The story of the widow of Zarephath from 2 Kings 4 to illustrate how God can provide abundantly in times of extreme need. When faced with debt and the threat of her sons being taken as slaves, the widow had only a small pot of oil. Elisha instructed her to gather empty vessels from her neighbors and pour the oil into them, emphasizing that as long as there were empty vessels, the oil would continue to flow. This miracle demonstrates that God's provision is not limited by our circumstances but by our willingness to receive and utilize what He provides, symbolized by the oil representing the Holy Spirit. The core lesson is that by surrendering our limited resources and trusting in God's power, symbolized by the oil, He can transform our desperate situations, enabling us to pay our debts and live abundantly.
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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now I sort of feel that most of you know where to turn to, don't you? The second book of Kings for our scripture reading. And we shall start tonight on chapter four. Two Kings chapter four. Those of you who are able to follow up these studies, these Bible studies, will know that we are making little chapter titles. Chapter one, man of God.
Chapter two, take the mantle. Chapter three, dig the ditch. And now we are in chapter four, and I'm going to ask you to put over the verses that we shall read. Pour the oil. Pour the oil. Verse one. Now there cried a certain woman at the wives of the sons of the prophets, unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead. And thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord, and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bombed me.
Delisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee? Tell me, what hast thou in the house? And she said, Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house. save a pot of oil. Then he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad, of all neighbours, and empty vessels, borrow not a few. When thou had come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shall 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. And it came to pass when the vessels were full. But 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 on the rest.
God will bless his word to us as we read it, for his namesake. Now just our quiet pause for a moment of prayer. Help us, dear Lord, to forget each other largely. And be conscious that thou art here making the Scriptures live in the power of thy Holy Spirit to our minds and hearts. Lord, you know all about us. Our deep needs, our sorrows, our testings, our longings, the secret things of our lives. We ask thee very graciously to minister to those needs tonight.
For our good. for thy glory, for thy namesake. Amen. Now as we face this picture tonight, pouring the oil, I would like you to get the picture. In that land, in the days of Elisha, there were at least seven thousand who had never bowed the knee to veil. Their hearts were true by the work of God's gracious spirit through those sad, declining days when the nation seemed to be turning to idolatry.
The great task of Elijah had been, in the last ten years before his translation, to build up the faith of these seven thousand and their children, their growing children. And as you read of him marching over the land, it was from the school of the prophets to the school of the prophets. If you were to modernize this, it just means he moved from church to church in America. And as a man of God, he stood up wherever he found a congregation, and he told them all he knew of the things of God and encouraged their faith in the living God. And...
after his translation to heaven without dying, Elisha is carrying on the work in the spirit of his master, induced by the same spirit, conscious of his own weakness, feeling his need of a double portion of that gracious spirit's moving. Now this person, the character, the woman unnamed here, that cried out to him, was one of the wives of one of these outstanding men, amongst the seven thousand. You might call him a pastor, you might call him an elder, you might call him a man, as it were, that was raised up of God to be one who cared and taught.
And she cries out, she said, you know, my husband was one of the servants Of the prophets, he was one who ministered and served amongst them. He led the little community. He's dead, and I'm left all alone, and you see a woman with tears on her cheeks. She's lost her loved husband. He seems to have been a good man. And she's left with her children, her growing boys, and circumstances are pressing her on all sides. And as far as we can see, it wasn't her fault at all. I say, dear Christian, dear friends here tonight, there's someone here tonight, and you sort of feel that God is judging you, and you're in a difficult situation, and you're passing through trials and testing, and you say, I wonder why God allowed it to me.
Well, now listen, it isn't your fault, possibly. I wish some of you would realize that we've got a great big potter who's trying to mold our lives. When Jeremiah was told to go down to the potter's field and watch the potter at work, and he saw that spinning wheel and spinning wheel and spinning wheel, And he saw the man taking the big piece of clay and putting it down on the wheel. And he watched him shaping it up with strong hands, pressing it together and pulling it up a bit. And then digging his finger down into it and pushing it out a bit and bringing it up here. And he saw the pot rising.
Jeremiah learnt that the pressures of life. The prodding finger, the pull back here is all necessary to produce something. And down here in this old rugged world where God in wondrous grace has saved you and made you his child, he's not going to relieve you of the pressures. You say, but why should it come to little me? Well, it doesn't only come to little you. You can meet a big, strong American man around the corner here, and he's never had a headache or taken an aspirin in his life.
He doesn't know what toothache or tummy ache or any other ache and pain means, but he goes to bed with a burdened heart. Why? Because he's got a girl that's gone astray. He sobs in the night into his pillow because his boy isn't the Christian man. He hopes he would be. Pressure doesn't always come from the same angles. Sometimes I've seen God at work in lives and he's allowed the pressure to come from strange angles. But it's all to produce something in your life. And this poor soul, the credit of knocking at the door. Your husband owed me money.
Unless it's paid, you're getting out of this house. I'm taking your boys' fondness. Or how cruel the world can be. I hope you've never had a bailiff at your door. I had a cry of distress from a dear lady in Jamaica. She got me on the phone and she said, oh, come down at once. The bailiff's at my door and he wants to take away my bed and my fridge and my chairs and everything. And I don't know what I'm going to do. And I went down to try and help her in our pickle, and it wasn't her fault. Sadly enough, her husband was unfaithful, and had gone away from the island of Jamaica and wasn't sending her support, and she had got into this extremity.
Oh, we little realized at difficult times that lots of those around us are passing through, even though sometimes there's a happy smile on their face. But anyway she knew who to turn to. She sent for the man of God, and she said, This is the situation. My boys are in peril, and many a woman will say, Well, I could stand it myself. But my boys, my boys, may want to take them. And I can see this, Elijah. Looking into the face of a sobbing woman, maybe, and facing her distress, And he says, what shall I do for thee?
Tell me, what hast thou in the house? She said, I haven't got a thing. I'm at the end of everything, except save a pot of oil. Just the one thing that was in the house. Of course, this is the key to the situation, and if you want a picture of this Bible story, you will find a little pot of oil. You can see it there sitting on the little table, and on this side you can see distress, distress, and death, and despair. On this side you can see provision and peace and plenty, and the little pot of oil changes the whole picture.
And I'm going to dare to believe that a little pot of oil and all its pictures could change the whole picture in some life here tonight. I don't know who it is. I don't know a thing about your circumstances, your distresses, the inner battles of your life, but that little pot of oil could change the whole picture. And just as this ancient man of God, Elisha, pointed to it, said, that's the secret. I think I can point in your life to a secret, a pot of oil that could change the whole picture. Well, you say, let's have it. Well, I think most of you will agree with me, and we were talking about this this morning, that oil is one of the most used pictures of the Holy Spirit of God in the types of the Bible.
I hope some of you have been thinking about that this morning. I challenged you and no one took up the challenge, not yet. Oh, I'm expecting some saint of God to come round the corner with their Bible and say, well, here it is. But they must bring scripture, you know. I challenged you to find a picture of the Holy Spirit that isn't a moving picture. Genesis one, right in the early verses. Spirit moved upon the face of the waters. And all through the Bible, the Holy Spirit is the person of the Godhead in action.
And it's wind or fire or running waters or a dove or a moving picture in every case. Whereas the pictures of Christ are nearly always solid pictures. Unmovable pictures. Now, the Holy Spirit as oil was used again and again in picture form, actually used in anointing. When they used it to anoint a king, when they used it to anoint a high priest, you can see the oil, the anointing oil moving down as we hear through the beard of Aaron and down even to his cuts, the quiet movement of the oil with all its fragrance.
In the New Testament a picture like this comes up, is there oil in your lamp? You put the oil in the lamp and the lamp will go out without it. It's the drawing movement of the oil up the wick that produces the flame and keeps the wick burning. And so the gracious Holy Spirit is often pictured as oil. Now I'm going to turn you to a scripture. I'm going to turn you to the New Testament to show what it teaches. It's new to many, it's old, very old to lots of you. But out of these scriptures come things new and old, and in Ephesians chapter one, verse thirteen, we get these tremendous words.
In Christ, in whom ye also trusted. Listen carefully. After that ye heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation. It's by the preaching of this truth that going out of the gospel around the world that people are led to trust in Christ. And trusting in Christ, what happens? In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that promised Holy Spirit, that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchase possession unto the praise of his glory.
The Holy Spirit of God came to seal you as Christ's own bloodbought child. I've sometimes used the illustration if I was out, say, in St. Petersburg on a hot day and I was downtown and I'd been moving around a good deal and was really hot. Immediately put my hand in my pocket to look for a handkerchief and I can't find one. Oh, I can. So I find I need one. So I slip into a shop and I say to the man, look, I don't want anything else but just a handkerchief. He brings down a box of handkerchiefs and I pick up.
a cotton or a linen handkerchief and I say how much and he says seventy-five cents and I put it down and it's in my pocket. Handkerchief. Now, when I was traveling a lot in West Indies for certain reasons, my wife used to mark my handkerchiefs because when a dozen of them went out to the wash only six came back. And it's not anybody's fault. I'm not blaming them. They just disappear. They disappear. So she used to put a little seal on the handkerchief. She would hem it along here. H-A-R-O-L-D-W-I-L-D-I-S-H. And with the seal on the handkerchief, marking it...
If I left it lying about and my old colleague and friend that worked with me, Mr. Edwin Willie, came along and he picked it up and shoved it in his pocket, I say, hello, I've lost my handkerchief. Mr. Willie, have you got my handkerchief? No, he said, no, he said, I've got it on my own. And I said to him, but just a minute, I left mine there and you were the nearest person. I think you've got it. No, he says, you're not the only man in the world with a handkerchief. We've all got them. And I said, now that doesn't alter the fact. I think you've got mine. Come on, let's have a look. And he digs into his pockets. Well, he says, this is mine. It's just a minute. And we go around the edges and we come to this Harold Wildish.
And I say, now listen, is that Harold Wildish or is it Edwin Willie? And I can see him now, my old friend and colleague looking at me and he says, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. I made a mistake. Now, if I were to go to a young believer, very young, if I say, listen, I'll also ask you a question. Does that Harold Wildish make this handkerchief mine? Lots of them would say, yes, of course it does. But they're wrong, doesn't it? The seventy-five cents I put down in the shop made it mine.
The seal marks it out from the millions of other handkerchiefs around Florida as my purchased possession. And so the Holy Spirit of God came to one who trusts in Jesus to be the seal. marking them out as Christ's precious possession. You say, well, if every believer got the Holy Spirit, yes. If you're a believer in Christ, and that belief in Christ has brought salvation, and you're a child of God by the new birth, you have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in your body.
If you haven't, you're not a child of God. Nothing is clearer than this in Scripture. Thousands of Christians are ignorant of this fact. Know ye not, write Paul to the Corinthian church, I Corinthians six, nineteen. Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. If you are bloodbought and you belong to Christ and you are a child of God deceived into his family, a new creation work has taken place in your dead spirit, And the Holy Spirit has come there to bring that newness of life and make Jesus the one that you received real.
You see, to save my soul, to the salvation of your soul. Your soul is just the inner life. It's the thinking, feeling, deciding inner person. And your soul, that precious soul, makes its contact through the body, through the five senses, with the material world around, and that soul makes its contact with the unseen world of God in the realm of the Spirit. And because of Adam's fall and our lost condition, there was death in the realm of the Spirit, and there had to be a new birth, a new creation work. And when you received Jesus, the Spirit of God did his work in your spirit.
a new life, a new creation. And immediately Jesus began to capture that saved soul, or he should do. He begins to capture your thinking and capture your affections and capture your will, and it begins to bow to him. And then... Oh, the wonder of being a Christian, Jesus begins to peep out of your eyes and talk through your lips and work through your hands and walk through your feet and you whisper, Christ lives in me and the life that I now live. And this is being a Christian. If any man Romans eight, nine hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
Yes, the wonder is that Jesus Christ perceived is made real by the Holy Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit is the seal that marks me as Christ's purchased possession. And he is the earliest, the guarantee of that great future that God has destined every bloodbought, born again, child of God, to so richly enjoy. He brings the foretaste, the earnest, and he is the earnest guarantee of the great inheritance that we are going out into later on. Now in verse three of our story, a way back in the second book of Kings, you will notice that this pot of oil had to be, as it were, loosed in that house with its problems.
Go, borrow thee vessels abroad, of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels, borrow not a few. I don't know if you will have a good vivid imagination to see the exciting story of those two lively teenage boys possibly going out to get the vessels. dashing round to Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Brown and knocking at the door. Hi, got any kerosene tins? Have you got anything, any vessels, anything that will contain? You can just imagine the collection that they brought back into that house. Vessels of tin or vessels of gold, jugs and jars, symbols and wine glasses, vessels of different capacity and different appearance.
and they're all brought there inside this house. It's quite a picture. I think if you've got any imagination, it's one of those thrilling pictures of two boys bringing the vessels back. But there's one thing about every vessel that it must be empty. Imagine them lugging a big, big barrel back that's full of rum. Or a great big kerosene tin full of kerosene hasn't been pierced or opened. No use for the situation. The situation has developed, and at this moment it's vessels, empty vessels, not a few.
The more the better. Until at last they say, now we can't find any more. We've just scoured the neighborhood around, and we can't find in the garden or the yard, and we can't find in our neighbors' house any more that we can borrow. Then the command comes to shut the door. Now, do you know that God's deep work is nearly always done alone? I'm a bit puzzled as to whether we shall be able to have a morning or an evening, for we've only got, let's see, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, where are we now?
We've only got, is it six more talks on this subject, and we've got about fifteen lying here in the opening of Two Kings, talks on these great studies and victory, and we'll have to pick them out. But there is a lovely thought, a lovely thought. These vessels, not a few, behind a shut door. I'd like to spend a whole morning on that shut door. You know, you will forgive a stranger. I can run away when I've said it, you see. I can say, ta-ta, good old Keswick, and he wouldn't bother me too, hoots, whether you like it or not, because I'm gone, you see, in a few days, and back in Jamaica, you can rage at what I said.
It doesn't worry me a bit, you see. But let me tell you, there's far too little shutting the door in America today. Oh, the rush and the bustle of your great land, you must always be doing things and going places and seeing things and getting things done. It's made your country what it was, but it isn't producing deep Christians. I rarely meet a Christian today that knows what communion means. heart to heart with the Lord Jesus. When it comes to searching the Bibles yourself and getting out of the Bible, things fresh, it's prophetic.
You don't like it, do you? Of course you don't, but you've got to have it. It's true. Behind the shut door, God always does his deepest work. And Jesus said, Long, long after this, he said, Go into your secret closet, wherever you can find that quiet place, and shut the door. And if you will do business with God in secret, he will honor it. There will be always a mark upon that child of God. There will always be a flow of blessing with that child of God. If you know what it is, behind the shut door in the secret place, so rarely... love and know and worship and do business with God.
So the door is shut. There's just a poor woman with tears on her cheeks and her distress around her and a little pot of oil and a lot of old empty cans. What a picture. A lot of old empty cans. And now she's told to pour it. pour it and she begins to pour it and slowly and steadily vessel after vessel is filled and as long as she's pouring it pours and pours and pours until at last she comes to the end of the row and she says affects me another vessel this is the last one here no we can't there isn't another one left they're all full out of the one thing that they had in the house, the pot of oil.
There comes vessels filled and tell the prophet when she goes excitedly and tells in the story, says, well, go sell the oil and pay your debts and live on the rest. What a satisfying thing to be able to pay off every debt around live happily, contentedly satisfied on the rest. Would you like to be a Christian who could do that? Pay your debts. Your debts to God. Your debt to the perishing world.
Your debt to your fellow Christians. Oh, I could speak of you as a debtor. There's lots of debts you haven't paid yet. I am a debtor, cried Paul. Jesus didn't die on the cross just to save my soul, that I might hug it up in my own heart and say, Little me is saved. I'm going to glory. Shame on you, says Paul. I'm debtor to the Greeks, to the barbarians. I'm going to pay my debt. I wonder someday, yes, I wonder someday if the Christian church in America is going to pay her debts. Do you send missionaries to Puerto Rico?
Do you win Puerto Ricans for Christ here? Do you send men to China in Singapore and the lands afar? Do you win them for Christ here? They mean, but I give my dollars to do it. But did you ever, by prayer, by planning, by literature, by personal contact, ever really try to pay your debt? For the strangers that pour within your borders, longing for freedom, longing for a way of life that's so different to the lands they leave?
And did you pay your debt? And I tell you, to be able to pay your debt and live on the rest and find your resources, it all comes from this gracious person that God has given to you as a Christian, the Holy Spirit, who has sealed you and marked you out as Christ's purchased possession. Yes, I want to turn you to it again, Ephesians, back to Ephesians this time. And I want you to look at Ephesians chapter three. And in Paul's prayer, he says, verse fourteen, For this cause I bow my knee to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man?
That what? Oh, I love. I love to test young people when I get a bunch of them alone up in the hills of Jamaica sometime. And we get on the subject of the Holy Spirit or the Lord's coming or the possibilities of the Christian life. I say to them, now look, I want to ask you a question. Would you like to enjoy the constant, happy, ungrieved, fullest of the Holy Spirit? Oh, yes. Without exception, young Christians, say yes, that's what I would want and need.
If I go to count for God, why? Why? That, why? Well, you know, perhaps I could be like Billy Graham. What a wonderful ideal. Oh, how many young Christians would love to be like Billy Graham. Bless them. Oh, I wish there were twenty or thirty Billy Graham's around the world. Some of the dearest in my family that we prayed for the most were converted when he came to the West Indies. Thank God for it. I never speak a word against the Lord's anointed.
As long as God keeps them a humble witness to the message he's preaching, and I see those souls coming to Christ, and I've seen them again and again, and I fellowship with them now over the word of God, and they look back to the night when God used him. Oh, a young man says, I want, I want the fullness of the Spirit, that I might be a great evangelist like that. No, no, no, young Christian, you won't get it for that. Oh, but I want to be a Bible-class teacher. I would love in that lovely state where I live to see the ladies gathering together that I might be able to teach them thy word, that the hungry might be fed. Well, I love that thought.
That's great, but you won't get it for that. You say, what will I get it for? Well, have a look. There it is. you will be strengthened with might, and this means divine power by his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your heart, I think, that Christ may book into a motel room for two or three days and then leave, know that he might dwell there and make it his dwelling place. and live there. As sovereign Lord, he reigns, he's atone there, and he can use everything there.
That's it. Every vessel fills. Now, would you be brave tonight? Would you be honorable and brave tonight? I wonder if you will look with me at... your body, this temple in which the Holy Ghost has come to dwell and seal you as Christ's blood-bought child, and he's come with a possibility of strengthening you with might by God's Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell. Does he dwell upstairs in your mind? Does he live there?
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Now see? I don't think I'm a silly, wildish, rabid creature when I talk to you like this, but dear old Dr. Walter Wilson of Kansas City, who was one of my dearest friends, he's in heaven now. That beloved doctor. Dear old Walter Wilson, one day when I was working with him for a whole week at Cedar Lake, I remember he said, he said, you know, he said, my dear fellow Christians, if you are a TV fan, he said, and you love to turn knob on and sit there from five in the evening till eleven at night, and there are lots of people doing this shoot.
And pictures come and shows come and all sorts of variety comes, good, bad, indifferent, nice, decent and filthy. He said, I would advise you to get a nice little ticket. And he said, have the ticket with a strap so that you can strap it just above your eyes like this as you sit, not as a shield, but just above your eyes and have written on it, dirt may be dumped here. And the dirt will pass through your eyes, your brain, and what you think you are. You say, should we give up television?
Oh, no, no. It's come to stay. It's part of our modern life. It shows you good news, tells you the weather reports sometimes correctly. gives you all sorts of interesting things to look at, from little kiddies to grandmas and grandmas who can just see it, and really it's a great blessing to the old folk, I should think. But I tell you, if you are going to leave that knob on and spend your hours, you are wasting your Christian ease. Waste! Have you ever let the Spirit of God fill your mind? And have you been ever able to say, Lord, not my mind, but the mind of Christ.
Christ shall dwell. And if I begin to go from the mind a little lower, oh, listen, I sink down to the eyes. Have you ever filled that vessel? Those precious vessels, those wonderful vessels, the eyes. I'd like to see your bookshelves. I'd like to see your reading. I'd like to see the books supplied by your bedside at night in the stillness of the night when you go to sleep. Can you honestly say that your eyes are filled as vessels by the gracious, loving control of the Holy Spirit that Christ may be magnified through eye gate in all the intake through eyes?
The mind and the eyes are linked, and so we could move to the ear. You know, you are such gentlemen and ladies, you know, and you are so kind to each other. But sometimes when you begin to talk, and the talk gets on the rotten, and you know through ear gate the nasty things, and the nasty things about people are being said, you know, really the bravest thing would be to say to that person, look here, would you shut up, please? But of course you couldn't do that. You were far too decent. But it would be the wisest. You know lots of people are not stabbing people in the back but they're destroying their lives with chitter chat.
And even in Christian circles the amount of conversation that passes through the ears that's destroying to the character of other people is really disgraceful. You know it and I know it. If you begin to move down these vessels from the mind to the eyes to the ears to the tongue, the vocal cord, why James will spend a long time with you talking about this amazing, wonderful gift of speech and how the hot water comes and the cold water comes and how it can speak nice words and then bitter words, isn't this a tap to control? I'm glad God gave me two eyes and two ears and five fingers and ten toes, but I'm so glad he only gave me one tongue.
It's all I can look after. I wonder if that vessel is filled and we could move down to the muscles. Oh, if I was talking to young people, I would say young people. I watch you. seen the American boys twice coming to my old homeland of England, and I've seen them bracing their muscles and getting ready to go overseas to Europe, and I've seen them waiting for their D-days and waiting, and they've kissed mom and dad goodbye, and they've trained to fight in the skies or on the beaches, and they'll do anything. And I said, when will they do it for Jesus Christ? Then will the boys of England and America go to the battlefronts to fight as if they were fighting for the cause of freedom, fighting for Jesus Christ to fulfill his command.
Yet they'll spend hours and hours, you know, catching up all and into the scrum. socking that old ball away hour after hour and yet how little muscle is used and how rarely you meet young English and American who will say just as I am young strong and free to be the best that I can be for truth, for righteousness, for the Lord of my life I come. Yes, the pot of oil is there. You're a Christian. You're saved by God's grace, but the vessels are filled. Behind the shut door there comes the transaction of the pouring by faith till every vessel is filled, filled.
And now pay your debts. And there are debtors to God, for we are debtors. There are debtors to the world, for we are in trust with the gospel to give it out to those around us. Our debtors, to our fellow believers, our debts can all be paid, and we can live on the rest. You say, do you really believe it's possible for me to live this sort of Christian life? Yes. Yes, God wouldn't fool us. But you say it's only for the exceptional few. No, it isn't. No, it isn't. It's for the humblest believer. It's for all.
This is God's provision and it's out of his sufficiency. Well, you see, what is this life? Wrap it up in some verse of Scripture, and I think I will turn you to Romans eight. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free. Free. from the law of sin and death. See, I don't understand it. It's too involved. You must explain it well. The best way I can explain it is this. Look. You see that book?
As I hold it, if I let it go, will it go right up to the ceiling and rest on the ceiling? You say, no, it'll go down like that. What's that old-fashioned word now? Gravity. Gravity. You know they're squabbling today as to whether to gravity pushes things down or draws things down. This is the latest squabbling scientifically, and I don't know. They don't know. Of course, it's out of date. Gravity, it's all relativity now, as they see the related bodies and the universe. But listen, this thing's something we've lived with. It pulls things down. Down. Yet... I go out and I see on the ground there as I'm walking over the grass, I shouldn't, but I love to.
And as I go over the grass, a bird goes up. And I look at it and I say, but listen, how's that bird doing it? I thought there was something that pulled everything down and it's going up, up, up, up into the sky. You say it's very easy. That bird's got life, and as long as the life can spread its wings and keep its wings in motion, it can rise victoriously over the law of gravity. It pulls down. If I take a little shotgun, I wouldn't do this, and I fire at it, and I remove the life from the little tiny breast of that little bird. Immediately it falls down to the ground, and I realize that all the time it was rising victoriously, There was a law of gravity that was pulling it down, but there was a law greater than the law of gravity called the law that was letting it rise up.
And this is the picture. To my dying day, say this with sorrow in my heart, for I was talking with someone running for a long time about an outspin Christian man who's fallen into liquor and disgraced. And today he's right down there. ever could this mean listen to my dying day there is a possibility of the old Adam flesh dragging me down to any disgraceful sin unless that old Adam flesh is kept by faith moment by moment in the place of crucifixion on the cross and unless the Holy Spirit of God who has given me the new life of Jesus the Lord of the Spirit of life in Jesus may be free.
Hasn't removed it. It'll always be there. The pull-down always be there. You can prove to me at the end of this meeting that you can never sin again, that you've got sinless perfection. You'll be the first one that I have... And I tell you, I would like you for an hour, because I'm afraid you would sin during that hour as I talk to you. But to find out it, that old nature of mine, that old nature of mine, can never please God, can never be improved. I am bankrupt, and I stand before God with nothing in the house except a pot of oil.
And the pot of oil that came to seal me, the indwelling Holy Spirit is the one that wants, in all his fullness, if I will only let him fill, fill the life, to magnify Jesus, to display Jesus, his beauty, his strength, his love, his peace, his promise. Do you want this? There I must leave you alone with the Lord. Shall we bow together? We bow each one of us speaking with the Lord.
I am going to ask the one of the organ or the piano, the organ If they would give us the music of Take My Life and Let It Be, it's three, three, five, and that great hymn, Take My Life and Let It Be, written by Francis Ridley Havago, covers the whole of the vessels, take my hands, take my feet, take my voice. Take my lips, take my love, ever only all for thee.
Lord, I want you to have it. I want the Holy Spirit ungrieved to possess and fill all the vessels inside the door of the house, the kingdom of my soul. Lord, if you've made me thine, and you've led and died to redeem me, you've sealed me and put thy spirit within. And I want his gracious fullness to possess and fill every vessel. Music, please. And quietly you like to the reach for your hymn book. The head still bowed turned to three hundred and thirty-five.
Just the first verse and the last verse. Very softly bowed before the Lord with your books open. If you know it, don't bother to look. Just sing. Very softly. Ask your heart, can I really mean it? Take my life. And then we move to the last verse. Take my love. If he gets your love, he'll get all right. Shall we start now? Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to me.
Take my hands and let them move. at the impulse of thy love. At the impulse of thy love. I just pause for a moment. Strengthened with might by his spirit. in the inner man, in the inner woman, that Christ may dwell and be atone, filling every vessel.
Take my love, Lord. Lord, I'm not going to withhold anything. If you get my love, you get me. And as you come to the end of this verse, three words tremendous in meaning, ever, only all for thee. Ever. No retreat. Only. No arrival. All. No reserve. The whole bunch of keys handed over to the Lord for the house to be atonement, from the mind down to the toes, from the thinking to the walk, to all that that precious, lovely life of yours is made up his for thee, Lord.
Oh, sing it and just forget me, forget everyone around you and mean it. Take my love, my song I call, as thy beat is precious too. Take myself and I will be.
Never only fall for thee. Never only fall for Lord, as we dismiss, may we go out into the night with glad hearts, whispering the words, strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell. And in his dwelling every debt will be paid to those around, and we shall live on the rest, live victoriously with our conquering risen Lord in full charge. Many have had this experience, some are new to it, but may thy work be deep and true in all of our hearts tonight.
As we go to our conversation, our fellowship, our recreation, our refreshment, and then to our beds to sleep, may it be with happy yet sober thoughts about thee and about the gracious comforter who indwells us to make thee real in us and through us. day by day. May the grace of our Lord Jesus always sufficient, the love of God our Father, that matchless love, and the gracious ungrieved communion of the Holy Spirit abide with us now and ever. Amen.