I) Let’s talk a bit about heroes.
A) I love to read adventure thrillers. One of the authors that I used to read a lot (while he was living) was Robert Ludlum. His stories were frequently built around an average citizen who sees or hears something that he should not have. He then becomes caught up in a diabolical plot involving international espionage, assassination, or world domination. Untrained in such things, unprepared, running for his life, he somehow turns the situation around and is victorious in spite of unsurmountable obstacles. In short, the hero is a common man or woman who finds himself in an extraordinary situation and rises to overcome the challenge.
B) We frequently find ourselves fascinated by stories of real-life heroes, as well.
C) Webster defines a hero as “one that shows great courage; … admired for … achievements and noble qualities; an object of extreme admiration and devotion.”
D) Of course, the Bible has no shortage of heroes for us to consider. Take a moment to make a list of five Bible heroes. [Wait] How many of you included Joseph enduring in slavery? Moses rescuing the people from Egypt? Joshua or Gideon leading in the conquest of the Promised Land? David facing Goliath? Elijah or Paul preaching in the face of opposition? Daniel in the lion’s den? Shadrach, Meshach, or Abed-Nego facing the fiery furnace?
We can learn much from the lives of these heroes: determination to do God’s will, seen in Moses as he leaves pharaoh’s house to lead God’s people out of captivity; conviction to remain unsullied by the society around us, illustrated vividly by Daniel in the lion’s den and Meshach in the furnace; absolute trust in God, as David faces Goliath; a spirit of evangelism, leading Paul to keep on in spite of shipwrecks, beatings, and jail.
E) But there can be a problem with drawing our inspiration from great heroes of literature, of life, or even of the Bible. Their heroics took place in extraordinary circumstances. In fact, a currently popular definition of a hero is “an ordinary person facing extraordinary circumstances and acting with courage, honor, and self-sacrifice.” But we will probably never find ourself in that burning building or fiery furnace, or sold into slavery or tasked to lead the nation from it, or even threatened by an angry mob. So we put our greatness on hold, waiting for those extraordinary circumstances to give us the opportunity for heroics.
F) Today I want to ask you to consider a few heroes of the Bible that I suspect were not on anyone’s list a few moments ago. In many cases, we don’t even know these heroes’ names, and their deeds are related in no more than a verse or two in the Bible. I am calling these “everyday heroes,” because their heroics are found in the context of their everyday lives. Yet these men and women, though perhaps not in extraordinary circumstances, fit Webster’s definition of heroes in that they showed “great courage”, and they should be “admired for [their] achievements and noble qualities.” And I want to challenge you to take them into your hearts as objects “of extreme admiration and devotion.”
II) Crispus
A) How many of you can place who Crispus was, much less his heroic deed? We find the events leading up to his mention in Acts 18:1-7, and then a brief statement in Acts 18:8, “Then Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his household” (NKJV). Heroics? How so? Isn’t Paul the hero here? Consider the faith and courage, the sheer determination to do right, that Crispus must have had in order to be baptized.
B) Try to imagine what this conversion must have cost Crispus, what he knew it was going to cost him. Think what it would be like today if you were publicly charged with a reprehensible crime. Even before you had a chance to be tried and determined to be innocent or guilty, you would likely be shunned by your friends and colleagues, doubted by your family, feared by many, ridiculed by others, at risk of losing your source of income, watching your entire family subjected to ostracization.
Look what Crispus knew he was going to lose. He would certainly lose his position as leader of the Jewish synagogue. But as a Jew, his whole life would have been built around the synagogue. He would lose the respect of the community in which he lived and worked. He would lose virtually all of his friends and many of his relatives. His means of support would likely be at risk. He would in essence be an outcast from the society of which he was a pillar and leader on the day before.
C) Crispus was a hero! He had the courage and the faith in God to determine that he was going to let nothing in this world stand in his way in his service to God. This is a conviction and courage that we need to emulate. We must determine in our own hearts that we will let nothing in this world deter us from doing God’s will.
There will be no end to the situations that Satan will throw our way in order to tempt us and to test that conviction. We will find our circle of friends much smaller than we would like it to be, as prospective friends feel intimidated by our convictions and old friends move in directions that we cannot follow. Close and beloved family members (husbands or wives, children or parents) will leave the church, and our choosing of the church over them will forever stand as a barrier that will not allow that relationship to be the same again. We will be faced with turning down promotions or overtime, losing job opportunities because we are unwilling to work Sundays, to move where there is no church, or to put the job first in our life.
D) There is a cost to being a Christian, a price that we must ourselves pay in order to obtain heaven, apart from that which Christ has already paid for us. We have to have the courage and the faith to decide up front, right now, that we are willing to pay that price no matter how great it may be. We have to decide that we will let nothing deter us from serving God: no disappointment, sorrow, love, opportunity, inconvenience, or sacrifice.
Luke 14:25-33 reminds us to consider the cost of our discipleship. It is foolish to undertake any great task without first considering what it going to cost, in money, time, energy, or whatever, to finish it. Christ is saying, “You have already committed to follow. You should have already considered what it might cost and decided that heaven is wort it, even if that cost is everything of this world.”
E) That is not easy! But I challenge you now to determine that you will act heroically every day from here forward. Be a Crispus, doing what God has taught us to be good and right while sacrificing whatever is necessary in order to do so.
III) 7,000 Heroes, Unnamed.
A) Our next everyday heroes are the 7,000 unnamed heroes of I Kings 19:1-18 (read 19:1-3, 9-10, 18). In a time when the nation had descended into ungodliness, when a godly man was forced to flee from the government in fear for his life, when society had turned from God to worship idols, and when one trying to uphold godliness was made to feel utterly alone, 7,000 heroes had the faith and courage to refuse to bow to the pressure of the society in which they lived. The courage of those heroes kept God’s word alive in their generation.
How different was their world from ours today, when we consider the nature of the society in which we live in now? How many of our community are interested in worshipping with us today? We are the ones who must keep the church alive through this age. In spite of living in a world that is overwhelmingly given to lust, greed, selfishness, immorality, hate, and godlessness, we must be the light in that darkness.
B) Be a hero! Determine that you will not allow yourself to be sullied by the world around you. It’s hard; it takes courage. We have to do this not once, but every day. That takes true heroics. Nobody is going to try to kill us for our convictions, but we are nevertheless challenged and expected by the society that we live in to abandon our godliness and to conform. God, however challenges and expects us to be willing to give our lives, to live, as sacrifices to Him. Rom 12:1-2 tells us that we are to give ourselves as living sacrifices and that we do this by keeping ourselves holy. Paul goes on to say that this is a reasonable expectation, considering what God has done for us. We need to do this in spite of the pressures of this world to conform in ungodliness.
C) To keep ourselves holy as living sacrifices to God requires courage every day, every hour, as we face the lusts and temptations of the ungodly world in which we live. How are we facing that temptation? With courage, heroically? Or bending and folding easily, allowing ourselves to be molded by the world?
IV) The Poor Widow
A) The third everyday hero I would like to consider is the poor widow from Mark 12:41-44. As she gave her last coin to God, she demonstrated a heroic courage and trust in God. She probably did not know how she was going to make her next food purchase. But she committed to give as she had determined in her heart to do, completely trusting that God would care for her. I doubt she considered herself heroic. I am certain she had no idea that her gift would be recorded for all of humanity to dwell upon for two thousand years and more to come.
B) We, too, can determine to have heroic trust and courage in our lives, by spending our time and energies pursuing spiritual rather than material reward. We readily acknowledge the plea of Matthew 6:19-21 that we lay up eternal spiritual treasures rather than the temporal treasures of this world, but do we really live that way? Matthew goes on in Matthew 6:31-34 to record Jesus reminding us that we need to focus our daily concerns upon seeking righteousness rather than upon the things of this world. What does the manner in which we spend our time and effort and worry say about what we have put first? With true trust, we will never find ourselves too busy to do what is needed for our spiritual lives. The example of this poor widow is there for us to emulate!
V) Tabitha
A) Our final heroine is another woman, but one that we do not encounter in the scriptures until after her death. Acts 9:36-39 tells of the aftermath of the death of Tabitha, or Dorcas. She was known to all as one who was full of good works and charitable deeds, particularly for the garments that she made for others. She was known and loved for her giving nature. Again, I am sure that she didn’t think that tunic she made as a gift qualified her as a hero, but it encouraged others and left an example for us to copy. I am equally certain that it was not always easy or convenient for her to perform those good works for others. She sacrificed her time, her energy, and her finances in order to help encourage others even when it would have been so much easier to focus upon her own comfort.
B) We don’t have to wait for some extraordinary crisis or moment of need in order to a hero. Simply by being willing to sacrifice a bit of our time and suffer a bit of inconvenience, we can be a person with heroic love and care for another right now. After all, unselfishness is the very essence of heroism, and we have opportunities to act unselfishly every day. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that we were in fact created by God for the very purpose of doing good works. Are we fulfilling that purpose? John 13:35 tells us that one of the prime ways in which the world will recognize that we are disciples is from the love that we display toward one another. Is the world getting that message as they observe how we spend our time?
C) Let’s resolve that we will fill our days with acts of loving care for one another, even when that requires a heroic sacrifice of our time and energy. Every one of us has the ability to be a Tabitha.
VI) Being a hero takes courage, conviction, trust in God, and a sacrificial spirit. I challenge each of you to resolve to be an everyday hero from this day forward.
A) Resolve that you will make any sacrifice necessary in order to serve God, without hesitation.
B) Resolve that you will not allow the world’s tarnish to rub off on you, that you will make yourself a living sacrifice to God in purity.
C) Resolve to trust God enough to busy yourself with His work instead of with material things.
D) Resolve to make a heroic sacrifice of your time and effort by wholeheartedly working to encourage others.
E) This won’t be easy or fun or glamorous or exciting most of the time. But we need to take to heart Paul’s admonition to the Galatians in Gal 6:9, “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (NKJV).
