Are You Empty Enough?
2 Kings 4:1-7
A martial arts student was meeting with his master and teacher at a table, having tea. The student said to his master, "I’ve learned all you have to teach me about defending myself. I want to learn one thing more now. Please teach me about the ways of God." The master took the teakettle and starting pouring the student’s cup full of tea. Soon the cup was full and began to spill over onto the saucer. But the master continued to pour the tea until it spilled over the saucer and then onto the floor. The student finally said, "Stop, stop, the tea is spilling over. The cup can’t take any more." The master then looked at the student and said, "You are so full of yourself that there is no room in your life for God. It is not possible for you to learn the ways of God until you learn to empty yourself."
Because you are in church today my guess is that you would like to know and experience God in a greater way. My question for you today is, are you empty enough?
2 Kings 4:1-7 The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, "Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the LORD. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves." Elisha replied to her, "How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?" "Your servant has nothing there at all," she said, "except a little oil." Elisha said, "Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don’t ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side." She left him and afterward shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another one." But he replied, "There is not a jar left." Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God, and he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left."
I. The Empty Jars
a. She wasn’t empty enough. Elijah told her to get emptier.
i. Take all the empty jars you have and borrow all the empty jars you can get.
b. The oil quit flowing when there was no more empty to fill.
c. If you are not experiencing the fullness of God, it could be that you aren’t empty enough.
d. Jesus specializes in filling the empty, when there is nothing else to fill them.
Matt 14:15-21 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food." Jesus replied, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat." "We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish," they answered. "Bring them here to me," he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.
II. Feeding of the 5,000.
a. Jesus fed them with nothing but 5 loaves and 2 fish.
b. He only fed them when they were hungry and there was no substitute.
c. It could be that the reason you aren’t hungry for God is because you are so full of the world.
John 2:1-11 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, "They have no more wine." "Dear woman, why do you involve me?" Jesus replied. "My time has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet." They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, "Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now." This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.
III. Turned water into wine
a. They filled 6 jars with water and Jesus made the water wine.
b. Jesus produced the wine, not when they had wine, but when they didn’t have any wine. Only when the jars were empty did He turn water into wine.
c. If there had been enough wine, they would have settle for something inferior. They only received the best wine when they ran out of their own wine.
John 4:5-26 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back." "I have no husband," she replied.
Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true." "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
IV. Woman at the well.
a. The well was deep and there was nothing to draw water with.
b. She had tried to fill her life with men and Jesus showed her the emptiness of that. Her life was empty. Then he filled her life with living water.
Jer 2:13 "My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
V. " broken cisterns that can hold no water.“
a. Two evils.
i. Forsaken the true water.
ii. Tried to find a substitute.
b. There is an emptiness, a thirst inside of man, that only God can fill. When we try to fill it with anything else, it will not satisfy us. It will make us think we are not as empty as we really are.
c. After the Dallas Cowboys had won the Super Bowl, Tom Landry made this observation. "The overwhelming emotion--in a few days, among the players on the Dallas Cowboys football team--was how empty that goal was. There must be something more." There is nothing else but God that will fill the emptiness in our soul.
d. What is it that you are substituting for God? It will disappoint you.
Eccl 1:2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."
VI. “Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher; "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
a. Solomon tried to fill his life with every imaginable pursuit and he called all of it vanity.
b. The word vanity could also be translated emptiness.
c. Solomon had the ability to try it all and it didn’t satisfy.
d. Rocker Rod Stewart has found that out. A USA Today article quoted him saying - "I remember being in the south of France years ago, in a suite at the Carlton in Cannes, with girls coming and going and all my friends there. And I was empty, just empty.”
e. No matter what you think will fill you, only God can satisfy the longing of your soul.
2 Chron 12:9-11 When Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem, he carried off the treasures of the temple of the LORD and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including the gold shields Solomon had made. So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace. Whenever the king went to the LORD’s temple, the guards went with him, bearing the shields, and afterward they returned them to the guardroom.
VII. “bronze shields
a. They took the gold and replaced it with bronze.
b. Some people try to replace God with a shabby religious substitute that will not satisfy.
Disclaimer: The work found here comes from a multitude of sources including but not limited to Sermon Central, personal sermon collections and others. In all cases where similarities may occur I have taken materials such as outlines or creative ideas and added my own illustrations as led by God. There is no attempt to claim sole authorship for anything offered here. Enjoy and God Bless.
