A common theme

I am preaching messages Sunday mornings and Sunday nights that are a little different from anything I have done so far in my 11 years in the pulpit. I am preaching a series called "Life Lessons from Characters of the Bible". It is a departure from my normal approach to pulpit ministry. My favorite way to study scripture and to preach scripture is to go verse by verse through books of the bible. But I will say that it has been a blessing to do these character studies and I do see the value in other approaches to studying the bible other than strictly verse by verse.

So far I have preached about Joseph, Moses, Gideon, David, and Jonah. There is one common theme that seems to keep emerging.

1 Corinthians 1:26-29 For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble;but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are,that no man should boast before God.
 
God often chooses people to work through that are unlikely candidates. God is in the business of bringing glory to Himself, not humans. God gets the glory when something great is accomplished through someone that is not great himself, because everyone recognizes that it was not the man that accomplished it, it was the Lord working through the man. As we study characters of the bible, this idea keeps coming up over and over again. I have never done a study of any kind that has highlighted this concept in my thinking quite the way these character studies have.

It is more apparent to me now than ever that the normal course of things for the Lord is to use people who are very ordinary and very flawed when He wants to accomplish something. The characters that I have taught on so far: an arrogant man, a murderer, an adulterer, a wimp, and a disobedient man. So if you are ordinary and flawed, then you are just the type of person that God would choose to accomplish His will!!