The fullness of God ever waits upon an empty vessel. This is a grand practical truth, very easily stated, but involving a great deal more than one might at first imagine. The entire Word of God illustrates this truth, the history of the people of God illustrates it, and the experience of each believer illustrates it. Whether we study the Word of God or the ways of God, we learn this most precious truth that the fullness of God ever waits upon an empty vessel. This holds good with respect to the sinner coming to Christ, and it holds good with respect to the believer at every stage of his career, from the starting post to the goal.
The Sinner
When the sinner is coming to Christ, the fullness of God in redeeming love and pardoning mercy is waiting for an empty vessel. The real matter is to get the sinner to take the place of an empty vessel. Once there, the whole question is settled. Yes, but what exercise, what struggling, what toil, what conflict, what fruitless efforts, what ups and downs, and what vows and resolutions are necessary before the sinner is really brought to take the place of an empty vessel and is ready to be filled with God’s salvation! How difficult it is to get the poor legal heart emptied of its legality, that it may be filled with Christ! The heart will have something of its own to lean upon and cling to. Here lies the root of the difficulty. We can never “draw water out of the wells of salvation” until we come thither with empty vessels.
This is difficult work. Many spend years of legal effort before they reach the grand moral point of self-emptiness in connection with the simple question of righteousness before God. When the sinner reaches that point, the matter is found to be so simple that the wonder is how they could have spent so long in getting hold of it, and why they had not gotten hold of it before. There is never any difficulty when the sinner really takes the ground of self-emptiness. The question, “Who shall deliver me?” is followed immediately by the reply, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:2425).
The more a sinner gets emptied of himself, the more settled his peace will be. If self and its doings, its feelings and its reasonings, be not emptied out, there will be doubts and fears, ups and downs, wavering and fluctuation afterwards. Hence there is the vital importance of seeking to make a clean riddance of self, so that Christ, “the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” may be known and enjoyed.
The Believer
This truth also applies to a believer at every stage of his career. At times we have very little idea of how full we are of self and the world. Hence it is that, in one way or another, we have to be emptied of self. Like Jacob of old, we struggle hard and hold fast our confidence in the flesh, until, at length, the source of our strength is dried up and the ground of our confidence swept from under us, and then we are constrained to cry out,
“Other refuge have I none,
Clings my helpless soul to Thee.”
There can be no greater barrier to our peace and habitual enjoyment of God than our being filled with self-confidence. We must be emptied and humbled. God cannot divide the house with the creature. It is vain to expect it. Jacob had the hollow of his thigh touched so that he might learn to lean upon God. The halting Jacob found his sure resource in Jehovah who only empties us of nature that we may be filled with Himself. He knows that insofar as we are filled with self-confidence or creature-confidence we are robbed of the deep blessedness of being filled with His fullness. Hence, in His great grace and mercy, He empties us out that we may learn to cling in childlike confidence to Him. This is our only place of strength, victory and repose.
Our Ambition
Someone has said, “I never was truly happy until I ceased to wish to be great.” This is a fine moral truth. When we cease to wish to be anything, when we are content to be nothing, then it is we taste what true greatness, true elevation, true happiness and true peace really are. The restless desire to be somebody is destructive of the soul’s tranquility. The proud heart and ambitious spirit may pronounce this a low and contemptible sentiment, but when we have begun to learn of Him who was meek and lowly in heart, when we have drunk in any measure into the spirit of Him who made Himself of no reputation, we then see things quite differently. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” The way to get up is to go down. This is the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine which fell from His lips and is inscribed on His life. “Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily, I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:2424And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. (Matthew 18:24)). This is the doctrine of heaven—the doctrine of self-emptiness. How unlike the spirit of self-seeking and self-exaltation!
A Voice
In John the Baptist we have a fine example of one who entered, in some degree, into the real meaning of self-emptiness. The Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who art thou? What sayest thou of thyself?” What was His reply? A self-emptied one. He said he was just “a voice.” This was taking his true place. “A voice” had not much to glory in. He did not say, “I am one crying in the wilderness.” No; he was merely “the voice of one.” He had no ambition to be anything more. This was self-emptiness. And, observe the result. He found his engrossing object in Christ. “Again the next day after John stood, and two of his disciples; and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!” What was this, but the fullness of God waiting on an empty vessel. John was nothing, Christ was all, and hence when John’s disciples left his side to follow Jesus, we may feel assured that no murmuring word, no accent of disappointed ambition or wounded pride escaped his lips. There is no envy or jealousy in hearts emptied of self. There is nothing touchy or tenacious about one who has learned to take his true place. Had John been seeking his own things, he might have complained when he saw himself abandoned, but no, when a man has found his satisfying object in the Lamb of God, he is happy to lose disciples to Him.
Oh! for a self-emptied spirit — “a heart at leisure from itself” — a mind delivered from all anxiety about one’s own things! May we be more thoroughly delivered from self, in all its detestable working. Then can the Master use us and bless us. Hearken to His testimony about John: “Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist” (Matt. 11:1111Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Matthew 11:11)). How much better to hear this from the Master than from the servant! John said, “I am a voice.” Christ said he was the greatest of prophets. Simon Magus “gave out that himself was some great one.” Such is the way of the world — the manner of man. John the Baptist, the greatest of prophets, gave out that he was nothing and that Christ was “above all.” What a contrast!
Adapted from
Things New and Old, 3:141