On the Shoulders of Nobodies!

Two guys in a remote corner of the world nobody notices take a walk with a man whom their friend had barely introduced to them the day before. One of them hurries on ahead to tell his brother about this man. On their way to an even more obscure place with this man, two more join their group—that makes five followers and one leader.

You can read the story in John 1:29-51. If you’re careful to read it with honest eyes and discipline to stop your mind from running ahead of the familiar story, it’s pretty incredible. A small group of unimpressive men who had been following a weirdo named John, are now walking the trail north to Galilee with a young upstart from Nazareth.

If you were a church growth expert selling books today, you would have to reprimand the Son of Man for His naiveté. “This is no way to start a church! You’re heading in the wrong direction with the wrong type of people. No one’s going to listen to these unimpressive guys! Hurry, before it’s too late; turn back to Jerusalem. Our studies show that those neighborhoods are far more ready for religious teaching. You have no money, no reputation…you don’t even have a place to sleep!”

Jesus started the church in the same way God always does His greatest work—surprisingly humble and everyday. God delights in turning history on unnoticed events and founding His greatest works on the shoulders of insignificant people.

God’s beginnings never make the evening news or the front pages of the papers. Every time He does something big the religious experts and learned prognosticators of the day miss it. I’m pretty sure that whatever Jesus is doing today has very little to do with what they’re talking about on CNN, MSNBC, or FOX News.

I wonder if it has that much to do with what we’re talking about in the Christian community? Church history answers that question with a painfully honest, “Probably not.”

Jesus is always doing something, but it’s rarely what we think He’s doing.

So the next time some Christian leader tries to scare you with “alarming trends” in society, impress you with the latest “can’t miss” theory on the spiritual life or convince you to get on board with “the biggest thing” God is doing right now, remember the humble beginnings of the church.

Five men nobody knew walking on a road to nowhere important with a Carpenter from Nazareth nobody had heard of, walking toward a destiny greater than the Roman Emperor.

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31, The Message)