New Things – New Works

Well, Father God, we are so thankful to be here once again, but we're thankful for your

love and mercy and the opportunity to come together as a group of believers to humble

and submit ourselves to you.

Lord, we know there are many people who are hurting, many physical needs, Lord,

there's many spiritual needs. Lord, I daresay we all have family members and

friends and loved ones who need to be touched by your spirit, who need to have

their eyes open to know you more. And, Father, we come before you this morning and

we humble and submit ourselves to you and acknowledge that you and you alone are

the only one who can heal the physical and the spiritual. Lord, you are God in

heaven and on earth. Lord, you created our bodies, you created our souls, and only

you have the power to work and move in both. So, Lord, this morning we lift up our

brothers and sisters who aren't able to be here with us. Pray that you would

touch them. Lord, we lift up our brothers and sisters who are struggling

spiritually. Lord, we pray that you would speak to them, but we pray that your

mercy and grace would be in their lives, but, Lord, that you would convict them and

draw them back to you. And, Lord, if there's anyone in this room right now

who is not walking with you in the way that they know that they should, Lord, I

pray that they would humbly ask you, God, please speak to me. Please help me to

surrender. Please help me to turn away from the things that I'm drawn to,

because we can't do it on our own, God. We need you to give us the power and

ability to do it. So, God, I pray that we would cry out the name of Jesus this

morning to do the things that only you can do. Father, there's people in here

who's lost loved ones who are dealing with that, Lord. Send them your spirit to

bring peace and comfort in these days. Lord, it is humbling to truly acknowledge

how much we need you, because there's so many things in life that we just, we

can't control. And no matter how hard we try to influence and have an effect,

Lord, we're just not able. But, God, you are more than able. So this morning we

call on the name of Jesus, who is more than able to do immeasurably more than

we could ever think, imagine, or even ask. And I pray that you would speak to our

Lord in your will, in your ways, this morning. Father, we love you, and we thank you, and we

ask all this in Jesus' precious and holy name, all God's people said. Amen. You may be seated.

Well, as usual, I think it is as important, if not more important, for you guys to have the

freedom to share, as it is for me. So if you feel led, and for whatever reason, the courage

comes while I'm speaking, you can interrupt me at any time. I will not mind.

But we're talking about God doing new things. We serve this amazing, this wonderful, perfect,

complete, and satisfying God, who has no need to change, but loves to do new things in our

hearts and our lives and our world. In this series, we've been talking about how He makes

us into new creations. He forges new paths. He uses new methods to reach people. One of the

things that we talked about last week is how God does very unique things in a specific time

with a specific people. And what we find is, is that many times He does not use those same

things again, but He works and moves in totally different ways with different people

in different times. And today we're talking about how God uses us to do His work. And He

does that in very different ways from one person to the next. And so we're going to read a really

interesting passage of scripture from the book of Judges this morning. We'll be in chapter 15,

if you'd like to turn there, it'll be on the screen if you want to follow along.

But our main person that we're looking at this morning is this guy named Samson. He's one of

the judges of Israel, and it's a very unique, peculiar... The best way I can say is that

Samson is a peculiar person that God used to do things for His purpose, His will, and His glory.

If you read through the story of Samson, this is not a man that you would want to...

My opinion is, is that I would not want to model myself after Samson,

and I would not encourage you as an individual or encourage you to encourage your children to be like

Samson as an individual. Because from what I can read in scripture, when you read about Samson's

life, there are more things of learning what not to do than what to do. And yet God still chooses

to use Samson in these amazing and powerful ways. And that's kind of good news for us this morning,

right? That someone who's not necessarily deserving of something, God can still use and

do great, mighty things through them to accomplish His purpose and His will, and that gives us hope

as people. And so in chapter 15, there's a lot of things that have transpired leading up to this

story. Samson has gone back and forth with the Philistines. He is having these encounters with

them. And through the book of Judges, what you see is, is that there's this rollercoaster ride of

ups and downs. And so the people of Israel are following the Lord. And what happens is,

is that they begin to sin. They begin to worship idols, and that starts the downward slope.

And as they begin to crash in that sinful state, the Lord sends the Philistines to come

and to rule over them and bring about punishment to them for their sins.

The people repent once the Lord starts putting the pressure on and kind of revealing their sins

to them, the people repent. God raises up a judge. They overcome the Philistines.

And then it happens all over again, and Samson just kind of falls in the middle of this.

But what we see about Samson's life is, is most of this is very personal. It's not necessarily

a matter of the people of Israel having these encounters with the Philistines, but it's Samson

having these encounter with the Philistines. And you'll see this pretty clearly in our

passage this morning. Let's read verses nine through 17, and then we'll talk a little bit.

So in verse nine, it says, the Philistines retaliated by setting up camp in Judah

and spreading out near the town of Lehi. The men of Judah asked the Philistines,

why are you attacking us? The Philistines replied, we've come to capture Samson.

We've come to pay him back for what he did to us.

So 3000 men of Judah went down to get Samson at the cave in the rock of a tomb.

And they said to Samson, don't you realize the Philistines rule over us?

What are you doing to us? But Samson replied, I only did to them what they did to me.

But the men of Judah told him, we have come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.

All right, Samson said, but promise that you won't kill me yourselves.

We will only tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines. They replied, we won't kill you.

So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

As Samson arrived at Lehi, the Philistines came shouting in triumph, but the spirit

of the Lord came powerfully upon Samson. And he snapped the ropes in his arms as if they were

burnt strands of flax. They fell from his wrists and then he found the jawbone of a recently killed

donkey. He picked it up and killed 1000 Philistines with it. Then Samson said,

with the jawbone of a donkey, I have piled them in heaps. With the jawbone of a donkey,

I have killed a thousand men. And when he finished his boasting, he threw away the jawbone and the

place was named Jawbone Hill. Point number one this morning is that God works in mysterious ways.

Make sure you write that down. Make sure you remember it. Because as you look at the life

of Samson, this is very much a man who probably, in our opinion, from what we see as human beings,

would not deserve to have the strength that God had given him. He's not someone that we would

look at and say, oh, this man deserves to have the spirit of the Lord upon his life. But yet,

God works in amazing and beautiful and mysterious ways, despite our inability to be able to

understand it. One of the things that I've seen over the past 20 something years as I've been in

history is that as you are an outsider and you're looking in at things, there are times where you see

God using specific people. God will use specific churches, specific organizations. There are specific

things that God will do. And yet, in the midst of all this, it seems like God is moving in

amazing and powerful ways. And it seems that as time progresses, maybe the individual who's in

charge is not living in a way that we feel like they should live in order for all that to be taking

place. And that's really hard to understand, right? Because in our mindset, it's like we have to be

faithful. We have to be right in order for God to be willing to work and move and do this in our

lives. And then this organization or this thing, this has to be right in order for God to be

willing to use it. And the truth is, this morning, is that we serve a God who works and moves and

operates in ways that we don't understand in ways that we cannot comprehend. And that can be

frustrating because if you're a person sitting here this morning and you're a rule follower,

and you're like, no, you're supposed to do the right thing. You're supposed to do this. You're

supposed to A, B, C, and D in order to get E. This can be very, very frustrating, but this does

not take away from the sovereignty or the amazement of God. It actually gives more credit

to his ability to take someone who is undeserving and someone who is unworthy and use them to do

amazing things in his name. That should give every single one of us this morning great hope

because the truth is, is none of us are worthy. There should be some amens in that.

The truth is, none of us are worthy. I'm not worthy. You're not worthy. None of us are worthy.

And yet, for whatever reason, God still chooses to save us from our sins

if we will simply ask him. And God uses us to accomplish his will if we are simply willing.

And there's nothing that you and I could ever do to be deserving of that or to earn that.

To buy it, to claim anything to it. There's nothing that we can do to attain that.

And yet God still uses us. And so I say this morning

with some clarity and carefulness that this does not give us the freedom

to go and live in sin and expect the Lord to work and move in our life. If we truly love the Lord,

if we have truly felt the presence of God in our life, there's going to be something within us

that is going to seek him and be drawn to him and to give ourselves to him and submit to him.

And so this morning, if there are things in your life that shouldn't be there,

it does not mean that you're not saved. It does not mean that you don't have a relationship with

the Lord. But what it means is, is that the Lord still needs to work and move in our life.

And that's okay. So we shouldn't give into this idea of, oh, now we can just go do

whatever we want to do because the Lord use Simpson so he can use me. Don't do that.

But just know this morning that despite any failures that you've had in the past,

despite even in your life, as we fell the Lord in present moments,

that God can still work and move in us and work and move through us to do great and amazing things.

Samson's a great example of that. And there are other examples of that. So let's just kind of

track through this. Let's look through the Bible at some weird people and weird circumstances

that God used. He took Moses who was a murderer. Can I get this? This is gonna be awkward.

He took Moses who was a murderer and he used him to do God's will. Moses killed a man,

buried him in the sand and ran out of Egypt to escape. And yet God called him to do

these amazing and wonderful things to deliver the people of Israel to bring about his will to

start this entire nation. He used a donkey to speak to Balaam. How weird is that?

He used John the Baptist, a man who dressed in weird clothing and ate weird things, who

lived in the wilderness, the voice shouting in the wilderness. That was kind of what he was known as.

And he used him to pave the way for the coming of the Lord. He used a prostitute to anoint

Jesus for burial. He used Jonah to be swallowed by a fish and to be regurgitated on land and go.

When you think about someone undeserving of this, I don't know if you've ever studied the

book of Jonah, but if there was ever someone who was undeserving, it's probably Jonah.

Absolutely amazing that you have other prophets who completely devoted their life,

gave their life and died to deliver the message of the Lord. There was, I think it was Jeremiah,

who had like one conversion of his entire life that we know of one person to convert and turn

to the Lord. And Jonah, who refused to do what God wanted him to do, ran to the other side of

the world to get away from him. God had to bring him back in a fish and said, no, you're

going to do what I want you to do. He does not want to do it. He goes to Nineveh. He delivers

the message of the Lord and it's a 100% conversion rate. Only person in scripture,

even Jesus didn't have a 100% conversion rate. Jonah goes to Nineveh. He preaches the message.

Everybody turns from their sins, the King, the people that even put burlap on the animals

to show that they were in mourning to turn from their sins and the Lord spared the city.

How weird is that?

An Ezekiel, I think a lot of our Sunday school classes just got done with Ezekiel,

but you start reading about how God called him to lay on his side

for like a year's time and then switch sides and build this little fort and have a pretend

siege and basically got to be a six year old for a year and do these weird things

in front of it and then cook his food on Kalman year while he's doing it.

God works in amazing, incredible, weird, mysterious ways. And the hope in all of this

is to know that God can use even you. I think that's one thing that as people,

we sell ourselves short of so many times to think, well, God can't use me.

I don't have the talent. I don't have the ability. I don't have the words to say.

I could never be able to get up and testify like these guys did this morning.

And to just have this attitude of God can't use me. But the truth is, is God can very much use you.

It may not be the same exact way he used them, but God can still very much use you.

You look at all the people in the Bible and all the people that God used to accomplish his will.

How many people did he use to kill somebody else with a jawbone of a donkey? One.

But he did it.

And the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully on Samson to enable him to do this weird,

hard to explain thing. But yet it happened. And as bad of an example of Samson's life,

maybe many times, know that this morning that no matter what you've done, God can use you.

So God can call you and it's not about your talents or your abilities,

but it's about the Spirit of God coming upon you and anointing you to do that thing that

he's calling you to do. That thing that he's created you to do. And point number two is

the Spirit's anointing was on Samson and not the jawbone.

I think that's really important for us to remember today.

You know, as Americans, we place a lot of stock in things and material stuff that we can touch

and grasp and feel and use. You know, men are all about their tools and women are all about

their accessories. And we love to just have that thing that works perfectly to do this thing with.

And we think as we serve God, we need this wonderful and amazing thing. But you look at

verses 14 through 15 and it says that the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully on the jawbone of the

donkey. Is that right? No. The jawbone of the donkey just happened to be laying there.

It is a very insignificant piece of this story. It just happened to be the thing

that Samson was there beside and picked up and used. But the important part of the story is

that the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson. We place too much stock in things and objects

and not enough stock in the one who is anointed by the Lord to wield the object.

You know, a club would have worked just as good. A sword would have worked better.

A spear, a bow and arrow. There's many things that he could have used. It just happened to be the

jawbone of a donkey. But the jawbone of the donkey was so unimportant. But it was the Spirit

of God on Samson in his life that came upon him and moved and enabled him to do the things

that he was. And we as people, we have to be so careful because we are tempted to cling to things.

Like we see things that work and we want to hang on to them and use them. Cling to them. We see

tactics. We see methods. We see things that other people use to do stuff. And we say,

oh, I want to try that. I want to do that. Let's try to do that ourselves.

And in reality, it's the Spirit that gives us the ability for the work to happen. It's not the tool.

And that's hard for us to see in a physical world. Because as a guy who's done a lot of different

jobs, I can tell you it's like it's amazing what the right tool can do.

If you play baseball, you know a metal bat is so much better than a wooden bat.

You know, a type of glove is so much better than another type of glove. If you're working on a car,

you know, there are specific tools that are made and it's almost impossible to do certain things.

But if you have that specific tool, it makes it so much easier in that moment to just do that

one thing. And we think that in the spiritual realms and the way that our God works, that we're

going to apply that same worldly logic to Him. And in reality, God does not operate and work that way,

but He can anoint us. He can fill us with His strength and His power and His Spirit.

And it doesn't matter what we have. God can still work and move.

So point number three this morning is Samson through the job on a way.

And I just think it's really important that we just kind of take note of that today as we're a

type of people who like to cling to things and rely on things. That Samson did this amazing act

and the name of the place became job on a hill. It was that significant what he did, but Samson

cast the job on a way because the job on was not important. And Samson didn't put his trust in

faith of all the many things Samson did wrong. He never put his trust in faith in the thing. He never

put his trust in faith in the thing that he used to slay a thousand men, but he knew that God was

more than able to give him the ability and the strength and the tools at the time to accomplish

the thing in the moment that God wanted him to do. But we as people are tempted many times,

you go back and you look, there are remnants of the past that we love to cling to and the people

in the Bible were no different. When you look at even something as simple as the Ark of the

Covenant and God even commanded the people, he said, look, when you build the Ark of the

Covenant, I want you to put Aaron's staff that sprouted the rosebud, put the staff in the

Ark, put the copies of the tablets of the 10 commandments in the Ark, take a jar of manna,

put it in the Ark. So there were physical things that was placed in the Ark. And there were times

where the people of Israel, they placed more faith in the Ark or the things in the Ark

than they did in the one who was supposed to dwell above the Ark. Now think about that for a

second. There was more faith placed in the stuff or in the thing that man built rather than the

actual idea that the cherubim were on top of the Ark and the presence of God was supposed to dwell

there. And the Ark of the Covenant simply represented the presence of God. And that's

what it was meant for. And people put more faith in the Ark than what they did in the presence of

God. And you see that as they went to war and they just did things that they wanted to do. And

they said, well, we'll just take the Ark. And if we have the Ark, we'll win. And they didn't win.

Actually, the Ark was captured. And then when the Ark was returned, guess what some of the

guys in Israel did? They were curious and they wanted to open up the Ark and look at what was

inside of it. And the Lord struck them dead because the focus should not be placed on the

Ark or what's in the Ark. The focus should be placed on the presence of God that dwells

above the Ark. Same thing with the temple. There were times in the nation of Israel where

the temple was idolized more than the presence of God who was supposed to dwell in the temple.

There was times in Israel when the law was idolized more than the God who actually gave

them the law. And you see that in the gospels as Jesus Christ came to fulfill the law and explain

the law and the religious leaders and the people of today were placing more emphasis on the law

than they did on actual God himself who was with them. And today we live in a day and time where

we have idolized the gifts and the fruits of the spirit more than the spirit who gives the gifts

and the fruit. We have a generation of people who want to be on stage. They want to be seen.

They want to be heard. They want to sing. They want to lead.

And we want to have the right tools and we want to have the money and we want to have all the

right stuff in order to make stuff happen. And the simple truth of the matter is that

we don't need any of that. In order for God to use you, you don't need any of that stuff. You

don't have to speak in front of people in order for God to use you. You don't have to sing. You

don't have to play an instrument. You don't have to have money to give. You don't have to have

anything. But the fact that the Spirit of God can come upon you and use you to do his work

and his will is an amazing privilege that we all have access to but very few of us actually

surrender enough to allow it to even happen. You know many times God does this amazing and

wonderful things and we try to copy and duplicate, reproduce the works of the Lord because we've seen

someone else do it and I just challenge you this morning. Do not try to be like anyone else.

Don't try to look like anyone else. Don't try to dress like anyone else. Don't try to talk

or do anything like anyone else. Just be God's. Surrender to him. Allow him to use you

and the ways that he can use you and the ways that he chooses to use you

because when you look at Samson in this moment, Samson takes this weird thing, this jaw bone

and he casts it away because that's not what's important. What's important is

is that he was filled with the Spirit of God. And finishing up this morning I just want to share

a little story with you. You know in 1934 there was this evangelist by the name of Mordecai Ham

and he was doing all these tent revivals and he was traveling around. In 1934 he

puts on this tent revival in the Charlotte, North Carolina area.

And at this revival you know it's already happening and Mordecai Ham's already preaching

and there just happens to be these two teenage boys. They're about the age of 14

and they come walking by and they're drawn to what they're hearing in this revival.

The words that are being spoken is just resonating with who they are.

And as they come up to this revival and they're looking it's packed. I mean there are no seats

left and so they the two boys end up turning around and they begin to walk off when all of a sudden

this usher, this guy who's helping at this revival, he goes and he catches them. He says,

wait don't leave we'll find you a seat. So him and the two boys walk back

and he talks to some people. The usher asks them to slide over. They make room for the boys.

The two boys sit down. They continue listening to the message and that night they end up giving

their heart to Christ and accepting him as Lord and Savior. One of those boys was Billy Graham

and the other boy was Grady Wilson and they were friends for the rest of their lives.

And if you don't know Grady Wilson may not be as popular as Billy Graham but Grady Wilson

helped Billy Graham plan and facilitate most of the crusades that he had when he preached the

message of the gospel to millions and millions of people.

And I guarantee you that as you think right now about this story you're like man how awesome would

it be to be the pastor who was preaching the message of the gospel when Billy Graham got saved.

And it would be pretty cool but how much cooler is it that there was someone there who was faithful

enough who never said well God didn't call me to speak. He didn't give me the talents and

abilities to stand up in front of people and explain the word of God and preach a message

and see people get saved. So I'm just not I'm not going to do this. I'm just going to go do

something where I can have more impact somewhere else. I can be more important somewhere else.

The usher that no one even knows his name.

Even Billy Graham didn't know his name. We don't know his name and he was faithful

and he did the simple littlest thing to not let those boys get away

but to bring them back and to make room for them.

And his faithfulness and his willingness to serve God in such a simple

what the world would see as an unimportant way

made the difference for millions of people in the coming years who would hear Billy Graham preach

and present the message of the gospel and give their hearts and lives to Jesus Christ.

Mordecai him had a hand in it but so did the usher. And this morning as we talk about this

I encourage you guys do not worry about having the right tools. Do not worry about being in the

right place. Do not worry about making sure all the stars are alone so that you can serve the

Lord or you can have this opportunity to do this great and amazing thing. Just be faithful.

Just surrender. Allow God to simply use you in the smallest of ways because the awesome

thing is is why the world may not see it and they may not know your name. The service of that usher

was one seed that was planted that thankfully we serve a God who is more than able to take one

seed and produce a harvest of 10 50 and even a hundred times and what we can even see to know

it was a million times more than just saying come on boys come have a seat. That's all he did.

And if he had not been faithful it didn't matter how good of a message Mordecai him preached.

It didn't matter how powerful it was or how much he studied or how eloquent he spoke

without the faithfulness of that usher

all the millions of people who heard the message of the gospel through Billy Graham would have

never heard it. So this morning don't try to be like anyone else.

It would be foolish to go outside and look for a dead donkey so you could pick up its

jawbone to try to do something amazing for the Lord. It's crazy. It's the only time in scripture

to ever happen. Samson is in fact the only one mentioned in scripture who was given that

supernatural strength.

Nobody else God used in that way.

Don't try to be like somebody else. God doesn't want you to be like somebody else. He created you

to be you. He created you to follow him to submit to him and to serve him.

We can't copy. We can't replicate. We can't duplicate. We simply are faithful.

And in that faithfulness God can take whatever we do and multiply it

10 50 even a hundred times more than we could ever know or think.

And it wasn't just this amazing win for this usher to see those boys give their hearts to Christ

that night. It was the millions of people who was going to give their hearts to Jesus Christ

in the coming years as those two boys began to be faithful to what God called them to do.

Glory and honor is brought to God when we're faithful.

Not when we do what we want. Not when we show off our talents or our abilities.

When we humble ourselves to God and we serve him. That's when glory and honor is brought to him.

Allow God to work and move in you. Let's pray. Father thank you so much

for the opportunity to be here today to read your word. Thank you for

using us and calling us to spot our many many failures.

Lord we ask that you would help us to just be humble and submit to you.

Help us to be faithful. Lord we are yours. We commit ourselves to you

and I pray that you would use us to do your will and bring glory and honor to your name.

For us in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.