God Uses Whom He Pleases
After we are converted to God and saved by His wondrous grace, we get into the school of God. We become subjects of His disciplinary ways, in order that we may become instruments ready to His hand, to accomplish His purpose with regard to others, and that we may be well-pleasing to Him as His people here.
We are saved, it is true, and redeemed to God by the precious blood of Christ, and without fail our God is going to bring us to His eternal glory; but in the meantime we are not only the subjects of His ceaseless care, but also of His ways as Pruner, Refiner, and Potter; so that He may get fruit from us, see His own likeness in us, and we be altogether according to His own mind. As we read, “But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that we have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you. To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 5:10,11).
In the “five smooth stones out of the brook” that David chose, we have an illustration of this. These five stones lay a long time subject to the action of the water before they were ready for the hand of David, and for use in the destruction of the great adversary of Israel.
A long time ago they were rough and jagged stones, quite unfit for such a purpose; but now they are smooth—made such by the constant action of the water—and ready for the use of the already anointed king of Israel. There were many other stones in the brook, but David chose “five smooth stones out of the brook.” The others were passed by as unfit, and five were chosen. These were David’s choice, and with them he went forth to victory.
There is a lesson in all this for the people of God today. Does our God want instruments to do His work? He looks for those fitted to His hand; those who have been under His training, been in His school, learned of Him; who have been under the action and power of His Word, of which the water is a figure; in whom the flesh is refused, the will subject—fit instruments to accomplish His purposes.
The Master chooses these. They are fitted by Himself, and fit for His service. They may have lain in the water a long time, the action of the Word of God has been going on, it may be for years; but now He reaches down His hand into the brook and takes them up and uses them. He is sovereign in this, and yet there is a moral fitness in those whom He chooses. Others, whom man might deem more fit, are passed by, and these are used mightily for His glory.
How often do we see this illustrated in the Word of God—Moses, for instance. How unfit when he thought himself fit! And how unfit in his own estimation when God had really fitted him! Forty years at the backside of the desert was a long time to wear off the jagged edges and make him a “smooth stone,” “the meekest man in all the earth,” and fit to bear the burdens that rested on him as the chosen deliverer of God’s people. So with Joshua, “the young man that departed not from the tabernacle.” David was another case. What secret training had he as a youth! And all along his pathway he seemed to be under the disciplinary hand of God, “the water of the Word” seemingly ever flowing over his soul. It is the way of God. How much were the prophets of old kept in retirement, waiting for the “word from His mouth.” So with the apostles, and, last of all, the apostle Paul. Those three years in Arabia, if they were allowed to speak, would doubtless tell the story of secret training with his God, to fit him to brave the storms that met him, to enable him to suffer as he did for his Master, and at last joyfully to die for His sake. See Philippians 2:17.
There is much human training going on today. Much stress is laid on education, ordination, human credentials, and the like; but how often we are made aware of the fact that God moves outside of all this, and has His eye on the “smooth stones of the brook”; and when the time has come, He reaches down His hand and takes one up, and uses it to the astonishment of many that thought they were fit. One need not cite illustrations of this; they are too numerous. The long rows of names burdened with titles conferred by man are passed by; some obscure miner, some unlettered clerk, some one who has been in secret training with God—a stone fitted by His hand—is taken up and used sovereignly and mightily to do His work.
This is humbling to the pride of man, to all his boasted attainments in an educational way; but it is the way of God; and we have to learn that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” … “that no flesh should glory in His presence” (1 Corinthians 1:25,29).
Much is made of man’s presence, his eloquence, his enunciation, his education, his titles, his ancestry; but what are these to God? The “five smooth stones,” as they lay in the brook, were the expression of weakness. What could they accomplish? Nothing, only as the hand of David took them up and used them. So with any of us. We are absolute weakness in ourselves, the expression of ignorance and nothingness; but when the mighty hand of God works in us and through us, then we are strong to accomplish the work of God. God will be no debtor to that which exalts the first man; those stones are not smooth enough for Him; He passes them by, and uses whom He pleases.
An obscure monk once shook the papal throne and wrested from the grasp of Romish superstition multitudes of souls. At the Diet of Worms, how mighty he was in the hand of his mighty Master! How smooth the stone had become through those years of secret training with his God! And so, when slung by the hand of the true David, how it smote the Goliath of superstitious unbelief and laid him low, letting the precious truth of the Gospel shine out in its heavenly beauty!
“When I am weak, then am I strong”; “If any man seem to be wise, let him become a fool, that he may be wise” (2 Cor. 12:10; 1 Cor. 3:18), are lessons to be learned in God’s school!
The time is fast approaching when it will be seen that God has not used the flesh at all, nor that which exalts man; that He has moved outside of it all; and that which has been done, which will abide, has been done by the mighty energy of His Spirit, through instruments prepared and chosen by Himself, who were willing to be nothing, so that He might be glorified.
God is at work in the world, and He has His own way of working. Instruments fitted by Himself, who have learned that “power belongeth unto God,” and that God’s work is not accomplished by the might and wisdom of man, nor in the energy of mere nature, whether refined or unrefined, educated or uneducated, but by the Spirit of God, as it is written, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” In this way only can the mountain become a plain and the work of God be accomplished, with shoutings of “Grace, grace unto it” (Zechariah 4:6,7).
The prophet was “waked, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep,” to see and know this (Zech. 4:1.) And is not this the important lesson that the work of God, so as to do it in a way that shall work, and that it is the power of God that is at work, and that it is for the glory of His grace?
—E. Acomb