A Nobody World

Greetings to each of you no matter where you are listening from. As I was preparing this message, I ran across a story about the value or worth of a person, written by Carlene Mattson, Focus on the Family, April 1993, p. 13. It reads …

The greatest obstacle to being handicapped--or challenged or disabled or whatever label we may be using this year--is not the condition but the stigma society still associates with it. The truth is we are valuable because of who we are, not because of how we look or what we accomplish.

And that applies to all of us, the disabled and the temporarily able-bodied alike. I'm convinced God didn't turn His back at the moment of Jeff's conception. He is still the God of miracles, but in this instance, the one who received healing was me. Our Lord is still in the business of changing lives, but not always in the ways we expect.

Several years ago, Jeff played in a special Little League for kids with disabilities. After many seasons of watching from the bleachers and rooting while his big brother played ball, Jeff's opportunity finally arrived. When he received his uniform, he couldn't wait to get home to put it on. When he raced out from his bedroom, fully suited up, he announced to me, "Mom, now I'm a real boy!" Though his words pushed my heart to my throat, I assured him he had always been a "real boy."

Photos from — https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/paralympics.html?irclickid=zfTUktyDrxyITq0wNpXVRx2RUkG3JWyRRymo000&irgwc=1&utm_source=2003851&utm_campaign=Shop%20Royalty%20Free%20at%20Alamy&utm_medium=impact

My question for you is … “What if you were voted the “Least Likely to Succeed” in your high school yearbook? That’s what happened to the creator of Food Network, Jack Clifford. He went from a nobody to creating a multimillion-dollar network

(Shandra Martinez, “Food Network Creator Funds Michigan High School Scholarship,” MLIVE.com, updated April 2, 2019, https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2016/05/the_food_network_founder_retur.html).

If we think about it, David’s family would have called him “Least Likely to Succeed”—if they thought of him at all. He famously entered the biblical story of Israel by defeating the giant Goliath in one of the ultimate underdog stories. He was just a shepherd boy who was blessed by God and anointed by Samuel to eventually take Saul’s place as king. In the meantime, he served his father and brothers by tending to the fields and protecting the sheep from bears and lions.

When the Israelites were fighting the Philistines, David’s father sent him to take food to his brothers at the front line (1 Samuel 17:12–18). David went there and eventually saw that his brothers and the army of Israel were afraid of the Philistine champion Goliath, but David was not afraid (vv. 19–37).

Far too often we are made to feel worthless, unimportant, of no value, a nobody. But that is so far from the truth. Walk with me as I prove my point.

Sermon Title

The title of today’s message is “A Nobody World” walk with me through the scriptures and it will make sense.

Our Scripture for today is taken from Isaiah 11:1–9

Main Text

Isaiah rings with power, breaking into joy that Jesus, still eight hundred years unborn, is the branch, a root out of Jesse, a Savior for the nobodies of this world. In this passage Isaiah paints Him as “a nobody Savior for a nobody world.”

Not recognized in His time, dying ignominiously . . . even anonymously, so that anonymous men and women, whom the world might never take note of, might be saved.

Robert Browning took the Pied Piper of Hamelin and set it down in a glorious, near-lyrical kind of verse: Into the street the piper crept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe . . . And out of the house the rats came tumbling And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling.

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,

Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats

Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,

Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,

Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives

Families by tens and dozens,

Followed the piper for their lives.

Browning is not so much talking about rats as he is an infected world, hungry for a piper who lures us toward decent values with a redeeming message. Rats, rascals, children, scamps, and all the people of the whole world—all the nobodies who have ever lived are looking for a worthy piper.

Always Pick the Proper Piper

Why would any thinking person ever want to follow such a tyrant as Adolf Hitler? If you were to talk to someone who lived in Germany during the World War II era, you may find that, especially if it was an older person, he or she is a bit embarrassed to admit that the whole nation wholeheartedly followed such a heinous piper.

In The Man in the Glass Booth, Adolf Eichmann stands to defend himself before his Jewish jurors. He shouts out through the bulletproof glass of his box, “People of Israel, had he chosen you, you too would have followed.”

Contrast such a megalomaniac as Hitler with Jesus. Isaiah said, “He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him” (52:2).

Christ was seen truly as a nobody in His own time.

In 1900 Albert Schweitzer published his epic, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, and the book literally rocked the world. Schweitzer clearly stated that if Jesus Christ was really as almighty as the Gospels proclaim Him to be, surely there would be some mention of Him in the secular histories of His day.

Surely, he reasoned, some historian would have mentioned such a mighty man as Jesus, yet none of His contemporaries did. The German physician searched the Roman annals of the day (which the Romans kept faithfully year by year—hence the name annals) and found not one mention of Jesus between 7 BC and AD 27, the years of Christ’s earthly life.

So Schweitzer concluded that nothing official could be known of His years upon the earth. Jesus Christ, according to Schweitzer, was a historical nobody! But

what a nobody!

Isaiah spoke of Him eight hundred years before He came into the world, calling Him a root out of Jacob. Job thought of Him in much the same way; he saw a burned-out stump (Job 14:7) that, at the scent of water, budded and sent a sprout out of the deadness of its charred soul.

So uncomely was this Jesus that the historians of the world missed Him, somehow. Yet mighty became the sprout out of Jesse.

God Saving Nobodies

Some believe that Matthew 1 is a waste of time up to verse 18. The initial seventeen verses include what has been called (under the force of the King James Bible) the “begat” passages.

But what you must realize is that Matthew 1:1–17 is about Jesus’ ancestors. What was so notable about His ancestry? Perhaps the whole point is that there is not a great deal that is notable about His forebears. Jesus came from a long list of largely non-historical nobodies.

But then that is exactly the meaning of grace. God loves, saves, and then uses nobodies, and the combined force of the faith of these nobodies in the end rewrote the history of the world.

These nobodies followed their “non-Schweitzer” Lord until the world was filled with charity: hospitals, orphanages, universities, and a million charitable industries that gave what people could never pay for—grace and forgiveness, health and education.

But let us turn to this table of nobodies that occupy the first seventeen verses of the New Testament. Consider Matthew’s list of the nobodies whom, throughout biblical

history, God found the grace to save and use to create the kingdom of God. Abraham comes first on the list.

Who was he, after all? A onetime moon worshiper perhaps, who took a concubine to try to hurry God

along with his promise of an heir.

Then there was Isaac, blessing the wrong son, to the odd right purposes of God’s plan.

Then there was Jacob, “the Supplanter,” whose crooked dealings would have landed him in prison in our time.

Then there was Rahab, the Arab harlot, whose profession may have been less chaste than God would have preferred it to be, but there she shows up as one of the ever-so-great grandmothers of Jesus.

Well, all these people on Matthew’s list suggest that ultimately Jesus came from a long line of scalawag sand scoundrels, to live the perfect sinless life, in order to redeem scalawags and scoundrels.

A Closer Look at the Savior

“Well,” says Isaiah, “this family tree isn’t as crucial as we might wish, because when the Messiah comes, He will literally be a root out of dry ground.” The hope of God is never to be listed among the beautiful people.

God can draw from a stump of nobodies a root of life, a nobody Savior for a nobody world.

Here’s how Isaiah really defined the faith:

The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,

The Spirit of counsel and might,

The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.

(Is. 11:2)

Here’s how James Moffatt translates the next two verses:

He will not judge by appearances, nor decide by hearsay,

But act with justice to the helpless and decide fairly for the humble; He will strike down the ruthless with his verdicts And slay the unjust with his sentences.

Justice shall gird him up for action, he shall be belted with trustworthiness

(Is. 11:3, 4 Moffatt).

So what is the ultimate impact of this Christ? This Savior of a nobody world will delight in the power of God and the fear of the Lord.

When God’s kingdom, in its merciful peace and joy, is finished, “the wolf shall . . . dwell with the lamb, [and] the leopard shall lie down with the young goat” (Is. 11:6).

One day the whole animal kingdom will be tamed,

brought to oneness with the power of God. Infants will play over the den of the cobra.

This great Jesus, having tamed the whole of nature at one time, now invites you to His heart. In John 10:7 He says, “I am the door of the sheep.” It is an invitation to join Him and dwell with Him in His great heart of love.

It is a lovely reprieve, precisely because it is the only eternal reprieve. Cherish this invitation to enter into the Christ life, for there is no “other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4.12).

This Christ is the great Messiah of Isaiah 11,

who creates His colony of grace from His army of nobodies:

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,

For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord

As the waters cover the sea. (The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,

Conclusion

It can be uncomfortable to be confronted by someone who is hurting or has an obvious need, but it only takes one leader to change the dynamic of a conversation or interaction.

Following Jesus means furthering His efforts to reach and love those ignored by others.

Mark 10:46-52 tells the story of Jesus calling out Bartimaeus and healing him of blindness. In this passage we see the crowd is not receptive, not wanting to engage the blind man, but Jesus shifts His entire purpose to a person they would have rather ignored. Whether it is the homeless person on the corner with a sign asking for help or a person with a developmental disability acting out in public,the tendency is to avoid eye contact, ignore the situation, and get away from the person as soon as possible.

However, Jesus calls Bartimaeus to himself, and he sends his followers to tell the man to come near. It is then that the atmosphere changes. Bartimaeus is no longer a nuisance; he is welcomed. His need is not too big or messy or difficult to be brought to Jesus.

Challenge yourself to see beyond the outward appearance, to the person. As believers, we can respond in a way that acknowledges each person’s value and need for God. We can advocate for the most vulnerable in areas of society that would rather ignore them.

I want to close with this statement; you are not a NOBODY, you are somebody. Your fullest self—your greatest destiny—all begins with a simple confession, “Lord, I am a nobody in great need of the Somebody that can change my life and make from its tawdry values system a disciple of Yourself.”

And this peace begins the moment you say, “Lord, I am weary with my own nobody status. I give You my life, this nothing that I am.

Receive my warring soul into Your peace. May the Rod out of Jesse cause my own deadness to live for reasons beyond myself. I stand in repentance and await the renovation that will make me usable for greater purposes than I could ever know without You.

I wait for grace with just one simple plea:

Deliver me from self, to what you’d have me be.

Related Media

Related Sermons