In Acts chapter 13 verse 2 and
3 I want to read and then we're going to pick up in our outline
under point number 3 where we left off last week. I want to
expand on a couple of very important ideas there. But in Acts chapter
13 verse 2 we read, And as they ministered to the Lord and fasted,
the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the
work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted
and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. And as we were working through
last week, the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of God,
and therefore the sovereignty of the spirit of God, as we will
see a little bit down the line, that the third person is a real
person. He is also divine. He is God
himself. and therefore he is sovereign
as is the son is sovereign and as is the father is sovereign.
They are one in nature but they are three distinct persons and
they have three distinct roles never to be confounded nor confused
by those who are about the truth. We never confound nor confuse
the persons of the Godhead. They are all individual persons
to whom we must yield ourselves if we are the people of God.
And we weren't how that chapter 13 verse 2 opened up with this
proposition. And as they ministered to the
Lord, and as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy
Ghost said. And so I raised the question
last week, Is it possible for us to minister to the Lord? Can the people of God or do the
people of God have the capacity or the power or even I might
say the privilege to minister to God, to minister to God. That was the question raised
and we began to contemplate it last week. Some of you said yes,
some of you said no. I know that's an interesting thought because
we are asking the question, how can we, little peon creatures,
do anything for God? Let alone the idea of minister,
but if you look very carefully again at verse two, part A, it
says, and they, that is, Out of the five, we can call all
five of them having been marked in verse one, these men who were
in the church at Antioch, prophets and teachers, remember Barnabas,
Simeon, Lucius, Manaam, and then Saul. as they minister to the
Lord and fasted. And we raised the question, what
does it mean to minister to God? That's point number three. Well,
what I want us to do now is to contemplate how thorough the
scriptures establish this point. And we have to be careful when
we talk about ministering to God. because it's very easy for
human beings to begin to invent things and to practice things
that do not correspond to what we must know is biblical ministry. So first and foremost, on an
etymological or just on a level of definition, the term to minister,
there are two dominant terms in the New Testament. The first
one is liturgy, and that should be a U. Liturgy is literally
the Greek word liturgountes, And that simply is addressing
a verb form, because obviously we are using it here in our context
as a verb. They ministered to, literally,
guntai, or literally, guntei, is to actually serve or act or
wait or minister to someone for some reason. To exercise liturgical
practices is the public act of waiting on or serving or ministering
to someone for some reason. It can be practically understood
as being a servant. To minister, therefore, is to
be a servant. but in a very specific sense
in which you and I are contemplating ministry now, to be liturgical
is to be a person who is set apart for the task of ministering
or waiting on or serving God. To be liturgical is to be a person
or people who are set apart for the specific purpose of waiting
on God. are ministering to God, are serving
God in a very strict, in a very orderly, in a very protocol-driven
way. There's no sort of innovations,
there's no sort of freelance, sort of spontaneous ministering
to the Lord. There's a structure to it as
we are going to see here in a moment. So when we use the word liturguntes,
which is a present Participle active verb. It means that that's
what they were doing. It's in the present tense. They
were doing this they were Ministering to the Lord a perfect translation
by the King James the other word in the New Testament You can
also see it as a transliteration as well the acne offs are a diakonos
from which we get the term what deacon a Diakonos, it's also
translated servant or to minister. This word is used in the gospel
of Mark when Jesus says, the son of man came not to be ministered
unto, but to minister and to lay his life down as a sacrifice
for many. So he considered himself, as
we have stated before, to be the quintessential deacon. the
quintessential deacon. When we ordain deacons in our
church, one of the things we do is we make sure that the role
of deacons is understood to be as important and preeminent as
the role of elder in the church, because every office in the church
is important to Jesus. And by the way, every office
in the church is an office in which Christ himself occupies. This is the fascinating thing
about what we're gonna contemplate a little bit tonight, and that
is everything that We do and have and are as a church, we
have it as a consequence of our union with Christ. And what that
means is Christ first and foremost is everything for us that we
are in him. Are we men and women? Christ
was a man. Are we servants of God? Christ
was a servant. Are we prophets of God? Christ
was a prophet. Are we teachers? Christ was a
teacher. Are we children of God? He is the quintessential Son
of God. And so when you follow the list
of attributes and characteristics that describe who we are, we
can always say Jesus was these things first. And then they are
passed on to us by way of derivation in order that we might have union
with God through him. So when we think about the role
of diaconate or the liturgical process of ministry, we can think
in the holistic sense of the role of Jesus Christ. Think about
this. The Bible says in first Timothy
two, five, that Christ is the mediator between God and man. He is the one mediator between
God and man. So inherent in the term mediator
is the whole of the liturgical diaconate process. Everything
that the whole priesthood, are we priests? Is not Christ the
great high priest of God's people? Are we lambs of God? Is he not
also the lamb of God? Everything that we are, he was
for us in order that we might be his body. Therefore, by extension,
when we make comments like, do we have the right privilege or
responsibility to minister to God? The question is, are we
Christ? Because if we're Christ, and
if that's what Christ did, then that's what we do too. And in
fact, what a privilege it is to be able to wait on God. What
a privilege it is to be able to serve God. What you and I
want to do is kind of look at the scriptural texts that support
this concept and then begin to make sure that we inculcate this
paradigm or this model of thinking into our own life. Because the
danger, as we stated last week, is if you and I are functioning
on a horizontal plane, where all we are seeing is what's going
on down here, we are secular and not sacred. If you and I
are only functioning in our life in terms of the dynamic of horizontal
relationships, how we engage one another in the sphere and
realm of the world, and we do not understand that vertical
connection between us and God, and that all that we do, if we're
His, is to be done heartily as unto the Lord, then we have failed
to walk in a sacred Coram Deo. We are nothing but secular religionists. Does that make some sense, ladies
and gentlemen? Very important to know. And therefore, for you
and me, as we're learning in the Roman series, it is our job
to constantly reckon ourselves to be exactly what God has told
us to be. It's our responsibility to assess
ourselves in light of our calling and not assess ourselves in light
of our feelings, actions, or circumstances. To truly walk
by biblical faith is to be able to comprehend what the Bible
says about who we are in Christ and to believe it. To truly walk
in faith is to comprehend who we are in Christ according to
the word of God. and to believe it. So right now
we're talking about under our first point, ministering to God. And what I wanna do is just build
this concept. Again, it means public duty,
service, worship, to minister or to wait. And the objects of
this liturgical diaconate, we will see is first God, we minister
to God. We also minister to the spirit
of God. Then we also minister to Christ.
Now that's quite interesting, because I'm just giving you an
allusion to what? The three persons. We minister
to God, the spirit of God, Christ. We minister to the Gentiles as
we'll see. And then we minister to the church of God. I wish
I had developed those things under the PowerPoint, but I do
want you to know clearly and explicitly in the New Testament,
we are ministers of God. We are ministers of the spirit.
We are ministers of Christ. We are ministers to the Gentiles
and we are ministers to the church of God. And these are all sacred
objects. The church of God, the Gentiles,
Christ, the Spirit, God are all sacred objects. Go with me in
your Bible again to Romans chapter 15. I want you to see this again,
how Paul uses this terminology in Romans 15, where he stated
how he labors to make sure that his service to God in terms of
his calling as an apostle to the Gentiles is not in vain. So we read over in chapter 15
of Romans 15, of the book of Romans and notice
what he says in verse 16. He says that I should be the
minister of Jesus Christ. Do you see the word there? The
minister of Jesus Christ to the whom that's right. He understood
his calling. I told you last week as we begin
to work and work with the appointment of Paul or Saul and Barnabas. You're going to be aware that
Saul is not quite fully invested with the understanding of the
enormous task that's in front of him to be the minister to
the Gentiles. Now, he was told that back in
Acts 9. I'm going to send you to the Gentiles and to the people
and to kings. But he doesn't know this yet.
He's just about to be called to that task. But by the time
he writes Romans, We see in Romans chapter 15, he understands his
calling well, and that's how you and I are as children of
God. God will save us, he will endow us with gifts, but only
over time are those gifts made aware of, developed, and then
employed. As Proverbs chapter four, verse
18 puts it, the path of the just is as a what? Shining light that
shines more and more to the perfect day. And so God gives us clarity
over time as to who we are in Christ and what his will is for
our lives. This is what we will see with
Paul. Notice the bold declaration that I should be the minister
of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering what? The gospel
of God. So there is the content, there
is the supply, there is the material by which we now minister for
God and minister to God is called the gospel. We call it the gospel
ministry. So when we are doing liturgical
diaconate work for God, right? We are doing the gospel. The
gospel in a nutshell is the person and work of Jesus Christ. The
gospel, in a nutshell, is the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The gospel is not, smile, God has a wonderful plan for your
life. That's not the gospel. The gospel is always the message
about a person and that person is Christ. When we talk about
the gospel, we're talking about the good news of what God has
done for sinners, where? In Christ. So we are learning
about a person and that person is Christ who leads us to the
father. And it's the spirit who brings
us into the illumination and awareness of this thing we call
the gospel. So when we are part of a faithful
and a biblical and a sound ministry, the center of it, or the foundation
of it, or the rubric of it is what we call a gospel ministry. There's a lot of religious activity
in the world. People are doing religion all
over the world. The Catholic Church is a massive
representation of a liturgical system. So is the Church of England,
so are all sorts of historic denominations. The question is,
what is the content of their ministry? If the content of their
ministry is not the gospel of the person and work of Jesus
Christ, as it is prescribed for us in the word of God, they may
be ministering, but they're not ministering for God nor to God. And so the gospel is critical
to understand in terms of whether or not our ministry is in vain
or whether or not our ministry pleases God. So we're going to
be able to kind of exercise our senses on that a bit tonight
as we work through exactly what it means to minister to God. So in Romans chapter 15 verse
16 Paul says that I am a minister of the gospel That the offering
up of the Gentiles might be what? Acceptable being what sanctified
by what there it is. So now watch this as a subject. I am a minister my Objective
is to see to it that Gentiles are accepted before God the content
of my ministry is the gospel and If I get the gospel wrong,
I will offer up an unacceptable sacrifice. If my gospel is wrong,
the Gentiles will not be saved. If my gospel is wrong, the Gentiles
will not be sanctified. If my gospel is wrong, the Gentiles
will not be accepted. This is a complete Levitical
paradigm, is it not? Do you not envision in your mind,
if you know your Bibles, the Old Testament ministry of the
priest? Remember, we learned this, ladies, in our Ruth series,
as we were dealing with barley harvest and wheat harvest, that
in the beginning of the harvest, the feast of unleavened bread
in the Passover is the sheaf offering, those two sheaves that
the priests offer up to God, representing the incarnation
of Jesus Christ. The two sheep offerings, the
number two representing witness. And then 50 days later, the two
loaf offerings that took place at Pentecost. You guys remember
that? The two wave loaves, they're loaves of bread. Well, how do
you get loaves of bread except by the sheaves? So you can't
separate the loaves from the sheaves. You cannot separate
Christ from the church, which is his body. So what the priests
are doing is taking in the agricultural paradigm, the wheat that God
gives, offering it up to God, which is Jesus, and then taking
the two loaves which come from the wheat and offering it up
to God, which is the what? Church. That's Acts chapter one. That's Acts chapter one. The
Pentecostal event was an offering up of the church in its first
fruit form by the Spirit of God in the ministry of the gospel.
And then finally we have what is called an end gathering or
a harvest. That's that whole seven month
period. And the harvest for us is the end of the world. So what
are we doing right now? We are right now scattering the
good seed of the gospel which is the message of the redemption
that's in Christ, trusting that in the hearts of men, there is
a birthing of fruit, a birthing of wheat, a birthing of the fruit
of the seed going into the ground and dying and producing in men
and women an acceptable sacrifice. And so as Paul saw himself as
part of that Levitical priesthood, he saw himself offering up the
Gentiles to God. And we are part of that ministry
as well. Not only are we part of that ministry, we ought to
be viewed as part of that loaf. And that model of the Levitical
order runs all the way through the New Testament. Paul uses
that paradigm. Peter uses that paradigm. Are
we not a spiritual priesthood? Are we not a holy people, peculiar,
set apart unto God? Isn't that what Peter says in
1 Peter 2, verse 5 and following? So what God would have you and
I to understand is the Old Testament model, our framework of the priesthood
has application to you and me today. If we view ourselves as
ministers of God, as ministering unto God, as a diaconate, a servant,
a worshiper, people whose public duty is to wait on the true and
the living God. Let me plunge you now into some
Old Testament texts, and then I'll bring you back. The first
set of scriptures I want you to go to is again, 1 Samuel 2. 1 Samuel 2, where we use this
last time to argue for the role of ministering to God. And I
just want you to see it in 1 Samuel 2, where Samuel is in the ministry,
is he not? As a young man, as a baby, that's
a three or four or five year old child. He's much older than
that. You're not going to minister in the temple as a three year
old, but he's a child in the sense that he is not coming to
full age as of yet. And in the old Testament, Hebrew,
you could be anywhere from a boy of six or seven years old, all
the way up to 20 years old. That's Hebrew term, bien, can
imply being that young until you come into a full adulthood
status. And it started at your bar mitzvah,
but ultimately you come into an adulthood status when you
are able to operate and function on your own. In 1 Samuel chapter
two, notice what is stated again over in verse, Number 11 first
Samuel chapter 2 and Elkanah went to Rama to to his house
and the child who was this child Samuel did minister unto the
Lord before who Eli the priest What was that child doing? He
was serving the Lord but in practice he was actually serving Eli so
it's it's important to know that the primary objective was God
and This is gonna be important for you and I to understand that
whenever God calls us to serve him is never going to be serving
him exclusively It's gonna always have an application to people
around us because the aim of the service is the glory of God
You got that the aim of the service is the glory of God. This is
very very important without that our We are not actually achieving
the goal then look at verse 18 once again in verse 18 it says
but samuel ministered where being a child girded with a linen epod
so here we have samuel the a closing prophet of the uh book of the
judges the closing judge final judge and now he's establishing
a role as a priest and he's establishing his role as a prophet as well. And we will now go to First Chronicles
chapter 15 and see how David actually explains this same concept
of ministering to God. Now, you ought to know David
knows something about this whole idea of ministering to God, right?
In fact, it's the labors of David and the Levitical priesthood
and the Aaronic priesthood who gives us the deep and rich liturgy,
the literal language and writings and structures and forms for
worship in terms of hymns and Psalms and protocol for how the
people of God are to worship. And if you were to read Chronicles
carefully at length, you would see how that the whole ministry
of the church was set up around the practice and the form and
the structure of the priest. And to violate those rules was
to incur upon yourself the displeasure of God, and in some cases, the
wrath of God. Now notice what it says in 1
Chronicles 15, verse one and two. And David made him houses
in the city of David. This is David prospering in the
days of his kingdom. And he prepared a place for the
ark of God. Do you guys see that? So, if
you don't know your Bible, here's what you can be aware of. When
it says he prepared a place for the ark of God, it simply means
he made a tabernacle. he made a tabernacle. Well, the
Ark had to have a house, a home. It had one in the wilderness
when God gave Moses the instructions to make a tabernacle, right?
And in the Holy of Holies, that little 10 by 10 tent that was
inside the holy place is where the Ark of the Covenant abode,
where the high priest went in once a year. Well, that tabernacle
would get old, it would tatter, it would wear down, and the people
of God, namely the Levites and the Aaronites, had the duty of
maintaining the tabernacle, right? That means they had to go get
the skins, they had to go get all the artifacts, all the articles,
they had to replenish the wood, the gold and silver, the bronze,
all of the utensils that made up that structure called the
tabernacle had to be maintenanced. That maintenance is called ministering
to God. That maintenance is called ministering
to God. Every aspect of the tabernacle
preaches to us the gospel. The tabernacle is called the
tabernacle of what? Witness. And because it's the
tabernacle of witness, men and women who don't know God get
to see God in the emblematic picture of the tabernacle. The
tabernacle had one door by which you enter in. That one door represented
Jesus Christ. I am the way, the truth, and
the life. I am the door, by me you enter in and obtain salvation. It's only one door, not two,
one. And inside that door was the altar, the brazen altar,
upon which you offer the sacrifice to the left. And up the road
a little bit, the laver where the priest washed. And then a
little bit up the road was the altar of incense. And then inside
the holy place was your showbread. And inside the showbread was
your candlestick or the menorah. And then finally in the holy
place is the Ark of the Covenant, where only the high priest went
in once a year to offer blood on the day of Yom Kippur or the
day of atonement. The whole of the tabernacle and
the procession from the outside of the tabernacle into the holy
place is a picture of how sinners come to God through Christ. It's
how sinners come to God. They come one way. And when they
come, they come with a sacrifice. They first offer their sacrifice,
confessing that they are hell-bound sinners and that the only way
God will talk to us is through the blood and righteousness of
Christ. And then because they are people of God, they move
on to the labor, which means they have now been employed into
the priesthood ministry where we have to be washed. And washing
always signifies what? Sanctification. It's the ministry
of the Holy Ghost to take God's people and to wash them in the
water of the word and so sanctify their hearts and mind and prepare
them for ministry. Now we're moving closer, are
we not? And so we move from the justifying work of Christ on
the altar to the sanctifying work of Christ in the labor.
Now we move to the ministry of what Paul and Barnabas was doing
before they were separated, the altar of burnt incense. Which
means now we are ministering by way of what? Prayer to God. without end. It was a perpetual
burning of the incense which represented the prayers of the
saints as they ascend up to God because we are in constant need
of God's mercy, are we not? Is there ever a time in our life
where we are not calling upon God to be merciful to us because
of our weak and feeble state and because of our foes and adversaries
and because of God's holiness? So the priest actually stand
as mediators for the people. ministering to God on the behalf
of the people. So this continual process of
prayer is designed for God to show mercy to the people because
of the labors of the priest. And are we not privileged children
of God to be priests, kings and priests of God, ministering supplications,
supplicatory prayers, ministering prayers of petitions, prayers
of intercession, prayers of doxology as we're about to see. This is
the whole of that Old Testament paradigm to which you and I have
been called into once God has brought us out of darkness into
his marvelous light. You know, you know, the only
time you called on God outside of Christ was when you got in
trouble. And all you wanted them to do was get you out of trouble
and you were back in trouble again. You were not ministering
to God nor for needy sinners. You were begging God for your
own personal selfish objectives. You know that. And we don't call
that ministering to God. That's a desperate sinner needing
God. And thankfully God hears real authentic sinners. Is that
true? But that's not, that's not what it means to be ministering
to God. And so our text will teach us something about how
David, who is both king in Israel, but also is called the sweet
Psalmist. He is a prophet. He is fully anointed of God.
He is the beloved. He is a great archetype of Jesus
Christ, as you know, in many of his offices, but he will help
us appreciate this idea of ministering to God. So verse one says, he
prepared an ark or a place for the ark of God and pitched a
tent for it. Then David said, none ought to
carry the ark of God, but the who? Levites. For them hath the
Lord chosen to carry the ark of God and to what? Minister
unto him. Not David, God. Who's ministering
to God? The Levites. Are we not Levites? Yes, we are. The Hebrew word
Levite means to attach or to join or to put together. That's
what the word means. And you and I are part of the
ministry of reconciliation. That's what reconciliation is,
to join that which has been separated by sin back to a holy God through
means of the gospel. So the people of God are Levitical
in their objective because we attach the lost sinner back to
their God who has been separated by their sins, as Isaiah puts
it. Your sins have separated between
you and your God. How does a separated sinner get
back to God? Through the gospel ministry of
reconciliation. we beseech them in Christ's stead,
be ye reconciled to God. As we pray and as we preach,
and as we procure the word of God, we are asking God to attach
the sinner back to himself on the grounds of the shed blood
and righteousness of Jesus Christ. Does that make some sense to
you guys? Right. And so we can see the Old Testament, New Testament
parallels, right? This is what enriches our calling
because we have the Old Testament to go back and look at. Now notice
what it says. David said they only had the right to carry the
ark of the Lord. And that was true. And only true
believers have the right to share the gospel. The non-believer
does not have the right to share the gospel. Let me tell you exactly
why. Because everything about the
whole of the gospel ministry is witness. W-I-T-N-E-S-S. And if you are not born again,
authentically born again, your testimony cannot be true because
you're only speaking from yourself. and out of the mouth of two or
three witnesses shall every word be established. And as we are
learning in our men's theology class around the critical nature
of understanding the three persons of the Godhead, Jesus did not
bear record of himself. His father bore record of him,
and the spirit of God bore record of him, and his words bore record
of him. And the only reason the people
of God can bear record to God is because God has qualified
us to tell the truth about Christ by two means, the word and his
spirit. The Word and the Spirit. The
Word is a witness, is it not? And it's an infallible witness.
but you and I need more than the word in order for our testimony
to be authentic. We need the spirit of God on
the inside of us, bearing record to the truth of Christ to our
soul, the spirit bearing record with our spirit that we are sons
and daughters of God. It allows me to open my mouth
and say, thus saith the Lord in a credible way so that when
I stand in the courtroom of the conscience of men, I can say,
I know God of a truth and this is who he is and this is what
he has done Because his spirit is bearing record in me that
these things are true without the spirit of God. I am not an
authentic witness I am telling lies first John chapter 5 10
That's for those of you who need scripture He that believeth on
the Son of God hath the witness in himself He that believeth
not on the Son of God has made God a liar How do we have the
witness because it's the Spirit of God? that confirms to us the
realities of Christ. And therefore, as Paul said in
2 Corinthians chapter 4, having the same spirit of faith, therefore
we believe, and because we believe, we speak. So this is critical
to our ministry, the fact that the priests have the privilege,
first and foremost, of bearing the ark. That means they get
to draw near to the ark, look at the ark in all of its glorious
details, have a full comprehension of its dimensions, its weight,
its glory, its significance, its content. What is that ark? It's Christ and his proprietary
word for sinners, is it not? The ark of the covenant represents
the crucified Christ. He is our propitiation, is he
not? He's a mercy seat. So the ark
get to come up near, the priests get to come up near to the ark.
They don't touch the ark. They carry the ark. Because the
ark was to be carried by staves. Remember? Two long poles running
through the ends of the ark, where gold rings were made, by
which the staves run through the ark, so that while we carry
the ark, we don't touch the ark. Because if we touch the ark,
we'll contaminate the ark, because we're still sinners. We therefore
do not preach to men and women that salvation is by our works
plus God's work. It's all together of grace that
the contents of the Ark of the Covenant possess within it by
itself everything necessary for life and godliness. So all that
we carry it is simply means we are actually exalting it. We
are demonstrating it. We are causing it to be magnified. We are bringing it into the presence
of men and women, the Ark of the Covenant, so that they might
behold the glory of God and Christ. The job, therefore, of the people
of God is to know the gospel in such a way as to reflect that
deep, intimate, involved relationship that the priest had with the
Ark. Remember what was inside the Ark of the Covenant? The
law of God. Remember what else was inside the covenant? The,
the, um, the, the showbread or the, not the showbread, but the
manna, which was from heaven and the golden pot. Remember
that? And then remember what else was in the Ark? Aaron's
rod that budded. All three of those are what we
call testimonies because inside the Ark is the testimony of God. It's the testimony of God in
terms of the manna, which came down from heaven. that provided
life for the people of God. Christ said, I am the manna which
came down from heaven. Christ is the manna, is he not?
So God is testifying to whom? Jesus, being the bread of life,
which gives life to the world. And then in that ark was the
law of God, was it not? The broken law of God that mankind
broke immediately upon God giving it to Moses. The people of God
broke it and God said, make another set of these laws and put them
inside the ark of the covenant. What does that law represent?
The necessity for perfect obedience to God. And only Jesus could
keep the law of God perfectly. And therefore what God did was
place the law, his witness against man, inside the ark because only
Christ could keep that law. Just like Christ is the only
way to heaven by being the bread of life, by being the incarnate
Son of God, and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us. Even so, the law of God,
outside of the ark, will always and constantly be broken by you
and me. But God preserved his law by
placing it in Christ and making Christ to be responsible for
perfect obedience to the law. And therefore we say that Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. That
means when I look to the Ark of the Covenant, I'm not looking
to my performance for salvation, I'm looking to Christ's performance.
And I see that he has obeyed all of God's law and God has
accepted him for me. And then when I look at Aaron's
rod that budded, I come to realize that as God had chosen Aaron
out of all of the people to be his priest, God has chosen Christ
out of all men to be our mediator. And I submit to that revelation.
I submit to the revelation that the Ark of the Covenant teaches
me that the whole of my salvation is wrapped up in the word made
flesh, wrapped up in him who kept the commandments perfectly,
wrapped up in my great high priest and mediator, Jesus Christ, so
that my salvation is confidently secure in what Christ has done
for me. Now, biblical gospel priests,
which all of us should be, are bearing that testimony. We are
telling men and women that Christ is the only hope of glory. You
guys got that revelation? Critical, that's your job. Now,
the only reason you can speak confidently like that is when
you draw near to God. And only the people of God have
the right to draw near to God. We get to draw near to God under
the ministry of the word and the preaching of the gospel and
the passion and longing of our own souls, which the spirit of
God prompts in us that we might see him more clearly and declare
him more boldly. For them hath the Lord chosen
to carry the ark of God and to minister unto him from time to
time. Isn't that good? Isn't that good? The Hebrew word there actually
means continually. The King James translated forever, because in
the old new paradigm, as I've taught you before, when we go
from the Old Testament to the new, there are many things in
the Old Testament that fade away. But the principles of the Old
Testament always carry over. So the externality of forms and
those typical pictures represented in the emblems fall off. But
the substance of which those forms spoke about carry over,
like we do not offer up blood sacrifices today. But we do have
a sacrifice to give to men, and that is the sacrifice of the
Lamb of God. We do not circumcise the foreskin of young men today,
but all of us are circumcised in the Spirit. according to Philippians
chapter three. Am I making some sense? We do
not burn incense on altars anymore today, but our hearts become
the altar of the living God and our words become the grounds
upon which the incense goes up as we offer sacrifices of praise,
sacrifices of thanksgiving, and then sacrifices and petitions
for God to meet our needs. So we are a spiritual priesthood
offering spiritual sacrifices which have their center and substance
in Jesus Christ. Ladies and gentlemen, are you
hearing me? So I'm helping you understand the intricacies and
the broad scope of what it means to be ministering unto God so
that you can find yourself doing that in the various areas in
which on a practical level, every day you're engaged with serving
God. So David made it clear to the
Levites that only the Levites could carry the ark. How did
David discover that? Remember when he made the horrible
mistake, it's in this chapter, of recovering the ark from the
Jebusites and he put it on the back of an ox cart and as they
were headed back to the city of David, the ark stumbled and
Uzzah the priest ran to stop the ark and he put his hands
up against the ark and God killed Uzzah. Remember that? He killed
Uzzah, and David had fits because he loved Uzzah, but Uzzah dared
to think that he had the power within himself to keep God. He was watching the ox stumble,
and so the ark looked like it was sliding. Well, throughout
human history, the gospel does often look like it's sliding.
like it's slipping away from culture, like it's not having
the impact that it ought to, like it's diminished in terms
of its centrality in the life of the people of God. And then
religious folk think somehow that they can hold up the ark
by something that they do, rather than simply call on God. God,
you see the ark slipping? Put it back on a settled, solid
state so we can continue to look to Christ in it, right? That's
what he should have done. But he thought in his own strength,
he could help God. And this is where apostasy in
the church comes in, where you think you can help God by human
innovations, works, religion, methodologies, and techniques
that are human in nature to somehow prop up God. Now, David came
to learn that the job was to go find two poles made of chitim
wood, a certain length, and do what the word of God said. Let
the priest carry the ark. God knows how to hold the priest
and the ark, doesn't he? After all, it was the priest
that carried the ark through the Jordan to bring the people
of God from the wilderness into the promised land. That was a
glorious day, was it not? Where God separated the waters
all the way up to the city of Adam. And they dried up and the
children of God, three million strong, crossed over into the
promise with the priest going before them. 2,000 cubits separated
the priest from the people so that the people got a good look
at their forerunner and Their forerunner is Jesus Christ represented
in the Ark of the Covenant He went in before them and we go
in behind him and we're still running in are we not? We're
still running in And so this language here teaches us that
when we're talking about ministry to God, we're talking about the
whole of the gospel ministry, which requires us to be taught
and impacted by the gospel so that the net response or our
ethical response to the gospel is a Coram Deo service, a Coram
Deo service to God. Look at chapter 16, verse one
through four, chapter 16, verse one through four. So here's what
David says in chapter 16, verse one through four. So they brought
the ark of God and set it in the midst of the tent that David
had pitched for it. And they offered burnt sacrifices
and peace offerings to God. They're ministering to God, right?
And when David had made an end of offering the burnt offerings
and peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the
Lord. And he dealt to every one of Israel, both men and women
to everyone, a loaf of bread and a good piece of flesh. in
a flagon of oil. And he appointed certain of the
Levites to what? Minister before the ark of the Lord. There it
is. Now watch this, ladies and gentlemen. And to record. Their job was to keep the Chronicles. The Book of Chronicles is where
we have the recording of the works of the Lord. The job of
the Levites was to write down the works of the Lord, the ways
of the Lord, the providences of God, the acts of God, the
acts of the people of God, the acts of the kings, the acts of
the princes, the acts of the enemies of God, the acts of the
promises of God. We are recorders, and so it goes
on to say, and to do what? Thank and praise the Lord God
of Israel. That's amazing. So the job of
the minister is to make sure that we codify, the word is codify,
codify God's acts. Why are we writing them down
for the generation to come? We're writing them down so that
the God of Abraham can be the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob
and the God of our children and the children's children of ours
as well. That's why we write them down.
We write them down so that they can know how God acts. Because
the next generation quickly forgets the gospel if we don't record
it. And then the other thing we're
doing as we are ministering to the Lord is giving praise and
thanksgiving to him. So now look at that last line.
And to what? Thank and praise the Lord God
of Israel. Now watch this. If I say, I thank
the Lord for how good he is to me. I have not just thanked the
Lord. I have told you I thank the Lord. But now when I thank the Lord,
I go, Lord, I thank you for your goodness and for your mercy to
me. I thank you for your kindness.
I thank you for smiling upon me. I thank you for looking upon
me. I thank you for upholding me
and keeping me with your outstretched hand. I thank you for keeping
me in a sound mind. I thank you for health and strength.
I thank you for all that you have done for me in Christ. I
am now thanking God. I'm not thanking God to you,
I'm thanking God. And this is the role of the priest.
This is magnificent. The role of the priest therefore
then was to engage in a Coramdale vertical interaction with God. And the resounding manifestation
of the collective work of the priest was to resonate out to
those who would hear it and be inclined to reflect upon how
good God is to the priest. and then be drawn themselves
by the worship of the Levites to come and enter into that worship.
It's amazing. In other words, as Jesus said
to his disciples in the gospel of Matthew's chapter six, he
says, chapter five, I'm sorry. He says, do not be like the Pharisees
for whom everything they do is calculated to be seen of men.
Do not be like the Pharisees who spend all their time seeking
to influence men primarily. Do you understand that the moment
that you are doing something with regards to how people view
you, what they think about you and how you impact them, you
are no longer ministering to the Lord. God knows it too. He knows when churches are simply
harlot churches, luring in people, to engage them in some fancy
fleshly satisfaction as opposed to bringing them nigh to God
as the people of God demonstrate a set apart, sanctified, consecrated,
Coramdale relationship with God. Watch this now. Watch this now.
Watch this now. What you really want when people come in is to
observe a set apart people who know what they're doing when
they worship God. What we don't want is people's head who rotate
a hundred and eighty degrees or 360 degrees like rosemary's
baby Looking at everybody trying to figure out who came into the
church There's not a monstrosity. I just use that analogy. It's
great though because people break their neck to see who's coming
in the church don't they? Failing to understand that your
job is to simply worship God whether there's a thousand people
in the room or none. I That your worship is not worship
until you are exclusively committed to an involved process of being
focused on God alone. And I'm not talking about you
sitting there clowning so other people can look at you and see
how you worship God. That too is nothing but narcissism. You get people who do that, they'll
set themselves apart and get crazy thinking that somehow they're
worshiping God alone in their own way. You don't ever do that
in the collective worship of God. Because it's not about you. You guys are hearing me, aren't
you? You know, we get our friends
with one card short of a full deck, right? A pack of marbles,
two balls missing. And really all they're doing
is calling attention to themselves. That is not worship. They're
calling attention to themselves. In the public worship of God,
there has to be a forged unity and equanimity among the people
of God, so that there is a kind of oneness in everything that
takes place. Are you guys hearing me? There
has to be an equanimity, that is an even disposition or distribution
of the dynamics of worship that take place among the people of
God. so that when we are in a state of solemn reflection, we're all
in a state of solemn reflection. And when we are in a state of
breathing out because of the goodness of God, we're all breathing
out. And when we're in a state of jubilation, where we're saying,
thank you, Lord, we're all doing it at the same time. See, God
is the God of order. There's no crazy stuff about
one person got a tongue, another person got a revelation, another
person got a drink. We got all these fires going on in the same
place. That's not the spirit of God. It's not the spirit of
God. The spirit is subject to the
prophet. I couldn't help myself where
you're not born of God. Did you hear what I just said?
I couldn't help myself where you're not born of God, because
when you're born of God, you can help yourself. I had a really
difficult test with that last week. Young man came into our
study as off the case will be. He wasn't there for 30 seconds
before his hand went up. And I said, we'll get your question
after our lecture. 30 seconds later, his hand goes
up again. I said, we'll get your question after our lecture. A
minute later, his hand goes up and things are coming out of
his mouth. I asked him the question, are you saved? He says, oh yeah,
I'm saved and I'm filled with the Holy Ghost. I say, good,
then you have the capacity to control yourself. When the lecture
is over, then you get to raise your questions. He couldn't do
it. And he swears he's born of God.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you're born of God, you have control
over your spirit. You don't want any kind of spirit
on planet Earth getting a hold of you, throwing you across the
room. You go one way, your shoes go another way, and you don't
know what happened. Please hear me now. That's not the Spirit
of God. The Spirit of God never functions
in the life of people of God tyrannically. He does not handle
you in such absurd, demonstrative ways. He is forcefully gentile. He is forcefully gentle. He controls you through the faculty
of your mind and heart. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
And you are willing to submit to it because you can experience
and you can feel the power. But he does not embarrass you,
nor the father, nor the son. He's not gonna have you slobbering
and acting a fool. That's what the devil does. That's
the devil. That's the devil's forte. Do
you hear me? He'll have you spinning around like a helicopter in the
middle of the room. Not the Holy Ghost. This is very important in this
present generation where people have no idea of the characteristics
or the attributes of the Spirit of God. Very important. It's
very important that you don't ever attribute to God disorder,
chaos, and confusion. That is a Babylonian system.
Do you hear me? Now there's dynamic with God.
There's power with God. There's deep, profound influence
with God. There is a depth of motion and
emotion that takes place when God is in the midst of the worship.
It's profound, it's powerful, but it's never oppressive. Are you hearing me? It's never
oppressive. It just does not undo you like
that. You can undo yourself emotionally.
You can be psychologically and emotionally unstable person and
maybe God is touching you through the preaching and then you begin
to fall apart. But don't call that the Holy Ghost. Everybody
else didn't fall apart like that. What happened? He was only successful
to make you fall apart? No. This is some of us just a
little bit flighty. You do understand that, right?
Some of us are a little flighty. All right, so I just want you
to know, as David is actually laying out in the Chronicles,
the order of worship, it's orderly, it's majestic, it's profound,
it carries all of the ranges of emotion that are consistent
with the nature of God and consistent with who we are. Let me touch
on that one just a bit. Can I do that? Because some people
are so profoundly melancholy that they think everything about
God is melancholy. Nothing could be further from
the truth. God is not all melancholy. You understand that there are
66 keys, 88 keys on the keyboard, right? They all have different
notes. That's how God is. So we have the ranges of emotion
that may go from solemn, deep, reflective, contemplative, mournful
grieving over sin. to the high, high jubilation
of spirit because of thanksgiving and mercy from God that will
have a shouting for joy and everything in between. And everything in
between. Am I making some sense? And everything
in between. And I personally in my preaching
ask God to give us a measure of all of it whenever I preach.
Not one of one thing or one of another. Give us a measure. Take
us on a journey, oh God. Start us off solemn. Open our
heart and mind. Educate us in biblical truth.
Humble us and cause us to remember again it's all about you. And
then show us your glory so that we can be moved by that glory.
And then fill our hearts with joy and even laughter because
laughter is part of the triumph of the saints over wickedness.
And let us boast in God as we worship you. Let us go away from
the house of the Lord just as glad as when we came in, because
we were cleansed by that journey as God opened to us his word,
as I'm trusting he's doing with you now. This is exactly what
you want. You want to go away impacted
by the presence of God because the scriptures are opening up
to you. That's what you want. You don't want to just go on
an emotional rollercoaster ride. I don't know where we started
and I don't know where we ended. I just know we went on a rollercoaster
ride. That's not worship. Are you hearing me? That's manipulation
by the way. That's manipulation and you never
want to be manipulated. Why? Because when you grow, when
you grow up, you and I get tired of rollercoaster rides. You know,
there was a whole, what do you call them? When you have the
roller coasters and the Ferris wheels, what do you call it?
The whole circus amusement park, what do you call it? The what?
Carnival. I guess you can call it that.
Well, anyhow, I was over at my elder's house this Sunday. And
as we were driving up University to the left was all the whole
shebangle. Big Ferris wheels and all of
the different stuff. Lights and glitters and everything,
right? I mean, it was fascinating to see it. Do you know this person
right here didn't have an ounce of compunction to want to go
over there and hang out and get on the rides and play? Not an
ounce of compunction. Are you hearing me? It was interesting
to look at the light. And me and my 14-year-old daughter
talked about how large the Ferris wheel was. But then she checked
me and says, dad, that's nothing. You go to Great America and they're
three times as large as that. See, because she's still into
that stuff. So she wasn't even moved by that Ferris wheel. Now
had it been three times as large, she might have said, dad, now
you and mom, y'all go hang out with the elder. Drop me off here.
Why? Because when I was a child, I
do childish things. But when I grow up, I move away
from those childish things into things that are much more deep,
rich, grave, and consistent. It is incongruent. It's oxymoronic. It is radically, radically wrong
for those of us who are maturing Christ to act like we're not.
The goal is to grow up. So you don't want to be going
to church every week and getting on a roller coaster ride, starting
nowhere, ending nowhere. This is true. It gets boring,
don't it? That's why people leave those
churches and come to solid, sound, expository preaching churches,
because they know the soul has to be fed. The soul is never
fed on a roller coaster. It's only fed when you sit at
the table with Christ and you feed on the word of the gospel.
So David is laying out these instructions. as to how they
are to function. And as we have stated in verse
4, and we'll begin to go back now, and he appointed certain
of the Levites to minister before the ark of the Lord and to record
and to thank and to praise the Lord God of Israel. And I can
tell you if you just read the whole of this particular 16th
chapter, you see it in the book of the Psalms again and again
and again, the rich, rich, rich liturgy of worship. I gave you
the Old Testament there in order to affirm our argument for the
proposition that we are called to minister unto God. We do it
by virtue of the maxims of scripture. So going back to our PowerPoint,
we're going to start making our way now to our next point. Under point number three, to
minister to God constitutes three things. First, gospel service,
which is parallel to the priesthood. Did I not set that down? Gospel
service, which is parallel to the priesthood. Isaiah chapter
61 verse six talks about us being ministers of God too. You don't
have to go there. Point number B. The concrete means, the source
of revelation and the guidance by which we minister to God will
always be a consequence of his word and prayer. His word and
prayer. When we read in Acts chapter
13, verse two, that the apostles ministered unto God, we can know
that what they ministered unto God was rooted in what they were
resolved to do in Acts chapter six. Notice again in Acts chapter
six. Going to Acts chapter six, where
the apostles laid down the distinctive roles between the diaconate and
the eldership, when they said in Acts chapter six, these words. Acts chapter six, verse three
and four. Are you there? Listen to what they said. I'm
gonna start at verse two. Then the 12 called the multitude
of the disciples unto them, that is the apostles, and said, It
is not reason or right or appropriate that we should leave the word
of God and serve tables, that is to minister to the physical
needs of the people. We'll talk about that in a moment.
Wherefore, brethren, look ye among yourselves, seven men of
honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may
appoint over this business, but we will give ourselves continually
to what? Prayer and to the ministry of
the word. Now watch this, this is how a
spiritual church responds, verse five. And the saying pleased
the whole multitude. See that? Why? Because the multitude
knows that we have the practical side of ministry, then we have
the spiritual side of ministry. They both go hand in hand. And
that the ministers of the word cannot be burdened down with
all of the intricacies of practical ministry and still effectively
minister the word. So now watch how important it
is for our leaders, our pastors and our teachers to be set apart
to the exposition and exegesis and teaching and exhortation
of the word. This is how important it is. They have to actually
be in a state of ministering to God that is set apart to minister
to God in order for the word of God to profit their own soul
in order for them to profit your soul. The church that burdens their
teachers with the mundane practical things of life, defraud their
own soul. When the members of the church
think that the job of the pastor is to put out every little bitty
carnal fire in everybody's life, you have totally missed the role
of the pastor. That's the job of the members
of the church. You get a water hose, a fire extinguisher, and
go over there and put that fire out in the life of that saint
that's crying out, Watch this, nine times out of 10, if you
leave them alone, the fire goes out all by itself. Haven't y'all
figured that out? Nine times out of 10, the fire
goes. Isn't that true? You older saints know I'm telling
the truth. People will call my house on fire. What part? Well,
it's just the part on the porch over by the mailbox. Okay, I'll
be over there when I get a chance. I'll come over when I get a chance,
but I'm not coming over to help you and put away important things
in my life. when that little part of the
porch is not going to burn up the whole house. Now, by the
way, sister or brother, where your fire extinguisher at? Where's
your water hose? Are you hearing what I'm saying?
Don't you have the ability to call on God to put that fire
out for yourself? Now, see, there's a tension here.
There's a tension here. But this is a piece of wisdom.
Because again, the church can become so lopsided in a social
gospel. And this is prevalent everywhere
when apostasy sets in. Again, this is what we call the
horizontal dilemma. The horizontal dilemma, it's
all about the practical needs. Now we've got ministries to bake
goods and feed people and do this and do that. And we have
left off with the preaching of the word. Are you hearing what
I'm saying? Well, I'm not saying that people don't need to eat.
And I'm not saying that there are not exigencies where needs
are to be met. But they are never to usurp the
centrality of ministering to God. The moment you and I diminish
this thing we call the preaching and exposition and teaching of
the gospel, we are nothing but a social club. And you guys are
going to learn it on Sunday, as I'm going to demonstrate on
Sunday, once again, through the Old Testament paradigm, that
it's easy to slip into the horizontal dilemma and get away from the
thing we're doing right now. So then I want to impress this
upon your mind. While God would have us to remember the poor.
And while God would have us to minister to one another, that's
what we're gonna see in one of our points. He would have us to be
serious about this ministry of the word as of the highest order. Nothing usurps the sacred office
of preaching and teaching. This is where God kindles the
fire on your heart by his spirit through the word of God. Your
soul cannot be delivered out of traps and bondages, snares
and pits, gins and all sorts of other traps that are laid
out against you and laid out by you until you are under the
word of God. It's the word of God that loses
all these bonds, that breaks all of these snares. It's the
preaching of the word of God that does that. Nothing else,
nothing else but the clear, Plain spirit and power preaching of
the word that does that. So again, under our point of
ministering, the gospel service parallel to the priesthood study
of the scriptures in prayer. That's what the apostles gave
themselves to. And first Timothy chapter four, verses 12 through
16, show us what it means to be a person given to ministry
to God. So I'll share that with you because you need to know
it. Often and rightly so, first Timothy chapter four, often and
rightly so men come to me, many men come to me. in the aspiration
of the ministry of the gospel and rightly so. As Moses had
said, I would that all of God's servants prophesied and rightly
so men ought to have this sense of an urgency to get closer to
God. All men ought to be, have this
impulse to be given to the word of God in such depths and in
such commitment that they would be used by God. But primarily
men, men, primarily, It's actually for your own edification. It's
for your own edification first that you have this drive to go
deep with God. I'm gonna say it one more time.
Men, it's for your edification first that you have this drive
to go deep with God. This impulse that says to you,
I wanna learn the word of God. I wanna be filled with a knowledge
of God's word. I want the word of God to dwell
in me richly. in all wisdom and in all knowledge
that I might be able to communicate the Word of God effectively.
That impulse is for you, first and foremost, for you to be what
God has called you to be. And if you're married, it's a
priest in your own home. It's a prophet in your own home.
It's a king in your own home. And your only authority to walk
in those offices is the Word of God. So where the Word of
God is not in you, you cannot be a prophet, priest, and king
in your own home. Am I making some sense? It's
critical for that. Critical. Where men fail to give
God that priority, they cannot be priests in their home. They
cannot be kings in their home. They cannot be prophets in their
home. And then somebody else is running the home. The children
are running the home. The wife is running the home.
Something else is running the home, but the man of the home.
Because he's not committed to that office. Am I making some
sense? So now notice what Paul says in 1 Timothy chapter four,
starting at verse 12, as he's setting aside his son, Timothy,
around these principles. We've got 10 minutes before we
wrap it up. Let no man despise your youth, but be thou an example
of the believer in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith,
and in purity. You understand that when Paul
gave these attributes as demonstrative of what it means to be a believer,
he's calling Timothy to a deep, deep, deep transformation. He's
saying, Timothy, the word of God has to impact you, not just
in your intellect where you have the ability to explain it, but
it has to impact you in these areas wherein your conduct, that's
what conversation is, your charity, that is the benevolence that
flows from your heart in terms of how you choose to interact
with people, in spirit, in faith, in purity, these things you are
to give yourself to. Notice what it says. Until I
come, give attendance to reading. See it? Give attendance to reading. Now, every believer ought to
be reading, but men ought to be reading the word of God. And
now he's moving to exhortation. Exhortation is what I'm doing
with you right now. Exhortation is what I'm doing with you right
now. Exhortation, this Greek term here, means to call you
near. And once I call you near, say
something to you. It is rooted in the word parakaleo
from which we get the term, the comforter or the Holy Ghost.
And the job of the preacher is to be the mouthpiece of God that
draws the people of God near in order for God to talk to you
up close. Am I making sense? Now, how privileged
are we all as children of God, men and women, to be so full
of the word of God and therefore full of the spirit? I'll talk
about the parallels next week. that God would use you to draw
people near to him through you. People who are far from God. We got maybe 60 or 70 people
in here tonight. Some of you are far from God.
You were far off when you came in. You are nearer to God tonight
than you were an hour ago. and you've been brought nigh
by the Spirit of God through the exposition of the Word. But
ladies and gentlemen, if I am not near to God, you cannot be
near to God by my ministry. You cannot be brought near to
God unless I'm near to God. And you want to be able to have
that impact on others. There are times when you'll be
in relationships with friends and loved ones, relatives, constituents,
workers, whoever. And you may not know that they're
far from God, but you're near to God. And in your exhortation,
your job is to bring them near to God. Every soul is benefited
when they are brought near to God, brought near to God. And God now becomes a little
bit more vividly attractive to them because of your work as
a priest. Till I come give attendance to
reading, exhortation and to doctrine, which is what we're doing. Verse
14, watch this. Neglect not the gift that is
in thee, which was given thee by prophecy with the laying on
of hands of the presbytery. And the gift that Timothy had
was the gift and calling of being a preacher. Don't neglect what
he's saying. Going back to verse 15. Now notice what it says.
Meditate upon these things. Give yourself wholly to them
in order that your profiting might appear to all. Now notice
what he says, that the prophet of Timothy's labors to be involved
in the study of the word of God, which is going to shape the whole
of his personality, is going to appear to other people. In
other words, his ministering unto God is going to have overflow
to other people. You got that? One's ministry
to God will have an overflow to other people. God intends
for your relationship with him to impact others. Did you get
that? God intends for your walk with
him to overflow and influence and impact others. That your
profiting might appear to all first and foremost to the saints.
So think about this with me for a minute. I got five minutes.
Think about being in the church for 900 years. As some of us have been in the
church 900 years. And having grown in the first
two years. In a considerable way of study
and prayer and learning church protocol and church terminology.
religious cliches and phrases like we do, right? Because we
can quickly learn that stuff. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.
Thank you, Jesus. Right? We can become really religious
and learn all the colloquialisms and the phraseology is called
the language game dynamic. It goes on in church. You can
be as lost as a goose in a snowstorm and know all of the terminology.
Know all the religious terminology. You can even become a leader
in the church. All the terminology. Don't know God. Hit this plateau.
Hit this plateau where the plane is just skimming the top of the
water. It hasn't gained any height. It's not rising to any levels.
It's not experiencing any depths of knowledge of God. We're not
growing. And then 10, 20 years later, people will notice that
you're not growing because you will be the same way in character
and in the content of your words that you were 10 years ago. And
that is a strange, oxymoronic reality, because God has meant
for everything he touches to grow. He has meant for everything
he touches to grow. The people of God are not to
be monuments of the past. They are to be vital living organisms
that grow steadily and carefully, continually, And it may not be
perceptible in the short term, but in the long term, you can
see when the tree grows, can't you? You can see that over a
five-year, 10-year period, you can see that tree getting stronger
at its trunk, solid down at its base, and then gradually growing
up, and its branches spreading out. You marvel at that tree,
and you remember just when that thing was a twig. It seemed like
yesterday, but in the process of it, it could be a long time.
But what you are not marveling at is a tree that has stunted
in its growth and didn't continue to be what it was called to be.
And so this is what Timothy meant. And this is what I am saying
was occurring with the apostle Paul. Going back to our text
so we can wrap it up now. What I am saying was occurring with
the apostle Paul, who is called Saul and Barnabas and these other
men is that they were deeply committed to the study of the
word of God. the exposition of scripture and
prayer. They were deeply committed to
this process because they were engaged in a work. When God is
putting you in a work, you have a job to do, and you know you
can't do that job without the aid of the Spirit of God. You
cannot accomplish the task of spiritual things without God.
Can't be done. And so as Paul and them had given
themselves over to this task, they had grown to such a level
that as we see in the text, they were ministering to God. And
the text tells us now, which we'll get a chance for next week,
and I'll just touch on it and then we'll close. The text tells
us that the Spirit of God spoke vividly and clearly. Verse two,
and they ministered to the Lord and fasted. The Holy Ghost said,
separate me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work whereunto I have
called them. Think about that last line, or
the second line, rather, second line. The Holy Ghost said, you
see that? The Holy Ghost said, separate
me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work to which I have called them
to do for me. So under point number three,
ministering to God, the gospel service parallel to the priesthood,
study of the scriptures and prayer, critical to the health of any
church. It cannot be secondary. There
can be no contenders with it. Thirdly, addressing the needs
of the body. That's clear, isn't it? You and
I know we are not a healthy church or a wise church when we have
needs and don't address them. And in that sense, there's a
ministering to God too. Remember what Jesus says? And
as much as you have done it to one of these little ones, you
have done it to me. So there's a vertical and then a horizontal.
These people who live on the extremes, I'm getting old now.
I get so tired of extremes. And I'll tell you why. What I've
learned about folks who are on the extreme is that they're hiding
from the truth. The folks that are so spiritually
minded that they're no earthly good, they're lying. They're
not spiritually minded. they're simply apathetic and
cold and indifferent to needs. Am I making some sense? Well,
I'm too busy. Well, Jesus wasn't too busy for
you. So being way over to the other
end where you are not recognizing that there's a place for helping
people, helping people. But then on the other end, I'm
so busy helping people that I really don't have time for my Bible.
You're going to hell too. You're going to hell too. You're
going to hell too, Martha. Right? Because Mary chose that
one good thing. And we're not talking about canceling
out one for the other. As Jesus says, these things ought
you have to done also and not leave the other undone. So a
balanced ministry will prioritize the preaching of the word and
then it will also apply That's the ethical outcome of the gospel
is to meet needs How say ye the love of God dwells in you when
you see your brother in need and don't seek to meet that need
But don't let carnal earthly needs take you away from the
cause of the gospel Am I making sense? So I'll open up our fourth
point like this and then we'll come back next week and start
to unpack it the personhood of the Spirit of God. That's our
fourth point. And it's going to take a little
bit of time, not too much. I'm not going to bog you down. If you
really want to have your brain stretched around the concept
of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity, get our men's
study. We are deeply involved in a historical, exegetical process
of developing the doctrine of the Trinity. You will like the
classes. That's if you're serious about being able to understand
and explain it. If not, then leave it alone,
because it'll blow your synapses, okay? This is for people who
want to get this concept down appropriately, because most people
don't know how to explain the Trinity. They just don't know
how to do it. So if you want to be able to properly explain
from a biblical standpoint, how the three are one and yet distinct
in their persons, then you might wanna join us in the class by
getting the CDs and ask God to give you grace, because it takes
a serious, serious mind to be able to anchor itself to biblical
truth when it comes to explaining these things. Lazy people will
not get this revelation. Lazy people will not get it anyhow
the personhood of the spirit I'm bound to have to Contemplate
this a little bit because the way verse 2 opens up as they
are ministering to the Lord and fasting the Holy Ghost said So
now a force doesn't speak only a person speaks you guys got
that a force doesn't speak a person speaks and He's speaking specifically
authoritatively, sovereignly, and personally. Specifically
to Saul and Barnabas. Authoritatively and sovereignly
about what he wants them to do. And personally, he wants them
to do it for him. That's powerful. See, I'm doing
right now, what I'm doing right now is called an exegesis of
that text. I'm breaking it down into its
categories for you. calling your attention to the
specific areas in which we now defend the doctrine of the person
of the spirit. He spoke, he spoke to his objects,
Paul, Saul and Barnabas. He gave them specific instructions
and those instructions were for him. This is what I want them
to do for me. And when we come back, we'll
be able to work this out. For the work where unto? I have
called them We'll get a chance to work this through. Let's close
in prayer father. Thank you for this time. Thank you for your
word Your word is plainly said the hour is coming and now is
when the dead shall hear the voice of the son of god And they
that hear shall live We pray that if anyone Is in this room
dead That the spirit of god would have been gracious enough to
raise them from the dead quicken them And if those who are yours
are dead by virtue of dwelling in among the tombs of this carnal
fleshly life, far, far, far from the peaceful shores, we pray
that you quicken them again as well. Deliver them from the traps
and gins and snares that keep them from ministering to you
and you ministering to and through them to others as you have called
us to be. Have mercy on your church, oh
God. Have mercy on your people. We are your people. We are the
sheep of your pastor. You are our God. We need you. You don't need us. We ask your
mercy upon every one of us that we might live out our life in
the last of our days, serving you with everything that's in
us. Give us a revelation of your glory. Open us up to your truth. Help us to see your will and
your word. Open our eyes. that we might
understand the truth of the gospel as your people have done so for
thousands of years now and give us the courage to go deep with
you and to know you better and to be able to boldly declare
your word in a generation where many women are laughing at the
very proposition of a God and certainly that there is only
one way We know that you are not a God that lies, you're not
a God that can fail, and you're not a God that changes. If you
have plainly said there's only one way to the Father and that's
through the Son, give us boldness to let men and women know that
and prosper that word in their heart. We ask this in Jesus'
name, amen. God bless you guys.