January 17, 2016 Gods Care Up Close and Personal by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church iconSilicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

2 views

January 17, 2016 God’s Care, Up Close and Personal 2 Kings 4:1-7 Pastor Josh Sheldon

0 comments

00:03
Lord, we just praise you as the Eternal God. Lord, we thank you that as you have ever been,
00:10
Lord, you will continue to be. Lord, we thank you that you have provided a rest for us, a heavenly kingdom for us,
00:22
Lord. And we thank you that you have always opposed the crown and heart, that you have been merciful to the poor and the needy.
00:35
You have protected those who are defenseless. And Lord, we just thank you for this mercy.
00:43
I pray that we will humble ourselves and open your sight. Lord, that we would, in humility, come before you and learn the truth of your word.
00:53
Lord, that you would open up the eyes of our hearts to hear what Pastor Josh is going to preach today.
01:00
Lord, that it would only be truth. And that we would know you better and live in closer communion because of what we hear today.
01:11
In your name we pray. Amen. Amen. Hey Joseph, Joseph, would you get me my, there's a pot of water.
01:23
We'll turn please in your Bible to 2 Kings chapter 4. This morning we're going to consider the widow's oil, as this history is often called.
01:38
Thank you. 2 Kings chapter 4.
01:45
Our text this morning is verses 1 through 7. Let me read those for you. A certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying,
01:57
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.
02:07
So Elisha said to her, What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house? And she said,
02:12
Your maidservant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil. Then he said, Go, borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors.
02:20
Empty vessels, do not gather just a few. 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.
02:35
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.
02:41
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,
02:48
There is not another vessel. So the oil ceased. Then she came and told the man of God, And he said,
02:54
Go, sell the oil and pay your debt, and you and your sons live on the rest. May God bless the reading and the hearing of his word this morning.
03:05
What this passage does is it brings our attention from the grand movements of history, which we had in the great war of the three kings who went to subdue
03:13
Moab, in the previous chapter, from there, from these huge movements, these dramatic events, to the minutest level, to the trial, the trouble of a single widow in this small town.
03:28
We're not told even where this small city is where she resided. Jericho, Gilgal, Bethel, where the seminaries were, as we spoke of a few weeks ago.
03:36
We go from this great military campaign down to this widow, this single widow's travail.
03:47
In the previous chapter, three kings had joined together to bring Moab back to submission to their Israelite overlords, and that mission initiated by the apostate king of Israel, and without any inquiry to God, without any reference to him, without calling for a prophet before they went, it was an unmitigated disaster.
04:07
Moab threw off the yoke imposed centuries before by King David, Jehoram, the king of Israel, his ally
04:13
Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, the deputy over Edom who answered to Jehoshaphat.
04:19
They all went home having wasted their time, their resources, their enterprise. And after this, immediately after this, in the very next verse, the first verse of chapter four, our inspired historian presents to us this most innocuous of all people, a widow.
04:40
As we learned back in 1 Kings 17, when Elisha went to Zarephath and there stayed with the widow, you recall that widows were the most desolate of all people in that time and in that land.
04:52
They had no special rights. They were generally ignored by society. They had very few resources. Their prospects in the best of times, except in the rarest of cases, was only for the barest existence.
05:05
Such a one as this, this unnamed widow from an unnamed town, such a one as this cries out to the
05:16
Lord God through Elisha and the Lord hears her plea. The Lord sees her trouble and He hears her cry.
05:27
And God undertakes to do what He had entrusted men to do. What the law from beginning to end, from the king down to the plainest of men requires.
05:39
Which is what? To care for the widow, to look out for the fatherless, the orphan. And those categories only being symbolic of looking out for those who need help, who can't look out for themselves, who are at a moment disadvantaged by whatever means.
05:57
Such a one as that cries out to the Lord through the prophet Elisha and as we will see has
06:04
God's ear. You look first at the widow's plight. At her plight.
06:11
Her husband had been one of the prophets, a disciple of Elisha. And she reminds Elisha of two of his qualities.
06:18
Well one is that he had been Elisha's servant. He served the Lord by his service to the prophet. And the second thing is that he feared the
06:26
Lord. He was a God worshipper. He feared God in the right way.
06:32
His service then was to God through his ministry to Elisha. We have no idea how old this man was. This man, husband of hers who died.
06:39
His sons are young enough to be of value as slaves, but the man himself could have been quite elderly or maybe just a few years older or around the same age as his wife.
06:48
We just don't know. But to add pressure to the widow, as if in her loss of her husband she needs any more pressure, to add to that trial is the fact that there is money that he had owed which now of course she owes.
07:05
He had taken up a loan of some sort and he's left her with no resources to keep up the payments or to pay it off.
07:12
And what's the collateral for the loan? It's really the only thing she has left are two sons. The widow's case in that day was one of just a destitute poverty.
07:24
The only hope she really had to be out of it would be children, especially sons who could work and care for her.
07:34
No, they are collateral for whatever money their husband had borrowed. The creditor is of course on his way.
07:46
And the way this reads, it's like he's on the path. He's coming down the street. He has to turn one more corner and he's going to be on her block and be knocking on her door.
07:54
The creditor's coming. This is crisis for her. And he's coming right then.
08:00
And his intent seems to be more than to be paid back. Indentured servitude was an accepted way of paying off debt.
08:10
But servitude had a limit. Either the loan would be satisfied by the services rendered or the year of jubilee would come along and all debts would be forgiven.
08:20
Servitude had a limit. The creditor has more than this in mind. He doesn't have bonded servitude in mind.
08:30
He has slavery in mind. His concern for the widow is about the same level as is his mercy.
08:38
It's nil. It's just not there. He is like the land where he lives, as far from the mind of God as it's possible to be.
08:47
There are so many scriptures that reveal God's thoughts,
08:52
God's mind towards widows and orphans and the weak and the defenseless. Let's read a few of these to you.
09:02
Exodus 22, 22 says you shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child.
09:09
The prophet Isaiah chapter 1 verse 17. He demands this of God's people. Learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
09:22
To those who refuse to hear him, the prophet says, your princes are rebellious and companions of thieves.
09:27
Everyone loves bribes and follows after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, nor does the cause of the widow come before them.
09:35
These are condemnatory words by God through the prophet to the people of Judah at that time.
09:43
Jeremiah calls for repentance with this. He says, for if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, then
09:58
I will cause you to dwell in this place in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.
10:04
Just one more. The psalmist condemns as cruelty to ignore the case, the need of the widow.
10:14
It says the wicked slay the widow and the stranger and murder the fatherless. There are more, but whether we look to the law, we look to the
10:22
Psalms which reveal God's heart, we look to the prophets who condemn for failure to follow
10:28
God's law. Look anywhere in the scripture, the widow and all who are disadvantaged, all who are weak, all who are lowly, all who are in need of merciful assistance.
10:40
They all come to a special place of God's notice. Our Lord Jesus Christ took special notice of the widow
10:47
Nain who had lost her only son when he raised him back to life. Do you remember this from the book of Luke?
10:54
Where Luke makes that point, and he was her only son. She was a widow and he was her only son.
11:00
And this procession is going down the street and Jesus Christ stops it and raises him to life. Not miss the fact, the point, the emphasis that Luke gives us.
11:11
She was a widow and that was her only son. The mind of God, you see, is that God's people care for those who especially need care, those who are not able to fend for themselves for whatever reason.
11:26
And so with all this, we come to this widow, this woman whose husband had been one of the sons of the prophets, a disciple of Elisha, probably
11:35
Elijah before Elisha, had served him faithfully. And what would
11:43
God have of the creditor? Well, we would say quickly, mercy.
11:50
We don't have to say even forgive the debt for him to have mercy. We could just show some restraint. Give her a little time.
11:57
I know you're a widow. You only have two sons. You guys were poor. You were serving the Lord. You didn't make a lot of money.
12:04
I'll give you some number of weeks or months or even a couple of years to get your feet under you and get going again.
12:12
Something like that. Didn't mean he had to give up all claim to being paid back, though I think
12:18
God would be pleased had he. He had other options, though, of a lesser degree than that, but other options than coming to her house and taking her only two sons, her only real hope of not living a destitute, poverty -stricken life.
12:34
Why do we focus so much on this in this message? There's a theme running through this history that we started.
12:43
It's actually been about four months, four months ago, beginning back in 1st Kings 17 with Elijah.
12:50
And this theme is running through now still with Elisha. It's a bit between the lines, but it's really not hard to see.
12:58
You see, there's a deadness of the land. The land is spiritually dead, and it couldn't be more clearly expressed than a widow who goes to a prophet for help that she ought to not have needed.
13:15
She ought to not have needed to make a plea. If this land were spiritually alive, if this land were following God's mind,
13:22
His heart, His law, the widow would have found a creditor ready to forgive the loan at best, but at least show some restraint, show some mercy, grant her some time to collect herself.
13:39
This land is dead. The creditor only needed to look to God for a moment to find a better way than what he was intending to do.
13:52
And what's more than all this, as you heard in Psalm 72, which Joseph read to you, the king should have been administering justice.
14:01
The king should have been being sure that these sorts of things would happen, that widows would be shown mercy, pity, restraint.
14:12
That's really our overarching background here. We can move forward very quickly.
14:18
I want to look at the miracle. That's the widow's situation. That's where she was. I've given you some idea of where she should have been had
14:25
God's people been following God's mind, His heart, His law. Let's look at the miracle.
14:34
Elisha asks what He might do for her. This is not Him giving her a choice.
14:41
He's not wondering aloud, what can I do? What shall I do? Well, let's talk about some options.
14:46
That's not what's happening here at all. It's more of a statement that He will do something.
14:53
It's not, what shall I do for you? It's, what shall I do for you?
14:59
There's a certainty to it. He begins with what she has, which is only this small flask of oil.
15:06
And here she echoes back to the widow at Zarephath, the one that Elijah ran into there in that city, the one that God told him to run into,
15:13
I should say. And that widow in Zarephath, remember she only had this smattering of oil, a little bit of flour, and she was going to make a little cake and cook it over the sticks that she was gathering when
15:23
Elijah found her and just have that last meal before they die of starvation. And like that former widow, this one, the one that Elisha has dealt with now, this one also must give up all she has at Zarephath.
15:40
The prophet required her last morsel. He said, you make that cake for me, and then the
15:45
Lord will care for you. She had to take that step. Here the last drop of anything valuable she has is the first to be invested.
15:58
So he tells her to go and gather all the vessels she can find, all the pottery she can get her hands on, go to your neighbors and get anything that they're willing to put in your hand.
16:08
The word can actually mean to beg. She's to go and beg her neighbors for their empty jars.
16:16
And then she's to bring them inside, close the door, and fill them with oil, starting with her small flask, all she has remaining in the world.
16:25
And this is what Elisha is telling her. And he's saying that the oil is going to keep going. I think it's very clear in what he told her to do.
16:42
There's nothing here that will allow her to fill the first batch of jars, set them aside, then go out and get some more, saying, hey, this is working pretty well here.
16:52
Hey, boys, go out and get some more of these. This thing seems to be working. It's not like that at all.
16:59
What she collects will be filled, no more, no less. Now some people wonder here whether it was her small faith that caused her to not ask for more vessels, as many as she could possibly have gathered up, just cram them into the house as it were.
17:15
They look ahead to Joash, the king of Israel, who was with Elisha in his last moments. Do you recall that?
17:21
And Lord willing, in not too much longer, we'll get there. 2 Kings 13, remember, he's given the arrow of the
17:27
Lord, and he's told to strike the ground with it. And Joash strikes three times, and Elisha was angry with him.
17:33
So you should have struck seven times, then you would defeat your enemy these seven times. You would have wiped them out, so to speak.
17:40
But now you'll only defeat them three times. Some people look ahead to that incident and equate it with the widow here and saying she didn't get enough jars.
17:50
But here with this widow, there's no rebuke. With Joash, the king of Israel, the prophet was mad.
17:56
He was angry at him, and he rebuked him to his face. There's nothing like that here.
18:03
I mean, how could there be, after all those scriptures I read, and there's many, many more you can find very quickly that reveal to us how
18:11
God regards widows? How could the prophet rebuke her? No, the clear sense of it here is that she gathered up plenty.
18:20
And I would argue she gathered up exactly the right number. Not one too many, not one too few.
18:28
And what are we speaking of here? What we're talking about here is faith. It's faith.
18:36
It's faith that she sent her sons out to gather up all the jars that she could find or that they could find.
18:42
It's faith that caused her to put her last vial of oil, the last thing she had of any monetary value, as the beginning point of it.
18:53
This is not saving faith we're talking about. Let's be clear. Not saving faith as one who believes the promises of Jesus Christ who was yet to come.
19:01
It's faith that God is able. It's faith at its most basic level, if you will.
19:08
That there is a God and he is able to do this. She knew
19:15
Elisha to be a man of God. Her faith was that God was working in Israel through him and that the
19:20
God who was working was able to do what the prophet had just said he would do. It's not uncommon for a miracle to be commensurate with the faith of the beneficiary.
19:36
Miracles were often commensurate in proportion to the faith of the one who receives the benefit.
19:46
Matthew chapter 9 verse 28 to 30. And when he, meaning
19:51
Jesus, and when he had come into the house, the blind men came to him and Jesus said to them,
19:59
Do you believe that I'm able to do this? That's a great question, isn't it?
20:08
Do you believe I am able to do this? Why are you calling me to you? Did you try some shaman or rabbi and all these other people before and it's just not working?
20:19
You just want to cover all your bases? So you heard of this itinerant preacher who did a few miracles? That's not acceptable.
20:27
Jesus says to these men, Do you believe that I'm able to do this? This is not a whim.
20:33
This is not a fancy. This is not just a silly little wish. It's do you have faith?
20:40
Same word. That I'm able to do this. And they said to him,
20:46
Yes, Lord. Jesus obviously believed them. Jesus who knew what was in a man's heart.
20:54
Because it says next, Do you see their blessing from God is commensurate here with the faith that they exhibited.
21:07
The faith that Jesus knew they had. Notice that he did not say to them, According to your faith, you will be with me in paradise.
21:15
Their faith was that God was working through him, through Jesus, and he was able to do this. According to that confidence,
21:23
Jesus chose to heal their eyes. This does not mean that without faith in Jesus Christ as the
21:30
Son of God who died on the cross, that if we should repent of our sins and believe in him, and put our faith in him and all our trust in what he did on the cross, if we have not that kind of faith, that we can get a lesser benefit.
21:45
He'll fix our physical maladies. That's not at all what is being said here. That's not at all what
21:50
I'm trying to teach from this scripture. Only that in order to reveal the working of God, in some cases, the miracle conferred upon a person was in proportion to or commensurate with the faith they had in the ability of God to do that miracle.
22:10
That's all it's saying, and there are not that many cases of that in the scripture. But they are there. Paul in Acts 14 9 -10 says,
22:46
And again by faith she took her last vial with a smidgen of oil and she poured it into the jar as the starting point, and then she poured and poured and poured.
22:58
When the family had filled the last jar, God withheld the oil. Then the oil ceased, says the scripture.
23:04
And so we might see here the fallacy of thinking as we sometimes hear, Oh, if only she had more faith, she would have gotten more jars and she'd still be receiving blessings today.
23:17
Why is that a wrong conclusion? Why is that a wrong thought to have and impose upon this wonderful, this beautiful miracle of God done for this innocuous widow?
23:27
Why should we not think that way and denigrate her faith and say if she only had more, she might be pouring more oil today.
23:35
Wouldn't that be more wonderful? It's wrong because it denigrates what the
23:41
Lord had done for her. It makes God who always has one eye on the defenseless and the other eye on the powerful into some kind of a miserly curmudgeon.
23:53
Instead of that, instead of slamming her for her lack of faith, which I don't think the scripture at all allows for, instead of that, though, let's take from here the conclusion the author means for us.
24:06
The land of Israel is dead in trespass and sin.
24:12
They have forsaken the God of their father for dumb idols, the insanity of which had been demonstrated by Elijah on Mount Carmel.
24:19
The kings of Israel are no guardians of God's justice, and they're so far from administering his mercy as the depths of the ocean are from heaven.
24:28
How far is this land from hearing the word of God from Jesus Christ? Just think about it a moment. Just a couple of the
24:36
Lord's sayings in the book of Matthew. These are both from chapter 23. He says, Again he said,
25:07
How far is this land in Elisha's day from hearing a word from the
25:20
Lord like what Jesus just spoke there to the Pharisees in his day? Let's understand, widows and orphans are no more or less sinners than anyone else.
25:33
The poor and the defenseless, the marginalized, the weak, those who have no influence, they all need the same as the rest to be forgiven of their sins.
25:42
They all need what we all need, which is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to be cleansed by his blood shed on the cross.
25:48
There's no difference for all of sin and falling short of the glory of God. Yet God looks to them, to the defenseless, to the weak, to the hopeless, the dejected, the marginalized.
26:05
God looks to them as the gauge of a nation's spiritual health. And here it isn't good.
26:13
Widows are shown no mercy. She owed the money. This is true. And God's word says the wicked borrows and does not repay.
26:20
That same word, though, that condemns those who don't repay, that same word says that debts are to be forgiven in this regular cycle of sevens and fifties, fifties being the
26:31
Jubilee year. That same word requiring us to repay what we borrowed also demands restraint.
26:39
You see, it's a matter of faith and judgment and contentment, because that same word also allows bonded servitude as satisfaction of obligations.
26:47
But the man is seeking ownership of the two sons. He wants slavery. He's willing to leave her in utter and complete desperation.
26:59
Our passage proves what Jesus said in Luke chapter 18 and verse 7. His parable of the widow seeking justice from the unjust judge.
27:06
Remember, he finally hears her just because he's tired of her bothering him in the parable.
27:14
But he finally gives her justice, if for no other reason just to quiet her for his own convenience.
27:22
And the Lord Jesus goes on, he says, So where is she to go, this widow?
27:36
To the king? No, she's not going to go to the king. She's not going to the man whose father murdered Naboth for his vineyard.
27:43
She can't go there for him. She has to cry out to God who, as Jesus promised, did what? Answered her speedily.
27:54
There's another reason not to second guess her for the number of jars. And that's simply this.
28:01
Don't second guess her for having not collected enough jars, because as the scripture tells us, how
28:08
God blessed her. See how God blessed her.
28:16
Read what God did for her and ask if there's any room for criticism against her in this scripture.
28:22
When she had filled the last jar, Elisha told her to do three things with the oil. The three things she had to do first, sell it.
28:30
In other words, get the monetary value for it. Go sell it. And then with the proceeds, satisfy the bill.
28:38
Satisfy this creditor who might be coming around the corner down her street right then. And finally, third thing, live on the rest.
28:49
You see, God had met her need. Did he not? What did she cry out for?
28:56
The creditor's coming to take my sons. I owe him money and I have nothing to pay it with. My husband left me with this debt.
29:02
I can't satisfy it. That's her need. Has God provided for that?
29:09
Indeed he had. She had plenty of money to pay off the debt. And then she was told to live on the rest.
29:22
Does this tell you what an abundance she had? She could live with her two sons on the rest.
29:28
God had met her need. And if she had kept collecting jars, if she had gotten more and more jars, if at the very beginning she understood what was going to happen, she just piled her house from top to bottom, side to side, everywhere she could with jars, what would that read like?
29:44
It would be greed. It would be avarice. It would be things that the word of God would say are not good.
29:52
God would be tempting her into a sinful pattern which we know God would never do for he cannot be tempted by sin.
30:02
Such greed would have actually placed her in company with her tormentor, this creditor. So the abundance of God's blessing is not to be disparaged here in this scripture.
30:15
Instead, thanksgiving should be offered to the king of heaven for what he had done for her. And I think any other way to look at this would reveal a heart in us that says,
30:26
Lord, I appreciate what you did, but you haven't done enough. It's like the old song that we used to sing at Passover.
30:36
It was Dayenu. If you had given us the Torah but not taken us out of Egypt, Dayenu, it would have been enough.
30:41
And it goes on and on with the blessing. If you've done this but not gone further and done this, Lord, it would have been enough. Dayenu, over and over.
30:50
And I'm afraid if we take this wrong approach to what the widow did, if we have any thought in our mind that she didn't collect enough, that somehow she was deficient, that's going to reveal something in our heart about our view of God's blessing.
31:07
And I'm afraid that too often that what that would reveal is we think we deserve more. We think we deserve better. Oh, Lord, why didn't you give me time to collect five more jars?
31:15
I didn't realize you were going to help me to strike it rich with this or that venture. If only I'd known
31:21
I would have gotten more instead of being thankful for what he has done. I mean, think of the way
31:27
God has provided for you. Sometimes his provision is as mundane as giving us strength and health so that we can go to work and make a living.
31:36
He's given us skills that employers are willing to pay for so our families will be taken care of. He's given wives to help husbands and husbands to love wives.
31:43
He's given us a church right here. He's given us the fellowship of the saints, which is each other. You and me brought together by the same
31:52
God who filled the widow's jar. Has God not met your needs?
31:59
Has he not provided us with all these things, adding to our faith, husband, wives, children, friends, brothers, sisters, jobs and clothes and cars and everything?
32:10
Dare we look and say, yes, but if I only had one more jar. No, would not the scripture answer back to us, be content with such things as you have and praise
32:22
God for each and every one of them? No, God does not give his spirit by measure as though he were doling him out piecemeal to us.
32:32
No, as Jesus said, wondering at our lack of faith, he said, if you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the
32:41
Holy Spirit to those who ask him? And then when he gives, we say,
32:49
Lord, just put this all on hold for a moment and I'm going to go find one more vessel because you haven't given quite enough.
32:58
God's provision is not meant for self -promotion. It's not meant to make us wealthy. Perhaps the widow could have become the first big oil of the
33:06
Middle East if she had just gotten enough jars, but that's kind of silly. God met her need and then some.
33:13
The creditor was satisfied, her sons were safe, her security was ensured.
33:20
See, this was no partial miracle, but an overabounding display of mercy and kindness and provision from the hand of God.
33:30
What else was it? It was caring for the widow. And I think in the way
33:35
God cared for the widow, it's a rebuke to all who did not. From the creditor who was running to her house to take everything she had all the way up to the king, to whom it would have been useless to go.
33:50
It was a spark of life in this dead land. It was his work of God done so there'd be a light on a hill that people would see it and glorify your father in heaven.
34:08
God did this so that the dead might grope after life, so that the dead land might see the value of repentance.
34:17
As Paul says in Ephesians 2, you who are dead in trespasses and sin, he made alive. How does he make you alive?
34:26
As we discussed earlier in the few comments I made before prayer, by the implanted word which is able to save your soul.
34:33
By God who called light out of darkness, who changes dark by nature children of wrath, men and women into bearers of light.
34:45
God did this in Israel. He cared for this widow the way he did so that dead men in a dead land might see and repent of their evil deeds and flee to the cross of Jesus Christ.
34:59
Oh, they could not have pronounced Jesus Christ, not back then, eight or so centuries before the
35:06
Lord was incarnated. But they can grasp onto the promises everywhere in the scriptures that they had up to that time.
35:14
He did this so that they would do that. They would grope after life by repenting. What do you have in the house?
35:22
He said to her. She said, Your maid servant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil. Nothing in the house but a jar of oil.
35:34
Nothing is a relative term. I have to tell you, with this body of hearers,
35:44
I'm a little reticent about using any word that can possibly be applied to mathematics.
35:49
Because nothing is a theoretical term, and I know it has a lot of mathematical implications, but I'm not a mathematician or an engineer.
35:59
I'm a pastor. I study theology. And theologically,
36:04
I can tell you, nothing is a relative term. To someone who has literally nothing,
36:10
I mean nothing at all, a small flask of oil like the widow had might represent quite a bit.
36:18
I have nothing but this flask of oil. So I'm poor. I'm destitute. I have nothing.
36:24
But the man who doesn't even have that might say, doing pretty well compared to me. She has the oil.
36:32
She has a house. She has two sons. She has the clothes on her back. One might think of Paul, who in Philippians 4, 11 -13, said he had learned to be content so long as he had what?
36:42
Jesus Christ. So long as he knew that he had Jesus Christ and Christ had him, he was content in all situations.
36:49
Or the instruction to Hebrews I talked about before, be content with what we have. She had only one thing of value, that small flask of oil probably used for toiletry.
37:00
But what do you start to hear her? Hear, hear. You should be hearing echoes of loaves and fishes.
37:14
Nothing's a relative term because what God does with nothing is what? Everything. He does everything.
37:21
Hebrews 11 -1, by faith we understand. Sorry, this is 11 -3. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
37:33
See, what God created didn't start with a small flask. He started with literally nothing. What he did start with, what did he start with when he called you or me out of darkness?
37:46
Nothing. Only sinners dead in trespass and sins, just like Israel was at this time.
37:51
Nothing. I have nothing but a small flask of oil. Nothing is a relative term.
38:02
Some people might say that we bring our faith to God. Have you heard this before? Well, I bring nothing to God except my faith, which
38:10
I then present to him because it's bent towards the Lord Jesus Christ. I bring nothing but my belief.
38:17
That's completely wrong though. That's totally incorrect. You have no faith unless God gives it to you.
38:24
Better to come, as the widow did, in an attitude of total dependence on God who you trust is able to do this if he is willing.
38:35
Total dependence on God who, if he is willing, will meet your greatest need. What do we answer when we're asked by God, what do you have?
38:45
We say only this. I have my need, which you and you alone can meet.
38:53
We worship a God who meets us where we're at. Jesus says that when we seek him first, when knowing and living according to his righteousness is our first priority, then all else that we need will be added to us.
39:07
Brethren, do you believe this? I see people well clothed. I see people who drove here in cars.
39:17
I see people who are going home to a good meal. Goodness, after I say amen, before we have our meeting, we have a table set up there with food on it.
39:31
Worship a God who provides everything to us. But this is second to seeking after the person of God in Jesus Christ.
39:47
Hebrews tells us that by faith in Jesus Christ, we're able to come boldly to the throne of grace, to God's throne, and there we will find help in our time of need.
39:57
Do you come to God? Do you seek God's help? Or do we take credit for what we already have and say, well,
40:06
I by my power, by my strength did this. Not verbally, we don't actually say that, but it might be implicit. Do we really go to the throne of grace in all our times of need?
40:16
The question is, do we even have the widow's faith, believing that God is able? Or is
40:22
God the footnote? Because in essence, we believe ourselves to be the able one. There's a dear sister whom we recently prayed for on several
40:33
Wednesday night prayer meetings. She just found out that the growth on her thyroid is due to hyperthyroid, which is a huge blessing from God, who provided for her need, because the other option was something called medullary cancer, which is very serious and very hard to treat.
40:51
And that's what we feared it was. That's what the doctor thought it might be, but it turned out to be this much less serious, much less severe, much easier to treat hyperthyroidism.
41:03
The test results came from Kaiser. Now it's important, because Kaiser is where she found her husband was able to get her medical coverage, which a few weeks before, even as we with her own church were praying, a few weeks before, she had no medical coverage.
41:20
And now the result of this test comes from the place where the Lord provided her medical coverage. And before all that, they had incurred an $8 ,000 emergency room bill, over which we in this place, along with she and her friends in her home church, prayed, covering it with prayer.
41:38
And we just found out that that bill, which was a terrible burden to them, was just reduced by the provider to $1 ,300.
41:47
Brethren, do you know that God meets our needs? The widow would know that.
41:54
The widow had that faith that God is able. Like the blind man Jesus came up to, said, Do you believe
41:59
I am able to do this? Yes, but we have to go further. That's faith that there is a
42:04
God. Good. The demons believe that, and they tremble at such a word. The widow would have believed that God could do all these things
42:15
I've just mentioned. She'd be nodding in affirmation. Of course He could do that. You should see what He did with my oil, the debt
42:21
I had, saving my sons for me, providing for my needs. And she'd have no problem believing that God did do that.
42:28
But the faith cannot end there. God doesn't work these deliverances just to give us health or just to protect our checkbooks from the creditors.
42:37
He does things like this, and I tell you, He does do these things so that you might see the mighty works of God and repent, so that you might flee to the cross of Jesus Christ for forgiveness of your sins, so that you might be saved, not from financial ruin, but from the pains of everlasting torment in hell.
42:56
And everything God does, He does to bring glory to His Son, Jesus Christ, and that glory is magnified when sinners repent and flee to Christ.
43:06
Brethren, if you repent, the Scripture promises you will be saved.
43:13
And the question we ask is, with Jesus, and I think implicitly, Elisha to this widow, do you believe that He is able to do this?
43:24
I declare to you by the testimony of the Spirit within me and within many others in this place, all the blessings of God that we've seen, miraculous deliverances from financial ruin, from divorce, from health scares like the one
43:39
I just spoke about. We've prayed about these in this place and seen the immediate deliverance of God. I tell you,
43:45
God is able. Amen? Lord God, Heavenly Father, we thank you for the day that you've given us together.
43:54
We thank you for the redemption we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, that He has saved our souls and we confess freely,
44:00
God, that you have shown yourself as a God who is able. And we bow down before you,
44:06
Lord of the universe. Lord, you have saved souls, you have done the greatest miracle by attributing, by saving us from our sin,
44:17
Lord, giving us faith to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Even so, Father, we pray that you would continue to watch over us, that you would grant us by your mercies continued provision, help us,
44:29
Lord, to continue to care for our families, for each other, for our church. And may you receive all the glory for it.