ME
Easter Sunday is resurrection Sunday, but the truth is that every Sunday is resurrection Sunday – if it weren’t for the resurrection of Jesus Christ we’d have no reason to be here today and all of this that we do is in vain. But He did rise from the dead. Jesus said He had the power to lay down His life and the power to take it back up again, and today He is seated at the right hand of the throne of God in His rightful place as the King of kings and Lord of lords!
We’re here to worship Him today! We’re here to glorify and exalt Him! Revelation 4:11 tells us that “he is worthy of all glory and honor and power, for He created all things and for His pleasure they are and were created!” You and I were created to glorify God and bring Him pleasure – that’s why we exist! And our lives are to be a constant reflection of that purpose.
Now I didn’t always know that. Growing up I knew about God and church and Jesus. I have known all my life about Jesus Christ and that He died on a cross for sin and that He rose from the dead and went back to heaven. I have heard that all my life and I believed it all my life. But none of that made any difference to me until I gave my life to Christ in salvation at the age of 21.
How did you come to this place today? I don’t mean this building or this service necessarily, but to this place in your life? And more specifically, to this place in your spiritual life or in your walk with God? Today you see me preaching, but I haven’t always been a preacher nor did I set out wanting to be one. But God had a plan for my life that I could not have imagined and enjoy more than you might know, and He has used a lot of people along the way to bring me to this place.
I accepted Christ under the preaching of Pastor Bobby Myers. He was preaching one Sunday about hell and how bad it was and I remember not wanting to go there, so I gave my life to Christ. But I never would have done it had it not been for the urging of my then in-laws who would not get off my back about going to church. The only reason I went was so they would leave me alone.
I attended that church for 2 years, but I didn’t like it. I wasn’t connected with anyone and wasn’t growing. I was working as a steel fitter at the time. My dad was a welder. All I knew was steel and making stuff. I was working for General Dynamics at the time and my crew foreman was a guy named Bobby Carpenter. Now if you don’t know steel workers, think of Buddy Scott back there. Buddy can tell you that welders and fitters are quite often a different breed of people – and I love them. But my foreman Bobby kept telling me about this church he was going to and how he liked it. He kept talking about his pastor’s teachings and about how there were dinosaurs in the Bible and I was intrigued. So I went.
When it comes to church, I have always been somewhat of a square peg in a round hole, but that church welcomed me and loved me, and they put me to work. The pastor was Billy Wright, and he is the man I consider my father in the faith. It was Bill who encouraged me to be the church’s youth pastor, and it was Bill who convinced me to give up my job to go to work at the church’s Christian school. He wasn’t seminary trained, but the man knew the Bible and preached it with conviction. All the while we were together he called me preacher man and kept telling me that God was going to use me to preach one day. My preaching today is a direct reflection of his ministry in my life. I could spend a lot of time telling you about how God used Bill to mold me and disciple me, but there will be time for that later.
I attended seminary and graduated, then pastored in Denison until 2008. I moved to Kansas in 2009 and pastored there for a short while. In Kansas my world sort of fell apart, and I walked away from pastoring and ministry. But I did more than that – I walked away from God. I’m not proud of that and don’t want you to think it’s okay to do it because it’s not. But God in His providence protected me, and during that time brought Tammy and I together. She wasn’t attending church and I had no desire to go. I didn’t want to have to deal with God about why I walked away and my anger and a lot of other garbage.
But God had other plans. After we moved here to Whitewright Tammy told me one day she wanted to start attending church somewhere. So we visited around. We visited here and there, even going to church in Dallas a few times. I loved being anonymous, but God…
We ended up here. Tammy and I sat back there in the back pew for a year and a half being anonymous, but God used some people right here in our church to really help us grow. I want to give you just three of them. The first is Billie McDowell. I already knew Billie from working around her house and Tammy and I became good friends with her. She kept inviting us to attend her life group and we kept not going. There was an obvious age gap from us to her group and we didn’t want to go. But finally one night last September or so we went. And when I got there she told me I was teaching the Bible study that night.
I cannot tell you how many times I have sat with Billie and listened to her tell me that I needed to be preaching or pastoring again and that God had something more important for me to do than remodel bathrooms. She has and continues to speak great words of encouragement into my life to serve Christ with my calling.
The second person I want to give some credit to is Eddie McCartney. I hate to mention his name because he will get the big head, but Eddie was leading our life group, and after I taught that first night he let me teach again 2 weeks later. At the end of that lesson he announced to the group that he felt like God wanted him to step down as the teacher because God wanted me to start teaching it. Do you know how hard it is to let something go like that when you feel ownership of it? But he did, and he encouraged me and still does with my preaching and teaching.
The third of course is Leon. He encouraged me in a different way. He knew from pastoral experience what I was going through in the back pew and he didn’t bother me about it. Instead, he let me deal with God and encouraged me to simply follow Him.
There are plenty of others I could name, both here and in my past, but what I really want you to see is that God used people – normal people just like you to get me up here in this place. You see and hear me, but it’s people like Billie and Eddie and more than any of them my wonderful wife who helped me get here.
YOU
Who has it been in your life? Maybe it was your parents or grandparents. It may have been a pastor or a Sunday school teacher. Some of you here today don’t want to be here – you’re here because somebody keeps hounding you about it or because it’s Easter and it was expected of you. In fact, you may be that hounder who keeps after other people – and folk listen, God is using you even if you don’t see it.
I look around this room and wonder…was it a wife that kept after you to come? Did you follow a husband who came to Christ? Did your kids influence you?
I asked Tammy about this in her own experience. God has used Billie has become Tammy’s mom to a large degree and really her spiritual mother as well. God used Leon in a great way in the way he accepted and loved her. God has used Maureen to influence Tammy for Christ as well.
Do you know who DL Moody is? He was one of the greatest evangelists in the world in the 1800s, and he shared the gospel with at least 100 million people in the age before modern technology. Pretty incredible! He also founded the Moody Bible Institute and Moody Memorial Church in Chicago. His name is well known in the Christian community, even today, more than a hundred years later.
But have you ever heard of Edward Kimball? He is the Sunday School teacher who led Moody to Christ in the basement of a shoe store.
You’ve all heard of Billy Graham, but do you know the people who are behind his coming to Christ? Billy Graham came to Christ through the preaching of Mordecai Ham during a tent meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1936. Graham, born in 1920, was 16 years old, didn't know Christ, and was "sowing his oats," as many a young man is known to do. He had a 16-year-old buddy, and they were just hanging out when they thought, “Hey, let's go into this tent and hear what this guy has to say.”
So they were just clowning around when they went into that tent. Once inside, they realized that there was no room for them; they couldn’t find any seats. So Billy said to his buddy, “Let's get out of here.” As they turned to leave, an usher standing there saw them and said, “Hey, guys.” He put his big arms around their shoulders and said, “You know, hey, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Let me take you to a seat.” So, the usher took them to a seat and the rest is history.
Billy Graham found Jesus that night and he went on to take Jesus to the world. That usher could never have known how God was using him that night through his simple yet faithful service.
GOD
In my opinion the people that I’ve mentioned to you…Bobby Myers or Billy Wright or Eddie McCartney or Edward Kimball or anyone else matters to much of the world, but they mean the world to God. People like my foreman Bobby Carpenter are a dime a dozen to the world, but in terms of eternal impact for the kingdom of God you and I will never know how God will bless that man for influencing me to come to his church. All of these people are what I like to call unlikely heroes. The Bible is full of people like them and history is as well.
Think about Rahab. To the world she lived in she was a prostitute, a common whore, but God used her to save and bring victory to His people, and she was the great great grandmother of Jesus.
What about Moses? Raised a son of Pharaoh, he rejected his royal upbringing and murdered a man. He spent 40 years in the desert tending sheep, but God used him to lead the people of Israel out of Egyptian bondage.
King David – the builder of a nation as a young teenager killed Goliath when he was nothing but a shepherd boy.
How about the disciples? They were common men: fishermen and tax collectors, but they turned the world upside down.
The Apostle Paul who wrote most of the New Testament started out with hate crimes and even murder.
Unlikely heroes! We could go on and on with people from Scripture who were ordinary men and women like you and me that God used in great ways – sometimes big ways like David, and sometimes in small ways like Rahab, but all of them in some way to make an eternal impact for the kingdom of God.
In Isaiah 53 the Bible tells us about another unlikely hero of the Bible…an unlikely Jew who rose from obscurity to become the most important historical figure ever known to man. The passage we are going to read is a prophecy that was written about Jesus about 700 years before He lived, and we’re actually going to start in Isaiah 52:13.
Read through and comment…
But listen, the story doesn’t end there. Turn with me to Luke 23:50. Read and make a few comments.
Now I want to make two observations from all I’ve given you this morning.
God uses the unlikely things of this world to make all the difference in the world. Paul said it this way:
“For consider your calling, brothers; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”
Not only was Jesus an unlikely Savior to the world…God uses unlikely people like you and me to carry on His work and bring glory to Himself. So what if you don’t have a lot of money to give. So what if you can’t preach a sermon or carry a tune to save your life? So what if you don’t think you have a lot to offer? Just be available for Jesus to use. Just give your life to Him. Put it in His hands and let Him use you right where you are with the people who are already in your life. Maybe it’s a word of encouragement or an urging to get in church. Maybe it’s sharing the gospel with them or living the gospel yourself. This room is full of people who, though you seem unlikely to the world around you have the opportunity to make eternal kingdom impact every day of your lives – even if you never know it.
The Jesus most of us have formed in our minds actually looks very little like the Jesus of Scripture. I’m not talking about the Hollywood image we conjure up. I’m talking about something much deeper.
The people in Jesus day crucified Him precisely because He didn’t fit their preconceived ideas about whom or what He ought to be. And the fact is that many of you have crucified Him again in your own hearts and minds. In other words He doesn’t stand a chance of being your Savior because He doesn’t fit what you’re looking for. You can’t follow this Jesus because His teachings and expectations are contrary to what you’re looking for in life.
Maybe you just don’t see the relevance. Okay all of this is good and fine for you, but this isn’t important to me and doesn’t fit into my life. It works for you but not for me. To you I just want to say this: Jesus is the only way. Period. Go ahead and live your life and do your thing, but in the end you will have wasted it. Jesus said though that if you will lose your life in Him then…THEN you will have found real life.
This unlikely Jew was more than a Jew…He was God in the flesh who lived a perfect, sinless life so He might die a cruel death on your cross so that you might have life. The people of Jesus day witnesses His miracles and heard His teachings first hand and they still walked away. It is little wonder people do it today. But I hope you won’t be one of them. Give Jesus a chance.
