These Scriptures relay an incident closely related to the Christian’s life of service and victory. The story is told of young men of the “School of the Prophets” eager to enlarge the place of their service, going out to make a building for God. They wisely sought the aid and presence of the prophet and established themselves close by the ever-needed rivers of waters. But being unskilled in their work, they had zeal without knowledge of their task.

It Was Borrowed

One of the young men, through improper use of the tools he was given, dislodged the axe head, and with it, his power to be of service! It is good to notice that he had learned enough not to keep swinging and beat the air, or keep hitting the tree with just the handle, making lots of noise so that maybe no one would notice, but instead he asked a man of God for help. How was the loss remedied? The answer of the prophet gives us guidance when we lose our unction in the work of the Lord, for truly our tools, too, are only “borrowed” from the Holy Spirit. Elisha said, “Where fell it?” Then taking a stick, perhaps the very one that caused the axe head to loosen, the prophet defies the laws of nature; and behold, a miracle: “the iron did swim”!

It Was Borrowed

If you lose your effectiveness in service, go back to the place where you lost your power. Confess your fault, toss in “the stick that caused the problem,” get back your seasons of prayer, and your meditation of God’s Word; and contrary to all expectations, the iron of the power you had will swim again! If you’ve lost your blessing, Christian, ask yourself: “Where fell it?” Go back and let the Holy Spirit restore your “borrowed axe head” of service and power.

It Was Borrowed

It is no sin to be rich in this world if one knows how to use his riches for the glory of God and the good of others. It is the “love” of money which is the root of all evil (I Timothy 6:10). Covetousness is severely condemned in the Scriptures, and “riches” are often more of a curse than a blessing. Riches alone cannot bring happiness, and some of the unhappiest people in the world are those who possess most of this world’s goods. The ability to make money is as much God’s gift as the ability to preach or to sing.

Open Your Hand

Paul tells Timothy to charge those who are rich in this world not to trust in these uncertain riches, but in the living God (I Timothy 6:17).

The things of a material nature are given to us to “richly enjoy,” and Paul instructs that the best way to enjoy “wealth” is to use it for the glory of God. Every man, be he poor or rich, is responsible to God for everything he possesses.

Open Your Hand

Each of us will have to render an account for how we have spent our time, our strength, and our money. Paul says, “Be ready to distribute.” The word “distribute” means “open your hand.” Be open handed and ready to share. When we only hoard, it results in covetousness.

I remember hearing the story of a little boy who got his hand caught in a milk bottle. Try as they would, he and his mother could not pull it out until she saw he had his hand closed. Then she said, “Johnny, open your hand.” Johnny said, “If I do, I’ll drop the quarter I am holding.” Is your hand open, ready to distribute, willing to communicate?

Open Your Hand

What you do with your money tells what it has done to you.

“That no flesh should glory in his presence.” (verse 29)
“He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” (verse 31)

Anything a Christian may do, even “good” things, if it glorifies the flesh, it is not good. Because of the strong influence of worldly philosophy and today’s lack of Bible teaching, many Christians make statements that actually rob Christ of the glory due only Him and try to shine a favorable light on themselves. Perhaps you have made such statements as: “God helps those who help themselves.” (?) I know you included God in name and in assistance, but do you not come first in your help and in bringing glory to your own self-reliance? What about, “I have done all I know how to do, now it’s up to the Lord.” (?)

“Glory In The Lord”

God does not help those who help themselves; God blesses and helps those who trust and obey Him. Some say “Now it’s up to the Lord” after doing all they can. (?) It’s always been up to the Lord. “Well, that’s what I meant,” we say. But one way seems to give us some glory, and God’s Word says “no flesh should glory in His presence” and “he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”

“Glory In The Lord”

Let’s make sure what we say is Bible and let’s be more careful to say what we really do mean, lest it seems as though we are giving ourselves glory.

God never loses the individual in the crowd. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” There is the multitude. But God breaks it down into individuals: “There is none righteous, no, not one.” The sinners cannot hide in the crowd.

But there is another side: “God so loved the world.” There is the multitude. “He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life.” There is the individual. Salvation is for every sinner in the crowd.

The Individual In The Multitude

The disciples in our text saw the crowd; Jesus saw one lone woman. The multitude “thronged” Him; the woman “touched” Him. The crowds at church on Sunday morning “throng” Him, but few ever “touch” Him. God deals with people one at a time. “Him that cometh.” “If any man.” “Whosoever will.” We are saved, called, used and directed one at a time.

The Individual In The Multitude

Let us be sure we press through the “throng” and “touch” Him. “For as many as ‘touched’ (not thronged) him were made perfectly whole.”

The Individual In The Multitude

What began as a company of lay witnesses has evidently become the responsibility of just the deacons and paid staff in most churches. While some do have a special call on their life to preach, all are appointed to be witnesses. Every believer in the early church was a missionary. They were all spreading the good news of God’s grace and advertising the gospel everywhere they went.

Watching or Witnessing?

Something was always going on inside and outside the local New Testament church because of their witnessing. On the outside threats, imprisonment, riots, salvations, new churches started and so forth. On the inside some were expelled, like the young man living with his father’s wife. Some expired like Ananias and Sapphira, for lying about their giving. Some were repelled: “And of the rest durst no man join himself to them.” But the real believers were compelled: “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”

Watching or Witnessing?

The gospel of Christ will spread again as it always has when God’s people quit watching the Pastor, staff and deacons do the job the people falsely believe they voted them in and paid them to do and all obey the command to witness.

Which are you? Watcher or Witness?
Which are you? Excuser or Accepter?
Which are you? Obedient or Disobedient?

We all know and understand that it was all in the early church who went everywhere preaching and teaching Christ and not just the preachers and deacons.

Watching or Witnessing?

It is not when we are ready to teach ourselves a lesson, or when we think it is time to wrestle with God all night that we have our best seasons with God. We do not find our Bethels where we recharge our spiritual batteries in some ideal retreat. It was in desperate loneliness at Jabbok that Jacob met the Lord and gained power with God and man. At the backside of the desert Moses came to the mountain of God. It was in the year that King Uzziah died that Isaiah saw the Lord. Do not forget that John wrote Revelation on Patmos, that Pilgrim’s Progress came from the Bedford jail, and precious hymns from Fanny Crosby’s blindness.

“There Wrestled A Man With Him”

Our choicest art and literature came out of poverty and suffering, and God does His best work with us oftimes when it seems we are least prepared or ready. The times of teaching, use, and experience is not of our choosing, but His. We do not come to know the deeper things of God when we are sitting on the porch of some lazy rest spot, sipping lemonade, and saying to ourselves, “I am ready to wrestle with God.”

“There Wrestled A Man With Him”

We cannot set the stage and arrange the scenery and then work up the experience we need. The Spirit does not work that way. “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” It may be in the unlikeliest place and on the darkest day when you are “left alone” that God deems it time to wrestle.

Jacob did not plan this, ready himself for this, nor did he wrestle with this man -

“There Wrestled A Man With Him”

“Old cast clouts.” you must admit, this is a rather strange expression; yet it contains a message of great encouragement concerning the wondrous workings of God’s grace! These matted bits of patched rags and refuse cloth served a noble purpose: they eased and blessed a prophet of God! Acting as a soft padding under the emaciated arms of Jeremiah, they assisted in bringing him up out of a deep and loathsome dungeon whose very floor was quicksand and mire.

“Old Cast Clouts”

Yes, by them he was drawn up, out and onto solid ground. Here he enjoyed the welcome sunlight and was afforded the companionship of a king.

All of us by nature are useless and disgusting “old cast clouts” for “we are all as an unclean thing” and “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6) Nothing we do can merit salvation, and even our best works after we are saved are polluted with sin. But praise His holy name, in His grace He designs to use these “old cast clouts” and will even reward us at His judgment seat in that day when every man shall “have praise of God.” (I Corinthians 4:5)

“Old Cast Clouts”

Do you feel useless and helpless? Then rejoice, for He chooses the “weak things” to exalt His glory. Perhaps yet even today God will use you or me to lift one of His dear children out of the miry dungeon of this world into the glorious sunlight of His love and fellowship.

“Old Cast Clouts”

Praise God, there is still service waiting for “old cast clouts” like you and me!

Why do we think it so remarkable when an older person gets saved? Is it not because it is so rare and unusual? The very fact that we think it is so wonderful proves the danger of waiting until one is older. The majority of people who are saved get saved in their younger days, usually between the ages of eight to twelve. After the age of twenty-five the possibility of his ever being saved diminishes rapidly with every passing year. The more often the Gospel is rejected, the less possibility there is of receiving it. “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” (Proverbs 29:1) Therefore, the Bible says, “Those that seek me early shall find me.”

Seek The Lord Early

But there is another reason why we should seek the Lord early in life. When a youth is saved, he has all of life before him to serve the Lord and bear fruit for his Saviour. When an old man is saved, he is saved yet so as by fire, but with not many days left to serve the Lord.

Yet we tend to make a great fuss when an aged person with no service to bring to the Lord is saved, but when a little child is saved, we act as though it were either questionable or unimportant. Yet what an opportunity to dedicate one’s whole life early to the Lord. The instruction we get from God’s Word is to “remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth.” (Ecclesiastes 12:1) This would be hard to fulfill as an elderly person.

Seek The Lord Early

I have heard all of my Christian life that those saved later in life wish they were saved as a child, yet when a child is saved we tend to question if they are old enough to understand. Let us just remember what God instructs:

Seek The Lord Early

The born-again child of God has been separated from judgment and has a dissolved partnership with the devil. The unsaved is in company with the devil, but when once saved, that relationship is broken, and we go into partnership with God. We are under new management. Can the world tell, and do they know, that you have changed partners?

Advertise Your Change

A certain businessman had a very dishonest and disagreeable partner who almost ruined his business by his shady practices and dishonest transactions. The only way to save the business was to buy out his present partner’s interest and get a more reliable partner. However, even after that, business did not pick up, and he complained bitterly to a friend. The friend said, “I can explain that. No one knows you have changed partners. They think you are still partners with Mr. Smith. You must advertise your change of management. Take down the old sign ‘Smith and Jones’, and put up the new partner’s name.” The old sign came down, and the new one went up. The change was advertised in the papers. It read as follows, “John Smith and George Jones have separated and dissolved partnership. Charles Brown is now a member of the firm in the capacity of manager. Same location, same building, but under new management and with entirely new policy.” Everyone read it, confidence was restored and business began to boom.

Advertise Your Change

Will those around you know that you are in partnership with God and under new management? Have you informed the world that you and the devil are through working together? Take down the old sign and light up the new one. Tell somebody today about Jesus.

Advertise Your Change

“Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophecy deceits: Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.” (Isaiah 30:10-11)

Isaiah was a preacher of judgment. He declared without compromise the holiness of God and the filthiness of Israel’s sin. As a result he was hated, persecuted and, according to tradition, martyred by being sawn asunder between two boards (Hebrews 11:37). The people resented hearing about the judgment of God but wanted the preacher to talk of “love” instead, and so they said to Isaiah, “Speak unto us smooth things.” The word for “smooth” in Hebrew means “flattering.” They wanted to be flattered and pleased. When Isaiah refused, they killed him.

Smooth Preachers

In the last days in which we live, this scene is being played out once again, according to the words of the Apostle Paul, found in II Timothy 4:3-4, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lust shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and they shall be turned unto fables.”

Smooth Preachers

These are described in great detail in Isaiah 56:10-12, “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand: they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter. Come ye, say they, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink; and tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.”

May God deliver us from “people pleasers” and those who make merchandise off of God’s people. These that, when trouble comes, leave the flock as they go off to a safer pasture. Hirelings that do not guide, lead, nor feed the sheep and neither keep them clean by “the washing of the water by the Word.” Just as King Saul allowed the enemies of God’s people to slowly strip the people of their weapons leaving them with just farming tools to fight with in the day of battle, these smooth preachers are not preparing God’s people for war.

May God give us a generation of godly, Spirit filled, God fearing Pastor’s, and deliver us from -

Smooth Preachers