Sermon Central
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How God Can Use Your Life Series
Contributed by Keith Warden on Feb 23, 2004 (message contributor)
Summary: Do you want to be used by God? Discover what God’s responsibility is and what your responsibility is.
How God Can Use Your Life
Introduction
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God’s part in using my life…
1.God chooses the person.
When God got ready to prepare for the
coming of His Son, He chose an ordinary Jewish teenage girl to have the honor of being the mother of the Messiah. He chose a young girl, who lived in the backwoods town of Nazareth. Nazareth was a town that served many soldiers and tradesmen because it was on an important trade highway. But it also had the reputation of being a rough and corrupted village. There weren’t many virtuous people, much less teenage girls, who lived there.
That’s one of the reasons that when the disciple Nathaniel heard that Jesus hailed from Nazareth, his first response was, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth” (Jn. 1:46)? But when God got ready to look for the one He would choose to parent Jesus, He bypassed Jerusalem, “the City of God,” and even all of Judea, and went north to Galilee. His first words to Mary are, “Mary, you are highly favored because the Lord is with you.”
Our Catholic friends venerate Mary to someone greater than a human, who had special standing with God. But Scripture tells us here that Mary wasn’t special because of anything she had done. She was special because of what God had done in her life. She was a pure young lady who loved God and had her heart set on serving Him.
"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." 1 Cor. 1:27
God can use a stuttering Moses to deliver a nation. He can use a teenage boy David to kill a giant. He can use an ordinary teenage girl to give birth to His Son Jesus. He even used a donkey to deliver a message to a prophet! And He can use you and me as well. It’s God who does the choosing, and He uses people who are usable.
2.God proposes the plan.
In verses 31-33, Gabriel delivers the meat of
God’s message to Mary—a mind-boggling plan to Mary I’m sure. It was a plan that seemed humanly impossible on the surface. But those are the kinds of plans that God specializes in. Consider the five-fold plan of redemption laid out here—
·The baby would be named Jesus.
The names simply means “salvation.” It’s a
name so simple that children can sing it out clearly. It’s so comforting that it’s whispered by elderly saints on their deathbeds. Jesus is the sweetest name I know.
·The baby would be great.
The word in Greek is “mega.” He is saying
that Jesus will be the one mega-man.
John Piper writes—
“Jesus is ten million times greater in every respect than the greatest men and women history has produced. If you took all the greatest thinkers of every country and every century of the world and put them in a room with Jesus, they would shut their mouths and listen to the greatness of His wisdom. All the greatest generals would listen to His strategy. All the greatest musicians would listen to His music theory and His performance on every instrument. There is nothing that Jesus cannot do a thousand times better than the person you admire most in any area of human endeavor under the sun.”
·The baby would be called “Son of the Most High.”
This is simply another way of saying that He
is the Son of God. He says it again in verse 35.
·The baby would occupy the throne of His father David.
Mary is assured of this not only because she
herself is of David’s line, but that one day He would literally sit on the throne of David. This part of the birth announcement will be fully accomplished when
Jesus returns and sets up His future kingdom that will reign on this earth.
·The baby would reign over the house of Jacob forever.
The “house of Jacob” is the 12 tribes of Israel.
This again means that Jesus will literally rule and reign over the nation of Israel in the future. This is an amazing announcement that Mary must have thought impossible. Gabriel is telling her that the greatest Man to ever walk the face of the earth will be Her Son.
God is a God of God-sized plans. He specializes in proposing plans that send our human brains into overload. And that is one of the key ways to recognize when God is working. Most of us never move beyond the scope of thinking about what we can do for God in our own strength. That’s because it is so much safer to think and live that way.
When God lays out the plan, He removes the boundaries and the limitations of human ingenuity. He does something totally new and fresh.
