Ministry does not begin with human decision or church appointment, but with the call of Christ Himself, who chooses and empowers His servants through the Holy Spirit. The first ministry was entrusted to the apostles as witnesses of the risen Lord, and every act of true service flows from that same divine commissioning. Our sufficiency is not just in ability or training, but more deeply in the Spirit who gives life and power to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. True ministry is therefore far more than a role or profession, it is participation in the continuing work of the risen Jesus.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] There is ministry that’s happening in the church. It’s commonly understood in Baptist churches that the ministry is not just done by some professional who has a dog collar on. You’ve never seen me with a dog collar on. You might have seen me with a leash and with Michelle on the other side, but no, we don’t actually see ministry as done by some specialist person who is of some different type of character. And we see that ministry is something that’s done by, as Joey was talking, us all a part of the body of Christ. However, that’s sort of half of the truth because there is reference in the New Testament to ministry which is different from the Old Testament.

[00:00:50] In the Old Testament, the ministry largely talked about is the ministry of those who worked in the temple in the preparation of the sacrifices and the priests who did specialist jobs. That was the ministry in the Old Testament. There were also prophets. There were prophets, priests and kings who were seen to be a part of God’s rule through the nation of Israel. But in the New Testament, we’re introduced to focusing far more sharply on what lies behind what makes ministry. And to do that, we need to look at our first Bible verse. It may not come out in the translations the same, but the word service is often the word that comes across as ministry, as service. But service of who?

[00:01:41] Well, we see here in verse 12, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his ministry, his service. There’s an idea there of the ministry really being Christ and other people being brought in to be a conduit of his ministry. And here we have this word service. And let’s go to the next one. And this is a part of Peter’s service, Peter’s first sermon. And it’s on that first initial moment of recognising what’s going on. All right, now, the storyline that’s happening here has to do with how there got to be a ministry or a service that was appointed by Jesus. And to your surprise, if you’re a good Baptist, you’ll discover that actually the people of the church are not like the primary place to start talking about ministry at all.

[00:03:01] They might be the conclusion place to finish with the talk, but there’s somebody else who really has been the person who’s been putting ministry into place. And this is given the scene of the death of Judas, who committed suicide, and for he was numbered amongst us and was allotted his share of this ministry. So what the passage here we’ve got in Acts chapter 1 is about the fact that one of the chief people who’d been chosen to be the ones who shared the ministry of Jesus, is the disciples, the disciples, the 12 of them, he has committed suicide. And so now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness. He built some, he bought some land, but he bought it with the money he got from betraying Jesus. And falling headlong, he burst open in the middle, and all his bowels gushed out.

[00:04:04] Now this sounds a little bit strange to try and picture what went on. But I had help when I was studying over in Wheaton College by one of the professors who told his story of how when he went into theological training to go into the ministry of the church, he had teachers who basically in how they taught theology got him to doubt just about everything. And his sense of trust that he was on the truth, and he was really quiet in a place of much distress. And he took a trip to Israel, and while he was across in Israel, he went along to see the various things in Jerusalem. And you’d probably be aware of there’s lots of places that say this is where, you know, Peter scratched his toes, or this is where somebody happened, or whatever. And sometimes it’s true, and sometimes it’s not.

[00:05:00] But one of the places that you can see when you’re doing the tour in Jerusalem is you see the place where he’s being talked here, the field of blood. And the field of blood is where Judas died. And this man, it’s Judas, acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, betraying Jesus. And falling headlong, he burst open in the middle, and all his bowels gushed out. Now that’s a very mysterious passage, and one of the things that happened to this professor, man I’m telling you about, he was a wonderful professor of mine, but of how he got caused to doubt things was that this was one of the passages where they said, well, what exactly went on? How did Judas burst open his bowels and die in this field to have it called the field of blood?

[00:05:52] And when they showed him the spot, the people, you know, the ones who believed that this was the right spot, it was backed up against a cliff. And at the top of the cliff, there was a grassy field up there, but someone had put up a rope that was hanging from around one of the trees up the top, and hangling down, and it was a rope with a noose. And whether that was someone in later years, 20 centuries later, who put one there to make the scene more indicative of what it had been used for, or whether it was the original rope, that wasn’t the point. The point was that my professor friend saw how someone tried to hang himself there, and either the twigs or the roots on which he put the top thing tied on, or the rope itself broke, there would be quite a fall,

[00:06:53] not a very enormous fall, but there would be a fall, enough for someone to land on the rocks below and burst open his guts. Falling headlong, he burst open in the middle, and all his bowels gushed out. and it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the field was called in their own language Ekaldama, that is the field of blood and there’s a prophecy from the book of Psalms that tied in with this well anyway it caused this man who’d had his doubts because the theological training had all the question marks and doubts coming into it to have his evangelical faith restored because he subtly saw that he hadn’t had any reason to doubt the Bible particularly in this passage it fitted perfectly as a possible thing that may have occurred and that really affected me to hear this professor

[00:08:00] he did his PhD at Chicago one of the major places he was a man very cluey in his mind but he’d returned to the faith he got as a younger child an evangelical faith simply to trust in the scriptures that had a very big effect on us students that someone had been wandered off by believing all the highfalutin stuff and was brought back by the simple obvious truthfulness of what the Bible says well anyway let’s keep talking and reading because that was down to verse 20 do we have any more of that little spot? the finish of it all is where it says may his camp become desolate which it has, the field of blood and let no one dwell in it and let another take his office take his role this ministry role the first persons who had it were just the disciples the 12 disciples and Judas had it was disqualified

[00:09:09] and this was a prophecy to say let another one take his office of us. And so one of the men who have accompanied us the writer of Acts says during all the time that the Lord Jesus was in and out amongst us beginning from the baptism of John until the day he was taken up from us one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection. Where does the ministry come from? It doesn’t actually come from the body of Christ up. The ministry comes from the twelve disciples and down. It comes from persons chosen for a very specific person, purpose not just for everything in the church and that would include all the various things that need to be done but it’s chosen as it says that they would with us become a witness to his resurrection. Well they had two persons put forward and one was Joseph called Bar Zabbos

[00:10:12] Bar means son so I don’t know what Zabbos means but anyway his name was Joseph called Bar Zabbos it’s not Barnabas but Bar Zabbos and he had another name Justice and Matthias Joey didn’t have the same pronunciation as me and I don’t know who’s right but Matthias Matthias was the other choice now you know Matthias I don’t I can’t remember who he was but anyway Matthias is it Matthew? there’s a theological student it’s not is it no Matthew’s another person but anyway Matthias and they prayed and said Lord you know the hearts of all Well, show us which one of these two you have chosen to be one of the twelve that are a witness to his resurrection, to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place. That’s the field of blood, as Joey said, to his terrible demise.

[00:11:22] But someone had to take the place, that special place in ministry, which is to be a witness to Jesus, the resurrected Jesus. We’re getting now a much tighter definition of what the original ministry was about. It was for people chosen to give witness to Jesus. That’s why he chose the twelve disciples in the first place. And they were all going to die, most of them by martyrdom. Only John, the young man who became John, the old man of the book of Revelation writing on the Isle of Patmos. But all of these were to be witnesses to Jesus. Not Jesus, just the one who walked around and healed and did good things, but Jesus, the one who died on the cross, was buried and rose again and then ascended. And the witness to the fact of his resurrection was the biggest part of what being an apostle

[00:12:22] was going to be about. And it’s the biggest part of what is ministry all about. So the content of what ministry is about is the person of Jesus, witness to his existence as a human being, and a witness to his becoming the saviour through his death on the cross and resurrection. And none of us these days were around to be a witness to his resurrection, but we do witness to the truthfulness of that as we promulgate, as we publish, as we give verbal explanation about the fact that he not only died for our sins, but he rose again and he went back to heaven and was crowned King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And that is what ministry is all about. Ministry is about Jesus and being a testifier to him. If you want to be involved with ministry, the first thing to recognise is that the heart of ministry

[00:13:32] is giving your testimony to the resurrected, reigning King Jesus. And the ones who were first chosen were the apostles by Jesus himself, and then when one Judas got killed, a replacement. So they’re chosen of God. And one of the biggest things about being called to the ministry is that it’s something we, the church, don’t do. We don’t say, OK, you lot go into the ministry. We may have a role in giving testimony that the persons amongst us who have shown that Christ is perhaps calling them, we can give testimony that makes sense to us. We’ve seen things happen through these people. They should be in the ministry. But it’s not something that you just go because it’s a democratic decision. You don’t democratically decide who should be in the ministry. Democracy, demos, is about the people.

[00:14:41] It’s not the people. It’s God and heaven above about the decisions as to who would be placed into that special ministry of leading the church and being involved in giving testimony to Jesus. Now there’s a sense in which all of us have that calling through being Christians and it’s a part of what we heard in our communion service this evening that a part of being a Christian puts you in that role as being someone who speaks of Jesus. in fact it’s a part of what causes the fellowship that we all have with each other that we recognise in the bodies in the people of the body of Christ the presence of Jesus in them. So there’s certainly a part to be played by us but who does the choosing is the Lord of heaven and I won’t have time. I’ve given such a big long list of Bible verses

[00:15:44] at the back I won’t get through all of them and I didn’t know how I was going to handle that so I brought along a book here a testimony with all the various things and I thought that should cover the evening service. No, I’m not going to try and do that but this is about what is the ministry. So let’s go to another verse another interesting verse please on my list and in 2 Corinthians 2.17 for we are not like so many peddlers of God’s word we’ve got, you know how these days there’s information that people get through the internet or through discovering some scientific discovery and if you can write it up the right way you can sell little tablets and make a bit of money out of the suckers who believe it. I confess to being such a sucker at times of believing too much on the internet

[00:16:44] when people want to sell you something and there’s often a catch to it that they haven’t been totally honest about. For we are not like so many peddlers of God’s word and we’ve found in the Bible something to make money out of it. No, but as men of sincerity as commissioned by God in the sight of God we speak in Christ coming out of our connection to Christ we speak as moved by Christ if you like we speak in Christ we’re not peddling God’s word to somehow make a career of it. One of the problems I know this from having been working in theological education that amongst those who do come a lot of very sincere people who want to serve the Lord to theological colleges there are some who’ve seen it just as a very sensible step into what is a good career perhaps not the right word but a vein of work which would have

[00:17:47] always going to have opportunities in the future. So you get people volunteering to go to college but they’ve done so because it’s a quite smart thing to do is to have a job that is fulfilling and have a job that’s involving people if you’re a people person there’s some for whom they’re the motivations for them to come to college but as the first years pass by it becomes obvious to all of us who are involved in leading and teaching that they may have sincerity sometimes they come young men come beautifully dressed and nice hairdos and they’ve got everything to some of them are very good with people skills but nothing happens and they get put in a church and nothing much occurs sometimes they fulfil the human side of the role and no one’s complaining about

[00:18:44] the fact that they don’t know how to talk to people at the door or they don’t know this or that They can do all that, but nothing happens because Christ didn’t call them and he’s not doing his work that he would otherwise do had they been a person that he chose and it was an obedient step that took them to step into the ministry. You don’t do it just because it’s a good idea. You do it because there comes a hand on your shoulder. The Lord says, this is the way to go. And sometimes the people who come into the college and we amongst the staff would often have our conversations in the staff room about the different new students who’ve arrived for the year and probably we’d make comments, very good, looks like a student, he’ll be a wonderful pastor.

[00:19:37] It’s just not the fact of how good on the human side people look. It is simply whether God has sent them and when he sends them, and sometimes the ones you say to yourselves in the staff room, they’ve got a long way to learn. But they turn out to have the hand of God on them, which is seen when they go to churches and what happens in the churches. The hand of God proves the whole point because ministry is something that God decides on, not us. But as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. So we’re not like peddlers of God’s word because we’ve found a good commodity. I’m really quite annoyed at the current trends of the internet because that jolly AI can make a very convincing thing. They put someone’s picture and even have them speaking

[00:20:39] and actually it’s all made up by some artificial computer and they try and sell you something and what happens is that there’s a beautiful product on sale but then when you send your money, you get a copy that’s not the original. It doesn’t work. I have to be honest and I’ve spent several hundreds of dollars trying to get stuff against diabetes but often then I notice what was actually told was a very specialist product that isn’t what came in the capsules they sent. And that’s this idea of peddlers of God’s word, people who are able to see a way to have a good way of living but if God didn’t send them, then what happens through the word of God? Sometimes there’s blessing, God uses his word anyway but of the overall sum up of the ministry, it doesn’t bless because it’s not of God.

[00:21:37] And Paul is speaking here not like that but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ and there’s just a difference that comes about if a person has been sent by the Lord. Let’s go to another verse we’re talking about in the ministry and this is in Corinthians, it’s not far away from the other one. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us. One of the first things that the students at college have to learn is their insufficiency for the task if they are going to look at their human attributes as being the cause of thinking they can make it. But our sufficiency is from God and when he sent you on a purpose, he provides the wherewithal for it to work. Who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant?

[00:22:34] Now this is where the ministry comes from. Now I like this particular verse because it brings in an extra factor. It’s not a ministry of the old covenant. It’s a ministry of the new covenant. What’s the difference is that the new covenant speaks about the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Not of the letter because the chief thing about the Old Testament is that it is strong on obeying the letter of the law and doing what is required. And sometimes people do from their church upbringing, I understand this myself as to having to learn something in this area, that you think that what is necessary to be a good Christian and you think what’s necessary to be in ministry is to find all the right things to be done.

[00:23:23] But it’s not to be sufficient that way, but not of the letter, the exact requisite of the scriptures. They’re good requisites in the letter of the Old Testament, they’re all good things to follow, but that’s not what makes you sufficient. Sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. And it’s what the Holy Spirit does in you as a Christian that makes you sufficient to be successful at doing what is the requirement of the new covenant. The Spirit gives life.

[00:24:00] And it’s just the fact that it’s so visible, I bless the Lord for the experience of being involved with our theological college and for my 20 years or whatever it was of being the lecturer of theology there and watching what went on because I saw miraculous things happen through people who you wouldn’t have thought would make it. And the ones that we, the lecturers said, there’s a good future pastor, we’re not the ones that turned out where God’s hand came on them and things happened because it’s the Holy Spirit and the new covenant’s all about the promise of the Holy Spirit.

[00:24:47] The first availability of that new covenant was in Peter’s sermon at the day of Pentecost, where his gospel announcement was linked to not only the forgiveness of sins, which he strongly argued that the people should try and make sure they have, but also that they would have received the Holy Spirit. The twin blessings of the twin blessings of the Lord, the twin blessings of the twin blessings of the announcement of Peter’s sermons in Acts chapter 2, which is the beginning of the availability of the new covenant, is that you’ll get the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the gift of the Holy Spirit brings to the person who’s a convert ability to have somewhere to play a role in the church. and if that role is to be in the ministry then it will be the spirit who makes

[00:25:38] it work. Not of the letter but of the spirit for the letter kills but the spirit gives life and one of the difficulties of the college and it was really quite fascinating to see this lived out amongst the students where they would often take it to themselves to make a decision as to who amongst them was someone who’s gonna make it all work and I often got told I would never make it in the ministry and the person who told me that eventually apologised because God arranged for it that I had to be a person that helped him and there is a way that the Lord works to bring about his purposes and it is what Christ does through you that makes the ministry work it’s not what only what you bring, I’m not trying to undo the fact that we have a contribution to make an availability to lay on the line but that availability

[00:26:42] is just to be obedient because we’re being obedient and if he’s called he makes the ministry work ministry is a calling just as all these passages are saying and it is because of what the Holy Spirit does. Let’s go to the next passage. Will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? It’s comparing of the glory of the Old Testament time. For if there was a glory in the ministry of condemnation people having to obey not to be condemned the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. And the righteousness there talked about is not the righteousness of not having made any mistakes is the righteousness of Jesus made available to you who could have lots of mistakes and lots of holes in your offering. A righteousness which far exceed in its glory.

[00:27:42] We’re talking about the ministry. Let’s go to another one now. I’ll have to stop sooner or later, but it’s just when I started looking up for verses, there were so many that you could get to find useful. Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, you get to have a ministry by God being merciful to you and letting you in on something that you could never earn. We do not lose heart when you know the way you got into it by his mercy is an encouragement that you can’t get talked out of. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everybody’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, people can’t get it.

[00:28:41] Let me be honest with you that when we first came here to this church 19 years ago or 20 years, I lost count. There was some folk who I knew from previous times who didn’t, they weren’t really my, they didn’t see me as their style of person and they left. And as they left, they were a bit more honest. They said, Jim, we don’t really get why you keep talking about the gospel. Which is what I was doing all the time. The gospel is the power of God to salvation and the reason why you have success in ministry is not your box of tricks, not because of your snappy personality, not because you’re good with people. Actually, you know, you’ve seen me around for long enough to know I don’t rely on those things at all. Not because they’re not good things, but they’re not me.

[00:29:37] But I rely on one simple thing, the open statement of the truth. We commend to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God and even if our gospel is veiled, and I think the ones that left, if they could say, I don’t know why you keep on about the gospel, that they didn’t get it. It is veiled to those who are perishing. But when people have come to be saved, I could tell you another person who comes every now and then to drop back in here, who was someone who had a Christian family in another geographical location and came here and wasn’t really that coming very much. And he didn’t stay in one sermon. He went around the back. I think he might have even gone around there to go to the loo. And at the end of the service, I went walking down there and he called out to me, Jim, and came running over

[00:30:33] and he says, I really need to be born again. And he came to Christ. How did that happen? I didn’t do it. I just know that the gospel has its own power. And all I have to do, an open statement of the truth. And it works. He drops in here every now and then and I enjoy a renewed fellowship because he’s someone to whom the ministry of God’s word, of the gospel, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we don’t lose heart because it works. We’ve renounced all other more sneaky ways to get people on side. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. I hope you’re hearing the message that ministry is what God does when he lets you in on the ministry that Christ has. Jesus is at the heart of the ministry. And do we have another verse? Let’s see if we do.

[00:31:41] We’re doing pretty good on time. But I do not count, this is Acts 20, my life of any value nor as precious to myself. If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus. What is it? To testify to the gospel of the grace of God. This gospel is not about how you can somehow qualify to have God with you. This gospel is about his grace. Grace and you know of the words that are used for grace, they include in the Old Testament, seen some of those words that mean covenant keeping grace. The fact that God made a promise and even though you didn’t live up to your end, you made a contract with him and then you failed it. But God always keeps his side. And the gospel is a gospel of the grace of God with the word grace used in some context

[00:32:41] to mean the fact that God keeps up his side of the bargain even if you don’t keep yours. And we have a ministry received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God, which is a fantastic thing. The grace of God is a topic that Christians generally believe in, but some more than others. But it’s about the fact that what God gives his blessing, not because anybody deserves it, but because he is a God of grace. And we being sinners, even though we’re forgiven sinners as Christians, we’re forgiven sinners as Christians, yet he still loves us and he still hangs on to us. And this grace that God will keep his covenant even if we haven’t done everything right on our side is the gospel of the grace of God. Never turn the gospel into a gospel of your performance.

[00:33:43] God will bless me if I do the right things. There are blessings for being obedient and there are the reverse of blessings for disobedience but the actual gospel is about God being gracious despite your inability to be perfect. and what I think if I could add to Joey’s wonderful talk earlier when we recognise this gospel as a gospel of the grace of God then we apply that grace to all the others who are under it as well as ourselves and that will be how the fellowship of the church remains strong when you let everybody be recognised as under God’s grace so don’t apply to them a performance treadmill that you couldn’t really suffer yourself you want to stay under the grace of God for yourself and when we do that to everybody else in the church we have a fellowship that’s enormous and beautiful

[00:34:49] well that’s been about the grace of God it’s been about what is the ministry the ministry has its centre in Jesus and in the message about him. There are other things that ministry also involves and quite a number of different things and there are things that God may call an individual person to do. It is a part of ministry for them. So it is a multifaceted understanding ministry but right at its heart is that it’s about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who rose from the dead and the one who gives the Holy Spirit along with the forgiveness of sins. When we come to him. Then we have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the ministry. Lord, thank you we don’t have to wear dog collars to be in the ministry. We just have to find where you want us to be obedient

[00:35:44] and there the blessing of God will be. And there are some who are called to specific areas of that ministry and there are some who are called to other areas and we praise you, Father, that you’re the one, you and your son in heaven who together are the ones who sends the Holy Spirit to your believing disciples and that you’re the one who decides and we rest in what you decide for us. We thank you in Jesus’ name. Amen.