John 12:12-19
“He Uses the Ordinary”
By: Rev. Kenneth Emerson Sauer
Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church
Newport News, VA
www.parkview-umc.org.
There is nothing dignified about a donkey.
We can look at him from any angle and we will fail to find what we might call a sense of ‘presence’.
He just doesn’t have it.
He is an awkward, stubborn, and well… not very intelligent animal to say the least.
In his well-known poem on the donkey, G.K. Chesterton makes the donkey reply to those who might sneer or laugh at him:
“Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.”
Whatever Jesus Christ touches He gives sacred worth and dignity—no matter how despised a person or creature might be, Christ has a use for him or her.
No matter how ordinary, uneducated, unpopular, disabled, disfigured, untalented, or seemingly unimportant a person may be or feel—Jesus Christ has a use for them, and He raises that person up—or gives them dignity--by His use!
Think about it.
Jesus Christ uses ordinary people in order to accomplish extraordinary things.
Look at the disciples themselves.
They were all ordinary people.
As far as we know, none of them were of noble birth.
None of them were what we might call a genius, or a scholar.
We know the occupations of only five out of the twelve.
Four were fishermen and one was a tax collector—and a tax collector in those days was a greedy money lender—not a respected government official.
And with this group of ordinary men, Jesus Christ turned the world upside down!
And Jesus has been using ordinary people ever since and doing mighty things with them.
God doesn’t just work with geniuses.
God will work with anybody who will give Him their heart.
And we are all called to give Christ our hearts, our lives, our all—no matter who we are, no matter where we come from.
Christ has a divine purpose for all of our lives.
All of us were created with certain talents and abilities in order to be used by God to live abundant fulfilling lives of dignity and worth.
In the eyes of God there is no such thing as human garbage.
There is no such thing as an unimportant person.
People are not disposable.
No matter how the world might view us—no matter how we might view ourselves…God views us with eyes that see us as the most precious and valuable treasures in this entire universe.
With this in mind—there is nothing that God cannot accomplish through any one of our lives!
What is God accomplishing through you?
What is God’s plan for your life?
The worst thing any one of us can do is to shrink away from His call on our lives—using our inferiorities as a wall between us and what God knows we can be!
Never allow yourself to answer God by saying: “I’m not clever, I’m not good enough, or talented. I can’t do anything.”
Because the Christ Who made use of a despised animal such as a donkey can and will make much greater use of you or me, and if He doesn’t the only reason will be that we won’t let Him!
I wasted a number of years feeling I was unusable.
I remember one particular day as I was walking across the campus where I went to college.
I was feeling pretty low.
I was beating myself up pretty bad.
I happened to walk into the college record store—and through the speakers in that store I felt God was talking to me at that very moment.
Billy Joel’s song: “I Love You Just the Way You Are,” was playing.
It was as if God was saying to me: “Stop beating up on yourself. Yes you are human. Yes you make mistakes. You are far from being perfect—but that’s alright. Stop being your own worst enemy—I love you just the way you are!”
“Now just hand everything over to Me—and we’ll do something together.”
“We’ll make something beautiful out of your life!”
And here I am. A work of God in progress.
But I know that God is changing me and using me—despite myself.
And life is good.
I’m not rich.
I never will be.
But I’ve got a wife who loves me, a wonderful son, a fantastic church family…
…and most important—A God who believes in me.
Do you know that you have a God Who believes in you as well?
He believes in you so much that He came and died, so that you can live!
That’s a big investment.
The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ has purchased those who believe in Him by His blood…by the blood He shed on the Cross.
Have you allowed yourself to be purchased by God?
Have you allowed God to purchase you with the most precious thing possible?—that is, the shed blood of His One and Only Son!
We don’t come cheaply.
God didn’t buy us in a discount store.
So, let’s not act as if we are cheap and unwanted.
What an insult that is to the One Who went so far and spent so much!
On November 2nd, 1739 a man with an enormous and grotesque squint appeared on the scene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
People would laugh at him before he got up to speak.
He did not look the part of an eloquent preacher.
He was not blessed with good looks.
Instead his eyes were horribly crossed.
But no one questioned God’s use of him once He began to speak!
He didn’t let his disabilities get in the way of God’s great plan for his life.
He allowed God to have him—crossed eyes and all.
And more than any other single person in America during his time—God used George Whitefield, a plain old Methodist preacher, to cause the Great Awakening to burst forth on American soil.
No one but God knows how many souls have been saved as a result of George Whitefield’s preaching.
Don’t let the laughter of the world stop you from becoming one of God’s beautiful shining lights!
Don’t let anyone make you feel unfit to answer God’s call.
You are unfit—of course, we all are!
But when God calls, leap and obey!
Never forget that it was the one-talented man in the parable of the talents who was rebuked in that parable.
Why? Because he didn’t allow God to use what God have given Him.
If you are one-talented or half-talented never let yourself go with the excuse: “What can I do? I have so little!”
Little or much, you will come to the last audit just like everyone else.
Jesus Christ has done mighty things with one-talented men and women.
Most people who knew Philip Bliss put him in the one-talent category.
He was no poet.
He had a single gift of being able to put verses together in a metrical structure.
But what use Jesus Christ made of his gift!
All around the English speaking world people sang his Gospel songs—and some people still do.
And who was the farmer who clambered up a pyramid of people in order to lift John Wesley as a little boy of six years old form the blazing rectory at Epworth on February 9, 1709?
Did he play a part in changing the spiritual history of the world?
I think he did.
But nobody knows his name—except for the one Who used him for His purposes—the Only One Who really counts—Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world!!!
To what group do you belong?
Are you ordinary?
Uneducated?
Disfigured?
One-talented?
Unknown?
Well, the Christ Who lifted up and made royal use on Palm Sunday of a mere donkey can make much higher use of you or me.
Donkeys are stubborn, stupid and undignified.
I’ve been all three of these things as well---and often.
How about you?
We can learn a lot on this Palm Sunday from God’s use of that honored donkey.
How many Christians have you known, who were not wise by the world’s standards, not useful by the world’s standards—but very wise in the wisdom of God?
One thing I like best about the Christian Church is that no matter who you are in the eyes of the world, no matter how low you may rank on society’s list of important and influential people, no matter the job you hold, no matter the amount of money you have in your wallet, no matter your looks…no matter all that ‘stuff’ that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans…
…you are just as important as anyone else as soon as you walk through the doors of the church!
All we have to do is to be willing to allow God to use us as He sees fit.
All we have to do is believe in how much God believes in us…
And He will lift us up on eagle’s wings!
Only He knows what He has in store for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose!
A smart young woman criticized a parishioner who attended a certain preacher’s church.
“Look at that guy,” she said.
“What does he know about life?”
So the preacher thought about this fellow.
He was a simple man in some ways, but he remembered the time when all three of his children were stricken with scarlet fever at the same time and two of them died in one day.
He remembered his faith in that midnight hour.
He remembered why he was still a poor man.
It was because he would not compromise his conscience on a certain point, and therefore missed making a large sum of money.
He remembered how often the old man had cheered him up in his work by his simple and loving testimony to Jesus.
He looked like a poor old donkey to the smart young lady, but if she only knew the Spirit of God Who lived inside of him.
If she only knew the One Who purchased him at such a great cost.
Well, it’s Palm Sunday and one message of Palm Sunday is this: that the Lord who gave dignity and prominence to a despised donkey will give meaning and honor to ordinary people like us!
The world may not know our names, but we who have accepted God’s great purchase of us through the shed blood of His One and Only Son, can dare to believe that our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life!
Let us pray: Almighty God, we come to You today in order to thank You for how far You are willing to go in order to let us know that we are loved, that we are important, and that our lives truly do have real meaning—no matter who we are…no matter what we look like…no matter where we come from. Make us to be the righteous people you know we can be. In Jesus name and for His sake we pray. Amen.
