Marks of a New Testament Ministry

The Bible tells us that for 40 days, Jesus, following the resurrection, was with his people, teaching, exhorting, leading, guiding. The essence of what he left with his people was this. He said, The ministry that I have begun, you are to carry on. When you leave the sanctuary this morning, you should go out this door back here, on my right. You go past the last encase directly, which says this, Memorial Park Church ministers, members of the body of Christ, and pastors and other staff. Ministers are the members of the body of Christ. Everyone sitting here this morning who has given their heart and life to Jesus Christ, you are the ministers of this congregation. I wonder if it's possible this morning if you really understand what your ministry is. Have you really come to grip of what it means to be a minister in the New Testament? Do you really, honestly, have an understanding of what God has called you to? And if you are a responsible Christian, you're seeking at this point in your life to live out that call. The purpose of my message today is not to try to lead anyone on a guilt trip, or to try to in any way discourage you, but rather to help you to see something of what the marks of a New Testament ministry are, so that you can have some source of evaluation of how your life is progressing as you grow in Jesus Christ. One of the things I had to learn to do when I was in the Marine Corps was an art called orienteering. And all we did in orienteering was to get a series of marks that we had to find in a rather easily about a 10-15 mile course. And we had to run from one mark to the next just by using our compass. Well, needless to say, we had an interesting day, and we were crossing this way, and we knew someone was wrong. But eventually, the thing that really got us excited when we got to the next mark, then we got our bearings again, set our compass, and off we went. That's basically what I hope to have happen this morning, is that you will get a chance to evaluate your ministry by the marks that Paul the Apostle left for us. And if you can evaluate your ministry, then we need to determine, are we being able ministers in the New Testament? Or do we need to change that direction? Let's begin with the definition of ministry. In the large vessels that the Romans used to travel to the seas back in the first century, they used men as their source of power. Men would sit in long rows along the sides of the ship's hold, and they'd have oars extended, and they'd be rowing that ship. Down underneath the main hold, there was a sub hold in the ship. Right in the very base of the ship, right in the center of it, the hottest, darkest, most cramped, most uncomfortable part of the ship. The men literally had to be hunched over because they couldn't sit up because of the floor above them. They were the men called the under-rowers in the ship. And the Greek word for under-rowers is the same Greek word for ministry. You know, I knew it. The ministry's got to be terrible. It's got to hurt. I've got to die to myself, and all these kinds of things. But what I think the New Testament writers were seeking to convey was that ministry begins with an attitude of lowering yourself, a humble, loving, giving of yourself, regardless of those and their stature to whom you're giving. The Greek word most often used for ministry is the word diakoneia, which means really, in its essence, a table waiter. Now, if you've ever eaten at a nice restaurant and watched the waiter, you realize that he is basically there to watch for your needs and to minister to them even before you ask him to. And a good waiter isn't looking for you to always acknowledge what he's doing. He just wants you to be there, to take your mind off the things that are there, and just enjoy yourself. And that's what the Greek word means, that loving service, to give without any regard of acknowledgement and receiving in return. And what we often miss when it comes to ministry is that God intends for us to minister not only to the external, but to the inner man. Many of you here are very gifted when it comes to ministering to the external. Hospitality, the ministry of service, of caring for people's needs on the external basis, is very common amongst us. Some great meals are being turned out around here, and there's a lot of giving in those days. I want us to be encouraged today to go one step further, and to engage ourselves in a ministry to the inner man. There's a gal on our youth staff who can just cook like nobody else, just tremendous kind of meals. And yet, not only does she minister to the external, but also in her heart, in the spirit with which she serves, she also ministers to the inner man. And that's what God wants. He wants His word to be ministered to people's hearts, as well as to the needs of their outer man. Okay, with that definition of ministry, let's see some of the things that Paul the Apostle gives us as marks of his New Testament ministry. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 2, and look at verse 14. Many people think that Paul was so anointed, and so powerful, and so touched of God, that whatever he did, people would bow down and say, Isn't he wonderful? Isn't he the greatest thing that God's ever given us? And yet, the New Testament says something entirely different. Paul was rejected. He was despised. He was cast out, thrown down, many, many times. And yet, he said these words in verse 14, Above all, a New Testament ministry is a ministry of triumph. Paul is an illustration of what it means to be resisted, what it means to be rejected. And most of you, if you've sought to exercise your ministry, you've faced opposition. You've been thwarted in what you've wanted your ministry to accomplish. You've had a friend that's laughed in your face, and you've told him about Jesus. You've had a business associate who says, I don't want to hear about that God stuff. You've had a son or a daughter who says, you're really getting far out of this religion. And over and over again, we can get turned off by others as we seek to minister to them. And yet, Paul says we always triumph. Now, how does that happen? There's two ways. The first is that God's Word will always accomplish that which God sets out to do. We have that promise of faith. And secondly, we know that God has a plan, and that He's working every circumstance to the fulfillment of His plan. And I would rejoice this morning as Naomi shared her testimony of what God has been doing. What an illustration of this very truth. Although we had gone out there and given ourselves that reservation, leaving with a sense of, well, maybe we really hadn't been God's, the models of the Christian life that God calls us to. Maybe we really hadn't fulfilled our call. And yet, the report back is that the Word of God did not return to us. And in a sense, we have triumphed, even after the fact, in our ministry to the Indians. The greatest thing that impedes that triumph is your fear that you're going to fail. And that leads me to the second mark of ministry. New Testament ministry is ministry that receives its competence from God. Look at chapter 3 and verse 5. Not that we are competent of ourselves, Paul says, to claim anything as coming from God, or from us, rather, but our competence is from God, who has made us competent. Your translation may say confident, to be ministers of a new covenant. Nothing is more defeating and discouraging than to hear people say, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't know how to minister. I don't know how to share the gospel. You know how to pray better than I do. I don't know what the Word of God says. I don't know where this verse is. I don't know how to tell about the Lord. And yet, the Bible says right there, it's clear, our competence is from God. Now look at that. How does the Lord work this into the fabric of our being? Not by a written code. It's not something that you sit down and learn, A-B-C, but it's by the Spirit within that we're made competent. If you want to know why I believe so strongly in the necessity of the fullness of the Holy Spirit in your life, it's because the Holy Spirit is what makes you competent to be a minister of a new testament. If your ministry is struggling, and you don't sense any fruitfulness, it may be because the fullness of the Holy Spirit is not flowing through your life to effect that ministry, to empower that ministry. The first summer I came to Memorial Park, it was nearly six years ago, and I remember talking with Dick Todd on the phone, and he and Rich and Joe were sharing all the things that the Lord was doing, and I would confess to you today that I was really anxious. I had an anxiety about all the responsibilities, and how would I be able to do it all. I came here, and the Lord just taught me that my competence wasn't in all the programs that I knew, or in the different things that I had learned in a written sense, but in the Spirit. And I'm not to say at all that you don't learn, that you don't apply yourself, that you don't give to the Word and learn, but that's just part of it. The thing which gives life is the Holy Spirit. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, We didn't come to you in lofty words or in wisdom that was high and above. We came to you in fear and in trembling. We came to you in weakness, but in the demonstrated power of the Holy Spirit. That's where we see ministry take place. You say, well, I don't really feel confident. I don't feel confident when I administer the Word. Let me ask you, when you first rode a bicycle, did you feel confident? Probably not. Your dad probably ran along beside you, or your brother or something. But you had every endowment that you needed. You had the balance. You had the coordination. You had the strength. And all that it took to learn to ride that bike was practice. Likewise, much of our ministry would flow much more easily. We'd just get into it, begin to practice the things that the Lord calls us to. The third mark of a New Testament ministry is seen in chapter 4, verse 2. Paul says, We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's Word. But by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. We don't have to look very far around us to see illustrations of the disgraceful, underhanded ways that Paul is talking about in releasing ministry. You've probably read reports of these mock debates that a well-known evangelist had with an atheist where they set up questions. They even set up responses and emotion and everything. And people were drawn to that for a point. And yet, you see, that was just so shallow. That was so far from what God really intended. You've seen places where bingo is used to draw people into the church. Bingo for Jesus. Call it jingo, I guess. And we underhandedly seek to sneak the gospel into people's life. We try. We dilute what the Lord calls us to. We say, Be a Christian and everything will be fine. You'll be rich. You'll be happy. You'll be blessed. You'll be healed. You'll have new friends. You'll have all this. You'll have all that. But we forget to tell people that Jesus also took upon himself. That we need to learn death for the self. That we might experience the richness of God's blessing. The truth is what we are to give. And people have been asking me recently, Well, how do I share Christ with people who seem to be apathetic? And I'll tell you, I've never met a person that said, I don't want to know the truth. Truth is something that the world really wants to know. Even the apathetic. They wouldn't walk away if they knew it was the truth. What is the truth? Verse 5. Jesus Christ is Lord, with our self as your servant for this day. That's the truth that we have to share. And when we do that, what is the result? We see, again up in verse 2, that we are commended for the conscience of every man. When you share the truth, men know that it's the truth, and they are compelled to give acknowledgement in their conscience that it's a good thing. And secondly, we are commended in the sight of God. It brings pleasure to God. Is your New Testament, is your ministry a ministry of truth, as it was in the New Testament? By the way, as I'm going through this, I'm aware of the fact that I'm passing over a lot of powerful verses, and I hope that you'll understand that this isn't meant to be exhaustive, but just sort of a survey, and you can go back over these chapters yourself. The fourth mark of a New Testament ministry is chapter 5, beginning in verse 7. It's a ministry of suffering. I'll have to say that again. A ministry of suffering. Uh-oh. I knew that it was going to come. The whole thing of selling everything and going off to someplace in South Africa or northern South America where the Amazon is the worst and everything like that. We get this distorted idea of cost, and yet I want to be clear in saying that New Testament ministry is costly. We may be called upon to give up our comforts, to give up some of our securities, to give up some of our endearments, some of the things that we don't want to leave. We may even be called to sacrifice some of our time that we give to recreation and leisure, even some of our family times. Paul says in verse 8, look with me, we are afflicted in every way. We are perplexed. We are persecuted. We are struck down. Always bearing in the body the death of Jesus. That's the one side of it, and it is a grim side to some extent. I have a good friend who I went to seminary with for a time. He's about 35 years old. He graduated from medical school, did a four-year residency in general surgery, a very gifted guy, athletic. He could converse in all the same things that we enjoy, but he sensed that God was calling him to serve the pagan peoples in private. And every month I get a letter from Neal Thompson saying, what a struggle it is to live in a pagan culture where God isn't even acknowledged, to try to speak a language that is almost behind comprehension, except with the natives. The isolation, the loneliness, the barriers, the heat, all these things he gave up, and he gave them up willingly because he wanted to serve the living God. And why did he do it? Look at verse 7. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. What we have to give is a treasure. And it's worth giving up some of the things that we cling to so closely because the world needs that treasure. The world needs to hear that Jesus Christ wants to deliver them. And secondly, in verse 17, for this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us, look at those words, an eternal weight of gold beyond all comparison. And I'll tell you, some people would criticize me if I said that I set my eyes on my heavenly reward because they said that's the wrong motivation. But sometimes I need a little more. Maybe you do too. I need to see that Jesus is preparing something for us. And I know my brother in Thailand right now is looking beyond this earth for the things that the Lord has prepared for me. If you're in a ministry today and you're trying to care for people and everyone thinks the best of you and thinks you're wonderful, well, praise God for that, but beware. Because our ministry, the gospel of Jesus, is the truth. And the truth cuts. And it causes people to resist and rebel. And that's when suffering comes in. And I just pray that you see that a ministry in the New Testament tradition is a ministry of suffering. Fifth, the New Testament ministry is a ministry of good courage. And I like those words. Look at verse 6 of chapter 5. So we are always, Paul says, of good courage. Now, that really struck me. Because there's a lot of times that I'm not of good courage. Times that I feel like I've really blown it. Things aren't happening. I'm not seeing people come to the Lord. Or I pray for someone and nothing happens in their life. How could Paul say we are always of good courage? Now, you think, well, Paul can say that because everything he did turned to gold. Every time he opened his mouth, people were falling down under the power. Well, it wasn't that way. Paul tells us that people were rejecting him. And look at verse 5, or verse 1 of chapter 5. He's talking there literally about dying for his ministry. We know that if the earthly temple we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God. He feared for his life. What was his secret of being of good courage? Verse 5 of chapter 5. He who has prepared us for this very thing as God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee, so we are always of good courage. If so, then there is the link. The Spirit is our guarantee that we are of good courage. The Holy Spirit within is what encourages us to press on, even in the face of difficulty and rejection. You say, well, when I go to talk to people about the Lord, I don't always feel very encouraged. I don't feel very strong. I heard this said once, and it really has helped me and stuck with me, that the grace of God is like a train ticket. You don't really need it. You don't really sense it until it's time to get on the train. And when you're out there in ministry, then is when you're going to sense that God is enabling you, that God is empowering you, that God is making you of good courage. Finally this morning, a New Testament ministry is a ministry of reconciliation. Now it's a big word, but what does reconciliation mean? It's simply this. Making our enemies into our friends. Verse 18, all of chapter 5, all of this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us this ministry of reconciliation. I would say that the most important mark of a New Testament ministry is, are you reconciling, being a messenger of reconciliation, helping others to make friends with God. And I don't mean just to know about Him, but I mean to be in relationship with Him. See, that sounds pretty pious, to be a friend of God. Jesus said, I no longer call you a servant, but a friend. God wants to break down that barrier of sin. Why are we, you say, I don't feel like I'm an enemy to God. The Bible teaches us that sin has erected a barrier between you and God. And it's not in God's part. Keep that in mind. God isn't the one who's an enemy. It's that we are enemies with God. We are prevented from relating to Him by that sin. But God has broken through that barrier. I picture a hand breaking through a wall and saying, come. And that we need to just tell people that the Lord has made that advance towards us. I was with a group of pastors, and there was a well-known evangelist there speaking. And the brothers that had brought this man in were very, I guess I could say, proud that he was there. And they were taking him around from person to person, introducing him. And you could just tell that they were enjoying the experience of being such a part of, and I thought to myself, I wish I had that same kind of joy in introducing my friend. The reconciling love of Jesus Christ. But what obstacle gets in the way of that? Look at verse 16. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view. Paul is saying, prior to that, we always look at people's externals. We look at their credentials. We look at their titles, their status, their wealth, their education. And you'd be with a person of stature and you'd say, well, they don't really need to hear this message. They'd be turned off. You're with a popular guy or gal at school. Well, they'd think I was kind of weird if I shared with them advice. You're with a person at a gas station who's practically falling over from drinking and being just caught in the degeneracy of this world and you say, I don't have time to deal with a person like that. God says, we no longer look at people in a human point of view. Even though we even look at Christ like that, we now look at them at the heart and we see that that reconciling message needs to be seen. Reconciliation, that's what I mean. I was with a young couple and for months and months before that they'd been fighting, arguing, and finally, at the point in their time of counseling, I joined one hand with the wife, the other hand with the husband, and I prayed with them and I said, I ask the Lord to reconcile them to one another and to Him. At the close of that prayer, I stepped back and joined their hand and I just prayed, Lord, do not join them to yourself. That's what reconciliation is. It's bringing two hands together and that's what God calls us to do. So these are some of the marks of a New Testament ministry. There are marks of triumph There are marks of confidence from God. There are marks that show that you have the truth. There are marks of suffering. There are marks of good courage. There are marks of reconciliation. How does your ministry stack up? Does it evaluate favorably for these people? And if it doesn't, don't leave here discouraged and shattered because you're not living up to what the Lord calls you to, but rather bring yourself to the Lord, yield yourself to the Lord, and allow that Holy Spirit within to begin to flow His life. And we're going to see a change, I'm sure. Father, we just pray that these words would be of encouragement to us to become that which we want to be. May we be honest enough to realize, Lord, that if we're not fulfilling our ministry, then we're not fulfilling the purpose to which you call us. And free us, Lord, from the traps that would ever hold us back. As we have this time of burden lifting, if you want to recommit yourself to the Lord to fulfill His ministry, I encourage you to come forward. ♪♪♪ ...we have spent our days when we have wandered through thy ways. We have wasted thy good gifts. We have left on account many good things we've lost in the past. We have forgotten thee, humbled and saddened, and sincerely driven apart, asking thy forgiveness and thy mercy, and working upon it. ...will still arise. ...to the new sense of dignity. Because Jesus says that the real world... He was saying to me that Jesus makes sense spiritually. But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of life in the business world, give me all of Jesus you can, because there's nothing better than Him, spiritually, but He'd never make it in the business world. The passage today that I'm going to address this morning speaks to what I believe is that central misconception, that Jesus Christ not only cares about the whole person physically, mentally, and emotionally, but that He uses all the experiences of our physics to fulfill His purposes, ultimately, spiritually. Jesus understands where we're coming from, just like He understood the disciples nearly 2,000 years ago. Now, the setting of this story is in Luke chapter 5, where Peter and John and James' brother and a number of other fishermen had been out all night fishing. Now, it's interesting to me, and it's important that you see that right off the bat, James and John and Peter had been called by Jesus almost a year before this. What does it tell you? Well, that somehow it had been difficult for them to follow Jesus, because they had returned to their vocations, not able to fulfill the call that He had put upon their lives. They were fishing again. And Jesus comes along, teaching the Word, and a large crowd of course gathers around them, as they always did. And it's in the midst of this rather untouchy setting, a large crowd of futile fishermen by a quiet lake, that Jesus Christ wins the hearts of these men and shatters their fears about the future. There are four principles that I believe we can see here today. One is the routine that binds growth, the revelation that brings growth, the repentance necessary for growth, and the release. Now, there are a few things in life that are more stifling than the monotonous routine. When I was a high school graduate, I went to work down at St. Joe Lead, as many of the guys here in Beaver did, and I was really thrilled. So in my third summer, they made me a lab assistant. And all that I had to do in the lab was to take these little capsules of flash burn tests on them. And, you know, at first I was really excited about that job, but after a few days, it just began to get kind of routine. And in a couple of weeks, I was bored to tears. I'd come in there and throw in my samples and leave. And the only thing that caused my joy to be reborn every day was when I walked out of that place clean as I went in, when I watched my friends come out of their furnace. But somehow routine has a way of wearing down our vitality, of reducing our expectation and minimizing our joy in life. This is true physically. This is why they pay people so much in the assembly line. But it's true spiritually as well. The pattern, which can be a positive thing, can also become something that reduces life, that forms life into a mold and thus takes away its vitality. Now in this passage, Peter had returned to fishing, the routine that he was used to. He had also returned to the routine of listening to Jesus, but not really hearing him. He had been with Jesus. He had seen Jesus do even great miracles. He had even seen Jesus heal his mother. But he'd heard it all before. And I wonder, could this be true for you today? Could it be true that you've heard the gospel? You've heard the call of Jesus on your life many times before. And that the truth has begun to be powerless, because the form has remained the same. Routine has rendered itself powerless. What routine? Well, as Peter, it could be the routine of your job. You see, the American penchant today for getting ahead, for keeping up, for having everything that we want, let alone what we need, has begun to squeeze life out of life itself. Every decision is being made in terms of the job, getting ahead, more money, promotion, influence. And almost invariably, God is farther down the line in terms of this. And also, as Peter, it might be a routine of the spiritual. Keep one ear open, give token assent, never really give yourself away to him, never really expect that God will break in and change you. Routine has two dangers, as I see it. One is that you can become comfortable and secure and never really want to change. And the other is that you can become so lifeless and bored that you don't believe it ever could change. Well, there was Peter, catching fish, hearing the gospel, same old thing, and then something happened. Jesus shatters his routine through revelation. Now, revelation is not something that's necessarily mystical, a dream or a vision, but it's something that we can expect when a personal God approaches a human being in a personal way and makes a personal appearance. There comes a point, in fact, I believe many points, in the lives of people today when the Holy Spirit works something inside of us and it arises our sensitivity to what God is saying. It may be to a television program, it may be to a preacher, it may be just to you reading the word of God or just walking out and seeing creation. You realize that God is speaking to you. Almost 16 years ago this happened to me when I was a teenager. I was in a meeting with a bunch of other families. I remember that the preacher was talking about a message about Jesus. It was a message that I realized was for me. I responded that night by giving my heart. I struggled for a couple of years living that out. I went on to high school or rather college and there, in a smelly locker room after a basketball game, a guy shared with me his faith in Jesus Christ and I realized that God was speaking to me again. But I was not really walking and living for Jesus as I needed to be. So once again I had the opportunity to respond to the Holy Spirit. You see, this is something that's so powerful about the Holy Spirit. It's that He speaks to you, but He gives you the privilege to respond to Him. He'll never force you, He'll never make you listen. He just gives you the privilege to respond. And I'm not saying that He hadn't spoken to me every other time that I was there, but I just didn't hear Him speak. Now to Peter, Jesus simply said, Put out into the deep and let down your nets. Now I want you to notice, this was a very physical command. This was something in the seen world that Jesus was telling Peter to do. But it still required faith. Because you see, Peter was very much like you and me. On the outside I suppose he was rather quiet, but inside he was churning like a volcano. All he said was here in verse 5, Master, we've been toiling all night. I hadn't caught anything. Oh, but within, there was that long pause right there. Master, we've been toiling all night. And inside of him was the fact that he had doubted Jesus. Should I or shouldn't I do this? What about all the people that will watch? If I don't catch anything, then mock me. And tell me how ridiculous that was to throw out my nets again in the middle of the day, near the shore. And then he says these words, But, your word, I'll let down your nets. And you know, you and I are faced with these same two points of struggle at every encounter that God meets us, designed to speak to us. We have, as Peter, the bondage to our past experience. We never did it that way. It never worked before. I failed in the past. Second, fear of circumstance prevailing over God's word. That circumstance would rise up and say, That act of obedience is irrational. It's uninformed. It doesn't make any sense. It's simple-minded. And many, many times, my brothers and sisters, we are called to act contrary to the flow of human wisdom. We are called to act in obedience to God's word when wisdom would say, forget about it. The other day I was in a hospital room visiting a brother who had been in for an operation, a man who didn't receive any income while he was in the hospital and he had planned to be there for a number of weeks. And he was saying how he and his wife had been saving money for this time in the hospital. And they got a phone call, a brother who was in need. And they hung up the phone and they said, we've got to do something. And they knew that God was speaking to them to give some money. Even though they also knew, coming up, the circumstance was that they'd be in that hospital and that they would be pouring out money with no money coming in. And yet that brother wrote out a check and sent it off to his friend. Circumstance would have said that's ridiculous. But faith in Jesus, obedience to his word, said that's what I want you to do. And he sent off the check and you know, God then returned two weeks later abundantly in response to that act of faith. Past experience, present circumstance, neither must prevent us from doing what God wants us to do. Peter says these words. He says, but at your word, Jesus, I'll do it. In place of my bondage to my past failures, faith in God, my faith, Peter says, will cause me to obey. History, you see, is no problem for God. What you did in the past won't prevent him from doing something new in the future. A number of the guys that I work with over at Memorial Park Church were desirous of sharing a home together, to reduce expenses and to live out Christian fellowship. But nobody would rent a home to five single guys. And they tried place after place, agent after agent, person after person. Finally it seemed that there was no hope of ever getting a place. And on the unlikely chance that perhaps God really still wanted this, the guys went ahead and made one call on a man, a very successful man who was well-known in the neighborhood where he wanted to rent a particular home, didn't think there was a slight chance at all that it would happen. Yet the guy said, Lord, we believe this is what you want, and we're going to ask. They went ahead, and you know the guy said, okay. And now the staff house has been working out beautifully as a testimony to God's love. In place of bondage to history, faith in God, and in place of paralysis by circumstance. And that's really what it is. Circumstance prevents you from taking a step of obedience. We're to take that step. Do what he says. His word becomes the focal point of our attention. It becomes the grounds for the step that we're going to take. You know, I've had two of our children learn to walk. What I see is that when they begin to walk and they want to go from one chair to the other, that little first couple of steps. It's beautiful. You sit there, and you just speak to them, and you encourage them. Come on now. You can take that step. You know you can do it. Go ahead, and you just keep speaking to them. And even though their littl