Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

All right, welcome back to day two of this post-Christmas, pre-New Year Daily Blade. Again, we're looking at Luke 2 because Christmas isn't over, Christmas changes everything. The second thing I want to look at is this is that God is in the habit of using nobody's for his kingdom. Verse 8 of Luke 2 says this, and in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night, and an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. Now, here's the thing: our Western, like uh Christian bookstores, Bible bookstores, and kind of varied sub-mediocre Christian art has painted a picture of what a shepherd is that is not very close to reality. Um, it was a humbling thing for God Himself in Psalm 23 to say that he is our shepherd. It's a humbling thing for Jesus to tell us in John chapter 10 that he is the good shepherd, because shepherds in the first century were not these wise old men that we see uh depicted in a lot of art. No, no, no. Most of the time they were very young guys, they owned nothing. That they were they were so despised locally that their testimony was not admissible in a court of law. Sometimes people would be shepherds because they owed somebody money and they essentially were indentured servants to pay off that bill. Shepherds were a nomadic group of people that they never hunkered down in one place. They did not have a permanent residence or a permanent address. And so they moved from place to place to place. And that system of living, just being a bunch around a bunch of young guys day and night with little to no accountability in your life, often led shepherds to be looked down upon. Here's what I want you to see here: that the angelic hosts come to announce the birth of the king, and they did not announce it at the royal palace. They did not announce it in the city of Jerusalem, but God finds these shepherds, these nobodies, these B team, these JVs, these overlooked, these left outs, and that's who he likes to use. In fact, God continues to do that. That when Jesus chose his 12 disciples, he primarily picked those that nobody else would pick. You see, every little kid would grow up going to Jewish school. They would memorize the first five books of the Bible, the best of the best would go on to the second round. They would memorize the rest of the Bible. If you failed out, if you did not have what it takes to be a rabbi, then a really good rabbi would come up to you and say, Congratulations, you love God and you love his word, but you don't have what it takes to go to the next level. So why don't you go and learn the trait of your father? Now, maybe you know this if you've been around Bible study for a while, but Jesus is walking along the seashore and he sees two men who are doing what? Fishing, working for their father. This means they were not the best of the best. They were not the gifted class, they were not the elite, but they were the leftovers, they were the rejects, they were the B team. And Jesus walks up to these men and says, Drop your nets and follow me, for I will make you fishers of men. Here's what this means that no matter who you are or what your past is, or how much or little you know about the Bible, that you were not disqualified from being chosen by God to be an instrument for God. You see, I want to make this very clear. God wants you. First of all, he wants all of you. He wants your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. And then when he brings you into his family, he wants to choose to use you for his glory. And you were not disqualified. You see, the Bible says that God chooses the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. Why? I think it's so that God gets all the glory. Now, let me tell you, I've got empirical evidence of my own life. I mean, God has used me in ways that far exceeded anything that I would ever dream of, and I think a big reason that he does this is simply this that anybody that knows me or has met me, you know that I have done many, many things in my past that should disqualify me from God even loving me. But the only one that speaks that word over me is the devil himself. You see, the devil, his primary language is that of condemnation. And to be condemned is a building term, it means that you are unfit for use. But the Bible says in Romans 8:1, therefore now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That not only does God not condemn us because we don't measure up, but he saves us, he loves us, and he deposits his spirit in us to use us to do even more and greater things than Jesus Himself did. So when the enemy whispers to you that you should be defined by your scars, by your past, by your mistakes, then you just remind him that you are defined by the scars of Jesus Christ. And nobody gets to tell you who you are, only Jesus does. So maybe you feel like you're one of the shepherds. You don't have a lot to offer. Maybe your past is very embarrassing. Maybe you don't feel like you have this incredible skill set that God could use for his glory. Well, I've got really, really good news for you. If that's you, you are perfectly positioned to be used as an instrument of God for his glory and your joy. Don't you ever give up on you, because God never has.

Amen. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Before you go, if you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five star rating and review. Stay sharp.