Sunday, December 31, 2023 AM

Heavenly Father, we thank you for gathering us here today to worship you, to rejoice in the truth, your son

Jesus Christ, to relish the blessings that we have been given by your grace, and to do so in his light.

We pray now that as we open your word together, and read it, and consider it, and submit to you, that you would give us a clear view of your son in this word, and that you would thereby transform us and conform us to the image of your son in this world.

We thank you for your long -suffering. We thank you for your grace.

We thank you for your glory revealed to us by your son. Now we ask by your

Holy Spirit that you would accord these graces to us freely and abundantly. We pray these things for the sake of Christ.

Amen. Well, I'm not Dean Tucker, for those of you who are fastidious about your bulletins, but our dear brother is sick, and he could not preach for us today, and so he let me know in God's good timing, and so this morning, rather than First Thessalonians, as I knew he would be going back there, we are going to be in the book of Acts.

Acts chapter 12, beginning in verse 25, and I'll be reading through verse 5 in Acts 13, as we continue going by passage by passage through Luke's second volume, the book of Acts.

Acts chapter 12, beginning in verse 25, and going through chapter 13 and verse 5.

As we have been tracking with the story in the Gospel of Acts, we've seen a lot of amazing things.

And when we ponder and consider the nature of God's relationship to those in the

Old Testament, all the promises that he made, and then we consider the ministry of Jesus Christ, the parables he told, promises that he made, we begin to see the outflowing of all of these wondrous graces of the

New Covenant here in the book of Acts. The new wine has burst the old wineskins.

The eternal flowing water of the New Covenant far exceeds the shallow and dry wadis of the

Old Covenant. And we've been seeing how there's been opposition to the church, opposition to the followers of Jesus Christ, but even the murderous and tyrannical opposition of the civil magistrates is not enough to stop the advance of Christ's kingdom.

And as we read about the success of the Gospel, as we read about the advance of his kingdom, as we read about the failures of tyranny, and as we read about the powerless demonic opposition, we can give an accounting for it all.

We can give an explanation for it all, and it is this. Jesus said, I will build my church. Jesus said,

I will build my church. It wasn't Peter who's going to build the church. It wasn't the apostles who were going to build the church.

They were but stones, lathe as a foundation. Jesus said, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

And that's why we see so much success in the book of Acts. And these indeed are the acts not just of the apostles, but truly these are the acts of the risen

Lord Jesus Christ. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not and will not overcome it.

Christ is our victor on the white horse, prevailing over all his enemies by the double -edged sword that proceeds from his mouth.

And what of the saints? We march in his victorious wake. Christ is the head of the phalanx and the power of it, and we tread along in the wake of his victory.

And at the same time, we are called to walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called.

So let's read our passage this morning. Let's think of the saints, their ministry, and Christ's glory.

I invite you to stand with me as we read beginning in Acts 12 verse 25. This is the word of the

Lord. And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry.

And they also took with them John, whose surname was Mark. Now in the church that was at Antioch, there were certain prophets and teachers.

Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaan, who had been brought up with Herod the

Tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the

Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which

I have called them. Then, having fasted and prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them away.

So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.

And when they arrived in Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the

Jews. They also had John as their assistant. This is the word of the

Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. For many years,

I gardened and I raised rabbits for meat. Don't judge me.

Tastes like chicken. And I was propelled to do that out of several motives, not least of which is

I really wanted to provide for my family in this way, trading time and investment for nutrition.

But in my case, since I did it poorly, I discovered that I really wasn't providing for my family.

I wasn't really feeding and nourishing my family so much as I was feeding rabbits and nourishing plants. We did eat some of it, but boy was that expensive stuff.

I just did it poorly. And so I kept on saying, you know, that I was homesteading, but in fact I was

LARPing. If you don't know what that means, it means live -action role -playing, for those of you who don't know.

I was pretending to be a homesteader. And as I read this passage, and I noticed there in verse 25 that Barnabas and Saul had fulfilled their ministry, and then

I read that the brothers there, that the saints there in Antioch, they were ministering before the

Lord. I thought about that word ministry, the word ministry, and how that word gets used a great deal.

Very often used in a technical sense, but without a clear definition of what that means.

And when ministry is not well -defined, it can be added to most any noun, usually primary sight words.

Cake ministry. Bike ministry. Cat ministry.

Hat ministry. Cat in the hat. Dr. Seuss ministry.

I'm sure we could find those listed on all manner of church websites all across our great land.

I think many folks with good motives engage in ministries, but what does that word mean biblically?

And if we can understand what that word means biblically, thinking about this passage and others, then we will be able to understand what really matters about the ministry, why it matters eternally.

Good intentions. Good intentions. I had good intentions to engage in homesteading. People have good intentions when they engage in what they understand as ministry.

The base of it is, of course, that each one of us as Christians desire, by the grace of God, to walk worthy of Christ's calling.

But what does that look like? What does that mean? I want to begin by looking at the people of ministry, verses 25 and verse 1 of chapter 13.

Notice again all these names. And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry, and they also took with them

John, whose surname was Mark. Now in the church that was at Antioch, there were certain prophets and teachers.

Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Menaean, who had been brought up with Herod the

Tetrarch, and Saul. Some of you are old enough and were brought up in certain regions where you learned a little bit of rhyme going along with the mangling of fingers that look like something like this.

Do you remember how it goes? This is the church. Here's the steeple.

Open the doors. See all the people. Very effective catechism.

Bad theology. Let's try to improve it. Let's try to improve it, okay?

Let's do this a little bit different. This is the church house. Here's the tall steeple.

Jesus is the door. The church is his people. A little bit better? Okay. Let's look at all the people.

Barnabas. Interesting thing about Barnabas, his name wasn't Barnabas. His name was Joses. Barnabas was his nickname,

Son of Encouragement, which is a lot better nickname than Sons of Thunder, some of the

Apostles had. Barnabas was known as a Son of Encouragement. His real name was

Joses, but he was a Levite, and he came from the island of Cyprus. That's interesting because they're about to sail to the island of Cyprus and do some ministry.

Barnabas, you will remember, is the one who welcomes Saul, the traitor, the great persecutor.

After he had been redeemed, Barnabas was the one who welcomed Saul into the fold of the church.

And of course, there's Saul, undoubtedly named by his parents after the first king of Israel, and he was soon to take on a new name.

Even in this chapter 13 of Acts, we will learn that he has taken on a new name for himself,

Paul, meaning little or least, and he often called himself the least of the

Apostles. He described himself as the forever slave of Jesus Christ. Saul was a highly trained rabbi of the highest credentials, but he did not patch that Old Covenant regalia with a scrap of the

New Covenant. But in fact, he took off the whole robe with its chevron sleeves, the funny cap, the tassels, the hood, the medallions, all of it.

And what did he do? Did he pack it away in a closet every once in a while to bring out and show off his credentials?

No, he tells us in Philippians 3, he tossed it all into the nearest latrine. This is

Saul. Who else do we see? John, whose surname was

Mark. His mother was one of the Marys who supported Jesus's ministry, and he was also

Barnabas's cousin. Now, John Mark would get the reputation of running away.

First, he fled naked from the chaotic arrest of Jesus, and then we hear later on he turned back from the missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas.

And yet, the same John Mark would be strengthened and matured by the grace of Christ until he was useful for the ministry.

And in fact, he's an author of one of the four Gospels, the Gospel of Mark. Then there's

Simeon, Simeon who is called Niger. You know, Joseph had a nickname,

Barnabas. Saul got a new name, Paul. John had a surname, Mark.

And Simeon also had a Latin callsign, Niger, which means black.

The saints and the brothers in the church looked at Simeon and called him black.

Now, this is a good example of why we do not read the modern angst of our society back into the biblical text, right?

Why did they call him that? Well, because he's from Africa, and they loved him. And Simeon was a common name.

And so they used that name, the nickname, to distinguish him from the many other Simeons that were all over the place.

Remember that we have a brother, Samuel Carlston Berry, who recently passed away, but everybody called him red.

Even long after his hair had turned snow white, he was still known as red.

These were not, these are not terms of racism or prejudice. These are terms of endearment and love.

There was also Lucius, who was also from Africa, from Cyrene. And Paul, later on in Romans, called him his own countryman.

So he's probably a Jew, one of the Hellenists who spoke better Greek than he did Aramaic, and he was brought up in North Africa.

There was also Menaen. Now, this is interesting. Menaen was brought up with Herod the

Tetrarch. So either he was in the household as a servant, or he was an adopted foster brother of that royal family.

This is not the Herod you just read about in Acts 12 that got eaten by worms. This is

Herod the Tetrarch who ruled in Galilee for a short time.

My guess is that Luke met Menaen, and Menaen helped him with his history in writing

Luke and Acts. Well, what about all these people? What about all these names?

We know that Jesus is the door. Well, look at all these people. Look at all these people. They were from Cyprus and Cyrene, from Tarshish and Jerusalem.

They were from Cilicia and Ijumiah. There were lowly households and royal households.

There were Jews and there was Gentiles. There were Judeans and Hellenists. They spoke Aramaic and Greek and Latin and local dialects.

What are we being reminded of here? Well, what we're often reminded of in the book of Acts, when we begin to see the grouping of the church together, we're to be reminded of Pentecost.

Reminded of Pentecost. Look at all the different kind of folks from all over the known world whom

Jesus saves. And they are brought together in unity and in love for a particular purpose.

Once again, we must resist applying the modern angst to the biblical text.

This is not a passage that is debating whether a pluralistic society is better than a homogeneous society.

This is not a commercial for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It has nothing to do with that.

And given these common debates that were often pitched to Christ in his day and are pitched to Christians in our day, if you're given a side

A and a side B, chances are Jesus is just going to say no to the whole thing. Okay, so they were from different places.

They spoke different languages, but most of them were Jews. And when they go on their mission to Cyprus, where do they go?

To the synagogue to preach among the Jews. So, take up the passage, twist it one way,

I'm for pluralism. Twist it the other way, I'm for homogeneous society. It has nothing to do with that.

It's not the debate. Look what Christ does in transforming the world. They're not talking about it.

They're not worried about it. What's the point? The point is that Jesus Christ in his ascendancy, in his reign from his holy mountain, brings together all manner of people, and they no longer have their swords at each other's throats.

For the swords have been beaten into plowshares, and they're shoulder -to -shoulder in the harvest. That's the point.

So, they need to walk worthy, and we need to walk worthy of Christ's calling upon us.

Now, let's look at Ephesians 4 for a moment. And in Scripture interpreting

Scripture, I want to give some context for what we are reading about in the book of Acts, especially as we get ready to go through the rest of Acts 13.

And we see the spread of the gospel, the building up of the church, by the means of all these different saints.

And in Ephesians chapter 4, we read in verse 1, here is

Saul, who understands himself as Paul, little. How does he describe himself?

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you are called.

Walk worthy of the calling with which you are called. And this is not an encouragement to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work really, really, really hard until you satisfy the standards of God.

This is not an admonition to say that you need to use your own talents and your own strength and your own ability to please

God. Why is that? Because, notice the context, verse 7, but to each one of us, those who are called to walk worthy, to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Does anybody want to try to measure the measure of Christ's gift? The one who can hold the seas in one hand and the mountains between a finger and thumb.

Are we going to be able to measure the measure of Christ's gift? Verse 8 says, therefore, he says, and I quote

Psalm 68, when he ascended on high, who was ascended on high? That is our Savior, Jesus Christ.

He led captivity captive and gave gifts to men. There was a, there is an entire triumph related to Christ ascending to the right hand of the

Father by whom we have all these gifts. Paul quotes

Psalm 68 in this passage and in context, Psalm 68 describes the victorious reign and advance of the ascended

Messiah from God's holy mountain. This holy mountain shows up all over the

Bible. It's none other than Daniel's vision of Mount Zion filling the whole earth, which of course is the scope of Christ's authority.

All authority in heaven and on earth. So Christ, in his ascension, gives us all that we need to walk worthy of the calling whereby we are called, giving to us the

Holy Spirit in all the graces of the cross and resurrection with him. Notice verse 11,

Ephesians 4 verse 11, and he himself, Jesus Christ, gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.

Why? So they have really cool titles? No, there's a purpose.

Verse 12, for what? The equipping of the saints for the work of ministry.

For the work of ministry. What is this work of ministry? For the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the

Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine or news cycle by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head

Christ, notice, from him from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to the effective working by which every part does its share causes the growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

In other words, some are apostles like Paul. Christ gives apostles.

Some are apostles like Paul. Some are prophets like Barnabas. Some are evangelists like Mark. Some are pastors and teachers like Timothy and Aquila.

But notice, please notice, every joint and every part receives from Christ, from the head, what each one of us needs to cause the edifying and the maturing growth of the body that's ministry.

Each one of us, born again by the Holy Spirit, seated with Christ in the heavenly places, adopted by God as our

Heavenly Father, each one of us has an interesting story. Each one of us have a set of unique experiences.

We all have various interests and talents and giftings and so on. Some of us even have endearing nicknames.

But what matters eternally is that we walk worthy of a calling with which we have been called.

This is what's pleasing to God, what's pleasing to Christ. So we don't begin with our individual uniqueness, not that that gets totally erased.

We begin with who Christ is. He is the one who has called us.

He is the one who equips us. And notice, He's the one who gives us to one another.

He gives gifts for the sake of one another. He gives us to each other.

Not that we promote ourselves to become the best version of ourselves, you be you and the best you that you can be.

No. What was the standard? That we grow up into Christ. He's the standard. He's the one who is mature.

He is the eternally perfect version of all those who are made in God's image. And that maturity does not happen by isolated self -exaltation, but in unity following together after Christ.

So let's go ahead and talk about the purpose of ministry since we're already there. Verses 2 through 5, back to Acts, chapter 13, verses 2 through 5.

Notice what they are up to, all these people of the church.

As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, now separate to me

Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then, having fasted and prayed, laid hands on them, they sent them away.

So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus, and when they arrived in Salamis, they preached the

Word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and they also had John as their assistant. So they're in Antioch, far northern city, third largest city in the ancient

Roman Empire, and they're upriver from the Mediterranean Sea.

The town of Seleucia is the port city attached to Antioch. So they go down the river

Orontes, down to the port city of Seleucia, and there they find the great

Roman port. And they board a boat, and they sail 75 miles across the

Mediterranean Sea to the Isle of Cyprus, and there on the east side of the island is

Salamis, their great port city. And as soon as they arrive in this place where all manner of people are, they go to the synagogue where Moses is read every week, and they begin to preach that Jesus is the

Christ, the Son of the living God, that he has come and died and been raised from the dead, is ascended at the right hand of God, reigning as it was promised, and that all men should bow the knee and repent and believe in him.

Well, notice that we have, in verse 25, this description of Barnabas and Saul fulfilling a ministry, and then we find the saints in Antioch ministering before the

Lord. What does this mean? Well, you can recall that Barnabas and Saul are in Jerusalem because they were sent out by the church in Antioch with supply, with provision for the brothers and sisters in Judea because a famine was falling upon them.

Now, they have completed that ministry, they have fulfilled it, they're done, so now they're coming back.

And then we see all the saints in Antioch, they ministered to the

Lord. They ministered to the Lord, it says in verse 2.

So what goes on here? The first word, ministry, that we see in verse 25, that English term covers the

Greek term from which we get the word deacon, and that kind of ministry, that kind of image, gives us a picture of servants stirring up lots of dust in their industry, in their diligence.

The second use of ministry there in verse 2, as the saints ministered to the

Lord, that English word again covers a different original Greek term from which we get our word, liturgy.

And in this one, this word was used often to describe the duties of the priests as they labored in slaughtering, and butchering, and sacrificing, and doing sacred rites before the

Lord in the tabernacle and in the temple. So what is ministry?

Ministry, therefore, involves an element of self -sacrifice.

It involves an element of intercession, doing something for somebody else, an element of reverence, of honor and worship to God.

When you put all three of those together, you have ministry, our own word from the old French and Latin, referring to the lowly service of priests and what were priests, but intermediaries, they were intercessors.

So what is ministry? Ministry is, for the glory of God, I labor for the sake of others.

That's ministry. But there's an aim to it, there's a goal to it. I find it interesting that Barnabas and Saul fulfilled their ministry and they were done with it.

We could learn something from that. There are some ministries that are finished and completed, and yet they just continue on and on and on and on, because we love bureaucracy.

We love titles, and we love line items, and we like having space to ourselves, and so on and so forth.

But look, it was finished. They were done with it. There was no standing committee on food for Judea that lasted from year to year and decade to decade with a newsletter update.

It was completed. You can finish something. It's okay. And look, having finished that,

Saul and Barnabas are free for something else. Something else that Christ has for them, that the

Holy Spirit has set them aside for. And so they go forth to Cyprus, heralding the

Word of God to the Jewish community there. Now when we look at the saints in Antioch, we notice that some of them, there were certain who were prophets, certain of them who were prophets, certain of them who were teachers, but that was not the entirety of the church.

As we read in Ephesians 4, Christ gives some as these, but not everybody has the same role, the same way of ministering.

Our worship of God in Christ is not restricted to those who are in the limelight, or in leadership, who only have certain types of giftings.

All of us are called to minister in such a way as to do so for the sake of others to the glory of Christ, meaning that the preaching is not restricted to the individual's reception.

Oh, I have received my spiritual vitamins for the week. I've gotten my scripture infusion, and now

I am bettered because of it. It's not restricted to the individual. It's not a matter of a personal experiential high.

It is a means by which we may exhort and admonish one another. The singing is not restricted to the individual, to be moved aesthetically by art alone, but we are called to do what in Ephesians and Colossians?

We are called to exhort each other and admonish one another in our singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Your singing is not for you. It's for those around you. You are ministering before the

Lord, laboring for the sake of others. The work of Christ that he has for his people means making disciples of all the nations.

Saul and Barnabas and John Mark were sent out for others to the glory of Christ. Ministry is not about fulfilling the self.

Ministry is not about scratching that itch of feeling important. Ministry is not about the self.

It is to the glory of Christ and the good of others. I boasted of long garden rows, many, many cages and hutches full of rabbits.

Was I really providing for my family? I was pursuing a hobby, and that's fine, but I shouldn't call it homesteading.

I shouldn't call it actual provision and benefit. It was more about something

I did for me more than anybody else, and that's the way it goes with ministry.

Give it some thought. Are we just scratching an itch because I want to feel important, or am

I laboring truly for the good of others to the glory of God? Remember, definitional to Christianity is this, that the

Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Now back to Ephesians 4. We want to walk worthy of our calling. I think there's a pull and a desire in the hearts of Christians.

Yes, I want that. I want to walk worthy of the calling with which I have been called, and I would love to hear on that day when

I meet my Savior, well done, thou good and faithful servant. That is a Christian desire, but it is something in which we must set aside our own preferences and expectations and demands.

Listen to the way in which Paul describes the walking worthy of the church, Ephesians 4, verse 1.

I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. His thought continues.

What does that look like? How do we know that that is a worthy walk? Well notice, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long -suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the

Spirit in the bond of peace, and what's the basis for this?

It tells us in verse 4, there was one body and one spirit just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one

Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who was above all and through all and in you all.

Not about me, not about you, but about God. We cannot walk worthy of Christ's calling unless we are doing so in following Christ's humble, self -sacrificing, serving example.

He's the rabbi, we're the disciples, we mimic him.

It is imperative that we have unity in love and in truth.

Our unity in the love of the Triune God depends on our confession of the glory of the

Triune God. It is not enough that we say that we love one another, it is that we love one another as Christ has loved us.

It is imperative that we understand the gospel in light of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

It's about his name, not ours, his will, not ours, his word, not ours, his grace, not our abilities.

Verse 7 says, but to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

And this leads us back to the power of ministry. Consider again verses 2 through 5.

As they ministered to the Lord, as they worshiped him, as they blessed his name, as they gathered together for the singing of hymns, and the reading of the word, and the praying together, all for the glory of Christ, as they ministered to the

Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which

I have called them. Then, having fasted and prayed and laid hands on them, they sent them away.

So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia. From there they sailed to Cyprus, and when they arrived in Salamis, they preached the

Word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. They also had John as their assistant. What are we observing here?

They are gathered before Christ, before the face of God, to minister to Christ.

They are praying, confessing their sins, their failings, their needs.

They're adoring God. They're asking him to supply their every need, thanking him for his many acts of faithfulness.

They are fasting. They're saying, we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And they're desiring to be guided not by what they think is most urgent, not what their society is telling them is most important, but they want to be guided by God himself, the

Holy Spirit. We observe here people of God who are in the

Son of God, depending on the Spirit of God, to proclaim the

Word of God. That's what's going on in this passage, and that's not anything different than what

Christ is still doing today amongst the saints. He's still building his church this way.

And so we see that they seek the Lord's will, including fasting.

Fasting always attended by prayer in the Scriptures, but what is fasting truly? In fasting, every pang of hunger and wave of weariness reminds the saint that we do not live by bread alone, that there is something out there, there is something outside of us that is to be more desired than necessary food.

There's something more important than even my most basic necessities.

How did Jesus teach his disciples to pray? Our Father in heaven, remember the one who knows all of our needs before he even asked.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. You be exalted, not myself.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Then comes the daily bread.

Give us this day our daily bread. Priorities. And what does the

Father say by the Holy Spirit of his Son? What is the direction given?

What is the provision given? We see Barnabas and Saul set aside for ministry, set aside for the work that God has for them.

The Spirit is sovereign in his provision for the advance of Zion. He says, separate to me

Barnabas and Saul for this task. Now, all the saints, all of us saints have been recreated in Christ Jesus for good works which

God has long prepared for us, and it is not only the work that has been provided, it is the grace, it is the power as well.

I find it interesting that the church, so dependent upon the Lord, so focused on what the

Lord's will is, that indeed they send Saul and Barnabas, but it is said also in the text that the

Spirit sent Saul and Barnabas. What a wonderful thing for the church to be in agreement with the

Holy Spirit, in agreement with Christ our King, so that what we say has already been said in heaven.

In this way, we are the pillar and the ground of the truth in this world. Now we see

Saul and Barnabas and John. Barnabas, obviously, is a gregarious fellow, very encouraging, very kind.

Saul, we know, is a scholarly fellow, thinking about how all the things in Scripture are fitting together in Christ.

And we know John Mark, initially, as a young fellow, a waffling fellow.

He gets a rep later on. And, you know, about John Mark and Barnabas and Saul, there is a big falling out and a fight that's going to happen here in two chapters.

In other words, don't get too focused on Saul and Barnabas and John. They don't have the personality, they don't have the persuasiveness or the power to pull off this ministry that has been given to them.

They are simply children of God, and if you have children, you know that sometimes they're just unreliable, and sometimes they get in fights.

And we are children of God, but as children of God, united in the

Christ of God, sent by the Spirit of God to preach the gospel of God, they do so by the power that He gives them.

When Paul describes the way in which the church is built, the ministry that we are called to, for which

Christ provides, he quotes from Psalm 68. Why does he quote from Psalm 68 of all places?

Because the psalm begins in verse 1, let God arise. Let God arise, let

His enemies be scattered. Verse 4 is about His glory, sing to God, sing praises to His name, exalt

Him who rides on the clouds by His name, Yahweh, and rejoice before Him. It's His power, it's

His name, it's His throne, and even now in the book of Acts, the announcement is spreading across the ancient

Roman Empire. Not Caesar is Lord, but Jesus Christ is Lord, and we'll see the world turned upside down by the pronouncement, the heralding of that good news.

In verses 7 and 8 of Psalm 68, O God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, the earth shook, the heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God, Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the

God of Israel. See? God goes out and things change.

Not based on man, it's based upon God and the power of God. Why is it that our labor is not in vain?

Because we make it so. But that God raised Christ from the dead, that He did mighty things and shook the earth, that's why our labor is not in vain.

Verses 15 through 19 of Psalm 68, A mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan, a mountain of many peaks is the mountain of Bashan.

Why do you fume and envy, you mountains of many peaks? This is the mountain which God desires to dwell in.

Yes, the Lord will dwell in it forever. Common picture throughout the scriptures, the mountain of God eternally set.

The chariots of God are 20 ,000, even thousands of thousands. The Lord is among them as in Sinai in the holy place.

Verse 18, here's where Paul quotes in Ephesians 4, You have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive, you have gifts among men, even from the rebellious, that the

Lord God might dwell there. Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits, the

God of our salvation. Selah. Think about that. You know,

Psalm 68 is the passage Paul's meditating on when he's writing Ephesians 4. This is the poetry that really hangs as the backdrop for the stage of Acts 13.

How is it, why is it that these men go forth ministering and heralding the victorious Christ, the gospel of the kingdom?

Why is it that they do that? How is it that they can possibly do that? It is because Christ is ascended and ruling from God's mountain, and he's giving gifts to men.

He is remaking rebellious men into gifts that he gives to the church. This is the power of God.

So we are to confess the power of God, and we are to pray for the power of God. We are to rely upon the power of God.

As the saints, as we take up ministry, whatever it is that we are called to, we are to take up that ministry and walk worthy of the calling with which we have been called, because Christ is ascended, and he has given us gifts, and given us as gifts to one another.

I'll close with Peter. As each one of you, as each one of you has received a gift, minister it to, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do so as with the ability which

God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever.

Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the day that you've given us in your Word. Thank you for reminding us that it's about who you are and what you do in us.

We thank you for your long -suffering. We thank you for your grace and your empowerment, and that you use the likes of us to do things that matter forever and ever.

Help us to rely on you to humbly seek your aid in every step that we take, doing the ministry that you have called each one of us to.