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Ephesians 2:7-8
Main Points:
All right, everybody, grab your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians chapter 3. Ephesians chapter 3. And today, we'll begin looking at verses 7 and 8. Ephesians chapter 3, verses 7 and 8. And as you're turning there, please allow me to pray for our time together.
Father God, we come before you today as we do every day, admitting our weakness and our frailty before you. And it's by virtue of that reality that we ask you this morning for your help. We know that apart from your spirit working in us and through us, our time here today is wasted, but because you have promised to be here in your church, in our midst, we lean into you, trusting you for the help that we now plead for.
And so as we look at your word today, we ask that you would use it to instruct our minds, to inflame our hearts, and to put our hands to work for you in a way that is pleasing to you. Most of all, we ask that you would help us to see Christ, that you would help us to see his unfathomable riches, and that you would help me be a slave of your gospel and your people, that you would help me to preach Christ.
I ask this in Jesus' meritorious name.
Amen.
Martin Lloyd-Jones once said of ministers that they are born and they are not made. This is true, specifically in the case of the Apostle Paul, who we will use as not only a case study, but as our archetype to our understanding of what it means to be a minister of the gospel.
Paul is laying out here, as it were, his apostleship and what that carries with it. We have seen that Paul has told us in this letter thus far that he is, in fact, an apostle of Christ in chapter 1, verse 1.
And as we move to chapter 3, he begins to tell us that he is a prisoner of Christ and a steward of Christ's grace in 3 .2. Now, as we look at our passage, verses 7 and 8, we are reminded that the Apostle Paul is not just a prisoner, not just a steward, but a minister.
And so our aim, or my aim today, rather, is to explore what he means by minister. And really, my aim is twofold. On the one hand, I am hoping that through this passage, the Lord would teach us what a minister is, how he is called, and I hope that it ultimately will be encouraging to ministers or future ministers of the gospel.
My second aim is to do my best to talk all of you out of thinking about becoming a minister of the gospel. And the reason for that is going to become quite clear as we look at this passage. Because as I said, God makes ministers of the gospel.
That is not something that we take up and run with on our own. So if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all-sufficient word. And I will begin starting in verse 1.
This is the word of God. For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, if indeed you heard of the stewardship of God's grace, which was given to me for you, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief, about which, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men as it was now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the spirit that the Gentiles, our fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promises in Christ Jesus through the gospel of which I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me according to the working of his power.
To me, the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable riches of Christ. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Amen?
Have a seat. As we look at our passage, the first thing that I want you to see is ministers are enslaved to God's message. Ministers are enslaved to God's message. As you will note, verse 7 begins kind of in the middle of a thought or in the middle of a sentence with the word of, and continues with another word, which.
Of which I was made a minister. So the question becomes, what was he made a minister of? Well, the antecedent, of course, is the gospel. The gospel. The very thing that is to be proclaimed to bring together the Jews and the Gentiles horizontally, but ultimately to bring them to God vertically through the wrath-absorbing death of Jesus Christ, the righteous.
And so the gospel is that thing which he is a minister of. As we have seen thus far, as I have already said, he has already told us that he is an apostle. And of course, we talked about how that is reserved for a certain group of people in the first century that Jesus handpicked to do the ministry of apostleship.
He then goes on to say that he is a prisoner and a steward of God's grace. And now this very unique word is used, minister. Minister of Christ's gospel. Paul is not shy from using such a word to describe himself.
Throughout the entire New Testament, Paul calls himself and others ministers of the gospel or simply just minister. In Colossians 1 .23, he tells the Colossians, if indeed you continue in the faith firmly grounded and steadfast and not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.
And then just a few verses later in verse 25 of Colossians 1, he says, of course, of which I was made a minister. Speaking of the gospel, according to the stewardship from God given to me for you so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God.
So whatever a minister is, he is a minister of the gospel, and it's tied up with the preaching of God's word. That is true in our passage, and it's true in these two passages as well. Well, this word minister comes from the Greek word diakonos.
It's where we get the word deacon. It is used 29 times in the New Testament. It is used 21 times by the apostle Paul himself. So he likes the word a lot, and it was used two times in his letter to the Ephesians, once here and once in 621, where he calls Tychicus, the beloved brother of his and faithful servant, which is another way of saying minister in the Lord.
Now, as we see a translated servant there, this idea of what a minister is begins to unpack for us. This specific Greek word is used in a myriad of different ways. It's used to describe deacons, the official office of the church.
In Romans chapter 13, it is used to describe the civil government that is given to the world to be God's minister, to put forth justice in the world, to bear the sword against evildoers. It's used of certain women in the book of Acts to talk about their faithfulness, and here Paul is using it specifically to talk about his office and what it means that he actually is a servant slave, servant slave, as it were, of the gospel.
One of the key ways we can understand this word minister is to look how it's translated in Matthew 22, 13, or rather a better way to say that is the context in which it exists, because if we translate it a certain way, it may use a different word in the English to paint the picture for us of what's being said.
In Matthew 23, 13, this word minister is used to speak of a servant of a king. Matthew 22, 13 says, then the king said to the deaconess, or the minister, or the servants, bind him hand and foot and throw him into the outer darkness in the place there will be a weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But more than that, it also can mean a waiter of a feast, a waiter of a feast. In John 2, when Jesus goes to this wedding at Galilee and turns the water into wine, you all know the story. The waiters are told to go and to get the water.
And those waiters are called servants, ministers, deaconess. What's interesting about this word as well is that it is a synonym for the word doulos, which in the Greek is translated from the Greek to mean slave.
And so you have servant and you have slave. The difference being is there's kind of a nuance that is teased out in these two words, though they essentially mean the same thing, there's a slight angle to them, as it were.
Slave, or doulos, kind of speaks to the identity or relationship to the one who a person belongs to. So if you are a slave, you are a slave of someone. But the minister is speaking of the slavish activity.
Of a slave.
It is the servanthood, as it were. In 1 Corinthians chapter four, Paul uses this word, and this specific word is really understood as a galley slave, one who would work at the bottom of ships and kind of row and make sure that the boat moved forward.
Okay, why did I just go into all of that? Because what Paul is saying is, he's saying that he is, in fact, a servant of the king, that he is a waiter on behalf of God's people for the sake of the gospel, that he is a slave to the cause of Christ.
He is one who acts on the commands of another. That's what a minister is, one who obeys the commands of his master and often at great cost to himself. If you look at the apostles of Paul's life, which we have done ad nauseum for the entirety of the last four weeks, you will see that he intentionally and almost without exception put himself in harm's way so that God's people could hear this great mystery that he has for them, that Christ is in the business of saving people and that they are now brought together into one body, the church.
And so what this means for those of us who are ministers or what it means for those of you who are looking to ministers or might desire to be ministers is that it produces an understanding that we are, in fact, not our own.
Ministers are ministers of the gospel. They are enslaved to the gospel. Paul here is saying, I am enslaved to the gospel. That very message that binds us all together. So everything I do is to spread that message.
Everything I do is for that purpose. Paul says elsewhere that he suffers what he suffers to get this gospel out for the sake of the elect. The gospel of Jesus Christ and being a slave to proclaiming that message was the north star of his entire existence.
He ate it, he breathed it, he slept it, he dreamed about it, it consumed him. And it ought to consume the ministers of God's church today.
Why?
Because we have one task, one task. And that is what? To obey orders. Some of you sitting in this audience right now have a military background and you understand what it means to follow an order no matter what it costs you.
And the apostle Paul here, a soldier for Christ as it were, understands that ministers of the gospel are enslaved to the gospel and their orders come from on high and they are to obey those very orders no matter what happens.
They're not to be creative with the way that they do things. They are just to be obedient. What this requires then of a minister of the gospel is that they have a low view of themselves. They're not elevated in their own estimation.
They're not chasing accolades or praise. They're not trying to make anything about them.
Servants and slaves and waiters exist for the sake of someone and something else. Paul understood that none of this was about him. None of it. This is why he says, for example, in 1 Corinthians chapter three, verse five, when there seemed to be kind of a rift or controversy in the church about whom they should follow, he says, what then is Apollos?
Speaking of another preacher and teacher in the church. And what is Paul, he says. Of course, he was meaning who is Paul? What, why does Paul matter? All we are, he says, are servants through whom you believed even as the Lord gave to each.
And he will go on to say that it is God who caused the growth. So ministers of the gospel are obedient to their master to be enslaved to the gospel, understanding that it's not about them. And also understanding that even though we labor and even though we toil, the best we got is words.
It's God who has to cause those words to be effectual. It's God who has to change lives. It's him who gives the growth. But Paul isn't just saying that he's a minister or that he became a minister. He makes the same argument, essentially, that Martin Lloyd-Jones was making when Martin Lloyd-Jones said that ministers are born, they are not made.
Although Paul says that he was in fact made, but it was not by man, it was by God. It was by God. Look with me again at verse seven. Of which I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace.
Of which I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace. So he's not just a minister, he's a minister who was made by God. And it was his gift that he gave Paul. And this fits in with the flow of Ephesians quite well.
Ephesians chapter one, verses three through 14, and Ephesians two, verses one through 10, teach us how God makes individual Christians. Salvation is of the Lord. If you are saved, it's because God did it.
Ephesians two, 11 through 22 teaches us that God makes his church. The church doesn't just come together, God causes it to come together by creating Christians and bringing people together. And now we see that God is the one who makes ministers much in the same way that he makes individual Christians and makes his church.
Because the church needs ministers. Paul was made a minister by God. What this means very practically then is that Paul was not a minister because of his pedigree. He was not a minister because of his intellect.
He was not a minister because of the accomplishments or abilities that he possessed. And he possessed a lot of them. In the book of Philippians, Paul tells us that he did better than everyone at everything.
And we know he wasn't just being pompous because he tells us that it's meaningless. It's completely useless. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. He excelled in Bible reading and Bible memorization. He taught better than everyone else.
It says that he ascended above his peers in just about every metric that could be measured on the way to success. He sat under Gamaliel, who was one of the greatest teachers in the first century. Paul was second to no man.
But Paul is showing us that to be a minister of the gospel, God has to make you one. There is no training that is going to make a man a minister. When it says here that God made him a minister, it means that God put him into service.
He made him that waiter. He made him that slave. It was not his choice. As a matter of fact, he was walking, or riding rather, on a horse on the road to Damascus to do away with the Christian church. And he was kicked off his horse, and God gave him an entirely different mission.
And what's interesting is if you talk to a lot of preachers and pastors, you will find they have similar stories. Not in the way that Paul does, exactly to a T, but they thought they were gonna do something else.
And God said, no, you're going to do this instead. No man can choose to be a minister. No seminary can make a minister. No church can make a minister, and no training can make a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Because ministers are made according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to Paul here and everyone else by extension, who is in fact a minister. So you might be thinking to yourself, well, as a congregationally driven church in large measure according to the 1689, why do we have to vote on pastors then?
It's important at this juncture that you understand when you vote a pastor in, or another elder, or a minister of the gospel, you are not saying we want this man to be a minister, but rather we are affirming that God has called him.
To be a minister.
Because ministers do the things that ministers do without having to be told that they are a minister. Titles mean absolutely nothing. The question is, are you a slave of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Do you live in such a way as to pour yourself out as Paul did as a drink offering?
And here it is.
If you aren't made a minister, I promise you that you do not want to do it. You don't want to be a minister if you are not called by God to be a minister. If you are called by God to do something else, then do that.
It's hard work. Nobody's patting you on the back. And everybody thinks all you do is get up and stand and talk for a little while on Sunday mornings. Now, heritage is not quite like that. And I am very thankful for that.
But that is the general experience in many churches in America. But it goes beyond that. To be the slave in such a way is entirely and utterly draining in ways that you obviously maybe can't understand.
Not only do I carry the burdens, not only does Corey carry the burdens, not only did Paul carry the burdens that he had in his own life, but the lives of so many others. And you can't really go around talking about that because then you become a gossiper in the church.
This is why Spurgeon says in his lectures to his students, if you can do anything else, do it. If you can stay out of the ministry, please do everyone a favor and stay out of the ministry. He continued on and said, if any student in this room, and this was a room full of people who were pastors, mind you, because Charles Spurgeon believed the same thing that I am preaching now, that God makes ministers, and he wouldn't even allow people into his pastor's college unless they were already pastors and had a record of soul winning, is what they called it.
If there weren't people coming to Christ when you preached, God did not call you, according to Charles Spurgeon. And so he's speaking to a room of people who believed themselves to be called to be ministers of the gospel.
And he says, if any student in this room, if any minister, so-called, could be content to be a newspaper editor or a grocer or a farmer or a doctor or a lawyer or a senator or a king, in the name of heaven and earth, let him go his way.
Let him go his way. In other words, only those who believe that they are chosen by God for this work should proceed in undertaking the sacred yet difficult and sometimes wearisome calling. To be a minister is a big deal.
It doesn't make you more important than anyone else. As a matter of fact, as we have seen, and we will continue to see, it means quite the opposite. You're the servant and slave of Christ and all. And friends, not understanding that is part of the problem that the church is in the state that it is in today.
When we look outside these walls and we look at modern evangelicalism and we see all of this spiritual abuse, all of this false doctrine being preached, all of these people who are supposedly burnt out, it's because they have taken on the mantle of minister and they were never called to be a minister in the first place.
They wanted to stand on a stage and they wanted to be looked at. They did not want to be slaves. They did not want to be servants. Now, at the risk of sounding self-exalting, because as I'm studying this text and I'm like, we have to preach this text, people need to understand what's being said here, I'm also like, that's like standing up and being like, look how awesome I am because I'm a minister of the gospel.
But that's not my heart posture. That's not Paul's heart posture. In fact, the entirety of the Bible makes the case that it is quite okay, if not preferable, for you not to be a minister. In just a few weeks, we'll be in Ephesians chapter four.
And Ephesians chapter four talks about the unity of the spirit in the church and how Christ gifts his church with so many different people for so many different things and it is so beautiful. In verse seven of chapter four, it says, but to each one of us, you and me, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.
That is, he gifts the church with every single person who sits in these pews. It's okay not to be a minister. A minister is not a higher plane of spiritual existence. It is simply one calling among many.
It's okay not to be a minister. It's just not okay to cosplay. It's just not okay to fake it until you make it. It's just not okay to function as a minister if you are not called as a minister. You must be chained to the ministry.
It must burden you. It must, as the prophet Jeremiah says, it's a burning in your heart. And so for those of you out there who are thinking to yourself, what does this have to do with me? I'm not a minister.
Well, one, now you understand a little bit more the weight of being a minister, but you also don't have to be a capital M minister or a pastor for this to matter to you. No matter who you are, no matter what your calling is, you are still called to be enslaved to the message of the gospel in some sort of way.
You're still called to be a part of the church. You're still called to help push out the proclamation of the word of God, and you are not off the hook to do evangelism. It just might look different than a minister's work.
Might look like serving the church. It might look like singing, playing instruments. It might look like being a deacon. It might look like doing the audio visual. It might look like helping with the website.
It might mean going out and doing street evangelism. It might mean all kinds of different things. It might mean being the tax guy. It might mean, there's so many things that God has gifted so many people with in this church to help.
And so, please understand that Matthew 28 is not just for pastors. It's not just for ministers.
Children, would you look at me?
What I've just been saying is true, that God makes ministers. God makes ministers. Just like he makes Christians, and just like he makes the church. And what that means is, if you're starting to, if you're a man, feel that pull, and I believe that can start early.
Or maybe it's not even on your radar. You must give your things now to the word of God. You must study his word. You must love his word. And maybe God will kindle that thing which he has made in you in years to come and years to pass.
The second thing that I want you to note here is ministers are ministers by God's grace. Not only are they made by God, they are doing the work of ministry by God's grace. Look with me again at our theme verse, starting in verse seven.
According to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me according to the working of his power. So the idea that he is a minister is true. It's true that he was made a minister by God of the gospel, and it was according to the gift of grace.
This word gift is significant. It is used in the New Testament 11 times. It is used five times by the Apostle Paul, and it is used two times in the book of Ephesians. And the thing that's being drilled down on here is not so much so, if you're looking at this syntactically, that God graced him to make him a minister one time, but rather he has been gifted with the giftings of a minister by God's grace.
In other words, this is not a natural gifting. It is a supernatural gifting given by God's grace and supplied by and sustained by his power. Being a minister of the gospel is something that is supernatural in nature.
That means it is not a natural ability. In fact, God oftentimes uses men who do not excel in the type of giftings that are necessary to begin with. Think, for example, Moses. Moses was afraid to go speak and preach on behalf of God.
We're not told exactly why, but he did not want to do it. He was nervous to do so, and so God was gracious enough to give him another man, namely his brother Aaron, to be his mouth, not to be his mouthpiece, but to be kind of this mediator between what God wanted to say and what Moses would say, right?
He was gonna give the words to Aaron for Moses then to speak. So he didn't get Moses off the hook. He just gave Moses some help. And Paul, not many of us would think this about Paul, but Paul was not necessarily the most gifted individual, especially when it came to what ministers are primarily called to do, which is what?
Preach the gospel. If you remember the passage that I wrote about Apollos, there was a faction that broke out in the church, and it was over who they were gonna follow. They had a multiplicity of elders, if you will, although, of course, it didn't work exactly like that, and there were better preachers than Paul, and Paul was the guy in charge.
And so what was happening was the church began to split down the middle, and they were saying, I'm gonna follow this guy, and I'm gonna follow this guy. Some were like, no, Paul, give him a chance. He's a good guy.
He just can't preach really well. And other guys are like, yeah, but that's what ministers are supposed to do. Let's go with Apollos. And so there was this controversy, and we learn this both in the book of Acts, but also in his defense of himself in 2 Corinthians.
In 2 Corinthians 11, verse six, he says, but even if I am unskilled in word, yet I am not so in knowledge. In fact, in every way, we have made this evident to you in all things. So Paul admits, I'm not the best preacher, but that doesn't mean that I'm not helpful.
That doesn't mean that God has not called me. As a matter of fact, God used Paul in insane ways. You know how I know? Because he wrote most of the New Testament. And he is the apostle to the Gentiles.
He's the reason you're sitting in these chairs right now. You tell me if he was a faithful slave. He goes on in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, or actually he says before in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, for they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is weak and his words contemptible.
In other words, the people in his church were saying that yeah, when he writes letters, they sound really good. He's really bold and he's really courageous. But when he gets up there to start preaching, he's pretty ugly.
And not only is he ugly, but his words, they're not good. There are people who could do this far better than him. You see, Paul was not naturally gifted, but he was made by God and by the grace of God was supernaturally gifted.
God used his weakness to affect change in the world around him for the sake of his gospel. What does that teach us?
What does that teach us?
That teaches us that obedience and character matter far more than worldly abilities. As a matter of fact, when you look at the qualifications for what it is to be an elder and a deacon in 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus, you will see that there's like one command as to what somebody can do.
You have to at least be able to explain the gospel. You must be able to teach. The rest of it, it all has to do with a person's character.
Because God can draw perfect lines with crooked sticks all day long, so long as they are a slave to him. So what we need in the church is not more impressive men. We need supernaturally gifted men called by the grace of Christ, operating in Christ's power.
But we don't need men who have graduated from seminary, who have amassed degrees, and who can function as a CEO. That is what most churches are looking for. Most churches, when they get together in their search committees and they're looking for their next pastor, they're not looking for a guy who is holy and who desires to preach the word and to put the balm of Christ into the wounds of Christ's sheep.
They're looking for a guy who can run the youth ministry, who can make sure that he's playing nice with all the different types of parachurch things that they have going on and can orchestrate those things all to happen and so on and so forth.
They're not looking for a minister of the gospel. They're not looking for someone who is a slave to the gospel. They're looking at somebody who can keep the institution running. It's sad to say that most search committees probably wouldn't hire Paul to be their pastor, so that he is supernaturally.
So ministers like Paul are supernaturally gifted. He was supernaturally gifted. God worked in between his weaknesses and his power and he did this according to his grace. Now God's grace here is mentioned.
It's the gift of God's grace which was given to Paul according to the working of his power. Now this word grace, of course, is all over the Bible. We've talked about it at length as we have worked our way through the book of Ephesians.
We have given it the definition of God's unmerited or undeserved favor, especially as it relates to salvation. For instance, in Ephesians chapter one verse seven, it says, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions according to the riches of his grace.
Ephesians 2 .8, for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of yourself. It is the gift of God. And of course, in Romans chapter three, Paul says in verses 23 and 24, for all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.
But it doesn't just mean God's unmerited and undeserved favor as it relates to salvation. It also means the enabling power for the believer in performing the tasks that God has for them. We see this here now in the text.
What this is teaching us is that Paul's ministry was by grace. It was given to him as a gift and that gift was a gifting of supernatural quality. But his ministry is also through grace. That is, it sustains him.
It sustains him. And friends, this is the posture that every ministry, every minister should have. So whether you are a minister or whether you are seeking to become a minister, you have to understand that it is given to you by the grace of God as a gift.
If not, you will be tempted to get puffed up. You will be tempted to think that your ideas are the best ideas. You will be tempted to think that you know better than everybody else and everybody else should always pay attention to you.
But that is not the heart posture of a slave or a servant. This is why Paul says in one of his letters that God gave him a thorn in his side. We don't know what the thorn in his side was. There's a lot of theological arguments as to what it is, a lot of academic kind of argumentation as it relates to, oh, is it an actual ailment that he might have, could be?
Some argue that the thorn in his flesh is all of the people who persecuted and hated him despite the fact that he was being so zealous for the Lord Jesus. That could be true. I mean, it's pretty hard to think that you're really awesome when everybody wants to kill you all the time.
And honestly, we probably need more of that. On the Puritan documentary, I don't remember who quotes it, but I think it's a quote that somebody else said because that's how preaching works sometimes. But they said, the problem with preachers today is that nobody wants to kill them anymore.
They just go along to get along and they say whatever the culture wants them to say so that they can fill the seats and get the numbers up and get the joy box filled. We don't know what it was. I think R .C. Sproul Jr. said he was convinced that it was a burst spleen.
I have no idea how he got there. I wouldn't put that one in your theological pocket. But see, Paul understood what all ministers must understand which is that we all are, not just ministers, but every Christian is who they are, doing what they do by the grace of God.
He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 10 when he says, but by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace toward me did not prove vain, but I labored even more than all of them. Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.
Ministers and future ministers, you can do more than you think you can. Non-ministers, those who are pastoring your homes, you can do more than you think you can. You just can't trust yourself to be the power behind it.
It is the grace of Christ that makes you who you are and causes you to work harder than everyone else around you. And it's because of his power, which brings me to my third point, which is ministers minister in God's power.
Ministers minister in God's power. So he says, according to the gift of God's grace, he was made a minister, which in verse seven, was given to me according to the working of his power. Now we have run into synonyms of this word power in the book of Ephesians already.
If you remember in verse 19 of chapter one, it says, and what is this? Paul prays that we would know the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of the might of his strength.
And in verse one, or 21 rather of chapter one, it says that Jesus is far above all rule and authority and power and dominion in every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.
But the power here is talking about the power that God supplies for the work of the ministry. So Paul is made a minister of the gospel by God, according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to him.
He is supernaturally gifted by the grace of God. And he carries out his ministry by the working of God's power. In other words, God supplies the power for what he commands his people to do, or what he commands his ministers to do.
It is in the power of God that ministers minister. They can't do it on their own. They're weak, feeble chumps, as it were. I mean, we're just people. Ministers are just people. One way I've heard it said that I like is ministers are just fellow beggars looking for bread who happen to have found some, and they're just trying to get everybody to come along and get it with them.
And oftentimes they'll stand back and let everybody else eat. At least that's what they should do. If we're talking about bread, if we're talking about Jesus, there's enough for all of us.
God supplies the power for what he commands, and he knows that he needs this power to carry it out his ministry because of what he says next. He says, to me, in verse eight, the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable riches of Christ.
To me, the very least of all the saints. So just when you think Paul's head might be getting a little too big for its britches, he pauses and there's this parenthetical statement inside of a parenthetical passage where he essentially shouts out in amazement, why would God choose to make me a minister?
I am the least of all the saints. This word is very peculiar.
It literally means leaster.
He's the leaster of all the saints. The least and the less of the least. Paul is an interesting wordsmith, and that's maybe what part of the problem was when he was being accused of not being able to preach very well, but what he's trying to communicate here is that he is less than the least saint, and he's not saying that he's the least minister.
He's saying he's the least out of all the saints, and if you remember when we talked about that was in Ephesians chapter one, that's every single Christian. So Paul, understanding his enslavement and his servanthood understands that he's above no man.
He's at the bottom of the barrel, and this is not false humility, but true humility. He understands that he is a waiter. He understands that he's a galley slave. He understands his position in all of this, and it's to bleed out for God and his people, and he felt entirely inadequate to do it, and he felt unworthy of this task, and that he did not deserve the honor of being used in such a way.
Now, how many of us think that way? How many of us think, I can't wait to be used like a slave? Paul did, and he did so because he understood who he was, and to be a slave of the king is better to be a king anywhere else and for anyone else.
He understood that he was the foremost of sinners. He tells us this in 1 Timothy 1 .15. He said, it is a trustworthy saying deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners among whom I am the foremost.
Paul understood his sin to be heinous, so heinous, in fact, he saw it as more heinous than every other person's sin that has ever seemingly existed. He felt unworthy of this honor because he was also a blasphemer and persecutor of the church.
Before Jesus changed his heart, he sought to remove Christians from the earth in 1 Timothy 1 .13. He says, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor, he was president, the first stoning of a Christian, yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief.
Acts 9, four and five, and falling to the ground, speaking of his time when Jesus kicked him off the horse in Damascus, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, who are you, Lord?
And he said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. So this same Jesus has called him to be a minister of his gospel, and he is the worst sinner in his mind that he has ever came across. He is a blasphemer and persecutor of the church, and he sought to not only persecute the church, but destroy it.
First Corinthians 15 .9, he says, for I'm the least of the apostles. I'm not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. Galatians 1 .13, for you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure, and I tried to destroy it.
You see, Paul was a punk rocker. He's not the guy who you think would be doing God's work, and yet here he is. Despite these things, God has called him by his grace and put him to work, and there's many reasons for that.
One, because Paul's ministry existed simply to show you that you haven't went too far. Paul makes this case plainly throughout the scriptures. One, God has a church. It needs ministers, and so God sovereignly chose him to do it, and he chose him to do it so that the gospel might go forth, and to show future ministers and future Christians that you can never out-sin the cross of Christ, and you can never undo God's plan for you.
God can and does use everybody, and he oftentimes does so by using the most least likely candidate.
Because he gets the most glory when the guy who you shouldn't think could do it or couldn't do it does it. I'm reminded of a story. Does anybody know the name William Perkins? William Perkins was maybe the godfather of Puritanism.
He created essentially the form in which Puritans preached. His writings and his sermons caused entire revivals to break out, and Puritanism essentially is Puritanism because of William Perkins, but William Perkins was only used for a short time.
He was dead by the time he was 44, and he wasn't a Christian a majority of his adult life. In fact, he was debaucherous in all ways, and there's a story that goes this way, that he began to hear the wooings and whistlings of Christ by sermons that were always preached, but there was one especially sobering moment for him when he was wobbling through the forest home drunk, and there was a mother walking with her children, and he heard the mother say, "'Come closer so that drunken Perkins won't get you.'".
You see, he was not only living in complete debauchery and drunkenness, but everybody in the town knew it, and God turned his story around, and he used him in ways that you can't even imagine, and though he was educated, he thought the best way to preach was to preach like a normal human to normal people.
I know we don't think that when we read the Puritans. We think, ah, how in the world can't we understand what's being said? But back then, speech was so out of this world, especially on an academic level and within the church, that that was them bringing it down, showing them the doctrine, bringing them along, showing them how to apply it, so on and so forth, and he would get made fun of for not being able to preach, not being smart, and there's stories, if you read in the biographies of how men who were great in academics would make fun of William Perkins, and then once they were convicted by the Holy Spirit, come to Christ, say his words are sweeter than any honey we've ever tasted.
God does what he wants with who he wants, how he wants, despite the background that they have, whether that's a minister or not. Jesus is in the business of changing stories, and Paul's ministry is absolute proof of that, but also Paul's ministry existed to display God's power in him and through him, and friends, when ministers of the gospel forget that it's God's power and his grace that supernaturally gifts the minister for his task, and they begin to exalt themselves, glorify themselves, lift themselves up, the power evaporates.
The crowds may still come, but the power is gone, because you become God's competition, not his slave, and God is in competition with no man. He's in competition with no man.
When you think about the wrong that you have done, when you think about the sin you have committed, you might think to yourself, how can God love me? Or you might think, how can God use me or help me to tell my friends about him when I've sinned in the way that I have sinned?
Well, the Bible teaches us, and Paul is showing us here, that no matter what we've done in the past, if we love Jesus, if we believe in Jesus, if we have bowed our knee to Jesus, that as Paul has said in Romans 8, 28, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
That means you don't have to continually look back on that sin, and you don't have to be filled with shame. You can actually just move forward and thank God for his grace and continue to put that sin to death, and God can and will use you for his good.
The fourth thing that I want you to see, and the last thing that I want you to see is that ministers preach God's Christ. So we have seen that ministers are enslaved to God's message, that they are ministers by God's grace, and that they minister in God's power.
Now you will see that ministers preach God's Christ. Look with me again at verse eight. To me, the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable riches.
Christ says here that they are to proclaim, that is that they are to preach. Ministers are first and foremost slaves of the gospel, and that means that they must in fact preach the gospel. Ministers are word workers because they understand that the word does the work.
This word here is not a new word. We've encountered this once before in the book of Ephesians. This word here was used, speaking of Jesus preaching in Ephesians 2 .17, when it said, and he came and preached the good news of peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.
Preaching is the work of God's son, and it is the work of his sons who are called to minister to his people. In 2 Timothy 4, one and two, this is why Paul says to Timothy, his child in the faith, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word.
Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and teaching. The reality is God's ministers are called to labor in the preached word. That is their principal task and their principal duty.
John Owen, another Puritan, once said, the first and principal duty of a pastor is to feed the flock by diligent preaching of the word. The word governs us. It enslaves us to preach it, not ourselves.
This is why we're talking about ministers on Mother's Day, because the word drives our agenda. We do not drive our agenda. Preaching is what preachers are to do. And so many churches hire pastors to do everything but preaching, and that becomes their last priority, which is why so many churches are so shallow because they do not afford their pastors, their ministers the opportunity to live in the book.
But the word is what does the work. Trust me, I mean, I can meet with you, and I do. Ministers can meet with people, and they do, and walk hand in hand through life's trials and tribulations. I do that.
Other ministers do that, and they should. There's nothing wrong with that. But the principal work of the pastor is to make sure that you understand the life-giving word of God. That is his principal duty.
That's why that's what Paul tells Timothy to do. That's to anyone who picks up a Bible and desires to preach it or even teach it to their children. I mean, those are sobering words. He could have told Timothy to do anything and everything that you might think falls under the umbrella of what it means to be a pastor to his people, and he says, one day, you're gonna stand in front of God, and one day, he's gonna judge you.
And what will you have done? Would it have been preach the word? Because that's the most important. Whether people think it is or not, it is the most important. So be absorbed in these things.
Because biblical preaching rips up the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit and applies the balm of Christ to every single situation that you could ever find yourself in. As we talked about it many weeks ago, when the word is rightly understood and interpreted, applied, it's as if Christ is speaking to his people.
There's something supernaturally happening when a minister stands up in the pulpit to proclaim the word of God that does not just normally happen. And why is that? I don't know. But that's what my Bible says.
Preaching convicts, constricts, cauterizes, and comes alongside. That is that it shows us our sin. It shows us how we don't measure up. It shows us that we are bound for hell. Preaching then constricts us.
It commands us to submit to Christ as Lord and to walk the narrow path. And it cauterizes, it heals the wounds.
By fire.
That's what Martin Lloyd-Jones called preaching. It's logic on fire. It's clear and it's passionate. So there is a difference between preaching and teaching. Though there is teaching in preaching, preaching is much different than teaching.
And Martin Lloyd-Jones famously said, if you have to ask what the difference between preaching and teaching is, you've obviously never heard preaching. Or I like the way that even Michael Reeves talks about the difference of preaching and teaching.
It's a little less on the nose, a little more humble. And he says, the difference between preaching and teaching is this. At the seminary I teach at, I teach people heresy. I teach them about Arianism, Docetism, so on and so forth.
I teach it to them because I want them to know it, but I don't want them to believe it. I don't want them to love it. But when I preach, I'm trying to get through to the mind and to raise the affections so that we might see and love God all the more through Christ Jesus.
So preaching has to be clear. It has to be bold. It has to be passionate. William Gurnall, another Puritan, says, a minister without boldness and passion is like a knife without an edge.
It's useless.
Now, does that mean that everybody needs to yell all the time? That's not what I'm saying, no. It means when you speak, people ought to believe that you actually believe what the Bible actually says. It's not an academic exercise.
It's a life and death. It's heaven and hell. It's you believe this or else. That's preaching. That's preaching. More pointedly, I want to read for you a definition of preaching that is going into a book that I'm working on on preaching, which says, in biblical preaching, the God-breathed biblical text is the slave master that dictates and decides what the preacher is to deliver to God's people from the pulpit.
That is to say, the point of the message preached is derived explicitly from the careful examination and correct interpretation of the selected text itself, with all things considered, the historical, grammatical, literary, and doctrinal contexts.
More than that, biblical preaching seeks to clearly, accurately, and plainly expose, expose, expound, illustrate, and apply the text to demonstrate and herald the necessity, relevancy, and efficacy of the truth extracted in such a way that God's people are stirred in their affections and invoked to respond in both faith and obedience to Christ.
In short, expository preaching or biblical preaching is God's man urgently and emphatically preaching God's message by the power of his spirit for the good of his people and for his honor and his glory.
There are no pet projects. There are only true words that come from God's word. And specifically, this preaching has an aim, and I've already alluded to it. It's to raise the affections and to show us the beauties and glories of Christ.
Look with me again at verse eight. To proclaim or to preach to the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable riches. The job of the minister, friends, is not to get up into the pulpit and to preach themselves.
It's not to get up into a pulpit and preach the law. It's not to get into the pulpit and to preach politics. It's not to get into the pulpit and be motivational speakers trying to get you motivated for some cause that might be really awesome.
It's not just teaching theology divorced from the beauty of Christ. It's about showing God's people Christ. A Christ that is unfathomable. A Christ that is so wonderful that the bottom never runs out.
The well never runs dry. Just when you think you have them pinned down, it keeps deepening and deepening and deepening and deepening. So much so that when we get to heaven, we're gonna continually and forever learn more and more and more about what this gospel is and who this Jesus is who accomplished it on our behalf.
And we will bask in glory for eternity.
We preach Christ.
And we preach the unfathomable riches of Christ. If you are called to minister to God's people, you are called to preach the riches of Christ. The role of the minister is not just to tell you what God wants you to do or how to do it.
He's here to tell you what's already been done for you. He's here to tell you what Christ has already won for you by the virtue and merit of the blood of his cross. The minister is here to tell you how blessed you are in Christ Jesus.
You've been blessed according to verse one or verse three rather of chapter one with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. The minister is here to tell you that you are complete in him, that you don't have to do anything to come to the foot of his cross and that he has everything for you that pertains to life and godliness.
In him, you are rich because he has a bank that is so full that it can never run dry. And when we choose to walk outside of his will, our sanctification, that well, that bank account does not go empty, we just misplace the checkbook.
There's so many, so many things that Christ has done. At this point when he says the unfathomable riches of Christ, he's showing us the tip of the iceberg. Remember, in chapter one verse three, it says that in Christ we are given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
And one for us says that in Christ we have been chosen and are holy and blameless before God because of that choosing. That in verse five, we are in him predestined to adoption, that is we are brought into God's family.
And one seven, in Christ we are forgiven of all of our sins freely and forever. In chapter one verse nine, we are given the understanding of God's will. And in chapter one verse 11, in Christ we are made an inheritance for his possession and his glory.
And one 13, in Christ we hear and believe the gospel and we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. In Christ in chapter two verse five, we are raised from spiritual death to spiritual life. And in chapter two verses six and seven, in Christ we are seated with him in the heavenly places.
And as you scour the Bible, there are even more riches to behold. These riches continue to build. His riches include his kindness and forbearance and patience according to Romans 2 .4, his wisdom and knowledge 11 .33, his mercy and great love Ephesians 2 .4, his glory Ephesians 3 .16, his supplying us with all things to enjoy 1 Timothy 6 .17, his assurance Colossians 2 .2, his word 3 .16, and even our being reproached or hated for his sake, Hebrews chapter 11 verse 26.
It's no wonder then that in Colossians chapter two verse 10, that Paul reminds us triumphantly as it were, that in Christ we have been made complete. There's nothing better than Christ. There's nothing more worthy of our lives.
And so if you feel as though you are called to be a minister, 1 Timothy says you desire a noble task. And what better job can there be, future minister, than to expound on the riches and beauties of our great savior, Jesus Christ, the King.
How sweet are the feet are those who deliver good news, but know that it will cost you, know that it makes you a slave and know as Charles Spurgeon says, if you can do anything else, do that it will be better for the kingdom.
If you are content doing something else, do something else. But if he has called you, you better not turn away. And if he hasn't called you, you better stay away. And so how do we apply this text? In closing, I have a few uses for you.
The first being as a church, we must praise God for the ministers that he gives to his church. And no, I'm not talking about me necessarily. I'm saying that God gives his church ministers. What an amazing gift that he gives us alongside many other gifts that we will get to in chapter four.
I mean, Romans chapter 10, verses 14 and 15. It says, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how will they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?
And how will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who proclaim good news of good things. Secondly, pray for ministers to be made by God.
Here at Heritage.
It is a noble thing to desire to be ministers and the world needs more biblical ministers, not less. We have too many churches and not enough biblical ministers. The math is horrible. It is a trustworthy saying.
First Timothy three one says, if any man aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a good work. It is good work, but it is hard work and it is slave work. Thirdly, pray that God would give men who aren't called by God to minister to channel their energies elsewhere where they will be most helpful.
Sometimes the best thing some men can be told is no. And sometimes to be told no by God. Because it would be better for them to do what God has actually made them to do than to do something that is gonna require more than they can give without God's power.
Fourthly, let ministers actually minister to you. They were given to the church for a reason. Hebrews 13, 17 says, obey your leaders and submit to them for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.
Every word that comes out of my mouth, every conversation I have, every counseling session I'm a part of, all of that will be weighed by God and I will have to give an account for absolutely all of it, which should scare something out of so many people standing up and proclaiming to be ministers.
But that's a different sermon for a different time. So that they will do this with joy and not with groaning for this would be unprofitable for you. Next, pray for your ministers. See, we're just like Paul.
Ministers are just like Paul. Broken sinners who struggle just like you in every way is you and we need prayer. We're broken, feeble men. We will let you down, but by God's grace, we'll continue to proclaim Christ's excellencies and be there for you in any way that we can.
And because it's Mother's Day, and I suppose you have to say something about mothers.
On Mother's Day.
This is a really important one though. Mothers and grandmothers alike, raise your children Christ's word because they might be future ministers. They might be future ministers. You might be raising future Paul's, future William Perkins, unaware.
You might be raising the next Timothy. I want you to see what Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter one verses five and seven. He says of Timothy, I'm being reminded of the unhypocritical faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice.
And I am convinced that it is in you as well. For this reason, I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands for God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and self-discipline.
Paul is saying there is, I know your grandmother, I know your mother, and they were women of faith. And I know that they taught you well. And I believe the faith that they have handed down to you is in you as well.
You had good parents, not perfect, but ones who taught you about Jesus,.
Appointed you Christ.
Friends, Paul was a minister of God's gospel,.
Enslaved to his message.
And it was only by his grace and by his power.
That he was able to do so.
And he labored harder than anyone to preach Christ. And because of that, we are now sitting here as Heritage Church. And your labors only build on that foundation, ministers and future ministers. Be thankful for ministers.
I am thankful for the ministers that I have had in my life who have pointed me Christward.
