Not Him
When the Call is not always
logical – the story of the Apostle Paul
Galatians 1:11-24
11 I want you to know, brothers, that
the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12I did not receive it from any man, nor was
I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
13For
you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I
persecuted the
18Then
after three years, I went up to
Introduction
Not him. Osama bin
laden is undoubtedly the most hated man in
That’s what people said about the Apostle Paul. He persecuted
Christians for their faith. He had some
of them put to death. When you thought
of an evangelist to the Gentiles, most people would say “Not him”.
In writing to the church he started in
That means when Paul was running around persecuting Christians
as we read in Acts 8:3 “But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men
and women and put them in prison”
he was already set apart or called by God but that isn’t what God called
him to do. In the early years of his
life he was listening to the wrong people.
Nothing was going to stop him from listening to the wrong voice unless
something broke into his world and got his attention.
In Acts 9 we read about how Paul was on the road to
Sometimes it takes a blinding experience to shake us off the
course that we’re heading. An experience
so jolting that it causes us to stop listening to the voices we were listening to
and to listen to a new voice.
Charles Colson was called President Nixon’s “hatchet man” because
when the administration needed someone discredited for the cause Colson would do
it ruthlessly. Before he was convicted
for his involvement in Watergate he had a soul searching experience. In his book Born Again Colson writes
about how the events of Watergate jolted him to finally listen to a different
voice and he gave his life to Christ. When news of Colson's conversion to Christianity
leaked to the press in 1973, the Boston Globe reported, "If Mr. Colson can repent of his sins, there just has to be hope
for everybody."[1]
Today
he is more known for his Prison Fellowship ministry which he founded in 1976 to
become the largest prison ministry in the world. They minister in over 1600 prisons a year
with 24,000 volunteers and an average monthly attendance of over 187,000
inmates involved in their Bible studies.
Most people in 1973 would have said Chuck Colson, not him.
Paul explained why God called him in v.15. [God] “…was pleased to reveal his Son in me so
that I might preach him among the Gentiles…” I
don’t think there could have been a worse candidate for that particular calling.
He had spent years training to be a Jew of Jews. He understood every intricate detail of being
Jewish. That meant he spent little of
his life understanding what it meant to be a Gentile. It would be the equivalent of spending ten
years training to be a brain surgeon and then switching to become a
lawyer. He had no training in how
Gentiles or non Jews thought. People
would say: not him.
That’s important to remember about a call. God calls us.
We don’t call God. God calls us
before we know what potential we have.
We don’t audition for a calling with God.
Our First Calling –
Larry’s testimony
At some point in your life
God was “pleased to reveal his Son” in you.
Here’s a good place to recall that.
At what age were you when Jesus first became real to you? I (Larry) was raised from age four in an
urban Lutheran church in downtown
I realized that the Jesus I had originally believed in was
imaginary unfortunately right at the end of my two year catechism class when I
was supposed to stand in front of my home church and profess Jesus Christ as my
own savior. I couldn’t do it unless I
lied which the retired interim pastor of our church asked me to do so as not to
embarrass him.
From ages 14 to 16 I read literature from various religions
including Transcendental Meditation and Buddhism. Someone gave me a little New Testament Bible
like the ones the Gideons hand out at the schools. I carried it with me in my back pocket and
read the entire book from cover to cover.
Then I started through the Old Testament in another Bible. One night while recovering from a sports
injury I realized that my running career was going from one injury to another
and I wasn’t getting anywhere. As soon
as I made progress I’d get a setback. It
was sort of like the Jews who wandered in the desert for 40 years going in
circles before they could enter the Promised Land.
It was a school night in October of 1972 that I knelt beside
my bed and confessed my sins to God and asked Jesus Christ to forgive me and
become my savior.
Jesus then became very real in my life. When was I called by God? Not 1972 but in 1956 when I was
conceived. In 1972 God was “pleased to
reveal his Son” to me. That revelation
did not come as a result of my religious search for God. It wasn’t that I took a book and formulated
the gospel as the end product of a process of meditation and reflection. It was an unexpected event of personal
transformation.
You’ve
probably heard of Ted Turner. He’s the
founder of CNN, owner of the Atlanta Braves baseball team, Atlanta Hawks
basketball team and was for awhile married to Jane Fonda. Regarding Jesus, Turner once said
"Christianity is a religion for losers." On another occasion, Turner joked that the
pope should step on a landmine. Seeing CNN employees wearing ashes on their
forehead on Ash Wednesday, he remarked, "What are you, a bunch of Jesus
freaks? You ought to be working for Fox." He has been so uncomfortable
with the Christian faith that he blamed his divorce from his third wife, Jane
Fonda, partly on her decision to become a practicing Christian.
I believe that Ted Turner was called by God at birth. In February 2003 The National Observer Online
did an article on Turner in response to his film company sponsoring the film Gods
and Generals which showed the positive impact the Christian faith had
on Civil War participants. In that
article we learn that growing up Turner
“…was a deeply religious boy, despite his
father's emotional abuse. He intended at one point to become a missionary.
Then, when he was a teenager, his younger sister Mary Jane contracted a form of
lupus, and suffered terribly before dying a relatively short while later. All
his prayers for her recovery — an hour a day, he said — were for naught”.
"She
used to run around in pain, begging God to let her die," he recalled.
"My family broke apart. I thought, 'How could God let my sister suffer so
much?'"
“These
events happened nearly half a century ago, but he speaks of them as if they had
occurred last week. Though none of the journalists pressed him on the point,
Turner, who has described himself publicly at times as either an atheist or an
agnostic, began talking as if he were justifying himself at a tribunal.
"Look at my philanthropy!" he
said. "The Bible says it's better to
give than receive. I sponsored that religious conference at the United Nations.
It cost me $600,000."
“Turner
may have turned his back on his faith, but he still has a missionary's zeal to
change the world. In addition to his pledge to give a billion dollars to the
U.N. (a pledge he's had to revise given the dramatic stock-market reversals
he's undergone), Turner donates lavishly to causes that promote his globalist
and environmentalist views. He is currently finishing production work on an
eight-hour documentary about weapons of mass destruction. For Turner, the world
still needs saving as much as it did when he was a would-be missionary; it's
just that the gospel he preaches is a militantly secular one” [2]
At age 24 Turner’s father
committed suicide in part because of the failure of his business. The author of the article Rod Dreher said
that he got the impression from being around Turner in writing the article “that
it's not so much that Turner doesn't believe in God as he doesn't want to give
God, who allowed his sister to be crushed by disease, the satisfaction of
recognition.” But Turner desperately
wants to go to heaven.
Ted’s ex wife Jane Fonda published a book in 2005 entitled My
Life So Far. Her father was the
famous actor Henry Fonda, the father in the film Grapes of Wrath and her
brother Peter starred in a number of films as well. When she was a child her mother committed
suicide leaving a huge void in her life.
In the book she said that when she turned 60 and
began to deal with an eating disorder in her life, she also felt that something
was missing and turned to Christianity. She
had not told her husband Ted Turner about becoming a Christian but when he
learned of it, she says it was one of the factors that broke up their marriage. She said that she knows it was not fair to
keep the news of her faith from him, but that she was "...yearning for the
spiritual that I had not had. And I knew that if I told him or asked him
before I did it, that he would talk me out of it."[3]
Both Ted Turner and Jane Fonda had tragedies early in their
life. I believe they were both called by
God at birth and that because God loved them so much that he suffered through
the tragedies with them instead of being against them.
Even though Turner will not publicly acknowledge Christ as his savior God is using his
philanthropy to help hurting people. Like
so many people Turner’s childhood pain is keeping him from experiencing the joy of
knowing Christ and his call on his life.
Do you remember why it was that God was “pleased to reveal his
Son” to Paul? So that he could preach
the gospel to the non-Jewish people, the Gentiles. But it wasn’t to use the talents he amassed
up to that point. He should have been a
shoo-in evangelist for the Jewish people.
They would have looked at him and thought if he could change we could
change.
It would be as if pro golfer Tiger Woods had a born again Christian
experience. He’s presently a
Buddhist. We would think he would be a
shoo-in to start a “Golfers for Christ” ministry. We wouldn’t think of Tiger Woods being called
to go to linguistics school and moving to a Columbian jungle to do Bible
translation. Not him. We would want to capitalize on his wealth and
his already widely known influence to influence others for the Gospel.
That’s the thing about a
calling. It’s never about us. It’s always about God. So you’re sitting there thinking “I’ve never
been a very religious person” what could God call me to do? You may be thinking “I don’t know the Bible
very well, what could God call me to do?”
So instead of saying “Not him” or “Not me” say “Why not him?” Or say “Why not me?” Allow the possibility that God could do
something new in someone you know or in you.
God called Paul to be his own when he was born. God revealed his son to Paul and sent him out
to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Paul
went and God provided what he needed to plant churches across the
God called you to be his own when you were born. God revealed his son to you so that he could
send you out to reveal his son to someone else.
That’s why Jesus was revealed to you.
What is your calling? Today
might be a good time for you to write out your story of how Jesus became real to
you. If you’re at the point where Jesus
is still mythical or just a role model for good works but you don’t have a
personal relationship with him what’s keeping you from accepting Christ into your
life?
Study Guide
At age 18, what career were you preparing for or
starting? How does that relate to your
life now?
What “revelation” or new has most
dramatically affected our life?
What was Paul called by God to
do?
If you had to argue for the
reality of the Gospel by giving one example of how you have changed as a result
of your faith, what would you share?
Daily Bible
Monday Psalm 139
How does
David understanding of God in this Psalm compare to Paul’s understanding of
when God originally called him?
Has God
“ordained” (set apart) all your days (see Jeremiah 1:5)? What does this mean? What doesn’t it mean?
Tuesday I Thessalonians 1:1-8
How did Paul
know that God had chosen those in the church at Thessalonica? vss 4-10
What is supposed to happen to the Lord’s message when it’s heard by people God has called? vs. 8-10
Wednesday Luke 1:46-55
(Mary’s Song)
What is Mary
reminded of to help her get past the fears of the task she has been called to?
Have you had
times in your life where God called you to something fearful? How did you respond?
Thursday Matthew
What were the
disciples and Peter afraid of?
What helped
Peter get beyond his fears?
How has God
and might God pull you up out of the water?
Friday Isaiah 41:8-10
What
promise can help us in our fears?
What
are some ways in which God has already strengthened, helped and upheld you in
your life?
Saturday Luke
What does it
mean to fear the Lord?
All of these
verses deal with fear in a slightly different way then we are used to (revere or reverential awe) How might we fear the Lord in this way?