You Are Never Too Far Gone For God - Part 4

We all Fall Short

It might surprise you to learn how many heroes from the Bible failed God miserably at one point or another during their lives.  Here is a brief rundown of key figures:


 Moses
 
Moses murdered a task master who had been abusing one of the Jewish slaves in Egypt.  This act cost him his standing in Pharaoh’s house where he had been raised as a son.  He fled into the wilderness as a fugitive.  That is where God came to him and chose him to be one of the greatest figures in history.  Backed by the power of God, he went toe-to-toe with Pharaoh and led the Jewish slaves out of Egypt.  He was allowed to see God on Mount Sinai and was tasked with bringing God’s law to the people.  Not a bad destiny for a former murderer.
 
David
 
King David is among the men whom God loved the most.  As a mere shepherd boy, his faith allowed him to defeat the mighty giant Goliath and become king of Israel.  But despite all the faith and love that David had for God, his lust got the better of him.  When he saw Bathsheba bathing on the roof of her home, he conspired to lie with her.  The problem was, Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah, one of his best warriors.  But that didn’t matter to David.  He slept with her anyway and she became pregnant.  This posed a problem because Uriah was away at war and her pregnancy would make it obvious that she had been with another man.  So David called Uriah back from the battle, expecting Uriah to be with his wife upon his return.  But Uriah refused to sleep at home with his wife while his fellow soldiers were at war.  This caused David to panic.  He sent Uriah back to the battle and asked him to carry with him a message.  The message was Uriah’s own death sentence, for David instructed the general to send Uriah out into the front of the battle and to make sure he didn’t come back.  Uriah was killed fighting for his king and David bore the shame of sending a good man to his death to cover up his own sin.

David’s family life was filled with hardships after this and the child conceived in sin died.  But God did not abandon David.  Instead he promised that Messiah would come from the line of David and that his son would become a great ruler.  That son was Solomon, the second child of David and Bathsheba and one of the most famous kings in history.  And when Jesus the Messiah was born, he entered this world as a descendant of King David.
 
Peter
 
Peter was a trusted disciple of Jesus.  He professed that he believed that Jesus was the Christ – the Son of God.  And yet when confronted after Jesus had been arrested, Peter denied knowing Jesus, not once, but three times.  Like all the other disciples except for John, Peter was in hiding during Jesus’s last hours on the cross.

But when Jesus rose from the dead, he came back to meet with all of his disciples.  He did not berate them for having turned away from him in his darkest hour.  Instead he entrusted them with the great task of spreading his word.  And he made Peter the rock upon which he built his church.  Indeed the name of the world’s most famous Christian church bears the name of the man who once denied knowing Christ.
 
Paul
 
Born under the name Saul, Paul was a leader in the effort to wipe out the early followers of Christ.  He stood by and held the coats for the men who stoned the famous Christian martyr Stephen to death.  But Jesus chose Paul to take his gospel to the Gentile nations.  He appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus and changed his name to Paul.  From that point forward Paul became a fierce advocate for Christ and the most prolific contributor to the New Testament.
 
The lesson of these four examples is that we are all flawed and that God does not wash his hands of us when we sin.  He made a former murderer the leader of his chosen people and trusted him to give them his laws.  He made an adulterer and murderer the greatest king of Israel and chose him to be the line through which the savior of the human race would be born.  He took a man who denied knowing Christ three times and made him the head of the Christian Church.  He choose a man who hunted down the followers of Christ to spread the word of Christ to the ends of the known world.

​You can still be a servant of God despite anything you have done in your past.  You can still achieve great things.  There is no limit to how God might use you if you turn back to him.