Sermon on God's Purpose from Romans 9

Back when I first started at Gilster, I was the only employee in the shipping department on the night shift. The plant was in the growing stages and didn’t have much room for storage. So, as the plant would make pallets of cereal, I would load them on a trailer and take them to the warehouse, unload them and if there was a truck that needed loaded, I loaded it also.

Some nights, I was so busy that I didn’t know which way was up and other nights things could be very slow. One time when things were kind of slow because there were no loads to go out and the plant was in the middle of a cleanup. The plant had just finished running a cocoa puff and they had to clean up all the chocolate. The coating guy had made too much coating and we had about 800 gallons of coating to get rid of.

They put the coating in these 40X40 grey totes to put on the waste trailer. Did I mention that the coating was about 190 degrees and did I mention that the totes were plastic and the lazy forklift driver didn’t want to make 2 trips, so he put one plastic tote on top of the other plastic tote. Can you imagine what happened as the plastic got warm and pliable? That’s right the bottom tote collapsed and both totes spilled on the floor. Do you know how hard it is to clean up about 600 gallons of chocolate coating? I think it took about 8 hours to get it all cleaned up.

So many things went wrong with that. I know I thought of several things wrong at the time. Let’s use containers for their intended uses and let’s jump right into our scripture. Romans 9.

One comparison that I can see between those totes of coating and our lives is that we put things into our vessel that should not be there. Sometimes instead of following the directions of the creator we want to use our vessel in a different way because we know better.

We need to be the vessel that God uses, HIS Way! Not ours. Sometimes we don’t like it, sometimes we think we are not worthy but some of the things that we need to know about being the vessel start at point #1.

1. God picked you.

Romans 9:24, John 3:16, I Peter 2:9

I remember when I was growing up and a bunch of us kids would get together and play ball, whether baseball, football, basketball or even volleyball. We would first choose captains and then we would flip a coin and choose who picked first. Then we would pick teams. One by one until everyone was on a team.

Now there were times that I was picked first, like in baseball, and there were times that I was picked last or almost last, like in basketball. Whether I was picked first or last or in the middle, none of that mattered if I was on the winning team. And if we lost, it didn’t matter where I was picked either.

Stealing an idea from John Mehrens, can you imagine having a pick-up game of 3 on 3 basketball and Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant were on the same team and they pick you to play with them? And you are playing against a junior college team. A team with some talent and abilities but nothing compared to that of your teammates. You would have no doubt about your chances to win every game that you play.

Do you realize that is what happens when God calls you? I mean the Creator of the universe and everything in it and did it in 6 days, picked you to be on His team and on His team is his Son, Jesus. Jesus, while human, was able to walk on water, heal the blind, and raise people from the dead. And the Holy Spirit, which gives us power, understanding and comfort.

God calls you to be on His team and it is up to you to get in the game. It is up to you to decide if you are going to be on His team. And on His team, we are more than conquerors, and no weapon formed against us will do work against us.

Here’s the deal. God didn’t pick you because you are so smart. God didn’t pick you because you are so strong or because you have a special set of skills. He chose you for what He can be within you.

Satan wants to tell you that you are worthless, but yet God chooses you. I am going to say there isn’t anything in all of creation that is more intelligent than God. Nothing more powerful. And nothing more amazing. I mean nothing.

So, God chose you, not because of who you are, but in spite of who you are, and point #2 tells us that……

2. We don’t know who God is calling.

Romans 9:25, Hosea 2:23

God never ceases to amaze me. Sometimes He amazes me with something really cool that I was hoping for. Sometimes He amazes me with something really cool that I was not expecting.

When I think about the people in the church that have started coming and being a part of our church in the last few years is something that is really cool and something I was hoping for. When I think about the church paying off the loan so quickly, that was really cool and something that I was hoping for.

When I think about Jerry Gamble and Jim Kelly making a commitment to God and wanting to be baptized, that was something cool, but if I were completely honest, I didn’t expect it. And many of you have deepened your commitment to God and it is awesome.

I love the story of Jesus calling Matthew to be a disciple and Matthew inviting Jesus to come and eat at his house. Jesus went and at with Matthew and his tax collector friends and the uppity Pharisees and teachers of the law were just beside themselves and couldn’t understand why Jesus would eat with such people. They were the worst of the worst in their eyes.

Jesus explained to those goody goodies that He came for the worst of the worst and just because they didn’t think these people were valuable enough, He did.

Story after story in the bible of Jesus talking to and calling the undesirables. The woman at the well. The prostitute that washed his feet with her tears. The tax collectors. Fishermen. The list goes on an on. The people that were the bottom of the barrel are the ones that inspire us today and those that were the top of the food chain were humbled.

We need to watch ourselves in our attitude toward other people. Just because we think that they are unreachable doesn’t mean that God isn’t already calling them and working on them and you need to be obedient and…if God tells you to share the gospel (the way to salvation) with them, then that is what you need to do. Which brings us to point 3.

3. We must let God use us however He wants.

Romans 9:20-21, I Corinthians 12:14-20

Back when I worked at Gilster, the cereal manufacturing plant, at one point I worked for the maintenance department. I had never worked in production, so I had no idea what some of the machinery did. I had to rely a lot on the operators of the machine to tell me what the machine normally does and what it was not doing now.

Many times, it was obvious that a belt was off or the control wires came loose, but from time to time it wasn’t very easy to figure out what was wrong. There were operators that I could count on to know what was wrong and there were those that should have never been promoted to a machine operator.

Can you imagine what would have happened, if I would have refused to work on a piece of machinery? I will work on the mixer, but I will not work on the bagging machine? I will work on the wiring, but not on a steam line. What would have happened? I probably would have been fired.

We actually had people call in sick, almost every time their line was scheduled to run a certain product because it was more work. It wasn’t long before they lost their job.

Do we do that to God? Do we say, “Use me, but don’t tell me to do this or that”? When we become Christians, we are surrendering ourselves to whatever God leads us to do.

Last week, I talked about the parable of the father and the 2 sons that he asked to go work in the field. One said “no” but did go work in the field and one said, “yes”, but did not go work in the field. Which one did what the father wanted? The one that, even though he didn’t want to, went and worked in the field.

Even though we don’t like the task God gives us, we need to do it. And we, yes that’s right, this church is guilty of this. I know that it is hard to believe, but let’s look at the needs of the church. We need people to run sound, to work in the nursery, fill positions on different boards, to tithe, to share Jesus with others, the list goes on and on.

If everyone in the church was allowing God to use them however He wanted, then we wouldn’t have to beg for workers. We would not have to promote giving to do miscellaneous construction work in the church. We would have to convince people to put their name on a ballot for our annual business meeting just to fill positions that our bylaws say that we will fill.

If each one of us, me included were the vessel that God calls us to be how could our lives be different?

Be the Vessel