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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Mark Howard

A Jar of Oil

Gracious Father in heaven, we are so thankful to be in your presence this morning.

We do thank you for the beautiful sunshine and so many blessings that we can all tend to take for granted, the greatest blessing of which is knowing you and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

And Lord, I pray this morning as we specifically meditate upon that blessing that we avoid the tendency to keep it to ourselves.

Guide us this morning, guide my words, guide all of our ears and our hearts to respond to what it is the Spirit has to say to us today, for we ask it in Jesus' name.

Now I'm going to do something, and it's kind of cruel, but I am going to quiz you about Sabbath school, because this is a Sabbath school, a whole week ago.

Last week's adult quarterly lesson talked about, in part, talked about the vineyard, Israel as a vineyard.

Yeah, I think the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah chapter 5, and then of course in the New Testament, Jesus picks up on that and how the Lord, as he's describing his people as a vineyard, says, what more could I have done in my vineyard that I did not do, right?

But the challenge in the parable is that when the Lord came to the vineyard and he looked for fruit, he found no fruit.

He looked for grapes, but he found wild grapes.

What was the fruit that the Lord was looking for that wasn't there?

Now we can say, oh, it was righteousness, it was Christ-likeness, it was kindness, it was love, all those things would be true, but not necessarily hitting right at the heart of what the Lord was hitting at.

And to save us some time, I'm going to go to the book Prophets and Kings.

I'm going to show you this on the screen.

Here's a statement from Prophets and Kings, pages 18 and 20.

I would suggest you read the whole section, but just drawing out what was the fruit he was looking for.

Through the chosen nation, God had purpose to bring blessing to all mankind.

Through the teaching of the sacrificial service, Christ was to be uplifted before...

I thought the sacrificial service was only for Israelites.

Our worship services today, they're just for us, right?

God had expected that these would be channels to spread the blessing where?

Every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.

And all who would look unto him should live, but ancient Israel did not fulfill God's purpose.

They talked about the blessings of God, they experienced the blessings of God, but they didn't share the blessings of God.

Are we in danger of repeating the history of ancient Israel?

Now I know what some of you are tempted to think here.

You're tempted to think, in fact, I've got to be careful.

I know I'm going to lose probably a good number of you here in the next 10 seconds if I don't make this practical, because you're saying to yourself, well, witnessing is not for everybody.

So lest you fall into that erroneous thinking, there's a statement in Christian service here, page 69, it says, let ministers, that's people like me, teach who?

Church members, that's most of you, that in order to do what?

Grow in spirituality, they should, could, might, must carry the burden.

I'm going to pause here before I get to the burden.

We might not use the word burden as much today when the Lord lays something on you.

What's another word you could use instead of burden?

Okay, responsibility is the 1 I'm looking for.

So notice the Lord has laid a responsibility upon who?

And he's told the ministers that they need to teach the church members that there's a responsibility that the Lord's laid on you that you must carry out if you will grow spiritually.

Notice it's not an isolated, you know, he doesn't say that ministers teach some of the church members, the elite witnessing people in the church, this is across the board, folks, the burden that the Lord has laid upon them, the burden, notice, of leading souls into the truth.

Those who are not fulfilling their responsibility, so there she uses the word responsibility, should be visited, prayed with, labored for.

If you've read enough in the Spirit of Prophecy writings, you know that Ellen White uses that kind of language to talk about how we minister to the unconverted.

And she says if there are church members who are not fulfilling this responsibility, go and labor for them as you labor for the lost, to take an active part.

In the introduction, it was said, I've spent my entire ministry in soul winning and evangelism.

I know how we think, and we get, many of us get very nervous.

We had a guy, does anybody here know Steve Vail?

He was a conference evangelist in Michigan for some time, And I remember asking, I would train people, and I would ask, how many of you feel nervous going door to door?

I feel a little nervous about stuff like that.

And sometimes we're tempted to think that if we feel nervous or uneasy, it must not be for us.

And I'm afraid, and here's the heart of what we're getting at today, I'm afraid that many of us have been deceived into thinking that God is asking us to use what we don't have in order to do what we can't do.

I want to assure you that that is not the case.

Turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 8 and verse 12.

2 Corinthians 8 in verse 12, the Bible says, for if there is first a what?

A willing mind, it is accepted according to what 1 has and not according to what 1 does not have.

Saints, God is not asking any of us to do what we can't do with what we don't have.

God is simply asking us to use whatever talents He's given us to influence somebody for Christ.

And we're going to see how that works today in an Old Testament story found in the book of 2 Kings.

I want you to turn to 2 Kings with me now.

Now this is a literal account of a story that happened in the days of the prophet Elisha.

We're going to read the story and then we're going to draw some spiritual lessons from it, if that's all right.

The Bible says, "...a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha saying, your servant, my husband is dead and you know that your servant feared the Lord.

And the creditor is coming to take my 2 sons to be his slaves.

So Elisha said to her, what shall I do for you?

And she said, your maid servant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil.

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A Jar of Oil

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