Colossians - We Need To View Ministry Like Paul, Part 1

God Centered Theology

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Daily Bites Of God's Word - Part 2 - Psalm 119:2

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And Paul switches gears here. We preached this verse last week, but we didn't go all the way through, so I'm going to pick up in verse 23 where it says, "...if

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indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation," which is another way of saying that the gospel transcends all races, all backgrounds, it's for humans, it's for mankind, it's not for a special elite sort of race, or ethnicity, or anything.

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If you are human, the gospel is for you. And that's what he's saying here. It's in all creation under heaven, not just parts, and of which

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I, Paul, was made a minister. And so Paul transitions here, and in the rest of his first chapter here, which chapter and verse divisions, as I've said many times, are a modern thing, so the thought will really carry over into chapter 2, but we will sort of put a bow on it to try to tie off this chapter.

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But he's basically speaking about the fact that he was not only made a minister, but what his approach, or his view of ministry is.

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And it is my argument to you this morning, beginning with this first part, is that we should view ministry the same way

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Paul did. So, Paul saw his ministry, or service to Christ, as his ultimate joy in his life.

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Notice he says at the end of verse 23, I, Paul, was made a minister.

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There's nothing more special about me than there is you. There's nothing inherently more special about a pastor versus a non -pastor

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Christian. But there is a specific type of calling that God will place on the life of someone that is called to preach the gospel.

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Does it make them any more saved? Does it make us any more, you know, more worthy or honorable?

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In fact, you're going to see as we outline this, that those that are made ministers, and Paul was a unique situation in that he was an apostle.

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I am not in that same vein. I am just simply an under shepherd, a pastor. But the same consistency as those that are called to preach, called into this particular role, are called to be all the more humble, and see ourselves as all the more unworthy because of the amount of time we're able to spend in God's Word, versus someone that has a secular job, or is in a different type of job.

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You've got to be on the clock, or at a certain place of business, and that takes up a lot of your time. Whereas my time is more geared specifically towards studying.

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So, in that, and to the degree that you spend more of your time in the Word of God, and growing up into Christ, what happens is you actually find out, and you recognize just how undeserving of the grace of God you really are.

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So, a call to be a minister is really a call to be humble. And you could say the same thing about any

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Christian. Any Christian is a call to humble service. And you can apply now all the sermon series we did on spiritual gifts that would come into view here.

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As you develop your gift, recognize it, and use it for the body, it should further humble you as you use it.

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So, Paul viewed himself here as a minister, as something he became, was made, or became a minister because of God, and it didn't originate in himself.

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So, while there may be a special, specific calling on say a minister or a pastor, that statement could be said about any

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Christian. Every single Christian is endowed by the Holy Spirit a plurality, a mixture, something specifically unique to you that is your calling, your spiritual gifts, your ministry.

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Because in this verse, verse 23, the word translated minister is the same word diakonos. And those of you who have heard me preach before, it is the same word translated deacon.

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It is the same word translated ministry where you see it in our English Bible. So, it means deacons are servants, and they have certain things they are servants of in the

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Church. Each one of you, depending on what your gift is, that is your particular area of diakonos, or service, or ministering.

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My primary role is in the service of the Word of God to present it and preach it publicly.

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We all have a service. We are all ministers, and we are all made ministers of God by the Holy Spirit. And Paul, in general, is just notating this, that this is not something

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I signed up for. Paul was certainly one who understood the grace of God in his life, and it completely changed who he was.

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Think about it, Acts chapter 8 and 9, you know Stephen's martyred, Paul standing right by there saying, yeah, hey have at it, good, this is good.

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And then the next chapter says he was still breathing insults and murder against the

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Church. Paul took great joy in not only persecuting the Church, but killing Christians.

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That was his whole mission in life. That's all he thought about, that's all he cared about. And it wasn't something he did once and then just, well, okay

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I'm good now, I killed five of them so I'll go home. No, he wanted to wipe them all out. All those that were of the way, or then

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Lord's service, that were coming after this Messiah, Jesus Christ, he wanted them wiped off the to who he became?

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To go from the great persecutor to the great persecuted. He's saved on the road to Damascus.

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Jesus Christ tells him to go see Ananias. He says, I want to show him all the things he must suffer for my sake.

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So, isn't it interesting that he goes from one causing suffering on Christians to now he's going to be receiving suffering because he's a

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Christian. Only God can do that. We can't do that. I can't save you.

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You can't save yourselves. Nothing about ourselves makes us even worthy to be considered for salvation.

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It is completely and wholly of the grace of God. And when you understand this and understand your position, and that you didn't deserve it, and especially in light of that.

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I mean if anybody didn't deserve it, it was Paul. I mean I don't know about you all, but I've never killed a Christian. I've never gone out breathing insults and murder against all of Christianity.

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My sin still sent my Savior to the cross, though. We've got to be really careful in our Christian circles, my friends, that we don't think that, well because I haven't done what so and so has done, well

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I'm somehow superior, and well they need to get themselves straight before I would ever extend fellowship or God pay love to them.

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No! This very second you start thinking your sin wasn't that bad, you need to humble yourself all the more and realize that whether your sin is quote -unquote as bad in your view as someone else, your sin still put

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Jesus on the cross. The payment had to be made. And either we will pay it in Hell, or it was paid for us by Christ on the cross, and we receive it wholly of His grace by faith in Jesus Christ.

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And Paul certainly understood this. He was a completely changed life. I believe

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God makes no mistakes. I believe the Holy Spirit makes no mistakes. I believe God is perfectly sovereign, and He knew exactly what

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He was doing in the life of Paul, because if He had gotten somebody that was, you know, generally good person, really didn't go out of their way to hurt anybody, and oh, by the way, would you mind go preaching to the

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Gentiles for me? Would it have had the same effect? No. It took someone that was,

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He wasn't Satan, okay, He wasn't the devil, but He was about as sinful a creature as you could find. And He's persecuting the very people that were swearing by placing their faith in the

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Messiah, the Christ. And He completely transforms His life. 2 Corinthians, you are a new creature in Christ, right there,

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Saul, Paul. This should help us understand just how undeserving we are of the grace of God that has come our way.

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How undeserving we are of the great salvation. And just to kind of flip the scenario around, you know we sort of look down our noses on other people, we think sin is worse than us.

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Flip it around too. You can never say in any wording, or in any phrases, or in any thinking in your mind that somehow your sin is so great that you are disqualified of the salvation of Jesus Christ.

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No matter how high your sin goes, no matter how much you sin, grace abounds all that much more.

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His grace is sufficient. It doesn't mean we have a license to sin. It doesn't mean we can just go out and live any way we want to. It means we should walk in obedience and in the changed life that we now have.

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But it does mean that there is no one that can't be saved if they place their faith in Christ.

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Every single person. John 3 .16 literally all the believing ones will have life eternal without exclusion.

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And then we get to a really interesting part

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I guess you could say, or just sort of I guess ironic, or just befuddling, or why would

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He say this? Is this guy crazy at this point? He says, I, Paul, was made a minister. And he says, now

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I rejoice. Verse 24. Keep in mind when he wrote this letter to Colossae, he was in prison.

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And he says, now I rejoice. My friends, if it gets over 90 degrees and I'm outside mowing the lawn,

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I'm not rejoicing. This man is in prison for witnessing for Christ and he's rejoicing.

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Boy, does that humble me. All the things that we complain about. And look we all do it. It's okay.

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Just rest at ease. We all do it. I do it far more than probably any of you do. And if you disagree well we'll have us a little complaining war later and see who is better.

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Gina is probably thinking, boy I feel bad for that poor soul because they are going to lose. We are geniuses at complaining and not rejoicing.

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Now look Paul certainly got discouraged by his circumstances. I mean come on, he's still human.

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Nobody wants to be in prison necessarily. But he never lost his joy. He maintained it throughout.

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There was nothing that was going to rob him of his joy in Christ, even in prison. In fact, the early church saw suffering for Christ as such a high privilege they were not only willing to die for it, but many of them did die for Christ.

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And the question I have to ask myself is a question you should ask yourselves. Are we willing to go past maybe simply just a broken nail for Christ in comparison?

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Because relatively speaking compared to what some have suffered, our suffering for Christ could be no more than just a broken nail bleeding a little bit.

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And you hear all these things all the time, I want to see the churches filled. I want to see people on fire for the Lord. This, that, and the other.

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My friends I'm sorry you just look at history unless there is persecution your churches won't be filled. It's just a fact of life.

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People don't see their need for God until something is so on top of them, and the pressures are so great that it sends them running to the house of God.

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And not even so much to the house of God, just to their Bible, just to their needs in prayer, anything to seek after. It's just a fact.

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It's sad, it is. And look I'm not including people here at this point that have jobs.

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The difference between a Christian and a non -Christian, a Christian wants to go to church every Sunday, even if they necessarily can't.

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I worked a food line, there were some years I barely made it to church. I still wanted to go every week, but I couldn't, so I'm not talking about that.

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I'm talking about people that just have no regard for God, don't care. You know I'm fine with the idea of a free ticket to Heaven, which that's not what salvation is, although it is free, a sermon for another day.

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But they are perfectly fine with that. But serving God, actually getting engaged with other believers, I don't know man it sounds like a lot of work.

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Well, people died for us in the name of Christ so that we could have freedom in today's world to serve

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Him freely and openly, and we don't take advantage of it. So when

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Paul says here at the end of verse 23, after Paul has made a minister, he is saying that the true source of his ministry is the grace of Almighty God, nothing else.

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It's not anything in him, it's not anything that was special about him, not anything where he had some kind of leverage over God, God somehow owed him the ministry.

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So when he picks up and says in verse 24, now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.

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The great persecutor of the church was told that he would suffer for Christ's name in the book of Acts, and now this same person is saying,

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I rejoice in those very sufferings. He has joy in his sufferings for Christ.

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Rejoice is a present tense verb meaning ongoing action, an ongoing joy. It's a joy that is not extinguished by any circumstances or anything, because his joy is rooted in Christ and nothing else.

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Sad reality today that we face I think, that a majority of Christians, and yes even a lot of pastors, have completely lost the joy of serving

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God. Sad thing to see. That's been the story of my life at certain times.

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There have been periods in my life where that joy was sort of gone, and had to be reinvigorated, revived.

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The reason is because Christians think that their joy is found in what they want, or their preferences, or making sure everything goes as planned.

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Planned, yeah like you know what's the old joke, you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans? Yeah, I've done that one.

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We even put our joy in our spouse, or our children, or our job, and basically everything else. And these things all bring us joy, and it's true.

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But if the foundation and the root of our joy is not in Christ, all those other things will not bring us the same kind of joy, and the scope, and the extent of the joy that Jesus Christ alone can bring the

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Christian. If that foundation of joy is in Christ is there, everything else that I just mentioned, from the things we want to see happen, to things we plan, our children, our spouses, everything, becomes that much more joyful, because it's got the right foundation.

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Our joy in the Christian life is only found in Christ and nothing else. So, Paul was rejoicing despite his imprisonment, because Paul knew that his joy was not measured by personal circumstances.

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While it can be discouraging, they should as I've already said not rob us of our joy in Christ.

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So, if you ever find yourself suffering for the sake of Christ's name, or for His body, for the

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Church, then Paul says, you can rejoice in that.

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So, when I ask a question in light of all this, why are so many Christians joyless?

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What robs Christians of their joy? Why do we even find ourselves ever in a place where either as individual

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Christians, or maybe even as a Church, or even Christianity at large, maybe American Christianity, or if you want to even extend it out to the whole world, why do we see joyless

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Christians? The reason is, we are robbed of our joy when we take our eyes and our focus off of the

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Great Shepherd. One of the things they tell us in, I can't remember if it was in one of the classes

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I took, or it might have been Pastor Jay, he said, Andy, he says, you know you deal with people at Food Lion, and some of your produce managers and stuff, they discourage you, and sometimes, so I'm going to be frank with you, sometimes some of your

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Church members may discourage you. And he says, you know what, you're going to discourage them.

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It's a two -way street. You're no better than they are, you're doing that role, and sometimes you're going to want to see things, or see

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God working in somebody's life, and it's not going to be quite coming like you want, it can be discouraging. And sometimes somebody may be looking at you to be something they want you to be, and you're going to discourage them.

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He says, but look, don't focus on sheep, focus on the shepherd. Christians are sheep of Christ.

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I am not the great shepherd, I'm an under shepherd, which means I am completely in service and obedience to Christ.

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It's still His Church, it never will be mine, and when He returns one day, He's going to make the whole world know it's His. But even if we're discouraged, even if things don't go like we want to, whether you're a pastor, not a pastor, whether you're a

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Sunday school teacher, or just someone that comes to church, and enjoys the fellowship, and prays for people, and encourages people, no matter what your role is, if your focus is on the great shepherd, your joy is maintained, and it cannot be taken away from you.

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So in reality what it is, is when we become self -centered, or think that we deserve better than what we are getting, or we think we don't need to serve others.

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And what is worse is if you get Christians and or pastors, and some pastors even do this, that think that every decision must be filtered through their preferences.

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My friends, one of the biggest church killers that has ever occurred is when people think their preferences must be dictated.

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They don't sing the songs I like, and they don't do this, or they didn't do communion like I like, or Sunday school isn't at the right time, we should have it this.

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I heard somebody one time growing up that says, you know the biblical way to have a church is to have the aisle down the middle with the pews on the sides.

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So, we'd all be going to Hell right now because our aisles are over here, and there is no aisle in the middle. Oh, don't laugh, because let me tell you something the person that said that was dead serious.

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But this is the result when you think your preferences are so great that everyone must fall in line with them.

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Now look there is nothing wrong with preferences, there are certain types of music I like, certain types of settings, and different things

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I enjoy. I mean we all got them. But the key is your joy is not determined by whether or not your preferences are happening or don't happen.

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And we take our eye off the Great Shepherd and focus on things like, and that's just one example, there's a lot of other things that self -centeredness can manifest itself in a variety of ways.

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But primarily you see in a church it's preferences as well, this decision didn't go the way I want it to, or that person didn't speak to me, or whatever.

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Whatever it is you just keep filling in the blank. And we get all mad, and disoriented, and focused off why we should be here.

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But you know things like focusing on the Great Shepherd maintains that joy. And then notice he carries on and says,

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Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of his body which is the church.

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Notice Paul didn't say, I do everything that is ever needed for the church, I'm the only one that will ever do anything and everything that is needed for the church.

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What did he say? He said, I do my share. None of you, not me, choir, any, none of you are expected to carry the whole load, and you shouldn't try.

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I can't, you can't, we need each other. If someone's not in the game and they're on the side, there is no sideline

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Christianity. If you're not in the game, if you're not in the fight, to follow some of those old Christian cliches we throw around, some of those things.

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If you're not in it, the body suffers as a result. He says,

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I do my share on behalf of his body. Well, do we do our share? Are you holding anything back?

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Are you sitting back and holding back service, or holding back this demonstration of agape love, or this particular thing you could do for someone, or for the church, or maybe say, well, my time's come and gone, or fill in the blank with any of the other excuses we give.

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I've had plenty of them. I can tell you some of mine. I've used many of them. Are you holding back? Are you not willing to toil and labor?

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We're going to see this in verse 29 when we eventually get to it, when he says, I don't have this on the slides, but he says, for this purpose also

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I labor. It means I labor to weariness, to the point of exhaustion for Christ, to the point of exhaustion for His body.

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And then the next word where it says striving is the word we get in English, agonize. It should be something you agonize over.

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You want to see people saved. You want to see Christians growing. You want to see Christians finding out their spiritual gifts, developing, using them.

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If someone has a financial need you want to run to them and help them. If they have a spiritual need you want to pray with them, or cry with them.

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It should agonize everything that we do, and everything we focus on, because it should be the highest priority of our

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Christian life is to serve Christ, and to serve our fellow Christians. Sadly I think many of us hold back, and what we see in a lot of American churches,

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I can't speak for China, I can't speak for Japan, I can't speak for Honduras, but I can speak for America.

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Typically what happens is they get the country club mentality, where you've paid your dues, and if you've put in enough time and years, well then you should get everything you want.

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Now that I've been here for 50 years, or I've been here for 20 years, or 10, or whatever you think, or I've given this amount of money, or I've served in this capacity, well now all my preferences should be made.

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That's not biblical. I can't do that. None of us should do that. No, those among us who have been here the longest, and have been in service to Christ the longest, should be the best examples of humble service to Christ on behalf of the body.

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It's Mother's Day. Some of us are very young mothers, not kind of looking over this way.

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We've got some young mothers, Gina included. We've got some older mothers, and I'm just going to look up the ceiling, not looking in any general direction.

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We've got some that are a little older. I don't have a

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Mother's Day sermon in particular today, but there is this one portion in here that I want to speak to mothers. Never underestimate the power of Almighty God working in you specifically as a mother to impact the body of Christ with eternal benefits.

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Never, ever underestimate your potential to impact other Christians.

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It's not just in your home. It's not just Brother Hudson sitting over there, and Hannah, and we actually have three or four

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Hannahs I think in this church. All the Hannahs, and all the other children with her in your house. It's not just them, it's all the other children you can impact.

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It's everything, not just children, but every place you can impact. Growing in Christ, longevity in the

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Church does not put anyone in your debt. None of you are in my debt, you don't owe me anything.

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There are no special classes of Christians. Nobody owes anything to anyone because of who they are, or how much they give, or what their family name is.

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I don't think that's a particular problem here, but one of the places I was growing up there was like two or three last names where if you had that last name you were special, and everybody else wasn't.

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So hopefully that will never happen in Port. But it does happen. Family names are what position you hold in the

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Church. No my friends, you owe nothing to me, you owe nothing to each other.

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So Andy that sounds off, let me explain. You owe everything to Christ, and it is

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Christ's Word that we are to be in submission to that tells us love the brethren.

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Love each other, uplift each other, serve each other, go into ministry, whatever your ministry is, serve in that ministry.

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We're not doing it because of anything I've done, or you've done, but because of what Christ has done.

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We owe Christ everything. Everything that we have, everything that we are is by the grace of God, and we owe everything to Him.

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Our mindset should be just like Paul's is, because after all that is what this sermon is about, viewing the ministry just like Paul did.

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Our mindset should be that we are willing to go through, endure, or do anything for Christ if it will advance

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His Kingdom, and uplift and edify His body. Are you holding back something, or some part of your life from Christ this morning?

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For a lot of people the reason they hold back is to avoid the suffering, and the toil, and the labor that comes with serving

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Christ. We in America, we know we don't really much like suffering too much. We try to almost avoid it, or go out of our way to get around it.

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We even have whole false gospels like the health and wealth gospel out there. There is a completely different gospel.

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It is completely in contrary to what Paul is saying right here. It doesn't mean God doesn't want to bless us. He has blessed me more abundantly than I could have ever thought of.

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He does want to bless us. He does want to help us, but it is not to be rich, and be filthy, stinking rich.

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It is just not so. Now there are some Christians in rare occasions, because of God has them in a unique ministry.

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He is going to endow them with a great amount of wealth, so they can give every bit of it away. Everything we are promised is for eternity.

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We are going to inherit it all. We are going to have it all. We are going to have wealth, health, eternal life that we can't even imagine.

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It is a promise for the next life. We are promised suffering for the cause of Christ in this life.

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And to the degree that we joyously endure and go through the things that we suffer for Christ, His kingdom is advanced and souls are saved.

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The removal of self and ministry, which Paul clearly had under control, means that you serve to the point of suffering or even exhaustion from your labor, never thinking of yourselves, but instead of Christ and His body to whom we serve.

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As we serve Christ, as we serve the body, as we deny self and serve others, our joy grows.

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If any of you have ever wondered how to have the joy of the Christian life, or joy in serving in the Christian life, my friends, it is right here.

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It is right here. I am not going to go into these in detail, but I want to outline five reasons for you.

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Will, if you will pop those up for me. Thank you, brother. I've got five. These are John McArthur's out in California. I got these straight from his commentary, so I want to make sure

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I notate the fact that this came from him and not me. But I like the way he outlined these so well, I wanted to share them with you.

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Because we typically think of suffering as something to avoid, or we even go even worse as looking at someone that is suffering, or is having trouble and think, well they must be in sin, they must be doing something wrong.

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Paul was in prison! They probably thought he was a failure. He says, no, now I rejoice.

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Five reasons for suffering, or what suffering causes. Number one, suffering brings us closer to Christ.

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I've said very often, those that have ongoing medical issues, chronic illnesses, those that just have thing, after thing, after thing, after thing, if they handle it the right way, and get on their knees before Almighty God, and pour their heart out to Him, and say,

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God I don't know why this is happening, but use me anyway, they have a closeness with God that none of us will ever experience in this life.

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There is a way that God draws you closer to Himself through suffering, and through disease, and pain, and all these things that the world can't understand.

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It seems off, it seems wrong, but it's true. Suffering also assures us that we belong to Christ.

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No non -Christians, unregenerate people, lost people, none of them will ever be assured, or ever can say they belong to Christ if they haven't suffered for His sake.

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It's part and parcel with what we do as Christians. Number three, suffering brings a future reward. We will see rewards at the judgment.

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Number four, suffering can result in the salvation of others. This one, combined with number one, are two of the most important ones on the screen right now.

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Never underestimate the power of God through the suffering that we endure, handling it right, maintaining joy in Christ, pointing to Christ, teaching

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Christ anyway. He can use our example to win people to Himself. And what a great joy and great reward we stand to gain in Heaven for allowing

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God to work in and through us to see people come into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. And number five, suffering frustrates

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Satan, because he can't stand someone like a Paul, or like any one of you in this room.

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If you go out there and you live for Christ, and you receive suffering, or a lost job, or whatever it is, anything that you suffer for Christ, handle it the right way, maintain your joy, and you know what?

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He's not going to like it. And then lastly, he goes on to say, starting back at the beginning of verse 24, now

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I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the

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Church. And then he says, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions.

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What he is saying here is that Christ, 33 years

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I think, and 3 year ministry thereabouts, Christ isn't still on Earth is He?

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No, He's in Heaven. Our hateful, sinful people that hate

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Christ, hate everything about Him, hate what He represents, and would love to in Saul -like fashion kill every

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Christian if they could, do they still exist on Earth? Yes. What Paul is saying when he is filling up the lack of afflictions in Christ is that our

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Savior still isn't here, but the hatred for Him is. If you are a Christian and you live for Christ in this world, you have got a really, really big target on your back.

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We all are going to have it. But Paul says, when these things happen, we can say,

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I rejoice. I am going to close with this, if you want to turn your

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Bibles to the book of Acts chapter 5. We are going to read three verses here in Acts chapter 5, and I want to close with this point about the early church seeing it as their highest privilege to suffer for Christ.

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In the book of Acts chapter 5 verse 40 it says, they took His advice, and after calling the Apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then they released them.

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Verse 41 says, so they went on their way from the presence of the council rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer for His name.

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What do we do when suffering comes? What do we do when hardship comes?

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What do we do when disease comes? What do we do when trials and tribulations come?

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What do we do when we might even face death for the cause of Christ?

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If you don't think it can happen in America, my friends you are asleep at the wheel. It can. I believe one day it will.

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But what do we do? Verse 42, and every day in the temple and from house to house they kept right on without ceasing teaching and preaching

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Jesus as the Christ. If this world gets you down, if hardship comes your way, if you have some chronic illness or disease or something that just is always present with you, if you are out there in the workplace living for Christ and people are talking bad about you, or cussing you out behind your back, or saying all manner of evil against you, maybe even lying to try to get you fired.

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If you've got things you are trying to accomplish for Christ, and maybe even some church members sometimes could be our source of discouragement.

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They don't think you are doing it right, or whatever. Number one, go love them all the more than win them. But my friends, no matter what the circumstances, no matter what we face, keep on preaching and teaching

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Jesus Christ. In the face of whatever you see in life, no matter what it is, whether you are a mother on Mother's Day, father, a son, a co -worker, a fellow church member, the extent of your roles, or the scope of your influence, no matter what suffering and hardship you face, keep on preaching

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Jesus Christ. That's the solution, and my friends, that is where we find our true joy in life.

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Not in circumstances, not in preferences, not in I think this or think that, but Lord I am a willing vessel.

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I am a living sacrifice. Whatever you would have me to do, I will do it, and I will do it boldly for your name.

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And if suffering comes my way, I will say just like Paul did, now I rejoice.