THAT GUY, and THAT GIRL

Have you ever been the team captain?

How did you make your picks? Big, fast, and strong? Experience? Ability?

And did you ever make a mercy selection?

You know—choosing the smallest guy early so he doesn’t end up getting picked last.

Did you ever have someone question your selection, “Why’d you pick THAT GUY?”

I want you to know something about Jesus: his picks are surprising.

He chooses unlikely characters.

Luke chapter 6 lists the names of Jesus’ team (the 12 disciples).

One of them: Levi, A.K.A. Matthew. He was a tax collector—a Jewish guy who worked for the Roman government.

Back then, the Jews really hated tax collectors—they counted them as crooks, white-collar criminals.

Tax collectors worked for the “enemy’ – the Roman government.

Yes, Jesus picked THAT GUY.

Another Jesus pick: Simon the Zealot.

Zealots were fanatical Jewish Nationalists. They were crazed with hatred for the Romans. Zealots bitterly opposed anyone who partnered with Rome (like Jewish tax collectors working for the Roman government). They carried knives, ready for an opportunity to shank the enemy…

Yikes, that’s quite a team!

Levi and Simon should be enemies, but Jesus brought them together.

Somehow, Jesus saw beyond the exterior—the labels, stereotypes, and political bumper stickers.

He saw more than what was. He saw potential. He recognized what could be.

Jesus still chooses unlikely characters—people like you and me.

THAT GUY, and THAT GIRL.

The misfits.

“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these nobodies…” (1 Corinthians 1.26-28 MSG)

Yup, He chooses some unlikely characters!