It’s amazing whom God calls to work with him in carrying out His mission.
A simple list of the key people in the history of redemption in Scripture highlights what I’m talking about… Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, John the Baptist…
Who would have guessed, early on, what God would do in and through these people?
Abraham – His father worshiped idols and Abram grew up in a city devoted to the worship of Nanna, the moon god. Abram’s wife was barren. When Abraham was 99, his wife still had not given birth to the promised descendant.
Moses – At birth his parents were forced to abandon him. He was raised in a palace – an environment where the exaltation of other gods, especially the sun gods (Osiris, Isis, Ra (Re) and Horus) was all pervasive. Yahweh, and his people (”the Hebrews”) were despised slaves.
Samuel – His mother was barren, with no prospect of having children. Samuel grew up, without parents, living in the worship center of Israel – a place where the leading priests had no fear of God, openly stole from the worshippers and shamelessly practiced immorality with employees of the religious establishment.
David – His great grandmother was Ruth, a poor widow from Moab. The Torah blocked Moabites from entering “the assembly of the Lord” down to the tenth generation.
John the Baptist – the forerunner of Jesus and the greatest prophet was born to an old, barren woman and a old priest who failed to believe the angel’s good news of God’s gift of a son.
What each of these unlikely candidates for serving God share in common is the fact that God called them to serve him. With that call came God’s sovereign preparation and God’s equipping for the task at hand. Paul, another unlikely candidate for God’s service, was keenly aware of this. God, he said,
“Had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace.” That same God was the one who “was pleased to reveal his Son to me in order that I might preach him among the nations.
Reflecting on whom God choose and called to serve him encourages me. He doesn’t call (both to salvation and to service) only those who are wise according to worldly standards, those who are powerful, and those who are of noble birth. Instead God chose and called,
What is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world even things that are not… so that no human being might boast in the presence of God (1 Cor 1:26-29).
This is, as Dale Ralph Davis, notes, “vintage Yahweh,”
God’s tendency is to make our total inability his starting point. Our hopelessness and our helplessness are no barrier to his work. We are facing one of the principles of Yahweh’s modus operandi. When his people are without strength, without resources, without hope, without human gimmicks – then he loves to stretch forth his hand from heaven (1 Samuel: Looking on the Heart).
Encouraging, isn’t it. Maybe God can use us in his service!
