Let me first of all give credit to this concept to my Pastor, Dr. J.D. Greearr, who touched on this thought Sunday in his sermon. I have been rolling something like this through my head for some time and his words were far more eloquent and current than mine will be. But they usually are.
One of the most intriguing New Testament passages is found in the words of Jesus in what, chronologically, was the first recorded sermon He preached. It is Luke 4:25, where Jesus said, and I paraphrase, "God brought a great famine in all of Israel and though there were many widows who suffered during that famine, God sent Elijah to only one of them, a widow of Zarephath in the land of Sidon." This is a reference to an Old Testament event recorded in I Kings 17:8-24. Why did He mention this event in His first recorded sermon? He was sending forth a very powerful message. The true God was a superior God to Baal because the true God is a God of outsiders. There isn't enough time or room to deal fully with the I Kings passage here so I suggest you go there and read the story.
Consider this: There were many widows in Israel, all part of God's chosen people, but God didn't send Elijah to provide for them and do the miracles He did for the widow in Sidon. Why did He pick her? Tim Keller, in his book, "A Widow's Joy", makes the point that she typified the people for whom God sent His Son, she was an outsider in almost every sense of the word. She was a gentile, so she was an outsider racially. She was pagan, so she was an outsider religiously. She was a woman, so she was an outsider in gender and she was a widow, which made her an outsider economically.
By the way, I'm not sure if you've ever noticed or thought about this, but in the genealogy of Christ there are four women recorded and that was highly unusual in Jewish genealogies. Women were almost never included in Jewish genealogies. But what is even more unique is who these women were: Rahab, a gentile prostitute; Ruth, a cursed Moabite; Baathsheba, an adulterer, and Mary, who became pregnant prior to her marriage (although we know why this happened). It was fairly common in those days for people concerned about their family reputation to eliminate sketchy characters from their genealogies altogether. But God intentionally left these women in the genealogy of Christ BECAUSE all of them were outsiders. The true God is a God of the outsider. Now, what do I mean by outsider?
Every other religion in the world focuses on God rewarding the "insider". Sadly, even Christianity has slipped into this in some ways. He rewards you with His grace and blessing IF you keep the rules. IF you do religious things, IF you wear certain clothes, IF you listen to certain music, IF you pray certain prayers at certain times of the day, IF you carry the right version of the Bible. IF you never smoke, drink or chew or date any people that do, that sort of thing. It's easy for me, us, to become very judgmental about other people that don't follow the "rules" because insiders are rules followers. So we look at a guy who rides a Harley, covered in tattoos, adorned in leather, riding in a pack and judge his spirituality based on that. We hear someone rapping a Christian song and immediately judge whether he can truly be a sold out Christian, or Christian at all, because of his music preferences. We can easily cast them as "outsiders" and they are. But we tend to forget that we are all outsiders and the only hope any of us have is the great grace of a great God who sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for the outsider. No matter how holy or righteously we try to live, and think everyone else should live, WE ARE ALL OUTSIDERS. In fact, the only way of any of us gain entrance to the "insider" club is through His blood, not through following rules on either side of the passageway to the "insider" club.
All this reminds me again how grateful we must be for the grace of a loving God who looks beyond our faults and sees our need. A God who never loses sight of the fact that we are just dust, worth nothing in ourselves either before or after salvation. But because of His marvelous grace we've been made worthy through Him.
His grace and peace to you today!
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