Barren and Provoked
1 Sam 1:1-7 Now there was a
certain man of Ramathaim-zophim, of mount Ephraim,
and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the
son of Tohu, the son of Zuph,
an Ephrathite:
2 And he had two wives; the name
of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah:
and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no
children. 3 And this man went up out of his city
yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts in
Prov 30:15-16 The horseleach
hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never
satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough: 16 The
grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the
fire that saith not, It is enough.
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The vast majority of the book of Proverbs was written by Solomon and it contains quite a lot of just practical advice. Each verse or so is a separate principle taught through a wise saying of the Old Testament days and so the book tends to jump around subject matter so that you really need to focus on each verse separately to learn the wisdom that is found there.
Tonight I want to focus on verse 16, but want to point out to you that verse 15 introduces and is connected to our main point. Solomon states that the “horseleach” has two offspring crying “give, give.” There are some scholars who have studied the unique word for “horseleach” here in the Hebrew that believe that the word in the Hebrew was a proper name. In other words, when Solomon says “horseleach” here he was using a nickname of a woman that he knew. We don’t know the entire story, but apparently Solomon was vexed by this woman or her family to constantly give, give, and give to the point that he said she was a “leach” sucking him dry! Maybe it was one of his many wives and maybe God was letting him reap the results of his disobeying the Word of God and marrying women that were spiritual foreigners to God’s kingdom. Whatever the reason, “horseleach” is pretty strong and Solomon must have been aggravated to even record such a thing in scripture.
It was in this bad situation that the wise man makes an interesting statement. While he is thinking about this leachy woman who is constantly wanting more, it triggers his mind to something that he had learned. And this principle is obviously truth because the Holy Ghost moved upon him to record it. He says that there are four things that are NEVER satisfied:
1. The grave.
2. The barren womb.
3. The dry earth.
4. The fire.
The grave is never satisfied because no matter how many people die, it always has room for one more person. The barren womb is never satisfied because God has placed within a woman a biological clock that begins ticking and desires children. The dry earth is never satisfied because it soaks the water up and begs for more. The fire is never satisfied because the more you feed it the larger and more demanding that it becomes. It will grow as large as you will let it grow by how much you feed it!
That Solomon chose the four things to list here are interesting but even more astonishing is when you realize that each of these four principles applies to the things of the Spirit. The scripture teaches us that when we are baptized in Jesus’ name, we are baptized into His death and are “buried with Him.” Water Baptism is a spiritual “grave” and the baptistery of a Jesus’ name church is a spiritual graveyard. And it is never satisfied! It doesn’t matter if we baptize 5,000 this year, the next day it is going to be empty and yearning for more! As long as there is people living that have not had their sins washed away in the blood of Jesus, then our baptistery is not satisfied!
Rain symbolizes in scripture the outpouring of the Holy
Ghost in blessing and filling someone in the Spirit. Peter quoted Joel on the Day of Pentecost
when he said that God had promised that in the last days “I will pour out my
Spirit upon all flesh!” The
Fire is a symbol of the Holy Ghost working within someone’s life. Jesus promised to baptize His disciples with Holy Ghost and with fire! In Acts 2, we find that the Holy Ghost sat upon them “like as of fire.” You are filled with the Holy Ghost as rain. But if you allow the Holy Ghost to remain and do what it wants to do in your life, then you must let it become a fire that consumes all and everything! And until you are like Jesus Christ in every way – in other words, until you go in the Rapture of the Church – the Holy Ghost will never be satisfied. It will still be working on this part of your life or that. Someone who says that “I don’t have to change” or “I’ve changed everything that I need to change” is proving to you that they DO need to change. Because the Holy Ghost is a fire that never says “it is enough.”
I’ve got to stay on fire for God. I’ve got to have the Holy Ghost fire burning bright when Jesus comes back. How do I do that? By feeding the fire! Only by continually allowing more and more of my life and self to be consumed by the Holy Spirit will I stay on fire. The minute that I say “I don’t need to change anything else in my life” then my fire starts dwindling. The minute that the preacher identifies something in my life, and I say “I will not allow God to talk to me there,” then I have stopped feeding the Holy Ghost. My fire is starting to diminish. It is starting to fade. When fire comes up against something that will not burn, then it goes out. But God said that He would give “beauty for ashes.” When the Holy Ghost is working on something in your life, then know that if you will allow the Holy Ghost to consume the situation and change you that your ashes will be replaced by something beautiful and desirable and great in your life. But you won’t see the finished product until you allow the Holy Ghost to consume it!
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The remaining point mentioned here, “a barren womb” I would like to spend the remainder of this sermon discussing. It also has spiritual implications. When a person is born into this heavenly kingdom, they are done so by being “born again.” They are born into a new creature in Christ Jesus by being born of the water and of the Spirit. And they are born into the womb of the church, who is called in scripture the future bride of Christ. Let me take a minute today and treach to you about this principle.
God does nothing by accident and most of you are familiar with the story of the birth of Jesus to the virgin Mary. (Here it is almost Summer and I’m preaching about Christmas again). I want to point out a few facts from the story of Jesus’ birth.
First of all, Mary was a virgin. She was not yet married but was engaged to be married under Hebrew law. Back then an engagement was a legally binding contract that required a divorce to get out of. The couple didn’t live together or have physical relationships but they were considered “together” in the sight of God for the time of engagement. There were several reasons for this, one being that the husband was required to build a home for them to live in together during this time. It also provided an opportunity for them to “prove” their love for each other.
We know that Jesus Christ had to be born of a virgin to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah chapter 7, but have you ever thought about why God chose this a sign of the Messiah? Remember it was God who told Isaiah what to say in the first place. And have you ever wondered why God would pick a woman that was engaged? I don’t believe anything was done by accident and let me show you the importance of this.
When the angel appeared to the virgin, engaged Mary and told her that she was going to have a baby, Mary asked “how can this be seeing that I know not a man.” In other words, “how am I going to have a baby and be a virgin at the same time?” And the angel said “the Holy Ghost shall overshadow thee.” In other words, for you to have all of this, the Holy Ghost will do the work by placing something inside of you to cause conception and I believe (still believe) that spirit mingled with egg and Jesus Christ was formed.
My point here is that God allowed all of this to happen this way to teach us a principle in the Spirit. The blood bought church is the “bride of Christ.” That is, we are the future bride of Christ. And when we finally get to heaven, it is called the “marriage supper of the Lamb.” So we know that our wedding day is when Jesus comes back for us. He had to go away for a time to “prepare a place for us,” and He will soon come and get His bride. We are legally engaged and to walk away from the church is to divorce Jesus Christ as your future husband!
But despite not being married to Him and being pure, it is the will of God for the church to bear children. We do that righteously – have children while remaining morally pure – through the conception power of the Holy Ghost. When the Holy Ghost mingles with the flesh of the people of a church, there is something created and that begins to form in the “womb” of the church. And it is a “holy thing.” It is another miracle birth again! And like Joseph, God does not divorce us because of our pregnancy, but protects us and supports us and allows us to carry things and deliver them in the Spirit.
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Pregnant and Provoked
Some of you are thinking that I am preaching about soul
winning and I am in part, but I’m not just talking about the church giving
birth to new-born spiritual babies. John
Let me preach to you a little bit about the “spiritual offspring” that we need to see. God said “be ye holy for I am holy.” Holy means separated from the common or the worldly things. It means living different than what everybody else is doing. It means separating ourselves from even the appearance of evil. A carnal church cannot win a carnal world. There are just some things that you must give up in living for God. We need a revival of holiness. We need a revival of separation. People ought to be able to identify members of this church by the way that they act, dress, look, respond, talk, and spend their time! We need holiness!
We need God to bring to birth in our church love and peace
and faithfulness to the house of God and the things of God. We need God to bring forth prayer and fasting
and Spirit-filled families and home life.
Peter wrote to the
2 Peter 1:5-8 But also for this
very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue
knowledge,6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to
perseverance godliness,7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly
kindness love.8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ. NKJV
These are things that must be “born” within us by the Holy Ghost. There is a process that we must go through to get them here. We talked about the “fruit of the Spirit.” The Gifts of the Spirit are instantly given to you when you receive the Spirit of God, it is just up to us to activate them, but the fruit takes time. You don’t plant a seed and expect fruit the next day. People don’t change overnight and so we should allow the fruit of the Spirit time to develop in people’s life.
If a person wants a baby, they don’t get pregnant and then
have the baby the next day. There are
some processes of growth that have to take place. There has to be an intimate relationship that
takes place. The seed must fall upon
“good ground.” Mother must sacrifice and
curtail some things in order to protect her child through the development
process. Then there is a very physical
delivery. As my wife preached one time,
it is a spiritual conception but a natural delivery. Mary had to ride a donkey to
And so understand that if you want to be fruitful for
God. If you want to produce
the Holy things of the Word of God in your life. If you want your life to be
“the living Word”. Then you must
plant the seed. And understand that it
will cost you something. You may have to
leave your comfort zone and ride on a donkey to
I’m preaching to some of you tonight and you are not
comfortable right now in your walk with God.
You are pregnant and provoked.
I’m preaching to you as a man of God who is not comfortable in the place
that I am in right now spiritually. Oh,
I’m in the perfect will of God, but I feel like the perfect will of God has me
sitting on a donkey on my way to a crowded
The problem is that we think just because it was conceived
in the Holy Ghost that God ought to just give birth to it for us and “plop”
there’s my revival, or there’s my anointing, or there’s my holiness. But it doesn’t work that way. To get to a place of birth, we must go
through some things. Our problem is that
we get surprised and then mad at God because we find ourselves 9 months
pregnant, about to see our dream fulfilled, and then suddenly life changes and
we are sitting on a donkey traveling to a dirty stable with hunger pains in our
life! Peter wrote:
1 Peter 4:12-14 Beloved, think it
not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some
strange thing happened unto you: 13 But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of
Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad
also with exceeding joy. 14 If ye be
reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of
God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken
of, but on your part he is glorified.
Yielding to the Holy Ghost takes a moment. Yielding to the Word of God takes a lifetime. The Holy Ghost is a gift, but the Word of God living and being manifested in your life is a “baby.” If you are going to deliver, then you must endure some things! But whatever you do, Mary, don’t get sidetracked and depressed on the pain of the process because when you hold that holy thing that has been conceived within you by the Holy Ghost in your arms, it will be worth it!
Heb 11:11 Through faith also Sara herself received
strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age,
because she judged him faithful who had promised.
Judge God faithful that no matter how tough the journey gets between conception and deliverance, that you will “judge him faithful who had promised” it to you in the first place. I don’t care how hard it gets! If God made you a promise then stay on the right road, whatever you do don’t lose the Holy Thing conceived within you in the Holy Ghost!
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Barren and Provoked
And that’s all well and good if you are in a place where you can see something that God is trying to develop something within you, but what about when you feel barren? I’m preaching to some of you tonight that are pregnant with something that God is trying to bring forth in your life and so you are being knocked out of your comfort zone in the spirit. But I am also preaching to some people that you feel like the windows of heaven are shut. You aren’t pregnant with the blessings of God and you don’t feel like there is anything inside of you that is being formed by the Holy Spirit. You are not satisfied with your walk with God because you feel “barren.” And remember: the barren womb is never satisfied.
We read as our other text the story of someone who knows how you feel. Her name was Hannah, and the scriptures say that “the Lord had shut up her womb!” To make matters worse, God had placed another person in her life to taunt and make her life miserable!
1 Sam 1:1-11, 17-20 Now there was a
certain man of Ramathaim-zophim, of mount Ephraim,
and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the
son of Tohu, the son of Zuph,
an Ephrathite:
2 And he had two wives; the name
of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah:
and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. 3 And this man went up out of his city
yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts in
Let me talk to you about why these women were cursed of God with barrenness.
1. She wanted a baby for selfish reasons.
2. She let her intimacy with her husband be affected by her persecution.
3. She blamed someone else for what was something wrong in her life.
It was a barren Rachel who told Jacob:
Gen 30:1-2 And when Rachel saw
that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob,
Give me children, or else I die. 2 And Jacob's anger
was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld
from thee the fruit of the womb?
The fact that Leah was having kids proved that the problem was Rachel and not her husband. The fact that Hannah’s rival was having kids proved that the problem was within her. She was blaming her lack of fruitfulness on everybody else but in reality it was something in her that had caused the barrenness!
4. She was blaming God for her situation. And He was sort of to blame because it was Him who had shut up the womb, but He was doing it because she was not trusting in Him! As long as she was angry and trying to produce fruit on her own, and not selling out everything to God, she was barren! Go search the scripture, it is recorded that Hannah’s husband worshipped in the temple every year, but it was not until AFTER she had got her eyes off of her rival. And AFTER she had agreed to give the fruit of her womb to God’s Kingdom. And AFTER she had prayed to God in desperation. that the scriptures say “they worshipped.” For the first time Hannah truly worshipped God and turned to Him!
And after all of this, then Hannah was intimate with her husband and she conceived! She had to go from a point where God was provoking her to get her to move until she was beseeching God for Him to move!
Reminds me of Jacob wrestling with the angelic form of God in Genesis:
Gen 32:24-26 And Jacob was left
alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. 25 And when he saw that he prevailed not
against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's
thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. 26 And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not
let thee go, except thou bless me.
Somewhere in the night, Jacob’s struggle went from him fighting against God to him wanting God to change him! If you fell barren and provoked, and feel like God has brought the barrenness, then you need to go to God and somewhere in the struggle of the provocation, you need to change from fighting against God to wanting God to change you!
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The most mightiest women in scripture are known because God had shut up their wombs:
Sara, Rachel, Rebecca, Samson’s mother, Hannah, Elisabeth
If you feel as if you are going through a time of barrenness then probably God has shut up your spiritual womb on purpose to identify some things in your life that need to change. If you will change them and give everything to God. And get your eyes off of other people, then you will find that God is trying to bring forth a mighty revival through you! There’s a Samson waiting to be born! There’s Jacob and Isaac and John the Baptist kind of revival in this church! But we must turn to God to satisfy our barren womb! God is waiting on us to come to Him and to allow Him to change us so that we can bring forth a great revival!