And you shall go in and shut the door on you and your sons. And you shall pour out into all those vessels. And you shall set aside the full ones. (2 Kings 4:4)
The work of Elisha as a prophet was in some respects very different from that of Elijah. To Elijah had been committed messages of condemnation and judgment; his was the voice of fearless reproof, calling kings and people to turn from their evil ways. Elisha’s was a more peaceful mission; his it was to build up and strengthen the work that Elijah had begun; to teach the people the way of the Lord. Inspiration pictures him as coming into personal touch with the people, surrounded by the sons of the prophets, bringing by his miracles and his ministry healing and rejoicing. {PK 235.1}
The widow and her sons were admonished to be alone with God, for they were not dealing with the known laws of nature, nor with any human government, nor the church, nor the priesthood, nor even with the great prophet of God, but they had to be isolated from all creatures, from all human circumstances that they were depending on, from all props of human reason, and swung off, as it were, into the generally unknown space, hanging onto God alone. (1 Cor 2:4, Judges 7:2, 2 Cor 1:12, 1 Thes 2:4) In touch with the fountain of miracles. Herein is a part in the principles of God’s dealings, a secret chamber of isolation in prayer and faith which every soul must enter into that is very fruitful. Jesus says in The New Testament as well:
“Come ye apart and rest awhile.” (Mark 6:31)
When the disciples had returned from their mission, Jesus took them away to rest. Doing God’s work is very important, but Jesus recognized that to do it effectively we need periodic rest and renewal. Jesus and his disciples, however, did not always find it easy to get the rest they needed
There are times and places where God will form a mysterious wall around us, and cut away all props, and all the ordinary ways of doing things, and shut us up to something Divine, which is utterly new and unexpected, something that old circumstances do not fit into, where we do not know just what will happen, where God is cutting the cloth of our lives on a new pattern, where He makes us look to Himself. Most religious people live in a sort of treadmill life, where they can calculate almost everything that will happen, but the souls that God leads out into immediate and special dealings, He shuts in where all they know is that God has hold of them, and is dealing with them, and their expectation is from Him alone.
Like this poor widow in our opening text, we must be detached from outward things and attached inwardly to CHRIST alone in order to see His wonders.
In the sorest trials God often helps us to see the most amazing discoveries of Himself.
“God sometimes shuts the door and shuts us in,
That He may speak, perchance through grief or pain,
And softly, heart to heart, above the din,
May tell some precious thought to us again.”
The lesson is for God’s children in every age. When the Lord gives a work to be done, let not anyone stop to inquire into the reasonableness of the command or the probable result of their efforts to obey. The supply in their hands may seem to fall short of the need to be filled; but in the hands of the Lord it will prove more than sufficient. The servitor “set it before them, and they did eat, and left thereof, according to the word of the Lord.” {PK 243.1}
When our need is urgent, and we spread it before God, the question is never about the amount of oil, but of the empty vessels. We fear that there will not be enough oil; God is concerned lest we fail to bring sufficient vessels to hold all More often than not we, God’s Church are not asking big enough. We need to ask Jesus for much more than we do. Jesus wants to give. The oil was multiplied in the pouring, as the meal of the other widow was increased in the spending. God’s oil will never be exhausted so long as we can receive and impart. According to our faith will it be done. It is not a question of how much God can give, but how much we can use.
In the days immediately following the departure of Elijah, God empowered Elisha to perform a number of miracles. One of them was to increase oil for a poor widow (2 Kings 4:1-7). This incident confirmed Elisha as a true prophet of God and the successor to Elijah. The increase of oil here recalled the miracle that Elijah performed for the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-16).
In addition to what the miracle revealed about Elisha, it illustrated an important aspect of God’s character: His concern for the poor and disadvantaged. Both Elijah and Elisha dealt with kings, commanders, and other powerful leaders. But they also helped the powerless. In this case, the widow was about to lose her sons to pay for a debt left by her late husband. That meant that she would be left with no means of support. God provided for her needs through the intervention of Elisha (compare Psalms 68:5).
James reminds us that true religion involves action, such as caring for “widows in their trouble” (James 1:27). Elisha was a true prophet practicing true religion.
Do we, the church today know and practice “true religion,” or have we been cemented into the craftiness of policy and form? So “heavenly minded” that we are no earthly good?
When Jesus said to His disciples that the harvest was great and the laborers were few, He did not urge upon them the necessity of ceaseless toil, but bade them, “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.” To His toil-worn workers today as really as to His first disciples He speaks these words of compassion, “Come ye yourselves apart and rest awhile.”
let nothing come up before you to worry you. Come apart and rest awhile. This you must do. Draw from the Great Physician leaves from the tree of life. Plead in your own behalf, and let others also plead for you. “Let him take hold of My strength, that he may make peace with Me, and he shall make peace with Me.” {MM 287.4}
As soon as her husband had died, the widow of our opening text was plunged into debt, contracted in order to obtain the barest necessaries of life. Having nothing of any value in the house, the hard-hearted creditor, in lieu of payment, threatened to take and sell her two only sons as slaves; which, by virtue of one Jewish law and the extension of another, he had the power to do.
On account of these trying circumstances, her case was one that peculiarly warranted the interposition of Heaven. But she had another claim still, beside that of her wretchedness, upon the sympathy and help of Elisha. Her husband feared the Lord while he lived. He was the son of a prophet, and cherished the deepest regard for the person and the work of those who filled that sacred office. Elisha’s first question to her evinced a wonderful knowledge of the human heart, and of the best mode of dealing with poverty and suffering.
Instead of volunteering to give her aid at once, as most persons would have done, carried away by an overpowering impulse of compassion at the recital of the tale of sorrow; like a wise and judicious friend, he inquires how far she herself has the power to avert the threatened calamity—“What hast thou in the house?” His assistance must be based upon her own assistance. He will help her to help herself. And this is the only true way to benefit the poor. By reckless and indiscriminate alms giving, we run the risk of further impoverishing the objects of our charity.
Our assistance should therefore be of such a nature as to call forth the resources which they themselves possess, and to make the most of them. However small these resources may be, they should be used as a fulcrum, by means of which our help may raise them to a better condition. The first question which we too should ask the widow or the destitute is—
“What hast thou in the house?”
No help from without can benefit, unless there be a willingness of self-help within.
Out Of This Last Pot Of Oil
The sign of her uttermost poverty—Elisha furnished the source of her comfort and happiness. The widow of Obadiah might well be astonished at the command of Elisha. If she had stopped to reason about the procedure required of her, she might well hesitate to undertake it. Taking a common-sense view of the matter, of what use would it be to borrow as many vessels as possible from her neighbors? What answer could she give them if they asked her what she meant to do with these vessels? Would they not laugh at her if she told the prophet’s message, and ridicule the utter folly of the whole story?
In spite of all these apparent absurdities and impossibilities—in spite of all the objections of reason and common sense, the widow hastened to obey the prophet’s command. She stumbled not because of unbelief. Her faith triumphed over all difficulties. It is a significant circumstance that the prophet should have commanded the widow to shut the door upon herself and her sons, when she poured out the oil into the vessels. There is a reason for, and a meaning in, every detail of the Bible miracles; and doubtless the design of this apparently trivial injunction was to secure to the widow the privacy and calmness of mind necessary for the performance of the miracle, and for its producing the full and proper impression upon her own soul.
If she had left the door open, the neighbors doubtless, moved by curiosity to see what she would do with the vessels she had borrowed, would flock around her, and sadly discompose her mind by their laughter, their sneers, and their unsuitable remarks. Reverence, stillness, and solitude are needed for the miracle. But, besides being necessary in order to prepare the widow of Obadiah for receiving the benefits of the miracle, the solitude and secrecy which Elisha enjoined were significant of the mysterious character of the miracle itself. It was withdrawn from sight. It was silent and unimaginable. The process by which the oil wag multiplied we labor in vain to conceive. We cannot explain the phenomenon by the observation of any known laws;
We sow the seed of an olive tree. That seed contains a very small quantity of oil. It grows and becomes a tree and produces an immense quantity of fruit; so that from the little drop of oil in each of the small vessels of the seed therein, you have thousands of vessels in the shape of the olives, each filled with oil. Those who make the olive seed in the course of a few years, or the olive tree every season, to prepare and extract oil from the scanty soil on the arid rocks, and the dry burning air in which the tree delights to grow, concentrated, in the miracle in the widow’s chamber, the slower processes of nature spread over months and years, into the act of a single moment.
Is it not very similar for us Christians today? Even the best led lives today are subject to trials and extreme poverty. This miracle blends with common life. How strikingly does this wonderful incident show to us that we must be fellow-workers with God throughout, from first to last, in our own deliverance and blessing. How wonderfully it illustrates the whole Divine economy of grace, under which we are enjoined to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, (Phil 2:12) seeing that it is God that works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure! (Phil 2:13)
We are all in the condition of the poor widow; we are destitute of everything, and are ready to perish. But God is far more tender and considerate to us than even Elisha was to the widow. If we have only the feeling of want and deprivation, but the desire for God’s help, that very want or desire will be to us what the pot of oil was to the widow—the source of an abundant supply of all that we need. A lifetime of such want will collectively be concentrated into a single moment when all is made right. Yes. Jesus is coming soon. We can be ready by simply believing that Jesus can work even with the very little that we may have. He is able.
What do we do when we don’t feel like obeying or when we don’t think that God can help us very well?
God has not left us alone in our struggles to do his will. He wants to come alongside us and be within us to help.
God gives us the desire and the power to do what pleases him. The secret to a changed life is to submit to God’s control and let him work. Next time ask God to help you desire to do his will. (Phil 2:13)
To be like Christ, we must train ourselves to think like Christ. To change our desires to be more like Christ’s, we need the power of the indwelling Spirit (Phil 1:19), the influence of faithful Christians, obedience to God’s Word (not just exposure to it), and sacrificial service. Phil 2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Often it is in doing God’s will that we gain the desire to do it:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you. (Phil 4:8-9
Do what Jesus asks, and trust Him to change your desires.
What we put into our mind determines what comes out in our words and actions. Paul tells us to program our mind with thoughts that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and worthy of praise. “to deliberate,” “to evaluate,” “to compute over and over” what is good and pure. In this way, Christians can renew their minds so that they will not conform to the evil habits of this world.
THAT single moment is in where all of our troubles, like the olives on the tree, like the poor widow of Obadiah have all become concentrated into one single process:
Don’t be like the people of this world, but let God change the way you think. Then you will know how to do everything that is good and pleasing to him. (Rom 12:2, CEV)
This is how to be ready for that grand climax of the end of ages when Jesus returns for His own. Will you shut your door today and consult seriously with Jesus?