The Right Priority — Keith Malcomson

Here this morning, I want to bring you one last message from the school that we didn't cover in the school, and I want to finish our three weeks with this message, but it's very specifically in application to you, this local church, and to others maybe who went through the school that will listen to this later.

But our last message here in this school over these three weeks is called The Right Priority, and it's from the series on revival. What we're going to deal with here, remember in our revival series, we brought many things in, which you would not expect to find in a revival series, but we applied it and used it, knowing that these things are essential.

They may seem small, insignificant things, yet they're central and vital when we come to dealing with a church revived, filled with the life of God, functioning in the purpose of God. My message, The Right Priority, reading from 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 6, and it says there, and Paul writing to the church, I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.

So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one, and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor, for we are labors together with God.

Ye are God's husbandry. Ye are God's building. Let's pray together here this morning. Father, I do thank you for the precious blood of the Lamb. We thank you for the finished work of Calvary. We thank you for the grace of God that came to us through the Lord Jesus Christ, and as a church, I pray, O God, for each one of us in this room right now, that you bring everything within our lives into the right priority.

God’s Order and the Right Priority

Lord God, you are a God of order, not of confusion. You have a right place for everything, for every person. You are a God that brings order into the body of Christ. You have an order in dealing with things.

You have a way of working with each one of us, and you have a way for the church of Christ to operate in the will of God. Will you speak to our hearts here this morning? In Jesus' mighty name, Amen. As we come to this message, the right priority, we are going and you are going to have to have the Holy Spirit apply this to your heart if it's to affect you.

It can become another message, another bit of information, or this could radically change the order of your life. We are preaching here this morning on the right priority. We want to look at the priorities of your spiritual life, and of this church, and of the school of Christ.

Priorities are a very important thing to God. If you get this wrong, you're going to have a problem, serious problem. If you get this right, something of the life of God is going to flow. You cannot serve God if your priorities are misplaced.

In other words, if the priorities of your life are in the wrong order, if the things that aren't important are emphasized, and the things that are important are forgotten about, you are going to have a serious problem.

Priorities are vital. Here for a second before I preach this message, let me give you a very practical example. This is going to hit the mothers especially. I'm going to pick on poor little Thomas here this morning, and use him as an example with his mommy.

Can you imagine Thomas in a few years time leaving his bedroom, and it could have chosen Joshua, it was a wrestle between the two. Can you imagine him leaving his bedroom in an absolute tip and disaster, and I knew Thomas would never do that.

His mother Victoria comes in and says, now Thomas I'm going out shopping for one hour, and when I come back in I expect you to have cleaned your bedroom, tidied up, and put everything in its right place.

So she leaves Thomas there, happy as Larry, and she goes out the door saying there's every sign that he's going to do what his mommy's told him to do. One hour later she comes back, and there's young Thomas from the top of his head to the sole of his feet, covered in paint, and with a smile reaching from ear to ear.

Unbelievable, he is so excited. Vic's mouth drops, her jaw literally drops, and goes Thomas, what have you done? He says come mommy, you're going to be so excited, as he takes her to the back of the house, to the shed in the back garden, and saying look I painted it pink, I know you like pink, I know you're going to be so happy.

You told daddy that this is something that you desire to be done at some point, and I've done it for you while you were out. What do you think Victoria's response is going to be? Is she going to be as excited as young Thomas, or is young Thomas going to find some education on the seat of his education?

Since I'm saying that in a very practical way, because you know what, you can laugh at that, and that is funny, and that is very unlikely to happen, but you as the church of God do get your priorities wrong, and you're like little Thomas standing there excited, saying look what I have done, and God's saying I never asked you to do that.

Our message here this morning is the right priority. I'm not so much afraid, and I want to tell you this, I'm not so much afraid of failing at something as I am of succeeding at that which is unimportant.

Do you hear the difference here this morning? You could succeed at something, and God says I didn't ask you to do that. I'm not scared of failure, but what if I give all my time, my energy, all my spiritual life to something, and God said I never asked you to do that.

You've got your priorities wrong. In fact, you always had your priorities wrong. I don't want to invest my Christian life in wood, hay, and stubble, and I don't want those that went through the school the past three weeks or this local church to invest in something outward ministry when God is looking for spiritual internal life.

You see wood, hay, and stubble have very little intrinsic value. They have no consequence. On the day at the judgment seat of Christ, Christ will say that's all for burning. You're going to say, but that's all my Christian life.

That's all my hard work. That's all the ministry I've done for you. Christ said it's only good for burning. It's of no consequence. You know why? For this one reason, only one reason, wrong priorities.

You never understood what I'm going to preach to you. The right priority is the only way to have gold, silver, and precious stones. It is absolutely the only way. I believe this message that I'm going to preach to you this morning is the key for you to rise above making that great tragedy that you're saved by fire.

There are many in the church who are going to be saved by fire, and they're offering to God what little Thomas in my imaginary story is doing. So excited, years of labor, and God says, I'm utterly uninterested.

You didn't even recognize my priority for your life or this church. Here in this message, I'm going to deal with three levels of service. Ministry for God, ministry with God, and ministry to God. There are three very different kinds of ministry, and if you get the priority wrong in these, you've made a tragic mistake.

I also want to line these three levels of ministry up with the three areas of the temple. There's the outer court, which is a large area that everyone gets into. There's the inner court, which fewer get into, and that's real ministry.

Then there's the holy of holies that only one man, one day a year, gets access to. I want to join these two. First of all, ministry for God. Now ministry for God is a labor done for God. It could be preaching, evangelism, playing the piano, the guitar, doing the words on the computer and the machine.

It could be cleaning the church. It could be anything, looking after the children. That is ministry for God. Now here in the verses that we already dealt with, we read about one planting. There's nothing wrong with laboring for God or working for God.

It's all part of this, but don't get it confused. If you get this mixed up, your priorities, if you get these three levels of ministry mixed up, you're really going to lose out. You could give all of your life to labor, and if you miss the other two, it's going to be vanity.

You'll say, but it's the will of God. I'm doing the work of God. I'm serving you, God. And he says, you got your priorities wrong. It's all going to burn, but I preach to souls. I know, but you know, because you got things wrong, it became worthless.

It is good. It is necessary. It is taught of my word, but if you don't get the right priority, it becomes hay, wood, stubble. Something that could have been gold, silver, and precious stones suddenly gets burned.

Something that could have presented you a crown now gets thrown away as utterly useless and of no consequence in the sight and the will of God. One plows, one plants, and another waters. What is this?

This is outer court ministry done in response to a precept or to a scriptural command. You could say, but I'm obeying the word of God. God has told me to do this. I'm just doing it. Yet it's outward ministry.

It's outer court ministry. There's deeper levels. If that's all the place that you know about, you're missing out on the Christian life. There are many who preach the gospel like me, who are in hell tonight.

I want to tell you, there's men that preach just like me with seemingly far greater ability and gifting and anointing and success, and yet they're in hell tonight because they got the wrong priorities.

They preached at everyone else, and they sent their own soul to hell. What a disaster. This is outer court ministry. Now there are three specific dangers with this outer court ministry. First of all, we get so busy working for God that we fail to work with God, and we fail to minister unto God.

If you here this morning have been ministering for God, doing things for God, and yet you have no idea about ministering to God, I'm telling you, it was all haywood and stubble. You've wasted your time.

You better rethink this whole thing this morning. All through the past three weeks of this school, we emphasize this one thing, that it's not your works that takes the first priority. It is the altar of prayer.

It's a place of communion. It's getting alone with God. It's seeking the face of God. It's humbling your heart before God. That's priority number one. Not preaching, not evangelism, not worship, not standing teaching in a pulpit.

That's why, although I have a high view of ministry, you've also heard me many times say, it's of no consequence. It means nothing. I meet all these young Christians or seeming young converts, and they say, I want to preach.

I want to be in the high street. Every single one of them that emphasized that are not here this morning. You know what? It was a tragedy. They knew nothing about prayer. You see, you're to establish an altar of prayer, or you're going to find you've got your priorities wrong.

Prayer keeps the priority right. Getting alone with God will keep your heart right, and everything flows out of that. Establish a place, a time, a way of meeting with God. We get so busy working for God that we fail to work with God.

God is sitting waiting. We do things, say, God, I want you to bless this. We never asked him about it. It wasn't initiated by him. It wasn't his desire. We do something, say, come on, God, I want you to bless it.

And all the time God's standing there saying, I'm waiting for you to finish so I can speak to you and say, I never asked you to do that. You're missing it. And even if I'd had, even if you're doing what I told you, you're not even joined to me and working.

You're going doing your own stinking thing, and it doesn't come out of a relationship with me. There's another point here, another danger of this first area. We tend to become legalistic. Brother Clendenin said just the other day, a few times in this school, he said, I notice I give someone a job in the church and I lose them from the prayer meeting.

You know why they think that's spiritual? They think that's ministry. They think they're serving God, and suddenly their prayer life disappears. If you're doing anything and neglecting prayer, what you're doing is an absolute curse to this church.

I want to tell you, people get involved in certain areas of ministry, but they lose the importance of the priority. There's a third area. These efforts require no intimate relationship with God. Most that gets done in a church takes no intimacy with God.

I can preach without being alone with God. You may say, oh, I could tell. No, there's a lot of preachers have no intimate submission to Christ, and you wouldn't tell. They have a gift that's really from God, an ability.

They've learned to do it. But you know what? There's lots of things you can do in church. All the outward ministry of the church can be done, and it's good. It's important. It's vital. But you know what?

It better come out of the other two levels of ministry, or it becomes a curse to us. It'll become a judgment to you on that day. It won't become a thing of reward. You're saying, man, I can't wait to the day of rewards.

You're in for a sad awakening on that day, I can assure you. That's the first level. What's the second level? It is described as ministry with God. In 1 Corinthians 3 and 9, for we are labors together with God.

There is a ministry not only ministering for God, but with God. Not only watering, but literally laboring together with him. It is an inner court ministry. It's a deeper place where we draw near to God.

Now there's an awareness of what God is doing. It's not serving God. It's an overwhelming awareness of what God is doing and wanting to be a part of what he is doing. It's not you receiving commands from the Bible and say, I need to go and evangelize.

I need to preach. I ought to pray. I ought to do this. But it's going deeper where you go, Lord, I want to be laboring with you. I don't want to be doing this, offering you something, but I want to go deeper with you.

This is inner court ministry. Working with God is a response, not to a precept or a command, but to a partner. That is the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen, Matthew chapter 11, 28. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, talking about believers, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me. Do you notice you have to come to him to learn? Why is there so little in the church of God coming out of Christ? It's because you don't come unto him. You don't learn of him.

You're looking to do things for him. And he's standing there saying, when are you going to ask me? When are you going to ask me whether I want you to set that aside, or do something new, or set out your intimacy?

Saints, I'm telling you, we need to hear this priority. Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me, for I make him lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Notice this second area. It says, as a partaker with Christ, as a partner with him, he said, come and take my yoke upon me. I'm doing a certain thing. I'm going in a certain direction. I want you to come and learn of me.

You're not going to tell me what to bless. You're not going to tell me what I want. Can you imagine your kids? Daddy, I know what you want me to do. Do you realize the three-year-old doesn't know? Do you realize a five-year-old doesn't know?

I find it very offensive when people who don't know God, don't know the Bible, don't know anything about the spiritual life, try to tell me what they don't know. I get a bit annoyed. We have people come into School of Christ, and they say at the end, we tell them not to do this at the start.

We didn't do it with this one. But at the end they say, I've got some good ideas on what you should do. It was the most lax person in the school, the most disorganized, the most unfaithful, but they want to tell us how to rearrange the school.

It is the character of man. It is the nature of man. But notice with this yoke, it is two coming into partnership. This is the second area of ministry. I am learning of Christ. I am yoked to Christ. It's not me doing this.

I am walking in step with Him. Where He goes, I'll go. What He tells me to do, I will do. As we submit to the yoke, we become fellow labors with Christ. I'm not calling the shots. It's not my decision.

It's not me saying what we're to do. I'm actually following Christ. Since it is radical, and most of the church don't know it, working for God brings restless activity. You see someone, I've worked so hard.

I've done so much. Why hasn't God answered? Why isn't something happening? You get frustrated and you get annoyed. I've done so much. You need to be so, so careful. You're not getting an attitude towards God.

You know what that tells me? You're in the outer court at best, and you've accomplished wood, hay, and stubble. You need to come to the second level of ministry where you're saying, I'm submitted. Do you know what He says here?

There's rest. When you come under the yoke, and now I'm calling the shots, the Lord Jesus is leading the way. I am carrying the burden. Do you know what happens? There is a working with Christ that brings a rest to your soul.

Walking with Christ under the yoke brings you into the rest of faith. That's why I believe I have never got frustrated over a revival not coming yet on a national basis. 45 years I prayed, waited, preached, believed, talked, read, listened.

I'm not weary. We went to church and preached once. We ran a school there, and one of the best Christians there come and said, Brother Keith, we prayed for six months. Why hasn't revival come yet? I almost didn't know what to say.

You know what? That's someone that's got said, I've done my bit. Why isn't God doing his bit? You know what? You're in the outer court at best. That's where you are, and you're there. You don't have a clue.

You've never come under the yoke. You're tired. You're frustrated. You're weary. Why do you think that is? Because you're not sharing a burden. Christ isn't carrying the burden. You're carrying it all, and you think you've got a raw deal.

Why is God allowing this? Because you're carrying your own burden. You're not coming into partnership and saying, Lord, I'm transferring over. What do you want? What do you desire? I want to go further.

I want to go deeper. I don't want to stay where I am. Then since, God, the third level of ministry is the highest ministry possible. It's ministry not for God, not with God, but unto God. It is a place of communion with God.

Ministry Unto God in the Holy of Holies

In Revelation chapter 3 and verse 20, Jesus Christ speaking to the church at Laodicea. No, let me reword that. Not speaking to the church at Laodicea, speaking to individuals in the church at Laodicea.

You know what it was like. It was a church that was backslidden, worldly, carnal, about to be spewed out. It was a lukewarm church, and Christ says, if you don't repent, if you don't repent, I'm going to spew you out of my mouth.

I can't stomach you. I can't handle you being in my stomach. I am going to spew you out. They weren't a member of the body of Christ. They're sitting in the stomach of the body, and it's revolting Christ.

He can't handle it any longer. And do you know what he says? He says that Laodicean church, listen, if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me.

Do you know at Laodicea, Christ was still looking for someone in this third realm of ministry. It's deeper than the other two. He wasn't saying, I want an evangelist. I want a preacher. Is there anyone who can pray far out of heaven?

He said, is there anyone who will open their heart? And I want to come in and commune in that secret, hidden place of the heart. It is here at the table of the heart that God sits down and communes with us in an intimate, spiritual, internal way.

Ministry unto God is a ministry of prayer. This is not a response to a precept or a response to a partner. It is instead a response to a person, to deity, to a God who wants a relationship. I assure you, my marriage would be in tatters if I didn't communicate with this girl.

You know the story, how we got on a plane and the guy at the desk, I tell you I know, he deliberately changed his smile. We said, now make sure you get us two seats together. He smiled and he said, yes, sir, you will have.

We got on there and she's sitting behind me. She cried. Six hours, we're not going to be able to talk. You see, what you work with her, you live with her, you drive everywhere with her, you do everything with her.

And six hours on a plane, she cries, yes, yes, saints of God, I'm talking about Christ. I'm talking about an intimacy of heart. It's a person. He's not just God. He's not just the creator. He's not just a savior.

He is my personal friend. He is my intimate. And this is the third level of ministry. It is a place of communion. You know what? If you don't have this communion of the heart, all of your labors are going to be burnt on that day.

This is not outer court ministry or inner court ministry. This is the ministry of the holy of holies, where there's no natural light, no light of the sun. There's no human light that gets lit with a fire.

But in that holy of holies, it's a shekinah glory of God. If it's in darkness, it's because God's presence isn't there. We must first minister unto God before we attempt to minister on the people. The church is riddled with preachers who are ministering to people, correcting people, teaching people, and they're frustrated with people.

If you minister to God, this is the overflow. Saints of God, primarily I'm not a preacher. Primarily my ministry is in preaching, teaching, running a church or running a Bible school. I assure you, none of those things are my priority.

They never have been. I discovered at four and a half what my priority was, that I might know you, that I might glorify you. As a boy of six and seven and eight and nine, I'd go to bed. I didn't know about prayer times, Brother Jer.

I didn't know about coming aside and having your prayer time. I couldn't read the Bible. I was dyslexic. Couldn't tell the difference between a B and a D. I didn't learn that until 10 years old to tell the difference.

My headmaster made a little bed, put a board, said, there you go. I went, I've got it at long last. Took me to 10 years old. But do you know what? At six, seven, eight, I'm lying on my bed. I'm just talking to the Lord.

He would come to me. Not physically, not visibly, but he's there. All through those years, I never preached. I never evangelized. I never prayed publicly. I never done anything. I didn't hand a gospel tract out.

All I had was this deep inner communion. Lovely, sweet, beautiful, month after month, year after year of communion in that holy place with the Lord Jesus Christ. I actually believe that I had sweeter communion, personal, intimate with the Lord Jesus before I reached 10 than most pastors ever do in their actual ministry.

You know why? They think this is ministry. This isn't ministry. This has to come out of true ministry. We must first minister unto God. To be much for God, we need to be much with God. If you're really going to serve God, if you're going to be effective in ministry, in evangelism, in prayer, in preaching, in service to others, you're going to have to be alone with God.

To try and do those things without being alone with God, you'll get dry. You'll get discouraged. You'll be disappointed. You'll put out lots of labor, but you'll end up a dried old prune that criticizes everybody else.

We're talking about real ministry. If you're going to be able to affect people, then you're going to have to minister unto God in the holy of holies. Since the tabernacle was built as a reflection of spiritual life, of the church, of how all of this functions, there are three stages to this, and it's all through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ministering unto God is first of all in effectual ministry. And until we make prayer, praise, worship, communion, adoration, and fellowship, unless we put that first, unless that's our first priority, you know what?

The other two areas will become very, very hard. Our ability to minister to others comes out of our knowledge and communion with God. Listen to what Daniel said about our generation, and this hour that's just ahead of us.

He said in Daniel 11, verse 32, they that knew their God shall do exploits. He didn't say that in this hour, they that knew about God, those that have a lot of knowledge, those that have been through school of Christ, he didn't say that.

He said those that know God, who have an intimate, personal experience. Saints, I'm speaking to every genuine Christian. If you have lost personal, private, intimate fellowship with Christ, you're on very dangerous ground.

Very dangerous ground. I'm not even saying about having a prayer time and reading your Bible. You can do that and have lost your intimacy. You could have your hours prayer time, read your McShane's reading, and yet there's no communion with God.

I would rather you read one verse and had communion with him. I would rather you had 10 minutes of prayer every day, but had sweet, holy communion with him. We're not talking about religiosity here. We're talking about a living relationship with Christ.

It is possible to know Christ theologically and not to know his presence. Yet I tell you without fear of contradiction here this morning, that this is truly the exception. Let me take you to Luke 24 to show you an example of what I am saying concerning the two on the road to Emmaus.

You can know Christ theologically, doctrinally accurate. You can be perfect in your knowledge, but you don't know his presence. Do you hear me? Listen very carefully. These two disciples walking along were talking deep theological discussions, two of them, concerning the person of Christ, theology, doctrine, scripture, what had happened in their own experience, and concerning the things that had taken place in Jerusalem.

They were talking about Jesus, a mighty prophet, how he was crucified. And while they were talking about him, while they were bringing forth their knowledge about him, he himself joined himself to them.

Verse 16 says this, that they did not know him. They actually did not know him. They're two disciples. They know all that's going on. They're very sad and hard, but they did not know him. They're Christians.

They're disciples. They're followers. They're believers, but they don't know him. Are you like that this morning? Do you know it all? You could talk and you're very sad about what's going on around you, and yet Christ walks beside you.

You don't even know him. You can't even see his presence. You don't even discern when Christ draws near. They discuss the theology of Jesus, yet we're blind to his presence. The curse of our time right now is that Christ is missing from much of our theology.

There's no doubt about it. We've thrown theology out. I'm for theology. I'm for the doctrines of the Bible. You do not know Christ through theology alone. I'm a Bible man. I'm a Scripture man. I'm a Bible preacher, but that's not enough.

I do not minimize sound doctrine. To seek to know Christ apart from the written Scriptures will lead you to fanaticism, error, and disaster. If you tell me you don't need the Bible, you are heading a one-way ticket to hell.

I don't care what your spiritual experiences are. An experience of Christ apart from this Bible, you're a disaster waiting to happen. When you say, I don't need to spend time in this book to know Christ, then you're deceived.

You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Oh, I could commune with Jesus, but I don't need the Bible. Then you're contradicting everything this book says and what Jesus himself said. It is also possible to have great understanding of theology and still be a stranger to Christ.

Look at Martha at the tomb of Lazarus, her brother who had died. She had a very sound doctrine concerning the resurrection. She knew it. She believed it. She could recite it to Christ. Imagine you're telling Christ, oh, I know he's going to be raised.

No, no, no, no. You don't understand. Don't you realize why I'm here? She is teaching him. I hate hearing people teach God in prayer. I go, don't you know that God knows everyone? Or maybe it's you're trying to teach everyone else listening.

So that's what you're putting it all in your prayers. What's the point of that? I really don't like people trying to teach me in their prayers. Okay. But sound doctrine is vital. The Emmaus rude disciples can quote all the facts about Jesus, but they don't recognize the Jesus that is walking with them, talking with them, and trying to lead them to the scriptures.

They're very hard to be brought that way. True revelation is the result of intimate communion with Christ. The Emmaus disciples eyes were open when they began to break bread with Jesus. Remember when they said, come in, come in.

There was something about him. They couldn't discern who he was. They didn't really know, but they had enough of an awareness to go, this man isn't getting away from us. You need to come in and break bread with us.

And as they broke bread, it says their eyes were open and they knew who he was. Since it's in the breaking of the bread, that there comes a revelation of Christ. The intimate revelation of Christ was not separate from sound doctrine.

It came out of sound doctrine. Sound doctrine will bring you to an intimate walk and an understanding of the real Christ. Jesus began with Moses, worked his way through all of the prophets until the book of Malachi said, I am, I am.

This book reveals who I am and their eyes are opened at the end of the journey. Sound doctrine is a must. It is vital. Basing our relationship with Christ on the word of God is vital, but it is only in the breaking of the bread that we truly know Jesus Christ.

In prayer, we commune with him at the table of our hearts. Our eyes are open. We see him. We discern him. We minister unto him. People who don't pray cannot know. They can know much about God. If you don't pray, oh, you could do everything.

You could read a thousand books on theology. You could correct my words when they're wrong and say, he got that wrong, he got that wrong, he got that wrong. But do you know what? If you don't pray and you don't worship and you're not intimate with Christ, you don't know God.

You may know theology, but you don't know God. You don't know where you are or where you're going. The first priority, let me bring you back to this again. The first priority for true service is to follow Jesus Christ.

John 12, 26 says, if any man will serve me, let him follow me. You want to serve me. I want to go serve you, Lord. I want to do something for you. Praise God. That's a good desire, but first follow me.

Oh no, I don't have time for that. I just want to serve you. You say, that's ridiculous. Yes, and it's all through the church. I've watched it time and time and time again. Lord, I want to serve you, but I don't want to spend any time getting to know you.

It's all through the church. The emphasis here is let him follow me. What does it mean to follow Jesus? Three things. It means to set your heart towards him. Secondly, it means to know him intimately.

You've got to spend time. I had to spend time with this girl. I mean time. I had to spend time with her and listen to her. You ever been in a relationship with someone? They never ask you anything about you.

They never listen to you. All they do is talk. Talk incessantly. They don't have the first clue about you, but also it means to minister unto Christ. To follow him means to minister. Do you know what it means to minister to Christ?

Do you know what it is to actually meet his desires and needs? When we seek the Lord in prayer, when we search his word to know him, we are at the very highest point of usefulness. Oh, I'm studying the Bible to get a message.

I'm studying the Bible to tell my neighbor. I'm studying the Bible for a sermon. I'm studying the Bible to get something for the Lord's table. You missed it. What about reading the Bible to minister unto Christ?

Never thought about that before. All levels of ministry are seen in the life and the ministry of the apostle Paul. Youse are very quiet this morning. As a Pharisee, the Saul of Tarsus, he persecuted the church.

Had you asked him, what are you doing? Throwing these Christians into prison. I'm serving God. Do you know what? He was in the outer court ministry. Nobody served God, done things for God like Saul of Tarsus.