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Text: 2 Kings 7
 
INTRO: 
 
What makes us useful to God?
 
* We are Useful when we are (humble)
 
These 4 lepers are outside of the city because they are contagious.
Leprosy was a terrible condition.
It lead to isolation.
Humiliation.
Even in the best of times, a leper lived with a stigma of being an outcast.
Separated from people.
Rejected by God.
But in this case, the situation was even worse for their city was besieged by a belligerent army…and there was a terrible famine inside and outside the city.
If leprosy didn’t get these poor men, then starvation surely would.
And yet it was precisely this that broken them from pride and resourcefulness.
They had no resources.
They felt no pride.
They have nothing.
And that’s what brought them to the point that they would even dare to consider going and asking mercy from their enemies.
As ironic as it seems—their desperation turned out to be their salvation!
Because their brokenness led to usefulness.
That’s one of the many paradoxes of the scripture.
When I want to use something, I find something that works.
I find something that doesn’t need to be fixed!
But when God wants to use someone, He doesn’t look for something that’s fixed.
He looks for someone who’s broken.
Humility.
Listen to the verses that talk about the importance of Humility.
Now, if you think about it, this actually makes sense.
Who wants help from a know-it-all?
If you are hurting inside, the last thing you want is someone who acts like they’ve never had a weakness.
They’ve never experienced a failure.
They’ve never made a mistake…
 
No.
The Good Samaritan didn’t give the beat up traveler a lecture on how dangerous the road is and how he should have been more careful.
You want someone around you who is humble, understanding, gentle in spirit.
Besides that, you can’t help someone in the name of Jesus Christ without Humility because to do something in someone’s name is to do what they would do…the way they would do it…if they were there.
So, it’s not even close to be accurate to say that you are doing something in the name of Jesus, if you aren’t humble about it.
He said of himself, “I am humble and gentle of spirit.”
Today, we’re talking about being useful to God, especially in the arena of reaching out to people who are far away from God.
And I just want to tell you:  Without humility, you’ll never be useful to God in this are.
The days when you could just get in someone’s face and say, “I guess you know that without Jesus you’re going to hell…”  those days are gone.
If that’s the way you approach it…I don’t know if that ever worked…it certainly won’t be effective today.
It may make you feel better to say it…but it doesn’t help anyone who’s hurting really get closer to God.
 
Today, people who are useful…churches that are useful…are the ones who put away all the pretense, the hypocrisy, the plastic faces, and the pious attitudes…and get down in the crevices of life and crawl with people through their pain.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve discovered that there is something that I can learn from almost any person on this planet.
Sure, I may know a few things about the Bible that they haven’t discovered, but I’ve also got a thing or two to learn from them.
And I’ve discovered that when I’m as interested in learning from them…as I am in educating them, my usefulness in leading them closer to God increases a lot.
These lepers were used by God to accomplish His purposes because they were broken and humble.
And you may be looking at what’s broken in your life as a handicap, but maybe it’s a great asset because it is what God is using to produce humility in you.
For example, an awareness of our own sin produces humility.
When Peter saw the things that Jesus could do, it made him aware of his own sin, and he fell on his knees and said, “Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
And yet, it was this humility, which Jesus kept developing in Peter that made him such a marvelous servant.
Sometimes our weakness against strong adversaries creates humility in us.
Like Jehosophat saying to the Lord, as three gigantic armies prepared to attack Judah, “Lord, we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
Sometimes, when we’ve failed at something that was very important to us, it creates humility.
All of my life I wanted to be a High School Quarterback.
And my junior year I was the starter on our varsity team.
The problem was that we weren’t very good, and a big reason we weren’t very good was because I wasn’t very good.
Now I had some record setting games.
One game I threw 7 passes in the first half, and all 7 of them were caught.
The problem was that 4 of them were caught by the wrong team.
(That was the record part.)
But, I discovered through the years that I can relate to people when they fail at things that are important to them.
I can empathize.
Sometimes humility comes when the circumstances we are in are so absolutely overwhelming and beyond our control, we simply get a fresh view of our littleness.
Now, it’s not that these things AUTOMATICALLY create humility, but if we allow God to work through them…they can.
And that’s what God wants because it is through that humility that God uses us.
By the way, part of the reason that humility is so important to being useful to God is not only does it make us more approachable, but it also gives us a deeper insight.
Suffering often produces a wisdom…a wisdom that comes from the deep pool of human experience…that pride just can’t reach low enough to grasp.
But humility easily dives down and comprehends it.
Before we move on, I want to say that there’s one more thing that can produce humility.
We can choose humility.
We can choose to humble ourselves—even if we seem on the surface to have no reason to choose humility.
ILL: Immanuel—Broken.
I say that because Immanuel was in a unique position.
Nothing left.
Much like these lepers.
As a church, we naturally don’t feel that same desperation…But by the grace of God, we can choose humility.
We can choose to humble ourselves before God and say, “Lord, compared to the great task you’ve given us…all of our resources are like 5 loaves and 2 fish and there’s a multitude to feed.
Lord, compared to what some others have given you…we don’t have anything.
Lord, compared to the way you’ve used others, we’ve been playing preschool games.
Lord, we are nothing, but you are everything.
Please, have mercy on us.
Use us, lest we die.
* We are Useful when we (Ask Good Questions)
 
One of the most common things I ask my kids when we sit down to eat supper every night is, “Did you ask any good questions today?”
Throughout history, God has used people who ask good questions.
When young shepherd boy David came upon the battle lines and saw the Israelite army cowering in fear in Goliath’s shadow, he asked, “Who is he compared to God?”
 
E.V. Hill told about going to an FBI Meeting where J. Edgar Hoover was informing the leaders of the nation about the dangers of the Black Panther Party.
He told how the Black Panthers were terrifying the city of NY.
People were afraid to go out at night and couldn’t use the bridge to Manhattan.
E.V. said he raised his hand to ask a question, “How many Black Panthers are there?
Does anyone know?” 
 
“Yes,” came the answer.
“There are 91 Black Panthers.”
E.V. was incredulous.
“91?
91?
That’s all?  91 people keeping 5 million people from using the bridge?
How can this be?”
I’d say that’s a pretty good question.
These lepers asked the question:  “Why do we sit here until we die?”
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