The Church of Eleven22 - S01 E82 - Calling

Episode Date: September 12, 2020

Hey, church family. Welcome back to a special edition of DeVos. Again, we're walking through. How do you know what God's call in your life is? We talked about preparing our hearts. We're talking about conviction. We talked about character. Now, we want to talk about calling.

How do you know when God has called you? And who does he call? You see, oftentimes you think God calls the best of the best of the best. Let me assure you from personal experience and knowledge. the exact opposite. He doesn't wait until we have our resume all together and then say, oh, that's it. God doesn't draft like that. Actually, God drafts like the Jaguars. Every time you look at the draft, they're like, what are we doing? Because if they ever won it all, you would be like, that must be the Lord. Well, that's how God drafts. I mean, look at us. Look at me.

And so I want to look at 1 Samuel 16, because this is the calling of King David. to what God has called him to do. It says this, and the Lord said to Samuel, Samuel was the prophet. How long will you grieve over Saul since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Now, we talked yesterday about character. It was Saul's character that got him rejected from God's place of appointing. You see, ultimately, the reason that God rejects Saul is because earlier Saul rejects God. Saul rejects God's law, Saul rejects God's prophets, Saul rejects God's priest, and Saul begins to do whatever Saul wants to do.

And ultimately what God says, okay, Saul, I am going to turn you over to yourself. Romans chapter 1 would say, this is the wrath of God upon him. And so he says, I've rejected Saul as the king of Israel. Fill your horn. He's telling Samuel this. God says, fill your horn with oil and go, and I will send you to Jesse, the Bethlehemite. for I have provided for myself a king among his sons. And Samuel said, how can I go?

If Saul hears it, he will kill me. The Lord said, take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord and invite Jesse to the sacrifice. And I will show you what you shall do. And you shall anoint for me, him who I declare to you. You see, listen, it is God who calls us. This is what he is saying to Samuel. God is saying, I have an an anointing and an appointing for a particular person, and this ain't a committee vote.

This is God saying, I am the one who calls an anoints. Verse four, and Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling and said, do you come peaceably? And he said, peaceably, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. consecrate yourselves and come with me to sacrifice. And he consecrated Jesse and his sons, and he invited them to the sacrifice. And when they came, he looked at Eliaab and thought, surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

And the reason he thought that, verse 7, but the Lord said Samuel, do not look on his appearance or on his height of his stature because I have rejected him. This next verse is so important. For the Lord sees, not as man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. You know, one of the worst things that we do as believers is run our mouths about ourselves. One of the worst things that we do as believers is talk down who God has created us to be.

You see, sometimes God has a call on the life of the believer, and before he ever calls, we go ahead and start talking ourselves out of it. We come up with a hundred reasons why God could never use us. But Samuel makes it clear. God doesn't look at what you're looking at. Man looks at the outward appearance. In fact, do you know how King Saul got chosen to be in King Saul? They picked the tallest guy.

And apparently the tallest and the best looking and the most qualified, if he does not have the anointing, he is not God's man for the job. I mean, you've heard this thing all the time. God doesn't call the equip, the equipes the call. That is absolutely true. And so, when talking about yourself, be careful what you say. Your words have power. And it's very, very dangerous for your ears to hear your mouth say things that are not true about what God created in you and for you, because then they'll get in your brain and you'll think them,

then they'll get down in your heart and you'll feel them. And you will begin to try to disqualify yourself and your ears for what God has for you will shrink. By the way, you know what that kind of language is? That's called condemnation. It is not the language of the Father. And I would highly advise you to not speak the language of the enemy, lies in condemnation. Because the language of the Father is love,

and therefore now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And so, again, man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. And then Jesse called Abedadab. and made him pass before Samuel, and he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. And then Jesse made Shama pass by, and he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one.

And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen these. Then Samuel said to Jesse, are all of your sons here? And he said, there remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep. I mean, you want to talk about some daddy issues here,

that his dad, David's dad, Jesse, does not even believe that David has what it takes to try out to be king. Do you understand this? And David's a shepherd, you know that. And we have this very romanticized view of shepherds because we're Christians and the Bible talks about shepherds a whole bunch. And you've seen pictures of shepherds in, like, Bible bookstores. And when we think of shepherds,

because of the 23rd Psalm, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. We think it's a real compliment. It's not a compliment. In fact, I mean, nothing against shepherds, but they would usually take the worst of the worst, the lowest IQ, the one that had the least ability to be a shepherd. Do you know why?

Because sheep are dumb. And it doesn't take any kind of great leadership to watch over the sheep. Now, you've got to be tough, but you pretty much just sit out there with them. You protect them. and when they try to eat something that will kill them, when they do dumb stuff, you keep them from killing themselves.

But David is the lowest of the low in the pecking order of his family. He is so low that when Samuel says, Bring me all of your son so that I can see if God wants to anoint one of them, he doesn't, I guess his dad forgot about him or something, just left him out in the field. And so he says, well, there remains the youngest, but behold, he's keeping the sheep. What Jesse is saying here is he's not qualified. Don't even waste your time.

And Samuel said to Jesse, send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here. And he sent and he brought him in. Now, he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome, and the Lord said, arise, anoint him, for this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointing him in the midst of his brothers. and the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward, and Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.

Okay. Now, first and foremost, don't you try to disqualify yourself for what God may be calling you to do? Maybe you do have a checkered past. David's going to go through several rough spots, but because he repents and comes to the Lord, he is not disqualified from what God has called him to do, maybe you're not the tallest and the biggest and the smartest and the brightest and all of that,

neither was David. And what's crazy about this is while David is out in the field tending to the sheep, what David may have thought was an utter waste of time. Actually, what was happening is that God Almighty was using his time in the field to prepare him to be a giant slayer and a king. Think about this. While David has seen, sitting out in the field slinging rocks with his sling, he probably thinks, well, this sure is a waste of time. All I do is scare away the coyotes and the lions and the bears. And little did he know that God was preparing those skills in him to, in the very next chapter, go out and face Goliath and show to the whole nation that he had what it takes to be the king.

Also, while he's sitting out in the field, maybe he writes verses like, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. You see, maybe one of the, literally one of the most famous songs in the history of humanity, don't waste your time in the field. Maybe you're at some job right now, and it may be, it may not be what you hoped and dreamed. It would be, don't waste your time in the field. In fact, what happens next in David's life, David is anointed to be king in 1st Samuel chapter 16, and it is not until, I think it's 2nd Samuel chapter 5 that he is appointed to be king of

Israel. You know what David does in that time? He submits to the authority that God has in his life. Yeah, but what if my authority doesn't understand how gifted and talented I am? Well, David's didn't either. David's authority was Saul, and Saul went crazy, and Saul tried to kill him, kept throwing spears at and you know what David never did? He never threw a spear back. David did not take matters into his own hands. David trusted that if God called me, then God will confirm me, that if God has anointed me, then God will appoint me. What David understood is that he should never expect God to give him any authority until he learned what it was to live under authority. David knew that the way he exited this season

of his life would determine how he would walk into the next season of his life. You see, God is in the habit of picking nobodies, JV, B-teen, overlooked, bench-warmers. In fact, that's what Jesus does. When Jesus is walking along the sea of Galilee, now think about this, the almighty sovereign creator of the universe, the Redeemer, the judge, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world, He knew I'm going to teach the gospel to 12 men, and then they will be responsible by being carried along by the Holy Spirit

to take this to all the rest of the world. And who did he choose? Did he choose scribes and Pharisees and the people that knew their Bible to best? He chose the tax collector that everybody hated. A bunch of fishermen that got rejected from rabbi school. That's why they were working with their dads. He chose all kind of different people,

but the one thing that was in common, according to the Book of Acts, is this. They were ordinary, uneducated men who had been with Jesus. And they turned the world upside down. That's who God chooses. You know what? Because he gets the glory. And I promise, I promise I know this. I'm an overeducated redneck from Dillon, South Carolina.

I had no kind of big, huge hopes or dreams for what I would do for the kingdom. Nothing like this. just minding my business, teaching a disciple group of teenagers when I was in college, and then spent some time at camp with Coach Lee. And then one day it dawned on me, I think I hear God saying, why don't you come follow me and I will make you fishers of men? And just like everybody, I had a lot of excuses to. I'm not qualified, but God doesn't look at the outside as man does.

He looks at the heart. And then it's God who calls. It's God who qualifies. It's God who anoints and appoints. And King David is anointed in 1st Samuel 16. He's not appointed till 2 Samuel chapter 5. And in between here and there is nothing but conflict and war. Which honestly is the story of our Christian life.

The day you come to Christ, you are anointed a son of God. You are not appointed to heaven until you breathe your last year. And it's a war between here and there. So when God calls you, and again, he may call you to be a disciple maker of your children, or he may be calling you to be a disciple maker as a church planner, or he may be calling you to be a missionary to the very ends of the earth, then it is God who calls. And you can trust him because he formed you.

He's not wasting your time in the field. He is preparing you for the calling that he has on your life. Bless prayer. Father, God, we love you, and we thank you that you are. You're like a good dad that wants to take your kids to work with you, knowing that we pretty much just get in the way. It'd be a lot more efficient if you save the world without using us, if you fulfill the Great Commission without us.

And yet, as image bearers of you, you call us, and you equip us and you anoint us and you appoint us. And God, I thank you that your divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. Lord, I thank you that your divine power has given us all that we need to accomplish everything that you have called us to accomplish. God, I pray for the men and the women that are hearing and sensing a call on their life to be great commission, going, I am sent, kingdom building, gospel proclaiming kind of

people. We pray it in Jesus' name. Thank you.