And he salted in some admonition. And then here again, he ends
up commending them again. And that makes admonition easy
to receive. It makes you, it seemed reasonable
because you heard it in light of the gospel. And it is how
Christ constrains our heart. If I stood up here and just preached
to you your sins and sat down, that would be law. It's no different
when we're dealing with one another one-on-one. You commend, you
declare the comfort of the gospel, salt in the admonition, and end
with commending. That's a very wise way of doing
that. But my subject this morning is
the minister of Jesus Christ. What is a minister? The minister's
not the one seated at the table being served, the minister is
the one doing the serving. That's what a minister is, a
servant. None are apostles today, and
not all are preachers, but all God's believing children are
ministers of Christ. We all are. We're all servants
of our Lord sent to serve one another. Paul told the Galatians,
brethren, you've been called unto liberty. Only use not liberty
for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. Minister to one another. Every
believer is a minister. Wherever Christ has planted us
in our sphere of influence, we're a minister. to those people around
us, a servant to those people around us. Now, how are we servants
and why? Well, let's read what Paul says
here in the rest of our text. First of all, it's by God's grace. He says in verse 15, grace is
given to me of God that I should be the minister. Then secondly,
whose minister are we? We're the minister of Jesus Christ. He was a minister to the Gentiles. We're ministers to all God's
people. Jew or Gentile. How do we serve? What do we serve with? Verse
16, ministering the gospel of God. That's what we serve with,
the gospel of God. Verse four, here's the purpose.
Verse 16, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable
being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. And then fifthly, who
gets the glory? Verse 17, I have therefore whereof
I may glory, and he's saying only in or through Jesus Christ,
in those things which pertain to God. I will not dare to speak
of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me,
to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed, through mighty
signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of God. so that
from Jerusalem and round about and to Elycrium, I fully preach
the gospel of Christ. I wanna look at these five divisions. First of all, we're made ministers
by God's grace. God's people are made ministers
by God's grace. He says in verse 15, grace that
is given to me of God that I should be the minister. Every believer
is what he is by the grace of God. It's by God's unmerited,
even demerited favor. We didn't merit it, we demerited
it. And yet God had favor on us.
Paul is like every true child of God. He was what he was by
God's grace. And this grace was given to us
before we were ever even born. He said in Galatians 1.15, when
it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb. That means he separated me before
I was ever born. And then he called me by his
grace to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among
the heathen. And immediately Paul said, I
did not confer with flesh and blood. We're separated by God
in divine election. chosen, separated by God in divine
election, and then each one he separated, he calls in time. And that's all by grace. Jeremiah
1.4, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, this is what
God said to Jeremiah, before I formed thee in the belly, I
knew you. And before thou camest forth
out of the womb, I sanctified thee. I separated you. And I
ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. So like Paul and
like Jeremiah, brethren, before we were ever born, God had grace
upon his people, sanctified his people, separated us in divine
election. He ordained we would be his servants. And then in time, he called us
by the same grace and made us his servants. It's all of grace. It's not by our worth or our
works. Romans 11, six, look back there. It says, if by grace, then it is no more
of works. Otherwise, grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it's
no more grace. Otherwise, work is no more work.
He's saying it can't be a mixture. Either our election and our calling
was of grace, or it's of works. It can't be a mixture. And God
says it's all of grace. The verse right before that says,
there's a remnant according to the election of grace. It's by
grace. Everything Paul was, every gift
he possessed, everything he did in his ministry was by the grace
of God. He said, I was made a minister
according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the
effectual working of his power. And he said, and unto every one
of us, every one of us that's been called is given grace according
to the measure of the gift of Christ. So brethren, our election,
our regeneration, our conversion, our justification, our redemption,
our sanctification, faith, love, gifts, deeds, everything is by
God's grace, by the power of his grace. Now secondly, whose
minister are we? Paul says there in verse 16 that
I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. Now Paul was especially made
a minister to the Gentiles. You and I here today, I was made
a minister to this church in Ewing, New Jersey. You and I
collectively are ministers to God's people, Jew and Gentile.
and ministers to sinners that don't even know him yet. We minister
to them hoping God will call them by his grace. But we're
servants to one another. And when he says here of Christ,
ministers of Christ, there's a couple of things that's meant
here, at least two things. Paul was a minister of Christ
in the sense that he was made and sent by Christ. And so were
you and I. concerning pastors, the Lord
said in Jeremiah 3.15, I will give you pastors, according to
mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. Paul hated Christians. When he was Saul of Tarsus, he
hated Christians. But Christ arrested him on the
road to Damascus and revealed himself in him, and when he did,
He called him and sent him to be his minister. He sent him.
And if you and I are servants of Christ, it's because Christ
did that for us. Secondly, the minister of Christ
means Paul was Christ's personal minister, doing Christ's bidding. That's what we are, brethren.
We're Christ's personal servant, his personal minister to minister
to his brethren. You remember Ananias, he was
afraid to go talk to Paul, because he had heard about Paul. He knew
Paul was killing believers. And so when the Lord told him
to go preach the gospel to him, Ananias was afraid to go. He
said, I've heard of this man. And listen to what the Lord said
to him. He said, go thy way, for he is a chosen vessel unto
me to bear my name before the Gentiles. and kings, and the
children of Israel. For I will show him how great
things he must suffer for my namesake." Brethren, that gives
a whole new meaning to us being servants of our Lord Jesus when
you think we're chosen vessels unto him. We're sent to bear
his name. We're sent to suffer for his
namesake. That's true of me and you and
everyone who's been called. We're not our own anymore. We've
been bought with the price of Christ's precious blood. Paul
said, you're bought with a price, be ye not the servants of men, be the servant of Christ. That's
how Paul introduced himself and Timothy to the church at Philippi. He said, Paul and Timotheus,
the servants of Jesus Christ. Now thirdly, how do we serve? How do we minister to one another? Paul says in verse 16, ministering
the gospel of God. That's how we serve. That's the
bread, that's the food with which we serve one another. Christ's
minister serves the gospel of God. There's only one. There's
only one gospel. We serve needy sinners by preaching
the gospel of God, which is Christ and him crucified. God's the
author of the gospel. It's his gospel because he's
the author of it. In the beginning, God. He originated the gospel. He purposed it. He ordained everything
involved in the gospel. He's the author of the gospel.
Paul said to the Galatians, I certify you, brethren, that the gospel
which was preached of me is not after man. I neither received
it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of
Jesus Christ. It's God's gospel. And then God's
the subject of it. The message we preach, we're
not preaching man, except to say he's a sinner, ruined. We're
preaching God, he's the subject of it, his character. We preach
God's holy and sovereign. He's just. He's merciful. He
will by no means clear the guilty. We preach the character of God. We have to deal with a holy God.
He doesn't wink at sin. He's not going to clear guilty
sinners. We must die. But he's merciful and long-suffering
and good. That's the character of our God.
and we preach his works. That's the subject of the gospel.
We're not trying to preach man's work. What you hear in religion,
false religion, is man's works. They're all the time telling
you what to do and basically it's just how to make your life
as good as it can be in this world. That's not the gospel.
The gospel's concerning the works of God. That's the gospel. God the Father willed salvation
and purposed salvation. He chose whom he would save.
He chose Christ who would be the Savior. The Son of God is
the one who came forth and performed it. He's the one who fulfilled
the law and made his people righteous by laying down his life. And
God the Holy Spirit applies it and keeps it applied and keeps
his people through the power of the Spirit of God. Salvation
is of the Lord means all the works in our salvation is of
the Lord. And then God in Christ is the
object we preach. Christ Jesus, that man who walked
this earth, is the fullness of the Godhead in a body. When you
see the Lord Jesus Christ, you see God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. They're three persons, but it's
just one God manifest in the man Christ Jesus. If God hadn't
come in human flesh, we wouldn't be able to see him. But he did. He came in human flesh, and that
one we preach. The object of our preaching,
the object to whom we bow, is Christ Jesus, who is God in three
persons. The man Christ Jesus. The same
followed Paul and us, these men followed Paul and the preachers
and they were crying, these men are the servants of the most
high God, which show unto us the way of salvation. What is that? What's the object?
What's the way? Christ said, I am the way, I
am the truth, I am the life. No man comes to the Father but
by me. So the object we preach is Christ. We're urging sinners to come
to Christ, to lay down all your works, all your so-called worth
and merit and anything you trust in, and come to Christ. He's
the object we preach. Romans 1.1 tells us clearly who
the gospel is. In Romans 1.1, he says, I'm Paul,
a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto
the gospel of God. And he tells us what that is.
Which God had promised afore by his prophets in all the holy
scriptures. So everything you read in the
Old Testament, just like everything you read in the New Testament,
is the gospel. And what is it? Concerning his
son, Jesus Christ our Lord. That's the gospel. That's the
gospel. I don't care what man says that's
true. I don't care how it tickles your
ears. I don't care how it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
If it's not Christ and what he accomplished for his particular
people and how he's calling them out and saving and shall lose
none, you haven't heard the gospel. Paul said, I marvel you're so
soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ
unto another gospel. Now listen to what he said about
it, which is not another. There's only one. This is how
serious he is about it. He said, but those that trouble
you and would pervert the gospel of Christ, he says, though we
are an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than
that which we've preached unto you, let him be accursed. That's serious. That's just one
gospel. So each of us that Christ has
made a minister, what we're ministering to one another has to be Christ
and Him crucified, the gospel. If we haven't done that, I don't
care what our purpose is in ministering to one another, if we haven't
declared Christ to one another, we hadn't ministered to one another. What if Paul would have written
this letter and he'd written nothing in there but just, it's
your reasonable service to give your bodies a living sacrifice? What if he had just written,
don't judge one another, receive one another without doubting?
But he hadn't declared everything else he declared? It wouldn't
be the gospel. It would just be some dos and
don'ts. It would be laws, what it would be. See, we have to
minister Christ when we minister to one another, always, in every
situation. Now, fourthly, what was Paul's
purpose in ministering the gospel? Why did we minister the gospel?
What's the purpose of preaching Christ and crucify? What's God
doing through this message? Verse 16, that the offering up
of the Gentiles might be acceptable being sanctified by the Holy
Ghost. Now Paul's referring to the Old
Testament meat offering. That's what we've been looking
at in Exodus 30. If you've been hearing those
messages, we've been dealing with the meat offering. It's
a thank offering. where God gets all the praise
and all the glory, and he's referring to that Old Testament offering.
Through the gospel, the Holy Spirit of God sanctifies each
one that God chose, each one that Christ redeemed. The Holy
Spirit sanctifies us with the blood of Christ, purges our conscience
through the preaching of this gospel, gives a new spirit, a
new heart within us. And as soon as those priests
were sanctified and consecrated in the old covenant, what did
they do? They gave a thank offering to God. They offered up a thank
offering. They praised God. They gave God
all the glory for the work. Well, instead of offering up
a sacrifice, The believer is himself the thank-offering. That one to whom the gospel's
been preached, that one whom the Spirit of God has made holy
and righteous through faith in Christ, you are yourself the
thank-offering to God. That's why Paul said in Romans
12.1, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
that you present your bodies a living sacrifice unto God,
which is your reasonable servant, holy and acceptable to God. See,
this thing's not about me sitting up here trying to get you to
accept God. That's not the issue. The issue is, will God accept
you? That's the issue. And He only
gonna accept you if you've been sanctified by the Spirit of God,
a wholly new man created in you, Christ formed in you, so that
you're united with Him experimentally through faith, so that you come
to God one way, in Christ. When you do that, you have yourself
been made a wholly acceptable offering to God. In Christ the
offering. It's the only way. Here's one
of God's elect Jews. Go to Zephaniah 3. I'll give
you a little time to find it. Zephaniah chapter 3. Now I want you to think of this.
Here's Paul. He's a Jew. And he's sent forth
and he's preaching the gospel to these Gentiles. And through
the Spirit of God, God gives them faith and he brings them
to believe on Christ. Now listen to this. Zephaniah
3.8. God says, this is a prophecy.
And God said, this would be fulfilled. And that's what Paul said. Paul
said, God sent me forth to fulfill this prophecy. Now, well, listen
to what God said. Therefore, wait ye upon me, saith
the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey. Christ
is risen. He's talking about that day I
rise. I'm gonna do this right here. For my determination is
to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms to pour
upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger, for all
the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy, God
said. This is Christ speaking. But
now watch this. There's a people he's gonna be
merciful to. For then will I turn to the people a pure language. This is what he does to his elect.
He turns to you a pure language. Adolf Sapphire was a Jewish theologian
and he said, the language of the scripture is not Hebrew or
Greek or Aramaic. The language of the scripture
is love. And God has to make you understand this language.
He has to make you understand this pure language of God. He
says, I'll give them this pure language that they may all call
upon the name of the Lord to serve him with one consent. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia,
my suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed, shall bring
mine offering. He said, from beyond the rivers
of Ethiopia. That means from the remotest
parts of the world beyond just this little border in Israel.
God said, I got an elect people scattered in the four corners
of the world. And he said, and my suppliants, even the daughters
of my disperse. He said, folks that's been like
Paul, that's been converted and made to supplicate God for mercy,
He said, I'm going to use them to go forth and preach the gospel.
My dispersed, my Jewish elect people, I'm going to send them
forth to the Gentiles. And what's going to be the result?
They shall bring my offering. Paul says the Gentiles have been
sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God. That's the meat offering.
That's the fake offering. That's the offering that God's
referring to. He's saying men like Paul will
go forth and preach my gospel. and through the Spirit of God,
I'll sanctify them, and they'll come, and they themselves will
be my offering, and the offering they offer will be thanksgiving
in glory to God. That's a prophecy. That means
there's no way it won't be fulfilled. God's gonna fulfill that through
the preaching of the gospel. Go to Isaiah 66, I'll show you
another place. Isaiah 66. He says in verse 19, Isaiah 66,
19, I will set aside among them, I will send those that escape
of them unto the nations. Paul was one who had escaped
the condemnation of the Jews. He said, I'm gonna send them
to Tarshish and Poole and Ludd, that draw the bow to Tubal and
Javan, to the Isles, to the Gentiles afar off, that have not heard
my fame, neither have seen my glory, and they shall declare
my glory among the Gentiles. They'll preach my gospel, and
they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the Lord
out of all nations. upon horses, and in chariots,
and litters, and mules, and upon swift beasts, they'll bring them
to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord. They bring them
to Christ, seated at God's right hand in heavenly Jerusalem. And
it says, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean
vessel into the house of the Lord. He said, just that's what
I was picturing by them. Remember in our text in Exodus
how they brought all that bread, they brought it in a basket,
That was a clean vessel that God commanded they bring the
bread in. And you remember what the bread
was used for? After he consecrated them and sanctified them, they
offered that bread to God with the blood of a lamb, a meat offering
to say, thank you, God, for saving my soul. God said, my preacher's
gonna bring them and they're gonna be an offering unto me.
So brethren, this shows us Paul knew what those Old Testament
pictures, pictured, he knew what they were, he knew what that
law pictured. That's what we've been looking at in Exodus. But
here's what it also tells us. Christ has sent us forth as servants. And you think about this. He's
gonna use you, who he's made a clean vessel through the sanctification
of the spirit, belief of the truth. He's gonna use you to
proclaim this gospel. And though there's no power in
you, there's no ability in you, by His power, He's going to bless
that word in the heart of His child, His elect, His lost sheep,
and sanctify them, make them holy and acceptable to God. and draw them to Christ, and
they're gonna be an offering to the Lord. And is it not amazing
that He would use a sinner like me and a sinner like you to do
such an amazing work? That's why we've been made servants
unto our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what He's doing with us.
I think sometimes we get in a situation where we could mention We could
speak of the gospel and we don't because for so many times that
we have, people just get mad at you. And I've been there. I've been there. You try to teach
somebody the gospel and they get angry and upset, that's usually
what happens. But remember this too, as a preacher,
my charge that I'm sent for is not, I'm not a success based
on how many receives it. My charge is just to preach the
truth. That's what makes a preacher a success if he declares the
truth. The results are up to God. He may just harden everybody
that hears it, but his pastor did what he was sent to do. And
you and I aren't sent just to declare the truth, and we've
only been a success if somebody received it. He just says, speak
what I've told you. But we're so prone to think God's
not gonna do anything with it, and I've seen what happens so
many times But we ought to have the attitude, he just might.
He just might. He might bless that word and
save a sinner. Wouldn't that be amazing? That's
what he's made us servants for. I tell you this, you come to
the table and you sit down at the table to eat, you're certainly
not gonna eat and be fed if nobody put any bread on the table. You
might be sick and not be having an appetite or anything else,
and somebody might say, well, they're not going to eat if I
cook it. Well, you're certainly not going to eat anything if
there's not any bread on the table. But you put the bread on the
table and leave it to God to bless it. That's what we're sent
for. Now, lastly, let's look at this. Who gets the glory?
When God does this work, who gets the glory? Who gets the
glory for making us a minister? Who gets the glory for sending
us? Who gets the glory for making the word effectual? Who gets
the glory for saving his people? Paul says, verse 17, I have thereof
whereof I may glory. Now that sounds like Paul saying,
I'm going to glory. But he's saying, I am gonna glory,
but I'm glorying in Christ. That's who I'm glorying in. Look,
I have whereof I may glory through or in Jesus Christ in those things
which pertain to God. For I will not dare speak of
any of those things which Christ has not wrought by me. He said,
I'm not gonna say I did any of this. Christ did it all. He made
the Gentiles obedient by word and by deed. Christ did this.
through mighty signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of
God. The mighty signs and wonders was not just those miracles they
worked. The mighty signs and wonders was when the power of
the Spirit of God made people fall down and believe on Christ.
That's the mighty sign and wonder, and that's by the power of the
Spirit of God. So that, Paul said, by that same power of God,
from Jerusalem round about and to Elycrium, I have fully preached
the gospel of Christ. He said, all of this, and you
and I that's been called and saved by Christ, we give all
the glory to God. This is really the difference
you're gonna find between a true sanctified child of God and one
who is a pretender. Now, everybody's gonna say to
God be the glory. Everybody's gonna say God gets
all the glory. But listen to them preach. What
do they preach? What do they say? If ultimately
the thing that made the difference was that they believed on Christ,
they're glorying in themselves. They're saying they made the
difference. We're saying God made the difference. Paul said,
I will have whereof I may glory, but only in and through Christ. I won't dare speak of anything
Christ is not wrong. The mighty signs and wonders
were by the Holy Spirit of God, by His power. Paul said in 1
Corinthians 15.10, by the grace of God I am what I am. And his
grace which bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored
more abundantly than they all. Yet not I, but the grace of God
which was with me. He said in Colossians 1.29, I
labor striving according to his working which worketh in me mightily. So God's people are gonna give
him all the glory. Paul said in the Corinthians,
he said, we have no sufficiency in ourselves. We don't. Our sufficiency's of God. He
made us able ministers, able servants of the new covenant.
He did that. We didn't do it, he did it. And
he's the one by whose power we go forth. If you have the boldness,
to kindly declare the truth to somebody, that wasn't any strength
in you that made you do that. It was the power of God. Because
otherwise, you hold your tongue and move on. It's him that does
it. And he gets all the glory. So
brethren, I pray that by God's grace, we hear this word from
Christ. Remember when he spoke to Paul
at Corinth? He said, be not afraid, but speak. Hold not thou peace,
for I'm with thee. No man shall sit on thee to hurt
thee, for I have much people in this city. And Paul continued
there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among
them, and Christ called out his people. Let's remember that as
servants of Christ. All right, brethren, let's stand
together. Our great God and Father, we
thank you for this day. Thank you for the houses represented
here, for each believer here. Lord, we pray your grace be upon
each house, that your mercy and truth would reign supreme. Lord, make each one submissive
to the other. Make each one overlook one another's
sins and be merciful and gracious to one another. Whenever we stumble,
when we fall, when we act like an unbeliever, cause the others
to be servants, to minister and to help and to remind each other
of Christ and Him crucified. Make us true servants, ministers
of Christ. We ask this, Lord, that you would
get all the glory, that your people would be called out, that
they would be edified, that they would be strengthened by your
power, by your spirit, by your grace. Forgive us now, Lord,
our sins. Forgive us for being unfaithful
servants. We ask it in Christ's name, amen.