Who does God gather to Him?
The strong?
The powerful?
The brave?
The worthy?
The perfect?No. He gathers fishermen and whores, tax collectors and debtors, murderers and adulterers. He gathers the sick, injured, distressed, discontented, and troubled. God gathers ordinary people, and transforms them into extraordinary servants.
There is a man in the Bible called ‘a man after God’s own heart’. His name is David and he was the youngest brother, a sheep herder, who killed Goliath. Later, David became King—God’s highly chosen and anointed.
But before David became King, God used him to remove King Saul from power. The overthrow was not pleasant work, or comfortable, or pleasing to David—after all Saul was God’s anointed, too—who’d gone afoul through pride. As horrible as this time period was for David, he obeyed God’s will, and as he was fleeing for his life—away from Saul—God began laying out His handiwork. He sent ordinary men, misfits, who would later become the best fighting army in the world at that time. Take a look at who these men were.
1 Samuel 22:1-2:
“So David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Abdullah; and when his brothers and all his father’s household heard of it, they went down there to him. Everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him; and he became captain over them. Now there were about four hundred men with him.” (1 Samuel 22:1-2)
The Institute for Creation Research describes more:
As David was fleeing for his life from King Saul, a rather pitiful and unpromising company began following him, and they became the nucleus of what would soon be David’s army. Others joined them, and David trained them, “for at that time day by day there came to David to help him, until it was a great host, like the host of God” (1 Chronicles 12:22). Soon they were no longer discontented misfits but a remarkable array of “mighty men” (v. 21). One group, for example, was said to be “men of war, fit for battle,…whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as swift as the gazelles upon the mountains” (1 Chronicles 12:8).
God chooses everyday, ordinary people to be His hands and feet. His children, His believers—each plays a role in helping gather the lost. Again, per ICR, in many remarkable ways David was a type of Christ, his life foreshadowing the experiences of the greater “son of David” who would come a thousand years later. In such a parallel, David’s army was a type of the earthly “host of God,” the great company of those who have chosen to follow Christ, each of whom has been called to “endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 2:3).
God is watching. He knows His beloved are in the throes of world distress, and yet we have no fear, for the “base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen” (1 Corinthians 1:28). Christ is now “the captain of their salvation” (Hebrews 2:10)—just as David was the captain over his group of misfits. God urges us—through His Word—to strive to “please Him Who hath chosen him to be a soldier” (2 Timothy 2:4). We are His chosen soldiers.
When Christ comes to claim His Kingdom, believers will be with Him in His triumphant return and eternal reign (Revelation 19:14; 22:5).
Amen, and Amen.