If you have your Bible, 2 Kings chapter 4, a very well-known passage. I just want to read seven verses. I'll bring the message from this. Let's all stand together. The Bible says in chapter number four, verse number one, 2 Kings chapter four, verse number one. 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 creditors come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen. Elijah said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou in the house? She said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil. And then he said, go, borrow the vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels, borrow not a few. 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. 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. 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. Then she came and told the man of God, and he said, go sell the oil and pay that debt and live down that children of the rest. Let's go Lord in prayer. Father, I realize today my inability to do anything without you today. Lord, I pray that you would anoint us for the hour. Lord, thank you Lord for the word of God that we've already heard preached. Lord, we needed every message today ourselves. Our hearts are stirred because of that. Lord, I want to have determination, and Lord, I want to stay in the peace of God all the time. Lord, if I have that upon us, Lord, I believe I can carry out your word. Lord, I can do all things through Christ's strength. God, I pray help this pastor, help this church, these men of God here today. Lord, we're all facing the same thing, all the same trials, same troubles, different times, different ways, different manners, but we're all in this battle together. Thank you for all that you do for us in Jesus name, I pray. Amen, amen. You can be seated. Thank you for standing. I wanna preach on two main things today. I tell our church that sometimes they get nervous. I said, I got a simple message for you. Whenever I say that, one lady in our church that I preach to, I figured it out, it took a while for her. You'll say you got three points, but you mean you got 25 sub points. I said, that's pretty much the case, amen. But if there be two points today, I'd like to start off the first part about the voids in this passage. There's some voids in the passage. I want to preach on this thought on borrowing vessels. And the Bible says here in the first part of this verse, in verse number one, we find a weeping woman. Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of prophets unto Elisha, saying, The first thing I see is there have been a death and a passing generation. And she said, Thy servant, my husband, is dead. In Zechariah 1, verse 5, it says, Your fathers, where are they? In the province. Do they live forever? The truth of the matter is, no. None of us live forever on this earth. There is going to be a day when we will pass away. And it doesn't matter what your title or your character or what you have done or what you are planning on doing. There is a day and a time when we will pass on the earth, whether it's by the sod or the shout, we're going to leave this world. We're going to leave this body sometime and go on. Amen? But we found out here that because of that, I think about the great man of God that's passed through my life. I think of Dr. Sammy Allen, what a great man of God Brother Sammy was. And I think about Brother Mifflin Biddler, and I think about Dr. Percy Ray. And I think about those men, I think about my dad. And I think about those men in God that was in my life that their generation they're passing off the scene and there is a passing of the generation as we move forward. I can't believe that any of us don't miss those men. And I look at myself and I'm 59 years old, I'll be 60 in January. And I'm looking at some of the heroes in my life that when they were my age, they were, boy, I stand in all of them. And now I'm taking this generation, this younger generation now looking upon me in the same way that I looked upon them. And boy, I had to be on my knees daily and say, God, help me somehow or another to deliver what they delivered to us, amen. I'm not there, but I sure desire to be, amen. And we look on with this and there's a death and a passing generation. Number two, there was a devotion of that precious generation. She says, and thou knowest that thou knowest, now be able to say that, she believed that he knew that. Thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord. Now, Jewish historians, we aren't given his name, but Jewish historians tell us that this is Obadiah found in 1 Kings chapter 18, verse four. In verse number four, it says, for it was so, in 1 Kings 18, four, it says, for it was so when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord that Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifty in a cave and fed them with bread and water. Now, I don't know whether it is or not, but I'm just telling what historians say. The Jewish historians say that to be so, but I would say this, whatever, whoever he was, it was so much so that she could openly testify her husband's devotion to the Lord, amen? And we read a little bit about that because she said, thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord. In 1 Kings chapter 18 verse 3, it says, now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly. So it very well could have been, amen. Psalm 116 verse 15 says, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints, amen. So I believe there's a devotion in this precious generation, but there's also a debt. She says, and the creditor has come to take in him my two sons to be bondmen. Now, first of all, there's a debt, there's an unpaid debt that has not been paid up yet. And that debt has left in that generation, that void that has gone on has left a debt and there is a unpleasant departure coming up in that her children would be taken away if that debt was not paid. So we see here a lot of things in this weeping woman. She's coming forward and she's saying, I've got a problem. You know who my husband was. You know who the former generation was. You know how devoted they were. But I'm telling you, there's a debt that needs to be paid. I know the difference in interpretation and application, but can I make an application to this passage? If you will, don't vote me out, don't throw me out. Can I just look at this a little bit? First of all, I see in this woman the church age that we are in today. I believe a lot of us are sitting around and we are weeping over the state that we are in today. And the Bible says in Ephesians 5, 25, husband, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, gave us a... And we know the church is a picture of the bride of Christ. And we see here that this woman can be easily pictured as the church. And the condition that she was in at that time. The death of devoted can easily be looked on those that have passed on the side. The Bible says over in Hebrews 11, 13, these all died in faith. They were devoted. Those that had gone on before us were devoted. to bring the gospel and reach the church and grow things. But thirdly, we find that there is a debt. Paul spoke about it in Romans chapter one, verse 14, I am a debtor. But I want to say not only was Paul a debtor, but I want to say that the brother Sammy Allen was a debtor. I believe Dr. Percy Ray was a debtor. I believe Brother Bill was a debtor. And I wanna say this, Dave, you're born again, you're saved, and you're in the ministry today. We're in debtors today, amen. For not only our generation, but the generation to come to keep things like it was given to us to hand it off down the road. We are debtors. You say, well, if that's the case, who is the creditor? Where's the accuser? And the accuser is coming to take our children away. Can we look at that today? She says, I'm telling you as a church, a weeping, we're weeping over the fact that there's a debt to pay and if we don't meet that debt, our children are going to be taken away. Now, we see in his, she comes to the man of God and to Elisha, millions have talked to him. Verse number two, Elisha said to her, what shall I do for thee? And she, listen, I will say this, that Elisha didn't dismiss her. He was very clear that he shows his heart toward her, that he had listened to her dilemma, that he fully understood her need, amen. He wasn't just brushing it off and saying, it doesn't matter, what happens doesn't matter. But he was absolutely, absolutely there in tune with what was going on. I believe today in the pulpit, we ought to be in tune with what's going on in our churches. We ought not be just, well, everything's okay. I will say this real clearly. Everything's not okay. Everything's not easily like it is. Things are not like they should be. Can I say amen right there? Things are not like they should be. If they would be, my church and your church and every church in the county would be packed out Sunday morning, but that is not the case. Now maybe I'm preaching somebody don't have that, but I have that. I have plenty of it. Anybody have excess pews on Sunday morning? All right, now notice this, I understand her, but he also, the truth of the matter is, is Elisha for had spent over 10 years being nothing but the minister to the man of God. It was not a position that paid much, in fact, he had left all in order to follow the man of God, amen. He was now in the role of that, and it's not a high-paying job, and he didn't have much to carry with him. In fact, when he did have a place to lay his head down, the Shunammite had to build the room in order that he might have a table, and a chair, and a candle, and a place to lay his head down, amen? So here's that Shunammite coming to him, and she says, I have a debtor that is coming to take my children away, and the former generation is gone, what are we going to do? What are we gonna do? That question, I don't know about you, but what he asked her haunts me as a preacher. What shall I do for thee? I remember Brother Wenzel, I'm gonna tell on him. I appreciate Brother Wenzel. I mean, I love you, brother. I'm telling you right now. Me and him, he's a smart one, but when we went to Bible college, we sat beside each other, sat in the back room, and they'd teach to us and we'd cry. One of them sweet days, amen. Just sat there, we just bawled like a bunch of babies back there. We're just wiping tears off, it'd be so rich. He called me up one day, you know, when all that stuff was going on with COVID and we was all trying to figure out what to do. And he called me up, he said, bro, Terry, I gotta talk to you, man. I said, all right, I don't know why he called me, I don't know. He called me up, I'm gonna talk to you, man. I think he does it just to make me feel how low I am. I mean, how little I know. And he called me up, he said, I wanna ask you a question. He said, where'd they teach that in Bible college? Where'd they tell us about dealing with this in Bible college? I said, oh, you missed it that night. It was John chapter 14. You missed it. You know what that man of God told me? He said, you liar. I was. I said, I don't know. Stay on your knees, do the best you can for your church. That's all I can tell you. I told him, I said, whatever you do, I'm not going to throw rocks at you. Do the best I can. I've seen a lot of men during that time throw rocks at other men that are trying to do the best their church knew their church, knew what they could do, what they couldn't do. I don't understand that. I don't understand that. When did you arrive with everything? You don't know. There's a lot of times, there's a lot of times in the church your man of God does not know what he's got to do next. He does not have the ability to get you out of debt yourself. I wanna say this, if we're counting on us, if we're counting on us in the pulpit to solve all the problems of our generation, you and I have got our minds in the wrong place. We better get our minds back on God. We better get back in that book. We better get back on our knees again. It's not gonna be solved by the man of God, but it can be solved by God, amen. If I offend somebody this morning, I'm sorry, but I'm telling you, I think we've took on too much of things that we have no ability to do. We've acted like, oh, we got it. We got it all. We don't have it all. Hey, even in the Bible, there's times with the man of God, when that shooting might come riding up there, he had no idea what her problem was. No idea. How in the world are you gonna win a battle when you don't even know which direction it's coming from? When you don't have all the answers. Well, I don't know about you preachers, but it sure haunts me. What shall I do for thee? Look at verse number two again. He says, tell me what hast thou in the house? In other words, we're gonna do a complete inventory. She didn't go through and say, well, I got a self-help book. I got something off the TV the other day I ordered. I'm counting it on getting through. I got an account, I got a savings account I've been putting back before. I kept it away from my husband, he don't know nothing about it. You can do all those things. She says, tell me what thou hast, what do you have in your whole house? And she says this, and she said, thine handmaid hath not anything in the house. Notice this, that even she didn't put a whole lot of, didn't put a whole lot of level of this, but she said, save a pot of oil. And it's very different. This is very different from 1 Kings chapter 17, when Elijah was there and they brought that meal and that oil and she baked him a cake. This is a different kind of oil. If you study those two oils out, they're totally different. One is cooking oil and one is anointing oil. She's talking about the only thing I can remember, her husband's been faithful. The only thing I have in the house is a pot of oil. It's not cooking oil. It's what you anointed the temple and the tabernacle with. It's that precious oil that is set aside to be sanctification. And I will say this, people don't like sanctification nowadays. I know they don't. I had a man just a while back left the church, told me, he said, you just preach traditions. I don't like you preach on sanctification all the time. I told him I had to get up to Windsor and our church is not large. They notice when people's gone. I had to tell the church, I said, so-and-so decided to leave. And they've told me, told me the reason for it. One of the reason was I was preaching on sanctification. I looked at the church, I said, turn to so-and-so tonight, I'll be preaching on sanctification. I surely ain't gonna let those that leave and dictate how I'm gonna preach. That's craziness. If they're leaving, they're not staying. I'm gonna preach the ones that stay. Amen, y'all okay? So we see there's a lot of voids, but there is, there is, there is something in the house, and it's that pot of oil. Now, notice what he says. I don't know y'all, though. Let me look at verse number three. He said, then he said, go borrow thee vessels. Now look at these vessels. He said, number one, go. To go borrow means to inquire, to request, to demand, to beg, to earnestly inquire, to obtain, and it means to get busy about getting those vessels. The key part is there is not going to be any change if she refuses to do this. No matter what happens to her life, no matter what's going on, no matter how bad the day it is, nothing's going to change if she does not do this. She has to be obedient and go borrow these vessels. Amen? Now notice this, she said, go bar these vessels abroad of all thy neighbors. Abroad means to not to be separated outside of walls, to be outside, to be in the field, to be in the highways and hedges. She says, you need to go beyond the walls of your house in order to bar these vessels. And if you don't borrow these vessels, nothing good is gonna come. You know, somebody said the height of ignorance or stupidity, or y'all help me on that word, dumb, is to keep doing the same things and expect something to change, amen? She has to get busy about borrowing these vessels, all right? Notice this, and this is what really got my heart. It says, even empty vessels bar not a few. I'm beginning to study on this. I said, Lord, I want to understand. And you say, well, empty means empty. Can I borrow the cup now? So I come here in the cup, and I know what empty means. Empty means empty. But I said, I really want to understand what he's saying here. Because you get thinking about this, it's just empty vessels. But that word there actually means, carries the meaning of worthless. Carries the meaning of vain. It carries the meaning that they may have been cast away vessels. It carries the meaning that maybe these vessels weren't deemed with any value whatsoever. It carries the meaning that no one, when you come up and ask for that vessel, that they'd get upset about it. Now, if I come up and got this vessel, there's something in that, people might get a little upset about that. But when I found that empty vessel, Don't have nothing in it. Somebody's just pushed it aside. Somebody's put it on the shelf. Somebody threw it out back door. You know what? I have never, you ever seen, I know in the country, here's what I do. People take things out in the wood and throw them away. Oh, yeah, that's how I do it in the countryside. Amen. And you know what? I've never have gone out and found one of them old trash piles. I know that's country bunk and stuff, but I like to dig around in there sometimes just because you never know. Sometimes there's some old stuff in there. You know what, I never have anybody come around to me and say, mm-mm, don't touch that, I've been saving that. Cause in their mind, that vessel is vain and of no use, and they're not using it anyway. So if you go and borrow that vessel, nobody's gonna stop you. Nobody's gonna, it's not gonna bother nobody. If you take that thing that they have considered cast away and of no use and of no good, and of anything whatsoever, they'll not stop you. He knew it, he knew it when he asked them. He said, he said, you go bar, you go find empty vessels that not only have nothing in them, but in fact, even the vessel itself is not seen of any use whatsoever. And he said, by the way, borrow not a few. Get busy about it. Borrow them. Go beyond the walls. But you go out and get that bassist crowd. That vessel don't mean anything. And then notice what he says in verse four. When thou art come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons. Now we're going to look at the filling vessels. First, you borrow them, then you gotta fill them. And he says, first of all, it is an internal work. It's an internal work, number one, because you shut the door on the interruption. Neither the neighbors nor the creditor is allowed to come in and interrupt the work. Boy, I tell you, we need that in our churches today. We need to learn to come back in the church of God and shut it down from all the things of the world. Close out that, shut down the things of the world. Nothing of the world should be allowed in the church as far as anything that would mess up the flow and mess up the contact, mess up the mind, mess up the heart. Nothing should be distracting whatsoever. You shut those doors and you shut out all the interruptions. Number two, you shut those doors on all the insertion. What do you mean, preacher? It means no one is allowed to insert their opinion on how to do it better. I think a lot of times we're so worried about the brethren they're doing that we can't even get busy about what we're supposed to be doing, looking for the approval of somebody. I will say this brother, if God called you in the ministry and God gave you that book and you're born again and you have the Holy Spirit, I have the confidence and the God and the Bible and the Holy Spirit to give you guidance on what you ought to do at this church. I'm not bitter at that, I'm just saying a lot of times it handicaps us from doing what we need to do with our church. There's sometimes we have some older vessels. Empty older vessels. They take a certain kind of work. There's sometimes we have a younger vessel and they take a little extra work. Sometimes they have to learn just how to sit in church. Just sit. Boy, I so encouraged you as a brother. I had the brother, Bill's brother, South's youth meeting. And you were sitting right in front of me like that. And you had those row of young people there. And some of them were learning how to sit and how to be quiet and all those things. And this preacher sat right there and didn't flinch and didn't bother him. And he didn't get all edgy. And he didn't care about what the brethren felt. He just brought them to church. And it helped me, I said to my dad, I said, I am so proud to be in the presence of somebody who's not always worried about what everybody thinks about the vessels that he's working on. I gotta move on, I gotta move on. We need to shut the door on the intermission, no one is allowed to stop until the task is complete. Shut the doors, don't quit. It's an internal work, number two, it's an investing work. and shall pour out into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full. They poured out, what are they pouring? Pot of oil. What they had. If this didn't work, by the way, if this didn't work, it's all they had. He said, I don't know what we're gonna do. If it's all you got, it's all you can do. I had a preacher, a friend of mine, one time, we were talking, you know how preachers go through, and we go through struggles, and boy, he was getting ready to, he said, I'm worried about somebody in our church, he said, I'm trying to take this stand on marriage and divorce and all these things, I'm trying to be right, and this family's in church, and their daughter and this boy's been together, and they're, you know, he's been married before, and there's two sides, big family, the church, if I take this stand, it's just gonna bust wide open, it's gonna split it all out, it's gonna, you know, I know y'all never go through those things. Y'all so super spiritual, your halo's cocked sideways, you got it all down pat. But I'm telling you right now, you don't like to see folks leave. He finished the whole spiel like I've done before. And I asked him a simple question. I said, preacher, what else can you do? I mean, either compromise or stay on that book. I mean, it comes down to that simple. I mean, there's sometimes it's true. It's just gonna go against everything. Oh, that's gonna bust thing. But you know what? He called me up about a week later. He said, they come in, I told him that. And he said, we agree with you 100% preach, no problem. What if he had said, I'll marry you? How would their confidence fail in their pastor? You need to pour out what you have. It's an investing work. And you pour in. So she went from him and shut the door upon her and upon her sons who brought the vessel of her. And she poured out. She did exactly what he said. She poured out. But look at verse six. And it came to pass when the vessels were full that she said unto her son, bring me yet a vessel. Boy, she's a pourin' that oil. It just seem like there's an end to the supply. It just keeps pourin' every time he gives me a vessel. I just keep on pourin'. I keep on pourin'. Poured in there, all that. She said, give me another vessel. We ain't got no more. House is all full of full vessels now. You know what I found out, what I believe is filling vessels is invigorating. When we pour ourselves into somebody's life, when we do only what we know to do, when we close the door from all the effects of the world, and it just becomes a bit about what the Lord wants us to do. You know what we keep asking for? Bring me another one. You know what I love to do? I love for a young Christian to get, I mean, a person to get newly saved. And you know what I like to do? I like to sit them somewhere near me in church. That way I don't look around the crabby people. I know, I know, you don't have any of those. Boy, I like to be around newly born again people. It just kinda, you know, I just, how long you been saved? for two years. Can I just sit here for a minute? It's the best life. It's the best. You ever been to church and it'll just hit you and cry a little bit? You just cry because you know you saved. A few times. It's a good work. All I say is bring me another. Bring me another. Bring me another, bring me another, bring me another, bring me another, until there's nothing left to pour out and the house is full. Then she hears the victory, then she came and told the man of God and said, go sell the oil and pay thy debt and live thou and thy children of the rest. If we want our church to survive, we have to quit leaning on the last generation to pay the debt. If you think about it, you'll go back and look at their generation. If they'll be honest with you, they found those that were broken and cast aside. Nobody cared for society and throw them aside. Nobody cared for them. They got them out and loaded up buses, brought them in buses, brought them everywhere they could get them, just bring them out. I talked to Brother Biddle, he's going down the road one day, there's another man sitting and he said, he said, Preacher Biddle, tell us about some of those revivals you had back there. And he said, oh, he said, it never was that our preaching was that good. He said back then the church was nothing, it wasn't having entertainment wasn't a problem. So when you had revival in the county or in the city that we're in, he said it wasn't nothing for 50% of the people that were setting church to be brought to the church and were lost and they knew they were lost. 50%. He said, it wasn't that we had great, great messages. He said, it's just that the congregation was full of empty vessels. Hallelujah. You say, preacher, have you got this all down pat? No, no, but you know, when I'm preaching, I preach this at my church. You know what you hear come out of my lips a lot? Ask my wife. Now my language is taught, and I keep saying, have you found any empty vessels? Have you found any empty vessels? Have you found any empty vessels? Because that's the key, folks. It's not how good our preaching is. It's not how good our singing is. It's definitely not our entertainment. You know what it is? It's about finding some empty vessel and pouring into them what God's given us. Go find that one on the street that just, he don't know nothing about church, but he'd like just get out of the rain. He'd just like get out of the rain. She or she might even want a meal. Maybe they let you have their children on Sunday morning because they don't care about them. The victory is only found by finding the empty vessels. I believe that with all my heart. I believe we really want to see something happen in our church age. It's going to have to happen by us going out and getting empty vessels.