God Uses Dull Tools

Intro: We’ve all heard the expression, “He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

You don’t have to be sharp.

Common excuses we use not to share the gospel.

I’m afraid (“in fear, & in much trembling”)

I can’t (“weakness”)

Can mean illness (“Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity,” ).

Often means powerlessness

“Like the Spirit helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray” ().

“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” ().

I don’t know what to say / I’ll sound stupid (“not with persuasive words”)

Literally “not in the persuasiveness of wisdom”

If you aren’t persuasive, God will use you!

Scriptural Examples of God using dull tools

Moses was an outcast living in the desert.

Gideon was a nobody.

David was a forgotten shepherd.

Mary was an insignificant girl living in an insignificant town.

The disciples were uneducated ().

You have to be stupid for Jesus.

You have to be willing to endure public shame in order to talk about Christ.

Talk about Jesus.

Talk about His crucifixion & resurrection.

Not just Jesus is wonderful, but the direct communication that “Jesus died for you and rose from the dead for you.”

When R. A. Torrey was a young man, he had no faith in God or the Bible.  His mother, however, was an earnest Christian and pleaded with him to turn to God for forgiveness and salvation. She constantly prayed for his conversion.

One day he said to her, “I’m tired of it all.  I don’t want to hear any more about my sins and your prayers; I’m leaving.” His weeping mother pled with him, but he would not be deterred.

Finally, she said, “Son, you are going the wrong way, but when you come to the darkest hour of all--when everything seems lost and gone--if you will earnestly call on your mother’s God, and seek Him with all your heart, you will get the help you need.”

Torrey went deeper and deeper into sin.  At last one night in a hotel room, unable to sleep, weary of life, with problems pressing down him on every hand, he decided, “I’ll get out of bed, take that gun I have in the drawer, and end my life.”

But as he stood up, his mother’s words came back to him.  Convicted by the Holy Spirit, he fell on his knees and cried out, “O God of my mother, if there be such a Being, I need help.  I need light.  If you will give it to me, I will follow you.”

In a moment his dark heart was filled with the light of God’s love. With tears running down his face, he put his trust in Christ as his Savior.  He then hurried home to tell his mother that her prayers had been answered.

Torrey’s mother wasn’t afraid to pester her son with Jesus.

Who do you need to pester?

You have to show out in the Spirit.

“Demonstration of the Spirit & of power.”

Paul performed miracles. We can’t do that.

This is not describing speaking in tongues or any other phenomena we might describe as supra-normal.

We show the Spirit’s more in more subtle ways but just as real (fruit of God’s Spirit, )

Fruit of the Spirit

“Out of weakness were made strong” ()

Ie, you’re supposed to be an ad campaign for what Jesus does.

Horrible ad campaigns.

- 7 Up as infant milk in the 50s.

- QR code on a billboard

- New Coke

Christians are some of the worst advertisements for Christ.

Applications / So what?

Better to be a dull tool used by God than a sharp tool that stays in the shed.

This is a focus on self.

Start relying on God’s Holy Spirit.

Stop making excuses.

Start relying on the Spirit.