I get occasional inspiration for my blog watching sermons from Christ Fellowship in McKinney, TX which is about 1,500 miles from where I live now. My wife Deena and I used to attend there just before and after we got married before we moved to our present location. We watch their services on Sundays when we can. Today, the message was about wittnessing to our families, our co-workers, and the people we encounter on any given day. Using selected Bible verses, the speaker told how ordinary people without degrees in theology living ordinary lives can provide a powerful testimony if we allow the Holy Spirit to work through us.
Good things come to boys who shoot hoops
During the message, the speaker used the analogy of a youth playing two-on-two basketball against two other friends. If the second player on the boy’s team is a pro-basketball player (like NBA star Kevin Durant of the Brooklyn Nets for example), then the two of them can beat any other two youths in the area. Even if the boy playing with Kevin Durant can’t score a layup, or dribble consistently, has no concept of defense and rarely scores a point on offense, the fact that a healthy, powerful, professional athlete in his prime is backing him up makes it impossible for the opposing team to win. Period. Kevin Durant could probably easily beat two boys on his own, but this sports titan choses to play with a mere mortal. In fact, the boy and the pro might be able to beat any two adults in the neighborhood under the same assumptions. All someone like Kevin Durant needs to to get his hands on the ball and he’s unstoppable.
Aslan is not a tame lion1
While God can do anything He likes (including broadcasting the giving of the Law at Mt Sinai audibly and the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost in a similar way, and even using a talking donkey on occasion), He often does things in what seem to be odd ways to us, like feeding Elijah (I Kings 17ff) using ravens unstead of just providing manna each morning. When Jesus was leaving the temple in Jerusalem and noticed a blind man, Jesus spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes (John 9:6.) The man was then commanded to wash his face and remove the salve. This is how Jesus healed this person.
When the centurion in Matthew, chapter eight came to Jesus to ask that his servant be health, Jesus did not even have to visit the servant, He healed him from a distance (Matthew 8:13.) I read earlier this week in Genesis that Joseph was sold into slavery, thrown into a dungeon for two years and restored to grace in Egypt just so God could spare Jacob’s family from the famine (Genesis 45:4.). Why put Joseph through all that misery? And God often uses people to compliment whatever it is that He does. God does not usually choose the most athletic, handsome, eloquent and charismatic person to be his spokeperson. It may be someone uncomely of low reputation that represents Him.
For example, in Exodus 4:10 we read how Moses tried to refuse the mission that God has selected him for. The author says “Moses said to the LORD, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” THis reminds me of Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hebrew scholars suggest that Moses had a stuttering problem. But there was a more powerful speaker near to Moses.
I remember just coming home from Vietnam in 1971 and popping in a bit late at a Methodist Church in Dover, Delaware. A preacher I never met before was delivering a sermon quite artfully with a beautiful voice. The benediction immediately followed and I shook hands with the pastor as I exited the church. He asked some questions of his new guest, but He could not say a sentence without stuttering. I later inquired about that and was told that this pastor always stutters, except when preaching. Case in point. He could not keep from stuttering using his own abilities, but when infused with the power of the Gospel, he was awesome!
Paul was likewise disappointing in stature. He writes: “I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (I Corinthians 2:3-5.) And then there was the thorn in his flesh, whatever that was. Neither Moses nor Paul graduated summa cum from any school of higher learning, and Peter, another powerful speaker was an ordinary fisherman. During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, certain scholars doubted that the Apostle Peter wrote the two letters bearing his name. After all, Peter was a course, unlearned manual laborer. How could he write as persuasively as the author of the two epistles did? These scholars overlooked the simple point that Peter was being led by the Spirit of God to write as he did (“For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit,” II Peter 1:21.) Jesus said as much (Luke 12: 11-12) when he instructed the disciples “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say. For at that time the Holy Spirit will teach you what you should say.” That is a witness and you’ll have the Holy Spirit on your team. If God is for us, who can stand against us?
Let’s go back to John, chapter 9, verses 8-34:
“His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, ‘Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?’ Some claimed that he was. Others said, ‘No, he only looks like him.’ But he himself insisted, ‘I am the man.’ ‘How then were your eyes opened?’ they asked. He replied, ‘The man they call Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed, and then I could see.’ ‘Where is this man?’ they asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. ‘He put mud on my eyes,’ the man replied, ‘and I washed, and now I see.’
Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
Then they turned again to the blind man, ‘What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.’
The man replied, ‘He is a prophet.’
They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man’s parents. ‘Is this your son?’ they asked. ‘Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?‘
‘We know he is our son,’ the parents answered, ‘and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.’ His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. That was why his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.’
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. ‘Give glory to God by telling the truth,’ they said. ‘We know this man is a sinner.’
He replied, ‘Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!’
Then they asked him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’
He answered, ‘I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?’
Then they hurled insults at him and said, ‘You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.’
The man answered, ‘Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’
To this they replied, ‘You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!’ And they threw him out”
Now let’s break this down. We have an ordinary guy who was born blind from birth. Someone he had heard rumors about named Jesus came up to him one day and performed a miracle by giving him (not restoring his) sight. So, he’s pretty stoked. And shocked, but in a good way. The authorities call him in and ask him to explain to them what happened. He’s good and he’s game. He speaks to them very matter-of-factly and relates what happened. They ask him if he’s really the guy who was blind all these years and he says “Yes!” The authorites want to know how it was possible for him to receive sight and he says in essence “This person they call Jesus put some mud in my eyes and the next thing I know, I can see. I don’t know how it worked, it just did. Then they asked him where Jesus went afterwards and his reply is pretty much “How would I know?” He has no agenda here, just cooperating with the authorities.
They ask the guy who was blind who he thinks Jesus is? The guy says, more or less, “Maybe he’s a prophet?” Again, how would he know? So now they drag his parents in and they ID their son. No doubt they are amazed as well. When the authorities push them, they push back and say (more or less): “Hey! He’s not a kid. He’s an adult and he can speak for himself.” Now the authorities return to the guy who received his sight and sweat him once more.
Have you ever seen those cop shows where some detective is grilling this witness hour after hour about something the witness saw. A new detective comes in the room and says to the suspect “Start from the top and tell me what you saw.” FInally the suspect on the television show gets frustrated and says: “How many times do I have to tell you the same thing over and over?” That’s what’s going on here. The person was casually witnessing to something that happened to him. There is only so many ways you can say the same thing. Aren’t they listening or are they just dense? He was pretty frustrated by then, I’m sure.
Many years ago living in South Florida, a teenage girl came to Christ. She had a born again experience and there was a 180 change in her life in a matter of seconds. That same day she grabbed three or four other people she knew from her crew. She didn’t know a single Bible verse, she didn’t know what evangelism was. All she knew was that God loved her and changed her life in a flash and she took these other people to see the person who did know Scripture and had witnessed to her. Within twenty-four hours, she had done more as a witness than some Christians have in a quarter of a century.
To thing ownself be true
In Acts 4:19, 20 we find Peter and John in front of the religious authorities in Jerusalem being threatened if they speak about Jesus again. “But Peter and John replied, ‘Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.’” Peter and John had to be true to themselves and their experience. And while they were outnumbered at the time they stood against the authorities, they had someone stronger standing with them, even as someone stood with Daniel in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:25.)
When a church loses its witness
In Acts 3:2-8 we see a lame man sitting at the temple asking for money, much as some disabled people on street corners do today. He happened to ask Peter and John for alms as they walked by. Peter said to him (Verse 6): “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” This was a another witness to the power of God in a Christian’s life.
There is a well known story, perhaps an urban legend, because the dates don’t sync correctly, of St Francis (some accounts say Thomas Aquinas) meeting Pope Innocent II “back in the day.” In front of the Pope was a large sum of money, and Francis (or Thomas) had an early glimpse of the waxing wealth of the Vatican prior to this encounter. Entering the presence of Innocent II, the Pope gestured to the money before him and remarked: “You see, the Church is no longer in that age in which she said, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’” “True, holy father,” replied Francis (Aquinas); but “neither can she any longer say to the lame, ‘Rise up and walk.’”
Footnote
1Reference to Aslan comes from the CS Lewis book series Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan is the redeemer (Christ figure) in that series, and he appears as a talking lion. The inhabitants of Narnia are beasts (also empowered with speech), some mythological creatures, some common animals along with some humans. There are preset expectations of how Aslan will act, when he’ll appear, etc. and these are dismissed with the reminder that “Aslan is not a tame lion.” He doesn’t do parlor tricks. He does not behave as you might expect. He can’t be domesticated. He’s entirely loving, but he can be ferocious as well.