Abraham Lincoln is probably the best known and most loved president in the history of the United States of America. His rise to prominence, however, was totally unpredictable. He was a nobody from nowhere. He was born in Kentucky to poor, subsistence farming, Reformed Baptist parents who moved to southern Indiana where he spent most of his childhood working on his father’s farm instead of going to school. His mother died when he was nine and his father was verbally and physically abusive. His sister died in childbirth when Lincoln was nineteen and his family relocated to central Illinois where his first job was navigating a flatboat of goods down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

How does a man like this rise to lead our nation through its darkest days? How does someone who considered himself “a piece of floating driftwood” come to occupy the highest place of leadership in the country?

 

History is full of stories like this. It seems that many of history’s most important figures are raised from the ashes of an obscure past to places of prominence and consequence.

We see stories like this all over the Bible as well. From “rags to riches” is certainly the storyline of Abraham. Through Abram, a recently converted pagan idol worshipper, God initiated a plan to bless a world languishing under the curse of sin. While Abram had great faith at times, he and his wife Sarai were also scoundrels who doubted God’s promises and tried to push God’s plan forward in their own way (see Genesis 16).

Like Abraham Lincoln, no one could have predicted that God would bless the world through people like Abram and Sarai. But God knew what he was doing. He was getting ready to reveal his power to and through his people.

Throughout Scripture, we see God displaying his power through unlikely people. Think of Moses, a murdering, runaway, nomadic shepherd. Or Gideon, a nobody from nowhere who struggled with doubt and unbelief. Or David, the youngest and probably smallest of Jesse’s sons who committed grave sins against the Lord.

Or what about Joseph the carpenter’s son, Jesus from Nazareth. He was from the country and worked with his hands. He preferred to be around fishermen rather than the political and religious elite. He was a nobody from nowhere. But God’s design was that he would literally change the course of history.

Scripture teaches us that God loves to use the weak things of the world to propel his story forward. Scripture and history suggest that God is more interested in a person’s faith than their fame, their character than their competency, their humility than their accomplishments. These kinds of people are exactly the kind of people God chooses for his glory. This is what Paul says 1 Corinthians 1:26-29:

“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”

In the upside down nature of God’s kingdom, weak people reveal God’s strength, poor people reveal his riches, and ignorant people reveal his wisdom. This ensures that God gets all the glory in the end. There will be no virtue-signaling or humble-bragging or chest-beating in heaven.

This also means that any “piece of floating driftwood” willing to admit their smallness is eligible for the King’s service because of his grace. Are you a nobody from nowhere? Then you are exactly the kind of person God ordinarily chooses to change the world.

Serving the King, in Weakness, With You,

Pastor John