How do you feel if someone comes up to you and say, “You’ve been chosen…” – chosen to represent the school, represent the company, or the country…
• We feel good. It is an honour to be chosen. Yet the truth is we are all chosen – chosen by Jesus to represent Him while on earth.
• The Lord says His disciples in John 15:16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last.”
We are chosen for a purpose. If you see your life that way, everything changes.
• We cannot find this purpose by looking at ourselves, or derive it from this world.
• It all begins with Jesus Christ. We are made to worship God. We are created to become like Jesus. We are shaped for serving Him.
• We are made for a mission - to introduce people to Christ and get them on this same journey.
• We are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ and to make disciples for Christ.
(1) DISCIPLES ARE CHOSEN FOR HIS PURPOSE
Since the beginning of the book of ACTS we have been reading the exploit of the disciples of Jesus.
• In the last few chapters, we began to see individuals being highlighted - individuals who responded to God’s call.
• It started in Acts 6 when the deacons were elected to serve, and we read what Stephen and Philip did in the last few weeks.
God continues to make those choices in Acts 9 and 10.
• Jesus confronted Saul and ‘grafted’ him into His Kingdom, almost by force – by the force of His grace! God enlightened him, literally and spiritually!
• And then God chose Ananias, an unknown disciple who was staying in Damascus.
• Ananias was in the right place, at the right time, to do the right thing for God, just as Philip was in Acts 8.
In ACTS 10 we see God making those choices yet again, when He called Apostle Peter to go to a Gentile’s house (Cornelius’ home).
• His family became the first Gentile (non-Jews) converts.
• We see wave after wave of the Gospel being preached, from Jerusalem to Samaria and now the regions beyond.
God is clearly at work, but what the author Luke wanted us to see, I believe, is that God works through individuals.
• God chooses His disciples. God choose them for a purpose. God choose them for HIS PURPOSE.
• We saw that in Stephen, Philip, Saul, Ananias, and Peter. God is doing the same today. He is calling us, because we are chosen for His purpose.
Do you feel unqualified? Look at SAUL. He was the most unlikely candidate. He was an enemy of God!
• It did not begin with what he has to offer; it begins with what God has to offer him - a new life.
• Offer yourself and God will make you His disciple.
You see the same picture again - who is reaching out to this man? God is.
• Who reached out to the Ethiopian eunuch? God did. Who reached out to you? God did.
• For that matter, who is reaching out to any man? God is. It’s all of God’s grace.
(2) DISCIPLES ARE THE PRODUCTS OF GOD’S GRACE
You don’t qualify to be one; you are CALLED to be one.
• God reached out to Saul and changed him! He turned His greatest enemy into His greatest advocate. He changed the greatest threat into His greatest voice.
• No one is beyond the reach of God’s grace. No one can stand up to God’s grace.
God said, “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel.” (Acts 9:15).
Saul was unaware of this: that he was on God’s radar screen. God wants him!
• We are all chosen BY GOD’S GRACE. The things we are called to do are different but we are all CHOSEN because of His grace.
• Ananias was a disciple staying in Damascus – he was in the right place, at the right time.
• If you are in the right place and at the right time, you may just become the right person God calls, to do the right thing for Him.
• Avail yourself and God will use you.
God’s instruction to Ananias was specific, just as He did for Philip in Acts 8.
• Acts 9:11-12 - The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
• This was a divine appointment. No one can arrange this. Only God can set it up.
Again we see the attribute of a good disciple – Ananias was listening. We saw Philip was too, in Acts 8, and Peter too, in Acts 10.
• You can only obey if you are listening. You can only be led if you are listening. Are you listening to God?
The instruction was simple and yet difficult, because that man was Saul. He was risking his life. Ananias had to trust God, and he did.
• Many people eventually know Paul – he became one of the great apostles, missionary, church planter and pastor in that generation - but few know Ananias.
• He appeared only in Acts 9 to do a job that God needed a disciple to do.
I don’t think Ananias knew the full extent of what his obedience meant.
• Neither would Stephen know that his martyrdom cause the spread of Christianity and made a deep impression on Saul.
• Nor would Philip know the impact he would have made to the nation Ethiopia through the Ethiopian eunuch he met.
Ananias prayed for the one who eventually became the greatest missionary in his generation and the writer to more than half of the New Testament books.
• He was the first person Saul met, the one who blessed for him, healed him from his blindness and baptised him.
• There is no insignificant work, when it is done for God. And there is no insignificant disciple of Christ, only those who refuse to let God use them.
(3) DISCIPLES ARE WILLING TO OBEY GOD
All this would not be possible if Ananias had allowed fear to get the better of him.
• He was WILLING to trust God. It was a choice he made.
Daniel Kolenda [President, Christ for All Nations]:
“There are moments when God’s way will seem so difficult, so prolonged, and so unrewarding, while our idea will seem much easier, much quicker, and so much more enjoyable. But it is only an illusion. Looking back, we will always find that God’s plan is so much better than ours. There will never be an exception to this rule, so you might as well just decide from now on to yield to God’s will, do it God’s way, and wait for God’s best… God’s perfect will and the blessings that accompany it are reserved for those who are willing to be radically obedient and to wait when necessary. Those who are slow to learn this lesson will make many trips around the wilderness and endure much unnecessary hurt and loss.”
Don’t undermine what you can do. Or rather, don’t under-estimate what God can do, through you, when you take the step of faith and obey Him.
• We may not always see the significance of what you are doing. Take it that nothing we do for God will ever be insignificant.
• There is no insignificant ministry in the Kingdom of God.
Last week in our small group time, we had this question – regarding the conversion of the eunuch - how much credit goes to Philip and how much to the Holy Spirit?
• I posed this question because I read it in an article and it caused me thinking.
• Someone said 0% and 100%? The Spirit of God did everything. Yet we know without Philip being there to explain the text, it won’t be possible.
• And it cannot be 100% Philip, we know. He won’t even go to the desert road in the first place.
Philo said it sounded more like a trick question. He said it - 100% and 100%.
• It’s all of God and it’s all of man (in a sense). Philip was fully obedient and God did what He can do.
• Augustine: “Pray as though everything depended on God and act as if everything depended on you.”
We are CHOSEN to be His disciples.
Matt 28:19-20 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
2 Tim 2:1-2 “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.”
We are called to MAKE disciples of Christ. Disciples are not born, but made.
• Lots of TEACHING going on, which means, lots of LEARNING taking place.
• It’s like SCHOOLING. But in the Christian sense, we call it DISCIPLESHIP.
How do we LEARN to be a disciple? There must be more to just “TELLING me what to do.” In schools, we learn through doing homework, exercises, sitting for tests and exams, and we practice, practice, and practice, if we want to excel.
• 1 Tim 4:7-8 “… train yourself to be godly. 8 For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
• DISCIPLESHIP cannot be left to chance. We need to plan for it to happen and set ourselves some benchmarks to meet.
I’m planning along this line for the latter part of the year. Hopefully we can come up with a roadmap for discipleship, and take some practical steps to TRAIN ourselves to BE like Christ and DO like Christ.
If you have never experienced God’s grace and you sensed that He is calling you to come to Him, respond to Him. Pray and invite Jesus into your life. Ask Him to forgive you, and you will receive the gift of a new life.
