047. Finding Significance in Obscurity

I’m going to read 6 verses to introduce Steven, a Christian who was stoned to death, and a Christian hater by the name of Saul.

Acts 7:58-60 and ch8-3.

Now please turn to the Book of Acts, chapter 9 on page 1264.  Acts 9, page 1264.  

This is the story of Saul, the Christian hater, and how he got converted to Christianity and started to work for the Christians instead of against them.

We’re going to read from v1 to 19 …

pp     Acts 9:1-19   page 1264

We’ll read around.    Here …

pp        ….  is a picture of Saul on the road to Damascus that we’re going to read about.

David and Noel will start reading and we’ll all read 2 verses each.

---------     The title of our message today is …

pp      FINDING  SIGNIFICANCE  IN  OBSCURITY

I would expect that a huge percentage of the people in our society feel very obscure—the kind of feeling that whatever I do doesn’t really matter. Nobody notices. If I were gone it wouldn’t make much difference in this society. -----    It would be an interesting thing to take a poll and have people respond by saying either “I feel very obscure” or “I think I’m very important to society.”  I expect the vast majority of people would answer “I feel quite obscure”.

If we add to the poll, “How many want your life to be significant and important?” just about everybody would say, “Of course I want my life to be significant and important.” --------  Well, God wants that too. It’s amazing how wrong our perceptions are of ourselves. That’s why God said through the prophet Isaiah in his 55th chapter,

pp      Isaiah 55:8,9     “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

God is saying that how you perceive yourself must be corrected by how God perceives you. --------

How are we going to understand this, so that even though I feel obscure in life, I can feel that my life is significant? Maybe one of the ways to do it is to look at the life of an obscure person. We have lots of those in the Bible. I want you to look at one of them with me, Ananias …

pp       (Ananias picture with Saul)

------   We know very little about Ananias. The apostle Paul gives a brief picture of this in Acts 22, but that’s all. Oh, there are traditions about Ananias. Some say he was one of the 70 disciples Jesus chose. Some say he was the first one to preach the gospel in Damascus. Then he became a bishop of Damascus who was so zealous in his faith that the people seized him, scourged him, and stoned him to death.  They are just traditions and we don’t know if they’re true or not.  All we do know is that Ananias was an ordinary church member.  He was respected in his community, and he became a Christian. That’s all.

Ah, but there’s one other thing: This obscure person had an impact on the apostle Paul, the greatest person—apart from Jesus Christ—to live in all the history of the Christian church in the New Testament scriptures. This obscure person, Ananias, was chosen by God to help begin the journey of the apostle Paul ----- the journey of his conversion, his development, and his understanding of the mission and direction for his life, and of the ripple effect of his teachings down through the centuries.   Imagine an obscure person with that kind of significance. -------

--------   Now, how can that help you and me? Let’s look at some aspects of Ananias’s life, and maybe that will help us get a picture.

Firstly …….

pp       Living with significance         requires a DREAM

First, there must be a dream. Nothing significant in our life ever happens without a dream, a vision, a sense that something bigger could happen to an ‘insignificant Ananias’ like ourselves. When God said, “Go to that house and see Saul of Tarsus,” Ananias said, “What!  How could I do that? That man is after the Christians. – He’s out to kill us.”  And God said,  “My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, so let My bigger thoughts become your thoughts, so your vision becomes big.”  So Ananias’s perspective got bigger.  -------   We’ve got a sign on the wall at the Butterfly House that reads, “DREAM  BIG  DREAMS.” -----

So often, in our feeling of obscurity, we think so small. We focus on the little problems of life instead of getting that bigger picture of life. Ananias got a bigger picture. ------

When you drive down the highway, it’s never good to focus your attention on the dirty spot on the windscreen. It’s so important to get the whole vision in front of you. Focus on the little spot and you’re likely to run off the road.  Life is so much like that. We focus on that little spot thing instead of seeing the big picture. --------

A man came to a construction site where a church was being built, where stonemasons were working. The man said to one of the workers, “What are you doing?”

The stonemason said, “You can see.  I’m chipping a stone.”

The man walked over to another mason and said, “What are you doing?” He answered, “I’m building a wall.”

The man walked over to another mason and said, “What are you doing?”

This mason answered, “I am building a wonderful cathedral.” 

All three were doing the same thing, but what a difference perspective makes!  -------

You probably don’t know Edward Kimball .  He lived over a hundred years ago. He was a Sunday school teacher in Boston, U.S., where a young teenager became part of his class.  This young teenager was a country boy who finished school in grade 5, could hardly read, and his grammar was atrocious.  He didn’t know the ways of the city or of the church. But he came to Kimball’s Sunday school class. When the teen first came to his class, Edward Kimball handed him a Bible. When Mr. Kimball said, “Turn to the Gospel of John,” the country boy didn’t know how to find the Gospel of John. Edward Kimball recognized what was happening, and while the other boys were snickering, he opened the Bible to the Gospel of John and handed it back. When he asked the boys to read, the country boy fumbled as he read.

But Edward Kimball had a big perspective, and he saw possibilities in the boy. Kimball worked with him, and after some months he went down to the store where the boy was working, went into the back room where he was stacking boxes, and led that young boy called Dwight to Jesus Christ. That was the beginning of the ministry of Dwight L. Moody, the greatest Christian evangelist of the 1800’s. -------    Finally, in that chain of events, a young man was converted by the name of Billy Graham who preached to over two billion people and probably led more people to Jesus than anyone else in history.

 We didn’t know Edward Kimball, an obscure church member who had a vision. But his vision transformed a young man who became a significant person.

Let’s have a look now at a short video clip that explains what happened.

VIDEOCLIP    (record this too)

So firstly, living with significance requires a DREAM.  -------------

Now, I have a T-shirt that says …

pp   Wherever the fear may be, 

look it in the eyes!   ----

(Are you getting those letters down boys?)

So next …

pp     Living with significance         requires COURAGE

So there’s another factor in Ananias’s story: courage. Anything worthwhile in life will need some risk. You can’t accomplish anything unless there’s a willingness to step out and say, “Okay, I’m not really sure about this, but somehow I believe this is what I ought to do.” You take the risk. That takes courage.

When the Lord said to Ananias, “You go and see Saul of Tarsus,” Ananias said,  “Wait a minute. I’ve heard that he’s come to destroy the Christians.  Lord, Your Christians in Jerusalem have been harmed by him.”  God’s idea was different from Ananias’s human idea, and God said, “My idea is for you to go.”  It took courage, but Ananias went.  --------

Back in the Old Testament, after Moses died, Joshua was called by God to take over and lead the people of Israel. Joshua was without courage. He was frightened because there were more than two million people. I can’t even imagine being out there in the wilderness with that kind of population. Lead them?  Who wouldn’t be frightened? What a risk to take! Joshua was listening to God when God said, “As I was with Moses, I will be with you.” Three different times God said to Joshua, “Be strong and of good courage.” Joshua did it. ---- You see, anything that’s worthwhile in life is going to take some risk. And God is going to give us the courage to do it, if we’re trusting Him. ----------

During World War I, a British commander was preparing to lead his soldiers back to battle. They’d been on furlough, and it was a cold, rainy, muddy day. Their shoulders sagged because they knew what lay ahead of them: mud, blood, possible death. Nobody talked, nobody sang. It was a heavy time.

As they marched along, the commander looked into a bombed-out church. Back in the church he saw the figure of Christ on the cross. At that moment, something happened to the commander. He remembered the One who suffered, died, and rose again. There was victory, and there was triumph! As the troops marched along, he shouted out, “Eyes right, march!” Every eye turned to the right, and as the soldiers marched by, they saw Christ on the cross. Something happened to that company of men. Suddenly they saw triumph after suffering, and they took courage. With heads now up and shoulders straightened, and a new positive attitude, they began to smile as they went. -----  Friends, anything worthwhile in life will take a risk and risk demands courage.

If any of us haven’t genuinely made a personal commitment of our lives to Jesus Christ, we will see it as a struggle.  But we’ll never discover real significance in life until we allow Jesus to take over. But we don’t know the risk involved in doing this. “It will change my lifestyle,” we say. “It will change what I do at work.” “It will change my relationships.” 

“It will make a difference to me in the community.”  ----  Nothing in life is going to be significant or worthwhile until we’re willing to take the risk.  Let’s be assured that the God who told Joshua to be strong and of good courage says the same 

to us. And I urge each one of us to 

think today about the great possibilities, as we commit our lives more fully to Jesus Christ. -------

So, living with significance requires

 a dream.  So dream big!   Then, 

living with significance requires courage. “Wherever fear may be, look it in the eyes.”  Thirdly, …

pp  Living with significance        requires FAITH

There’s another element we see in Ananias:  faith.  You see, faith is facing the unknown, --- with confidence in the One who knows the unknown!   Faith is living on earth with an insight that leaps beyond what human eyes can see. Faith is discovering that God’s idea is more significant than my idea. Faith is believing Him who can overcome my human limitations.

Too often we emphasize our limitations. Ananias could have done that. He could have said, “But this is an impossibility. There is no way that I can have dialogue and conversation with this man, Saul of Tarsus.” But God said, “You do it,” and he believed God. You see, faith leaps beyond our human limitations.

A certain lady loved flowers and plants. She planted a rare vine against the stone wall near the back of her yard. She nurtured it, and it grew well. It was vigorous; it was beautiful. But it had no blossoms. She was disappointed. One day she stood there looking at that vine with the beautiful foliage but no blossoms. Her neighbor called across the wall, asking her to come over. The lady went over to the other yard. The neighbor said, “Thank you for planting that vine. Look at these beautiful blossoms.” You see, the vine had crept through the stone wall, and the blossoms were on the other side. The owner hadn’t seen them yet.   And that’s the way faith is.   It leaps beyond our human limitations to the other side. ---- If you feel obscure, don’t forget that the God of our faith will overcome your human limitations.

Many years ago in a church, they needed a Sunday school teacher for the junior boys. This class wasn’t bad, just energetic. No teacher had been able to control them. Ewald Chaldberg, a Swedish masseur, was asked to teach, and he chose the junior boys class. Ewald still had his Swedish accent. Buzzing all over the church was the word, “He’ll never make it. Three weeks, and that will be the end.” But somehow Ewald Chaldberg believed God when he took the class, and he stayed with it through the years. He kept teaching boys.  (Boys just like you David and Noel.)

Ewald Chaldberg finally died.  Years later they were celebrating the tenth anniversary of his death.  How do you like that—an insignificant church member, and they’re celebrating the tenth anniversary of his death!  During the service, they recounted that at least forty men were in Christian service someplace in the world because Ewald Chaldberg taught boys, loved them, and watched over them as they grew. Ewald Chaldberg had faith to believe that God could overcome his human limitations. On the morning of that anniversary celebration, twenty-seven church members stood up to say, “In some small way, we’re going to be like Ewald Chaldberg.” ----The obscure immigrant with a Swedish accent found significance because he trusted God who said, …

pp       “My idea is bigger than your idea.”         GOD

------------  Finally, …

pp        Living with significance      requires ACTION

There’s something else important to consider from the life of Ananias:    action. Action is so tied to the whole matter of faith that you can’t separate them. For when we understand something by faith, and we act upon it, that gives substance and conclusion to the faith. When God said to Ananias, “You go to the house of Saul and talk to him,” his immediate response was ‘no’. But the divine command was “Go.” The human idea was countered by God’s idea that said, “Don’t miss it. This is going to work.”  ------

A great orchestra and it’s conductor were rehearsing. The organ was rolling, giving beautiful melody. The drums were thundering. The trumpets were blaring out. The violins were singing beautifully. Suddenly something seemed wrong. Someone in the orchestra had thought, With all this going on, I can rest a while. This is only a rehearsal anyway.

The conductor threw up his arms and said, “Where’s the piccolo?”

The piccolo player said, “I’m obscure. I don’t amount to much. With all of this going on, I don’t have to keep playing.” But the one with the trained ear said, “Every one of us is necessary.”   ------ Friends when you and I feel obscure, we must remember God has something significant for our lives, and we-need -to respond. ------

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, in the minds of many, was the greatest preacher since the apostle Paul. When he was 22 years of age, he preached sermons that some of us hope we might preach before we die. We probably won’t, but we can dream. At age 22 he preached to 5,000 people— morning and evening—in his London church. ----

When Spurgeon was 15 years of age, he was obscure and hadn’t accepted Jesus as his Saviour yet.  On a blustery, snowy weekend, he decided to go to church. He couldn’t get to his planned destination because the weather was so bad. So he turned into a side street, and went into a Methodist church. The preacher didn’t even get there. Only fifteen people had come to the church. A church member decided worship ought to take place, so he got up to preach. He used Isaiah 45:22, “Look unto me and be saved, all you ends of the earth.”   In ten minutes he had run out of things to say.

Then he noticed a boy in the back, under the balcony. He said, “Young man, you look like you’re in trouble. Look unto Jesus and be saved.”    That’s exactly what happened that day. Charles Haddon Spurgeon gave his life to Christ. That troubled young man became the mightiest preacher in England.  ----  He was led to Jesus by a man nobody knows—an obscure church member. -----

In conclusion, what about you today? Do you sometimes feel obscure? An awful lot of us feel that way. But life can be significant and meaningful as we turn our lives over to Jesus.  As a result, amazing transformation happens.  We turn from obscure ordinary caterpillars into significant beautiful butterflies for Jesus.  ------

Please stand to pray.

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