Why Were You Chosen
1 Samuel 10:17-24 Matthew 9:35-38 Ephesians 2:8-10 August 25, 2019
Have you ever been chosen for something that caught you completely off guard and you were surprised by it?
One day a man by the name of Saul went looking for his father’s donkeys that had been lost. Today he would have been a recruit for the NBA because he was a head taller than anyone else. But basketball had not been invented then so Saul was just an ordinary guy. He had no idea, that going out and looking for some donkeys, would end up with him running into the prophet/priest Samuel and him eventually being crowned king of a nation. Saul was so shocked that he was chosen, that he hid among some bags hoping they might choose someone else.
The nation of Israel was in a period of relaunching itself. It was moving from a form of government in which the priests were in control with God leading them, to a form of government in which they would have an earthly king like the other nations.
God chose Saul to lead them in this relaunching as a nation. Saul was somewhat afraid because he knew he was going to be asked to do things he had never done before. God is going to require us to do some things we’ve never done before.
Jesus came into this world to relaunch the ministry of the Jewish people to the world. You may recall, when God called Abraham and Sarah who was the first Jewish couple, he told Abraham that through him, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. God chose the Jews to help the world understand who God was, what God required, and how God reacted toward his people.
Somewhere along the way, the mission of reaching the world for God got lost, and keeping all kinds of laws and regulations related to Jewish religious, feasts, festivals and way of life had taken center stage. Laws became more important than ministering to people. Not only had they forgotten about those who were not Jews, they were overlooking some who were Jews.
Jesus relaunched God’s ministry, by putting the focus back on the people. He went through many towns and villages preaching the good news about God’s love for them and healing every disease and sickness he encountered. The word tells us in Matthew 9:36, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
If you had seen that crowd that day, many of the people would have considered themselves doing fine and having a great time in life. They only showed up to see Jesus because there was nothing else that exciting going on. Who knows, Jesus just might do a miracle. He might even say something worthwhile. They weren’t thinking of themselves as being lost spiritually. After all they were God’s chosen people.
If you looked at the crowd as a whole, they would have seen pretty united. No different than the crowd you’d see at a political rally, a Cav’s game, a concert or even a church service. Yet Jesus saw what they looked like beyond their united appearance. The verse says , “ He had compassion on them.”
The word compassion literally means, “to be moved in the heart.” When you actually have compassion on someone, you actually do something on their behalf. Many of the people in that crowd were convinced they were on their way to heaven, but Jesus saw them as lost sheep, harassed by sin and loneliness, with no one to show them the way. Because they had no shepherd, Jesus went the route to become their shepherd. He did two things.
The first was to deal with the problem of a sinful nature in their lives and in all of our lives. He did that by choosing to pay the penalty for our sin so that we can be free from our sinful nature. He literally took our punishment for our sin so that we could live differently and have a different final destination.
The second thing he did in this passage was to bring it to our attention, that God sees a tremendous potential for a great harvest to be brought into the kingdom of God. He saw what was keeping it from happening, was that there were not enough workers in the field to make the harvest possible.
Most of us do not go to farms. We get our ears of corn, our green beans, our collards straight from the grocery store. Yet before they arrive at the grocery store, somebody has to plow a field, somebody has to fertilize the soil, somebody has to plant a seed, somebody has to pull out the weeds, somebody has to pick the crop, and somebody has to bring the food to market.
If you don’t have enough somebodies, a potentially great crop or harvest will be ruined. Jesus told us to pray that the Lord would send more workers into the harvest field.
Whether or not we choose to go and be a worker depends a lot on whether or not we believe that we and others are truly lost. Those of you who are saved, do you actually believe that you were a sinner, on your way to hell, without any hope of being saved.
Or do you believe that as long as you had enough good works, there was a chance God was going to allow you to slide in on the curve. You could think of at least 10 other people that you are living better than.
As long as we think, somebody did something for us that was owed to us, we have little reason to feel obligated in return. If you agreed to work 40 hours a week for $20 an hour and you did it and did it well, you are thankful for your $800 check.
You don’t keep saying to your boss, oh thank you, thank you, thank you. Is there anything else I can do for this check. Your boss did not pay you out of compassion, but out of an obligation. But if somehow, your life depended on you having $800 and you had no way to get the money, and that same person simply gave you $800 out of compassion, you ought to feel some kind of obligation to offer something of yourself in some way.
Most people believe they are going to earn their place in heaven. As long as they believe this, they see no reason to owe God anything. There are people in the church who believe they are doing God a favor by accepting Jesus as their Savior and even coming to church.
Our society wants us to believe that we are all basically good people and we have already earned our salvation and our way to eternal life. The gospel of America is that as long as you give it your best shot, and don’t mess up too bad, admit your mistakes, and move on, while being true to who you are, you’re okay. Nobody owes God anything.
Jesus taught that everyone is on the road to hell and needs to get off it. Our society teaches that everyone is on the road to heaven and just needs to stay on it. Which message has the greater mass appeal? Which message is correct? Which message do we live as though is really the true one?
Which message causes the greatest amount of compassion to be stirred in our hearts? Jesus’ message has an urgency about it, that the second message does not have. Jesus’ message calls for decisive action to be taken, the other calls for being happy with the way things are.
Why did God choose to call you? Most of us did not wake up one day and say, “I’ve gotten my life together now and I’m a pretty good person so now I think I’m ready to get saved today.” For most of us, it was the realization that not only were we not together, we were never going to get it together to be good enough to come to God asking for salvation. We knew our sin problem was much bigger than we are and we couldn’t do anything about it. We were dead in our sin, and needed a relaunch that was beyond our capability to make it happen.
So what did we do. We turned to God, and said something along the lines, “God please help me.” Then this is what God did. He saved us with the gift of the work of Jesus Christ. For we find in Ephesians 2:8 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. Our salvation comes to us absolutely free simply by putting our trust in God. It’s God’s grace alone that moves us from one road leading to death to another road leading to eternal life.
God chose you because God wanted to give you the gift of eternal life to demonstrate how far He was willing to reach out on your behalf. The Word makes it clear, that it was not your good works that got God’s attention. Nobody is going to be able to impress God with anything they earned, they won, they gave, they did or the like. We won’t be able to boast about anything in God’s presence. Can you imagine boasting to God about throwing a basketball through a hoop, when God throws stars in the galaxies in the sky and keep them all in place.
Ephesians 2:10 says, 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God did not save us to put us on display on a shelf. God saved us to be made in the image of Jesus Christ to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
You may recall, Jesus said for us to pray that God will send more workers into the field for a great harvest. We are the workers that have been created to do good works. What we have been doing these past two weeks is to put us in the place of understanding that God called us with a purpose in mind.
One of the things God did was to equip everyone of us with a spiritual gift that was going to have a role in making the harvest of souls possible. Your spiritual gift is your tool to use to show compassion for those who are lost. God prepared certain works in advance for us to do, even before we knew who God was.
Your spiritual gift is not something for yourself to hoard. Your spiritual gift is always a gift to be used to either build the body of Christ so that it might be strengthened or to be used to reach the world for Christ so that the Harvest God desires will actually take place. We must remember, that God more than anybody wants to see people get saved.
We get upset with people, and we lose our patience with them and we are quick to say “forget you”. There are some people that at times we want God to just take them out.
But that is not how God deals with people. People will say “If there is a God, why does he let all this evil go on.” 2 Peter 2:9 “9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” God wants everybody to want to be saved. He’s not going to make them want it. He wants to use us and our gifts to lead people in the right direction. He’s given us a privilege and a responsibility to help people come to know God.
New Life At Calvary is just one piece in the body of Christ, that is seeking to make a difference in reaching the lost. It’s critical that we play the part God has for us to do now. You need to choose to use your gift and your talent in one or more of these ministries for us to carry out the larger plan of God.
God has given you a part to play in the body of Christ and if you do it we all benefit, but if you don’t we become a weaker church and somebody who might have gotten saved, may end up being lost.
You should never underestimate the power you have to impact the life of our church and the kingdom of God. God may have placed something inside of you that we need to have for a successful relaunch of our church.
If you are truly grateful for the free gift of salvation you have received, you understand that you owe your life to God. It is out of gratitude that we offer our gifts to the Lord. But our God is so loving that God evens want to reward our gratitude by promising us additional rewards.
One of the saddest things that happen in a church is when a person feels I can’t do anything that matters. The reality that Jesus loved you enough to die for you is proof that you do matter.
God would not have saved you if you didn’t matter to his plans and his purposes. When it says you are God’s handiwork it means you are God’s “masterpiece”, “God’s work of art”, or “God’s new creation.”
Sometimes we may think we need to be a prophet in order to matter, but Jesus said, anyone who offers a cup of cold water to one of his disciples shall not lose their reward. But God wants to use you with what you already have received. Your act of kindness, of service, of going a little bit further than others go are all seen by your Father in heaven.
Your willingness to help someone worship God better is going to be rewarded by your Father. You see the world in the way you do, because God expects you to see things some of the rest of us can’t see when it comes to touching people. Just 15 minutes of you can be the difference between us being an okay church or a great church in the kingdom.
As we use our gifts and talents in service, the one thing we can be guaranteed to happen is that friction and misunderstandings are going to take place. The reason we had you take the personality leadership test is to prepare you for when it happens.
We didn’t give you the test to be able to boast of what type of leader you were, but rather to help you see your brothers and sisters in a different light from yourself. Every time there is a conflict, it does not mean the devil is busy or the other person is full of the devil. It means two personality types have come into contact with each other, and each desires his or her own way.
It’s important for you to understand your personality type, but even more important was for you to understand the weaknesses in you in relating to others because of your particular personality type. Sometimes we are the problem, but we don’t see it because we are absolutely sure that we are correct.
You may have the best idea, but you might need some patience with letting everyone else see where you are coming from. Your good idea, might become a great idea if you allow others to shape it and add something to it. That can be true at home, at work, at school and definitely at church.
Your spiritual gift assessment lets you know where you should most likely be serving in the life of the church. Your leadership personality lets you know what kind of leader you are, but also what changes you need to make to become a more effective leader servant where ever God places you. God had in mind a purpose and place for you within the kingdom of God before Jesus Christ went to the cross to die for you.
Our purpose in relaunching as a church in a couple of weeks, is that we do so with a greater commitment to love and serve each other as well as love our community by working together to reach unsaved people. All that we do should have the end goal of helping someone move closer to Christ. Why did God choose you? Because God has equipped you to get the job done.
We want you to take out your sheet and put your name on it. Put a check in front of the ministries you want to be a part of. There is a one line description of what each ministry is about. Please sign up on this sheet. When you go into the fellowship hall, you can sign up again at the tables in the fellowship hall and ask any questions that you might have.
**If you want to see the spiritual gift test or the leadership personality tests that we gave to the congregation, go to our website at www.newlifeatcalvary.org, choose Resources, and then choose either the Leadership Personality Assessment or the Spiritual Gift Tests.
