"God Uses Ordinary People"

Hi there, this is Lon Solomon and I'd like to welcome you to our program today. You know it's a tremendous honor that God has given us to be on stations all around the nation bringing the truth of God's word as it is uncompromising and straightforward. And I'm so glad you've tuned in to listen and be part of that.

Thanks again for your support and your generosity that keeps us on the radio. And now let's get to the word of God. One day I was standing in the waiting room of a gas station here locally and I noticed the poster on the wall. And here's what it said. It said C. Rinker Paving Company needs some good men. Workers must meet the following qualifications.

And then there was a list. Number one, you must know your address or the make and model of car you are living in. Number two, you must be able to tell time. Number three, you must have hair short enough to see and hear. Number four, your earrings must be light enough that you can look the boss in the face.

And last of all, it said you must be able to go eight hours without drugs or alcohol and be able to work at least 30 minutes straight without going to the restroom. Now I wrote these down because I thought these were hilarious. And it's fairly obvious if you'd have been there, you would not have written these down. That's pretty obvious.

But I thought they were funny. Anyway, what's the point? The point is that every job has certain requirements, certain qualifications that you have to meet in order to work that job. And when it comes to the job of serving Jesus Christ and letting your life be used by him, which I believe, frankly, is the highest and the noblest job anywhere in the universe, what are the qualifications that you and I have to have in order to do that? This morning, our passage looks at Jesus calling his 12 apostles. And I want us to look at that passage and to talk a little bit about their qualifications. What was it that they had that qualified them to serve the resurrected king of the universe?

And then from that, I want us to answer the question, so what? So let's begin. Luke chapter six, verse 12. One of those days, Jesus went out into the hills to pray, and he spent the whole night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him, and he chose 12 of them whom he also designated apostles. Jesus here was about to make one of the most strategic decisions of his entire earthly ministry. He was about to appoint his apostles. These are men who would form his inner circle. They would be men that Jesus would disclose himself to in a way that he would not disclose himself to anyone else. Once he was gone, these men would be his ambassadors. That's what the Greek word apostolos means.

It means an ambassador. They would be his ambassadors to the world, and Jesus would count on them to write much of the New Testament, to establish the Christian church, to carry the message of salvation through Jesus Christ without compromise to the entire world. So this was an enormous task that Jesus was appointing these men to, and it was essential that he had the right men for the job.

And so, before making his choice, Jesus went out and spent the entire night in prayer seeking God's wisdom and God's direction. In the morning, Jesus was ready to make his decision, and he came down from the mountain, and he chose 12 men, and they're listed here beginning in verse 14. Simon, whom he named Peter, his brother Andrew, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the zealot, Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

I want us to take a quick look at these 12 men. Let's look and see what kind of qualifications they had for ministry. First, there was Simon, whom Jesus named Peter. Now, what did Peter do? Peter was a fisherman, right?

And when you think of Peter, certain adjectives fly into your mind. What are some of the adjectives that you would think of if I asked you to give me some adjectives that described Peter? How about uneducated? How about unpolished? How about crass? How about impulsive?

How about outspoken? All of these were true of Peter. Peter was one of those guys, you know, who always entered the room mouth first. You know those people?

Sure, I know several of those people. That was Peter. And then the Bible says there was his brother Andrew, who was also a fisherman. Now, we don't know much about Andrew, but he seems to be, as brothers often are, the exact opposite of his brother Peter.

The Bible presents him as saying hardly anything ever. And I assume that he was probably a very quiet, very restrained individual, kind of the exact antonym of his brother Peter. The only thing we know about Andrew is that he was the one, John chapter one, that tells us he was the one who actually led Peter to Christ. Then there were James and John, who were also brothers. They were sons of a man named Zebedee.

That's right. And Zebedee, we don't know anything about him, but we know that these were his two sons. Now, these two men were also fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, and Mark chapter three tells us something very interesting about them. In Mark chapter three, it says, to them, Jesus gave the nickname Boanerges, which means sons of lightning and thunder. Now, I don't know why, but Jesus called these guys lightning and thunder, which gives you some idea what their temperament and their personality must have been like.

These guys must have been a couple of fireballs. We know very little about Philip, Bartholomew, James, the son of Alpheus, or Judas, the son of James. We do know a little bit about Thomas. In fact, you know him by his nickname, which is what? Doubting Thomas.

Right. He was a twin, by the way. The Bible says his name was Didymus, which means a twin.

His twin was not an apostle, but he was. And the Bible says that when Jesus appeared after his resurrection, Thomas, if you remember, wasn't there. And then when all of the apostles said, Hey, Thomas, the Lord appeared to us. Thomas said, unless I can take my finger and put it in the hole in his hand, and unless I can take my hand and stick it in the hole in his side, I will not believe. So a week later, Jesus appeared and said, Thomas, come here a second.

Take your finger and stick it right here in the hole in my hand and take your hand and stick it right here in my side and stop doubting and believe. In John chapter 11, when Jesus was headed to Jerusalem for the very last time to go to the cross, Thomas is quoted as saying, Well, let's us go ahead and go to Jerusalem with him so we may die also. Any different than Peter? Huh?

Like night and day. Then there was Judas Iscariot. Did you ever wonder what Iscariot meant?

Well, it's Hebrew and it means Ish Kariot, which means the man from the little town of Kariot. You say, that's it? Say, gosh, that's kind of a letdown. And he was a traitor. You say, boy, Lon, Jesus' prayer life did him a lot of good choosing this guy. Look at the guy he chose. The guy was a traitor. What kind of prayer life is that? What kind of discernment is that?

Well, wait a minute. Acts chapter two. Peter said in Acts chapter two in his sermon, This man, Jesus, was delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. That's why you could nail him to a cross and that's why you put him to death. Look, choosing this man was no accident. This man was exactly the choice that God wanted Jesus to make.

It was all part of the plan. Jesus' prayer life was fine, thank you. You say, well, Lon, these guys are all a lot different.

Yeah, they are. But I suppose when we come to the last two apostles, we find the most striking difference among the whole bunch. And their names were Matthew and Simon the Zealot.

Now, what do we know about these two? Well, several weeks ago, we talked about Matthew here because earlier in Luke's gospel, he appears. Matthew was a tax collector. He was a Jew who worked for the Romans. The Romans controlled Palestine at this time and they decided what each province owed them in taxes.

And then a Jew, a tax collector like Matthew, would go around and collect the taxes and pay the Romans. And the Jews hated these people. They considered them collaborators with the Romans.

They considered them traitors and they considered them extortioners of their own people. And then there was Simon the Zealot. And if you notice, the word zealot in the Bible is with a capital Z because this was an actual political party in the land of Israel at this time. These people got their name, the zealots, because of their zeal to rid Israel of everything Roman and all Romans. And therefore they were called the zealots or the zealots. They hated the Romans. These people were fanatics. They were the ones who prompted the nation of Israel to revolt against the Romans in 66 A.D. that led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.

They were the ones who fled down to Masada, if you remember that story, where for three years they held the Romans off and finally all committed suicide rather than let any Roman take them captive. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist, does it, to figure out how Simon the Zealot and Matthew probably felt about each other, huh? Think they were bosom buddies?

I don't think so. And yet the Lord Jesus Christ took Matthew and Simon the Zealot and people of all kinds of different stripes and personalities in between and put them all together on the same team. He said, well, Lon, how in the world did he accomplish that?

I mean, people in our world today, nobody can get along in our world today. So how in the world can Jesus put together Simon and Matthew and everybody else in between and make it work? The answer is this, that these 12 men had a unifying force that held them together that was greater than all of the forces that pushed them apart.

And that force was their love for Jesus Christ and their devotion to him. A few years ago, I met a guy out in the foyer here who was from Egypt. He was an Arab. And we began talking and he told me that he had given his life to Jesus Christ. He was a Christian now.

And that was great. We talked for a while and he knew my background, that I was a Jew. And after we got through talking, we shook hands.

And then he reached out and he hugged me and I hugged him back. And after we let go, I said to him, isn't this neat that only in Jesus Christ can a Jew and an Arab embrace and be brothers? But in Jesus Christ, we can, because it's bigger than the differences between us. And friends, we hear all this talk today about world peace and it's all a mirage.

It's crazy. None of this is ever going to happen. Not until Jesus Christ comes back again and is enthroned as the ruler of all mankind, because he is the only force anywhere in the universe that's stronger than our sinful hatreds and our sinful biases and our sinful prejudices. He's the only force stronger than that.

But he is stronger than that. And that's the good news, strong enough that he took these 12 men who were as different as different could be, and he melded them together into a team that loved one another, the 12 apostles. That's our passage.

But it leads us to ask the question, so what? That's right. You know, as I looked at these 12 men and how different they were, one thing that impressed me, they had one thing in common, and that is they were all very ordinary people. There wasn't a PhD among them. There wasn't a professional athlete among them. There wasn't a professional theologian among them.

They were just everyday people. But, you know, the Bible says that God loves to use everyday people, because the reason is that when God uses the big shots to get his work done, then those people get the credit. The world gives the credit to them. But when God uses everyday people like you and me to do things beyond anything that we ought to be able to do, then he gets the credit.

And that's the way he wants it. I want you to see that here in the Bible. I want you to turn back with me to the first letter that Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. It's called First Corinthians, chapter one.

Here's what it says. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Hasn't God made foolish the wisdom of this world? And Paul goes on to say that all these philosophers and all of these wise men and all these college professors back then were running all through the world looking to find all the answers to life and the answers on the other side of the grave and how to get eternal life through all of their philosophy and all of their scholarship. And instead, God uses the simple message of the cross to solve all those problems. He's made foolish all of this wisdom of the world.

Look down at verse 26. Brothers, he says, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many of you were influential by human standards.

Not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world. That's us, by the way. To confound, to shame the wise, God chose the weak things of the world. That's us, by the way. To shame the strong, he chose the lowly things of the world, the despised things, the things that are not in the world's estimation.

Guess who that is? That's us, right. And he did it to nullify the things that are something in the world's estimation so that no one may boast before God. Verse 31, if you're going to boast in anything as it's written, let him who boasts boast in the Lord.

You know what, folks? History shows it is not the big shots. Who've made the big impacts for Jesus Christ.

In fact, often they just get in the way. It's ordinary people. Ordinary people like these twelve apostles.

Ordinary people like you and me. And if you want your life to make a difference for Jesus Christ, and I hope you do, you don't have to be rich. You don't have to be handsome. You don't have to be beautiful or brilliant. You don't have to be a jock or a cheerleader at school.

You don't have to be a big shot at all. If you're an everyday ordinary person, you are a perfect candidate to make a difference in this world for Christ. But there are two qualifications you've got to meet.

And here they are. Number one, you've got to be related. And number two, you've got to be committed. Related and committed. You say, related to what? No, not to what.

To whom? You have to be related to Jesus Christ. You see, God only lets family serve him.

That's all. He doesn't let people outside the family serve him. And the Bible refers to those people who are part of God's special family as sheep, or as his own children. I told you last week if you were here, everybody in this world may be one of God's creatures, but not everybody in this world is one of God's sheep. He said to the religious leaders of Israel in John 10, he said, you do not believe what I'm telling you because you're not one of my sheep.

And the converse is true. The way to become one of his sheep is to believe in him as your personal Lord and Savior. Then the Bible says God adopts you into his family as his special child in a way that the rest of the world isn't, as one of his sheep.

And then and only then is God prepared to let you serve him. And you know there are people sitting in churches all over America this morning who got it exactly backwards. They're serving in the Sunday school. They're singing in the choir.

They're working outside on the buildings and grounds. They're giving their money. They're doing everything they can think of, saying, God, when do I become one of your sheep when have I served you enough? And God says, you don't understand. You don't become one of my sheep by serving. You become one of my sheep by believing, accepting Christ personally as your Lord and Savior. And then your service flows out of how much you love me for what I did for you. In terms of giving you eternal life and making you one of my children, you're not serving to earn anything. You're serving because you love me. Maybe some of us here have it inside out.

If you've had it inside out for years, I hope we can straighten it out this morning. You have to become one of God's sheep before the service you do for God makes any difference to him anyway. God only lets family serve him. And God wants to make you a member of his family this morning. And it's easy.

You don't have to do anything. These same people in John 6 said, What must we do to do the works that God requires? Here's what Jesus said. Jesus said, The work of God is this, that you believe in the one God has sent. So if you're here this morning and you've been trying to serve your way into being a sheep, it'll never happen. You need to believe your way into being a sheep.

And once you do that, then you're ready to serve. And that leads me to my second word. Not only do we need to be related, but we need to be committed. You say, committed how? Well, committed in the same way these 12 men were.

How were they committed? They had left everything to follow Jesus. They left their employment. They left their homes. They left their families.

They left it all. They had decided to put Jesus Christ as the number one priority in their life. They were committed to obeying him, whatever he asked of them. They were committed to being outspoken for him.

You remember in Acts chapter five, the Sadducees and the religious leaders called him in and they said, All right, you guys, we got a deal for you. We're not going to put you in jail. We're not going to beat you up. We're not going to kill you. You can go free. All we're going to ask you is don't go out there and talk about this Jesus stuff anymore.

And the apostle said, You're crazy. You can put us in jail. You can put us under the jail.

You can kill us if you want to. By the way, they all were killed for their faith. But we're going to keep talking about Jesus Christ to anybody that will listen. You see, my dear friends, God is looking for Christians who may be ordinary in every other way, but they are not ordinary when it comes to their commitment to Jesus Christ. Dwight L. Moody may have been the greatest evangelist America's ever produced. But, you know, if you'd have looked at Dwight L. Moody at the age of 18 when he became a Christian, you would never have bet one penny on him ever amounting to much anything. He was more ordinary than the most ordinary person you can ordinarily think of. His dad died when he was age four, when Moody was. He was raised in poverty. He was overweight. He was awkward.

He was clumsy. He never finished elementary school. He could hardly read or write. He wrote letters the way his mom taught him to without any capitalization or any punctuation. Never used periods, never used commas and never used capitals. He never finished any kind of formal education. He had no formal skills of any kind. And at age 18, when he gave his life to Christ in the back of his uncle's shoe store in Boston, he barely even knew how to sell shoes. And he spent the first few years...