Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 819 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Paul is writing in the beginning of 1st Corinthians in chapter 1, about the message of the cross and the fact that it is utter foolishness to the world and in verse 18, he speaks about that, and then he talks about all the wisdom of men and all of the great things that man can think and accomplish, and he talks about how God in His wisdom is gonna destroy all of that. He's gonna by-pass it all. None of that really counts in His Kingdom.

And so he comes down to verse 26 and he says this. "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth...." Now he doesn't say, not any, but he does say, not many. "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

"He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not...." I mean, that really goes right down and takes in everything, doesn't it? It's not only things that we think of as low down. He says, things that are not. And He does all of this...it says, "...things that are not--to nullify..."--to put to nothing, to make nothing--"...the things that are, so that no one may boast before him." I'm just so encouraged by the simple principle...you can see this everywhere in the Word. And of course, it was hard to ignore that last song, "Let The Weak Say I Am Strong."

( congregational amens ).

I'm saying, Lord is this You?

( laughter ).

You know. Okay, Lord. I get it. But you know, we are so prone, when we think of about anything to do with our lives, let alone the Kingdom of God in the larger sense...what do we look at? We look at our lack, our inability, and as a result, we are all balled up in self...self...what's the word? Anyway, we're involved in self. That's all we can think about, and our weakness and what we are 'not,' and that has absolutely nothing to do with it.

( congregational amens ).

I mean, you go from one end of the Scriptures to another and you will see this. You think about Gideon. Now one day Gideon was just an ordinary guy. He was like anybody here...well any of the guys anyway. He was just out minding his business, doing...what was it? A threshing floor...whatever it was, he was just sort of doing the daily routine. And an angel came up to him and greeted him and said, "thou mighty man of valor."

( laughter ).

And he was looking around to see who was there. I mean...surely I better pay attention to this, this is somebody important here. But you know what? God...he saw himself as a simple farmer. He had a certain self-image that was based upon natural considerations. God saw him as somebody that He was going to use to do something that mattered in the Kingdom of God. And so, He did not address him as a worm, as a...you know all of those things, He said, you are a mighty man of valor.

Well that took some convincing, and you know of course, the Lord allowed him under those conditions to put Him to the test. And you know, he went through the business with the fleeces. He put a piece of lamb's fleece out in the outdoors at night and, I forget what the order was. One night he wanted the ground to be wet and the fleece to be dry. The other time he wanted the fleece to be dry and the ground to be wet. Well the Lord answered his prayer...demonstrating, yes, you are exactly what I say you are. We ought to be the most encouraged people on the planet.

( congregational amens ).

It doesn't matter if we fit the description of what Paul says here. That's what God chooses. And He does it deliberately. He does not want a single one of us to be able to stand there and say, God picked me because I was so smart. God picked me because I had a stronger will than other people. He doesn't choose Pharisees who go into the temple and pray, Lord, I thank You I am not like other men.

( congregational amens ).

My God, we are like other men! We're like everybody.

( congregational amens ).

What a terrible, horrible illusion that man was under. God has to strip that. But if He does, and He brings you down, and He shows you how weak you are, He does not do it so you wallow in defeat and despair. He does it so you will lift up you eyes and see God, and know that He is real and He's alive and He loves you.

( congregational amens ).

And that doesn't matter what we are. And so here He took an ordinary farmer and sent him out to lead the armies of Israel against the mighty Midianite army that was camped against them. And so he called...you know the story how he called all of Israel to gather together...we're gonna form an army here, we're gonna do something about this problem. 32,000 people showed up and the Lord said, it's too many. If you go at it that way, you're gonna think you did something. You're not gonna realize who I am and what I can do. And so He says, tell him...tell these people, everybody who is afraid...send 'em home, and 22,000 went home.

10,000...I can just see the wheels turning in Gideon's mind. He says, well, I don't know, maybe we can still pull this off. We're gonna have to out-smart 'em. We sure can't out...figure...we can't come against them with all our power. We haven't got it...we're gonna have to do some trickery here. Something's gonna have to happen.

And the Lord said, take 'em down to the water and let 'em get a drink. And I want you to make note of all those that drink by...being like this and bringing water to their mouth, and all those who get right down to it and just lap it up like a dog...or lap it up, anyway. And so he says, all right 300 did it one way and 9,700 did it the other way, and he said, well we're gonna lose 300. I guess that's okay. We'll still make this thing work.

( laughter ).

And the Lord said, send the 9,700 home! Praise God! Do you ever feel like you're part of that small group, when you can't possibly...what you see is impossible to do? Praise God! But God wanted to show that He was God in Israel and that it didn't matter. None of these human factors mattered. One thing matters. Are we workers together with God? If we are, we're on the winning side.

( congregational amens ).

Praise God! You may feel weak, but you are strong if you'll get your eyes off of yourself and say, I have a God who has called me, who is able. And my trust and my hope are not in what I am, but they're in what He is.

( congregational amens ).

Praise God! You might be one of the high and the mighty, naturally speaking. You might be somebody that's up here in some ways. But I'll tell you what, if you are, God's gonna have to bring you down first.

( congregational amens ).

Look what He did with Moses. Moses, the Scripture says, in the New Testament, was a man who was mighty in word and deed. He did great things. He had a command of the language, whatever they spoke. He was somebody who could influence people. This was an important prince in Egypt. That's how he'd grown up. He had been taught and trained in Pharaoh's house.

But one day, God put it in his heart to identify himself with his own suffering, slave people, rather than the might nation of Egypt. And in the providence of God, God brought him to a place where he had to run for his life from Pharaoh and live among the shepherds over...actually it was the Midianites, I think...at that time. But anyway, he went and lived with them and settled down to a shepherd's life.

He married the daughter of a Midianite priest and just, well...I'm gonna live out my days. And so as far as Moses was concerned, that was the end of his life in Egypt. He had left that life and was simply going to live the life of a shepherd. Well, many, many years passed. And there he was...and all of that self-confidence had just kind of ebbed away and he became a different person. He became somebody who was weak, who didn't think he could do anything, except tend sheep.

And one day, he went way off in the desert, a long ways away. It wasn't like the movie that portrayed him kind of going around the corner. He was way off in the back side of the desert there. And he actually went to Mt. Sinai. How many remembered that? I'd forgotten it myself. But he actually went to Mt Sinai, and there, there was a...all of a sudden he sees this bush that's on fire, but it doesn't burn up. And so, of course, the Lord used that to get his attention and he went over to check it out.

And the Lord spoke to him and said, you're on holy ground, pull off your shoes. And the Lord gave him a speech about how He'd seen what was going on in Egypt. He'd heard the cries of His people and He was going to do something about it. And He goes on for verse after verse after verse, and I can just hear Moses saying, well that's great, Lord. That's wonderful.

And then He says, and I'm sending you--I'm sending you. And all of Moses' sense of nothingness just swept over him, and there he stood just astounded that God would say, I'm sending you. Me? And you know how it progressed through this long conversation when God had to do one thing after another to convince him. He said, Lord, what if they won't believe me? I'll go and I'll tell 'em these words, they're great words, but what if they don't believe me? What did the Lord say? How many of you remember what the Lord said at that point? 'Cause it's significant.

( congregational response ).

Well, that's true. He said that. But He said, "What is that in your hand?" Do you know, there's a spiritual principle in that for every believer? We're not called...we may not be called to do what Moses did. But God...when God wanted to do something, He didn't say, I'm gonna give you this special potion, I'm gonna give you this.... What is that in your hand?

Well, what was it in his hand? It was a shepherd's staff. It was nothing...it was a stick. He just found a real good strong stick, and it was something that every shepherd had. You could use it to lean on. You could use it to do little things to guide your sheep where you wanted 'em to go. You could use it in a time of danger as a weapon. It was just a standard thing that any shepherd, anywhere in the world would have had in his hand. It wasn't anything extraordinary.

But you know, that's the way it is with us as Christians. What is it in our hand? If God lays anything before us, what is it our hand is all we have to do is say, Lord, here, what is in my hand is now at Your disposal. And God, 'course, gave him...showed him signs. He threw it down and it became a snake. And 'course Moses ran from it, like any of us would've. But the Lord said, go take it by the...at least He didn't say, go take it by the head.

( laughter ).

He said, go take it by the tail and it became a stick again. And the Lord gave him several signs, but you know later on, he took that shepherd's staff and it became a point through which God flowed miraculous power. It's not what we...it's not the stick. The stick didn't do that. It wasn't a magic stick. There wasn't any great 'something' about Moses as a man. It was the God that called Moses.

( congregational amens ).

And he gave his heart and his life to God, and God used what he had in his hand to do wonders. Praise God! And he was able, with a shepherd's stick, to go out and stand and open the Red Sea. Now you know, our picture of Moses is formed, to a large degree, by...at least those of you who have seen "The Ten Commandments," the movie. We see this heroic figure standing with the stormy sky, raising his arms and raising his staff, and saying, "Stand still and see the salvation of God," and there's this thundering voice of...who was the actor? I can't even think of his name. Charlton Heston. Thank you.

( laughter ).

But anyway, there he is speaking these mighty words, but boy I'll tell you, I don't know how accurate that is in terms of the picture, because most of the time when Moses had something to say, Aaron said it. Now I think he got to where he could talk too, but this was not some guy who was quick to speak...he was actually a very meek man. What does it say? He was the meekest man.

( congregational response ).

The meekest man. You said something against him, he just...he wasn't somebody who was gonna fight back and just really let people have it. He didn't lead by the strength of his personality. He led by the power of God and God backed him up time and time again. I'll tell you, if we will give our hearts and our lives to God and get our eyes off of ourselves and our weakness, and on God, we will be able to what God has said we can do.

( congregational praise ).

We have things set before us every day that we get up that are just as impossible as leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. How about just overcoming the things in yourself? How about the things the Lord puts His hand on, and you say, I can't. That's impossible. No way, Lord, that's not gonna happen. Or we say, yes, Lord, I'll try, but inside we say, that ain't gonna happen. God help us...everyone to recognize that though we are weak, when He calls us, it's not the strength that we have, it's the strength of our God!

( congregational amens ).

If God can look at a man like Gideon who was nobody and say, you are a mighty man of valor.... How could God say that? Because God was gonna make him that. How could God come to a young man...I don't know he might have been a teenager, I don't know, he was a young man anyway, named Jeremiah? You read in the beginning of Jeremiah and you will find out this guy was just minding his own business...a young man and God comes to him and says, I've formed...I've made you a prophet, before I formed you in the belly, I made you a prophet. Now, to Jeremiah...he just said, I'm nobody. Anybody here feel like that?

( congregational response ).

I'm nobody special. But God says, I made you a prophet. See God sees every one of us differently.

( congregational amens ).

Differently, than we see ourselves, and our problem is, our self-image is formed by our own negative opinions and not by the Word of God.

( congregational amens ).

Now we aren't all those things to puff us up. We're all those things to show forth His power. God means to show this world that He is God! And He's gonna do it through people like you and people like me.

( congregational amens ).

In spite of everything that we are, if we will only look to God and understand who He is. Praise God! You go from one end of the Scriptures to the other and you'll see...Jeremiah was told...I'm gonna have you stand before kings! I'm gonna...by the words that flow out of your mouth, you are going to topple kingdoms. You are going to set up kings and depose kings. You're gonna do things that armies can't do. By one thing...you're gonna speak My words and My words are gonna accomplish those things. And when you stand before all these important people, it's not you standing there. Don't you back down. Don't you act like...

( making moaning sound effect ).

Who am I? You stand there in My strength and you speak My words with confidence because I'm gonna back you up. Praise God! I'll tell you, God will back us up if our heart is to do the will and the purpose of God in our lives. God will give us what it takes if we will learn to...if I will learn to praise Him and stop looking at the negative things and the weak things. And, oh the need...oh my need...all these things. How about the greatness of God who has promised?

( congregational amens ).

Who has said that His Word will not go forth and come back empty! It will accomplish what He said it will accomplish, and I believe it.

( congregational amens ).

And I see it in lives. I believe God is doing things and I believe there's many things that are happening in people's hearts that I can't see. And it's not me, it's not any of us. We just have a great God.

( congregational amens ).

Who loves us and is faithful.

( congregational praise ).

I'll tell you, Jesus didn't die for nothing. He died to save every one of His people completely, to take people who are nothing in this world and make them everything in the Kingdom of God, and yet we will stand there shining and free and victorious one day, and we will cast our crowns, if we have any, at His feet and say, it's all You, Lord.

( congregational amens ).

I don't stand here because I'm anything. I bow because I was nothing and You made me Your son, Your child. Oh, I'll tell you...there's nobody, the lowest of the low can take hope in the Gospel message like this. We need to reckon on the goodness and the faithfulness of a great God, because God doesn't choose people based on who they are naturally. He chooses people who know they need God.

And I'll tell you, He can take the simple things of your life, He can take the tools of your trade, He can take the...whatever you have and turn it around and use it in a way that will bring glory and honor to Him.

I just thought of...there's so many other things. Maybe the other brethren will add to this or do whatever needs to be done, but I was thinking of a Scripture we've heard so many times about the time when Jesus stood before 5,000 people who were hungry, and it was a desert, and they didn't have enough money. He said, what are we gonna do?

And, of course, the disciples...well, let's add up the account here. Let's get the bag out and find out how much we've got. Maybe we can send somebody to the nearest town and bring back some food. Well, and of course what they had was totally inadequate, wasn't it? And so they took stock of what they had and they went around and one little guy, out of the whole crowd had remembered to bring some lunch. And he had five loaves and two small fishes. And of course, what did they say after that? "...But what are they among so many?" (KJV). Do you ever react like that? You ever think like that? Do you ever 'not' think like that?

( laughter ).

We are so prone, when we're faced with anything God says, whether it is on a personal level, whether it deals with young people in school, whether it deals with us in our businesses, our jobs, our homes, or whether it deals with great things in the Kingdom of God. The principles are the same. We never have, naturally speaking, what it takes to fulfill the Word of God. We are always gonna have to say, God, we need You.

( congregational amens ).

We're gonna step out in faith. If You tell us to do something, we're gonna do it and we're gonna trust you to make up the difference. And what happened? They gave...but what did that young boy have to do and the disciples, in order for that to happen. He had to give up his lunch, didn't he? There had to a surrender of what he had and I can just see him watching that lunch disappear.

( laughter ).

"Well, I had something to eat. I don't know now what's going on here. I don't understand this process, but they said to come and I'm hearing this teacher, I guess I'll just submit." And the disciples handed...I'm sure...you can imagine what was going on in their minds. It's the same thing you'd have been thinking. Don't you be so spiritual.

( laughter ).

It's the same thing you'd have been thinking. There they were. I said, all right I have no idea...no clue what's gonna happen here. Here it is, Jesus. And so He begins to pull stuff out of the bag. And He pulls, and He pulls, and He pulls, and He says, give them to eat. Make the people sit down. I'll tell you what, they had to...they had to get ready for what the Lord was gonna do, didn't they? But they did.

And, of course y'all know what happened. They not only fed them, they had 12 baskets that they took up afterwards...not bags, baskets...of all the leftovers, and everybody had plenty! They didn't say, now we're gonna have to ration here. You know when it's...with God we don't have to ration the blessings of God. We can give and God will give.

I'll tell you what, God can take nothing and make something out of it. Just like He did with the Shunammite...was it the Shunammite widow? Anyway it was a widow...that God commanded the prophet to go, and that she was going to feed him during a time of famine. Now what was her plan on that occasion?

( congregational response ).

We're gonna eat and die. We've got one meal left. We're gonna eat it and die. That was the extent of their vision...of that woman's vision and so, what happened? The prophet came and said, make me a little cake first. I don't know what went through her mind, but somehow God gave her the faith to do what the prophet had said.

And the barrel of meal didn't waste. All the oil never wasted. They had just what they needed all the way through that famine. God took nothing and added His blessing and made exactly what they needed. Praise God! You know, it's like that with our life. Jesus said, he that seeks to save his life will do what?

-- Congregation: Lose it.

-- Brother Phil Enlow: Lose it. It's like one life...we're gonna eat it and die. You think about it. That's all you've got...is one life, and you...in just living out your life is like eating that one meal for that widow. You're gonna use it up and die. But what happens if we give that one life to Jesus Christ in surrender. You're gonna lose it anyway. Give it to Him and He can give us life that will never end.

( congregational praise ).

He gives us eternal life in replacement for the life that we are willing to surrender to Him. I'll tell you, that's what He wants. That's what He desires from every one of us, is our hearts, and our trust, and our belief in Him, and our confidence. Like the missionary martyr Jim Elliot said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." Praise God!

I'll tell you, if you fit these categories today, you've got room to rejoice and to praise God! But it depends what you're looking at. If you're looking at your nothingness, God is looking at something else. He is looking at what His power can make you, if you'll just say, Lord, whatever I have...all of this nothingness that I am, it's your nothingness now.

( congregational amens ).

It's not my life anymore. You tell me what to do. Lord, I'm Yours. And then He can take and make out of us something that we could never imagine. Oh Praise God! This isn't just about earthly blessings and all those kinds of things either. This is about something that goes on for eternity.

( congregational amens ).

And Jesus is our principal example of One who came, not to live His own life. He just gave what He had. And I'll tell you, He walked around...God called Him to a life where, when people said, I want to follow You. He said, well that's great. Foxes have holes, birds have nests, I don't have a place to lay My head. You want to follow Me, come ahead. And they suddenly realized, hey wait a minute, this is pretty radical here. This guy doesn't have anything here. There's no bank account. There's no...He just has God...oh my God!

( laughter ).

Well, that was kind of enough, wasn't it? Praise God! Praise God! And so Jesus walked among men and gave His life. And the Father gave Him everything that He needed as He went. He was a living example. When He sent the disciple out, He said, don't take a bag with you, don't take this, don't take that. Just go. I'll tell you what, I don't think many of us know much about that kind of faith. But I believe God wants us to lift our eyes from our weakness and say, Lord, it's not about me. It's not what I am. It's who You are.

( congregational amens ).

My life is in Your hands. And so if there's something You tell me, I can do it. I can do what You say I can do, because it's not me, it's Christ in me. The life I'm now living, I'm not living it with my own resources, it's Christ in me now. So I can be...if You send me to speak to a king, I can stand there with rest and confidence and speak the words that You give me. If You send me to sweep the floor, I can do it to Your glory and rejoice in You and be thankful that I have You in my heart. It doesn't matter...all these things down here don't matter. What matters is, are you in the will of God, are you looking to God...is your life in His hands? That makes every bit of the difference in the world.

( congregational amens ).

And so if you're feeling kind of small, and down, and weak, you need to look up. You need to see who your God is. You need to read this Book and realize that these people were just like you and just like me. Oh we don't see them that way because we see what God did with them. But we need to go back to the beginnings of so many people and say, these were just ordinary people that found a relationship with an extraordinary God and that took away every limitation. They were able to do anything that God said, and we are, too. And praise God, we need to lift up our eyes and behold our God. Praise God!

( congregational amens ).

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