You were listening to a live city church podcast and we hope you'll experience Jesus today. We are excited to have you join our extended online church family. If you would like further information or wish to access more content, please connect with us on our live city church Facebook page or visit us at livecitychurch.com. Well, it's my turn today and let's get started shall we?
So, Proverbs 4 verse 25. Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you. So I was driving behind a military convoy recently and I noticed the sign at the back said, driver under instruction and it just got me thinking I was intrigued.
So I did a little bit of digging and this is going to be a product of that. So I love like a visual prompt and then I just sit on that and sit on that and then yeah, God does something with it. So yeah, I pray that this speaks to somebody today and here we go. So the word driver, well, we just think it's like, you know, I've got a learner driver, I've got a P-plate driver, we've got two open drivers.
But the word driver was actually used as a military rank way back in the British Army during World War I, World War II. So it was actually equivalent to the rank of a private, i.e. the lowest rank. So, and it was used in the Royal Atillery for the men who drove the teams of horses which pulled the guns.
So I don't know if I would put my lowest rank person in charge of all that artillery but you know, that was their decision. So the word driver was actually phased out as a military term in the First World War. Today they are called motor transport operators and are primarily responsible for supervising or operating wheel vehicles to transport personnel, people and cargo. They are the backbone of the Army support and sustainment structure providing advanced mobility on and off the battlefield.
Hmm. In addition to doing all of the driving and all of that, they manage the loading and uploading of people and cargo. They're tasked with using defence techniques to protect the convoys, managing, correcting any malfunctions with their vehicles. They obviously the safety, not only of their vehicle but the cargo, the personnel, the passengers.
And it's up to them, the driver, to make sure that the operation goes smoothly from start to finish. So their responsibility is not to start when the cargo is loaded or even delivered. It begins way before that. It begins with the vehicle they were responsible for.
It begins with the orders that they are given. It begins way before the physical, cargo or the people even come in front of them. So consider this for a minute. The driver, although fairly low in rank, is solely responsible for the safety of the cargo, the loading of the cargo and getting the cargo to its destination safely.
Can I say that their worth isn't in who they are? Or even in the title that they hold? But their worth is in who or what they carry. But the driver is not usually the one who is sung as the hero.
I don't remember last time watching a war movie on, oh, the person that drove the jeep that carried the general. No, it's about the general. It's about carrying the precious cargo to the front line. It's not usually about the person who's actually responsible for getting them there.
In Micah 5 verse 2, it says, but you, Obethleham, Ephrata are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a rule of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past. Our culture, our society, places a huge value in credentials. When we meet people for the first time, we often ask or we ask, what do you do?
If we're looking for new staff, we want to know what they've done, where they've gone to school or university, where else they've worked. And it seems that the more titles or achievements that people have or possess, the more likely we are to trust them. Of course this makes sense, doesn't it? But God has a way of turning what we think makes sense, totally upside down.
Kyle Alderman in 2015 reflected on how many Christians avoid taking an active hand in ministry because they feel unqualified. Yep, might seem like I'm looking straight at a camera, but I'm looking straight at you. However, he states that God doesn't need us to be qualified. We've heard it time and time again.
God doesn't need us to be qualified. He needs us to be willing. He writes, what's the past burden that you're still carrying? Is it adultery?
Go and talk to David. The king is at lying deception. Abraham and Isaac knew a little bit about that. A sordid past.
God chose Rahab, a prostitute, to be part of Jesus' geniolity. Do you have anger or temper issues? James and John fit into God's plan somehow. So maybe it's your turn.
It has nothing to do with qualifications, but it has to do with coming to the end of yourself because that's when God can use you in the very best way, by his grace and by nothing you can offer, because he chooses you. We've seen that with the disciples. We've seen that so many times in the Bible. You know, who's ever been asked what qualifies you to speak to me about this?
Three people spoke about Smith Wigglesworth this morning, already in my notes. Thank you. Smith Wigglesworth, born in the 1800s, was a British evangelist who was very influential in the early history of Pentecostalism. And we would consider him a father in the faith.
We looked to him for his examples and we quote him in different spaces. But he was illiterate as a child. He married Polly Featherstone. At the time of their marriage, she was a preacher with a Salvation Army.
She taught him to read. Then he would only read the Bible. He worked as a plumber. But at the age of 56, abandoned his trade because he was too busy after he started preaching.
56. Now his wife was the one with the qualifications and the experience to preach. But we don't even remember her name. We don't even know her name.
We just know her as Smith Wigglesworth's wife. Was he qualified? Another father, another father in the faith, King David. There are so many examples and I know that you're all probably thinking of other examples.
But these are just two that I picked out this morning. King David, this is what God said to his prophet Samuel when he was looking for the next king in 1 Samuel. When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliyab and thought surely the Lord's anointed stands here before the Lord. You know, rugged, handsome, first born.
But the Lord said to Samuel, do not consider his appearance or his height for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things that that man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance. But God looks at the heart.
David was just a boy. He had no real life skills. He was put in charge of the sheep while probably thought of as like, you know what? You can do that job.
Okay, we don't want to do it. You're the youngest. He had no royal work experience. And yet we looked to him as a Kingly example.
We looked to him as the writer of Psalms. We looked to him as a father in the faith. Now in times of war, soldiers are the people who do the fighting on the ground in planes or from boats. But what is an army without soldiers?
It's just a bunch of guns on the ground. A soldier is a person who fights for their government and carries the weapons risking their life in the process. So the word act soldiers actually comes from the Latin solids, which is the name of the gold coin used to pay soldiers who fought in the army. They were actually paid to represent the king.
On a side note, in ancient Rome it was salt and not money that was used for commerce and trading. The soldiers who worked for the Roman Empire got a handful of salt in return as payment for their wage each day. So this is where the common saying being worth one's salt comes from. Soldiers who did a good job were worth the salt that they earned.
So by the time of the book of Ezra in about 500 to 450 BC, salt was the currency that was used as payment. And so we see that in Ezra 414 when the servants of the king at the time say they express their loyalty as because we are salted with the salt of the palace or because we are responsible to the king. I love how research just takes you on all these like crazy tangents and you go wow that's really cool. Also the word selarium which is where we get the word salary from actually means salt money, selarium with an A, the sum paid to soldiers in salt.
I just thought it was really cool. So you are worth your salt. Just letting that sink in there. Similarly the word soldier relates to the life of the army ant.
I do have a point. I am going somewhere. Bear with me. In Proverbs 6 verse 6 it says take a lesson from the ants.
Even God wrote about the ants. Take a lesson from the ants you lazy bones or some translations say you sluggered. Learn from their ways and become wise. So looked into army ants.
They are not your conventional, foraging and gathering food ants. They are aggressive and they can be likened to Vikings in terms of their battle strategies. These ants have strategies. Different species of army ants have different attacking methods.
They follow an internal hierarchy or social order. Now these ants don't rest in a regular nest. They don't build a nest where they can hide away under the ground. Rather they band together to form a living nest.
Each ant will hold onto the other's legs and they form a linked chain or ball structure known as a bivouac. Any slight noise or tremor will cause these soldier ants or army ants to spring into action to defend the bivouac. They sound like rambou ants. They do have one weakness however.
They are blind. They are tiny and they are blind. So how would they catch their prey? Well see when the prey runs the ants can feel the earth's tremors and they run towards the source of the tremor.
So the more the prey runs the faster the ants will find it. And then you know do what these little Viking crazy ants do. Now in nature these creatures, these tiny creatures seem so igneous insignificant that we would probably walk over them. Ugh maybe because then they would hear us and eat us.
But you know think of normal other ants. We walk over them. They are so tiny they don't even take our attention. They are ignored numerous times a day and yet they have a mighty bite and they are not afraid to use it.
Although seemingly insignificant on their own when they come together they are a force not to be reckoned with as long as you're not running away. I was reading some of these ant strategies that they will actually swarm on mass. They will there's another strategy where they will attack in groups. So one minute there's no ants and the next minute there are swarms of ants and then you can't get away.
There are these tiny little things that somehow God has poured these things into them so tiny and we don't even give them like a second blink. How many have we stepped on? In Ecclesiastes 4 verse 12 it says though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves and a quarter of three strands is not quickly broken. So let's go back to the driver of that vehicle, of the military convoy.
The driver might not be high in rank on his own. If anything we have seen that is most likely not even high in rank. Very low. When he is in that driver's seat he is under the full authority of the sovereign he serves and that is all he needs to do the task before him.
In that moment the guys in the mess hall are not teasing him. They're not pushing him around. They're not tripping him over. At that moment everybody knows that that private is fully responsible, solely responsible for getting them to safety.
In that moment his rank has no meaning but it's a seat that he takes that has meaning. It's who he serves that has meaning. I love how at the moment in this crazy ever changing world that people are coming together, even though we're in isolation. You know a few months ago I would have mentioned in a sermon that we are so connected and yet we've never we've got no connections.
All these people on their phones and we're so connected and we're globally connected and nobody's connecting. And yet now we are in isolation and we are more connected than ever. That's another one of those moments. You know we're learning how to do new things.
We're learning how to just the tech side of stuff. Things that we would never have thought we would ever be doing. We are doing and we're doing well. People are putting teddy bears in their window as a way to communicate.
If we saw a teddy bear in the window even three weeks ago we'd be like, ah there's a teddy bear in the window. But now people are starting to do that around the world so that when the kids are walking around the streets having their you know get out of the house moment they're going, ah it's a teddy bear. It's bringing hope. That's a whole point of it.
On Saturday many of us will be considering to stand on our driveway at dawn as we honour the spirit of the Anzacs with our neighbours and yet some of us have probably never even seen our neighbours. We've seen their cars in the driveway but on Saturday there will be a camaraderie as we all stand together because that choice was taken away from us to be able to go and share it side by side with somebody. Dance lessons, piano lessons, all types of lessons, school lessons are being conducted through online platforms like Zoom and how cool is Zoom. All of these things and we are so fortunate that this happened.
I've seen those memes where it says aren't you glad that this happened now when we've all got smartphones and not our old knockers? We can talk to people. We can you know look at their face and not, I don't, well we've all, some of us have those knockers. We can still feel connected over various distances.
So let's go back to the beginning. Driver under instruction. Do you feel like that driver who's under instruction? Do you feel like you haven't got a high rank that you'll never be anything in the kingdom?
I'm telling you, it matters not your rank. We started with proverbs. Fix your gaze directly in front of you. Let your eyes look straight ahead.
When that driver is under instruction, under his orders, it matters not what is happening on the road because he knows he has got full authority to drive where he needs to drive no matter the conditions of the terrain he's on. Stay connected. Your rank or your size, just like that ant, you might feel like you're little in the kingdom, but your rank or your size does not define your worth. What you carry inside you.
What you carry with you defines who you are in the kingdom. So if God's giving you a crazy, crazy, like I want you to do this kind of thing and you're saying, I beg your pardon, I am too little. God's like, this is why I've planted something big in you. I'm going to finish with this one last scripture.
For where two or three come together in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Where we come together, how we come together these days is not the issue. The fact that we are coming together is the issue. So can I encourage you?
Take that. Take what you're carrying. Maybe this week reflect on what exactly is it that I'm carrying. Ask God.
He's just waiting to let you know exactly what it is and you are worth the salt. Amen. Thank you for joining Life City Church and we hope that you were blessed and inspired by today's message. If this ministry has made an impact on your life, we'd love to hear from you.
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