A SUPERNATURAL GOD USING ORDINARY PEOPLE

Introduction

-I’ll close with this: A lot of times when athletes get some sort of award or reward, they give thanks to God. For many I am sure it is just lip service. But for others, it is recognition that they are unable to do anything of themselves.

-I remember reading the story of Olympic runner Brianna Rollins who, after winning the gold, gave testimony that it was God who had done it, being quick to give Him credit. She said:

“I just kept God first and just continued to let Him guide me throughout the rounds. [The team] formed a prayer circle this morning and we just let His presence come upon us.

Praying that God would just help us come out here and continue to glorify Him and do the best that we can and that's what we did."

I'm just so excited; we are blessed, I'm grateful to God."----may we be quick to do the same thing she did.

-From the big to the small things going on in your life, from the exciting to the mundane, God had a hand in it, and is deserving of thanksgiving for every bit of it.

-During the invitation I invite you to come to the altar and thank God for anything and everything going on in your life.

-Or maybe you have been a whiner and a complainer, meaning your heart is proud, and you have been ungrateful, and you want to repent of such a heart, I invite you to come to the altar.

-The biggest thing we have to thank God for is our salvation. If you have never trusted that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins and rose from the dead, you are separated from God. But today you can come forward, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved—thankful for the sacrifice He gave of Himself.

Luke 1:26–45 ESV

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. 39 In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, 40 and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, 42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

-There are four lessons I want to touch upon today:

I) God chooses to use people according to His grace

-An important lesson we need to grasp is: God doesn’t need humans. And even having chosen to create humans within the universe, He still doesn’t need them to accomplish His purposes. And yet, He chooses to use humans, and somehow He is glorified through that.

-But I guess that begs the question, how does He choose who He uses and how to use them? The answer is that it is completely based on grace. He gifts people according to His grace and then He uses the people He has gifted according to His grace.

-If you look in our passage, in v. 28, Mary is called the favored one, and in v. 30 it says that Mary found favor with God. The words used there mean to be shown grace. It could literally say: GREETINGS, O ONE WHOM GOD HAS SHOWN GRACE; and DO NOT BE AFRAID, MARY, FOR GOD HAS SHOWN YOU GRACE.

-Mary was not chosen because she was special. Mary was not chosen because she was more holy than anybody else. There was nothing out of the ordinary with her. Her family was poor, she was engaged to a poor carpenter, she wasn’t particularly skilled in anything out of the ordinary. God chose to use her by grace.

-And God does the same with us. He gifts us in a special way to use us as He sees fit—merely because He has chosen to show us grace.

-So that means that there is no room for arrogance. If God uses you, it is simply because He chose to do so. Don’t start getting all puffed up because you have a great ministry or God is really using you in people’s lives. God can just as easily take away what He has given.

-This also means that we have no place to complain about what God does with us and through us. He has the right and power to do whatever He wants—but He always chooses to do things in line with His character and will.

-God doesn’t need us; He doesn’t have to use us; but by grace He does use us for whatever His ultimate goals and plans in the world are. May we have right hearts and minds about our place in His plans.

II) God’s purpose to use people is to make Jesus known

-When you read this passage, and everything that the angel says to Mary, you notice that Mary herself is not the focus, but the focus is on the One whom she would give birth to.

-And this is a great reminder to us that life and ministry are not about us. When God uses us, it is not to make us known, it is not to make us famous, it is not to give us a good comfy life, but it is all about how He is going to use us to make Jesus known and expand His kingdom.

-Unlike how some might treat her, Mary was just an ordinary person that we used as a vessel for God’s ultimate purposes. And when I say that, I don’t mean that God did not love Mary and care for her. He most certainly did. But the focus of God’s use in her life is not her, but Christ. The focus of God’s use of us in this life is not us, but Christ.

-So as you do whatever God has gifted you to do in the context that He has set for you, your focus is not trying make yourself the star of the show; your focus is not on living a comfortable life; and honestly the focus is not on the church itself (be it growing the church or whatnot)----God wants to use each of us for a specific kingdom purpose of knowing Jesus and making Him known.

-So our focus is on Christ’s person and His accomplishments. Just consider for a moment what it is that the angel focused upon Jesus:

~~The angel told Mary to call the child’s name Jesus. You find out in Matthew 1:21 that the name Jesus means Yahweh/Jehovah saves. How God uses us focuses on the sacrifice of Jesus that purchased the salvation of all those who would believe upon Him. God wants the world to know that He loved it enough to sacrifice His Son in their place, so they need to repent and believe.

~~The angel told Mary that Jesus would be great. This was a focus on the fact that Jesus is not like any other person. Jesus isn’t greater than others merely in quantity (in that Jesus has more love than other people, or more holiness than other people), but it is a focus on the quality of His person. Jesus, although completely human, is really a completely different human…

~~The angel told Mary that Jesus would be called the Son of the Most High. In the Ancient Near East, to be referred to as the Son of someone would be to have a share in that person’s nature and character. The child Jesus would share in the same nature and character as the Most High God. So not only was He completely human, but is also completely God.

~~The angel goes on to say that God will give the Christ child the throne of David and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and His kingdom will have no end. Jesus was born to be the King over the entire cosmos, but more specifically over God’s people. All of God’s people throughout the ages will come under the kingship of Jesus, eventually in a new heaven and new earth, for all of eternity.

-So when God uses us, the focus is on Christ’s person and work, such that we live in light of it, minister in light of it, and make it known wherever He may move us.

III) God’s power for using people is His Holy Spirit

-When the angel went on to explain to Mary what God was going to do, he explained in v 35 that the power of the Holy Spirit would overshadow her and she would conceive this miracle child. Later in our passage, in v. 41 it says that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and it was the Spirit that allowed her to recognize what God did in Mary’s life and who exactly it was that Mary was carrying.

-And so throughout Scripture we see that when God uses people, He fills them with His Holy Spirit who will work the work in them and through them.

-Now in OT times, the Spirit would enable someone to do a work, but He was not dwelling within that person permanently. So, for example, when Moses was given instructions to build the tabernacle, God told Moses that He empowered Bezalel to oversee the work, stating it like this:

I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, (Exod. 31:3 ESV)

-But now, for those who have trusted in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit indwells the believer permanently, and will always lead and guide someone (if they will listen), and according to the Father’s will and plan will empower someone for kingdom work, which is the filling of the Holy Spirit.

-It is because of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling and infilling that someone is able to serve God according to His purposes. Then and only then will it be done in a way honoring to God.

-And then we look at v. 37, and we all love that it says that nothing is impossible with God, but too often we yank this out of context and make it a promise that God will just do any old thing we want Him to in our life.

-But what it is saying is that God will fulfill His plans and purposes through us when, and only when we are walking in the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, listening to the Spirit, obeying the Spirit, instead of quenching the Spirit. Then nothing is impossible with God.

-But when we have our own plans and ideas, and we try to do things in our own power, even if they are good things and even if they seem like helpful things, we will fail because we are not doing it in the power of the Holy Spirit.

-When you do the work of God, is it you or is it the Holy Spirit within you that is doing it—are you using the gifts He gives you in His power?

IV) Our response to God’s plan is humble submission

-After Mary is told that God wants to so use her in the scheme of His plan of redemption, there could have been a thousand ways that she responded, but here is what she said:

"Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." (Lk. 1:38 ESV)

-She didn’t argue with God like Moses did. She didn’t disbelieve like Zechariah did. She recognized her role, and humbly submitted to God’s plan.

-God gives us certain gifts, and then He determines the context within which we are to use these gifts, and as long as we are relying on His power, He is able to do marvelous things through us.

-But we have to submit. We have to say, like Mary, that we are servants of the Lord, and whatever God’s will and purpose is in using us, let it be done. No complaining. No arguing. Just a simple: HERE I AM LORD! SEND ME!

-Our submission to the Lord means that no matter what role we play in the grand scheme of things, we are willing to do our part faithfully. This means that our ministry for the Lord could take us away from home. This means that our ministry for the Lord might stretch us personally and take us out of our comfort zone.

-This might even mean that our ministry for the Lord might be in obscurity. I earlier used the example of Billy Graham who practically everyone in the world knows. But God’s plan for us might be that nobody knows our name.

-I am convinced that the people who will receive the greatest rewards in heaven will not be all the famous evangelists and preachers that we have known throughout history. Rather, the people who will be greatly rewarded are those who humbly served God in the middle of nowhere, where no one knows there name, but they are using their gifts faithfully according to God’s will.

-A Supernatural God using an ordinary person doesn’t mean that this person will become famous on earth or even in Christian circles. But the most important thing to them is that God knows their name, and they do what He wants so that they will one day hear WELL DONE MY GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT.

Conclusion

-There’s a guy named Ananias in the Bible (not the liar who had a wife named Saphira, but another guy named Ananias). He was a quiet believer in Damascus. He wasn’t a leader. He wasn’t necessarily gifted or special in any way. Just an ordinary, first-century Christian.

~Going through a normal, daily routine, the Lord Jesus appeared to him in a vision. Calling out his name, the Lord told Ananias to find Saul of Tarsus and pray for him and heal him. Ananias had never done anything like that before. And, frankly, Saul was known as a persecutor of Christians, so this wasn’t anything he really wanted to do.

~But the Lord had plans for Saul, but he wouldn’t get started until Ananias did his part. God didn’t need Ananias. I suppose He could have just healed Saul. But there was a bigger picture here than neither Ananias or Saul could see.

~The Lord chose Ananias by grace to do a supporting work for Saul so that Jesus could be made known to the Gentiles. If Ananias didn’t do his part, Saul couldn’t do his.

~By the power of the Holy Spirit, Ananias went, prayed, and Saul was healed.

~He could have told the Lord NO and given a million excuses. But Ananias humbly submitted himself to the plans of the Lord.

~We don’t know if Ananias ever did anything big or notable after that. But we do know this—a supernatural God used this ordinary human as a part of His plan, and He wants to do the same with you.

-Maybe the Lord has been calling you to do something, but you maybe have not believed that He would or could use you, or you’ve turned a deaf ear. Come to the altar to submit to Him.

-Maybe you don’t know what it is that the Lord wants of you. Come to the altar and pray that He would reveal His plans for you.

-Maybe you have never trusted in the Lord Jesus who alone can save you from your sins. Come forward and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

-Maybe you’re looking for a church home in which you can serve the Lord. Join Harvest and fulfill his plans.