BROKEN THINGS GOD USES
Amos 9:11-12
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: Driving in the Middle -- Rocky Meyerson
1. A policeman looked up to see a woman racing down the center of the road at 100 m.p.h. He pulled her over and said, "Hey, lady, would you mind telling me why you're going so fast down the middle of the road?"
2. "Oh, it's okay, Officer," she replied. "I have a special license that allows me to drive like that." "Oh, yeah?" Let's see it."
3. The cop looked at the license and then concluded, "Ma'am, there's nothing special about this. It's just a temporary license."
4. "Look at the very bottom, though," the woman insisted. "See? It says 'Tear along the dotted line.'"
B. TEXT
“In that day I will restore … I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be…declares the LORD, who will do these things” Amos 9:11-12
C. THESIS
1. Ever since the fall of man, the world and its inhabitants have not been whole. Just as in Jeremiah 18, where Jeremiah observed the Potter fashioning the clay and the vessel was marred in his hands, so our world has been marred. But God in his wisdom is able to take that which has been marred a fashion it again.
2. It is through the genius of God that broken things can become useful. Many times in Scripture God used broken things:
a. The broken pitchers of Gideon and his men allowed the torches to shine out over the Midianite’s camp -- Judges 7:19-20.
b. The breaking fishnets of Peter convinced him of Christ's divinity -- Luke 5:6.
c. The breaking of a little boy's fishes and loaves fed a multitude of people -- Luke 9:16.
d. A broken box of spikenard anointed Jesus for his trip to the cross and the tomb -- Mark 14:3.
e. A broken ship brought Paul to Rome -- Acts 27:14.
3. But these are not the only things that were broken that God determined to use. God has determined to use a Broken Covenant, Broken Branches, and Broken People.
I. GOD USED A BROKEN COVENANT
A. HISTORY OF THE BROKEN COVENANT
1. Moses said, “So I turned and went down from the mountain while it was ablaze with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. 16 When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the LORD your God; you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded you. 17 So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, breaking them to pieces before your eyes” Deut. 9:15-17.
2. What a tragic day. God had brought them such a long way: through 10 plagues, delivered them from Egypt, through the Red Sea, across the wilderness, to great revelations of God – and STILL they turned back to idolatry!
3. It should be a lesson to us of how prone our hearts are to wander, even after deliverance and baptism and great revelations. But this gives us greater reason to thank God for His remedy – the Indwelling Holy Spirit!
B. GOD MOVED FROM STONE TO HEARTS
1. 31 "The time is coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel….32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers…because they broke my covenant." 33 "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." Jeremiah 31:31-34.
2. What the Law could not do because of the weakness of the flesh – God did through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Rom. 8:1-2. Now by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can live the Christian life, and no longer have to sadden the heart of God by our disobedience and rebellion.
3. “You are a letter from Christ…written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” 2 Cor. 3:3. I can’t think of a better place for God to write His Word than on our hearts!
II. GOD USED BROKEN BRANCHES
A. JUDGMENT ON THE OLIVE TREE
1. God spoke of the Israelites collectively in the metaphor of an Olive tree and individually as the branches of that tree. This symbolism of nations being spoken of as trees is commonplace in Scripture. In Ezek. 31:9-18, God spoke of Assyria and Egypt as prominent trees in the Garden of Eden, which He would bring down.
2. When Israel rejected God and became immoral and idolaters, God spoke of judging them – again in the terminology of trees: “The LORD called you a thriving olive tree with fruit beautiful in form. But with the roar of a mighty storm he will set it on fire, and its branches will be broken” Jer. 11:16; also Isa. 27:11.
3. Though many of its branches (individual Israelites) were broken off, the “stump” of Israel remained (Isa. 6:13; 11:1). God loves His people and if even one is saved, heaven rejoices. How must it have grieved God that they should lost. How could good ever come from God having to break off their lives (branches) from the stump of salvation?
B. MILLIONS OF GRAFTS INTO THE STUMP
1. Yet it was God’s determination to “graft” new branches into the stump of Israel “If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches” Romans 11:17-18.
2. Paul said humbly, “Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious….their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles…!” Rom. 11:11-12.
3. God took a tragedy – His rejection by an entire nation – and turned it I to something good: the salvation of all who will believe in Christ. Thank God He’s able to use broken things for good!
4. Story/ Illustration
III. GOD USES BROKEN PEOPLE
1. ILLUS: In the 3rd-century, a skeptic named Celsus made fun of Origen (a Christian leader of the day) "When most teachers go forth to teach, they cry, ’Come to me, you who are clean and worthy,’ and they are followed by the highest caliber of people available. But your silly master cries, ’Come to me, you who are down and beaten by life,’ and so he accumulates around him the rag, tag and bobtail of humanity."
2. And Origen replied: "Yes, they are the rag, tag and bobtail of humanity. But Jesus does not leave them that way. Out of material you would have thrown away as useless, He fashions men, giving them back their self-respect, enabling them to stand on their feet and look God in the eyes. They were cowed, cringing, broken things. But the Son has set them free.” Wow! What a statement!
3. I want us to look at 3 people who were broken, yet God used them.
A. JACOB
1. Jacob was a conniver and a deceiver; a liar and a trickster. He gypped his brother and deceived his father. He was one of the kind society has written off and filled our prisons with, but God saw some good in Jacob.
2. Eventually, God forced Jacob to acknowledge that he was a deceiver and supplanter; it is said that Jacob “wrestled” with God! It sounded like Jacob won, but it was really God who won! Jacob the convict was stripped of his criminal mind and it was replaced with the mind of Christ!
3. The Scripture says that after the encounter, Jacob limped the rest of his life. His brokenness was even manifested physically. But his brokenness also made him “Israel,” one who "wrestles with God and prevails." This encounter completed the work of purification and grace God had been trying to do in him all his life.
B. JEPHTHAH
1. He was a child of shame. His mother was a prostitute. His own brothers despised him. They expelled him from the family. They denied him any of his father's inheritance: not one dollar, not 1 acre of land.
2. HE BECAME A REFUGEE. He was driven from their territory and lived in a land of: a). Enemies of Israel, b). A warlike
people, c). an immoral, Idolatrous, and Lawless people. Jephthah was another of the rejected of society.
3. But Jephthah let his brokenness make him stronger. He “redeemed his time,” preparing for the future by training to fight and amassing an army. In Israel's need, they recognized His gifting and he was invited back to become the head of his tribe and a Judge over Israel. His brokenness created in him a strength that surpassed the abilities of others who had no trials.
C. MARY, ANOINTING JESUS Jn. 12:2; Mk. 14:3
1. There are three mentions of Mary the sister of Lazarus. The first is connected to she and Martha’s entertaining Christ at their home. Here she sits at Jesus’ feet and listened attentively to every word that fell from the Teacher’s lips and was commended for having “chosen that better part.”
2. Next we see her after her brother Lazarus had died. When Jesus came, she stayed at the house, while Martha went out to meet Him. When she finally met Jesus, her words had less faith than Martha’s; “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” But after Lazarus’ resurrection, her love and faith revived.
3. The third instance is when she brought an alabaster jar of ointment and anointed Jesus. It was worth a year’s wages. It was a costly expression of love to Jesus. Why did she do it? The death of her brother was a devastating blow; it had shaken her faith. It broke her.
4. But when she saw Jesus, the Resurrection & Life, raise Lazarus who had been dead four days, her cavernous emptiness was filled with a deep revelation of Who Jesus was and with gratitude for the royal gift of her brother’s life back. She anointed Jesus’ head (Mk. 14:3) and feet (Jn. 12:2).
5. The breaking of the alabaster jar full of precious ointment was a symbol of a heart broken, pouring out praise and thankfulness to the Lord. If we hold on to the Lord during our trial and don’t let go, eventually God will turn our desert into a well-watered garden that will bless many people and ourselves as well!
IV. GOD WANTS TO USE YOU
A. BEING BROKEN IS A GOOD THING
1. We’ve seen from the previous examples how brokenness actually makes you stronger, deeper, and more useful to God. Maybe you have been broken. Maybe you have had terrible situations occur in your life. Your trials don’t disqualify you from service in the kingdom, rather they are endorsements that you’re more ready for service than ever before!
2. Sometimes you can feel like your life has been shattered into little pieces. Well, before God can correctly assemble your life (since it was assembled wrong to start with) He has to disassemble it and then reassemble it! So your being in pieces is evidence He’s in the middle of the process and is hard at work!
B. BROKENNESS IS A COMMON CONDITION
1. No matter how badly your life has been broken, God still wants to use you. There’s a world of people out there who are in various stages of brokenness; some a little, others a lot. Probably, for the first time in your life, you can actually relate to them!
2. A woman who has experienced labor pains can truly sympathize with another woman enduring them. Brokenness, disorientation, confusion, despondency, dejectedness, hopelessness – are experienced every day by millions of people. They need someone who can cry with them, who can “feel their pain.”
3. If you’re broken, then you are qualified to be God’s representative to them and introduce them to His love and show them how to let God put their lives back together. You are just where God wants you!
C. WAYS GOD CAN USE YOU
1. Put yourself to work in a ministry that ministers to people who have suffered as you have. Start a support group for people who: have lost a spouse, or a child, or gone through a divorce, or aborted a child, or been sexually assaulted, or lost it all through drugs or alcohol, or been bankrupted, or had cancer, etc.
2. Keep your ears open to anyone in your community who has suffered a similar fate as yourself and send them sympathy cards and make yourself available for prayer if they need it.
3. Pray for people who are suffering. Raise money to help the downtrodden in other countries get access to help for their trials. Encourage missionaries to appeal to those areas of need in their countries.
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION
1. POWER OF ADVERSITY.
a. In 1973, Charles Colson received the Templeton prize for Progress in Religion. The $1 million prize is the largest prize for achievement in any field. It is kept higher than the Nobel prizes in such fields as science and literature in the belief that religion is more important.
b. Colson served seven months in prison for obstructing justice in the Watergate cover-up and was known as the scandal’s "hatchet man." His conversion later led to the founding of Prison Fellowship in 1976.
c. In response to this award, Colson said, "Out of tragedy and adversity come great blessings. I shudder to think of what I would have been if I had not gone to prison." Adversity can be God's refining fire.
2. BROKENNESS BROUGHT PERSEVERANCE.
a. In 1992, Kristi Yamaguchi won the gold medal in figure skating. That was quite an accomplishment when you consider what she had to overcome.
b. Her legs were incorrectly developed at birth so she was placed in corrective casts at two weeks of age. The casts were changed every two weeks until she was one. For the next four years she wore corrective shoes.
c. Skating was later introduced as a method to strengthen her legs. Then at the age of 20, she became the reigning queen of figure skating. [In Other Words #19, 575]
B. ALTAR CALL
1. How many of you have a situation that has caused “brokenness” in your life and you would like to have prayer for it?
2. Sometimes God allows tragedy to bring us close to Him. How many of you want to get closer to the Lord – maybe even surrender all to Him? Prayer.
