The events recorded in the Bible were cast into a mould of divine providence for the purpose of revealing special truths to all generations. In the days before iron steamships, ship-builders would search the great forests and select those trees best adapted for making staunch vessels for transporting merchandise or people across the seas. In like manner, when the Holy Spirit was constructing the Bible, He searched out from human history those persons, and places, and events, and things that were most perfectly fitted for the forming of a great ship of divine instruction, and the carrying of the full cargo of truth over the seas of time, for enlightenment and feeding of the souls of men. No Scripture was written merely for the sake of the people then living, or as a cold, secular history. One of these items of events which is loaded with precious truth is that recorded in 2 Kings, chapter 4, where in answer to the prayer of Elisha the Lord multiplied the oil for the widow, to deliver her from debt and provide her substance to live on. In reading the account there given we notice seven points that can be made to apply to ourselves.

1. The servant of the Lord in debt. To be in debt is to be in bondage, and was never God’s purpose, as applied either to money or to the spirit of obedience. Debt is the rod of Satan with which he scourges the children of men. Debt, dirt and the devil belong together. The poor widow mentioned in this passage had been left by her husband with an old debt against the family, and although her husband was a preacher, “one of the sons of the prophets,” yet in his poverty he had gone in debt to a rich, hard-hearted neighbor, and perhaps it had been increased by usury; and now a crisis was reached, which wrung a pitiful cry from the heart of the widow and mother. In those days when the Holy Ghost had not been given as the universal Comforter, the prophet Elisha stood in many instances to fill the office of the Holy Spirit to God’s people, and so this woman cried to Elisha as he was the special mouthpiece of God’s will to the people. Here is a picture of multitudes of the Lord’s people today; they are servants of God, but by being in debt they are hampered financially and spiritually, for debt wears heavily on the mind of an honest person who intends to pay it. It saddens the heart, destroys cheerfulness, weakens courage, brings a certain sense of degradation and, as Scripture says, “the borrower is servant to the lender.” George Muller tells us that if we are in debt we should humbly repent of it the same as with other sins, and promise the Lord that we will not go in debt again, and keep that Scripture commanding us to “owe no man anything but to love one another.” This is the way to please God. But the debt of this poor widow has a broader and spiritual application. There are many who are the servants of God who are yet in legal bondage, and are not yet paying the debt of perfect love to God which we owe to Him. The first of all laws is that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength.

This is the return which will satisfy the Lord for His infinite goodness to us; it does not pay Him for His infinite goodness, but it is what He asks. Now as long as a Christian fails of loving God with all his heart, though he may serve God in a measure, he is constantly running in debt to his heavenly Father, not a debt of sentiment, but really and scripturally, he is, according to God’s law, failing to pay what the boundless love of God has required.

2. The demand of the creditor. She said, “The creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.” Perhaps he was a hard-hearted, exacting creditor, but he had the civil law on his side, which became the very instrument of torture to this mother’s heart, for how could she bear to have her two little sons torn from her side and bound out for service until they should reach their maturity? Have our hearts not ached at seeing similar sufferings on many a poor family resulting from an old debt? Let all who read this avoid going in debt as you would avoid a deadly disease. But this circumstance has an application to the demands of divine law upon our souls.

This creditor is a good type of the law of God which demands the full payment of perfect love. Let us remember that the law in its letter knows no mercy or deviation and, although Paul says it is holy, just and good, and has an office to fill of exact righteousness, and is essential in God’s economy, yet it is not the minister of grace; that is reserved for the personal Christ Himself, for the law came by Moses, but grace came by Jesus Christ. When a servant of God fails to pay the debt of loving God with all his heart, the law is not thereby repealed, and will soon manifest its exacting nature by putting the spiritual debtor into legal bondage.

God’s law is not a myth, nor a changeable option, but a real, divine spiritual force, and is applied to the soul by the judicial office of the Holy Spirit, just as really as grace is applied by the Comforter office of the Holy Spirit. Let us never forget, as a great many persons have done, that the Holy Ghost administers the law of Mt. Sinai to the conscience, just as literally as He administers the atonement to the heart of the obedient believer. This explains that vast world of religious life and experience known as “legal bondage.” A soul in the early joys of justification does not feel any bondage of service, but if it fails to go on to the perfection of love, the law will soon put in its claim for perfect love, and if the subject still fails to yield it, the law will seize on that soul and make a “bondman” out of him, just as the creditor in this passage was going to do with the widow’s sons. When this bondage is enacted in a Christian his whole life becomes one of restraint and constraint and, like the Jews in the wilderness who were not permitted to go back to Egypt, on the one hand, and not able to go up into Canaan on the other, but were constantly subjected to marchings and going about, making little progress, his very religion grows tiresome until he longs for death more than he thirsts for the fullness and sweetness of the living God. Such a soul feels it must serve the Lord, and yet there is a bondage in its prayers, in its spiritual reading, in its benevolence, in giving its tenth of the income to the Lord, in religious testimony or Christian work of any kind. The creditor of the law has really seized upon the inner, delicate fountains of the soul, and its grasp will never be relinquished until such a one yields himself up to an unlimited consecration, and to loving God just as the law requires. Many thousands of sincere religious people are in this condition.

3. Only a pot of oil. When Elisha asked her if she had any resources whatever by which to pay the debt, she said, “Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house, save a pot of oil.” Little did she dream that her little pot of oil could be attached to divine power and turned into a fountain of wealth. Little did Moses dream that the shepherd’s rod in his hand could be made the vehicle of scourging Egypt and emancipating his people. Little did Dorcas imagine that her sewing needle would be the instrument of showing forth her saintly charity to all generations. How the dealings of God forever soar above all the conjectures of men, and His marvelous providence walks through the heavens, and uses the seemingly trifling things of life as stepping-stones. Here we have an insight into God’s government, how He is constantly joining the supernatural upon the natural, taking the little things and weak things of the creature and welding them to omnipotence and grace. Nothing is more wonderful than the way God unites Himself to created beings and things. He did not ignore the little pot of oil, but made it the nucleus of His exhaustless supply. God honors things that men despise, because He is God and He cannot despise anything in the universe except sin, and so a pot of oil, or a sewing needle, will be taken into His service just the same as a planet or a solar system. God does not bless nothing. There must be something as the basis of His blessing. This pot of oil, like the few loaves and fishes, would not of itself supply the demand, but it was a fraction of a supply, and instead of casting it aside, as man would do, the Infinite Creator saw it was large enough to take hold of and be utilized in producing an abundance. This is the key to God’s operations, both in nature and in grace.

This pot of oil is the counterpart of something in every human being which, if utterly yielded to God’s disposal, will be made the channel of endless wealth and blessing. It matters not how poor and fallen and helpless and utterly undone any poor creature may be, there is always some gift in one’s life or being, some capacity of heart, or mind, or will, or voice, or hand, or personal magnetism, some unknown capacity of faith, or labor which, if in humility and obedience is put into the hands of God, He will gladly turn into a river of blessing beyond all that the poor, helpless soul could ask or think. God is able and willing to pull us through the greatest extremities, if there be only something in us that He can take hold of which will bear the strain of the divine pull. There are always great numbers of professed Christians who seem to desire that the Lord should use them, and they look with surprise and amazement at the work some other Christians do, and the extent to which the Lord uses them, and heave a sigh that they cannot be of more service. They are always waiting for greater gifts, larger fields, finer facilities, more definite leading, and more flattering opportunities, never dreaming that at this very hour there is some little thing within their reach, some humble gift, some special adaptation in their make-up, some little pot of oil hid away of which they take no account which, if utterly yielded in prayer to the Lord, God would gladly make an instrument of their everlasting fortune. Humble souls all around them, with less money, less talent, less social position, less physical or mental endowments, are throwing them into eclipse, and laying up treasures in Heaven beyond all calculation. The fact is, too many gifts are often a hindrance, by hindering the spirit of utter self-despair and entire dependence on God alone. It is not the measure of what we have that tells the most, but the measure in which our littleness is given up to the Lord, and led out into His purposes, and into the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord shows His glory by accomplishing amazing results with little things, and on the other hand Satan shows his wretched destructiveness by taking the greatest and reducing them to ruin. The Lord will take a poor hunch-back in utter poverty, without education, from a drunkard’s home, as in the case of Dorothea Trudel, and work out through her a career of prayer and faith which will tell in eternity infinitely beyond what Satan could do with a million gifted Bonapartes or Byrons, because the little hunch-back girl had a pot of oil in the shape of humble prayer which was taken hold upon by the Holy Spirit.

4. Borrow empty vessels. As soon as Elisha found something in the poor widow’s possession which could be utilized for her relief, the next thing was to provide room for the Lord to work His miracle. God works very fast and very lavishly when the time has come, and all the conditions are met. This command of the prophet was a tax upon the widow’s faith, for the step was especially the step of faith, as she had never seen or heard of a pot of oil being multiplied. The command to borrow empty vessels in abundance, before ever seeing the means of filling them, required of her to act just as if she had Elisha’s faith, and to trust and obey on a naked promise without feeling and before seeing any miracle. In like manner, when the Lord can find something in us that He can utilize, and it is utterly yielded to His will, the next step is for us to bring empty vessels, to make room for the inflow of the abundance of life and light. We also must pass this line of simple faith without feeling, or any kind of evidence except the inspired promise of God, and go out on lines of obedience, like Abraham, not knowing whither God may lead.

In many ways this same process has to be gone through, and whether it be in justification, or sanctification, or trusting for our health, or for open doors of service, or for financial relief, or for blessing upon others, in various ways we are to yield the pot of oil and go forth making room for great things. We must bring a mind which has been emptied of old prejudices, old traditional theology, human philosophy and false science, a mind so utterly humble and empty that the Lord can reveal to it great, bright worlds of truth and beauty, and such floods of spiritual understanding as we have never dreamed of. We must bring hearts that are emptied of multiplied earthly attachments and mere pious sentimentalism, old friendships, old day dreams, many a fond hope, many a tormenting fear, many an affection that has seemed so churchly and religious; emptied of anxiety and foreboding, and long cherished feelings, that the Holy Spirit may flood the love nature with great, strong attachments and divinely inspired loves which will never pass away. We must bring empty hands that have renounced our own works, and all planning and wire-pulling for self; hands that hold on to no toys, to no treasure; hands that bring no human stipulation or treatise of compromise, but so empty that they can grasp firmly and constantly the sword of the Spirit, the cross, and the crown, or the plow handles that God may put into them. God fills our nature and fills our lives just in proportion as they are emptied for Him. A great many suppose that we are to be emptied only of that which is recognized as sin, but there are many things which could not be classified as sin, even in the Scripture sense, which are a positive hindrance to the great ocean inflow of God’s power and knowledge into us.

Thousands of Christians allow their very religion to get between them and God, and this is true of the Protestant as well as the Papist. The Holy Spirit would love to fill professed Christians with pure love, with light on divine healing, and with bright floods of Scriptural knowledge concerning the coming of Jesus and His reign on the earth, and the understanding of Scripture on kindred themes, but their very church creeds, their old sermons, their stereotyped prayers, their devotion to what they think is good and holy, blinds their eyes, hardens their hearts, and fills them so full that the mighty ocean of God’s light and love goes rolling past them but is unable to enter.

Oftentimes one’s prosperity, or friends, or religious work, prevents him from making room for the inflow of divine things.

Oh, it is the miserable goody good things that in so many ways hinder God from filling us with His choicest and fullest blessings. A good thing may become bad if it prevents us from getting the best. And even sanctified souls may be so filled, in their reason, with rigid theories, or attachments to holiness associations, and pious friends, and traditional theology, as to see nothing in the marvelous Scriptures on the return of Jesus, and the reign of the saints over the nations, and allow themselves to speak foolishly and ignorantly of Jesus as a healer of disease. We understand the Scriptures to the extent that our minds are emptied of self-opinion and human tradition. Our hearts glow with sweetness, tenderest love in proportion as they are emptied of secondary affections. It takes faith to bring empty vessels.

5. Shut in with God. Elisha told the widow that having gathered the empty vessels, and brought them into the house, “thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons.” They were to be alone with God, for they were not dealing with the laws of nature, nor human government, nor the church, nor the priesthood, nor even with the great prophet of God, but they must needs be isolated from all creatures, from all leaning on circumstances, from all traditions of history, from all props of human reason, and swung off, as it were, into the vast blue interstellar space, hanging on God alone, in touch with the fountain of all miracles. Here is a part in the program of God’s dealings, a secret chamber of isolation in prayer and faith, which every soul must enter that is very fruitful. There are times and places where God will form a mysterious wall around us, and cut way 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 happens; 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 widow, we must be detached from outward things and attached inwardly to the Lord alone in order to see His wonders. The Psalmist says of sailors, “that they go into the deep and do business in great waters, and they behold God’s wonders in the deep waters.” So, in order to see God work, we must penetrate into His workshop, be shut in with Him.

6. Pouring out the oil. “Thou shalt pour out from the pot of oil into all those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full.” Up to this point the whole process had been one of dry faith and obedience, without signs or evidences, apart from the simple word of the prophet. At the moment that the widow took the little pot of oil and began to pour it out into any empty vessel, at that moment the omnipotent Spirit of God began to multiply the oil. Then, and only then, the miracle was wrought, omnipotence was uncovered, the unseen hand of the mighty God was made bare, and she and her sons had all the evidence they needed. This is God’s method of working still, for He hides Himself until our faith and obedience have touched the point, or the condition, which He has prescribed.

The miracle was wrought right at the point where the oil fell from the little pot into the large vessel, because the pot never got empty, and when she had finished pouring it out it was still full of the same oil she had before, but the oil which filled those large vessels was all fresh and sweet as when first pressed from the ripe olives. In feeding the five thousand men, the bread and fish were multiplied at the point where they left the hand of Jesus and were passed into the hands of the disciples, and just as soon as Jesus broke a loaf and gave it to the disciples it became a whole loaf in their hands, and another whole loaf in Jesus’ hands, and each half loaf became instantly a whole loaf, but never until the loaf was broken. It is the breaking and the giving out of things that causes the increase. The increase of a grain of corn never begins until it is broken by the sprouting in the moist earth and climbs up into a stalk with a hundred grains to one. The water that flowed from the rock in Horeb fell right from the spot which was smitten by the rod of Moses, and Paul tells us that the water did not come from the interior recesses of the rock, but it flowed out from the living Christ, who stood on the rock, for God said to Moses, “I will stand upon the rock when you smite it.” If we put all these instances together it gives us a peep into the divine laboratory and we see how the wonder-working God works His beautiful miracle of abundant supply always in connection with the giving forth or the breaking to pieces or the outpouring of the creature. And right here lies the glory and wonderful fruitfulness of our highest service to God—in breaking ourselves and pouring ourselves without stint or fear or a mental reservation in His service.

As the widow poured out the oil the God of Israel wrought the increase.

The same Lord who made the olive tree, and caused it to suck up the juices of the earth and transform them into the olive berry with its rich oil, now stepped in at a poor widow’s emergency and, laying aside the olive tree, became Himself the real divine olive tree, and produced the oil without the intervention of material chemistry.

This is the secret of the way the same Jehovah-Jesus works today in communicating peace and love and light to our souls and the imparting of health to our bodies. But if the widow had not poured out the oil it would never have multiplied, and if we do not pour out our faith, our gifts, our love, our money, our thoughts, our physical strength and the very substance of our lives for the Lord, and do it out of love to Him, the blessed miracle of increase in all these lines will not be brought for us. The stream never stopped flowing until the vessels were filled and she stopped pouring, and then the oil stayed. As long as we keep pouring out, the Holy Spirit will cooperate in a blessed increase. If we write out a thought that God gives us, there will come several other thoughts, deeper and sweeter, to take its place.

If we give our health, though feeble, at the command of God He will give us fresh vigor. If we give our money, He will give us more. If we utter forth kindness and love, the Holy Spirit will enlarge and sweeten the fountains of our hearts. How few learn this lesson- that we lose by saving and we gain by giving.

7. Paying the debt and living beside. This humble woman, when she saw the vessels all full of fresh golden oil, had enough grace not to take things in her own hand or act rashly, but she went and told the man of God. This was one of the most beautiful exhibitions of her character. Many souls will cry to God in their distress, and as soon as they are blessed or made prosperous, think they can manage their blessings, and fail to ask the Lord what to do with their benefactions. Prosperity ruins many more than does adversity. To keep humble and teachable under success is the highest test of all human character, and only a few deeply religious people are able to bear it.

The prophet said, “Go sell the oil and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children off the rest.” So God had answered her cry above all she had asked or thought by not only enabling her to get out of debt, but He gave her a surplus to live on.

There came a time in my life of unspeakable extremity, and I cried to God for a certain amount of money to pay an urgent debt. The prayer was kept up for many weeks, with much fasting, and when the answer came, in a most marvelous way, God sent more than twice the amount which I asked for, so I could pay the debt and have some to live on after taking out the Lord’s tenth.

God loves to be tested by His believing children. This miracle of the outpoured oil is a blessed invitation which our Father has hung up on the walls of time, as an index of what He is willing to do for thousands upon thousands who have yet to learn of that unlimited sea of divine love which waits only to be touched with obedient faith to pour forth streams of supply, both spiritual and temporal, for those who comply, as this poor widow, with God’s plan of grace and provision.