I’ve started to prepare for my sermon and I’ve found myself finding so many things to say but really not wanting to go off on a tangent every point in my sermon! Its strange I really expected me to struggle with filling a 30 minute slot and I’ve found that I could probably do a 3 point sermon for every verse almost! I thank God for the fact that I’ve been trying to run a tap and I’ve suddenly had a river of thought and points!
One of the things which I had been thinking about last night was that God’s hero’s are all so much of failures of human proportions. Lets take for example Moses, he was an adopted son of a Hebrew woman bought up in the palace to such a high position, a murderer and yet look at how much God used him? That’s just one example (I’ll be using this one in my sermon so for those who are coming… you know what part of my point is!) but the more I think about these things, the more I realise that there are so many unsung hero’s in the bible that are great examples to us but seem to be very lost in our memories.
I’m going to look at one of these today and share with you why I hold this particular person in such high regard in my mind and why. Some of you who know me best know that my favourite book in the bible is Job. Not because its short and to the point, but its simply because it shows faith and love towards God through the hardest of times and the most difficult of situations that if you and I were faced with in this day and age we would have cried out to God curses and really turned your back on him, indeed, I had just a small taste of loss and I was so quick to point the finger at God and for me to turn my back and run. The fact is this, Job was a faith soldier.
Picture the scene, you’re an upright lover of God and you do all things according to his plan to his design. You’ve got a big family and plenty of land and livestock, (the equivalent to having a big house and a fancy job with a Lamborghini on the driveway), and you are blessed by God. Satan can’t stand a successful God loving and fearing person so what does he go and do. Says to God, “its your holy hand outs that’s keeping him so much in love with you God, take it all away, and he’ll surely deny” (Job 9 and 10, obviously not exactly how it is written in the scripture!)
God knew Job’s heart and knew where his love for him came from so he said to satan that he can strike down and take everything from Job but not to hurt him. As the story goes on, even this happeneds and what does Job do? Well he praises God even further and thanks him for the turmoil! How many times can we say we do that? His friends all came around him asking him what he was doing and why didn’t he just end it all, obviously God has left him to his own devices and was not blessing him any further. Again Job stands by God and defends him.
At the end of the book, it says this;
Job 42 v 12 The LORD blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. 13 And he also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. 15 Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job's daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.
16 After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 17 And so he died, old and full of years.
So you can see that Job never gave up, he got through his tests by the Devil and came out the other end with a lot of blessings from God.
Right, here’s my point of the sermon here – Don’t give up. 3 words, as simple as that. If I could sum up how I would do my Christian walk better, its this. Never give up, never stop trying and never think you have failed. Moses murdered yet he was used by God and met him on a mountain, David was an adulterer, and God made him the greatest King in history, peter denied Christ yet used him to build the church. Can you see my pattern here. Although these people did sin and although these people did fail to attain the highest standard of God, they were used by him. So don’t give up, we are not worthless to God infact quite the opposite.
In Christ
Mikey
