Soldier, Giver, Prayer // Little People Used by a Big God, Part 9

It’s easy to look at some people and even at ourselves quite frankly and think, if God were going to use anyone for good it wouldn’t be that one. It could never be me! Funny how quickly we are to underestimate what God can do, through bog ordinary people like you and me.

Most of us would agree that war is a horrible, ugly thing. So, what motivates people to join the armed forces? I spent ten years as an officer in the Australian regular army. For me, well I was young, it was an adventure, it was about excitement. But what about a Roman Centurion in the first century AD? What motivated him? Would have been a tough gig, an officer in an army occupying a foreign land.

The Roman Empire of course ruled the known world at that time. In fact if God was God and sent his son Jesus as a Jew, the last person you would ever expect God to use would be a Roman Officer, don’t you think? Well think again, because God has this habit of doing things through people that you and I probably wouldn’t have a bar of.

Cool is a very, very important quality and commodity these days. It’s about acceptance, it’s about funkiness, it’s about aspiration. Cool, is well … it’s cool. And if you’re not … you just aren’t. Ask any teenage kid and they’ll tell you, cool is an incredibly important thing. It’s everything.

Adults, we’re into cool as well. Things, people, we judge them, if they’re cool and acceptable we like them if they’re not, they’re not. We do that, don’t we? So if we were expecting God to use someone, if God is God and God is doing something good in the world and God is touching people’s lives, we would expect that He would use one of the cool people.

Would He use a Roman Centurion, a soldier and officer? Well not if you’re a first century Jew, I mean God is the God of the Jews. God was the God who chose Israel to be His chosen people. And Roman Centurions, Roman soldiers were a brutal occupying force. If I were a Jew in the first century I would definitely not be happy with God using a Roman Centurion to do something. But the scary thing is God did exactly that.

He was a man called Cornelius, and he lived in Caesarea, a port city on the Mediterranean. And it says that an angel appeared to him and this is what happened.

The angel says Cornelius! And Cornelius stares at the angel in absolute terror. This is what the angel says:

Your prayers and your giving to the poor have ascended as a memorial before God.

Isn’t that an interesting thing for an angel to say to a Roman Centurion? Your prayers and your giving to the poor have risen up and ascended and they’re like a memorial before God. And then the angel gives him some instructions. He says:

Look send some people over to a place called Joppa, to where this man Peter the Apostle is, and get him to come over here and tell you about this Jesus.

Recognise up until now the Jews thought that God was only for the Jews and Jesus had only come for them. I mean He was one of them. Jesus was a Jew and they figured well, if Jesus was the Messiah, not all of them believed it, but they said if Jesus is the Messiah surely He came for the chosen people for the Jews. God had a different plan.

God came for you and me as well as the Jews. Because God loves us all. Now you have to understand this is a radical, radical notion. And God picks Cornelius and sends an angel to this Roman Centurion and his family. God picks Cornelius to be the first of the Gentiles, to receive the good news about Jesus.

Now Peter is a Jew and it was a radical idea to him as well. But just at the same time as this angel was appearing in Caesarea to Cornelius, Peter was having a radical dream. You can read about it in the book of Acts Chapter 9. A dream that was opening him to the possibility of sending the good new to the Gentiles.

And so the men came to Joppa and they knocked on Peter’s door and Peter was ready to go and he went back to Caesarea with them. And he sat everyone in Cornelius’s household down and he told them all about Jesus. And it says in the book of Acts, while Peter was still speaking the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word – Cornelius, his family, his servants, his whole household.

The Jews who were there were astounded, that God had poured his spirit out on the Gentiles as well. And subsequently the Apostle Peter goes back to the other Apostles and says, “Look this is what happened guys … what do you reckon, is this legit?”

They had to talk about it; they had to think through their theology and say do you think we should let God go to the Gentiles as well?

And yet God had this plan. God had this plan to pour his love out to you and me as well as to all of the Jews. And you know what? You and I are a bit like those Jews that were there in Cornelius’ house, they were surprised that God would use Cornelius in such a powerful way.

You and I have preconceived ideas about what God should do and how He should do it and whom He should use, don’t we? We look at some people and think, “Well God could never possibly use that person for any good.” If you had asked Peter and the other Jewish followers of Jesus a few weeks before, would God do this, would God go to the Gentiles, would he use a Roman Centurion to do it? I bet you their answer would have been a resounding, “No, surely God could never use one of these brutal, Romans, to pour his love out.”

If someone asked you, “would God do something powerful through you?” What would you say? God is a big God, God uses little people, God makes some surprising choices.

Berni Dymet was an IT Consultant; information technology is what I did. I was a tough, hard-nosed, materialistic, businessman. Berni becomes a Christian and today, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people are listening to this program in over sixty counties. Go figure!! God does some bizarre things that you and I would never, never, in a million years think that he would do.

That is an exciting message. God doesn’t care about our external packaging. God cares about our hearts, and he got the angel to say to Cornelius, your prayers and your giving to the poor, the things that you do in secret they have ascended as a memorial before God.

What’s a memorial?

You know when you see a memorial to fallen soldiers for instance, it has all their names on it. And it stands above other things and separate from other things and it stands for a long time and it’s something you notice, it commemorates them and you notice it. So what the angel said was to Cornelius, Gods noticed the way you pray in secret. Gods noticed the way you give money to the poor in secret, that’s like a memorial in front of his eyes.

When God was looking around for someone that He could use to be the first Gentile, this memorial with Cornelius’s name was in front of God. It was there because Cornelius had a relationship with God. A Roman Centurion, for crying out loud, was doing this stuff.

And when God was looking around for some little people like you and me to do something amazing to pour out his Holy Spirit on the Gentiles, absolutely radical, this memorial was in front of God’s eyes. And God said, ‘I know who I’ll pick, I’ll pick Cornelius, because Cornelius has a heart for me, Cornelius has a relationship for me, even though he’s in an impossible job as a Centurion, Cornelius has bowed down before me’.

And so when we take that step and say, “God, I want a relationship with you like what Cornelius had.” And just quietly follow God, pray, adore Him, worship Him, do the things He asks us to do. That is like a memorial before God’s eyes.

And one day when God needs a little person just like you, to do something amazing that God has planned in His heart all along, that memorial will be in front of his eyes.