Well, good morning. It is so good to worship the Lord.
Let me share with you just one paragraph before we look into the Word and continue our little series concerning the bread-breaking ministry that we have just celebrated.
In one of my meditations, I have been studying the Lamb of God—not just tracing the expression lamb through a concordance, but asking the Lord to minister in my heart what it means that He was the Lamb.
One of the principles that I love to apply as I study the Word is that the picture is only a picture, and the reality is infinitely greater than the picture. In the Old Testament, the animal lamb was the picture. Continually, daily, for thousands of years, the fire consumed the lamb.
In the reality, which is infinitely greater, the Lamb consumed the fire. The fuel of God’s anger is sin, and when the fuel was gone, the fire went out. What a glorious salvation we have when the Lamb consumed the fire for us.
As we come to the study of God’s Word, there is a Bible-study principle that is absolutely indispensable: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. We need to trust the Lord. Only the Lord can open up His Word.
As we have said many times, this Book is like our Savior. It has a divine side, and it has a human side. By the gifts God has given us, we can study the human side; but only by revelation can we have the divine side.
I suppose that we have all learned through the years what Jesus meant in Matthew 26 when He said, “The flesh is weak.” I think we can all testify, in some areas of our lives, that the flesh is weak.
But the context of that great statement in Matthew 26:40-41 was the most spiritual event that ever took place on this globe: the Garden of Gethsemane and the cross. In the most spiritual time that ever took place on the earth, the disciples fell asleep.
Our Lord Jesus said, “Could you not watch with Me one hour?” Then He pointed out, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
It takes a miracle of God, in spiritual things, to have us stay awake one hour. So let us trust the Lord that we will not be leaning on the flesh as He opens Himself and His Word, because the flesh is weak at all times, but especially when it comes to spiritual things.
Our Father, we thank You that You have not left us on our own when it comes to seeing, perceiving, and hearing Your voice—understanding Your revelation. You have put Your Holy Spirit in our hearts, and He discloses the Son of God.
We pray that our hearts might be open and our spirits might be very alive. Quicken us this morning, we pray. Deliver us from the flesh in all of its subtle forms, and enable us to stay awake, hear Your voice, and see Your face. We ask in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
If you would open your Bibles, please, to 2 Kings 4. We continue our look at the wonderful life and ministry of God’s servant Elisha, the man who looked like Jesus.
When you go through the record, you see how much he looked like Jesus. He went unto His own, and His own received Him not. He turned to the Gentiles. He was a friend to the needy. He cleansed the leper. He multiplied loaves. He raised the dead. Through his death, he gave life to others. He wept over Jerusalem.
Elisha is a picture of someone who looks like Jesus. The message that he had exactly resembles the New Covenant—the gospel.
We study Elisha in order that God can teach us in picture form through these stories. It is so easy to see a principle when God puts it into redemptive history and fossilizes it in an inspired story. Then we remember the story, and we remember the truth of God.
In our first two messages, we concentrated on the man who looks like Jesus. This morning and this evening, Lord willing, we will look at the message that the man who looks like Jesus proclaims and shares with others.
In our first lesson, we looked at how God prepares a person to look like Jesus. And “man” is generic; you women do not think I am not talking to you as well. The principles illustrated in 1 Kings 19 and 2 Kings 1-3 are these.
First, a person who looks like Jesus must respond to the grace of God. When God comes and visits you and puts His mantle on your shoulder, you need to recognize Who it is and the privilege that is yours. You must respond as Elisha responded: in an unquestioning, free-will, joyful surrender to the grace that was put upon you.
Second, there is the desire that God planted in his heart. After eight, nine, or ten years of service and pouring himself out to Elijah, Elisha was given, in effect, a blank check: “Ask anything. What do you want in the whole wide world?”
Without hesitation, he said, “The double portion. I want God to pour out on me everything that He is, so that I can be His representative on the earth, so others can look at me and see God’s heart toward them.” That was his desire.
That is the making of a person who looks like Jesus: one who responds to the grace of God, and one who has a passion to receive everything that God longs to give.
Third, before he picked the mantle up in his hand, he had to have focus. He could not be distracted. He had to have not only eyes up here, but eyes here—to see beyond, in spiritual reality. In fully developed form, he had to keep his eyes on the Lord. Then God enabled him to pick up the mantle.
It is one thing to have God’s mantle on you. It is another thing now to begin living.
We then looked last evening at the summary. If someone really does surrender, has a passion that God give him everything, and is focused on the Lord, what will that person look like? What will his ministry look like?
In those first four miracles, we saw a summary. That person will walk, and God will open the way before him, illustrated by the opening of the Jordan River. He will have a supernatural walk and a supernatural ministry.
For those who are open and say yes, it will be a ministry of blessing. For those who say no and reject, it will be a ministry of cursing. For those who know the Lord and need to be restored, it will be a ministry of restoration. He will be available.
Now this morning, I would like to look at the first overview of the message. Here is a man who looks like Jesus. What is the message that he embraces?
If you are following the handout sheet that I gave as a guide, you will see that this message embraces four stories, in order:
This morning, God helping, I want to look at the very heart of the message. There are other characteristics of the message, but this is the chief characteristic. This is the main direction. This is the heart of it all.
This is what distinguishes our message from the message of the seven thousand who had not bowed the knee, and from the sons of the prophets. This is a unique message, a distinct message.
First, I want to show you how these four stories illustrate the main point. Then I would like to show you briefly how Elisha relates to that—how the messenger relates to the message.
In the first story, 2 Kings 4:2, Elisha said to the widow:
What shall I do for thee? tell me; what hast thou in the house?
She answered:
Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil.
The story ends in 2 Kings 4:6-7:
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.
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.
The story ends not with one jar of oil in the house, but with the room filled with jars of oil. It begins with one, and it ends with many.
The second story is the woman of Shunem and her son. In the first part, there is the supernatural birth of a son. Elisha said to her:
About this season, according to the time of life, thou shalt embrace a son.
The woman conceived and bore a son at that season the next year, as Elisha had said to her. It was a dream come true for this woman. She thought she would never have a child, and then God gave her this miracle child.
In the second part of the story, the child is weaned. Do not be misled by the expression, “when the child was grown.” At first I thought it meant a grown-up child—perhaps nine, ten, or eleven years old, or maybe even a teenager. But that expression was a common word referring to weaning.
When you go through the record and see the mother holding this child on her lap and carrying him upstairs to lay him on the prophet’s bed, you realize this was not a teenager. The mother was not carrying a teenager. It was a child who had just been weaned—probably a two- or three-year-old boy.
Then the child said to his father, “My head, my head.” He was taken to his mother, sat on her lap until noon, and then he died.
The baby that was supernaturally born died. Yet the second part of the story is a resurrection of the child who was supernaturally born.
At the beginning, there was a wonderful beginning—a supernaturally born child. But there is a more wonderful ending: the resurrection of the one who was supernaturally born. It is an advance in the story.
The third and fourth stories should be linked together, because God presents a truth centered around hunger, eating, and feeding. Physical food represents spiritual food, and there is spiritual hunger.
In the third story, there is a famine, and a stew is made to satisfy hungry prophets—the sons of the prophets, the Bible students. Someone inadvertently gathered a poisonous gourd for the stew.
They cried out:
O man of God, there is death in the pot.
Then Elisha said, “Bring meal.” He cast it into the pot and said, “Pour out for the people, that they may eat.” There was no harm in the pot. Once again, we see a movement from death to life.
The next story advances on that. In 2 Kings 4:42-44, a man came to the prophet with a tithe of his harvest. It was not much—about twenty biscuits and a few stalks of wheat. Yet more than one hundred men needed to be fed from that little supply.
The attendant said:
What, should I set this before an hundred men?
Elisha said:
Give the people, that they may eat: for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof.
He set it before them, they ate, and they had some left over according to the word of the Lord. Once again, we move from death in the pot to multitudes being fed.
Let me summarize these four miracles in the words of our Lord Jesus from John 10:
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
Each of these stories starts with life and then moves to life more abundantly. Those are not two different things; they are the same thing. Abundant life is life appropriated. It is life laid hold of.
The story of the widow and her oil moves from one jar of oil to many jars of oil. The story of the woman of Shunem moves from a supernatural birth to the resurrection of the one who was supernaturally born. The last stories move from death in the pot, to healed life in the pot, to many people being fed.
There is one all-inclusive truth that makes our message distinctive—the message we embrace, hold, and preach; the message of the gospel, of grace, of the New Covenant, whatever you want to call it.
Our message is a Person. He has a name. His name is Jesus. It is the message of life and life more abundantly.
You will miss it completely if you do what I did for years. I thought life was one thing and abundant life was something else. I used to teach that all Christians have life, but not all Christians have abundant life.
I do not teach that anymore. Why? Because life is a Person, and His name is Jesus. All Christians have life. Abundant life is also a Person, and His name is Jesus. All Christians have abundant life.
Every Christian has abundant life, and every Christian has life, because it is the Lord Jesus. He is the fullness of life.
Colossians 1:19 tells us:
For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell.
Colossians 2:3 says:
In whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.
John 1:16 declares:
For of His fulness we all received, and grace for grace.
What a tremendous passage that is. All Christians have life. All Christians have abundant life. That is the message Elisha proclaimed. That is the message engraved on your Hashua T-shirt: entering the life that is Christ.
That is why John 11:25 was printed on your T-shirt:
I am the resurrection, and the life.
That is the heart of our message. It is a Person. That is the essence of it, the core of it, the sum and substance of it. Whatever else we preach, we preach Jesus. We preach Him as life and abundant life.
Though it is true that every Christian has life and abundant life, it is also true that not every Christian is enjoying Christ in His fullness. That is another thing altogether. But that is different from saying that you do not have it.
No matter how dull you are this morning, if you have Christ, you have life and you have abundant life. No matter how lazy you are this morning, you have life and you have abundant life.
I have to be careful here, but I do not want you to miss it. No matter how backslidden you might be this morning, if you have Christ, you have life. You have abundant life. That is our message.
Let us go back and look at the stories one by one. Of course, we have to skip over so much, but let us pick up the heart of each story. May God give us grace.
A certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha:
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 children to be bondmen.
Elisha said to her:
What shall I do for thee? tell me; what hast thou in the house?
She answered:
Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil.
Elisha said:
Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels; borrow not a few.
And thou shalt go in, and 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.
She borrowed the vessels, shut the door behind herself and her sons, and poured. When the vessels were full, she said, “Bring me yet a vessel.” Her son said, “There is not a vessel more.” And the oil stayed.
Then Elisha told her, “Go, sell the oil, pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest.”
I told you last evening that the story of the four kings in the trenches introduced a principle that God advances in this story: God is always ready to give as much as we are prepared to receive.
In the story of the trenches, God led His people into the deepest wilderness in order to satisfy their thirst. They were commanded to fill the valley with trenches—not one or two trenches, not eight or nine trenches, but fill the valley with trenches.
God would provide for the army and the animals as much water as the trenches could hold. If they were lazy and dug only two trenches, that is all the provision they would get. If there were a thousand trenches, a thousand trenches would have been filled.
God is prepared to give as much as you are prepared to receive. The story of the widow and her oil teaches that same principle. She was told to borrow vessels—not a few.
If she had two vessels, two vessels would be filled with oil. If she borrowed four, four would be filled with oil. If she borrowed six, six would be filled. If she had sixty vessels, sixty would have been full.
The oil stopped. Why did the oil stop? Because the empty vessels stopped. God is prepared to give as much as we are prepared to receive.
But the story of the widow goes beyond the story of the trenches in at least two ways. First, the woman and her sons ended up with what they started with. They started with oil, and they ended with oil. They started with life, and they ended with life more abundantly.
When the widow began to pour out her need to the man who looked like Jesus, it was a tremendous need, a terrible need. They were a believing family, a Christian family. Evidently, the husband had enrolled in the school of the sons of the prophets.
Perhaps he thought, “I am being prepared for some future ministry.” What he did not know was that what he thought was preparation was his life’s work. That was his mission field—the Bible school.
For some reason, God called the man home. Evidently, the woman sold everything in the house that could be sold. Then she went out and borrowed money. After a while, it all piled up. Her provider was gone, there was nothing else to sell, and the creditors were coming to the door.
In that day there was no law for filing bankruptcy. If you owed a debt, you paid the debt. If you could not pay the debt, they took your children as slaves. Under one set of laws, they would work for seven years; but there were ways for creditors to claim the same debt after those seven years.
This was what she was facing: “My children are about to be taken. My husband is dead. We have no means of provision. I have nothing else in the house to sell. I have sold everything. I borrowed too much money. I cannot pay it, and they are coming to take my children.”
Talk about a situation. Talk about a problem.
The man of God, with the light of God and the wisdom of God—God was not only dealing with this widow; He was writing a Bible—asked this heart-searching question. I am going to ask it to you, too:
Tell me, what hast thou in the house?
Think about that question. “Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She said, “Nothing—except one jar of oil.” But that one jar of oil looked like nothing to her.
Imagine that the whole matter was finished. She had borrowed the vessels, shut the door, and filled jar after jar after jar. What if the prophet asked her the same question at the end that he asked at the beginning: “Now tell me, what do you have in the house?”
Do you think she would say, “Nothing, just a jar of oil”? No. She would say, “Everywhere you look, I see jars and jugs and vessels, and they are filled with oil.”
What do you have in your house? Her answer would be, “I have the living God providing all of my needs.”
That one jar that she began with became for her the inexhaustible source of all her supply. She already had it at the beginning. She did not know she had it until God engineered her life, reduced her to emptiness, and brought situations where she was helpless.
But all along, she had everything that she needed.
Perhaps there is some situation in your life like this. You say, “Man, you do not know what I am going through—what has come up in my life.” I have a question for you: What do you have in your house?
Are you a believer? Then this is your house. This is your temple. What do you have in your house? You say, “Nothing, just the Lord.”
Brothers and sisters in the Lord, let God burn that in your heart. What do you have in your house? What do you have in your house? The real answer is, “I have Him. I have the Lord.”
I have the inexhaustible source of supply for every need that I have this moment, every need that I will have in the future, and every need that I will have for all the ages of eternity. I have Him.
The widow did not realize it at first, until distress came, discouragement came, lack came, and it looked as though her sons were going into bondage. The reality is that you have Christ. Circumstances, whatever they may be, to the contrary notwithstanding, you have Christ in your house.
Look with me at the second way this story advances the principle that God is prepared to give as much as you are prepared to receive.
Not only do you discover that you already have everything He can ever give. When you got saved, you got the Lord. He has no more to give you except eyes to see what you already have. He has already given His Son.
But when will I discover that I already have all that I need? God not only provides through His prophet and His Word, but I think it is instructive that He said, “Go to your neighbors and borrow vessels, not a few.”
What can I get from my neighbors? What can I get from you? What can you get from me? The real answer is nothing but an empty vessel. That is all I can give you—an empty vessel.
But did you notice that God’s oil was in proportion to the empty vessels she gathered from the neighbors? If I am not open to receive your empty vessel, I am not open to receive God’s oil. If you are not open to receive my empty vessel, you are not open to receive God’s oil.
If the Lord could burn this into our hearts: how He desires to use each of us in the life of our neighbor. God wants to use Christian brother and Christian sister. I need your vessel if I am going to get God’s oil, and you need my vessel if God is going to give you His oil.
In my imagination, I picture them borrowing vessels of every size, shape, and color—some weird-looking vessels, all kinds of vessels. Some of that oil paid off an immediate debt, and some of the oil from those vessels may not have been used until ten years later.
This weekend at Hashua, God may allow me to borrow one of your weird vessels. God may not use that vessel to pour oil out to me for five or ten years down the road.
Do not be afraid to go to your brother and sister and borrow their vessel. We need one another. Someday God will pour from that vessel the oil you need for that moment.
This woman needed the body. She needed her brothers and sisters. She needed her neighbors. Do not just hear that, “la, la, la.” God’s oil depends on that. God’s oil depends on that.
You already have in your heart everything you need. You have Christ. Now go to your neighbors and get the vessels, and God will fill those.
Before I leave this story, what is the transition between life and abundant life? What is the transition between having Him in my heart—knowing He is in my heart—but feeling as though it is nothing, not enough, inadequate, and insufficient?
What is the transition between life and life more abundantly? After I have received the vessels and after I am open to the Lord, I think the answer is in 2 Kings 4:4.
I speak as a fool: if I were God in writing this, I would say, “Go out and borrow vessels, not a few. When you have all the vessels, invite your neighbors to the front lawn. I am going to show them a miracle that will blow them away.”
I would have all the neighbors gathered around as she poured the vessels, so they could behold the glory of God. But God says, “No, no, no. This is a private thing. I want you to go in and shut the door.”
I have experienced this over and over in my life as I study commentaries—empty vessels. Oh, the oil that God has given me through those empty vessels! Not in reading, not in study, but after it was all over, when I went alone and shut the door.
You have to get alone with the Lord. That is when He is going to meet you. That is when you are going to know the fullness of what you have in your house. That is when God is going to supply your need.
It is not enough just to gather the empty vessels. You need to go in and shut the door. Like the door of Noah’s ark, it not only shuts you in to the Lord; it shuts out the world.
God does not want the world in there. There will be people who discourage you. You go in and shut the door so no one can embarrass you about what you are about to do—trusting in the Lord, pouring in a way that looks silly.
We do not want the unbeliever in there. We do not want the skeptic in there. We do not want those who would discourage in there. Go in and shut the door.
Let us not dishonor the Lord by not being prepared to receive all that He wants to give. He is ready to give all that we are prepared to receive. Borrow vessels—not a few.
Go to the one you think is the weirdest person you ever met, the one you think has nothing to give you—the strange and squirrely Christian. Grab their vessel. Oh, what amazing oil God will pour out of that vessel.
Do not dishonor the Lord. Philippians 4:19 does not say, “My God shall supply all your bare essentials.” It says:
My God shall supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Do you know how important it was for the widow to discover the secret of what she had in the house? If she did not discover that secret, her children would have gone off into bondage.
Parents, you had better discover that secret—not only for yourselves, but for the sake of your children. Because if you do not discover the secret, your children can go off into bondage. Oh, may God help us with this.
I have spent so much time on the oil. Let us move on. Time is almost gone, and we have three more stories. Let me just touch the principles of each one.
The second story, 2 Kings 4:8-37, shows the supernatural birth of this child. I encourage you to read this on your own time and meditate seriously on these things before the Lord.
This story also takes us from life to life more abundantly, or from Christ with a little “c” to Christ in all capitals. In verses 8-17, we have the miracle of the birth; then from verses 18-37, the miracle that follows: the resurrection.
Although this child was conceived by a special promise of the Lord, what good is that if he is dead? The dead boy needed a resurrection.
There might be somebody here this weekend who can testify to that. “I know I am saved. I know I am born again. I know I received the Lord into my heart so many years ago. He saved me. I am supernaturally alive. How come I am so dead? How come I am so dead?”
You need a supernatural birth, but then you need a supernatural resurrection. That is part of abundant life. It is one thing to be supernaturally born; it is another thing to have Christ supernaturally sustain that new birth by the power of His resurrection.
How does the message of resurrection life relate to the messenger of resurrection life? In other words, if God is going to use me to help somebody else who has been supernaturally born come to a place of resurrection life, what is my part in that as a person who looks like Jesus?
Let me call attention to two great principles in 2 Kings 4:32:
When Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead, and laid upon his bed.
He went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord.
This miracle, like the first one, also takes place behind closed doors. This time it is not the woman who is behind the closed door. It is the man of God, the prophet, who needs to go behind closed doors.
It is easy for me to stand up here and tell you, “These are closet principles. Get alone with the Lord. Go in and shut the door.” I had better listen to my own teaching. I had better go in behind closed doors too, as a messenger of the grace of God.
Elisha shut the door. First, it meant that he was shut in with the Lord in terms of his ministry, in the place of rejection.
You say, “What do you mean, a place of rejection?” We read this lightly, but do you know what it meant in those days for a Jew to be in the presence of a corpse? That was unclean. That was forbidden.
Here is a man of God in the same room with a corpse. More than that, 2 Kings 4:34 says:
And he went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and he stretched himself upon the child.
If anyone was inclined to the legal side, do you know what they would have said about this man of God? “He is not a man of God. He cannot be a man of God. What is he doing in the room with a dead person? That is unclean. He is ceremonially unclean. He is stretched out all over this child. He is lying on top of a corpse.”
Elisha went into the presence of the Lord and shut the door. He was not afraid to identify with this dead person. Marvelous, marvelous thing.
The second thing that was true when he shut the door was that he persevered in his ministry. Did you notice what happened when he stretched himself on the child for the first time? The flesh of the child became warm.
Many would quit right there and say, “Ah, it is done. His flesh is warm. I have had a great ministry. Praise God.” But let me word it this way in light of the text: just because someone begins to warm up to your ministry, do not think the work is completed.
Just because someone begins to warm up to your message, you can fall short. The job is not done when people warm up to our message. It is only done when they sneeze seven times. That is how you know.
Through the years, I have felt that many people warmed up to the message. I shared the message of Christ, and they started warming up. Then I walked away. I thought the work was done, and they went right back into their death.
But 2 Kings 4:35 says:
Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him.
That walking back and forth—I think he was praying. I think he was prevailing with the Lord. After a person begins to warm up, we can get so happy that he is warm. But he is warm and not on his feet. He is warm and not alive.
The man of God kept praying. He walked and poured it out to the Lord. There was a dead person upstairs. Where was the dead person? There was only one place where the man of God could minister: the place of his rest.
That boy was laid on his bed, the place where Elisha rested. Ministry takes place in the place of rest. This corpse was placed in that place of rest.
Did you notice how the messenger of pure grace now pours out his life for this dead person? That is illustrated by this identification—the prophet, the man of God, lying on the corpse.
He is saying to the dead person, “My eyes for your eyes. My breath for your breath. My hands for your hands.” He is giving himself. He is pouring himself out into the life of that corpse.
He is not afraid to touch a corpse. He is not afraid to identify with a corpse. He is not afraid to be in close contact. Others might look at him and say, “You should not be doing that. What are you doing touching that person? He is so dirty, so unclean, so corrupted.”
But the man of God says, “No, I love him.” That is the one who looks like Jesus. “I am going to touch him. I am going to identify with him. I am going to stretch out. I am going to pour out my life.”
When he starts warming up, I am not done pouring out. I am going to keep in contact with that dead person until he comes to life again.
All of that is with the door shut. It is nobody’s business how you pour out your life for somebody else. That is not to be proclaimed. “Oh, you know, I go down to Skid Row,” or, “I work with these people,” or, “Here is how I give myself to this.” That is behind closed doors.
That is between you, the Lord, and the corpse. That is it.
The message is Christ. What do you have in your house? It is Him. You have the Lord. You have life. You have life more abundantly.
But in order to communicate that, there comes the pouring out of the life of the man of God. It is not just standing on a podium, waving from a distance, and having a platform ministry.
It is drawing near to those who are dead, corrupted, and messed up. You draw near, contact them, love them, and pour out your life for them. That is what is happening here.
In contrast to that, look at 2 Kings 4:31:
And Gehazi passed on before them, and laid the staff upon the face of the child; but there was neither voice, nor hearing. Wherefore he went again to meet him, and told him, saying, The child is not awaked.
For years, that was the method I took. I tried to lay the prophet’s staff on the face of the dead. I would read this book or that book, hear this tape or that tape, get this blessing or that blessing, and think that if I laid his staff on that person, there would be life.
I just kept laying everybody else’s staff on the dead. No, it is not until you pour out your own life that God gives life.
Praise God for all the vessels that we receive, but life is not going to come merely by touching somebody with something you received somewhere else. Gehazi illustrates that.
Let me wrap it up with the last two stories. The background of both stories, 2 Kings 4:38-44, is the same. One is the poisonous stew, and the other is the multiplication of loaves. It was a time of famine. There was hunger. They needed to be fed.
We see in verse 38 that it began with spiritual feeding, because they were at the feet of Elisha. He was teaching them the Word of God. This is a picture of receiving the Word of God.
Let me give you the principle right away so I do not lose it in my rambling. When somebody is hungry, there needs to be a man of God who has a word from God to put into the stew.
Because if you do not have a word from God, you die. What you eat is poison. If all you are getting this weekend is what I have gathered, you are in trouble. There has to be a word from heaven. There has to be a word from God.
This man of God had the word from God to put in the meal. When you have a word from God, then the whole stew is all right.
I used to be afraid of certain brothers or sisters. I felt that they had not thoroughly studied something, had gathered a poisonous gourd, and thrown it into the stew. I did not want to hear it.
You have met Christians with some strange ideas. Some actually come up on a platform and teach those strange ideas, and you say, “Oh my, we are going to get poison. Somebody got a gourd and threw it into the stew.”
I am not afraid of anything you put in the stew if somebody has a word from God. If the word from God gets in the stew, they do not have to take out the poisonous gourd. The poisonous gourd becomes good because there is a word from God to purify.
I am not afraid of what goes into the stew if somebody has a revelation of the Lord. That is the illustration in the poisonous stew.
Let us move on to the last story, and then we will be done. A man came from Baal-shalishah and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits—twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give to the people, that they may eat.”
If you are going to get to the heart of this, you need to understand the law of God. The law of God was that you would bring your tithes. This takes place after a seven-year famine, so this first fruit was really precious.
The law of God said that tithes were to be brought to the temple and given to the priests. What took place here was completely radical. He was not supposed to give his tithe to the prophet.
But evidently this man saw something. Who was he? We do not even know. He was a nobody from somewhere you cannot even pronounce. But somehow he saw hungry people.
I am suggesting this: God is going to feed the hungry. Usually, that food will come from a strange source. He feeds His people in secret places.
God will raise up somebody somewhere who will go against the grain and against the tide and say, “I am going to provide because they are eating. They are feeding.” The man of God is not afraid to be radical, take that provision, and allow God to multiply it until everybody is satisfied.
Brothers and sisters, amid all these illustrations and principles, do not get snowed. The message of the man who looks like Jesus is Christ. It is Jesus. It is life and abundant life.
What do you have in your house? You have Him. You have Him.
How are you going to communicate? You are going to pour yourself out for those who need resurrection. You are going to identify with them behind shut doors, behind closed doors.
How is God going to provide? I do not know—somebody, somewhere, God is going to meet the need. He is going to feed the hungry.
You say, “Well, we are not getting it where I go. I am not hearing it. It is so rare in these days.” You hungry? God will feed you.
How much? How prepared are you? He is ready to provide as much as you are prepared to receive.
Father, thank You for Your Word. Again, not what we think it might mean, but what You have inspired it to mean. Work in every heart. Teach us what we have in our house. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.