Sermonette: God's Playbook Series #2

This September, we are examining God’s Playbook. We’re looking at the various choices and decisions that God has made preserved in the Bible. Plays God has run, that we would be wise to expect he might run again.

If you open your Bibles to the very first page of the New Testament, what you’ll find is a list of names. Matthew chapter 1 begins with the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah. In that list you’ll find some absolute studs. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Hezekiah, and Josiah, to name a few of the absolute rock stars of God-followers you’ll find in that list. Closer inspection, however, notes that four women are mentioned. Tamar, who was impregnated by her father-in-law Judah because he thought she was a prostitute. Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute. Ruth, a woman of character, but also a foreigner Moabite.

Finally, Matthew doesn’t mince words when he says “Solomon, Uriah’s wife was the mother.” Matthew

doesn’t even mention Bathsheba by name, but lays the despicable mess of David’s sin before his readers. These names pop out because they’re the only women, but once you start looking closely, you’ll also notice other names. Manasseh. Jehoiachin. Rehoboam. Take a look at these guys in Kings and Chronicles. They’re terrible people and terrible kings. Despite their failings, however, they ended up in the lineage of Jesus.

That’s the thing about the Bible. Outsiders call us “holy rollers” or other such things suggesting that we act more holy than we are. Maybe we do, maybe we don’t. The Bible, however, is full of people who you wouldn’t expect God to pick. There is a prostitute in Jesus’ lineage, one who acted like a prostitute, and a man who sacrificed his children! It’s gross; and yet, they’re there. God picked them, and God used them. Some of them ended up redeemed, some did not but all of them played a part in God’s plan. God does this so much in the Bible, and does it to this day.

I was a senior in high school when I felt the call to ministry. I knew better than to resist God so I prayed “God, just not small churches.” I hated small church ministry. I was willing to be a full-time missionary in some jungle, or tundra, or desert, just not rural America. God blocked me there, so I went to college to be a Bible Camp director. It was years before I fully yielded to God. Today, I see why he called me, but when he did, I was the wrong guy. I struggled in front of people, I was angry, and I was a terrible teacher with no patience and a disdain for youth ministry.

When we talk about God’s playbook, one of his ‘bread-and-butter’ plays is frequently picking the ‘wrong’ people. He did it through the Bible and he still does it today. The challenge then for us, is to spend as much time with God as possible through reading the Bible, prayer, and worship so we begin to see people the way he does. Only through his eyes, can we see what he sees and the unexpected become a little less surprising.