Click here to get a copy of RealAudio
Click here to get a copy of RealAudio
SM1132: On-Line
PROVERBS 20:11
When we look at people, observe what they are doing, how they act, we make certain judgments about them. If a person dresses nice, has a fancy home and car, a good paying job, they are a success. And by what they have, by their success in life, it shows that they are intelligent, and a SNL or strong natural leader, as the business world likes to call them. They have made something of themselves. They used their intelligence to get a good education which has been used as a spring board for the many opportunities that are out there.
On the other hand, if a person doesn't have fancy clothes, a big fancy house and car, a high paying job, then according to the worlds standards, they are not a success. And because they are not successful they must not be intelligent. Instead of being a strong natural leader, a SNL, they need to be told what to do. Thus, they have basically not done much with their life. Maybe all they have is a high school education which has placed them in a dead end, low paying job without any big opportunities for advancement.
Now, according to the worlds standards, most if not all of us would fit into this second category, where people look down upon us. We must remember that we are not living according to the worlds standards, but according to God's, who sees things completely different. I want to share with you this morning the following memorandum, fictitious, but I think you will get the point that is being made by it.
MEMORANDUM
TO: Jesus, son of Joseph, Woodcrafter
Carpenter's Shop, Nazareth
FROM: Jordan management Consultants
Jerusalem
Dear Sir:
Thank you for submitting the resumes of the twelve men you have picked for management positions in your new organization. All of them have now taken our battery of tests. We have not only run the results through our computer, but also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant. It is the staff's opinion that most of the nominees are lacking in background, education and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the team concept. We would recommend that you continue your search for persons of experience in managerial ability and proven capability.
Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership. The two brothers James and John, the sons of Zebadee, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale. We feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, the son of Altheus, and Thaddeus definitely have radical leanings and they both registered a high score on the manic depressive scale.
One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind and has contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your controller and right-hand man.
All of the other profiles are self-explanatory. We wish you every success in your new venture.
Sincerely yours,
Jordan Management Consultants
We may laugh at that, but understand that is how the world looks at things, how they move people into management type positions and-so-on. In Proverbs 20:11 listen to what Solomon has to say regarding the evaluation of a person, and then we will comment more on what he has to say, and what God has to say regarding this.
PROVERBS 20:11
"Even a child is known by his deeds, Whether what he does is pure and right."
Now, for the most part, this is a true statement. You see, the basic nature of a person tends to reveal itself very early on in life. Some children are just plain obnoxious and get themselves in all kinds of trouble, while others are pleasant and do what is right. And what tends to happen is we carry our character into adulthood, whether good or bad. Solomon's point is that whatever the nature of a child is, they will carry that into adulthood.
Now don't let that discourage you, for in Christ that whole picture changes. Paul tells us in II Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." Isn't that great news! Whatever your background was, no matter how evil or wicked your life was, when Christ comes into your life, He changes all that, from the inside out, and makes you into a new creation!
Again Paul tells us in I Corinthians 6:9-11 "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."
Paul is saying to us that our backgrounds were evil, some worse than others, but basically evil, none were good. BUT we have been washed clean in the blood of Christ. We have been set apart by God for His glory. We have been justified in Christ, just as we never did it. God can take a life that seems in utter turmoil, with no hope according to the worlds views, and completely turn it around for good!
This morning I would like to share with you a few stories, a few examples of men, who according to the world, were nothing, and yet God made them into a new creation for His glory.
Steve Mays is a pastor of Calvary Chapel of South Bay in California, and if you knew his background before he got saved, you would be surprised he was still alive today. For Steve, it did seem that his path to destruction was clearly written on the wall from the time he was a small child.
During his high school days he was routinely experimenting with drugs, Asthmadone, LSD, Hashish and more. One time he was stoned for 27 hours straight and when his parents came home they tried to shove open the door of their home, and they found that towels had been wedged underneath it. The reason for this was Steve had turned their home into a gigantic bathtub and they found their son smoking a pencil and he tried to tell them of the TV show he was watching. The only problem was that the TV was not turned on!
Steve's life only got worse, he became a rebel in which there seemed to be no hope. Steve, after getting kicked out of his parents house, and wanted by the FBI, joined a motorcycle gang, a ruthless bunch of hoodlums. On one occasion they blamed Steve for knocking over one of their motorcycles and Steve said "The guy who had it in for me reached for something. Then I saw the blue barrels of a twelve-gauge double barreled shotgun. He told me to open my mouth while the others held me and helped shove it in my mouth. Then I said, 'That isn't loaded, is it?' They pulled it out, pointed at the pillow next to my ear, and pulled the trigger. It blew pillow feathers all over the place. Then they stuck the shotgun in my mouth and smoke began to come out. I thought I was going to die. My paranoia really began to grow from then on. That's when another guy living there gave me his gun to protect myself. It was then that I started carrying a gun. I would have to stay awake all night to make sure that I wouldn't die, living in the same house with a guy who wanted to kill me."
Then "...one evening, at a time when Steve wasn't suspecting anything, his old enemy who lived in the house pulled out a thirty-eight pistol and pointed it at Steve. 'I hate you. There's a contract out on your head, and I may as well collect on it as anybody else.' Steve heard and explosion and felt searing pain, like white-hot wrought iron, tearing the calf of his leg. He passed out."
A day or so later he woke up out in some field. He had been given a large dose of reds to knock him out. He discovered cloth rags in the hole in his leg; essentially the muscles of his calf had been blown out. The blood had dried, and the pain was excruciating as he pulled the rags out. He knew that he could not go to a hospital because the FBI had a warrant out for him."
Through a series of circumstances Steve found himself sleeping in the gutter. It was then a couple came to his side and they brought him to Mansion Messiah House of Calvary Chapel. It was there Steve was saved. He said "Everything suddenly clicked. God just grabbed my heart, reached in and burned in my heart. It was the most incredible power I have ever experienced in my life. It was a tremendous burning sensation of an inner witness. It was something of the awesomeness of God's love. I can't even express it."
"At that moment God delivered me from drugs. I flushed ten thousand dollars' worth of drugs down the toilet that day. I have never touched any drugs since that time. I also threw my gun away in the ocean. The residents of Mansion Messiah buried my clothes, they smelled so bad. From then on, I started singing Christian songs by myself when I was just walking down the street."
Steve, by the grace of God, is the senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of South Bay. As pastor Chuck Smith said of this man, "We have seen a life literally go from the gutter to grace. The only thing Steve carries on his body to remind him of his former years is that painful scar on his leg. To this day, it still hurts. It serves as a reminder to teach Steve gratitude, to never forget the pit from which he came, and the greatness of God's grace that brought him out of that pit."
Raul Ries is pastor of Calvary Chapel Golden Springs in Diamond Bar California. Raul was a Latin street fighter from south of the boarder who crossed into the states as a boy to escape his crazed alcoholic father. During a party after a high school football game, this fierce leader of a L.A. street gang crippled a football player of the opposing team. Because of that the judge gave him a choice, go to jail or join the Marines. He joined the marines.
In Vietnam he learned to kill and kill again, earning a purple heart during his tour of duty. And trying to go from the jungles of Vietnam back to the civilized west was not an easy transition for him.
Raul's life was way out of control and his wife and children were terrified of this black belt martial arts expert. He began to abuse them more and more and was getting himself involved with other women. One night, as his wife and children had gone to church he found the suitcases they had packed. They were going to leave him this time.
Raul was so bitter and jealous that he was willing to kill them and himself rather than losing them to some other man. He was out of control!
Pastor Chuck Smith said: "Raul sat, paced, or crouched on the floor of his living room with a loaded rifle, waiting. If the door moved, he would explode into action like a panther. That was the plan. Just take them out as quickly as possible. Then he would turn the gun on himself."
"But time stretched on and on. So to placate this inner hell, Raul resorted to turning on the TV. He flipped the channels around till he froze the channel selector on my face. I was holding the Sunday evening service at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. Apparently I was less grating on his nerves than the other programs. But, in time, the message that I was sharing began to sink into Raul's soul."
"I was teaching about the love of God - a love so great that He was willing to give His beloved Son in the place of us sinners. Raul began to think about this. God couldn't really care about him that much, not about someone so evil. That kind of love couldn't be free for the asking...or could it? He kept listening."
"God wants you to know that in spite of what you may be or in spite of what you may have done - you may have messed up your life completely - God still loves you. He is reaching out to you and inviting you to come and to share that love with Him, no matter how deeply you may have gone into sin. Jesus offers forgiveness to us as a free gift. All we have to do is accept it."
"Raul's heart pounded. Without realizing it he put the gun down. The longing for forgiveness overwhelmed him. He was beginning to believe what he was hearing. He slipped off the chair and onto his knees in front of the TV screen. When I gave my invitation to pray, Raul responded, his body rocking with heavy sobs."
"After he prayed he decided to drive as fast as he could to the church that was televising the service. He wanted to make a public confession."
"Soon he was standing in the back of that huge church and almost ran down to the front when those who wanted to give their lives to Christ were asked to come forward."
"It was the same church that his wife and kids had gone to earlier."
God took a man who was going to end it all, was a nobody by the worlds standards, and made him into a man of God. Pastor Chuck Smith said "Raul went from oblivion to joy. I look at God's economy of purpose in awe and know that none but God could put this kind of beautiful living poem together."
Mike MacIntosh, who is pastor of Horizon Christian Fellowship in California, also had some very shaky beginnings. At 24 years of age his marriage was beyond salvage. He was in debt because of his drug abuse and his wife and children left him. It was LSD and other drugs that destroyed his life, his mind and his marriage.
"One night I was left off at Ron's by a pal who had given me a gift - LSD laced with rat poison, strychnine. My speech and vision were blurring rapidly and I was getting more and more paranoid every second. Everything became evidence of a conspiracy. Unfortunately there was plenty of evidence around. Ron looked like he was on the floor loading forty-five caliber shells into his pistol, surrounded by gaping followers. I suddenly suspected that Ron was a Mafia hit man hired to get me by my secret enemies."
"Fear, when detected by some people, becomes a growing source of power. This is an evil dynamic seen in certain occult groups. Ron picked up on Mike's terror and played on it. A sadistic game ensued."
"...'At a sign from Ron, I thought I felt those in the room grabbing me. They took off my shoes, socks, and my shirt. Tied my hands behind my back. Then they tied a cloth bag over my head. I knew I was going to die and I started screaming. I saw spirit forms floating by and I called out to them wondering if they were God or knew God. Among them was Maharishi who had promised that for one hundred and thirty-four dollars he could take me to God.'"
"...'I squirmed into a bedroom. Then I pressed my forehead against the floor to pray. Then I felt the barrel of the revolver pressed against my head. Suddenly I heard a deafening explosion. A forty-five pistol exploding only inches from your head is devastating. Try that amplified by the power of LSD. My head was gone, I knew it. My brains had been blown out. In truth it was either a blank or they fired at the wall, but to me on LSD that was it. The problem was that this perception of my brains being blown out stayed with me for over two years.'"
One night, as Mike hit rock bottom, and his mind was destroyed by drugs, he stood up and came forward and dedicated his life to Jesus Christ at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. For those first 6 months Mike still lived in a fantasy world and many wondered if he would ever come out. The medical doctors had already given up on him. But by the grace of God his mind was healed.
A short time later, his wife attended a Calvary Chapel beach concert and there she saw the love of Christ in these people, and she gave her life to the Lord. She also noticed this same spirit in this man she left, a vastly different spirit then what she was use to before. And Mike and Sandy were remarried a short time later. And over time, God trained him, healed him and moved him into the position of pastoring Horizon Christian Fellowship in San Diego California.
You see, I don't care how bad your past was. I don't care how messed up your life is right now. God wants you to come to Him, repent of your sins so that He may heal you and use you for His glory. In the world's eyes these men were nobodies. They were the garbage of society just waiting to be taken to the dump with the other garbage. In a sense they were nothing more than a piece of coal. And yet God is transforming them into a diamond.
Now some of you may feel you are unqualified for any ministry, and that is good. None of us are! The problem comes when we think we are special, or the only one who is talented enough to do something. God used a donkey in the Old Testament to speak for Him, so don't think you are so special. If you do, that pride will cause you to come crashing down. You see, it is in our weakness, our frailty, that God's strength is made known.
I love what Paul has to say in I Corinthians 1:25-29. We read "Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence."
You see, God has chosen the foolish things of this world to put to shame the wise, the proud and guess what, we are the ones that meet those qualifications, we are the foolish, the unwise, we are the weak, we are looked down upon by the world, and yet, in our humility, God lifts us up. He does great and awesome things in us and through us.
The reason, of course, that He doesn't use the wise, the strong, the proud, the intelligent, is because they would glory in themselves instead of giving glory to God, the one who deserves it. It is as the Lord told Paul in II Corinthians 12:9, "...'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." You see, there is no room for us to boast in our abilities, only to give glory and honor to God for using us as instruments so that He might work through us and touch the lives of others.
Now I do understand that not all of us have such sorted backgrounds as some of these men did. But the reality is that none of our lives were good outside of Christ, even though some may have been better than others. And obviously I am not encouraging that kind of behavior to show the grace of God, but I want you to see what God can do and has done in peoples lives.
I'm sure some will be upset by this, but it is how I feel. I think most of the Christian colleges, seminaries, are a waste of time and do more harm than good in peoples lives. Some leave those institutions doubting their faith because of the liberal teachings at these schools.
Interestingly enough, all these men, when they got started in the ministry, never had a theology degree or stepped into a seminary classroom! Also, none of the apostles attended the University of Galilee, or the Jerusalem School of Seminary. Then how could they do those things that seem to require a degree? How could they speak so boldly the things of God?
Let me tell you a story from Acts chapter 4. Peter and John have been taken into custody by the religious leaders for healing a man who was lame from birth and because they preached of Jesus and of His resurrection from the dead. Can you believe the nerve of these two guys, having the audacity to heal a person! They should be put to death! Sound foolish? It was, but that is where these religious leaders were coming from. It didn't fit into their theology and thus they rejected it, even though their own Scriptures spoke of these things.
As Peter comes before these religious leaders, he lets them have it. He speaks the truth to them. It says of that encounter "Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'Rulers of the people and elders of Israel: If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole. This is the 'stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.' Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.'" Acts 4:8-12.
Peter takes them back to the Old Testament and shows them that Jesus is the stone, spoken of in Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 28:16, whom they rejected, and yet in Him alone is found salvation.
The next verse is one I love and one I truly cherish in my own life. In Acts 4:13 we read "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus."
Peter and John were fishermen. They were uneducated and untrained men. They did not go to Old Rabbi U to get their training. And yet these religious leaders did go to school, they were trained in the Scriptures, but they did not speak with the boldness like Peter and John did as they shared the Scriptures.
What made them so bold? What made them so different? What did they have that these religious leaders did not have? I see two things that made a difference in their life and will make a difference in our life. You see, they were empowered by the Holy Spirit to be witnesses of Christ. Of course that is very important. It is no good to have power tools without the power. They spent three years with Jesus and they had all the tools, but it wasn't until the day of Pentecost when they were empowered for service to be witnesses of Christ.
Secondly, and also very important, the religious leaders recognized that one of the things that made them stand out, even though they were uneducated and untrained men, was "that they had been with Jesus." May people see that in our lives and hold it against us, that we are what we are because we have been with Jesus.
I don't care where you are, or how insignificant you feel, spend time with Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to empower you for the work He has called you to do. And please understand this, God will work in us first, so that He may work through us to touch the lives of others. Paul said in Ephesians 3:20 "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us."
Yes you can tell a lot by watching the actions of a child, be they good or bad. And you can see in a child, many times what they will be like as an adult. And for the most part that is very true, until Christ comes in and makes your heart His home. Then the picture changes, you are a new creation in Him! Allow the Spirit of God, working through the Word of God to change you into the man or woman that God wants you to be, for His glory.
Jude concludes his epistle with these words, and we too will conclude this study with his words, "Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, To God our Savior, Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and power, Both now and forever. Amen." Jude 24, 25.