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Second Kings chapter #4 I want to use an Old Testament story
tonight that I think is I just love Old Testament stories.
I love the Kings and the prophets, I love Elijah.
Elijah I if I had one favorite it would probably be Elijah.
I'm more like Elijah as far as let's just call fire down out of
heaven. But I also like Elijah.
My favorite on studying about leadership would be Moses.
So so those are so three of my favorite characters in the Old
Testament. Jeremiah.
I cry every time I think about Jeremiah and what they put him
through. And and I'm preaching through
Jeremiah right now. Think I'm on about the fourth
message. I'll probably preach about 11
messages going through the historical aspects.
But over here in Second Kings chapter 4, we're in the northern
tribes of Israel. And I've always said that when
the northern, the northern tribes of Israel never had a
good king, never the the southern tribes of Judah, they
would have a good king and a bad king and maybe 2 good kings and
then bad kings and they went back and forth.
But the but Israel to the north after Jeroboam and Rehoboam, the
split of the Kingdom, there was never a good king in the north.
In fact, they got somebody like Ahab and Jezebel.
So when Ahab and Jezebel comes on the scene, God puts Elijah on
the scene. So I like to say we're sin
abounds, grace much more abounds.
And so we think more about hopefully we think more about
Elijah than we do about Ahab and Jezebel.
But Elijah was the the understudy of Elijah.
He's the one that comes after, of course, Elijah and Elijah on
the day that he's getting ready to go up in a whirlwind, he
said, Elijah said to Elijah, ask what thou wilt and I'll try to
do everything I can to see that it happens.
And he said, well, I want a double portion of thy spirit.
And so anyhow, OK, I just want to make sure.
I thought I heard something down there.
So they, they, he said, I want a double portion of my spirit.
And he said, well, if you're with me and and you, you, you
see me go up, then that'll happen.
And it did. And so Elijah has double the
miracles that Elijah ever had. So it's a fascinating story.
But in Second Kings Chapter 4, we have a story that where
Elisha is the prophet of the day.
Now let me let me do a little bit of a background if you were
to go back to chapter 3 and I'm not going to preach through
this, but Jehoram is the king now over the northern tribes.
Jehoshaphat is the king in the southern tribes and there's a
war between them and Moab and and then there's another king.
I think there's 4 kings that are involved in Chapter 3.
So think about this. If I was going to say in world
affairs, it would be like China, the US, Russia, all of these
world powers, because they were the world power, they were the,
the dominant power of the day. And Elisha got involved in it.
And the way I would look at it if you go back and read chapter
3 is I would say these kings owe everything to Elisha.
So think about that world stage, world power, Elisha's involved.
And then all of a sudden we come to chapter 4 and now God is
going to tell us a story about a widow woman.
So let's go ahead and stand tonight in honor of God's word.
We're not going to read the whole story.
I'm just going to read part of it and then we're going to look
rest of it in just a minute. Chapter 4, verse one.
Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the
prophets of 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 bondsman.
And Elisha said unto her, What shall I do for thee?
Tell me, what has thou in the house?
And she said, Thy handmaid hath not anything in the house.
Now you know she's a Baptist. Then there's a comma, and then
she's like, she goes, save a pot of oil.
Oh, yes, I have this pot of oil in my house.
Then he said, go borrow the vessels abroad.
Of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels, borrow not a few.
Now, let's stop our reading there because we'll want to
catch up in just a few minutes. But I want you to notice here
that there's a woman who's in grave trouble.
She has two sons that are going to be sold into in.
They're going to be sold into slavery because she had a debt
that she could not pay. Now, does that sound familiar?
Having debt that we cannot pay, what do we do?
Well, we're going to see what happens in this story tonight.
And I believe that you'll understand, hopefully that this
is a missions story. It's just told in a little
different way. Lord help us tonight as we look
at the story of the widow woman with the two sons and they are
about to be sold into slavery because she has a debt that she
could not pay and their sons were going to be taken to pay
the debt. I pray that we might understand
the the principle and the application that we'll be able
to make by the end of the message in Christ's name, Amen.
You may be seated. So when you look at chapter 3
verses chapter 4, here's what I come up with.
God is interested in world affairs, but God is also
interested in individuals. So while God is intervening
through Elisha in chapter 3 with with the the the king of Moab,
the king of Israel and the king of Judah in chapter 4, a widow
woman comes to Elisha and says I'm in trouble.
I have a debt that I cannot pay Now, she said.
Now you know, my husband was a servant.
He was a man of God. He was in the school of the
prophets. And nowhere in the text does it
imply that that this debt that they owed was of any kind of sin
debt or any kind of something that was wrong.
It was basically as long as the man was alive and as long as he
was in the school of the sons of the prophet, as long as he was
working and doing his business, he was able to pay the debt.
But now he has died, and you know it is.
It's tragic. You, you never know when you're
going to die. Nobody knows the day they're
going to die. But here's what you need to
understand about death. You need to be prepared for the
day that you do die. Now, again, I love the fact that
God is concerned with world affairs, but God is also
concerned with individuals like a woman who really is.
If I could put it in this way, it's like she's in Bible college
with her husband. And of course, I know what
that's like because I left the military.
I had to left a good job, got paid every two weeks.
I knew that the paycheck was going to be there.
We left the military. We drove to Springfield, MO.
I didn't have a job. I didn't have a prosper of a
job. I didn't know anybody there.
There was no family that lived in Springfield, MO that I knew,
but God provided along the way. And so I, I can't even, in fact,
I'll say it like this. Sometimes preachers are allowed
to opt out of Social Security. And I was like, I'm not opting
out of Social Security because if I die, all my wife is going
to have is my FedEx insurance and my Social Security that's
going to help take care of my children and my wife.
Now I'm 65 and I can tell you, I'm glad I didn't opt out of
Social Security because I'm about to collect.
Hopefully now my, my luck is, is I'll get, I'll pay for one year
and I'll die of some disease or some, I don't know.
But anyhow, I, I remember looking at my Social Security
and got, I got on my personal sheet and I looked at how much
money I've paid in the Social Security since I was 14 years
old. I wished I'd had that money to
invest myself. But anyhow, I don't, I, I just
know this, that the first time that I got my first paycheck at
at age 14, I wanted to know who FICA was.
Because FICA, whoever this dude was, was taking money out of my
check. I understood taxes, but I didn't
understand who FICA is. And if you don't know who FICA
is, you ought to go figure it out for yourself.
So here's a woman readying her life to be in the ministry as
her husband prepares in the school of the prophets.
And she says in the text to Elijah that her husband was a
man who feared God as he was preparing his life.
Then the Bible says he died totally unexpected.
Of course, we don't know how he died.
We just know that he died and in a position and she was in a
position that she had a debt that was way more than she could
pay. Now, you understand, this time,
this culture they lived in #1 there was there.
There could have been some allowances under the law for a
widow. But listen, they didn't live
under the law because they're not living in the southern part
of Judah. They're living in the northern
tribes where bell worship is prevalent.
And before bell worship was prevalent, it was calf worship.
And after bell worship, it'll go back to calf worship.
And after calf worship, you see, there's kings in the that they
saw that bail worship didn't work, so they go back to calf
worship. Then they realize calf worship
don't work, so they go back to bail worship.
And it's just a bunch of idle wickedness that's going on in
the northern tribes. So there was no, there was no
provision for a woman like this. She didn't have Social Security.
She didn't have governmental assistance.
There was no life insurance policy.
And listen, you go back in our history, in our early days,
there were deader prisons. I I went to North Carolina and
went on a Baptist history tour. And there are are there are
there were jails back in the day that if you didn't pay your
debts, you went to jail. I always wondered, how do they
ever expect them to pay the debt if they were in jail?
But they really didn't care because you either paid your
debt or you went to jail. Now, this woman in this culture
was going to lose her sons to slavery and we know that was
prevalent also in the culture that they were in.
Now, I would like to also say that is why God today through
the New Testament takes great concern for the care of widows.
And if God take great takes great concern for the widows, it
would be good for us to do the same.
Our church actually does that in the sense that we have what's
called a golden acre properties. We have, I believe I'm going to
say this right, 14, we have 14 units, we have 14 apartments.
And the pastor before me had this burden that to, to help
widows and ministry related people and stuff like that.
And so we, when I was there in the, when I was there from 1986
to 1990, we actually built the first triple fourplex that were
one bedrooms and one duplex, 22 units that were two bedrooms
each. And I remember in 1987 or 8, we
opened those up and widows filled all six positions.
So there were six, there were six apartments and every
apartment was filled by a widow woman.
And they all went in at that time for $285 a month.
And the idea is that the rent would never go up no matter
what. So whatever they went in at at
that time, it would stay that way for the rest of their life.
When I became the pastor in 2000, there was still one lady
living in one of the apartments for $285 a month.
And I think she lived about four or five years while I was her
pastor. And when she died, she was
paying $285 a month. And you know what the idea was?
Let's take care of the widows. Let's help as best as we can.
But, but unfortunately, the wicked kings of Israel had made
no provision for any type of help for someone like this.
And the situation she found herself in was a dire situation
here. Here's what I'd like to say.
She had a debt that she could not pay, and she was distressed
about her situation. Would we agree with that?
First of all, her husband had died.
I, I've pastored widows and widowers for 30 something years.
You just never, you just never are ready to lose a mate.
It's, it's a devastating and, but the problem was when he
died, he left a debt that was probably, as I mentioned
earlier, not a problem as long as he was alive.
And again, I don't believe it was a debt of sinful living.
If it was, I believe Elijah would have probably told us
that. But because here's what she told
Elisha and Elisha agreed with us in the text.
You know, my husband was a good man and you know he feared the
Lord. Now here's what I want you to
grab a hold of also, by her going to Elisha, she is in fact
going to God because she knows that Elisha is the man of God.
He is the prophet of the day. He is the emissary between many
of the people and God. He's the one that comes on the
scene and says, hey, thus saith the Lord, you need to, you need
to get these things in order. And then she says this, and I'm
just going to kind of paraphrase it if I could.
You know, my husband was in Bible college, you know, he was
in the prophet school. You know, we were raising these
two boys and you know my husband Elijah, he was looking forward
to going out and preaching. Thus saith the Lord, and
preaching against Baal worship and preaching against Jeroboam
like Elijah did against Ahab and Jezebel.
You know, my husband was that kind of guy.
And now I need some help. My husband was burdened about
our land. He was burdened about Baal
worship. He had a burden and felt
obligated to preach the truth about Jehovah God.
And now look where I'm at. I need some help.
So she makes this appeal to God through Elisha.
And I'd like to also say praise God.
She had enough insight to know where to go to.
And here her sons are about to be taken into a slavery and she
appeals to God. Isn't it amazing today that
people in extreme crisis and circumstances that are bad, they
turn to everybody but God? Drugs, alcohol, psychiatrist,
psychologist, TV commentators, Psalm, Psalm readers, psychics,
and you know what all that stuff does?
It makes the problem worse. You know what?
We need God every day. We need God every day.
So the story tells us that Eliza asked her What shall I do for
thee? Now, when I first read that,
I'll be honest with you, I thought, boy, he's like, his
idea was like, what do you want me to do about it?
Because I say that to my wife all the time.
When she tells me something, I go, what do you want me to do
about it? I can't do anything about it.
The idea, though, is not that that way.
That's not the idea. The idea is this God, what can
we do? What can you do?
How can I help to show this lady and her two sons that God is
real and God? How can, how can we increase her
faith not only for her, but her, for her sons and those that come
after them? You know, listen, these stories
were told generation after generation after generation.
Can you imagine these two boys when they would have children
and grandchildren and they'd say, come and sit and listen to
what grandpa has to say about what God did in my life?
Because if God didn't intervene, they were going to live a
destitute life. She was going to live a life
without her sons, no way to make a living, and she was going to
be in real trouble. So what did he use in this
matter? What it what is?
And let me say it like this, not only does God teach them
something, He taught me something.
And if he teaches me something, he can teach you something.
And that is he can take a widow woman with two sons that are
about to be taken away from her. And the question that he asked
her is what the what do you have in your house?
And and then she says, well, nothing really, but save a pot
of oil. I do have this little pot of
oil. So I believe tonight as we close
out the mission conference, the question he asked her is not
only a good question for her, but it is a good question for
us. What do you have in your house?
Because God's not going to ask you to give what you don't have.
He's going to 1st ask you to give what you do have.
What do you have in your house? Now we, we know that she was a
Baptist because she said I don't have anything in the house
except the pot of oil. So Elisha gives her some
instructions and I want you to look at verse #3 I want you to
see the instructions. Then he said, go borrow the
vessels of abroad, of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels,
borrow not a few. Now let's just think about this.
I have an imagination. I read a book one time about
Warren, Weirsby said you need to preach with imagination.
Or so I do. I think about these things.
So I'm just imagining that this instruction of verse #3 he says,
now listen, what do you have in your house?
He doesn't say anything. He, he didn't say, oh, oh, you
got a pot of oil in your house. A little pot of oil.
OK, here's what I want you to do.
I want you to go to the villages around, the neighbors around.
I want you to borrow vessels. Don't borrow a few bar as many
as you possibly can and just borrow as many you can.
So she says two or two sons. Now here's what we're going to
do. We're going to go borrow
vessels, not a few. Now, here's what I'm thinking.
The two boys are thinking. Mom's lost their mind.
She's having a nervous breakdown.
This ain't good. Dad's died.
We're about to be sold into slavery, and she wants us to go
out and borrow vessels. What good's that going to do?
All we got's this little pot of oil in the house.
We're toast. We're dead meat.
But they do. Do what the man of God says.
Let me tell you something. Do what God says.
When God says tie, tie. When God says give offerings,
give offerings. When God says children obey your
parents, Children obey your parents.
When God tells you to do something, do it and it'll
always come out better than if you don't do it.
So they go knock on the door. And I like to think of them
knocking on the door and they look and a woman looks through
the little peephole. You know what I'm saying?
Look through the little peephole and, and, and the man says, who
is it, Martha? And she said, Jacob, it's him.
Two boys. What?
2 boys, you know those two boys that their daddy died and
they're about to get sold into slavery.
Oh, what do they want? Well, I don't know what they
want, Jacob. We'll open the door, Martha, and
see what they want. So she opens the door and the
two boys said, my Mama has given us instructions through the man
of God that we need to borrow some vessels.
Now, let me let me tell you, when you say borrow, do you know
what that means? That means you're going to
return the vessel. All right.
You don't borrow something and then keep it.
That'd be stealing. Amen.
We want to borrow some vessels. So they go into the backroom and
they maybe get a couple of vessels that they can borrow.
And of course they put, they put a duct tape on the bottom of it
and they put their name on it because that's what everybody
does when they go to a potluck supper, you know, because God
forbid you'd ever lose that thing you've had for 25 years.
You know, you can never lose that pot or whatever it is.
So they put it on the bottom of it and they and they do this,
they go from house to house to house to house and they do
exactly what the man of God told them to do.
That was the instructions they were given.
Now, how many would think with me that's, that's really weird
instructions. But I would say this, it's no
weirder than God telling the church going to all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature.
The world thinks that's weird, but that's what the command is.
So there's no difference really when it comes to difficult
commandments or maybe things that are hard to understand.
We are not to question God. God we don't.
God doesn't owe us an explanation.
We're going to answer to God. He's not going to answer to us.
So, So he gives her these instructions.
They go out into the they God gave the command and then God
enabled them, even if it seemed like a strange request.
So let's stop for a minute and see if we can understand the New
Testament application. Her problem was she had a debt
she could not pay. Now we've looked at Wednesday
night and Thursday night and Friday night saying we have a
debt that we cannot pay. Our debt is the salvation that
we have in Jesus Christ, Paul said in Romans 114.
I am a debtor to I'm a debtor both to the Greeks and also to
the Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise.
Meaning you and I owe a debt to the gospel.
You owe a debt to the gospel. I owe a debt to the gospel, Paul
said in First Corinthians 9/19. For though I be free from all
men, yet have I made myself a servant unto all that I might
gain. The more.
So the orders that Elisha gave the widow were no stranger than
the orders God has given us to go into all the world and preach
the gospel to every creature. This woman owed a debt.
She had to pay the debt, or she or her sons were going to be
sold into slavery. Now what she did was she.
She followed the instructions, but she did it based upon faith.
She believed God. Without faith it is impossible
to to please God. Without faith it is impossible
to please God. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for. What is she hoping for?
That her sons would not be sold into slavery.
The evidence of things not seen this there was substance to what
God said, but she had to believe God and she had to do God and
she had to trust God that God was going to take care of her
situation. This woman owed a great debt and
she was given instructions that really didn't make any sense.
And we owe a debt and we have to pay that debt.
And we've been given instructions that by the world
standards would be strange. But by faith we are to carry out
those instructions by our faith promise.
And seeing people called a pretty tight, you owe a debt to
this city. You owe a debt to this state.
Now, when it's New England, I would say you, you know, when I
think about Missouri, Missouri's probably bigger than all the New
England states put together. It's, it's a massive, if you go
to Saint Joe, Missouri and drive all the way to the Boot Hill,
it'll take you about 6 hours or 7 hours to drive that distance.
You can do that. You can drive all the New
England states in no time. You owe a debt to the New
England states. This, this area needs a good
fundamental independent, Bible believing churches and then we
could look at the responsibility that we have as a nation.
Someone was telling me there's about 350 million people in
America and 1/3 of them live in this corridor.
Isn't that amazing? She had a problem, but God has a
plan. God always has a plan.
God's plan is, and it involved faith.
God's plan is a lot like the plan that God had for the widow.
The debt we have is much bigger than we are.
However, God didn't ask her to do what she couldn't do.
God asked her to do what she could do.
Now we she could go out and borrow vessels.
So they go out and borrow vessels take.
And then she said this. Look at the second instruction
found in verse #5 I'm sorry, verse #4 He says, Now when you
borrow all these vessels in verse 3, when thou art come in,
thou shalt shut the door upon thee and thy sons, and thou
shalt pour out unto all those vessels, and thou shalt set
aside that which is full the second so, So now they're done
going to Martha's and Jacobs and Mary's and all the people that
they can gather this, this, this, these vessels.
Now they come in. He says now I want you to take
that little pot of oil because you said you had a pot of oil
and we all have something in fact to be truthful with you, I
think we have more than we can even imagine.
We have more than the whole we have more than most of the
world. So he said take what you have
pot of oil and then I want you to come in here and I want you
to pour that oil in them vessels so I can imagine they were like
clay pots. You know that you think about
when Jesus turned the water into wine and they poured the water
in it and you know all of that. So I'm thinking of in perkin
pots, you know that kind of vessel.
So they come in and they might have been small vessels and big
vessels and large vessels and she might have been even said,
let's start off with a small vessel, you know, Little 1.
So she starts pouring it in there and pouring it in there
and all of a sudden the 1st the pot is full and she slides it
over the side. She said to her son.
Now there's three of them in the room, right?
And most people lived in one room houses in those days, you
understand that they would have a fireplace and they would have
their beds. Parents would sleep on one side,
the children on the other. And so they're in this house.
There's the doors closed because because that was instruction.
Close the door, go all the way till it clicks, lock it because
I want God. I want you to see what God's
about to do. So the first boy, of course, he
would take the pot and she would say to the second boy or pour it
in here. And the woman keeps pouring it.
They keep doing this. They keep doing this.
I mean, they, their eyeballs got to be coming out of their heads
by now because each vessel just keeps getting full and keeps
getting full. They come to the last vessel.
You know what happened on the last vessel?
Drip, drip. Because she said, give me
another vessel, Mom, there's no more vessels.
Now, I'd like to practically think that if she had gotten
more vessels, should have got more oil.
But at some point it stopped and she's like, Oh my, look what we
have before her. All right, look at the next
verse. And it came to pass when the
vessels were full that she said under her son, bring me yet a
vessel. And he said, hey, Mama, there
ain't no more vessels. And that's how we set in
Tennessee. Now here it says there's not a
vessel more. And then I like what it says
after the and the oil stayed. So then she runs to the man of
God and she says, hey, this is what happened.
What do I do now? And he said, go sell the oil,
pay the debt, go sell the oil, pay the debt.
So she went into the Exxon on oil business.
Actually it was not that kind of oil.
We know it was olive oil, but that was, listen, you go to the
Middle East, olive oil is a very prominent product in that part
of the world. And and it, and she sold it and
she made money and she paid the debt.
You see, that's what we do. We take what God has given us.
We believe God by faith. We pay our debt to the gospel.
Now let me give you a couple of things here before we close this
up, because I think you've got the ideas.
Everybody got the idea. Number one, if she'd have had,
if she'd have borrowed more vessels than she would have had
she'd gotten more oil, if she'd have gotten more oil than she
would have gotten more money because the law of sowing and
reapers is a law of nature. That is undeniable.
So the question for us tonight is what do you have in your
house? Now, most people might be
sitting here thinking, well, Friedre, I don't really have
much. Really.
What about your talents? Does everybody ever think about
that? What about your job that you
have you ever thought about that?
How about your children? How many is willing to give
their children back to God instead of treat instead of
treating them like some idol that many parents do?
I'm just saying to you, I didn't realize this till after I was
called to preach. But my mom and dad, when I was
18 months old, I was on my deathbed.
I was very asthmatic. I was born early.
I didn't have any lung capacity. My lungs were didn't have any
lungs. And my wife thinks it's so funny
now because she said there ain't nothing wrong with your lungs.
Now she says you I can't even I can't even sit in the same room
when you're talking on the phone, especially with Dave
McCracken because you, like, you guys are like 2 old women.
Y'all just yap and yap and yap. I said, well, at least you know,
old women are the one that yap say man.
And so I was 18 months old. The doctor comes in and had me
in an oxygen tent. And the doctor said you need to
just be willing to give your son up tonight because I don't think
he can live through the night. And so my mom and dad, and they
never told me this till after I was saved and called a preach.
But but they got on their knees and they just prayed.
Well, if God, if you're going to take him, just take him and use
him for whatever. And then when I was 25 years old
and I called my dad was the last person I wanted to tell that I
was going to be a preacher because I knew this was not
going to go good. I'm just, I'm just telling you,
I know my dad. We've always kind of had that.
We had AI mean it was like we were we were never like the best
of buds. That was my brother.
I was the black sheep of the family and that that's but
anyhow, I got saved and God called me to preach and then I
called my dad. You know what my dad said?
He goes well, I was wondering when it's going to happen and
I'm like, what totally messed me up in my mind because I thought
he was going to like, well, you know, preacher, they starved to
death. And as you can see, I hadn't
starved to death. God's taken care of us the whole
way, but I, I, I'm just, that just blew my mind.
So I'm just saying, you know, why don't, why don't you don't
wait till your kids are on their deathbed.
Go ahead and give them to the Lord right now by faith.
My mom and dad gave their boy to God and he said it's really all
we got. And that's, that's the reason
I'm preaching today. I had a knuckle that's just
under my dad. They, my dad was, he was two
years younger than my dad. And toward the end of his life,
me and my wife went out to Phoenix, AZ and I met I, I spent
about four or five hours with him.
We talked about all of our family, everything.
And not about halfway through it, I, I was like, are you my
dad? Because you're more, I'm more
like you than I am like my dad. And it was just, it was just a
weird thing. And I know that happens in
families, but he assured me that I, he was not my dad.
He was my uncle. But I'm just telling you, if you
look around your house, I think we probably could discover that
God's been better to us than we realize.
And you need to know that God is first going to hold you
accountable for what you do have and what He's given you.
And then God's plan is for us to use what we have and then add
faith to it. And when we we when we do that,
God will work out his plan for His glory and for his honor.
Well, preacher, I just don't know.
I don't have much oil. Well, you got some oil.
Now let's go back to the story, because remember, they were
borrowed vessels. Back to the imagination.
They were barred vessels, right? So, Kim, two boys have to go
back after they sell the oil. They know whose it is because
the masking tape's on the bottom of the ball of the lane, and
it's got the name on it, Jacob and Martha.
So they go knock on that door. Martha opens a little slit.
Jacob goes, who is it, Martha? Martha goes, it's him.
Two boys. You means the ones that was
going to be sold into slavery and they came by and barred
them. Vessels.
Yeah, that's them. What do they want?
I don't know. They're outside.
Well, open the door and let them in.
So Martha opens the door. They step in and they say, we've
come to bring back your vessels. Now, you know what you call
this? You call this a testimony.
They're testifying to what God has done.
And they said, well, let me tell you what God did.
We had this little pot of oil and we poured it into these
vessels and the oil stayed. And we sold the oil and paid the
debt. And my mom is going to be able
to have her two sons. And we're going to be able to go
out and work and take care of our mother because that's what
they did. And you should take care of your
mother. Somebody say Amen.
So I'm just telling you that's what happened.
They gave a testimony. You know what happens when you
give the faith promise or when you preach?
We give a testimony. Let me tell you what God's done.
I've told you several testimonies this week.
Well, let me give you let me give you a Bible testimony.
Have you ever heard about a little boy that when there was a
multiplicity of people and Jesus said, I want y'all to all sit
down and there's over 5000 that need to be fed.
And Jesus said, well what, what do we, what do we have?
And they said not much. And they said, well, we do have
5 loaves. This little boy's got 5 loaves
and two fishes. All right, why don't you sit
down and we'll have some faith and have a word of prayer and
we'll distribute 5 loaves and two fishes to 5000.
Now when they, when they use the word 5000, that was probably
just the men, which means that there was could have been up to
15,000 people there because you know, there's a mom and a dad
and 1.3 children. I always wondered how they did
that. Well, the average is in America
is 2.8 children. I don't want an eighth of a
child. But you know what God can do?
He can take whatever, whatever you have, no matter how small it
is and multiply it to what He desires.
What if the widow was not willing to obey God?
Is everybody getting this? The debt would not have been
paid or children would have been sold into slavery and she would
have lived a life of destitution.
Instead God. God got her into the old
business and paid her debt and she kept her children.
What will happen if we do not give what God tells us to give
in faith? Promise.
Well let me just tell you because this is the way I like
to put it. People will die and go to hell
because their their debt is too large for them to pay and God
will not get the glory as He sews desires through your faith.
Now I, I tell you, these boys probably think it when they went
out that their mom had lost her ever loving mind.
But it was all said and done. You know what they said?
Well, I'm sure glad Mama followed God.
And right before their very eyes, God did something that
nobody could even imagine. We've last last June.
We have our vacation Bible school in June.
I love vacation Bible school. It's one of my favorite weeks.
I love it. I don't understand people who
don't like vacation Bible school.
I love it. I do the pig game.
It's my I hope I get to do it again.
You know, I didn't get to do it this year because I had surgery
and I'm just saying we, we have, we'll go out into the community.
We buy people. And three, we had three bus
kids. That's what I call stuck.
And they, they, they came on the bus and pretty, pretty hard life
pretty hard. The family they live in is, is,
it's, it's not ideal. It's not, you know, like we're
supposed to enjoy. And they're bus kids.
And one of them is got to make sure I get this right. 1 is now
1611 is 1 is 18, one is 16 and one is 14.
The 18 year old got saved first, the 16 year old got saved next.
This is all within a year and a half.
And just last Sunday night I baptized the 14 year old who got
saved. And they're sticking, They're
coming. And Angie Schrope and the Butch
who are missionaries out of our church and they are in
Australia, they are having their 25th anniversary.
And they and they and they, the place that they wanted to spend
their anniversary was, was in Springfield because her mom and
dad lived there and the church is there.
So they came home for three weeks, 2 with us and then they
were anyhow, they come home and Angie Shrope is a bus kid.
She, she's a bus kid now. She's a missionary's wife on the
foreign field. And when Angie saw those two
girls, she said I got to have my picture with them.
And she wanted them to know, listen, I was a bus kid too, and
you can do it. And I've already told my wife, I
said if, if one of them wants to go to Heartland, if we have to,
if we have to pay for ourself, I want to make sure she goes
because because we got a debt bigger than we can pay.
And if we can help people like that, then that's what we need
to do. So let me ask you this, what do
you have in your house? What is it that you can give God
by faith? So it's not it's not just it's
not just the story here, but there's real life stories like
those bus bus kids. We call them bus kids.
We probably shouldn't. I don't know what else to call
them. They're bus kids.
They come on the bus. Their parents don't come.
They don't even know who their dad is their their mom.
Their mom has nothing to do with church.
But here's what I want to and I told her I helped him one time.
Listen to this. I helped him with a issue, issue
helped them. And I told the mother, I said
I'm not doing this for you. If it was just you, I wouldn't
help you at all. I'm doing this for your kids
because I love those kids and they have a heart for God and,
and, and I want, I want to see God use them for his honor and
for his glory. And you say you wouldn't have
helped? Nope, I wouldn't have.
She's old enough to have a job. She ought to go out and get one,
and she has now. And I told her you need to get a
job. You're you're able bodied and
you know, you know what? You know what?
Take care of a lot of stuff JOBWORK.
You and I know a debt we cannot play, but God has a plan, plan
for us to pay our debt. Give your life, give your money,
give your talents, give whatever you have and give it to God in
your debt can be paid. Our debt is great and our
resources are small, but we must ask what do we have?
And if we give what we have by faith, then we can do.
Watch God do what you can't even imagine.
Thank you for listening to the sermon from the pulpit of
Liberty Baptist Church. If this message was a blessing
to you, or if there's any way we can serve you, please let us
know by contacting us at info@mylibertybaptist.org.
Or you can visit us this Sunday at 800 Washington St. in Easton,
MA. May the Lord bless you as you
grow in His Word.