Transcript
Pastor (0:00)
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Assistant or Co-preacher (0:08)
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Pastor (0:28)
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Assistant or Co-preacher (1:20)
Stand to your feet and go to Second Kings, verse 18:27. And I want you to read it when you get home. I'm gonna do that, baby. I want you to read it when you get home. Because there's more text than I have time to talk about, and this text is just phenomenal. You got close to it this morning. I had to pray you over to the other Elisha and not Elijah. I was worried about it for a minute. I don't mind you getting happy, but don't take my sermon. Second Kings, chapter four, verse 18. And when the child was grown, it fell on a day that he went out to his father, to the reapers. And he said unto his father, my head, my head. He said to a lad, carry him to his mother. That's important. Carry him to his mother. And when he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon. Till noon. That's important. And then he died. And she went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God. That's important. And shut the door upon him and went out. And she called unto her husband and said, send me, I pray thee, one of the young men and one of the asses, that I may run to the man of God and come again. Now, donkey, don't move fast. So she must have been kicking them. And he said, wherefore wilt thou go to him today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath. And she said, it shall be well. I don't have to have a special day, a special time, a special seat. When I got a need. It shall be well, I can come anytime. That's actually a New Testament concept. You can come boldly to the throne of grace. You don't have to wait on a particular day to be able to reach God or a particular person. You don't need me to reach God. You got a phone in your bosom. You can call him up and dial him when you want. So she sat up, ass and said to her servant, drive and go forward. Slack not thy riding for me, except I bid thee she could roll. It's a bad woman. Any bad women in here? This bad woman. Take him to her. Take him to his mama. So she went. So she went. So she went and came unto the man of God to Mount Carmel, the place where the fire had fallen. And it came to pass, when the man of God saw her afar off, that he said to Gehazi, his servant, behold, yonder. I see her coming. Is that Shunammite? Run now, I pray thee. Everybody running. Everybody's running. Run. Run now, I pray thee to meet her and say unto her, is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child? The child, it's only one. And she answered, it is well. Now, we took reading comprehension in school. The boy dead. He's laying in the bed. He died in her arms. And she answered and said, okay, now, most of y' all don't have a dead child. What are you complaining about? If she said, it is well. And when she came to the man of God, to the hill, she caught him by the feet, grabbed him by the feet, got down and got by the feet. I see why he gave the boy to his mama. Cause we'd have been trying to shake hands. She snatched him by his feet. But Gehazi came near to thrust her away. And the man of God said, let her alone, for her soul is vexed within her. Even though her mouth said, it is well. Her soul is vexed within her. Y' all don't hear what I'm saying her soul is vexed within her. You can't go by what she's saying on the outside. She gonna speak power positively. In Hell's Kitchen, she's going to say it is. Well, look at somebody say it as well. But when she got to the man of God who had caused the child to be born in the first place, she let loose what was on the inside. Her soul is vexed within her. And the Lord hath hid it from me and I and have not told me. The prophet didn't even know that the boy was dead. The same prophet that spoke life to the boy didn't know he was dead. My thought today, extrapolated from this text, but applicable to your times. I didn't come just to preach about an old ancient text and scripture or have a theological discussion with you. I didn't come to. To expound upon it just purely from a biblical perspective. I will do that. But what I want you to do is listen for yourself in the text, your time in the text, your direction in the text. And the title God gave me is don't bury your dream. Now, I don't know whether you got that or not, so I'm going to say it one more time. Don't bury your dream. Shake hands with somebody and tell them, don't bury your dream. You may be seated. Because I got a long ways to go in a short time to get there. Let's go to work. Let's go to work. Let's go to work. Let's go to work. What I love about this text, what fascinates me about this text, is not just the part that I read, because if I read all that fascinated me, you'd still be standing. So I had to. I had to put myself on a theological diet and get small portions of the text. But allow me to put in context the surrounding periphery of the text that we're going to explore today. You must realize that there are two women. There is a woman that preceded this woman, that Elijah has come to her house in the midst of a famine and a debt situation. And her debt was so severe that she was down to considering selling her children because the creditors were on her so heavy. And in the Bible days, it was not unusual for you to become an indentured servant to pay off a debt. Come on. See, you must understand that when you consider Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, you start considering Jacob and how long he worked to have Rachel, and you start thinking about Leah and Rachel and Isaac and Abraham, you will see a period of here and there, people who worked off debts, maids, concubines situations. You cannot read this with western eyes, but still, to give you my sons, my two sons, and my husband is dead and live in the house alone because the bills have gotten too much extreme. And Elijah said, you don't have to do that. What is in your house? You mean I've been living around, walking around, something that was in my house that could set me free, but I didn't see it? That's why you have a prophet, because the prophet illuminates what is already there. He the foretells or foretells what's already there. Some of you are praying for something that's already in your house. You just need to learn how to let it flow. So he told her to pour out the oil. And he told the woman who was in debt to get in deeper debt by going out to all her neighbors and borrowing a vessel. I'm already in debt. That's the problem. But he said, yeah, go deeper. He went deeper into that, because what God is going to pour into you, you don't have enough to hold it. And this is a period where she has to live by faith. Let me get out of that. And as long as there was an empty vessel, there was a flow. God didn't stop till they ran out of vessels. Look at somebody say, ooh, he gonna do it, he gonna do it. As long as you got a need, he's gonna have a supply. As long as you open your mouth, he's gonna have bread and fish to feed you. As long as your hands are open and your heart is open, God's gonna keep pouring down into you. He only stands stops when there's nothing left to fill. We're talking capacity here. According to your capacity, so be it unto you. If I had time, I go all through the scriptures and show you. God dropped bread according to the capacity of the house. Some got 10 loaves, some got five loaves. The manna fell according to the need. How much do you need? Oh, y' all don't need nothing. Let me ask him. How much do you need? Uh huh. Let me check. It's got a little bit better. How much do you need? Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna take the balcony. How much do you need? All those in the top. How much do you need? Make some noise. See, because a lot of times we come to church with our lips glued together and duct tape over our mouth and want God to fill us when we are not open to receive the capacity on the level that he has to flow. But the person sitting next to you is open to God, and they go into overflow and they get on your nerves because you think they should be dignified. But they know how to grab Elijah by the feet, shake your nerves and say, oh, I'm going to get this. If I got to crawl and get it. If I have to grab the prophet by his feet, if I have to walk for miles, if I have to get on a donkey, if I have to run up a hill, if I have to slide sideways, I am going to get this. And the thing that's interesting about the text is I see clearly why God would send Elijah to her house. Because she was in trouble, she was in debt. And our Christian theology in this Western world loves to talk about Jesus helping people who had obvious need. We feel good about feeding starving children with flies off all over them. And we like to be philanthropic. We feel good about helping people who have special needs or special problems or are abandoned. We love to see that. But what is an oxymoron in the text is, on one hand you have this broke woman, and the next verse, you have this rich woman. And he walks from one end to the other. This is how wide God is. God is as wide as Jesus stretched his arms. Paul said, I pray in Ephesians that you might know what is the exceeding riches of his glory. God has enough for everything you need. If God has enough, there's nothing wrong with the supply. There may be something wrong with the request, like chat GPT. If you don't have the right prompt, you won't get the right information. If you come to him complaining and fussing and feeling entitled, you won't get the right information. If you come to him and have already decided you're through with it, you won't get the right information. But if you dare to open up before God, God is going to do something amazing for you. Do you hear what I'm saying? The poor woman obeyed the word of God immediately because she was already in debt. She said, I might as well go further. But she sent her sons out to every neighbor's house and they borrowed vessels till there were no more. And God flowed till she ran out. He never ran out. He still had enough oil for the day of Pentecost. He never ran out. He still had enough oil to show up in the dove that left out the window of the ark. He never ran out. He still had enough oil to dress the lamps and the tabernacle and the temple. He never ran out. He still had enough oil to make Jesus The Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, he never ran out. Over in Acts 10, he still had enough oil left to fill the freshly baptized men with the Holy Ghost. Over in Acts 19, he still had enough power that while Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. God is never going to run out. I don't care if it's a recession. I don't care what they say about the times. I don't care what they say about the country. The country may run out of money. We may run out of food stamps. We may run out of whatever you thought you had to have to get along. But God will never run out. He will never run out. He will never, never, never run out. He will never run out. He will never, ever run out. He's got jobs.