I am sure you have seen the popular religious slogan used by so-called churches today: \u201cThe Church Where Everybody Is Somebody\u201d. Fact is, the church is a place where everybody is a nobody. The Church is made of unworthy sinners. All members know that. Ask them. Ask Jacob, he will tell you: \u201cI am not worthy of the least of [God\u2019s] mercies.\u201d Ask Abraham: \u201cI am but dust and ashes.\u201d Ask Job: \u201cI abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.\u201d Ask David: \u201cWho am I, O Lord God? and what is my house, that Thou hast brought me hitherto?\u201d Ask Mephibosheth: \u201cWhat is thy servant that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?\u201d Ask John: \u201cI must decrease.\u201d Ask Paul: \u201cI am less than the least of all the saints.\u201d Ask any of the saints of God and they will all tell you that they are nothing. \u201cYou see your calling don\u2019t you brethren? how God hath chosen \u2026 things which are not\u201d (I Cor. 1:26-28). As Matthew Henry once said: \u201cSince God made everything from nothing, if He is going to make anything out of us, we have to be a nothing.\u201d Scripture says, \u201cIf any man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself\u201d (Gal. 6:3).<\/p>\n
Do you know yourself to be a worthless, helpless, useless, sinful nobody? \u2026 that God doesn\u2019t need you and that the Kingdom of God doesn\u2019t need you? If so \u2026 welcome to the family of God! For the church is a place where everybody is a nobody and Jesus Christ is Somebody \u2026 the only One Who is of real value and worth, yea the altogether lovely One, the Holy One of God. As the people said of David, so say the saints of the Son of David: \u201cThou art worth ten thousand of us!\u201d The saints in Heaven are singing to the Lord Jesus Christ right now, \u201cThou art worthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
But wait! God says of the saints on earth, \u201cYe are the salt of the earth \u2026 of whom the world is not worthy.\u201d This is a wonderful paradox, that all who see themselves unworthy, He calls worthy. All who call themselves unclean, God pronounces clean. All who feel they are nothing, God says they are His jewels, His peculiar treasure! Why? Because Christ hath made them righteous, holy, worthy. Because He died for them, and because of the invaluable price He paid, they are now of infinite worth to Him and the Father. Because Christ is formed in them, they are now fruitful, faithful, obedient and full of goodness. That is what God says of them. Isn\u2019t that what you think of them? All the saints are told to esteem others better than themselves. We feel that we are nothing, less than the least, not fit to be called a disciple, but highly esteem our brethren. That\u2019s as it should be. We think ourselves to be nothing while esteeming our brethren very highly. A wonderful thing isn\u2019t it? That though we are nothing in ourselves, yet, in Christ, we are called sons of the God!<\/p>\n
\u2013Paul Mahan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am sure you have seen the popular religious slogan used by so-called churches today: \u201cThe Church Where Everybody Is Somebody\u201d. Fact is, the church is a place where everybody is a nobody. The Church is made of unworthy sinners. All members know that. Ask them. Ask Jacob, he will tell you: \u201cI am not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,71,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-paul-mahan","category-believers-rule-of-life","category-christ-his-person-and-excellencies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2436"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2438,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions\/2438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shoalhavengospelchurch.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}