No Experience Necessary

Listen Online:

Transcript:

Have any of you ever been made to feel like you didn’t measure up? Anybody? Or is that just me?

I think most of us at a time or two or more have been made to feel like we didn’t measure up for whatever purpose we were being looked at. I remember shortly after Christian and I got married, I had already been called to preach, but I wasn’t pastoring anywhere. I was just preaching places where I got the opportunity.

I shouldn’t say just preaching. I was getting to preach places where I got the opportunity. But I was in insurance as my main vocation, and the economy went south about that time.

It was 2008, and it got even harder to get people to buy insurance. It got harder to get people to buy much of anything, as a matter of fact. And I started realizing I was not going to be able to support us working at the insurance agency.

And so I started looking for other jobs, and I’d always said, you know, my goal, this was after I’d given up on the whole politics thing. And my goal at that point was to be a preacher. I knew that’s what God had called me to do.

And I thought, you know, if I ever have to be bivocational, if I ever have to do something else, I really, I wanted to teach school. I always enjoyed teaching high school when I got to substitute there. And I loved it when I got to substitute for teachers who would actually let me teach something instead of just having me play tic-tac-toe with 12th graders.

And so I started interviewing for jobs. And I interviewed for jobs at various private schools. And they kept coming back and saying the same thing over and over.

You don’t have the experience. You’re not experienced enough. Well, nobody’s experienced when they start out.

You’re hiring people right out of college just like me, and you’re telling me they have experience. And here I’ve been working in the private schools all through college. And I started applying for other jobs.

And I’d been told by everybody that for most jobs, it didn’t matter what you got a degree in, just get a degree. Well, that didn’t happen to be the case in teaching. And I started looking for jobs outside of working in the schools.

And I applied at another insurance company just to answer phones and work in the call center. And I kept being told, you don’t have enough experience. I’ve answered the phone before, people.

I don’t know what experience you think it takes. Another company contacted me. I didn’t even go looking for them.

They contacted me and asked me to come in for an interview. And I went in for an interview. And it went very well.

But they were supposed to call me on such and such day. They didn’t. I called them and they said, we gave it to somebody else who had more experience.

Folks, I got very depressed. It took about six, seven, eight months somewhere in there for me even to find a job. And that was a rough time.

It was discouraging. I mean, every other day it seemed like I’d go for an interview and be told I wasn’t qualified or I didn’t have enough experience. Or on rare occasions, they tell me you have too much experience, you have too many qualifications because you’ve got this diploma from OU.

And I thought, I can’t eat my diploma. I can’t send my diploma into the electric company. And I remember just being very depressed and feeling like I didn’t even want to apply for any more jobs because I could not handle one more person telling me I was not experienced enough or I was not qualified.

And to be honest, I felt like a loser. Anybody else ever been made to feel that way? Not necessarily by jobs, but to have people tell you, and sometimes over and over again, for months and months on end, that you didn’t measure up, you weren’t good enough.

And when I got into vocational ministry, which I found another job and ended up quitting that to go and pastor a church. It’s like God was trying to teach me something there. I’m still trying to figure out what it was, but I searched all those months to find a job and worked there five months and then quit to work at the church.

But through all that, I felt like I wasn’t good enough, and I fully expected that when I started getting into ministry that it would be the same thing, because churches are notorious for telling somebody, you’re too young, you’re too inexperienced, and the guy’s standing there saying, but I’m 50. Or, I can draw Social Security. How old do I have to be to be a pastor?

And that’s one of the reasons I was so shocked when you all called me here. But a lot of times, we’re made to feel by people out in the world that we are not good enough, that we don’t measure up. And unfortunately, when it comes to the Lord’s work, a lot of times, whether somebody makes us feel that way or not, we do feel like we don’t measure up, like we’re not good enough.

And folks, there is a sense in which we are not good enough. If we’re talking about God’s acceptance in the first place, we’re not good enough. If God could just accept us the way we are, then the cross was unnecessary.

And let me tell you something, based on my reading of the Bible, the cross was not unnecessary. The cross was absolutely essential for our salvation. But we’re going to look at a passage today where Paul talks about the calling to preach the gospel.

And I’ve shared with you the last two weeks, when I talk about preaching the gospel, yes, there is a sense in what I’m doing here is preaching. I’m preaching and teaching before a congregation. But in the Greek and in the Hebrew, most often the word used that’s translated preached, or the words that are translated preach most often mean just to proclaim something or to make words.

And it’s not used specifically of somebody who stands in the pulpit, although that is part of my calling. We are all, as believers, we are all as Christians called to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are all called to share the gospel. We’ve talked about what the gospel is, that it’s the story of what Jesus did, who he is, what he did, and why he did it.

that he was the only begotten Son of God, that he died on the cross for our sins, according to the Scriptures, was buried and rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and he did that so that we would have access to the grace of God the Father, so that our sins could be forgiven and God could mete out mercy to us while keeping his holiness and his justice intact. Folks, that’s the gospel. And what we’re going to talk about today is who’s called.

And I’m going to go ahead and get right to the point and answer for you that we are all called, as I’ve told you before. And a lot of times our objections are along the lines of, well, I don’t feel like I can do that. I don’t feel like I know enough.

I don’t feel like I can speak well enough. I don’t feel like people like me well enough. I don’t feel like, Brother Gene’s job, he’s a preacher.

They’ll take care of it. Folks, if it’s up to the ordained men to take care of spreading the gospel, it would have died out a long time ago because there just aren’t enough of us. It was the calling of every single believer in Jesus Christ to tell somebody else what Jesus Christ did for them and what he can do for them too.

It’s the calling of every one of us. And as I said, we all have our own individual reasons for thinking that we’re not good enough, that we can’t do it, And they really aren’t reasons at all if we get into what Paul said this morning. Starting in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18, he says, For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness.

And the world that perishes around us does look at the preaching of the cross and says that doesn’t make sense. That’s foolish that you people believe that. But see, it’s not just the cross, it’s also the empty tomb.

We don’t put our faith just in somebody who got himself killed. We put our faith in somebody who willingly laid down his life for our sins and rose again on the third day to prove that he could do what he said he could do. But the world looks at it and says, your leader was crucified.

He went and got himself killed. It’s foolish that you people believe this. There are people, it’s hard for me to believe that there are actually people who believe Christ did not exist as a historical person.

Most historians, whether they believe he was the unique son of God or not, they at least admit he was a historical figure. There are people out there who still believe the lie that he never actually existed. That’s unbelievable to me, given the evidence that we have.

One of the things that we’re going to talk about when we do this series with the senior saints, by the way, the evidence for Jesus Christ, even outside of the New Testament. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. And that’s not in the sense that, hey, we’re better than them now because we understand.

We get it. To them, it’s just gibberish, but we understand. Folks, we understand because we’re on the other side.

We pass from death unto life. Before we trusted Christ, the preaching of the cross was foolishness to us as well. Before the Holy Spirit got a hold of us, the preaching of the cross was foolishness to us as well.

And folks, if the Holy Spirit gets a hold of them, they will have passed from death into life, and it will be to them as well the power of God. So we shouldn’t take from that that, okay, we’re better than them now because we’re saved. We are still sinners merely saved by the grace of God, as we say all the time.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. I loved this verse. I clung to this verse when I was in college because a lot of really wise men say a lot of dumb things about God, about the Bible, and about Jesus Christ. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

So through this foolishness of preaching, through this foolishness of the cross, even the wisdom of the wise will be destroyed. And I remember, I’ve told you about the day that I realized the resurrection was key to all of this because you cannot, you cannot, if you take an honest look at the evidence, you cannot conclude anything other than Jesus Christ rose again from the dead the way he said he would. There’s no other, if you start talking about, well, he didn’t really die, he just swooned, or he didn’t really exist, or the disciples stole his body.

Folks, it is so easy to shoot holes in those objections that it’s not even funny. There is no logical explanation for the belief that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead other than the fact that he rose again from the dead. And if he rose again from the dead, he also existed.

He was also crucified. And it follows, everything else follows from that. Folks, this book has got to be true.

What it says about Jesus Christ has got to be true. And with this foolishness of the cross and the preaching of his death, burial, and resurrection, Even the wise, with all their arguments, folks cannot make any headway against the story of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe?

Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God.

It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And so all the wise men of the world looked on it and said, the wise men of the Jews looked on it and said, no, this man wasn’t the Messiah. The wise men of the Greeks said, there’s no such thing as the resurrection.

You remember they called Paul a babbler when he preached at Athens about the resurrection. And all these wise men came up with their moral philosophies and their ideas. But you know what?

Not one person in the history of mankind has ever been saved from eternal hell by one of man’s moral philosophies. It’s only been through the foolishness of the preaching of the cross. for after that in the wisdom of the world, the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom, by its own wisdom, knew not God.

It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Folks, our job is to preach the gospel so that those who will believe will be saved. Because it’s only by the preaching of the cross that people are saved.

For the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness. The Jews were looking for signs of the Messiah when God had already given them signs that it would be Jesus Christ. That he wouldn’t be their Messiah in a crown, he would be their crucified Messiah. And so they were still off looking for all these signs and the Greeks were looking for wisdom and philosophy.

And so he says that we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block. They couldn’t get past it, they didn’t know what to do with it. With the story of the cross in his day.

And to the Greeks it was just foolishness, this idea that somebody could rise again from the dead. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. To those who have been called and have heard the call of God, the call of the Holy Spirit, to repent and believe, Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Verse 25, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men. Folks, don’t take this verse to indicate that God is somehow foolish. What it’s talking about is what men say, what men see and claim to be the foolishness of God.

This idea of preaching of the gospel, this idea of God’s way of saving mankind that honestly, we would never have come up with it. And to us, the idea that God would save us by dying sounds foolish to the world unconverted. But God, even at his most foolish in the eyes of men, God, even at his most foolish, is wiser than men.

Folks, he’s not only wiser than the wise man who stood in the streets of Athens with his moral philosophies, he was smarter, he was wiser than all of them. When I was growing up, my pastor used to say, God is not only wiser than each of us, God is wiser than all of us. God’s not only wiser than me, Eastside, he’s wiser than all of us put together.

Not only wiser than our church, but all the churches put together. He’s wiser than all of mankind put together. Even at what we would say, even at what the world would say is his most foolish, God is still wiser than all of us put together.

And the weakness of God, by the same token, it doesn’t mean that God is weak. But a lot of the world looked at Jesus Christ and said, this is supposed to be your king? This man got crucified.

He was hung on a cross. Even the Bible says, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. He got killed in just about the most humiliating way possible.

And this is supposed to be your king? Folks, even at what mankind would look at and say is God’s weakest point, God is still stronger than each of us and God is still stronger than all of us. So we come to the point here where we begin to talk about ourselves.

Because, see, we’ve been given this message to preach. God has called us to preach because the preaching of the cross is essential to salvation. And even though it sounds foolish to the world and it sounds weak, we’ve still been called to preach it.

And yet there were people, even in Paul’s day, just as there are in our day, saying, I can’t do that. I’m not experienced enough. I’m not qualified enough.

Like I said, we all have our own individual reasons. And as I tell you this, I recognize and I readily admit I’m not as bold as I ought to be either. From time to time, I struggle with these very things about opening my mouth.

But you know what? When I do just get over it, and I’ve told you before about this and thinking, no, I just can’t share the gospel, I’m scared to. Sometimes you just need to get over it.

When I’ve told myself that and actually gotten over it, I find that on those occasions I open my mouth, I don’t know where those words came from. Because God brings things to mind that I’d forgotten about. And God brings verses and stories and illustrations from the Bible and points out that, folks, I’m not that smart to come up with that stuff, and yet God works through even me.

And folks, sometimes if we’ll just get over it and trust God, he’ll do the same for us. And he’ll speak to them through us. For you see that your calling, brethren, and their calling was not only to Christ, but to preach Christ, you see that your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.

So he talks about all the things that they possibly could have looked at and said, that, that makes an excellent preacher of the gospel. And he says, not many of those, to be perfectly honest, have been called. And we’re going to come back and camp out on verse 26 in just a moment.

But he says, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. That had to make the people at Corinth feel good, if you think about it. No, no, it’s okay.

Preach the gospel. You don’t have to be wise to preach the gospel. You go preach it because God even uses the foolish things.

Okay, if they were going to be down on themselves and say, I’m not wise enough. God was going to say through Paul, that’s okay, God can even use a fool to preach the gospel. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.

God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. And the base things of the world and the things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and the things which are not to bring to naught the things that are. So God has chosen what the world sees as foolish, what the world sees as weak, What the world sees as base, and by base we mean despised.

The things and the people that the world looks on and says they are not experienced, they are not qualified, they are not worth listening to, God has chosen to use those kind of people to preach the gospel. You’re going to leave out of here with a bucket load of self-esteem, I can tell you that this morning. Folks, I’m right there in this.

Because there are times I feel like I am not smart enough. I’m not good enough. I don’t have enough of a platform that people would, why would they want to listen to me?

And yet you never know what God can do with a willing person who’s willing to get over their fears, open their mouths, and share the gospel and let God work. And it says he’s chosen these things. It’s not that God just said, okay, well, I can’t get Caesar to convert.

That would help. I can’t get Caesar to convert, and I can’t get the chief priest to convert. So I guess we’ll have to go with plan B and call these people down out of the gutter in Corinth and get them to preach the gospel.

That wasn’t plan B. God chose, he says, the foolish and the weak and the base. Why would he choose that?

Folks, for the same reason that God has chosen the foolish and the weak and the base throughout all of biblical history. God didn’t choose the Israelites to be his chosen people because they were the biggest. As a matter of fact, I believe one place in the Bible says they were one of the smallest groups. There was a time when God called a warrior to go to battle on his behalf and said, wait a minute, you’ve got too many warriors along with you.

And made him send, if I remember the numbers correctly, made him send 90% of his army home. That sounds crazy to go into battle with a few hundred when you could have had several thousand. God said if several thousand warriors go and defeat this other army, they’ll have the glory.

But if a few hundred defeat them, everybody will recognize that there’s no explanation for that but God. folks God continues to use the people that will bring him the most glory God continues to bring to use the people who will bring him the most glory and when somebody who feels like they are worthless as I to be honest I do from time to time I know people think oh he’s the preacher he’s smart and he’s spiritual and he’s close to God I’ve never had anybody say I’m good looking but sometimes they say that about preachers too and and people listen to him and folks a lot of times I feel like I’m worthless and not cut out for the job that God’s called me to do, either as a Christian or as a pastor. Excuse me.

And I know a lot of you feel that way too. And when God uses somebody like me and like you who feels like I am not cut out for this, and somebody comes to Christ or somebody’s taught something, God gets all the glory in that because I recognize and you recognize that we are not powerful enough to do that on our own. You get somebody that’s capable and smart and sophisticated and good-looking and all these things, and they convert somebody, what’s entirely possible, they walk away thinking, how good am I?

How could they resist the message I brought them? Folks, it brings God the most glory when he uses regular people, because we recognize that it’s him at work and not us. And he says that in verse 29, that no flesh, that no flesh, none of us, should glory in his presence.

It’s not that we shouldn’t be happy about the work we do for God or that God does through us, but ultimately the glory belongs to him. But of him are you made in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. Folks, it doesn’t mean that we, though, are just as believers or just the dirt on the street.

God looks at us as believers, as born-again children of God, looks at us and sees the righteousness of Christ. And even though we have no worth of our own, in Christ Jesus we are of God made wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Folks, we have worth to God. Before we get into the application in the last few moments, I don’t want to leave you from this message with the idea that we’re just worthless, that God is disgusted by us.

Folks, our sin, God is disgusted by. When it comes to trying to gain God’s acceptance, we are worthless. There’s nothing good we can do to make God love us, to make God accept us.

But in Jesus Christ, because what Jesus Christ has done to purchase us or to redeem us, we have incredible value in the eyes of God. And we have incredible value because he’s chosen us, even as regular people, even as the foolish, even as the weak, even as the base. He’s chosen to use us, and that and that alone gives us value.

But for those who are sitting out there like I do sometimes and saying, I’m not good enough to go talk to those people about Christ. I don’t know enough. They’ll never listen to me. Three points before we leave out of here today that we can take from verse 26.

First of all, our calling to preach Christ does not depend on how smart we are. Our calling to preach Christ does not depend on how smart we are. You don’t have to know everything about the Bible.

As a matter of fact, none of you know everything about the Bible, nor do I. None of us know everything about the Bible. If it was a prerequisite that we had to know everything about the Bible, know everything about Christianity, have all the answers down, before we could talk to somebody about Jesus Christ, then Jesus Christ is the only one who could have talked to anybody.

The Apostle Paul didn’t know everything. Peter didn’t know everything. Folks, it is helpful if we know some things.

It is helpful if we have some verses we can point people to and say, this is what the Bible says about salvation, because we want to be able to give them our testimony, but apart from what the Bible reveals to us, our testimony is just our story and our experience. And our experience is honestly less valuable than divine revelation. We want to be able to say, this is what happened to me, and by the way, the Bible validates that.

I’m not just making it up, this is not just my opinion. So it helps us to know what the Bible says. But you don’t have to have all of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Numbers and all those things memorized before you can talk to somebody about Jesus Christ. See, God didn’t just call the seminary professors.

God didn’t just call the Mensa members. That is the IQ group, isn’t it, somebody? Okay, somebody’s shaking their head.

All right, thank you. God didn’t just call the Mensa members, these people with these insanely high IQs. God didn’t just call the people who knew lots of facts.

says he chose the foolish things. Because see, there were a lot of people that had a lot of facts, but it didn’t get them any closer to God. He talks about their wisdom, and yet they didn’t get any closer to God, and yet God, by the foolishness of preaching, was able to confound the wise.

So many wise men throughout history have tried to discredit Christianity, have tried to discredit the message of the cross, have tried to bring about an end of this preaching of this message that they consider so foolish and so harmful, and yet they’re confounded by the fact that it continues to spread under the power of God when it doesn’t make sense to them. But folks, it’s the truth. Quite honestly, you don’t have to be smart to tell the truth.

As a matter of fact, I find it easier to just tell the truth. You don’t have to remember as much. Just tell what happened.

Folks, we don’t have to know all the answers. As I said earlier this morning, we are told to be prepared to give an answer for the hope that lies within you. So it’s not an excuse for us to just sit around and never study our Bibles and never learn anything.

We need to learn, and we need to study, and we need to grow as believers. But if we think we have to get to a certain point before we can talk about Jesus Christ, folks, we will never get to that point. And some of the best times of growth I’ve had in my life have been from talking to somebody about Jesus Christ who had questions I couldn’t answer.

And I had to say, let me find out, and I’ll come back to you about that. And I had to go study and dig and find those things for myself. and I know them for next time.

But folks, if we think we have to get to a certain level of intellect before we can talk to somebody about Christ, the Bible says that’s not true. He hasn’t chosen the geniuses of the world. He’s chosen us regular people.

Second of all, our calling to preach Christ does not depend on how capable we are. It doesn’t depend on how capable we are. It doesn’t depend on who’s the best speaker.

Thank goodness. Because sometimes I get up here and I get so tongue-tied I don’t even know which way the words are coming out. It doesn’t depend on who has the best rhetorical style, who has the best voice.

I hate the sound of my voice. It doesn’t depend on who’s the most polished. It doesn’t depend on who’s able to do the most things.

Folks, it’s not based on how capable we are. He says not many mighty have been called. He’s chosen instead the weak.

And the world looks at people and says, we look at people, Christians look at people and say, man, if that guy would just get saved, can you imagine what he could do? Wouldn’t it be great if that guy got saved? See, there I go with the tongue-tied thing.

Wouldn’t it be great if that guy got saved? And the answer is yes, it would be great if he got saved, if anybody got saved. But if you’re wanting him to get saved because he’s mighty, because he’s capable in a great number of things, and boy, that’d help out the cause, we’re not looking at things from God’s perspective.

Because if God does something through somebody who’s already got the capability of doing it, then that person’s going to get a lot of glory. But if God does something through somebody who’s incapable, Who gets the glory then? And so you may think, well, I don’t know all the right words.

I’m not a good speaker. I get nervous when I talk to people. I’m not a forceful character.

I’ve told you before about Richard Parker, the Marine that I used to do street ministry with, and he could just force his way into people’s conversations, and they would listen, and he commanded such respect that even, what do you call them, gangbangers walking down the streets of Oklahoma City would stop and listen to him with respect. I can’t do that. Yet that doesn’t mean I’m not called to talk to people about the same Jesus Christ that he was.

Folks, he didn’t call the capable. It doesn’t matter how capable we are. Third of all, our calling to preach Christ does not depend on how prestigious we are.

It doesn’t depend on the prestige that we hold in the eyes of the world. See, he said not many noble were called either. And they had, we don’t really have it the same way they did, but they had nobles and common people.

And the idea, I guess, if we can just get the nobles or the aristocrats or the upper crust of society to come to Christ, then other people will follow suit. Folks, that wasn’t God’s strategy. And this is another area where we think, oh, if such and such celebrity would just come to Christ, if they’d just get saved, can you imagine the kind of influence they would have?

Well, that’s how we see things. But I could name some celebrities who’ve had a lot of prestige and have had a lot of influence, only to announce that they’d become born-again Christians and suddenly they’re never heard from again, because the world quits listening. Folks, God doesn’t call the president and say, you need to preach Christ because you’re noble and you can get people to listen.

God doesn’t call the newest pop star sensation to preach Christ because she can get a lot of people to listen. Folks, God calls the base people of the world. God calls regular people like you and me, because it’s no small wonder if, say, Barack Obama could command an audience.

If Beyonce, I watched a video about her spiritual life the other day. It’s just incredible for somebody who claims to be a born-again Christian, but that’s neither here nor there. She did the Super Bowl show, which I didn’t even see.

There’s some good points about not having cable anymore. But people listen to her when she talks or sports figures. Folks, we know who the celebrities, we know who the prestigious, the noble people are in our culture.

And God didn’t call them and say, hey, if you would just preach Christ, it’d be great because, you know, millions would listen. Folks, if they go out and they preach Christ, which none of them are doing, but if they go out and