A Call to Greatness - Ephesians 3:10-11

 

Do you believe this morning that it could be said that you were "The

Right Person at the Right Time?" Do you think God has particular plans

for you in a specific place or with a special person?

 

Many times we struggle with such a concept—we aren't ready to be that

specific with our lives but we certainly are not prepared to go the other

route and associate everything with fate.

 

By the spring of 1940, the British Empire were looking over a narrow

ribbon of water at the greatest war machine the world had ever seen.

 

Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, and Norway have already fallen

to the armies of the Third Reich. By the 9th of May, Holland, Belgium and

France were barely hanging on and would soon succumb to Germany. All that

lay between England and utter destruction was 20 miles of English Channel

and the courage of one man.

 

On the 10th of May, 1940, King George IV asked Winston Churchill to serve

as Prime Minister. A month later, the day after France surrendered,

Churchill addressed the nation on the BBC:

 

"Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it

depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions

and our Empire…Hitler knows that he will have to break us on this island

or lose the war….If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free and the

life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we

fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all we

have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age…Let

us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if

the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, Men

will still say: 'This was their finest hour.'

 

A great man matched to a critical hour in human history. There have been

a few such men through time: soldiers, explorers, scientists, writers,

politicians.

 

Esther 4:12-15: "When Esther's words were reported to Mordecai, {13} he

sent back this answer: "Do not think that because you are in the king's

house you alone of all the Jews will escape. {14} For if you remain

silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from

another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who

knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?"

{15} Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: {16} "Go, gather together

all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for

three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this

is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if

I perish, I perish.""

 

(Gen 45:3-8) "Joseph said to his brothers, "I am Joseph! Is my father

still living?" But his brothers were not able to answer him, because they

were terrified at his presence. {4} Then Joseph said to his brothers,

"Come close to me." When they had done so, he said, "I am your brother

Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! {5} And now, do not be distressed

and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was

to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. {6} For two years now there

has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not

be plowing and reaping. {7} But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for

you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. {8}

"So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to

Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt."

 

Gal. 4:4: "But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a

woman, born under law…"

 

Great souls who, in moments of crisis, have dared to stand in the breach

and fight for something they believed in, something they loved, something

worth dying for.

 

They didn't do it for the fame. They didn't do it for the riches. God

knows they didn't do it for the gratitude of their contemporaries--for

more often than not their deeds were unappreciated until after their

deaths. (Churchill was voted out of office weeks after the Germans

finally surrendered unconditionally.)

 

They dared, they sacrificed, they gave all they had because they believed

in the rightness of what they were doing.

 

Many of them acted as they did because they felt the hand of God laid

upon them. They had been given a mission, a calling. To be true to that

charge, they gave up everything in the single-minded pursuit of a higher

vision.

 

Transition: Saul of Tarsus was such a man. Saul, called Paul, changed the

world and all of history more than any other person who has ever lived,

with the single exception of the one who was Paul's master. At a pivotal

point in time, God laid his hand on Paul and asked him to be His

spokesman for a new world order.

 

What an unlikely candidate:

· He was born an outsider to a race of outsiders

· His home-land was occupied by Roman troops.

· He was born with Roman citizenship, an honor to everyone but his own

countrymen who hated Rome with a passion

 

Almost everything we know about Saul foretells mediocrity, not greatness:

· Tradition describes him as short, bald, bow-legged, hunchback with weak

eyes

· We have hints in Scripture that he made a poor impression in person

· that he was not eloquent in speech

· that it was easy to take him for granted and rebel against his

authority

 

Acts 26:9-11: "So then, I thought to myself that I had to do many things

hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. {10} "And this is just what I

did in Jerusalem; not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons,

having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were

being put to death I cast my vote against them. {11} "And as I punished

them often in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme; and

being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign

cities."

 

Something happened to Saul that turned him into the Paul we know:

· He could have lived out his life as a champion of the Jewish faith,

fighting the battle against Christianity

· He could have won the love and respect of his peers, something he seems

to have needed badly during the early years of his life

· He could have become a great rabbi in the declining days of the Jewish

faith and nation.

 

* But if he had chosen to do so, his name would have been as little

remembered as the names of dozens of great Rabbis who populated the

religious scene before and after Jesus.

 

Instead. Saul had a vision that turned his life inside out and utterly

changed the course of his destiny--and, by the way, the course of human

history. Saul, the persecutor of Christianity, became Paul the preacher

of the Christian faith.

 

He became a heretic, a traitor…what eventually happened to him ought not

happen to the worst of individuals, much less a person of such noble

character as this one:

 

2 Cor. 11:22-30: "Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am

I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. {23} Are they servants of

Christ? (I speak as if insane) I more so; in far more labors, in far more

imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death.

{24} Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. {25} Three

times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was

shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. {26} I have been

on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers,

dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the

city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false

brethren; {27} I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless

nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

{28} Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure upon me

of concern for all the churches."

 

Conclusion: Will we be a "great church matched to a critical hour?" There

is no question that the mission which drove Paul has been handed on to

us.

 

God's "intent" is that "now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of

God should be made known."

 

The question is--are we as a church willing to step up to that mission?

· Are we willing to stand in the breach and risk everything for what we

believe?

· Will we dare to make the sacrifices and pay the price in the

single-minded pursuit of a higher vision?

 

God continues to look for people who will be his "Pauls."

· Somewhere in this world there are churches willing to be great for the

sake of a great cause.

· Somewhere in this world there are churches willing to step forward in

difficult days and say "Follow us as we follow Christ."

· Will we be such a church?

 

"The credit belongs to the man [or the church] who is actually in the

arena. whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who knows the

great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy

cause; who at best. if he wins, knows the thrills of high achievement,

and, if he fails, at least fails daring greatly, so that his place shall

never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor

defeat."

---John Kennedy, paraphrasing Theodore Roosevelt.

Last modified: January 04, 2010