Poured From Vessel to Vessel
by David Orton
“…And he has not been emptied from vessel to vessel…”
Jer 48:11
The call to ‘go on with God’ is a call to be poured from vessel to vessel.
Our willingness to embrace change, to be poured from one vessel to another, is integral to spiritual development. Our transformation into the image of Christ comes through a history of inner abandonment to the high call of God to move continually on with Him. And like wine poured from vessel to vessel we become the fragrance of Christ to others.
Secure & self-satisfied
Moab had from his youth been undisturbed by misfortune. The nation had never been overrun or gone into captivity, and so remained very secure and self-satisfied.
"We have heard of the pride of Moab–he is very proud– Of his haughtiness, his pride, his arrogance and his self-exaltation.
(Jer 48:29 NASB)
This it seems to me is the sad state of much of the contemporary church, particularly in the West. We have continued to enjoy post-war prosperity and the fruit of technological advance. This has aided us in our development of church growth methodology, in perfecting better and even more effective ways of doing church.
But we are mistaken to think that we have escaped Moab’s condition. All of us who have been nurtured in the lap of Western materialism have taken on in whatever measure their condition. Refusing to be poured from vessel to vessel we have, like Moab, as our text explains, “retained our flavour, and our aroma has not changed”. We have not given off the flavour or aroma of Christ.
The Metaphor of Wine-making
The metaphor of being poured from vessel to vessel is taken from the ancient process of wine-making. Wine would be left for a period in a vessel to “rest on its lees”. The impurities would slowly settle to the bottom and then at the discretion of the wine-maker the wine would be poured off to another vessel, the process occurring repetitively, until the wine was purified. This process continued for forty days, the biblical number of wilderness testing and God’s dealings.
This is why so much of contemporary church life has lost its flavour and is not an aroma of Christ to the world. We may engage in all manner of promotional and attractional tactics to draw people to our church but if the aroma of Christ is not amongst us we will only succeed in building yet another church monument to human ingenuity. It may have loads of energy and human hype but it will have less and less of the true fragrance of God about it.
Spiritual ‘Ground-Hog Day’
We have “settled on our lees” and refused to learn the ways of God. Like the movie ‘Ground-Hog Day’ we have become stuck, consigned to endlessly repeat an identical day until we learn the lesson. God cannot graduate us and move us onto the next grade until we pass the test. Like Israel we have been examined and found wanting:
"It will come about at that time That I will search Jerusalem with lamps, And I will punish the men Who are stagnant in spirit, Who say in their hearts, 'The LORD will not do good or evil!'
(Zep 1:12 NASB)
He is searching us “with lamps”, showing that this examination is thorough. No corner or crevice of our hearts and lives, nor individual, church or movement will be exempt. We are not being examined on our knowledge or ministry effectiveness, but on the purity of our “spirit”. The phrase “stagnant in spirit” is rendered more literally in the Amplified translation as “settling on their lees”. They had not been poured from vessel to vessel, refusing to change and so developed a spirit that said, “The Lord will not do good or evil”. In other words He is not living and active in the circumstances of my life. Many of us are sentimental believers but practical atheists. We are not current with God. Because we have not been poured from vessel to vessel we say the right things about God but in the day to day reality of our lives do not have faith to believe that He is actively involved. Consequently it is over to us to get the job done and so we unwittingly build lives, ministries, and careers independently of God.
Therefore, being poured from vessel to vessel is designed by God to dislodge us from our independence, from any sense of self-satisfaction and pride, thus rescuing us from eventually becoming spiritually moribund.
But practically what does it mean to be “poured from vessel to vessel”? It means that we will be re-located, re-postured, re-aligned, and re-settled by God.
Re-located
For the process of refining to occur several things had to happen. As I have explained after a period of resting on its lees the wine was poured off to another vessel followed by another period of resting.
God uses seasons of both settling and change to bring us on in spiritual maturity. The only problem is that on the whole we prefer the settling seasons to those of change! We are inclined to settle around a truth, an experience, a place, or a people; and so, God comes to us calling us on in Him. Although those of us that are impatient to move on in God must learn to be content with the timing of God and wait until He pours us out into the next vessel, the next phase of our journey.
However, when that time comes it is not often convenient. The high call of God in Christ Jesus usually comes when we are most satisfied with our lot. It requires a re-location, often geographically, but always spiritually. We have filled the space God created for us in the present phase and it is time to move on into another space, into another aspect of His nature and our relationship with Him.
Re-aligned
Being poured into another vessel re-aligns us both internally and externally.
Internally we are re-aligned more deeply with Him. We find ourselves relinquishing our will and ways for His.
Externally we are re-aligned in our relationships. God moves us away from old alliances into new and sovereignly orchestrated connections. We find ourselves with a new set of friends. As much as we may wish it differently, the old set of friends has less in common and loses interest. Sometimes, this re-alignment can occur through betrayal as it did with Joseph as he was poured into the next vessel.
Re-postured
Being poured from one vessel to another requires a re-posturing of heart. We were previously perhaps in a round vessel, but now we find ourselves in a square one, but we say, “I may be in a square vessel, but boy, am I going to stay round!” I recall as a kid we relocated from the country to the city. My parents may have got the boy out of the country but they were not going to get the country out of the boy. As a nine year old I recall vividly vowing I would never be a “city-slicker”!
We may experience circumstantial change, relocation or misfortune, but do we learn the lessons that God had in these trials? Often we stoically take a grip on ourselves to endure it, but never break. As Saul discovered God is not interested in our sacrifice which we feel we are giving in our endurance, but in obedience. The obedience and sacrifice in which God is interested is rather a broken and a contrite heart – in fact, our surrender (see 1 Sam 15:22; Psa 51:17). And so, like ‘Ground-Hog Day’ we are consigned to a repetition of identical or similar circumstances until we are internally re-postured, until we surrender our self-effort – our strength to endure the trial.
Re-settled
As I mentioned earlier we must learn to settle again for as long as the Lord assigns the new season.
One thing I am slowly learning in the thirty-seven years I have walked with God is that He is God! We do not determine anything. Our times are in His hands. He is completely sovereign in assigning the seasons and circumstances of our lives. As the prisoner of the Lord I cannot, as much as I might try, change those times and seasons. God has a timetable and He is sticking to it! It’s then over to me to resolve that His ways are perfect and just.
The Call to Maturity
The apostle issued a call to the Hebrew believers to go on to maturity as they were being poured into a new vessel, the new covenant (see Heb 6:1-3).
This is the whole design of God in life. For it is God who is at work within us both to will and do according to His own good pleasure (see Phi 2:13); and so, all the circumstances of life are allowed by God, both the bitter and the sweet, to bring us on to maturity in Him, to an inner abandonment to His ways.
There will be a people at this end of the age who ‘go on with God’ being poured from vessel to vessel, and thus exude the fragrance of Christ.
As the Lord declared through the prophet there will be a banquet for the nations of “refined and aged wine”:
The LORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; A banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, And refined, aged wine.
(Isa 25:6 NASB)
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Copyright © David Orton
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 am
Isn’t it just human nature that we try & set everything in order so as to alleviate change. The need to feel like we’re in control. Tis the work of Fear, thus the work of satan, to try and control the future.
There was a time when I expended every effort to try and gain financial stability. I knew I was called to the ministry, therefore a life of uncertainty, and I wanted to remain in control, to gain the upper hand on life. Because God is faithful, the finances came…but the peace never did. The bigger my nest-egg got, the more I worried about it.(checkout 1 Tim 6:10!)
I now truly believe that change & uncertainty are not the cruel villains we fear them to be, but are a working of the grace of God to deliver us from the peril of religion - everytime we set something in concrete it becomes a tradition (or law). And Jesus said by our traditions we nullify His Word, the very Word that would save us! (Matt 15:6)
Why do we fear change? I testify with ease that every time I’ve had to shed a skin of the past - my job, my church, my circle of friends, my precious investments, my career plans - the same move has been accompanied by a far greater freedom, even deliverance, in God.
Like the Laodeceans of Revelation 3, we westerners so often seek to attain security thru money so that we too can “have no need of any thing” and be immune to the terror of change. (No wonder so few of us are going to the ends of the earth.)
Therefore the pursuit of wealth is not a work of greatness but rather the coward’s compulsive scrambling to build a buffer zone of false protection around himself against uncertainty. Bin there.
Bring on the uncertainty, I say! (…through chattering teeth). I want to ride the wave of God, entrusting an unknown destiny to a well-known Father and at the end of it all have nothing to show for it, if need be. I want to know I’m alive and be steeped in needs for God to gloriously meet, racking up testimony after testimony as we live on the edge of His divine purpose!
For though I know Change scares the hell out of me - the only thing I’m truly more terrified of is the lack thereof.
davo.
June 23rd, 2007 at 7:27 am
The walk of faith is a fabulous journey traversing through many lonely, confusing, and difficult times. All along the way are enticements to build three booths and call it home, but as the Father spoke so simply to Peter, in Matthew 17:5 Peter…stop Peter, it’s not about what you can do for Me, its about Me speaking to you!
Each element of our journey is laced with a message from God to our hearts, that if we will slow enough to listen to, as we work through the particular challenge of that season, we will hear Him, like in Solomon’s days of temple building, in which no noise was heard in the building, say something so quiet, so nearly imperceptible, but soooo important.
Often I find His Word come to me, in such quiet and unofficious ways, that hours later, I turn around within myself, look back, remember the bend in the road, on the way home from work, where His Word arrived, and I realize I heard it but didn’t, and now realize it was Him.
Only a continual commitment to be poured, as David describes it so eloquently, will cause that pure Word He is speaking to be heard, and when that Word has been heard, then as it was in the beginning so it will be again…new life will emerge.
Lord, help us to be willing to be poured out and to listen…