The Person God Uses

Acts 4:1-35

The Person God Uses

In Directions, James Hamilton writes;

Before refrigerators, people used icehouses to preserve their food. Icehouses had thick walls, no windows, and a tightly fitted door: In winter, when streams and lakes were frozen, large blocks of ice were cut, hauled to the icehouses, and covered with sawdust. Often the ice would last well into the summer.

One man lost a valuable watch wile working in an icehouse. He searched diligently for it, carefully raking through the sawdust, but did not find it. His fellow workers also looked, but their efforts, too, proved futile. A small boy who heard about the fruitless search slipped into the icehouse during the noon hour and soon emerged with the watch.

Amazed, the men asked him how he found it.

“I closed the door,” the boy replied, “lay down in the sawdust, and kept very still. Soon I heard the watch ticking”

Often the question is not whether God is speaking, but whether we are being still enough, and quiet enough, to hear.

I’ve come to share with you today that God wants to use you!

I hope you heard what I said; He wants to use you. That should give you reason to be optimistic today.

This story here in Acts is an incredible story.

Peter and John are on the way to the temple to pray.

They come upon this man who has been crippled from birth.

Peter speaks to him telling him that he doesn’t have silver or gold but what he does have he gives to him and in Jesus name he is healed.

They go into the temple and the man Is praising God.

The religious leaders are not happy!

Three Observations: The religious leaders had trouble…

1. They had trouble with the message – vs. 2

The religious leaders didn’t like Peter and John proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ. Let that be a lesson to us today. The opposition you encounter may come more from the religious people than it will the secular people!

2. They had trouble with the results – vs. 4

Can you imagine? Here is this man who has been crippled from birth up walking and leaping and praising God and they are not happy about it. What he did testified to the power of God, God’s ability to perform miracles and this just didn’t sit well with the religious leaders.

3. They had trouble with the source – vs. 7-10

Who had healed the man? God did – through Peter. Peter didn’t heal the man God did. The religious leaders had a God problem. We must understand that. They may have thought their problem was with Peter and John but their problem was with God.

This story encourages me in many ways. I would like to share four of those ways with you today. Because I have a feeling that you will find yourself in one of these four descriptions of persons that God uses.

Ands wherever you find yourself I want you to know God can use you.

So if you are ready let’s look at the person God uses.

1. God uses ordinary people – vs. 13

Notice what they took note of. They took notice of their formal schooling. They took notice of their degrees. They took notice of their preferred social status. Right?

No, it says that they were ‘unschooled, ordinary men”.

That should give many hope today that in light of the fact that you may be “unschooled and ordinary” that God can use you!

The qualifier here was simply that Peter and John believed that God wanted to heal the man.

And God’s ability to heal the man was not affected by Peter and John’s schooling or social status. It simply didn’t matter.

Peter was smart enough to believe God could do it and that God could do it through him!

Key Thought: God uses ordinary people to accomplish extra-ordinary things!

Observations: Why God uses ordinary people

1. God uses ordinary people to confound the wise – I Corinthians 1: 26-31

26Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29so that no one may boast before him. 30It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”