A condensed version of this sermon was preached on August 17, 2003
When I learned that I was going to become a pastor, I immediately sought out the advice of other pastors…..men who had more experience in this area than I did. I wanted to tap into their wisdom so I could learn things that would help me do a better job with this new task that God had given me. One area I specifically sought help was in the area of sermon preparation. I asked people like Dr. Bugg and Brian Connor and my father and several others to give me their tips when it came to that weekly task of preparing the message for Sunday morning. And I got lots of helpful advice. Some suggested certain books that I should read on this subject. Others said I should subscribe to periodicals like Proclaim magazine and Preaching Today. But the best tip I received by far was to start what is known as a “sermon garden.”
Now a “sermon garden” is simply a running list of sermon topic ideas. I started my own list almost immediately and have used it extensively in the last 18 months. And here’s how it works: I keep a running list of sermon ideas on a computer disk and anytime I think of something that should be addressed in sermon form, I enter it into my “sermon garden” file. Many times as I am reading scripture God will plant a thought in my mind and I’ll add it to my garden. For Christmas this year, Sue gave me a great “sermon gardening tool”…a nifty pocket tape recorder and I carry it with me every where I go and any time an idea comes over me I quickly hit “record” and then later I “plant” them in my sermon garden.
Well, like any garden — a sermon garden needs tending if you hope to harvest anything from it.
So once a week or so I go over the ideas in my “garden” and add a thought or two to an idea that has been “growing” ….. or pull a “weed” here and there….you know…ideas that just don’t seem to be producing. Then about four times a year I go away for a day or two — I head somewhere that I can be away from the hubbub and bustle of our church office and be alone with God. And I take my garden with me. After much prayer I look in the garden and “pick” the ideas that seem best developed and most needed by this church….this “harvest” turns into my sermon plans for the next few months.
Now, if you ever have a suggestion for a “seed” to plant in my “sermon garden” I hope you’ll be sure to tell me!
Last year about this time I planted a “sermon seed” and I’ve been thinking about it and working with it ever since and a few weeks ago I decided it was ready to harvest. The seed began one day with my awareness that there are basically two ways that God has done and continues to do miracles in our world. And this morning I want us to look at this concept together for we need God’s miraculous intervention in our lives. We need to be assured that He is involved. We need to know that God cares enough to work in and around us helping us deal with the problems we face every day so I think an awareness of how He does act will be a source of encouragement.
I want us to look at two texts that illustrate these two ways that God acts. The first is from the writings of that Old Testament Minor prophet Zechariah. The words God inspired Zechariah to write make up the next to the last book in the Old Testament so flip all the way to Malachi and then go back one book and let’s look together at Zechariah 4:6-7
6 – So He said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.’
7 – ‘What are you, O mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel, you will become level ground.’ Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it! God bless it!’
This incident in the life of Israel shows us the first way that God miraculously acts in our lives. (1) Often our God makes BIG THINGS small.
In other words there are times in our lives when we face impossible problems or tasks……things that in a very real sense are “mountains” blocking our path. And when we ask for His help, God makes these mountains….these BIG THINGS small. This is the truth that God communicated through Isaiah when He promised “…every mountain and hill will be made low…the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.” And this particular text from Zechariah was written during a period of Israel’s history where God used this minor prophet to teach His people this very encouraging truth.
Now to refresh you on Old Testament history a bit. Zechariah served God during the time period in which the Jews had just returned from the Babylonian captivity. As soon as they arrived back in Jerusalem they realized that God was leading them to rebuild the temple that Solomon had built which now lay in ruins so that they could once again worship in God’s house…..and at first enthusiasm was high for this task. With great zeal the people quickly laid the foundation….but gradually the rebuilding of the temple slowed to a standstill. The local residents, the Samaritans, opposed this building project and made it their goal in life to discourage the people from participating in the project. And many workers quit working on God’s house all together so that they could fix their own houses. As a result of these and other factors, all construction stopped. And as the years went by the unfinished temple became a testimony of the Jew’s preoccupation with their own lives and their lack of zeal for the Lord’s business. Zerubbabel was the governor of the little colony of Jews returned from exile….and he apparently prayed for God’s help in resuming the building of the Temple. I imagine that ZERUBBABEL had looked at the task that was set before him and had seen the limited resources and all the obstacles and felt like giving up. He probably remembered stories of the glory of the old temple and that made his job seem even more “mountain-sized”…even more impossible.
But you know opportunities for God to work are often disguised as impossible tasks. And Zerubbabel was wise enough not to give up but to ask for God’s help. And God did come to his aid. He sent two prophets, Zechariah and Haggai and God’s response to Zerubbabel’s prayer is in today’s text. Remember through Zechariah God commented on the seemingly impossible task before them by saying, “NOT BY MIGHT NOR BY POWER BUT BY MY SPIRIT.” In other words, God said, “Don’t worry Zerubbabel…the temple will be rebuilt (and it was)…the capstone will be laid….this impossible task will be accomplished….but it will not be finished by your might or your power…it will be completed by the power of My Spirit.” God was telling Zerubbabel that this thing that seemed like an unscalable mountain….this task that appeared to be too much for him and his workers WAS too much for them and their strength but it was not too much for God! God said that He would level Zerubbabel’s mountain….that it was less than a SPEED bump from His perspective.
And you know, I believe that God had these words written down and preserved all these centuries because this message wasn’t just for ZERUBBABEL. God meant these words for you and me as well. He wants us to know that we should not worry about the “mountains” we face in life….that the same mountain-moving power that was available to Zerubbabel thousands of years ago is available to us today. You know throughout my life I have faced many MOUNTAINS….problems that at the time I just knew were unsolvable….burdens that I just could not bear on my own. But each time I gave the problem to God, He did for me just what He did for Zerubbabel. He leveled the mountains in my path. And in each experience God reminded me once again how essential it is that I trust in Him and rely on His strength and not my own. God has taught me that I can get through any mountain but…”not by might nor by power but by HIS SPIRIT.” You see, this is one way that God acts. He turns seeming defeat into amazing victory…He makes the IMPOSSIBLE possible. He DOES makes big things small.
The Biblical record states time after time that God did this. He turned the Great Red Sea into a dry path so that the people of Israel could walk across safely and then He let the waters return to destroy the pursuing unconquerable Egyptian army. Years later He made it rain bread and meat so the people would not go hungry. God stopped the Sun so the army of Israel could win a decisive military victory. He pulled down huge city walls that were thought to be impregnable. When hordes of evil armies threatened His people, God destroyed them. His Son healed the sick…gave sight to the blind….raised the dead….and leveled the biggest mountain….when through His death and resurrection, He made a way for the sins of all mankind to be forgiven. For…as Martin Marty says, “It takes more doing for a holy God to forgive an errant person than it does to part the waters of a sea.” God does make BIG things small. As Jesus said in Luke 18:27, “What is IMPOSSIBLE with men is POSSIBLE with God.”
Now-what about your life? What mountains do you face this morning? What are those things that seem to be impossible for you today? Is it sickness? Is it financial troubles or insurmountable problems at work? Is it a grief that you just can’t bear any longer? Is your marriage or family falling apart? Do you struggle with anxiety or depression so great you don’t think you can make it through another day? Then hear this….NOTHING is impossible with God….He can make a way when there is no way. God can take the BIG things in your life….and make them small. As He told Jeremiah, “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”
I could share stories all morning long that show that NOTHING is too hard for God. But one that stands out in my memory was told by Paul Deutschman. This true story occurred not long after the end of World War II. Deutschman was riding the subway in Brooklyn and miraculously came upon an empty seat — next to a man in his mid thirties. He took the seat and noticed that the man was reading a Hungarian-language newspaper. Deutschman had spent some time in Hungary and he knew the language so the two began to talk.
The other man’s name was Bela Paskin. Paskin had been a law student when the war began in 1940 and had been put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine. Later he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead. When the war ended he covered hundreds of miles on foot until he finally arrived at his home in Debrecen, a large city in eastern Hungary. When he reached the apartment once occupied by his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, he found strangers living there. He ran upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife had once shared. It too was occupied by strangers.
And, none of them had ever heard of his family. As he was leaving, a boy ran after him, calling “Paskin bacsi! Paskin bacsi!” which means “Uncle Paskin!” The child was the son of some of his old neighbors. Paskin followed him home and talked to the boy’s parents and learned that his entire family was dead…that the Nazis had taken them and his wife to Auschwitz. Paskin knew that Auschwitz was the most horrible of all the Nazi death camps and so he immediately gave up hope. Then consumed with grief He set out walking again…crossing border after border until he was finally able to emigrate to the United States in 1947….three months before his meeting with Deutschman on the Brooklyn subway.
All the time that Paskin was sharing this story, Deutschman was thinking that somehow it seemed familiar. He had recently met a young woman who had been from Debrecen. She had been sent to Auschwitz but from there she had been transferred to work in a German Munitions factory. Her relatives had all been killed in the gas chambers. Later she was liberated by the Americans and was brought to the US in the first boatload of displaced persons in 1946. Her story had moved him so that Deutschman had written down her name and phone number, intending to invite her to meet his family and help relieve her terrible emptiness and loneliness. He asked Paskin, “Was your wife’s name “Marya?” He replied, “Yes, how did you know?” They immediately got off the train and Deutschman dialed Marya’s number. He asked Marya if she had lived at a certain address in Debrecen and confirmed that she was indeed Paskin’s long lost wife. Deutschman put Paskin on the phone and watched as the expression on his face showed that a huge “mountain” had been moved in his life….as he spoke to the wife that for years he had believed dead.
Well, Deutschman put Paskin in a taxi and a few minutes later he was reunited with Marya. Both husband and wife believe it was God who heard their prayers and acted to miraculously bring them back together. And God often works this way….He moves mountains…He makes BIG THINGS small. But you know that is not the only way God works miracles. For, He also does the opposite….
2. God makes SMALL THINGS big.
Let’s turn now to a second text. Look at Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians-chapter 1-follow along as I read verse18 and then verses 26-29.
18 – For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
26 – Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.
27 – 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.
28 – He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things-and the things that are not-to nullify the things that are,
29 – so that no one may boast before Him.
This text and others throughout the Bible tell us that God doesn’t just show His power by making BIG THINGS SMALL….Often He does it by using small things to do BIG tasks. In fact God seems to take pleasure in using SMALL things in this way. Think of it. He chose two childless senior adults to be the source from whom an entire nation would spring. He used a boy sold into slavery by his jealous brothers to rule the nation of Egypt and provide a food source for God’s people. He used the tear of a baby to move the heart of Pharaoh’s daughter….so that Israel could have someone to deliver them from bondage. He used the ROD of a shepherd to work mighty miracles through Moses. He made a shepherd boy into Israel’s greatest King. He used the skimpy lunch of one little boy to feed 5,000 men on a hill side near the Sea of Galilee and to teach all mankind that Jesus is the Bread of life. He used twelve uneducated men to turn the world upside down. God delights in doing BIG things with that which is SMALL and seemingly insignificant.
As it says in our text, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise…the weak things to shame the strong…the lowly things and the despised things and the things that are not-to nullify the things that are.” And then Paul reminds us in verse 18 that the greatest SMALL thing God ever used was the cross. He took some rough lumber…wood that was used for an execution…and He turned it into the universally recognized symbol of Jesus’ victory over death itself. God does make SMALL THINGS big.
And do you know how this principle applies to you and me today? That means that there is no one too small-no one too untalented — for God to use to accomplish GREAT tasks in His kingdom. In fact God prefers the humble–not the proud…the weak–not the strong.
So as Henry Blackaby says, “If you feel weak, limited, or ordinary, then you are the best material through which God can work.” You know when the Apostle Paul asked God to take away his weakness — which he referred to as his “thorn in the flesh” God’s reply was, My grace is sufficient for you….FOR MY POWER IS MADE PERFECT IN WEAKNESS….”
I love Paul’s response to this teaching. Writing to the Corinthians he said, because I know this to be true — because I understand this principle…”…I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me….I delight in weaknesses…for when I am weak….then I am strong.Paul’s walk with Christ taught him to believe that he could, ….do all things (not through his own feeble strength but…) through Christ who strengthened him!”
And Paul is not alone. The Bible is full of the stories of small, weak people whom God used to do unbelievably great, things. The 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews has often been called a “roll call of God’s heroes”.Yet, this listing of great giants in the kingdom of God like Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph begins with the words: “Those who out of weakness were made strong” (Hebrews 11:34 ) Or….to paraphrase this verse… “Those who out of smallness were made BIG.”
So you see doing BIG THINGS in the Kingdom of God is not about my ability or your ability….it is really about my weakness…your weakness….our SMALLNESS. Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland mission and the modern missionary movement, once said: “When God sought me out and called me to do His work in China, He must have said: ‘This man is weak enough, he will do.'” The secret of great, spiritual power is to be aware of our weakness and our need for God’s strength.For it is just at the moment that we confess our failings-that we are most fully conscious of both our need for God’s help and of God’s willingness to give us the strength to do those GREAT… …BIG tasks to which He calls us.
In the early part of this century a Frenchman named Emile Coue came to prominence through his own brand of medical quackery. He claimed to have discovered and developed an almost infallible method of healing. Basically it was this: Emile said when you were sick, you could get better by insisting to yourself that you were really getting better. He taught that a person could quite literally talk himself out of his illness. All that was necessary was for the sick person to repeat the following familiar phrase twenty times in a row on two occasions daily: Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.
Emile claimed that he had seen people cured of heart trouble, ulcers, bronchitis, clubfeet, bad nerves, and a multitude of other problems, by following his method. Emile is only one of hundreds of people in various walks of life down through history who have held the belief that self confidence will take care of any problem…that self-confidence will enable anyone to complete any task.
Now self-confidence is a good thing…..but if you want to live an exciting — deeply meaningful Christian life it is not enough. To follow God’s will to be a part of His kingdom we must follow a different philosophy. You see, in stark contrast to Emile Coue — God does not build our self-confidence…He builds our dependence upon Him. Over and over in His word are recorded stories that illustrate the truth that when God wants a man or a woman to do great things for Him. He builds into that man or woman not self-confidence but God-confidence.
Do you remember the Old Testament story of Gideon? Gideon led the army of Israel to defeat the Midianites who had invaded Israel with an army of 135,000. When God called Gideon to do this He didn’t pat Gideon on the back and say….Now Gideon you can do this…YOU must believe in yourself…YOU CAN DO THIS! No…in fact God commanded Gideon to reduce his army from 32,000 to a mere 300. In so doing, Gideon was forced to trust in God…he was led from self-confidence to develop God-confidence. You see…You cannot be too small for God to use…but you can be too big. God always works in a powerful way in the lives of weak people.
SO — God is not looking for GREAT Christians. He is looking for BELIEVING Christians who will be showcases for His glory and not their own. As Paul said in Colossians 1:27, “It is Christ IN YOU…the hope of glory!” God does not call us to believe in ourselves and in our own adequacy.
Rather He takes us down to the place where we must depend on Him. Then in grace, He lifts us up by the hand and teaches us that we can trust completely in Him. We learn that we can do nothing without Him and ALL THINGS with Him.
So God does make SMALL THINGS — BIG.
He takes the little things that we give HIM and does mighty…..God-sized tasks with them.
Years ago a Sunday School in Philadelphia was overcrowded, much like some of our children’s departments are here at Redland. But these classes were so crowded that one little girl was actually turned away. From that day on she began to save her pennies to help the church build a Sunday School with more room. But two years after the day she was turned away from Sunday School she died. In going through her things her family found a pocketbook by her bed with 57 pennies in it and a little scrap of paper with a note saying that this money was “to help the church build a bigger Sunday School.” The pastor of that church, Dr. Russell Conwell, used that note to make a dramatic appeal to his congregation for funds to build. People’s hearts were touched.
On hearing this story, one realtor even gave the church a piece of land. He said he just wanted a down payment of fifty-seven cents. The local newspaper picked up the story, and it was carried across the country. The pennies grew, and the results can be seen in Philadelphia today. There is now a church that seats 3,300 people and a very large Sunday School department.
There is also Temple University and Good Samaritan Hospital that came about as a result of that initial effort. In fact, in Temple University there is a room where that little girl’s picture is on the wall with the reminder that she gave her 57 cents with an amazing result. See what God can do with a small thing!?
You know each week I pray that my sermon gardening won’t end with just a completed sermon. I pray that the seeds of God’s word will germinate in your heart and mind and bear fruit in your own life. I wonder….has it done that for you today? Is there some mountain you are facing…some impossible thing in your life? I hope that you now realize that God can move it….He can make a way when there is no way. All you have to do is ask for His help. In Jeremiah 33:3 God promised, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”
Perhaps you are here today and your own sin is blocking your way to God. You have never repented of your sin and asked for God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ. Won’t you do that today? If you do He will forgive you and come into your life and you will now the sheer joy of walking through life with your Creator and Redeemer at your side….as He pours His power for living life into you.
And then….do you feel small? Do you feel ordinary….weak…incapable of doing any GREAT thing for God? Then you are just the kind of person He is looking for. He can and will do GREAT things-BIG things — through your life if you will give it to Him. We would love to have you take the first step in this commitment by joining this church and working alongside of all the ORDINARY people here through whom God is doing EXTRAORDINARY things.