2 Kings 4:1-7 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. 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 any thing in the house, save a pot of oil. 3 Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. 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. 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. 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. 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.
l. THE WIDOW’S DILEMMA
-Very abrupt and striking are the transitions in the life of Elisha. Yesterday he performed an incredible miracle which supplied the needs of an entire army. This miracle became the means by which the swords of Jehoram and Jehoshaphat were subduing the rebellious kingdom of Moab.
-Now the prophet works a miracle to a poor widow whose sons are in a catastrophe and about to be turned into slaves by the creditors who are pursuing their obligations.
-From this story there are some lessons that we can learn.
A. The Lessons of the Widow
1. Her Necessity Demanded Something Drastic
-Some commentators identify this widow as the wife of Obadiah, who had served during the early days of Elijah and Elisha. This is the same Obadiah who hid some prophets in a cave away from the prying and predatory fingers of Jezebel.
-At one point, Obadiah had been a chamberlain the courts of Ahab, but that was until Jezebel settled in her heart to destroy all the prophets of God. Whatever monetary resources that Obadiah may have accrued, it had been spent attempting to preserve the prophets. When he died, his wife and children had nothing to preserve them.
• Like Joseph in Pharaoh’s courts.
• Like Daniel in Babylon.
• This upright prophet did not take advantage of the opportunity to deceitfully gain from the courts that he served in.
-Elisha is filled with pity for this little widow. Who knows what destitution she had undergone without complaint? But now the dilemma is heightening. . . . . . Her creditors are coming for their debt and because she cannot pay, her sons are going to become slaves.
-She could contain herself no longer, she has to get help or die in the dilemma.
-Consider the desperate situation that faces us in this generation:
• One hundred and thirty-eight thousand (138,000) more lost people ate breakfast this morning than did yesterday morning.
• When we get here next Sunday night, there will have been an increase of about one million more lost people in this world than when we give the altar call last week.
• The year 2003 will conclude with 50 million more lost people in this world than there were beginning on January 1, 2003.
• By this time tomorrow night, one hundred and forty-six thousand (146,000) will have died without ever having heard of Jesus Christ and the Gospel, most of those who have not heard has been no fault of their own.
• Line up all the lost people in this world in a single line and the line will circle the globe thirty (30) times and the line will grow twenty (20) miles every single day.
• Assume that today, we were to drive down that line of people and the only thing that we did was give them a New Testament, if we drove for fifty (50) miles per hour for ten (10) hours each day it would take four years and forty days for us to reach the place where we started. However the line would have grown thirty-thousand (30,000) miles by the time we ended the trip.
• Suppose that we stopped the clock and noon today and closed the cemeteries and shut down the OB wards, no else dies or is born until we reach every lost person on this earth at the rate that “all” evangelical churches are going it would take 320 years to win those of United States alone. To reach the whole world, it would take 4,000 years and that is if no one died or was born.
• Not once, not twice, but five times the Lord commanded His church to “Go ye” and reach the lost.
-Despite those facts, there is a sovereign work of the Spirit that is going to prevail across:
• Dothan.
• Houston County.
• Alabama.
• The Southeastern United States.
• The United States.
• Extending into the world.
-The prophet asked the widow, “What do you have in your house?” God is not looking for extravagant materials, plans, programs. . . . . . All He is looking for is for what things we may deem as simple. But the simple has the capacity to invoke the miraculous.
• It was a sling shot that killed a giant.
• It was the jawbone that brought a great victory.
• It was the scarlet cord that saved Rahab’s family.
• It was the rod in the hand of Moses that secured Israel’s exit.
• It was the mantle striking the waters that parted the Jordan for Elijah.
• It was the little boy’s lunch of fish and bread that fed the multitude.
-That is the way that God works. . . . . . It is the simple that has the capacity to invoke the miraculous.
-Never, never, never underestimate the power of the small things that we have in our lives.
-Look at the miracles of the Lord and how that He used small, insignificant things to overcome deep deficits.
2. The Sign of Poverty proved to be the greatest source of prosperity.
-Get all the vessels that you can find. God is going to fill them.
-How great must have been the astonishment of the widow when pouring into the first vessel the vessel refilled immediately to the brim again when she turned it back upright. The same thing continued to happen as she went from vessel to vessel.
-Her house is now closed up to the world and it is in this vast secret place that God’s power is revealed. It is not in the crowd that God works. Reverence, stillness, and solitude are needed for the miracle to occur and therefore the door must be shut and the unsympathetic world must be excluded.
• The seed germinates, or rather multiplies itself in the darkness of the soil.
• Formless matter crystallizes in the darkness of the caves into more than the glory of the flowers of the earth.
• The beauty of a rose is hidden in the buds before it is ever displayed.
• The arm of God was working for Israel in the depths of the night long before Israel was trapped at the shores of the Red Sea.
-That is why that you must find every vessel available and keep on pouring it out.
All biography is a commentary on the necessity of seeing life through. There was a man named Oliver Wendell Holmes who was a very famous individual who maintained a relationship with a man named Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century. It was a very strange relationship. In fact it is one of the strangest things that I have ever heard.
Holmes was born in 1809 and Johnson was born in 1709. Oliver Wendell Holmes kept the pace of his life in step with the biography of Samuel Johnson, who had been born exactly one hundred years ahead of Holmes. Month by month and year by year, Holmes would look to see what Johnson did at the corresponding time in his own life. He tried to do like Johnson did and think like Johnson thought. It was like two different instruments playing the same tune in two different centuries, exactly one hundred years apart.
Then Dr. Samuel Johnson died in the biography in the year of 1784. Now it was 1884 and Oliver Wendell Holmes lived on. He wrote after that, “I feel so lonely now that my great friend and companion of many years has left me.” Holmes main mistake was following the one. The Lord left in His word that we should follow in his steps.
But Oliver Wendell Holmes discovered a very vital fact about life. This fact is something that many people never really discover. And there are some who find this fact too late in life to really recover. The fact is that life must be lived to it’s conclusion and that life itself must be lived in a sense that one lives beyond himself. It is one thing to start well but it is entirely something else to finish stronger than what you start and finish completely the task that God has chosen for you. Holmes went on to live entirely beyond himself.
-This church must live beyond itself in all that it does.
-Out of one small jar was poured out so much that by the miracle of multiplication all the empty vessels were filled. The small jar filled a multitude of vessels that were larger than it was. It filled those vessels because God infused it with the source.
-It does not matter what you may perceive yourself to be. . . . . . .God can see far more in you than you can see in yourself.
ll. CONCLUSION – LIVING BEYOND
-This church must live beyond itself
-It’s time to live beyond ourselves as never before. . . . . .
Philip Harrelson
January 26, 2003
barnabas14@juno.com
