2 Kings 4
1 Now there cried a certain woman
of 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 bondmen. 2 And Elisha 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. 3 Then
he said, Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty
vessels; borrow not a few. 4 And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut the
door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all those vessels,
and thou shalt set aside that which is full. 5 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. 6 And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said
unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a
vessel more. And the oil stayed. 7 Then she came and told the man of God. And
he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of
the rest.
There are
several lessons we can learn from this but I will pick out two for our present
discussion.
Firstly,
this woman was in trouble because of the poor stewardship of her husband who
was a prophet. This husband had borrowed money and staked his family as
collateral. (This was normal practice). However, the prophet sadly died without
paying off his debt.
The
creditor therefore came and demanded to take the two sons of this prophet as
indentured slaves to pay off the debt. An indentured slave was an indebted
person who did not have the money to pay off a debt and instead worked it off
as a slave. They would be set free after working off the debt. Sometimes this would
take a life time of work if the debt was big.
So this
man of God gets a loan (obviously he had no savings) and leaves his wife and
children to suffer the consequences of his poor financial stewardship.
There is a
good lesson for us to learn from here. Christians and especially preachers are
some of the worst financial stewards out there. Our money management is very
bad and keeps us and our families in perennial poverty. This needs to stop. We
need to be an example to the world of how to make money and build wealth.
Your
family shouldn’t struggle financially when you die. They shouldn’t go hungry
and lack because you are no longer around. They shouldn’t lose all the family
property because you left debts. That is not a great testimony to God and to His
blessing. We need to be the richest people in the world. Christian families
should be the wealthiest families in the world. Not muslims and unbelievers as
is the case today.
Secondly, Elisha
the prophet solved this woman’s problem by teaching her the stewardship
principles of multiplication and storehouse. Multiply what you have, save and
invest.
Elisha
could have given this woman money, he could have paid the debt and set her sons
free but he didn’t. Even though it most likely that this is what she expected
and wanted him to do. From her perspective, this was the only solution to this
problem. Instead he asked her what she had in the house. He knew that whatever
she had, however little could solve her problem if she went about it God’s way.
Many of us
in situations of lack see things from this widow’s perspective. We see only one
way of getting out and it usually involves God or someone giving us something.
Money, a position etc. We are unable or unwilling to consider the thousands of
possibilities and ways that God can solve a problem and help us.
The woman
answered that she had nothing, but a pot of oil. To her this pot of oil was
nothing. It was insignificant, it wouldn’t solve the problem. And this is how
most of us think. We think what we have is too little, our salary is too
little, our income is too little and cannot solve our problems. However, we are
wrong. Just like her.
Luke 9
12 When the day began to wear away,
the twelve came and said to Him, "Send the multitude away, that they may
go into the surrounding towns and country, and lodge and get provisions; for we
are in a deserted place here." 13 But He said to them, "You give them
something to eat." And they said, "We have no more than five loaves
and two fish, unless we go and buy food for all these people." 14 For
there were about five thousand men. Then He said to His disciples, "Make
them sit down in groups of fifty." 15 And they did so, and made them all
sit down.
Little
with God in it is a lot. If we apply God’s principles of stewardship and have
faith in His blessing, our little can go a long way. Jesus demonstrated this
when he multiplied the five loaves and two fish to feed tens of thousands of
people. When He asked the disciples what they had, they said a small boy had
only two fish and five loaves and they knew that it was nothing among so many.
They saw it from only one perspective. Like the widow and us, there was only
one way to solve this problem. They needed more.
16 Then He took the five loaves and
the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke them, and gave
them to the disciples to set before the multitude. 17So they all ate and were
filled, and twelve baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them.
But Jesus
had a different perspective. He knew that they didn’t need more bread and fish.
They simply needed to multiply the bread and fish they had. And for this to
happen, all he needed was to have faith in the blessing of God. So He took the
bread and fish, lifted his eyes to heaven (put His focus on God), blessed it,
broke and gave to the disciples to take to the people. As the disciples took
the bread to the people, it multiplied in their hands. Their baskets weren’t
running out of bread and fish. As they took out of the basket, more was
multiplied in the basket. This was faith at work. Not magic.
So Elisha
reading from the same script of faith in the blessing tells this woman to
borrow as many pots as she can, lock herself and her sons in and pour oil from
her one pot into these pots. She probably thought this was silly, just like
Jesus’ disciples and us. But she obeyed. Borrowed some pots, locked herself in
and started pouring. The oil never stopped pouring until she had no more
vessels to pour into.
Only she
limited the amount of oil she could get by the number of vessels she had. Her
vessels were the storage for the oil. They were the storehouse for her
increase. The more vessels she had the more oil she would have got. Your
storehouse is the limit of your prosperity. How many storehouses do you have?
Do you have faith in the storehouse principle?
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