God's Grace Defines a True Minister of the Gospel
Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things.
Ephesians 3:7-9
Ephesians 3:7-9
This past week I came across an article from The Christian Post. The Christian Post always has zinger headlines, and this one was definitely click bait for me. The headline said this, “Study finds that record levels of pastors, & more than half of mainline preachers, are ‘seriously considering’ quitting the ministry.” (TCP)
The article came out last November, and it was based on research done by the Barna Group. The study looked at over 500 Protestant ministers and it found that 4 out of 10 protestant pastors are seriously considering dropping out of the ministry.
What’s fascinating is that this is a significant jump up from January of last year. The same study was conducted at the beginning of 2022. It found that 29% of pastors who were thinking about calling it quits. That, in and of itself, is a pretty significant amount. But by the end of the year there was about a 10% increase.
This same study also found that 51% of mainline pastors were on the brink of bailing out. It seems that mainline pastors have a greater tendency to throw in the towel.
Now, a lot of people will hear those statistics and think, “Oh, how terrible!” These are some pretty drastic numbers. And they will think, “These pastors must be having such a difficult time. It’s a crying shame.”
But my reaction is a bit different. My reaction is, “Good.” Call me cynical, but I would say that they would do the world an incredible favor if they would go ahead and jump ship.”
Now, I recognize that there can be good men who face incredible pressure and question whether the ministry was the right choice. There’s no doubt that that can be the case. But I also believe that many (if not most) of those in ministry today (especially those in the mainline churches) shouldn’t have gone in the ministry in the first place.
As a matter of fact, on of my favorite quotes is by a Reformation pastor and theologian (who’s name I can never pronounce, Oecolampadius) goes like this: “What the world needs is fewer pastors.” In other words, most of those who are priests and preachers should have never entered the ministry. They weren’t truly called to it, they are not good at it, and they really don’t have a clue what they are supposed to be doing in this thing we call ministry.
That’s not to say we need fewer pastors. It’s just that the ones we have shouldn’t be there. And I’m not alone in thinking this. There are many others who agree. As a matter of fact, Martin Lloyd-Jones and others have said we are currently facing a crisis in the church today. It is a crisis of ministry. Much of this crisis stems from the fact that we don’t understand what constitutes biblical ministry.
And that’s why a passage like this is always good to come across from time to time. The passage before us helps to introduce to us what a true minister of the gospel ought to be.
Paul has been talking about God’s grace and how this grace has come to be revealed in an extravagant way among the Gentiles. And here he tells us about his own role in this whole process. And what he tells us is that God’s grace is the most fundamental component to his apostleship. For God’s grace is what drew him into the ministry and it is that which characterizes his work in the ministry.
Now, do you really need to understand this? Some of you might be thinking: I’m really not going into the ministry; I have a perfectly good occupation, and I don’t know if this message really concerns me.
But it does concern you. You are the ones who benefit from the ministry. And it is important for you to understand the nature of Christian ministry. It will affect what you seek in a church. It will affect what you settle for in a church. It will shape what you long for in a church.
In other words, you need to grasp what the bible teaches about the ministry and ministers so you don’t get one of those schlubs I talked about that shouldn’t be in the ministry in the first place.
What you need to understand here is that a true minister of the gospel will only be a minister of the gospel because he is both a PRODUCT and a PREACHER of God’s God’s grace.
I. The minister of the gospel is a PRODUCT of grace
Look with me at verses 7-8. He says, “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given.”
In these two verses Paul is talking about how he became an apostle. But you’ll notice the words he uses to describe how he got into it. He says it was a “gift;” it was a “gift of grace.” It was a gift of grace that was “given.”
You know what that is? That’s a redundancy. Grace is a gift. Grace, by its nature, is not something you earn. A gift is something that is given to you. You don’t earn grace; it is bestowed upon you as an act of favor.
And you will also notice that Paul stresses this even more when he says in verse 8 that he was “the least of all the saints.”
Paul is recognizing that he wasn’t qualified for the job. No, not at all. He wasn’t even close to being qualified. To say that he was the “least of all the saints” is to put it mildly. You will remember that he was converted and called all about the same time. Prior to becoming an apostle, he was an unbeliever and a rabid persecutor of the church. He’s a guy who had blood on his hands.
Now, if you were on the committee to bring in your new pastor and you got an application like this, I would hope you would put that resume on the bottom of the stack, if not in the recycle bin. Sure he’s got some good education and seems pretty articulate, but I don’t really think that it would be a good fit for the church if you had an unbeliever and renown oppressor of Christians come and fill the job.
Paul’s stressing that he was not worthy of this calling. He was not qualified for the office. He didn’t deserve to be appointed to it.
And the truth is that nobody is. There’s not one person who takes the name minister that has lived such a life that he has the merit to be in that position. Anyone who comes to the ministry comes there as a result of God’s grace. The Lord appoints him, not because he is worthy or has some real potential--it is only because God has put his favor upon him.
This is something that many people do not understand, whether they be ministers or lay people.
On the layman side, people will often become quite upset when they find out that the guy behind the pulpit is a sinner. For some reason they think that he should be some messianic figure who has either overcome the effects of the fall of Adam or should have had all aspects of sin removed upon his ordination.
Now, there’s no doubt about it, a minister should be one who excels in holiness and we recognize that he is held to a higher standard. That does not mean, though, that he has reached some level of sinless perfection.
And so what happens is that the minister does something to offend this person. Perhaps he looses his cool or certain words slip out of his mouth. Whatever form it takes we recognize that it was wrong. And because of this wrong notion of the minister’s holiness, these people in the congregation become upset. There is no reason to believe that his sins should be covered or forgiven because they do not believe that he should be sinning like this. And so there ends up being a great deal of tension in the church, conflict is stirred up, and people end up leaving the church.
Of course, that’s just one side of the problem. There’s a problem on the side of many ministers too. It’s not just a wrong view of things from the people in the pews, it can often be a wrong view held by the guy in the pulpit.
There are many people who go by the name minister that have a pretty inflated view of themselves and they think that they are God’s gift to the world. They do not have a humble view of themselves; they do not believe that God made them a minister through an act of his grace. They see themselves as somehow indispensable to the work of the church and you better be glad that I am blessing you with my presence.
But that is all foolishness. It’s foolishness to hold a minister up to some standard of perfection, and it is foolish for ministers to think that they have such incredible ministerial prowess that they take the reigns of church leadership as a result of their own ability.
No. The proper view is set forth right here by the Apostle Paul. Like the Apostle, the guy who takes the call of minister is first and foremost a wretched man, filled with sin and born in the likeness of Adam. He’s a guy who deserves not the least of God’s blessings, let alone the opportunity to serve in this profound capacity.
The minister of the gospel is himself in need of the gospel. Before he can let people know about God’s grace, he himself must first experience the powerful working of God’s grace.
But you’ll notice that, as Paul talks about himself, he says that the minister is not merely a product of God’s grace, he is also a preacher of grace. To put it another way, he is not only drawn into the ministry by God’s grace, that grace defines what he does in the ministry.
II. The minister of the gospel is a PREACHER of grace
You see that at the end of verse 8 and into verse 9. Paul says that though he was the least of all the saints, this grace was given so that he could “preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God.”
Why was Paul given this grace? Why was he made an apostle? It was so that he could preach. Or, as this particular word means in the original, to “declare the good news.” Literally we could read this by saying “this grace was given so that he could declare the good news of the unsearchable riches of Christ to the Gentiles.”
Paul’s saying that God had put him in this position because he was to be an orator. He was a divine spokesman. He was to be a conduit of God’s grace and mercy.
Sure, he may have some administrative work that he may have to do from time to time. He may have to also supplement his income by doing some other kinds of work (such as tent-making), but the thing that was to define his career was preaching the pardoning grace of God. He had been raised up to proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ and his saving work.
You will notice then, that Paul gives us a rather definitive job description of what a minister is supposed to do. When someone becomes a minister, what is it that we should expect of him? We should expect that his time will be spent preparing messages and preaching them. When he goes out to make a house call or to have a meeting with someone, it is for the purpose of bringing the word of God to that person and being sure that they know of the grace that is in Christ.
And with this verse you will notice what the minister is not to be doing.
In the present context of the church we are facing a rather significant crisis. It is a crisis that has potential to ruin a great many lives and run Christianity in America right off the rails. The crisis that I speak of pertains to the nature and task of the ministry.
That is one of the things I love about the Bible. It speaks in a very clear fashion about what is supposed to constitute church leadership. And we need that today (we need it all the time) because we are prone to degrade and redefine the office and the work of a gospel minister.
Not long ago a fellow pastor was asking me about Airsoft. He had seen some of the pictures I had posted online and he said it reminded him of his days as a youth director. He said that they would go out and play paintball. And he said to me, “That was some great ministry.” I replied by saying, “I don’t know about ministry; I just like shooting 12 year olds with my airsoft gun.”
That’s one of the many things that we tend to think today regarding the ministry. We think it is about providing entertainment and organizing social events. We think that getting people together so that they have opportunity to build relationships is ministry. But that’s not at all the case.
Playing airsoft isn’t ministry. Playing basketball or doing nails together isn’t ministry. Those may be fun and nice opportunities for fellowship, but it is that is not the kind of thing that defines the ministry of a pastor.
The ministry of the pastor is not about social events, and neither is it about providing entertainment. One of the most significant influences upon our understanding of the ministry today has been the television. When the little head first popped up on the screen in the 1950’s that began a movement that would forever shape how people viewed the guy up front on Sunday mornings.
The nature of television (and all its offspring, like YouTube and TicTok etc) is entertainment. It is there to put on a show that will make you smile and delight you in some way.
This is why we have the advent of Sesame Street. It’s not enough to show you the letter F and show you how to draw the letter F. It also has to have some dancing little puppet next to it. Why do they have the puppet? It’s because the letter F is boring.
You may say that you turn on the television in order to catch the weather or the nightly news. But that’s not true at all. What you are turning on is a little show which might have some weather or news mixed in. The news and the weather are just as boring as the Letter F. Don’t believe me? Then why are all the anchor people 20 year old women in tight clothing? It’s because it isn’t about the news. It’s about giving you some kind of pleasure.
And our view of the ministry has been shaped by this. Our lives have been so indoctrinated by the dancing puppets and the pretty faces that we think that the guy who leads the church needs to perform for us. He needs to make us laugh, he needs to distract us from life, or he needs to at least tell us a couple stories that will make us feel good.
But the ministry is not about your amusement any more than it is about organizing social events.
I think I should also add that it is not about promoting some political or national interests. Right now we are on the downswing, but you will find that every election season it gets ramped up. And a lot of pastors and churches start banging the “Let’s make American Great” drum. And what happens is that the pulpit preaches America or some political party rather than the gospel.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe that the Scriptures teach a great deal about politics. I do not doubt that the Scriptures speak to every area of life, whether it be the realm of the family, the church, or the civil magistrate. And there is no qualms from me about preaching about political issues or describing what a political society ought to look like from a biblical standpoint.
I believe that, if you are preaching the Scriptures in the right way, you should hit those topics. But we should recognize that everything that the Bible says about the wider society finds its root in or leads to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
For instance, we can talk about the death penalty. We can talk about how it was instituted by God and how it preserves order in society. We can point out that it has to do with man’s inherent dignity and how great a violation against that dignity when a person is killed. We can talk about how the death penalty is an expression of God’s wrath for crime. There are Scriptures that deal with all those things.
But we also have to remember that the death penalty points us to Christ. It reminds us that Jesus underwent the death penalty, and he did so so that even our greatest sins might be forgiven.
Jesus Christ is the driving force of every political teaching of the Scripture. But, when it comes to the ministry of church leaders, you typically do not hear that kind of thing. They are usually consumed with touting America and what they believe ought to be American ideals. They will be waving flags and denouncing certain people or certain views.
But the Scripture isn’t about America. It is about the kingdom of God and how it is been opened to us through Christ. It’s about the redemption of sinners. Every word in this book (political or otherwise) is about how God shows his grace to fallen people through the gospel of his Son.
And you understand why there is a real crisis in the world today. The world in which we live is being deprived of what it needs because masses of people do not truly understand what a minister of the gospel is supposed to do.
That’s why we need to hear what Paul says in Eph. 3. Those who come into the ministry should have one task on their minds: it is to preach the good news and declare to sinners how the Lord stands ready to forgive them.
Conclusion:
Some of you may know the story of why I initially came back to Ashland to minister. I came back because of what I believed to be a lack of biblical preaching in our area.
When I was a teenager, I’d just become a believer. I didn’t know anything about the bible. But I came to realize that the church I was attending didn’t talk about God. I would mark on my bulletin when the Lord was mentioned. And there would be services that where, if it were not for the prayers and them saying, “In Jesus name” the name of God would never have been mentioned.
Then I left that church and entered into another church. And this church was supposedly a “spirit filled” church. And this church would from time to time say, “You know, I just feel the Holy Spirit telling me we don’t need a message today. We just need to worship and sing.”
And I thought: The Spirit didn’t say that.
And this is part of the burden I had to come back to Ashland in order to minister.
The crisis of ministry is right here in our town. And the future of the gospel is very much dependent upon people like you and I. What we need is not more public speakers or some guy who will cast a vision for the church. What we need are men who are defined by nothing other than God’s grace.
Men who have been rightly called into the ministry; not because they have met some seminary requirement, but rather because they have been so impacted by the gospel that they can’t help but speak of it.
And if we have that as our expectation, then we can be assured that the Lord’s grace will forever water our land.
The article came out last November, and it was based on research done by the Barna Group. The study looked at over 500 Protestant ministers and it found that 4 out of 10 protestant pastors are seriously considering dropping out of the ministry.
What’s fascinating is that this is a significant jump up from January of last year. The same study was conducted at the beginning of 2022. It found that 29% of pastors who were thinking about calling it quits. That, in and of itself, is a pretty significant amount. But by the end of the year there was about a 10% increase.
This same study also found that 51% of mainline pastors were on the brink of bailing out. It seems that mainline pastors have a greater tendency to throw in the towel.
Now, a lot of people will hear those statistics and think, “Oh, how terrible!” These are some pretty drastic numbers. And they will think, “These pastors must be having such a difficult time. It’s a crying shame.”
But my reaction is a bit different. My reaction is, “Good.” Call me cynical, but I would say that they would do the world an incredible favor if they would go ahead and jump ship.”
Now, I recognize that there can be good men who face incredible pressure and question whether the ministry was the right choice. There’s no doubt that that can be the case. But I also believe that many (if not most) of those in ministry today (especially those in the mainline churches) shouldn’t have gone in the ministry in the first place.
As a matter of fact, on of my favorite quotes is by a Reformation pastor and theologian (who’s name I can never pronounce, Oecolampadius) goes like this: “What the world needs is fewer pastors.” In other words, most of those who are priests and preachers should have never entered the ministry. They weren’t truly called to it, they are not good at it, and they really don’t have a clue what they are supposed to be doing in this thing we call ministry.
That’s not to say we need fewer pastors. It’s just that the ones we have shouldn’t be there. And I’m not alone in thinking this. There are many others who agree. As a matter of fact, Martin Lloyd-Jones and others have said we are currently facing a crisis in the church today. It is a crisis of ministry. Much of this crisis stems from the fact that we don’t understand what constitutes biblical ministry.
And that’s why a passage like this is always good to come across from time to time. The passage before us helps to introduce to us what a true minister of the gospel ought to be.
Paul has been talking about God’s grace and how this grace has come to be revealed in an extravagant way among the Gentiles. And here he tells us about his own role in this whole process. And what he tells us is that God’s grace is the most fundamental component to his apostleship. For God’s grace is what drew him into the ministry and it is that which characterizes his work in the ministry.
Now, do you really need to understand this? Some of you might be thinking: I’m really not going into the ministry; I have a perfectly good occupation, and I don’t know if this message really concerns me.
But it does concern you. You are the ones who benefit from the ministry. And it is important for you to understand the nature of Christian ministry. It will affect what you seek in a church. It will affect what you settle for in a church. It will shape what you long for in a church.
In other words, you need to grasp what the bible teaches about the ministry and ministers so you don’t get one of those schlubs I talked about that shouldn’t be in the ministry in the first place.
What you need to understand here is that a true minister of the gospel will only be a minister of the gospel because he is both a PRODUCT and a PREACHER of God’s God’s grace.
I. The minister of the gospel is a PRODUCT of grace
Look with me at verses 7-8. He says, “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given.”
In these two verses Paul is talking about how he became an apostle. But you’ll notice the words he uses to describe how he got into it. He says it was a “gift;” it was a “gift of grace.” It was a gift of grace that was “given.”
You know what that is? That’s a redundancy. Grace is a gift. Grace, by its nature, is not something you earn. A gift is something that is given to you. You don’t earn grace; it is bestowed upon you as an act of favor.
And you will also notice that Paul stresses this even more when he says in verse 8 that he was “the least of all the saints.”
Paul is recognizing that he wasn’t qualified for the job. No, not at all. He wasn’t even close to being qualified. To say that he was the “least of all the saints” is to put it mildly. You will remember that he was converted and called all about the same time. Prior to becoming an apostle, he was an unbeliever and a rabid persecutor of the church. He’s a guy who had blood on his hands.
Now, if you were on the committee to bring in your new pastor and you got an application like this, I would hope you would put that resume on the bottom of the stack, if not in the recycle bin. Sure he’s got some good education and seems pretty articulate, but I don’t really think that it would be a good fit for the church if you had an unbeliever and renown oppressor of Christians come and fill the job.
Paul’s stressing that he was not worthy of this calling. He was not qualified for the office. He didn’t deserve to be appointed to it.
And the truth is that nobody is. There’s not one person who takes the name minister that has lived such a life that he has the merit to be in that position. Anyone who comes to the ministry comes there as a result of God’s grace. The Lord appoints him, not because he is worthy or has some real potential--it is only because God has put his favor upon him.
This is something that many people do not understand, whether they be ministers or lay people.
On the layman side, people will often become quite upset when they find out that the guy behind the pulpit is a sinner. For some reason they think that he should be some messianic figure who has either overcome the effects of the fall of Adam or should have had all aspects of sin removed upon his ordination.
Now, there’s no doubt about it, a minister should be one who excels in holiness and we recognize that he is held to a higher standard. That does not mean, though, that he has reached some level of sinless perfection.
And so what happens is that the minister does something to offend this person. Perhaps he looses his cool or certain words slip out of his mouth. Whatever form it takes we recognize that it was wrong. And because of this wrong notion of the minister’s holiness, these people in the congregation become upset. There is no reason to believe that his sins should be covered or forgiven because they do not believe that he should be sinning like this. And so there ends up being a great deal of tension in the church, conflict is stirred up, and people end up leaving the church.
Of course, that’s just one side of the problem. There’s a problem on the side of many ministers too. It’s not just a wrong view of things from the people in the pews, it can often be a wrong view held by the guy in the pulpit.
There are many people who go by the name minister that have a pretty inflated view of themselves and they think that they are God’s gift to the world. They do not have a humble view of themselves; they do not believe that God made them a minister through an act of his grace. They see themselves as somehow indispensable to the work of the church and you better be glad that I am blessing you with my presence.
But that is all foolishness. It’s foolishness to hold a minister up to some standard of perfection, and it is foolish for ministers to think that they have such incredible ministerial prowess that they take the reigns of church leadership as a result of their own ability.
No. The proper view is set forth right here by the Apostle Paul. Like the Apostle, the guy who takes the call of minister is first and foremost a wretched man, filled with sin and born in the likeness of Adam. He’s a guy who deserves not the least of God’s blessings, let alone the opportunity to serve in this profound capacity.
The minister of the gospel is himself in need of the gospel. Before he can let people know about God’s grace, he himself must first experience the powerful working of God’s grace.
But you’ll notice that, as Paul talks about himself, he says that the minister is not merely a product of God’s grace, he is also a preacher of grace. To put it another way, he is not only drawn into the ministry by God’s grace, that grace defines what he does in the ministry.
II. The minister of the gospel is a PREACHER of grace
You see that at the end of verse 8 and into verse 9. Paul says that though he was the least of all the saints, this grace was given so that he could “preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God.”
Why was Paul given this grace? Why was he made an apostle? It was so that he could preach. Or, as this particular word means in the original, to “declare the good news.” Literally we could read this by saying “this grace was given so that he could declare the good news of the unsearchable riches of Christ to the Gentiles.”
Paul’s saying that God had put him in this position because he was to be an orator. He was a divine spokesman. He was to be a conduit of God’s grace and mercy.
Sure, he may have some administrative work that he may have to do from time to time. He may have to also supplement his income by doing some other kinds of work (such as tent-making), but the thing that was to define his career was preaching the pardoning grace of God. He had been raised up to proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ and his saving work.
You will notice then, that Paul gives us a rather definitive job description of what a minister is supposed to do. When someone becomes a minister, what is it that we should expect of him? We should expect that his time will be spent preparing messages and preaching them. When he goes out to make a house call or to have a meeting with someone, it is for the purpose of bringing the word of God to that person and being sure that they know of the grace that is in Christ.
And with this verse you will notice what the minister is not to be doing.
In the present context of the church we are facing a rather significant crisis. It is a crisis that has potential to ruin a great many lives and run Christianity in America right off the rails. The crisis that I speak of pertains to the nature and task of the ministry.
That is one of the things I love about the Bible. It speaks in a very clear fashion about what is supposed to constitute church leadership. And we need that today (we need it all the time) because we are prone to degrade and redefine the office and the work of a gospel minister.
Not long ago a fellow pastor was asking me about Airsoft. He had seen some of the pictures I had posted online and he said it reminded him of his days as a youth director. He said that they would go out and play paintball. And he said to me, “That was some great ministry.” I replied by saying, “I don’t know about ministry; I just like shooting 12 year olds with my airsoft gun.”
That’s one of the many things that we tend to think today regarding the ministry. We think it is about providing entertainment and organizing social events. We think that getting people together so that they have opportunity to build relationships is ministry. But that’s not at all the case.
Playing airsoft isn’t ministry. Playing basketball or doing nails together isn’t ministry. Those may be fun and nice opportunities for fellowship, but it is that is not the kind of thing that defines the ministry of a pastor.
The ministry of the pastor is not about social events, and neither is it about providing entertainment. One of the most significant influences upon our understanding of the ministry today has been the television. When the little head first popped up on the screen in the 1950’s that began a movement that would forever shape how people viewed the guy up front on Sunday mornings.
The nature of television (and all its offspring, like YouTube and TicTok etc) is entertainment. It is there to put on a show that will make you smile and delight you in some way.
This is why we have the advent of Sesame Street. It’s not enough to show you the letter F and show you how to draw the letter F. It also has to have some dancing little puppet next to it. Why do they have the puppet? It’s because the letter F is boring.
You may say that you turn on the television in order to catch the weather or the nightly news. But that’s not true at all. What you are turning on is a little show which might have some weather or news mixed in. The news and the weather are just as boring as the Letter F. Don’t believe me? Then why are all the anchor people 20 year old women in tight clothing? It’s because it isn’t about the news. It’s about giving you some kind of pleasure.
And our view of the ministry has been shaped by this. Our lives have been so indoctrinated by the dancing puppets and the pretty faces that we think that the guy who leads the church needs to perform for us. He needs to make us laugh, he needs to distract us from life, or he needs to at least tell us a couple stories that will make us feel good.
But the ministry is not about your amusement any more than it is about organizing social events.
I think I should also add that it is not about promoting some political or national interests. Right now we are on the downswing, but you will find that every election season it gets ramped up. And a lot of pastors and churches start banging the “Let’s make American Great” drum. And what happens is that the pulpit preaches America or some political party rather than the gospel.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe that the Scriptures teach a great deal about politics. I do not doubt that the Scriptures speak to every area of life, whether it be the realm of the family, the church, or the civil magistrate. And there is no qualms from me about preaching about political issues or describing what a political society ought to look like from a biblical standpoint.
I believe that, if you are preaching the Scriptures in the right way, you should hit those topics. But we should recognize that everything that the Bible says about the wider society finds its root in or leads to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
For instance, we can talk about the death penalty. We can talk about how it was instituted by God and how it preserves order in society. We can point out that it has to do with man’s inherent dignity and how great a violation against that dignity when a person is killed. We can talk about how the death penalty is an expression of God’s wrath for crime. There are Scriptures that deal with all those things.
But we also have to remember that the death penalty points us to Christ. It reminds us that Jesus underwent the death penalty, and he did so so that even our greatest sins might be forgiven.
Jesus Christ is the driving force of every political teaching of the Scripture. But, when it comes to the ministry of church leaders, you typically do not hear that kind of thing. They are usually consumed with touting America and what they believe ought to be American ideals. They will be waving flags and denouncing certain people or certain views.
But the Scripture isn’t about America. It is about the kingdom of God and how it is been opened to us through Christ. It’s about the redemption of sinners. Every word in this book (political or otherwise) is about how God shows his grace to fallen people through the gospel of his Son.
And you understand why there is a real crisis in the world today. The world in which we live is being deprived of what it needs because masses of people do not truly understand what a minister of the gospel is supposed to do.
That’s why we need to hear what Paul says in Eph. 3. Those who come into the ministry should have one task on their minds: it is to preach the good news and declare to sinners how the Lord stands ready to forgive them.
Conclusion:
Some of you may know the story of why I initially came back to Ashland to minister. I came back because of what I believed to be a lack of biblical preaching in our area.
When I was a teenager, I’d just become a believer. I didn’t know anything about the bible. But I came to realize that the church I was attending didn’t talk about God. I would mark on my bulletin when the Lord was mentioned. And there would be services that where, if it were not for the prayers and them saying, “In Jesus name” the name of God would never have been mentioned.
Then I left that church and entered into another church. And this church was supposedly a “spirit filled” church. And this church would from time to time say, “You know, I just feel the Holy Spirit telling me we don’t need a message today. We just need to worship and sing.”
And I thought: The Spirit didn’t say that.
And this is part of the burden I had to come back to Ashland in order to minister.
The crisis of ministry is right here in our town. And the future of the gospel is very much dependent upon people like you and I. What we need is not more public speakers or some guy who will cast a vision for the church. What we need are men who are defined by nothing other than God’s grace.
Men who have been rightly called into the ministry; not because they have met some seminary requirement, but rather because they have been so impacted by the gospel that they can’t help but speak of it.
And if we have that as our expectation, then we can be assured that the Lord’s grace will forever water our land.