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Ministry: Shaped for Serving God |
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A Pocket Paper Robert J.
Morgan In his best-selling book, the Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren suggests there are five profound purposes for which we’ve been made, and our happiness and success in life comes from discovering and fulfilling those purposes. The first is worship, which can be defined to some extent as bringing God pleasure. The second is fellowship, which can be defined to some extent as being a refreshing person to others. The third is discipleship, which can be defined as the process of becoming Christ-like. Today’s we’re looking at the fourth great purpose in life, which is ministry—which can be defined as allowing God to shape us into a vessel fit for His use. Most people think of the ministry as a fulltime vocational calling for those who preach or go out as missionaries. But let me show you a great verse of Scripture on this subject. It’s 1 Peter 5:10: As each one… Notice that Peter does not say “some” but “each one,” as in “each and every Christian.” As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. The Greek word here for “minister” means “to serve, to wait on, to take care of.” The word “ministry” simply implies “to serve.” This verse says that each and everyone of us has been shaped with a special set of backgrounds, gifts, and abilities, and we must use those gifts to serve others as good stewards of the manifold (or many-faceted) grace of God. The writer is the old fisherman-apostle Peter, one of our Lord’s original twelve disciples. He is one of the twelve men whom Jesus sent out to change the world. And now, Peter is wanting to tell us how to do the same. Let’s begin with verse 7: But the end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers. And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.” Be hospitable to one another without grumbling. As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4:7-11). Peter begins here by telling us that the end of all things is at hand. Every generation of Christians have expected Jesus to come again during their own lifetime. Peter was no exception. He was writing this after years of serving Christ, and as he looked around him, he saw then then-known world as having been effectively evangelized. He saw persecution raging against the church—and most of this letter was written to comfort and strengthen Christians who were being persecuted. He saw world events lining up in a way that potentially corresponded to the predictions of Christ. And he just expected Jesus to come again at any moment. He longed for that. So should we; for if Peter thought the return of Christ was imminent in his day, how much closer is it in our own day. If we were more alert and mature people, we would wake up every morning saying, “Maybe this is the day Christ will return.” We’d fall asleep every night with the awareness that Christ might come before daybreak. What, then, are the implications? How should we live? If you knew for certain that you and I and our children represented the last generation of Christian on this planet… and if we knew for certain that Christ would come in our lifetime, would it make a difference in the way we lived? Would it make a difference in our priorities? Peter says: The end of all things is at hand, therefore… Therefore there are four implications. Therefore there are four ways in which we should live. There are four ways in which we should minister. There are four things we should do. Be Serious and Watchful in Prayer First, the end of all things is near, so we must be serious and watchful in prayer. The passage says: But the end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers. The word serious is a word that meant, in the Greek, to be sane and sensible. And the word “watchful” was the word usually used for staying “sober” as opposed to being drunk. The idea was to keep your wits about you, to be alert, to be clear-headed and self-controlled. I get the idea reading this that God puts a great deal more value on our prayers than we do. He considers prayer to be a serious thing that can influence events in this world—both events in our personal lives and events in world history and current events. The prophet Daniel was aware of current events and it influenced the way he prayed. In Daniel 9, Daniel began to earnestly pray about world affairs. I don’t have time to go into the passage, but I can tell you that Daniel’s prayers involved serious spiritual conflict and paved the way for the return of the Jewish remnant to Jerusalem and to the unfolding of revelation about the last days as recorded in Daniel 10-12. His prayers literally shaped history and moved heaven and earth and men and angels. Daniel was linked through prayer with the current events of his day, and his prayers were like a lever moving the arm of God’s providence. Now in light of that, let me make a suggestion. If by any chance you are a person who watches quite a bit of television, I recommend you offer one of your favorite programs as a burnt offering, as a sacrifice. Tell the Lord, “I’m giving up Survivor or the reruns of Friends. I’m going to devote that hour or that half-hour each week to praying over national and world events.” Have you ever tried taking a newspaper and praying over the stories that it contains? Have you ever prayed your way through a copy of Newsweek or Time Magazine? Turn it into a prayer guide. Take that bundle of missionary prayer letters that comes by mail or e-mail, and spread them out before the Lord. Pray for our world leaders. Years ago, I read a biography of King Edward VII of England. He was the son of Queen Victoria, who was a Christian woman and who reigned for decades. Her remarkable longevity was great for Queen Victoria, but it led to a life of boredom and dissipation for Edward VII, and he became well-known for his drinking and immorality and debauchery. He finally became the King of England in 1901 and reigned for nine years before dying in 1910. I remember being a little depressed when I read his biography. It just seemed like such a debauched and purpose-less life. But last year I read something that astounded me. In the year 1910, there was a Christian named Joe Evans who was known as a man of prayer. He was on a holiday in New York, in the Adirondacks, where he had gone to rest and to study the Bible. He was fairly isolated, because in those days there were no radios, televisions, or newspapers in remote areas. One morning he arose and felt a strange and urgent burden to pray for King Edward VII. The burden on his heart increased through the day, and by the end of the day Joe Evans was praying with great agony of soul for the conversion of the King of England. Finally a sense of peace and release came, and he grew convinced that God had heard his prayer. The following day came the sudden news, “King Edward is dead.” Years passed, and Joe Evans was one day sharing dinner with Dr. J. Gregory Mantle of England, who was one of the most influential and prominent evangelical ministers in England in the early 1900s. During their conversation, Dr. Mantle said, “Joe, did you know that Edward VII was saved on his deathbed?” “Tell me about it,” said Joe Evans. “The king was in France when he was taken ill. He was brought to England and there was hope that he might recover. However, there came a turn for the worse. At that time, His Majesty called one of his lords-in-waiting and ordered him to go to Paternoster Row and secure for him a copy of a tract which his mother, Queen Victoria, had given to him when he was a lad. It was entitled The Sinner’s Friend. After much searching, the lord-in-waiting found the track, brought it to His Majesty, and upon reading it, King Edward VII made earnest repentance and received the Lord Jesus as his Savior.” Upon hearing that, Joe Evans told his side of the story. The Bible tells us that we are to pray for kings and for all who are in authority. The Bible says that God’s house is to be a house of prayer for all the nations. God is concerned about this world, and Peter tells us this in a very specific verse in 1 Peter 4:7: But the end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers. God wants to shape us into men and women of prayer. That’s the foundation for all other ministry. Have fervent love for one another Now we must go on to verse
8: And above all things have fervent love for one another, for
“love will cover a multitude of sins.” Remember all this is an outflow of
verse 7, so we need to go back and add our preface. The
end of all things is at hand, therefore… have fervent love for one
another, for love will cover a multitude of sins. The word fervent here is very interesting. In the English, it seems to imply something emotional; but the Greek word is ektenēs (ek-te-nass’) which conveys the idea of strenuous maintenance. It was the word the Greek writers used for a horse that was on a full stretch, barreling toward the finish line the way Smarty Jones did the other day at the Belmont Stakes. Now, Peter said, this kind of love covers a multitude of sins. Katrina and I built a house 15 years ago, and it was there that we raised our three daughters and went through about a hundred pets and hundreds of people and now three grandchildren. I’m ashamed to say that during those 15 years we never repainted the interior walls of the house or replaced our carpets. We were waiting for the children and animals to leave. And I can tell you that every wall in our house was dirty. So we had the painters come and they patched up the nail holes where I had tried to hang pictures and they covered those walls with two fresh coats of paint. And it was like walking into a different home. A lot of you have been living with your husband or wife or kids for a long time, but it’s been a while since you applied a good fresh coat of love. Paul says that the end of all things is near, therefore we should cover everything with a new, fresh coat of love. It will be like walking into a new home. How do we do that? We do it with binoculars. I wish that I could hand out a pair of binoculars to everybody in this room today. A little invisible pair that was always hanging around your neck. Do you know that if you look through the correct end of your binoculars, it enlarges everything? And if you turn them around and look through the wrong end, it reduces everything to the same proportions. The person you are married to or the person sitting near to you here at church today has great strengths and great weaknesses. He or she has virtues and faults. When we love one another fervently, it means that we look out their strengths through the magnifying end of the binoculars and we look at their weaknesses through the minimizing end of the binoculars. Did you see the story in this week’s paper about the cello that was stolen from the Los Angeles Philharmonic? It was a priceless, 320-year old Stradivarius cello. It’s value was put at $3.5 million, but it was truly irreplaceable at ay cost. It had been personally made by master craftsman Antonio Stradivari. Well, after it was stolen, a nurse found it in a trash bin. It was damaged, but still in it’s silver-coated plastic case. She had no idea of its worth, so she threw it in the trunk of her car and wondered what to do with it. She didn’t know how to play a cello and had no interest in learning, so she asked her boyfriend to convert it into a CD holder to sit beside her sound system. She thought he could cut off the front, attach hinges to it, and build little shelves inside of it to hold her CDs. Fortunately, she heard a news report about the missing Stradivarius cello and went to the authorities before the damage was done. You and I have been made by a Master Craftsman. We’re built by the Master for a special work, and we are of great and rare value. We have a distinctive purpose. We’re made to play the music of worship, fellowship, discipleship, and ministry. The devil wants to turn us into a CD rack. He wants to divert us from our great and godly purpose in living and turn us into cheap, damaged instruments for his entertainment. Don’t let that happen. Don’t live for lesser things. Don’t fritter your life away in vain pursuits of no lasting value. The end of all things is at hand, therefore give yourself to serving God with all your hearts, becoming men and women of prayer and of love. Be hospitable to one another without
grumbling Third, God wants to shape us into a vessel of hospitality. Look at the next verse in 1 Peter 4: Be hospitable to one another without grumbling. Sometime when you’re reading through the Gospel or the book of Acts, notice how often Christians were in each other’s homes. Just think of Jesus. When He left His home in Nazareth, He spent three years in other people’s spare bedrooms. Have you ever thought of that? Jesus did not own a house, and there were no hotels or motels in those days. For about a thousand nights in a row—for three years—He either slept out under the stars or He was borrowing a bed in someone else’s house. And He had twelve men with Him! Acts 2:46 says about the early
church: So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread
from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of
heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. I know that sometimes we can’t bring people into our homes for various reasons. What do we do then? How do we obey this command? You obey it wherever you are at any given moment. You can be hospitable here at church. Look around for someone you don’t recognize, someone who might be a visitor. Introduce yourself and be their friend. If you can’t bring your neighbor into your kitchen, take your kitchen to your neighbor. Bake a pan of brownies and take them over to their house with a view toward inviting their children to our Kid’s Jamboree. Being hospitable means making
room in your home, your heart, or your schedule for other people. Having an open home, an open heart,
and/or an open schedule. And
Peter says that as important as hospitality was in the first century,
it’s even more important in the last century, in the final days before
Christ comes again. The end of all things is near…
therefore be hospitable to one another without grumbling. Minister to one another as good stewards
of the manifold grace of God And now, finally, we get to our
primary verse: The end of all things is near,
therefore… as each one has received a gift, minister it to one another,
as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. There are two basic types of gifts. Some of us have speaking gifts. Look at verse 11: If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. That’s sort of an archaic rendering of the verse. We don’t talk about oracles much. It sounds like a vacuum cleaner. This simply means that when we speak—when we preach or teach or talk about the Lord or take someone through a presentation of the Gospel—we should do so as if we were speaking the very words of God Himself. Whenever you say a word about Christ, it is Christ Himself using your mouth to speak His message. He speaks through us by the Holy Spirit. That means if God has given you an opportunity to teach, preach, witness, evangelize, or encourage someone for Him, it is as though Jesus Christ Himself were personally speaking to those people. He is doing it through you. We’ve got to think of it in those terms. It isn’t us saying a word for the Lord. It is the Lord Himself saying a word for Himself through you and me. There’s a little prayer
that I silently pray before virtually all my sermons. It’s a prayer taken from the
book of Psalms: Lord, set a watch before my mouth and keep
the doors of my lips. Lord,
appoint and ordain every word I speak. The other kind of gift is the
serving gifts. We’re to
serve in the strength that God provides.
The NKJV says “ability.” The Greek word is ischys
(is-kus’), and it literally means “strength.” The NIV has it right: If
anyone serves, he should do it with the strength that God supplies. This word ischys occurs 11 times
in the New Testament. This is the
word Jesus used when He told us to love the Lord our God with all our
strength. How do we serve Christ with the strength that He Himself provides? First, we serve Him with the strength of body that He provides. How often have we said something like, “I’ll serve Him as long as He gives me strength”? The Bible says, “As your days may demand shall your strength ever be.” Second, we serve Him with
strength of attitude that He provides.
Look at Paul’s words in Philippians 4: I
can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. What was he talking about in its
immediate context? He was talking
about his ability to be content in less-than-desirable circumstances. Not
that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to
be content: I know how to be
abased, and I know how to abound.
Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be
hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me. He was
talking about the way Christ could strengthen him in his attitude of
mind. Christ gives us strength in
terms of our attitude and morale. Finally, we serve Him with the strength of effectiveness He provides. The greatest thing I know to say about serving God is that is isn’t something that we do for God. It is Christ Himself ministering through us by means of the Holy Spirit. Acts 1:1 says: The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. The words “the former account” refer to Luke’s first volume, His Gospel. Theophilus was simply the man he was addressing and to whom he was dedicating his book of Acts. So Luke is saying here: “My first book—the Gospel of Luke—was the account of all that Jesus began to do and to say.” The Gospel of Luke was not the account of what Jesus did and said. It was the account of all that Jesus began to do and to say. The implication being that this book of Acts—and the whole story of the church and of every Christian of the church era—is the account of what Jesus is continuing to do and to say through His church. And so Peter is saying here in 1 Peter 4: If you do something, remember that it is the continuation of what Jesus is continuing to do on this earth through you. If you say something, remember that it is the continuation of what Jesus is continuing to say on this earth through you. Say it as though it were God speaking, and do it with the strength that God provides. Now, let’s wrap it all up. The end of all things is at hand. Therefore: 1. Be serious and sober in prayer. 2. Love one another fervently. 3. Be hospitable. 4. Use your gifts to speak and to serve Christ. The result? Well, that’s the best thing of
all. Look at the way the passage
ends: …that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ,
to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Not just that we may glorify God. But that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ who is working in us and who is working through us. In other words, we become the vessels Jesus Christ uses as He Himself glorifies the Father. And in the process, Christ Himself is glorified in us. …That in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom
belong the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office. |
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