SPEAKER_01: Many of us came to church this morning with one thing on our minds, uh namely outsourcing.
SPEAKER_01: Wait, what?
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: If if you didn't come to church this morning with outsourcing on your minds, then I hope you leave with outsourcing on your minds.
SPEAKER_01: Um The Economist, which is a well-known re resource that covers the economy.
SPEAKER_01: Are we tracking so far?
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: The Economist, uh, they had some interesting statistics I saw the other day that caught my eye.
SPEAKER_01: The average manufacturer globally outsources today 70 to 80 percent of their finished product.
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't have thought that.
SPEAKER_01: That's remarkable.
SPEAKER_01: 70 to 80 percent of what goes on the shelf is outsourced from larger, more well-to-do countries to poorer countries that are able to do the work cheaper.
SPEAKER_01: This has, according to The Economist, um shown to increase productivity and competitiveness 10 to 100 fold.
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
SPEAKER_01: For example, if uh British Airways sends 1,000 jobs to India, 1,000 jobs it had been for uh Englishmen and women, uh they send it to India, they save$23 million because of the difference in wage disparity.
SPEAKER_01: Outsourcing is increasingly becoming simply what it takes to remain competitive in a global economy.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, we um we often see the closure of small businesses and you see the dark side of all this, but it's sort of the day in which we live.
SPEAKER_01: We as Christians today can sadly take this same approach to Christian ministry, to the church.
SPEAKER_01: And we can actually begin to look at in default to outsourcing to other people what God has called us to do.
SPEAKER_01: Outsourcing to people who are the professionals or people that seem to have more time or more energy, what God has called and gifted us to do.
SPEAKER_01: But when we open the pages of scripture, we learn very soon that following Jesus in the details of life and growing in our understanding and in our obedience to him and helping each other do the same, this is something we might call basic to the Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: Basic meaning it's so fundamental you can't not do it and not forfeit the whole enterprise.
SPEAKER_01: So even though British Airlines can can uh outsource certain, maybe their um their customer service line to India, they can't outsource their employees in England eating and drinking adequately and getting enough sleep.
SPEAKER_01: There's certain things so basic to what it means to be human, or in this analogy, to be a Christian, you simply can't outsource it without forfeiting the entire enterprise.
SPEAKER_01: So here's our thesis this morning: that although some Christians are what we call specialists, or some Christians are people who are vocational ministers, some people are professionals, which is a bad term to use in terms of ministry, but we get that.
SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to Christian life and discipleship, every Christian, every single Christian is called to some sort of ministry or the other.
SPEAKER_01: And we see this clearly in our text today in Romans chapter 15, verses 14 through 21.
SPEAKER_01: The title of our passage in our message this morning is Every Member a Minister.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're going to talk about.
SPEAKER_01: Every member a minister.
SPEAKER_01: This part of our passage in Romans, we've been traveling through Romans for the last year plus, and what we've learned, or actually towards the beginning of the year, we've learned a lot from the pen of the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_01: And what we now have in chapter 15, verse 14, is the beginning of the end of the book.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 14 is the beginning of the conclusion, a pretty lengthy conclusion to this entire letter.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul's going to do something very important for us here, as we'll see.
SPEAKER_01: To help us at the very beginning understand, sort of get a big picture view of this passage, we need to think about this passage in three uh phases.
SPEAKER_01: The first, in verses 14 and 15, Paul's going to express his confidence in the Romans' ability to minister.
SPEAKER_01: So he's already told them all this stuff, and now he's going to say, I'm now going to express that I'm confident that you're going to understand this, you're going to put it into practice.
SPEAKER_01: The next two sections, the Apostle Paul's going to sort of defend his right to be so bold with them, defend his right as an apostle to be telling them all these things, because that would be the next question.
SPEAKER_01: If Paul is being so dogmatic about so many things in the book of Romans, the next question is, well, who is Paul that we should even believe what he's saying?
SPEAKER_01: And so he defends, as he does in seven of his eight epistles to the, or seven of nine, I think, epistles to the churches in the New Testament, he's going to give what we call an apostolic defense.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's part of our passage as well.
SPEAKER_01: The first part of that is that Paul is going to tell us about his commission to be an apostle, and then tell us about his calling as a global missionary.
SPEAKER_01: So let's begin with that very first part in verses 14 and 15.
SPEAKER_01: Let's read that again together again.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 15, verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.
SPEAKER_01: But even though he's going to compliment them, he's sort of like a parent would do.
SPEAKER_01: But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, just trying to remind you, because of the grace of God given to me.
SPEAKER_01: We would summarize these first two verses is Paul's confidence in the Romans' ability to minister.
SPEAKER_01: Most of us, I imagine, in the room here have experienced uh the joy and the responsibility of getting our driver's license.
SPEAKER_01: For some of you, it's been so long that you now you're now the parent who's sort of having to do that with your children.
SPEAKER_01: And for others of you, it's been so long you can hardly remember what it was like to climb into that Model T and hear that thing putt-putt down the road.
SPEAKER_01: Not gonna ask for a show of hands now.
SPEAKER_01: Um it's really interesting, this phenomenon of getting your driver's license, because getting a driver's license is nothing short of a rite of passage, right?
SPEAKER_01: Because you have parents who chauffeur their children around from the time they're literally a baby in arms coming from the hospital.
SPEAKER_01: They've been chauffeured around by their parents, but then they get to a point in time of maturity that the parent grows in confidence to the point where they're able to take them to go get their driver's license.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you can remember the joy as a 16 or 17 or 24-year-old, depending on your story.
SPEAKER_01: Going in and passing the written test and then surviving the driving test.
SPEAKER_01: But the best part of it, at least in my remembrance, the best part of it was when your mom or your dad extended their hands and they dropped the keys into your hands and they expressed their confidence in your ability to safely get from here to there and back again legally.
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm sure most of us probably did drive before that point when we shouldn't have.
SPEAKER_01: This is largely what is happening in our text this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is concluding this long letter to the church at Rome by affirming his confidence that the Roman believers are ready to take the keys and are ready to drive the car for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 14, he lists three specific things that he is satisfied about or confident in.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, they are full of goodness.
SPEAKER_01: Number two, they are filled with all knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: And number three, they are able to instruct one another.
SPEAKER_01: Goodness, knowledge, that is, they have the right motives and they're in the right place towards each other.
SPEAKER_01: They love and they genuinely care.
SPEAKER_01: They have enough knowledge and competency, and then they're actually able.
SPEAKER_01: They have the authority and they have the ability to instruct one another.
SPEAKER_01: Goodness here describes a desirable moral quality characterized by genuine interest in the welfare of other people.
SPEAKER_01: You see, if you're part of a church and you don't actually care for anybody else, this probably doesn't qualify.
SPEAKER_01: There's been days I get out of bed and I don't really care about my spouse like I should.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I need to check my heart before I start and start uh admonishing her, right?
SPEAKER_01: So Paul is talking about being in a position as a church member to where you're filled with all goodness, your heart's in the right place, your motives there, and then secondly, knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: In Paul's epistles, this idea of knowledge carries the idea of insight into God's saving purposes.
SPEAKER_01: We might just shorthand this and say this is a basic grasp of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: The ability also to apply it to your life, into other people's lives.
SPEAKER_01: Those of you who are here who are members of Sacred Mission Church, you know that if you join in the last couple years at least, you remember you had an interview with one of the pastors, and one of the questions that was posed to you was, What is the gospel?
SPEAKER_01: What is the gospel in your own words?
SPEAKER_01: And of course, what one of the pastors is is desiring to hear is not some dissertation, not some you know uh regurgitation of a systematic theology, but rather a basic understanding that God has a righteous standard and a way of life and a design for humankind, and we have fallen so short of it.
SPEAKER_01: We've broken his laws, we've we've profaned his name, his purposes, his designs for us, but he has provided in Jesus Christ redemption and righteousness and renewal and transformation.
SPEAKER_01: We're looking for you to understand that God has sent his spirit into your heart and made you a new creature.
SPEAKER_01: Now you have new desires and new capacities to follow Jesus Christ and to believe in him and his sufficient sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: And we're looking for you to believe that and affirm that Jesus is going to come again, that he's ruling the world and he's gonna come again to take us home.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you have this basic understanding of the gospel, Paul is saying you're filled with enough knowledge to be a blessing to those around you, to minister to those around you.
SPEAKER_01: Finally, we come to the word instruct.
SPEAKER_01: He says you are able to instruct one another.
SPEAKER_01: This word involves the act of counseling or of urging other people to avoid or to stop an improper course of conduct.
SPEAKER_01: That's an actual definition.
SPEAKER_01: It's a word that the Apostle Paul uses several times in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: It's a word neutheteo.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that's important is because in the early 1970s the biblical counseling movement uh was given rise, and they actually called it the newhetic counseling movement because of this Greek word newtheteo.
SPEAKER_01: It's a word that means to appeal to the mind, to put pressure, a positive pressure on someone's mind and their reasoning, so that they will, from the mind and then through the heart to the actions, align themselves with God's word.
SPEAKER_01: This is what we see also in Colossians chapter 3, verse 16, where the apostle Paul says this.
SPEAKER_01: This tells us the source of this nuthateo.
SPEAKER_01: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and, here's the word, admonishing.
SPEAKER_01: Same word, nuthateo, one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
SPEAKER_01: So while in Romans 15, 14, it sort of seems the negative side of the spectrum, you're able to warn each other.
SPEAKER_01: Here in Colossians 3.16, we see that there's a more well-rounded idea with this Nutheteo.
SPEAKER_01: You are urging, you are coming alongside one another on a daily basis or as often as you see each other, and your the net impact of your presence and your in your friendship is to bring each other along, to shepherd each other along towards Jesus Christ and the ways that God has called us to live.
SPEAKER_01: In his classical book, Competent to Counsel, the late biblical uh counseling movement leader Jay Adams pointed out that one of the fruits of the Protestant Reformation itself is something we call the doctrine of the priesthood of believers, the priesthood of believers.
SPEAKER_01: And by this we understand scripture teach that all believers are adequately equipped by God to be a blessing to other people, to mediate the presence of God, and to understand scripture for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Because in the Catholic understanding, you need a priest.
SPEAKER_01: You need someone between you and God to mediate God's presence, to mediate God's blessing, and to mediate God's word.
SPEAKER_01: And the priesthood of believers says, no, we actually through Christ and through the Spirit have been made priests.
SPEAKER_01: We can come directly to God through Jesus Christ, our high priest.
SPEAKER_01: The reformers, in fact, would call regular pastors, we think of as pastors, they'd call them pastor pastorum or pastors of pastors, shepherds of shepherds, underscoring the idea that every member of the church is meant to shepherd one another and to be shepherded by one another.
SPEAKER_01: Paul seems to believe this here.
SPEAKER_01: He says you are filled with the right motives, adequate knowledge, and you're actually able and given the responsibility to admonish, to warn, to encourage, to minister to one another.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're thankful for organizations like ACBC, which is the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, who offer certification programs where believers can be equipped to counsel their peers by the sufficient word of God.
SPEAKER_01: A quick note ACBC is not to be misunderstood as or confused with ACDC.
SPEAKER_01: That's a quite a different band of people from the 70s that also accentuated people's need for biblical counseling.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul says, Grace was given him by God to be a minister of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So we just saw that he talked about their ministry, what God expects of them, but now he's going to sort of say, and here's why I'm telling you all this.
SPEAKER_01: This is why I'm being so pushy.
SPEAKER_01: This is why I'm being so so parental and so pastoral.
SPEAKER_01: Because, verse 16, God has given me grace to be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: The summary of this is namely, this is Paul's commission as a minister.
SPEAKER_01: Paul's commission.
SPEAKER_01: He's pointing the Romans, based on his admonition towards their ministry, to for just a moment look at his ministry and understand that his authority comes from God.
SPEAKER_01: As I mentioned a few moments ago, in seven of his nine letters, Paul offered something very similar to this.
SPEAKER_01: And some, and in 2 Corinthians, he offered a chapter or two defending his apostolic authority because there were people in the church that were saying, Don't listen to Paul.
SPEAKER_01: This guy, yeah, he writes all these weighty letters, but then when he shows up, he's not an impressive speaker.
SPEAKER_01: He's pretty pathetic.
SPEAKER_01: This is literally what they said in 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul had to spend a lot of time saying, No, here's my story.
SPEAKER_01: This is where my authority comes from.
SPEAKER_01: This is why I'm telling you these things for your good.
SPEAKER_01: He does the same thing in just a couple verses to the Romans.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting to me is that the Apostle Paul sees the nature of his apostolic ministry as being a priest.
SPEAKER_01: I don't really think of the Apostle Paul as being a priest, but he says he's been called to, commissioned to enter the priestly service of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: What do priests do?
SPEAKER_01: Well, in the Jewish times, I mean in the Jewish believers among the Roman church would understand this very well.
SPEAKER_01: They were really familiar with the idea of a priest, because God instituted the Levitical priesthood in the Old Testament to basically be mediators between God and man, to take the offerings of the people and make them acceptable to God, to make sure they were fulfilling all the rules so that offering would be acceptable, and to offer sacrifices and offerings on behalf of the people.
SPEAKER_01: That's what priests did.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Paul here uses the same idea of being called to the priestly service of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And he says this he's called to take the offerings of the Gentiles and to facilitate them to be acceptable to God.
SPEAKER_01: Now we should not understand Paul here calling himself a priest to be a priest above non-priests.
SPEAKER_01: Paul's the priest and all of us are non-priests, right?
SPEAKER_01: Or a pastor is a priest and the congregants are non-priests.
SPEAKER_01: That would be sort of the sacerdotal episcopal Catholic type of mentality.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is a priest among priests, under Christ the high priest.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Peter would say in his first epistle that we are a kingdom of priests.
SPEAKER_01: That all believers who've been saved from their sins and have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit who have the all-sufficient word of God in their hearts, we are a kingdom of priests.
SPEAKER_01: We're like kings and priests.
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty impressive, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: We don't feel that way very often, but that's our calling.
SPEAKER_01: So Paul here uses three phrases that highlight this priestly service he's involved in.
SPEAKER_01: He says he's a priest, number one.
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, he mentions the offering of the Gentiles, which is calling our attention back to the Old Testament, all those millions and millions of sacrifices and offerings that were given to God by Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And then thirdly, he says he wants this offering to be acceptable or sanctified.
SPEAKER_01: You see, under the ceremonial system, an offering was worthless if it wasn't acceptable, if it wasn't purified, if it wasn't ceremonially clean.
SPEAKER_01: For example, if you um if you had a baby, you needed to go dedicate that baby to the Lord, and you would offer a sacrifice to God.
SPEAKER_01: You would take a lamb, the best lamb in your flock, and you would go offer it.
SPEAKER_01: If you were a poor person, God made a provision where you could just take two little birds and offer them to God, whatever you had.
SPEAKER_01: And by two little birds, I'm not talking about two of your other children.
SPEAKER_01: Not a little bird, he told me.
SPEAKER_01: I'll talk about two actual birds, and God would require them to be offered as an offering to God as a thanksgiving and a dedication of that child.
SPEAKER_01: The priest would take those little birds or that lamb and he would sacrifice them.
SPEAKER_01: Because of sin.
SPEAKER_01: If there were no sin, there would be no need for sacrifices.
SPEAKER_01: He was trained and he was called and he was equipped to sacrifice those little birds in order to mediate God's blessing to that new child.
SPEAKER_01: Well, Paul is now seeing himself as someone who facilitates the acceptance of the offerings of the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_01: This is amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is envisioning all of humankind as being fundamentally worshipers.
SPEAKER_01: Every day, though the buzz of traffic on I-75 and 71 and people go into the big buildings, people go into the rurals and cranking up their tractors, everything we do is an offering to some deity.
SPEAKER_01: Whether that God is self, whether that God is the bank account, whether that God is the boss who's going to be writing your letter of recommendation, whether that is just the approval of your peers, every day, everything we do, this buzz of humanity every day is just constant offerings.
SPEAKER_01: And the Apostle Paul sees himself as someone who is turning people in faith to Jesus Christ so that all these offerings of their entire lives are not worthless, not unacceptable, but are now made acceptable to God through the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: This is exactly the same language, just so you don't think that this is a one-off comment from Paul.
SPEAKER_01: This is fundamental to his understanding of his ministry.
SPEAKER_01: We see this in Acts chapter 26, where Paul was standing before a Roman king by the name of Agrippa, who was holding Paul as a potential enemy of the state.
SPEAKER_01: The Jews were in an uproar about the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_01: They were trying to kill him, and so he was taken into captivity.
SPEAKER_01: And while he was there, they're like, What's the big deal?
SPEAKER_01: Why does everyone hate you?
SPEAKER_01: And Paul gives is given the opportunity to give a defense of his ministry.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what he says in Acts 26, verses 16 through 18.
SPEAKER_01: The context is that Jesus Christ had appeared to him personally.
SPEAKER_01: Paul was riding on from Jerusalem to Damascus to throw men, women, and children and put him in prison because they were Christians, and God interrupted his course.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says to him in verse 16, Rise and stand on your feet, because he'd knocked him down off his horse.
SPEAKER_01: For I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as his servant and a witness in the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from your people, there's the Jews, and from the Gentiles, the Romans, to whom I am sending you.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: To open their eyes, so that they may receive, may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: That they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.
SPEAKER_01: Here's this idea of being sanctified.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the idea of this, the massive humanity fallen and under judgment, all of us worshiping false gods, worshiping idols of our imagination, all of us in revolt against our Creator.
SPEAKER_01: And the ministry of the Apostle Paul was to take the gospel to the ends of the earth so that the offerings of the Gentiles, of the pagans, of the godless and hopeless ones would now be acceptable to their Creator and Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And here he says their lives are sanctified, are purified, are made clean by faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Romans, uh Paul would tell us in Romans 10 and verse 17, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: So when people are believing in Jesus and being and being purified, it's by them hearing the gospel and believing it and trusting in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But Paul's not done describing his apostolic ministry.
SPEAKER_01: We see in verses 17 through 21, he says this.
SPEAKER_01: Back in Romans 15, verse 17.
SPEAKER_01: In Christ Jesus, then I have reason to be proud of my work for God.
SPEAKER_01: For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he's not going to take any credit for anyone else's labors.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, let me just tell you what God has done through me to highlight God's goodness and power through me.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, he's defending his authority here.
SPEAKER_01: And so he says, To bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the God.
SPEAKER_01: Of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And this, and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation.
SPEAKER_01: But as it is written.
SPEAKER_01: And this verse was something that was inspirational to Paul.
SPEAKER_01: Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard of him will understand.
SPEAKER_01: That was like a personal life verse for Paul.
SPEAKER_01: So here we see a summary of verses 17 to 21, namely Paul's calling as a minister.
SPEAKER_01: And by calling we mean his specific niche or niche, if you're from the South, his methodology, his modus operandi, his characteristic manner of life.
SPEAKER_01: What was it?
SPEAKER_01: It was a pioneering frontier missionary.
SPEAKER_01: This was Paul's calling.
SPEAKER_01: And he's going to tell the Romans that he's been faithful in that, even as he is encouraging them to be faithful in their ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Wish there was we had more time to kind of dig into the details here, but basically what we have here is Paul is reminding them of the source of his ministry, that he was called by God, that his power is through the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Signs and wonders were not because of Paul's fingertips were powerful, but because the Holy Spirit was through Paul performing miracles.
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, the scope of his ministry.
SPEAKER_01: He went from Jerusalem all the way up to Illyricum, as we'll see in just a moment.
SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, he tells us a little bit about the strategy of his ministry.
SPEAKER_01: He intentionally went where the gospel had never been preached.
SPEAKER_01: He said, I didn't want to build on anyone's foundation.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be a foundation layer.
SPEAKER_01: And so we see this map here, if we can pull the map up.
SPEAKER_01: If you see in the bottom right hand of the screen is Judea.
SPEAKER_01: Judea is right there, Jerusalem's in Judea.
SPEAKER_01: That's where the church had its start, and that's where the Apostle Paul started his missionary journeys.
SPEAKER_01: This map shows Paul's three missionary journeys plus his voyage to Rome.
SPEAKER_01: And so you see, if you follow that red line up all the way towards that circle at the sort of top left-ish corner, that circle is over Illyricum.
SPEAKER_01: Illyricum was a region, it's not labeled here, but it's a region north of the Adriatic Sea.
SPEAKER_01: And you can see that we have a record of Paul going to Berea and Thessalonica, which are the closest points to Illyricum.
SPEAKER_01: So really when he mentions Illyricum, he's talking about he went to the border, basically.
SPEAKER_01: Tradition has it that Paul actually did go on some excursions into Illyricum, some cities, but in terms of biblical record, we have him going to the edge of it.
SPEAKER_01: So Paul is basically retracing his steps, saying, This was my plan to go as far as I could into the Roman Empire and then back again.
SPEAKER_01: And I guess before he could make other trips, he was imprisoned, taken to Rome, eventually beheaded for his testimony for Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It's evident from just even looking at the map at Paul's extensive journeys, which would be the equivalent of traveling from the East Coast to the West Coast of the U.S.
SPEAKER_01: like three and a half times or something dramatic.
SPEAKER_01: Paul spent a lot of miles taking the gospel where he had never been known.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul here says he had made it his ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ had been named, lest someone else, lest he build on someone else's foundation.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is a trailblazer.
SPEAKER_01: He was a frontier missionary and church planner.
SPEAKER_01: Now, why is it important that we understand that that's what Paul was called to in this text?
SPEAKER_01: It's because the majority of Christians, both now and then, are not called to be little apostle Paul's.
SPEAKER_01: We're not called to be and to replicate the ministry of the Apostle Paul by and large.
SPEAKER_01: Thank the Lord, we still have men and women who are sensing the call to be frontier missionaries and that are going to the ends of the earth and that are joining being trained as translators and video makers and church planters and humanitarian uh mission workers that facilitate gospel proclamation in the four corners of the earth and unreached people groups.
SPEAKER_01: But by and large, including the people to whom Paul was writing, they didn't have Paul's ministry.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll just say this if someone here this morning does actually feel like that, you are called to be a frontier person.
SPEAKER_01: Come talk to us.
SPEAKER_01: We want to help you in that endeavor.
SPEAKER_01: But statistically, that is a minority.
SPEAKER_01: We ought to send, uh pray that God would send laborers into the harvest.
SPEAKER_01: But it is evident that the ministry described in verse 14, which is what I want us to take home for ourselves today, it looks quite different than the ministry of the Apostle Paul in his own ministry.
SPEAKER_01: In his book, Surprise the World, Pastor Michael Frost, he describes what he calls living questionable lives.
SPEAKER_01: That Christians ought to live questionable lives.
SPEAKER_01: We ought to live lives that are so fundamentally based on different priorities and values, a different sense of treasure, not this earthly world, but but being a part of the kingdom of God, that it plays itself out in ways that are rather different from the world around us.
SPEAKER_01: And when you live different enough, because you're living for different enough things, people are going to ask, like, what's the deal?
SPEAKER_01: Why are you giving up vacation to go uh serve the poor here or there?
SPEAKER_01: Why are you why are you having people into your home so often?
SPEAKER_01: Or why do you go to church so much or whatever?
SPEAKER_01: When your values are really gospel-based, it prompts you to live questionable lives.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, this is how every Christian should expect evangelistic encounters to take place.
SPEAKER_01: Not by standing outside of Walmart necessarily with a bullhorn and handing out tracts or maybe two cities pizza.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I would be tempted to actually do that if people would be angry and throw like fresh pizza at me around lunchtime.
SPEAKER_01: I might do a little open-air preaching.
SPEAKER_01: Like a bag right here, buddy.
SPEAKER_01: Um large Chicago.
SPEAKER_01: The fact is, all believers are called to minister, but not necessarily like Paul did.
SPEAKER_01: We are all called to minister in sacrificial, in practical, in thoughtful ways that demonstrate that our priorities, our hope, our reason for living is radically different than, let's say, a godless neighbor or someone who doesn't have the hope of the resurrection, or someone who doesn't know that when they die, they're going to lose everything they worked for except stuff that contributed to the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul, I think, is calling our attention both to the Romans' readiness to minister in their context and to his own unique apostolic ministry.
SPEAKER_01: And so, what's the main idea here?
SPEAKER_01: The main idea is this every believer has a ministry to fulfill.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say it personally.
SPEAKER_01: Every single one of you has a ministry to fulfill.
SPEAKER_01: If you name the name of Jesus, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have a ministry to fulfill.
SPEAKER_01: We see this also reflected in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 11 and 12, where the apostle Paul says this.
SPEAKER_01: He says, And Christ gave to the churches the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers.
SPEAKER_01: Now those are the leaders, right?
SPEAKER_01: Apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers.
SPEAKER_01: Those are the guys sort of up front.
SPEAKER_01: He gives those in the churches, why?
SPEAKER_01: To equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up of the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You see, it's it's so common in religious circles for a select few that tend to be up front or tend to be leading in the organization or in some way or that way, for all this ministry to be consolidated on a few, and for everyone else to be either a fan or a spectator or to be someone who is just getting their weekly dose of Jesus or something and is right on the fringes of ministry.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the biblical model.
SPEAKER_01: All the leaders in the church are given in order to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.
SPEAKER_01: We all are called to fulfill a ministry.
SPEAKER_01: And that's such empowering stuff.
SPEAKER_01: The keys are being handed over to every single member of the church.
SPEAKER_01: And it's time for the saints, for each of us, to catch a vision for personally having a ministry and not just supporting someone else's ministry, but of fulfilling our ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Ministering is so foundational to the Christian life, we cannot outsource this to pastors, to teachers, to youth group leaders, or to mission kids volunteers, or to mission group leaders.
SPEAKER_01: Ministry is meant to involve 100% of us.
SPEAKER_01: We all have a ministry to fulfill.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the bad news.
SPEAKER_01: Our story is that this has isn't how it's gone and often how it doesn't go.
SPEAKER_01: Our story is that we we often feel like we have no ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Many of us feel like we don't have something that God has really called us to, and so we're just here to kind of watch other people.
SPEAKER_01: It's like we turn on the TV and watch the Reds play baseball and miss their playoff chances.
SPEAKER_01: We're not out there playing, we're not the ones sweating.
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully not.
SPEAKER_01: Turn the AC on, goodness.
SPEAKER_01: But hopefully, we're sitting there enjoying and watching someone else labor, but that's not how the church is meant to be.
SPEAKER_01: We don't just turn on the preacher for a little bit, get a big gulp.
SPEAKER_01: That's not Christianity.
SPEAKER_01: That's that's spectator sports.
SPEAKER_01: And so while I'm uh I'm convinced that there are many people that feel like they have a ministry.
SPEAKER_01: For example, maybe there's a wife or a mother here, or maybe many of you here who are tempted to get caught up in all the sort of the tedious parts of being a mother and a wife, and and you maybe you look wistfully over the head of your children and your and your husband and wonder what kind of ministry God would call you to.
SPEAKER_01: Not realizing that you're engaged every day in a ministry He has called you to.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm convinced that that Christian women can have ministry much bigger than their home, but it must not be smaller than your home.
SPEAKER_01: You must be faithful in your first calling if you are a wife, if you are a mother.
SPEAKER_01: No one can disciple your children better than you.
SPEAKER_01: A God-fearing mother who is in love with Jesus, who is filled with God's word, who serves her family well, the words are as true today as they were when they were first pinned.
SPEAKER_01: The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
SPEAKER_01: Don't underestimate your calling.
SPEAKER_01: There are many men today who are so caught up in the boredom of life, they're just looking for some escape, something to take their minds off of the nine to five, and so they turn to fantasy football, or hitting a little white ball down a fairway as often as they can, or putting a headset on in video gaming, that they're spending 10 or 100 times more minutes and hours of their precious time investing in DraftKings or something else, than praying with, having conversation with, talking with their children, their wife, their classmates, their cousins about the most important things of life because they're just looking for a temporary escape.
SPEAKER_01: Not investing in ministry, they're escaping responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: We here at Sacred Mission Church like to call men to renew their responsibility, to be pastors, providers, and protectors in their homes who take redemptive responsibility for the people and things under their care.
SPEAKER_01: God has called you to that ministry, brothers.
SPEAKER_01: The question is, are you fulfilling that ministry or are you abdicating your responsibility?
SPEAKER_01: We have a ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Last weekend, David Haysen, and I didn't get his permission, but it's nothing incriminating.
SPEAKER_01: David Haysen gave us his testimony at the men's event we had last weekend, and something really stuck out to me.
SPEAKER_01: I really appreciated it.
SPEAKER_01: He said that, you know, he grew up sort of around the church, but that wasn't really personal until college.
SPEAKER_01: And God really started to work in his life, and he started having a desire to, and he believed the gospel and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01: But he had this mentality in the back of his mind that if he got too close to Jesus, if he started reading his Bible too much, if he started being too committed to praying, to meeting with other brothers, um, then God was gonna turn him into a priest or a pastor or some kind of leader, and he didn't want to be that.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't feel called, he didn't have any desire to be that guy.
SPEAKER_01: And so he had this misunderstanding that if he got too close to Jesus, he was gonna have to become a preacher.
SPEAKER_01: Until, after college, he said, he met a few men who convinced him through their lives.
SPEAKER_01: Men who were not career missionaries, who were not pastors, but who were nonetheless men of God and active ministers in the church because they just lived ministerial lives in their families and relationships.
SPEAKER_01: They convinced him that there is as much work to be done outside the pulpit, outside of paid staff leadership, by people in the pew as there is by those in those positions.
SPEAKER_01: Now maybe you're here today and you don't know what your ministry is yet.
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: If you can't put your finger on, I believe this is what God's called me to do right now in this season of my life.
SPEAKER_01: But don't rest until you do know.
SPEAKER_01: Make this a matter of concerted prayer, of searching, that you would determine, God, what kind of offering do you want out of me with my short life on earth?
SPEAKER_01: So some of us feel like we have no ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Others of us, we feel like we have Paul's ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Or excuse me, we feel like we should have Paul's ministry, but we don't.
SPEAKER_01: I've experienced this.
SPEAKER_01: I remember growing up in a home where there were lots of magazines around that depicted the Christian life as sort of looking at the Apostle Paul as being a normative expression of Christian existence.
SPEAKER_01: That every conversation you have, like Jim Elliott was someone who was definitely kind of like this, he was the Apostle Paul and he, or an Apostle Paul in our generation.
SPEAKER_01: Jim Elliott, reading his journals, and he said every conversation he ever had with someone, he wanted it to be a fork in the road where they had to choose Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Talk about a lot of pressure.
SPEAKER_01: Poor lady at the grocery store.
SPEAKER_01: She's just, you know, helping you with trying to find the cereal, and you're like, excuse me, ma'am, uh, can I issue a question?
SPEAKER_01: She's like, no.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible under the arm gave it away.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us feel like we have the Apostle Paul's ministry, and so we live because we're not the Apostle Paul.
SPEAKER_01: We actually have a family.
SPEAKER_01: Paul didn't.
SPEAKER_01: Uh we're not vocational missionaries.
SPEAKER_01: We feel guilty because we're not outside of, we're not uh picketing outside of an abortion clinic or or witnessing at a local mosque or open-air preaching at UC or handing out tracts to your neighbors.
SPEAKER_01: But the fact is, Paul's lifestyle was something that simply couldn't be done if he had a family.
SPEAKER_01: And he even in 1 Corinthians 7 uh encouraged people, he says, hey, because of the situation right now, the instability in our in our day and time, I encourage you, single people, don't get married so that you can really devote yourself to the service of the Lord in ways like I am.
SPEAKER_01: But he says, if you can't, if you can't contain yourself, go ahead and get married, and then you serve your family first and foremost.
SPEAKER_01: Paul would write in 1 Timothy that a man who doesn't provide for his own, and not just physically, but but emotionally, spiritually, who doesn't invest in his family, he's worse than an unbeliever.
SPEAKER_01: There's lots of unbelievers out there, much better men than that man, even if he professes to be a Christian, who doesn't provide for his family.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: So, or at least try to.
SPEAKER_01: So we should be inspired by Paul's ministry and his zeal, but we shouldn't make the mistake of using him as the standard by which to judge ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Living with that low-grade guilt because you're not Paul.
SPEAKER_01: I remember a little widow lady in our church where I grew up.
SPEAKER_01: Her name was Christine Robinson.
SPEAKER_01: And uh Christine Robinson was about five foot eleven, and she was, excuse me, four foot eleven.
SPEAKER_01: Five's eleven is pretty tall.
SPEAKER_01: She was a big lady, tell you what.
SPEAKER_01: You should have seen her in her prime.
SPEAKER_01: She was like a milkmaid.
SPEAKER_01: No, but um, so four foot eleven, a little different.
SPEAKER_01: Four foot eleven.
SPEAKER_01: Um she was on home oxygen when I knew her.
SPEAKER_01: She was about 80 years old, and um she had a heart for world evangelism.
SPEAKER_01: But there was no way she could travel.
SPEAKER_01: If you were to even just get her to somewhere on the other side of the globe, she wouldn't be a resource with her little oxygen tank.
SPEAKER_01: She called it oxygen.
SPEAKER_01: A little oxygen, I'm not mugging that up.
SPEAKER_01: A little oxygen tank.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, she wouldn't be much of a resource on the mission field, but you know what she did?
SPEAKER_01: She could sew quilts.
SPEAKER_01: And she would sew quilts every time you went to her house.
SPEAKER_01: And I went to her house probably a hundred times.
SPEAKER_01: My dad visited her every week.
SPEAKER_01: She was a precious old lady and older lady.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and every time you went there, she had this quilt that was sitting about three feet above the floor, and it was let down from the ceiling.
SPEAKER_01: When you'd come in the door, she would wrap it up and raise it up.
SPEAKER_01: She had this old timey system there because her little house was so tiny, when the quilt was down, you couldn't hardly sit in the room.
SPEAKER_01: And so she would raise it up, or you'd raise it up for her, and she made numerous, countless quilts for people, like all of her family members, all of her friends, many people in the church, anyone who was getting married, anyone who graduated high school or college would get a quilt.
SPEAKER_01: And she ended up making 40 quilts for the mission fund in our church, and she would sell it completely free of charge to her and donate all the proceeds to missions.
SPEAKER_01: She was no Apostle Paul, but she was no less a minister of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Our gospel conviction this morning is that Christ ministered to make us ministers.
SPEAKER_01: Christ ministered to make us ministers.
SPEAKER_01: Our gospel conviction comes straight from our text this morning in verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul says this He's a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God.
SPEAKER_01: There's a phrase there that we easily pass over.
SPEAKER_01: He was a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, to facilitate their offerings being made acceptable to God.
SPEAKER_01: Why would he say he's a minister of Jesus Christ in this?
SPEAKER_01: It's because Paul's own ministry was in, was an extension of the ministry Jesus Christ came, sent on mission from the Father to accomplish.
SPEAKER_01: Paul was a minister of Jesus because this was the very reason Jesus came to earth himself.
SPEAKER_01: Paul's ministry was to make the offerings of the Gentiles acceptable to God.
SPEAKER_01: That was Jesus' ministry when he came to earth as our high priest.
SPEAKER_01: In John Piper's helpful little book, 50 Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die, number 36 on his list of 50 reasons the Bible tells us Jesus came to die was this: to create a people passionate for good works.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus came so that we'd be ministers.
SPEAKER_01: John Piper says this we are saved for good works, not by good works.
SPEAKER_01: And the aim of Christ is not the mere ability to do them, but passion to do them.
SPEAKER_01: Christ came to die to create a people passionate for good works.
SPEAKER_01: He came to minister to make us ministers.
SPEAKER_01: You see, we are by nature a zealous people.
SPEAKER_01: You're a zealous person.
SPEAKER_01: You're zealous, and I am zealous for self-preservation.
SPEAKER_01: We're zealous for wealth.
SPEAKER_01: We're zealous for helping other people when helping them helps us.
SPEAKER_01: By nature, we can do all sorts of things very zealously, but our offerings are not acceptable to God because they're for us.
SPEAKER_01: And they're out of sync with God's designs for humanity.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus, in stark contrast, he was incarnated and he came and he suffered in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_01: He suffered misunderstanding.
SPEAKER_01: He suffered poverty and abject rejection and slander and physical violence, even unto the point of death on a cross in our place that he didn't deserve.
SPEAKER_01: And he did it all without so much as a wrong word or thought or action.
SPEAKER_01: He was the perfect human that we never could be.
SPEAKER_01: He was the perfect man, perfectly fulfilling God's will that we were called to be, but didn't measure up to.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus came and he did it on our behalf.
SPEAKER_01: And then he rose again on the third day and he did it for something, get this, so much greater than merely keeping us out of hell in the afterlife or giving us a padded 15-year retirement in this life.
SPEAKER_01: Titus chapter 2, verse 14 says, Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from lawlessness and to purify.
SPEAKER_01: There's that word again, to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine that.
SPEAKER_01: In the death of Jesus Christ, God was purchasing us back from not only sin, but he was purchasing for us a zeal that is towards God and for the good of other people, creating a people who were redeemed for zealous good works.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus Christ was the minister we couldn't be for ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: He was the one who took our rotten, selfish, self-focused, and ambitious offerings that we were offering to who knows what, and he made them acceptable to God through Jesus Christ through the Spirit when we trusted in his finished work.
SPEAKER_01: There were many priests in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: But at any given time there was only one high priest.
SPEAKER_01: And that high priest could go and offer a sacrifice one time a year in something called the Holy of Holies.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy of Holies was a cubicle room in the back side of the tabernacle, which the tabernacle was in the very center of all the tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: The very focal point of their existence was this tabernacle where God would reveal himself and should make himself known.
SPEAKER_01: Inside that center of the center of the center, where God's presence was made known.
SPEAKER_01: This high priest would go in once a year on the day called Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and he would go in bearing blood, a blood of a perfect lamb.
SPEAKER_01: And he would go and he would pray for.
SPEAKER_01: Who'd offered that to God on the altar there as a payment for the sins of all of Israel?
SPEAKER_01: And of course, we learn as Christians that that blood's that lamb of that the Lamb's blood did not cleanse us from sins.
SPEAKER_01: It was pointing to that precious Lamb one day, who would be Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus Christ one day would come and enter once for all into the very holy of holies, as it were, into the very presence of God, bearing our sins and then appeasing God's wrath for them by his own blood.
SPEAKER_01: As we read in Hebrews chapter 7, it is indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest.
SPEAKER_01: What was he like?
SPEAKER_01: He was holy, innocent, unstained, separate from sinners, and now he's exalted to the heavens.
SPEAKER_01: He has no need, like the high priest of the Old Testament, to offer sacrifices daily for sins over and over and over again, and even to offer a sacrifice for his own sins, since he did once for all offer himself up.
SPEAKER_01: We see in Hebrews 2.17, therefore he had to be made like us, his brothers, in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God.
SPEAKER_01: You see the terminology here?
SPEAKER_01: A priest in the service of God.
SPEAKER_01: This was Jesus' mission to make propitiation for the sins of the people, to make atonement for the sins of God's people.
SPEAKER_01: And so we see that the offering made by Jesus Christ on the cross, that offering was not the lives of innocent animals.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't an offering of his followers, shedding their blood for him.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't an offering of his enemies, but his own precious blood.
SPEAKER_01: So that the offering of your life tomorrow morning when you get out of bed on Monday will be acceptable to God if you come to God through Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: If you continue on in your own self-righteousness, I can do good enough, I'm a good enough person, I have good motives.
SPEAKER_01: I don't need Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't need his offering to make my offering pure.
SPEAKER_01: Your offering will remain unacceptable.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, but if you come through Jesus Christ, trusting in him, Paul says you're sanctified, you're purified by faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And God receives that and welcomes it into his presence.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus died to reconcile us to God and to ransom us from lives of worthless self-indulgence.
SPEAKER_01: He died to make us ministers.
SPEAKER_01: The glorious reality of Jesus' work as a minister for us as a high priest is what empowered the Apostle Paul to do the same thing as a pioneer missionary and is what should empower us today in our efforts, in our sacrifices, in the daily grind of serving God well, those around us.
SPEAKER_01: It's like sweet incense rising up to our Holy Father, made acceptable through the perfect blood of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Our gospel vision is what I want to leave you with.
SPEAKER_01: May we ambitiously minister according to our gifts.
SPEAKER_01: Don't miss that word ambitiously.
SPEAKER_01: Did you see Paul say ambitious there in Romans 15?
SPEAKER_01: He says, I make it my ambition.
SPEAKER_01: You think he would have gone all the way around three times?
SPEAKER_01: Thousands and thousands and thousands of miles in shipwrecks and beatings and stonings and slander and getting run out of town and death threats, all the things we see in scripture recorded of Paul's sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: Do you think he would have done that?
SPEAKER_00: If he didn't have ambition to preach the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: May we, with the same kind of ambition, minister according to our gifts.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder what your ambition is this morning and mine.
SPEAKER_01: If you're really honest, I believe all of us are ambitious for something.
SPEAKER_01: Is the chiefmost ambition of your life to know and to make known the Lord Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: You see, if we're outside of that design, that plan of God, we're like blind leaders of the blind just floating around, wasting our lives.
SPEAKER_01: But if you enter into the kingdom of God, you are now in line with your purpose you were created for.
SPEAKER_01: And you're within the sacrificial covering of Jesus' perfect sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: And now every part of your life, instead of it being a drudgery, instead of it being something you need some credit for, instead of it being something you're just trying to push through, or a selfish indulgence, everything you do through faith in Jesus is an offering acceptable to God.
SPEAKER_01: One last thing I want to point out here.
SPEAKER_01: Romans chapter 12, the Apostle Paul told us.
SPEAKER_01: Present your bodies.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted us to make sure that it wasn't just our minds, our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: We're listening to a sermon on Sunday and we've accomplished our ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Your bodies.
SPEAKER_01: That is, your words, your thoughts, your motives, what you do with your hands, how you bless people.
SPEAKER_01: Present your bodies as living, as a living sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: You see the priestly language again?
SPEAKER_01: This idea that our entire lives are an offering to God.
SPEAKER_01: Present your bodies to God.
SPEAKER_01: Here I am, God.
SPEAKER_01: Here's my body.
SPEAKER_01: Here's everything I am body and soul.
SPEAKER_01: To you.
SPEAKER_01: It's yours.
SPEAKER_01: Use me, call me, help me to be obedient to you.
SPEAKER_01: And then immediately after he tells us to do that in Romans 12, he lists gifts of the Spirit that God has given us.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, what God calls you to, he's going to gift you to do.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe you're here this morning and you're not sure what your giftings are and what your calling is.
SPEAKER_01: When I say ministry, I'm not talking about some large organized thing that's going to take up 90% of your time.
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about the ministry of listening.
SPEAKER_01: Do you serve others by listening?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're particularly good at that.
SPEAKER_01: If you ask my wife, I'm not.
SPEAKER_01: What'd you say, honey?
SPEAKER_01: The ministry of blessing others with music.
SPEAKER_01: The ministry of visitation to the lonely, to the forgotten, to the overlooked.
SPEAKER_01: The ministry of prayer, both for people without them even knowing, and with people when they're in need.
SPEAKER_01: The ministry of encouragement via card writing or text sending or thoughtful words of appreciation.
SPEAKER_01: The ministry of taking kids fishing or a boy and his dad fishing or hunting or hiking, whatever your gift and your interest is, to turn that into an offering to God to bless other people.
SPEAKER_01: The ministry of organizing other people, getting people together.
SPEAKER_01: The ministry of hospitality and hosting, the ministry of cutting a needy person's grass for free.
SPEAKER_01: The ministry of generosity, of slipping someone a hundred-dollar bill if God's blessed you in that kind of way.
SPEAKER_01: Someone who is operating on a shoestring budget and needs the money.
SPEAKER_01: The ministry of sewing quilts for orphans in India.
SPEAKER_01: The options are endless.
SPEAKER_01: There are myriad.
SPEAKER_01: It depends on your gifting, your calling, the ways that you can minister, especially to those in need.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 6.10 says, For God is not unjust to overlook a single sacrifice that you have made in love and in his name.
SPEAKER_01: One more story.
SPEAKER_01: I remember taking a trip one time, and I met a man and I talked to him, and uh he was sort of in conversation, telling me that he was not being fed at church.
SPEAKER_01: I felt like he wasn't growing in his walk, and he really thought it was his pastor's fault.
SPEAKER_01: His pastor wasn't, you know, his messages just weren't, maybe initially they were stimulating, but as as he'd kind of grown, he sort of topped out, and now this pastor needs to get his act together.
SPEAKER_01: And I just, I remember very distinctly, it was probably 12 years ago.
SPEAKER_01: I remember saying, brother, I want to encourage you to think, to think about your own spiritual growth.
SPEAKER_01: Primarily not in terms of what other people are doing for you, but in terms of what you're providing for yourself and for those around you.
SPEAKER_01: You see that the change of orientation from being a consumer to being a producer.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of consumers.
SPEAKER_01: Not as many producers.
SPEAKER_01: The turnaround from thinking about what is this guy doing for me and how is it insufficient and to say, how am I blessing him?
SPEAKER_01: How am I holding up his hands?
SPEAKER_01: How am I making the ministry of our church that much more strong?
SPEAKER_01: Mind blown, right?
SPEAKER_01: Two years later, I ran into him again and he told me, remember that conversation we had?
SPEAKER_01: That changed my life.
SPEAKER_01: Not too many people have told me that, but he told me that.
SPEAKER_01: That changed my life.
SPEAKER_01: And he was now leading a group of men in his house every week, digging into scripture, praying for their pastor.
SPEAKER_01: New people, people coming in, and they're growing in their understanding of God's calling their lives, they're growing in character and conviction, they're studying theology.
SPEAKER_01: And he said that that perspective absolutely changed my life.
SPEAKER_01: So let's not make the mistake of thinking we can outsource to others what God has called us to do.
SPEAKER_01: We each have a ministry, our gifts align with this, and so here's the conclusion.
SPEAKER_01: With an ambition for God's glory, like a fire in our bones, and the goodness of compassion in our hearts and motives, and the Spirit of God within us, and a knowledge of God's word upon our lips.
SPEAKER_01: Here are the keys.
SPEAKER_01: It's time to drive the car.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.