SERVANT LEADERSHIP - The Blue Letter Bible Institute

Servant Leadership – Lesson 14 5
Jesus, Part II by Gayle Erwin
Another thing about a child that I really like is that a child is very unthreatening. Just
looking you over, I do not see any of you men that I would want to meet in a dark alley at
midnight. But meeting a little child in a dark alley is no threat. Isn’t that amazing? They
do not scare us. Has it ever occurred to you that no one was afraid of Jesus? I am amazed
at that because He had all the power of the universe coursing through His veins, you
know. He had this incredible power that is in billions of galaxies out in space, man. The
power that created this earth! But nobody was afraid of Him—amazing!
The Sanhedrin did not arrest Him, not because they were afraid of Him but because they
were afraid of the crowd. And Jesus even sends the apostles out and says, “I send you out
as lambs among wolves” (Matthew 10:16). Boy that sounds exciting! Can you hear the
wolves going, “Oh no, here come the sheep. What are we going to do?” Now if you are
going to go out as a lamb among wolves, you learn quickly not to go on your own power.
One of the things that troubles me as I journey around is that it seems we have been
training some attack sheep. Rambo-type sheep I guess you would call them—We can get
them, don’t we? Baaah!
Throughout Scripture this has been God’s approach to the world, He takes something that
was naught and speaks a universe into existence. He takes a people who were not a
people and He makes them His people. God has always done that. Throughout the Old
Testament He takes the children of Israel when they are weakest and wins the greatest
battles. He takes them when they are trapped and destroys an Egyptian enemy—a whole
army.
Even Joseph, said the most interesting thing to his brothers as the whole family was
moving down to Egypt to eat. Joseph had become the number “one and a half” man in all
of Egypt, you know. And he says to his brothers, “Now when you come to the border,
they are going to ask you who you are and why you are coming here.” He said, “Don’t
tell them that you are my brother. Just tell them the truth. Tell them you are a bunch of
cattle herders because we despise cattle herders.” Now that does not make any sense,
does it? Look, if the president was my brother you would probably know by now. But
Joseph is saying not to do that, “When you come to the border, just tell them the truth.
Tell them that you are cattle herders because we despise cattle herders.” So they get there
and they say, “Who are you?” “Well, we are nobody. We are just a bunch of cattle
herders coming down to eat.” The Egyptians say, “Oh, cattle herders. You are no threat to
us. We despise cattle herders. Come on in. In fact, we will give you our best land, the
land of Goshen.” And the rest is history.
You come to the New Testament and you hear of Paul saying, “Not many mighty, not
many noble are chosen. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound
the wise and the weak things to confound the mighty” (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:26-27). That is
us! We are the weak and the foolish. And the world cannot figure us out. I like that. It is
the way God has always operated. Paul, the apostle says something else that seems un-
American to me. He says, “When I am weak, then am I strong” (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:10).
See, I would have put a question mark there. But it is a declaration. He says, “His