and to surround ourselves with others from the family of God for support and accountability. We are join each other in the effort to find and fill the empty vessels.
Though we cannot be with Christ in the physical manner, as the widow was with Elisha, who represents Jesus in this story. Jesus has gone into heaven and we are left with the Oil in our vessel to do as he directs us. We are a team, a family, a part of the Body of Christ in the earth, and we are left to carry on without his physical presence.
But don’t ever think that you’re alone! The Lord is always with us. Elisha couldn’t be in two places at the same time except through the Spirit of God within him. He gave instructions, and gave the Oil, and he allowed the widow and her sons to do the work. Then God gave the miracle and filled all the vessels.
Then comes the part that I find sad to a point.
2 Kings 4:6 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.
This is where so many are right now in the church, and in the world. They are no longer seeking to be filled. They are no longer hungry for God. They are satisfied being lost, hopeless and empty. Satan has them deceived into believing that they don’t need God; that they don’t need the promises of the word of God; that they don’t need to be in the place where the Oil will be poured out; and that they are good enough even if they’re empty. They look around at all the other empty vessels around them and think, “I’m as good as they are. I don’t need to change.”
Every empty vessel that was present was filled to capacity. Each one had its purpose and mission.
But when the empty vessels were no more, then the flow of the Oil stopped!
How many more vessels could have been filled?
• At what point did they stop looking and gathering empty vessels?
• How far did they roam in searching?
• How many empty vessels were remaining in the city?
• Did they seek from every neighbor or only a few?
The bottom line is that when the empty vessels aren’t brought in to be filled, then they will remain empty. If they had only known how much God has to offer, I wonder how many more they would have found?
I believe that if they had only known the unending flow of the Oil of Gladness that comes from God, that they would have never stopped gathering empty vessels. They would have gone for miles and miles, searching for every one they could find, because every one they found would have been filled, and the reward they would reap for their labor would have been far greater than they could imagine!
They gathered enough that their own debts were filled, and their own lives were given provision, but how many more debts could have been paid and how many other lives could they have blessed by just finding more empty vessels?
Let’s keep searching for empty vessels! Let’s do everything in our power, through the leading of the Holy Ghost, to bring in as many as we can!
We live in an hour when we surely need that Oil of Gladness, and so does every man!
• There are vessels in the church whose oil is running out like it did for the 5 foolish virgins, and they will miss out on the rapture, and may even end up being shut out of heaven altogether. Pray that they get refilled and burn brightly!
• There are so many who are sick and dying, and we need the Oil to anoint them and pray the prayer of faith over them, so we better keep getting ourselves refilled constantly so that our oil doesn’t run out!
• We are living in a time when the powers of hell have invaded the earth in a greater measure. I believe that there are a lot more people who are influenced or possessed by demons than ever before, and it’s going to take the anointing oil of the Holy Ghost to drive them out!
Church we need to be full all of the time! Let us check our own vessel to make sure that we filled, and then let us seek others who need filling!
We can’t stop searching now! We can’t let the flow of the Oil of Gladness, that Oil of the anointing of the Holy Ghost, that oil and wine that must be poured into the lives of those who are lost – we can’t allow the empty vessels to stop coming!
And we certainly can’t allow ourselves to allow the Oil of the Holy Ghost to stop flowing in us, so Search your heart to be sure you’re remaining full. Then pray for God to open doors of opportunity to bring in some empty vessels.
The song says, “God’s house is full, but his fields are empty!" There are empty vessels everywhere, perhaps even in this service right now, but the world is a field that is full of empty vessels so keep telling people about the One who can save them and fill them!
That’s the end of the message and I want to open these altars for anyone who wants to come and seek the Lord, have your vessel filled, and be ready to find other who need Jesus.
If you don’t know the Lord, and your vessel is empty, now is the time to come and be filled with his presence. Jesus is here just for you, so come!
Let us prepare our hearts for the receiving of Communion in a moment!
