The Ministry of the New Covenant

Transcript

GR 1799
03/08/2015
The Ministry of the New Covenant
2 Corinthians 4:1-5
Gil Rugh

We're returning to our study of 2 Corinthians and we're going to be starting in chapter 4. We took a break for a few studies to talk about the covenants of Scripture because in this section Paul has been contrasting the old covenant which is the Mosaic Covenant, the Mosaic Law, and the new covenant which is a covenant established by the death of Christ that provides salvation. The new covenant is part of the Abrahamic Covenant, the foundational covenant God made. It includes the provision of salvation not only for the Jews, the physical descendants of Abraham, but also for Gentiles. The Mosaic Covenant is a later addition, as we saw, that served the purpose of governing Israel's conduct and preparing them for the coming of their Messiah.

Paul is concerned for us to see and appreciate and understand the greatness of the new covenant. Some had infiltrated the church at Corinth and were teaching that the work of Christ is necessary, important, but not enough. You must also keep the Mosaic Law and obey its commands. And then God is pleased. Paul is showing that that is not the truth.

He began this section really in 2 Corinthians 2:14 when he said, “But thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.” Always in every place we are privileged to give off the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. We share in what He has accomplished for us on the cross. Down in 2 Corinthians 3:7 he talked about the contrast between the ministry of death engraved on tablets of stone. That's the Mosaic Law, the ten words or the Ten Commandments. Remember Moses came down from Mt. Sinai and he had those tablets of stone, and God had engraved on them what we know as the Ten Commandments. But the Mosaic Law was a ministry of death. It could tell of righteousness, it could tell of obedience but it did not enable. So he contrasts the glory associated with the Mosaic Law, and there was glory associated with it. When Moses came down from the mountain, his face was shining as he had come from the presence of the glory of God. But it was a temporary, transitory glory. It would fade and pass away. And that was a reflection of what would be true of the Law, the Covenant that God gave to Moses on Sinai. It had glory but it was a temporary, transitory glory.

That contrasts with the glory of the new covenant established in and by Christ. Verse 10 he draws the contrast, “indeed what had glory in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.” The glory of the Mosaic Covenant compared to the glory of the new covenant is such that the glory of the new covenant is overwhelmed. It's like having a candle and then having the sun come out. The glory of the candle, the light of the candle is totally overwhelmed by the glory or the power of the sun. And that's true with the new covenant.

So any talk of wanting to go back to the Mosaic Law, the Ten Commandments and the other of the 613 commandments. Why would you do that? There is an overwhelming glory. And this becomes crucial in where he is going in 2 Corinthians 4. He comes down to verse 18, “We all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit.” What a contrast. The Mosaic Law had glory associated with it when it was given, but it was a glory that would fade and end. But the glory of the new covenant established in Christ is a growing glory. It is from glory to glory, it is an ongoing, increasing glory culminating where for us as believers? In the fullness of the glory that was Christ in His resurrected body. We will have bodies conformed to the body of His glory, the body that He had when He was raised from the dead.

So what Christ has accomplished for us in the new covenant is a glory that is growing and will only increase. So that's where we are when we come to 2 Corinthians 4 and he says, “therefore, on account of this,” building on what we have just seen, that it is Christ in 2 Corinthians 2:14 “God leading us in triumph in Christ.” We have a ministry of glory that only grows and increases. “Therefore, since we have this ministry.” We have this ministry. So Paul says we, referring to himself and as we see in the context it's a ministry that every believer is involved in. We have this ministry of continual, unending glory; a ministry that involves us as we saw in 2 Corinthians 2:14, “always in every place;” a ministry of growing glory that will never end because the ultimate end as we get to Revelation 22 and 23 is to dwell in the glory of God's presence for eternity.

“Therefore since we have this ministry.” He further emphasizes, “as we have received mercy.” Paul never forgot the wonder of the mercy of God shown to him in Christ. In fact he writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1 and reviews the fact, this self-righteous Pharisee, this man who did everything he could to keep the Mosaic Law, to earn righteousness realized he was the “chief of sinners.” And yet he says in 1 Timothy 1:13, “I was shown mercy.” He repeats in verse 16, “I found mercy.” Mercy is something unearned, undeserved. This Pharisee who devoted his life to trying to be righteous by keeping certain laws and commandments failed miserably and when the light of God's truth shown in its fullness on him and he saw himself as he was, a sinner, he is overwhelmed with the greatness of his sin, the seriousness of his sin. He says I am the chief of sinners, God saved me so that He could demonstrate that He can save anyone. Because if He could save me, sinful as I was, He can save anyone. What a testimony. This is Paul giving credit to the mercy of God. We have received mercy, and this mercy that comes bringing us our salvation when we believe in Christ is a mercy that also enables us, empowers us, gives us to now serve as ministers of this new covenant, this covenant of glory.

Turn back to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 12. And here Paul is talking about what we call spiritual gifts, those special enablements, empowerments, if you will, that God gives to every person when they place their faith in Christ and are made new by the power of the Spirit of God. He begins 1 Corinthians 12 by saying, “I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, concerning spiritual gifts.” He talks about they were pagans, worshiped idols. All that has changed. Verse 4, “Now there are a variety of gifts but the same Spirit; there are varieties of ministries, the same Lord; varieties of effects of workings, but the same God who is working all things.” Verse 7, “But to each one,” each individual believer in Jesus Christ, “is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” That work of the Spirit that brought about our salvation as He worked on our hearts and minds, opened the eyes of our understanding to see and believe in Jesus Christ. He took up residence within our very being, in our physical body, and He manifests His presence by enabling us, gifting us to function in special ways as part of the body of Christ for the common good. Some people think they can be Christians but not be part of a church. That's unbiblical. Those who believe the Word of God don't believe that, don't practice that. I realize there may be physical things that happen that prevent us from being with the body when the body meets, but they are still part of the body. But our gifts are given for the common good. How can I serve others? Even a bed-ridden Christian who can never leave his bedroom can be involved with the body as they have a ministry of prayer that is impacting the body. But it's a manifestation of the Spirit given to each one.

Down in verse 11, “the one and same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.” This picture is of our physical body. Your physical body has many parts and those parts function as they should when they function in connection with the others. In other words if there is an accident and I cut off a finger, that finger no longer really functions effectively. Its effectiveness comes from being part of the body. So when we are born into God's family, become part of the body of Christ, the spiritual body, we are not just a bunch of pieces floating around. God by the Spirit has placed each one of us just where we should be, enabling us to function just in that way. That will enable the body as all the parts function together to be able to accomplish God's purpose and enable the body individually and corporately to grow and mature in Christ.

This is the same thing down in verse 18, “Now God has placed the members each one of them in the body just as He desired.” Verse 20, “There are many members, one body.” So when Paul says we have received mercy, it's the mercy of salvation through faith in Christ, but that's more than just the forgiveness of sins, rescuing us from the condemnation of hell. That is now the empowering work of the Holy Spirit to enable us to live for Christ, to serve Him. That's what Paul is talking about when he says we have received this ministry. We are saved, now I don't have to worry about going to hell. That's good, I can get on with my life. I get on with my new life, the new ministry which is a ministry of the new covenant, the ministry of the message of Christ and His work in the world.

Come back to 2 Corinthians 4. So when he says, “since we have this ministry as we have received mercy,” it's the ministry of the new covenant and all that is involved in that. The last statement is where he is going, “we do not lose heart.” We do not lose heart. So really this starts out therefore, in light of what we have just been talking about, the glory of the ministry of the new covenant, 2 Corinthians 3:18, that ministry that goes from glory to glory by the power of the Spirit as we continue to grow and mature, moving toward the ultimate goal of our salvation. Therefore we do not lose heart. The expression we do not grow weary, we don't lose heart. What kept Paul going? This is what he is going to talk about, and we won't get to it in our study today, but down in verse 8, “we are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed, not despairing; persecuted, not forsaken; struck down.” A ministry with so much difficulty, so much conflict, so much suffering, how do you keep going? Paul says we have this ministry, we have received mercy. We are involved in a ministry of glory. Stop and think about this. You are involved in a ministry that has greater glory than the ministry of Moses. Moses was an outstanding servant of God and he had a great ministry, but remember what Paul talked about in 2 Corinthians 3, the glory of Moses' ministry is nothing compared to the ministry of glory which you have today as a servant of Jesus Christ. I would not exchange places with Moses for anything. What a day, what an opportunity.

I was visiting with a man, a religious man that I have talked to before. We were talking about events of the day. He is not a believer. And I shared with him some things that the Bible said about what is going on in the world today. And he was talking about the confusion and the mess, he said, I couldn't sleep last night. And he goes and pulls out an 8½ x 11 sheet of paper and he has all these things on it. Everything that is going on in the world, he says, it's a mess. I said yes, in the world these are difficult troublesome times, but you know the Bible says the worst is yet to come. But I said, do you know something? This is the most wonderful time for you to be alive, this is the best time for you to be living because this is the day in which God is offering you His salvation as a free gift, you a sinner guilty before God can have complete forgiveness of your sins. These are days of glory, wonder. We are privileged to tell people in the mess of the world that God is doing a mighty work and we are involved in a ministry of glory. These are not discouraging days, these are not depressing times, these are awesome times of God's salvation. Remember these are the days of the fullness of the Gentiles according to Romans 11, when God is bringing His salvation not only to Jews but to Gentiles. Thank God for such opportunities, such privilege. That's why Paul says we don't lose heart, we are not growing weary. Because the ministry is easy? No, it's not. Because serving the Lord cannot be difficult? No, because it is difficult, but I focus on the glory of what I am doing. We study about Moses and admire him, he didn't give up. There were difficult times for him, there were frustrating times but he kept going. I think, I have a ministry of greater glory, I'm a minister or servant of a better covenant, a covenant of greater glory. And so are you as a believer in Jesus Christ.

Therefore with that as our focus we don't grow weary, we don't lose heart. Paul is concerned about this, he is concerned for the Corinthians. Ongoing conflict tends to wear us down and in the passing of time we think, I've been through this, I've done this. We don't like to say it this way, we get bored with Jesus Christ. We get tired of God. That's almost blasphemous to say it. Why would you lose heart? Why would you grow weary and quit? Is it any less glorious to you what God has done for you in Christ than it was the first week of your salvation? The riches of His Word any less precious to you than it was in those early days when it was all fresh and new? We lose sight of the glory of the ministry entrusted to us so we sort of wind down. Paul said we don't lose heart. Paul, we know, didn't have an easy ministry and he'll be laying it out for us as we move through this letter. But we don't lose heart, we don't grow weary, we don't let up. Don't you get tired, Paul? You bet I get tired. Don't you at times find it discouraging and frustrating? Yes I do. But the glory of the ministry keeps me going. He keeps reminding people of this.

Come over to Galatians, just look at some of these close passages. Galatians 6, he writes to the Galatians and he closes this letter, verse 9, “Let us not lose heart.” There is our word, grow weary, lose heart. “Let us not lose heart in doing good. In due time we will reap if we don't grow weary.” There is conflict, there is difficulty, believers struggle with the flesh and the conflicts. We keep going. Why? We don't lose heart in doing good, it's a ministry that God has given us, the call we have from Him.

Come over to Ephesians 3:13, “Therefore I ask you not to lose heart,” grow weary, “because of my tribulations.” You look at a faithful servant like Paul and the danger of the church at Ephesus, the sufferings, the trials, the difficulties, we might not have looked at his ministry, humanly speaking, as very successful. He may not have planted huge churches everywhere he went. You say with his sufferings, it doesn't seem to be getting any better and it won't because he is going to end up a martyr. But I don't want you to lose heart and grow weary as you look at my sufferings. He wants to encourage them. Why? They are for your glory. Paul keeps in mind, I am involved in a ministry of glory, bringing the message of salvation so people can enter into the glory of God's salvation. I'm in a ministry of encouraging and helping believers so they can continue to grow and go from glory to glory by the work of the Spirit. So my tribulations, that's all right, they are for your glory. Don't be discouraged, be encouraged. He says the same thing in writing to the Thessalonians in 2 Thessalonians 3:13.

But come back to 2 Corinthians 4. So I would encourage you as a believer, some of you have been believers a long time, I've been here for a long time as the pastor of this church, that we don't grow weary, we don't lose heart. We are involved in a ministry of glory and God is pleased as we are giving off the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ and He is using His truth in our ministry in lives to accomplish His purpose. We don't grow weary, we don't grow tired. I fear that the church in this country has, and I'm talking about the evangelical church, grown weary, sort of lost heart for the things of Christ. We're not going to deny any of the doctrines, I just feel like I need something else, something more, something different. Which is another way of saying I'm sort of bored with Christ. It's sort of tiresome. Moses had his frustrations, Lord, I don't want to come up on the mount, I'm just sort of tired and not really that interested and the things you are doing just don't appeal to me as much as they once did. I have a greater ministry. We give Moses no excuse, but what excuse do we have? Moses could envy us that we have a ministry of such great glory. He had to be faithful in the day in which God placed him, we have to be faithful in our day.

Look in 2 Corinthians 4:2, see the importance here. “But we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the Word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.” That's basically the same thing he said in a briefer statement in 2 Corinthians 2:17, “For we are not like many, peddling the Word of God,” making adjustments and changes in the Word of God to make it more appealing, more attractive, less offensive. “But as from sincerity, as from God we speak in Christ in the sight of God.” Same thing at the end of 2 Corinthians 4:2, “it's in the sight of God” that we carry out our ministry. Do you know what happens when people begin to grow weary, lose heart? They come up with something more interesting, more exciting. What do you do with a child? We don't bring the children into this service, some people think we should. But this is not a service geared for little children who have short attention spans. There are classes for them where they can be taught the Word but we adjust. How do you keep you 2-year-old's attention for an hour? You don't even try. He'll win out, you will lose. What happens to Christians even now? We are supposed to not be like children, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, but we lose interest. So then we create services that are more appealing, more exciting, more personal. They are not just telling you about ancient words. But he talks about things that are current, about my job, about my family, about all these things that I have an interest in. If you are not interested in God, we have nothing to tell you; if you find Jesus Christ boring, I have nothing to tell you except He is the Savior and He is the One in whom is life.

Paul says we don't make any changes in the truth. We think this whole idea of contextualization, it's the word today. We have to contextualize the Gospel. We sound so profound, but it's as though the Gospel is not relevant as the simple, pure Gospel.

Come back to 1 Corinthians 1:17, Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians says, “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel, not in cleverness of speech, not in wisdom of speech.” I didn't come to try to impress you, to enthrall you, to draw you in. The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. I can't change that. Those who continue to reject the Gospel will still find it foolishness. And if I'm preaching in such a way that the unregenerate man is enthralled, I am no longer preaching the Gospel. I have adulterated the truth. “To those who are being saved it is the power of God.” Verse 22, “The Jews ask for signs, the Greeks search for wisdom. We preach Christ crucified.” What did Paul do when he left the environs of Judaism over in Israel? Came over to a new continent, Europe, preached the Gospel in Greece. What did he do?

1 Corinthians 2:1, “I came to you, brethren, I didn't come with superiority of speech or wisdom.” Don't you know, Paul, you have to contextualize the Gospel? The Greeks love wisdom. I didn't come to tell them what the Greeks love, I came to tell them what God loves. He loves His truth. “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Verse 4, “My message, my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power so your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men but on the power of God.” You know we need to remind ourselves, we go out into the world and we talk around the Gospel, we talk around the message. Yes, God is working in the world; yes, God's purposes will be done. And we go away, well, we got to talk about God. What is that? We talk to them about the message of Christ. Paul says that is the focus.

Come back to 2 Corinthians 4. Do you know what the church is to be? “It is the pillar and support of the truth,” Paul wrote to Timothy who was at the church at Ephesus in 1 Timothy 3:15. The church is the pillar and support of the truth. Paul says it is to be the truth, not adjusted in craftiness, being sensitive to where people are and what they would like to hear and giving them that. Not adulterating the truth, mixing it in with ideas of men. It's by the manifestation of truth we commend ourselves to every man's conscience. They may not agree with us on everything, they may persecute us, they may oppose us. But we ought to feel like when we studied Daniel, they said we won't be able to find anything against him but his service for his God. We ought to commend ourselves to every man's conscience. In their hearts they know we are just presenting truth. And the ultimate judge of this is we do it in the sight of God. Our ministry as a church, all of our gifts and all as we serve together have one purpose—to make the truth known, to develop the truth, to build the truth in the lives. As evangelicals become bored with the truth, have lost their interest in the truth, become weary with it, want to move on to other things, the church may decline. There may be less people but we must be faithful with the truth. Paul may carry that truth to places it seems there is nothing but persecution. What did you do? I presented Christ. That's the measure. The measure is not how many people I preached to, the measure is not how many people are saved. The standard that God holds us to is, did you tell them the truth?

Paul says we have this ministry, we make no adjustments in the message in the ministry of the new covenant. What is the problem? We get confused. The problem is not the message, the problem is not the messenger. The problem is the sinful heart of man and the relentless work of the devil. So he says in 2 Corinthians 4:3, “Even if our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” What was true of the Jews back in 2 Corinthians 3:15, “to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their heart.” Now he says this is true of everyone, Gentiles as well. It's true of the Jews when they hear the old covenant of Moses, it is true when the new covenant is presented. Gentiles are in the same spiritual condition, hearts closed to the truth. It is veiled to those who are perishing, the heart is closed to it, they don't see it. Now as he said in 2 Corinthians 3:16, “Whenever a person turns to the Lord the veil is taken away.” That's the only thing. I can't make a person see, I am not the Holy Spirit, I cannot change a heart. Neither are you. We need to understand our role. We have been entrusted with a ministry, we have received mercy. We don't lose heart in doing that ministry. It is God's work to change hearts.

“If our Gospel is veiled it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” Man's sin, the devil's work. They work and join together to oppose God's grace. Man's sin, the devil's power. Man is responsible, he refuses to see the truth; the devil works on the heart to harden the heart. That's the issue. The issue is not the message, the issue is not the messenger. The issue is the condition of the heart to receive the truth. So you take the sin of that person and the work of the devil in that person and you have formidable opposition to God's work of mercy and grace in the world.

Back in the days, I'm old enough now to talk about the good old days. But back in the '60s, '70s, early '80s I came here. I just taught the Word and people were pouring in and that was happening around the country. And people would say, why so many people? What's happening? I said, I don't know. I just get up and say turn in your Bibles and people come early to get a seat. Amazing. Do you know what happened? Evangelicals began to think, we're important, we are something, look at our influence in this country. So we had then well-known evangelical leaders beginning to say, you have to pay attention to evangelicals, we'll be getting our President voted in. If you don't have our vote, you won't win the presidency, and we'll be getting our men into the Supreme Court and into the legislatures. We had the year of the evangelical for Time magazine's cover. And we started the Moral Majority. Do you know what happened? Christians began to be crafty and adulterate the Word of God. Whoever said that was the ministry of truth? Whoever said the majority were moral? Don't we believe in the sinfulness of the human heart? Don't we believe there is none righteous, there is none who does good? And we have the Moral Majority because we are a majority, even unbelievers are moral. We begin to deny the Gospel that we are supposed to be proclaiming. We get heady with power. And do you know what has happened? It has all collapsed in on itself. How moral is the majority? We say, what's happening in our country? What's happening in the world? It's like a tide. Well, men reveal their true character. Aren't we going to the tribulation? The world will turn against the Jews. Oh, anti-Semitism, that's terrible. We shouldn't say those things about those dirty, lousy Jews that are such a problem in the world. It's what is going on in the heart.

What happens to the church? It loses its focus on the truth. We begin to deny in practice what we claim to believe. We have a formidable opponent. We have the hard heart of the unbeliever and his animosity toward God's truth and we have the devil who is the master of the unbeliever. He is called the “god of this world” in verse 4, or the god of this age. That word world is the Greek word for age, but carrying the same concept as other passages that talk about the world under the control of the devil. Just listen, Jesus said in John 12:31, He called Satan “the prince of this world, the ruler of this world.” He is called the ruler of the world in John 14:30 by Christ. 1 John 5:19 says,” the whole world lies in the evil one.” Ephesians 6:12 reminds believers, “our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the world forces of this wickedness.” This idea that Christianity ought to be this upbeat, positive success kind of approach to life is not biblical. It is adulterating the Word of God so people hear what they want to hear. It's a lie. We have the devil as a relentless opponent, he does not quit. He will not quit until he is cast into the pit. You can't grow weary. If you lose focus on the glory of the ministry and begin to look on the difficulties of the ministry, you won't make it.

I see my calling is to discourage men from going into the ministry, full-time ministry. When I have young men come, I try to tell them why they shouldn't go into the ministry. And if you are sensitive and your feelings get hurt and you don't like people to be upset with you, go do something else. As believers we need to realize we've been called to a war, not called to a party. There is a coming glorious party, the marriage supper of the Lamb. But this isn't it. We've been called to war. That passage in Ephesians 6 says, “put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand.” We're like I've been doing this, I'm sort of tired of it. Well, get refocused on the glory of what you are privileged to do. We look back like we can read the history and see Moses and the glory associated with it. Think of, in heaven if they have the video room and we're going to show the video of those serving Christ. Why didn't they take more seriously the glory of their ministry? They were tired, they were weary, they sort of lost interest.

Like in the Gospels, Jesus had to tell the people you are like children, you want to be entertained and you go from one thing to another. And that's what the church is like. It's relentless, the stuff that comes in inviting pastors to this conference and that conference to talk about how your church can be successful and how it can learn how to teach the Word of God more clearly, how your church can be more biblically focused and based. We don't need a lot of conferences on that, we just need to do it. Perfectly fine to have a conference on studying the Word of God, the church is the pillar and support of the truth, keeping its focus on the Word. But somehow we are like children, I don't want to hear that. And then we say, look at this, look at that church, they have 12,000 people on the weekend. If they are ministering the Word of God, praise God for that; if they have done it by playing down the Word and mixing everything else in it, a curse on their house. We don't yield territory to the devil. We have a ministry of glory, whether people like it or don't, whether they understand or not I can't control.

Jesus told the parable of the soils and He said the seed sown, that's the Word of God. He was the sower as He made clear in the next parable. But do you know what? The problem was the heart. Some hearts were hard and weren't open to it, some hearts had so many other things that the seed could never take root because you just can't fit Christ into your cluttered life. And He must become your life. But by the grace of God there is one kind of the four soils, one kind of heart that was prepared by God and received the Word. We get the idea, we get caught up in so much. This is a battle, this is what Paul wants the Corinthians to understand. The measure of my ministry is not how many churches I have established, how big those churches are, how popular I am. The measure of my ministry is I've been faithful with the truth in the sight of God. And that means I have had relentless pressure, conflict, battle and suffering. But I don't lose heart because my focus is on the ministry that I am privileged to have, the ministry of the new covenant, having received the mercy of God.

Verse 5, “We do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake.” Interesting connection he makes here. I'm not about preaching myself, preachers need to remember that, we all need to remember that. We are not in the ministry whatever our area of service and giftedness is for our own glory. Those who preach and teach the Word better be sure that it is not themselves that they are promoting. We create these giant ministries built around these entrepreneurial personalities. What about the truth? We don't preach ourselves, we preach Christ Jesus as Lord. That's why I say you don't fit Him into the busyness of your life, He becomes Lord. He is Lord. You trust Him as Savior. He is your Lord. That means you are His slave. He is the master. It's interesting what Paul says, “we preach Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your bond-servants,” the Greek word slaves, “for Jesus' sake.” Not because you have become my lord. Because Jesus is my Lord, I now carry out the ministry I have received in mercy. What did we see the spiritual gifts were for? For the benefit of others. Why do so many of you serve in so many ways? Because I don't have anything else to do? No, because this is so important for you to do. Why do we have 100 people going to nursing homes? They'd rather do that than watch the ballgame. Because they understand He is Lord and this is the greatest honor I could have, that He has given me the mercy to enable me to serve Him in the context of a new covenant ministry in these various ways. Everything gets subjugated to that. So I'm a slave to other believers. Not because they are now my lord, He is the Lord.

We need to keep that in mind because we talk about serving one another. And Paul would say I'm a slave to other believers. That' doesn't mean other believers get to lord it over us. There is only one Lord and when we are functioning submissively to His lordship we are involved and willingly being the slave of others. That doesn't mean, well, if I can fit some time in, I might take on a ministry to others. But I'm pretty busy now. Well if you are a believer you get un-busy because when you are a slave you don't do your own will, you do the will of the master. One of the things the devil does is fill the lives of believers with so many things, we just don't have time for the Lord anymore. And less ministry, less time, that's better.

I have one of the few jobs I could probably get paid better and have more people in the church if I preached 20 minutes. I could make three sermons out of one. I'm working on it. But we understand we are slaves, we are enslaved to one another because our master has set that down. The mercy given to us was not for our own personal satisfaction, it was for the benefit of others.

Verse 6, “For God who said, light shall shine out of darkness is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” It's all about the glory. If you lose perspective on the glory of the ministry God has given to us in our salvation, you will begin to get weary, you'll begin to get tired. You'll begin to get bored with God. You may not say it that way, that's where it comes. I just sort of lost interest.

As one person who attended here for many years, then quit, when asked by one of you, what happened? He said, I just got tired and it's easier to get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and read the morning paper. That's more thrilling than to be involved in the ministry of glory? What do we do? We lose focus and then the ministry becomes such a grind, such a burden. What are we doing? I need to refocus, I'm in the ministry of glory. It's not easy, it's not all fun and games but it is a ministry of glory. Paul will unfold what he goes through, how hard it is, and his physical body is breaking down under the pressure. But that's all right, the new man I am in Christ is not getting weaker, it's getting stronger.

Light has shone out of darkness. We won't look at those passages. Christ is the light of the world, and that light is life. Do you know what we are doing? We are bringing the light of the glory of Christ to a world that lives in darkness, to a world characterized by hearts hardened to the truth, populated by people who are servants and slaves of their master, the devil. We are not doing battle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and world forces of this darkness. We need the whole armor of God, we need to keep refocusing, and we all do. There are times I have to come back and remind myself of such passages. You think you've done this a long time. I stop and think and refresh my mind with the focus—I have a ministry of greater glory than any Old Testament saint was privileged to have. We are ministers and servants of the new covenant. You have been gifted by God in His mercy to be a minister of the new covenant, a ministry of greater glory than any Old Testament saint had. We don't want to grow weary in this. We don't want to lose heart. We don't want to wind down. We want to be faithful. And the thrill comes not necessarily with the results we see, the thrill comes from the privilege of being involved in the ministry of glory, the ministry of the message of the salvation God has provided in Jesus Christ.

Let's pray together. Lord, how important it is we be reminded of the glory of the ministry that we as believers have in these days, days of turmoil, days of confusion, days of misery in much of the world. Lord, days of lack of interest, of overt opposition, but Lord days of glory, days of opportunity. You have shown us mercy so that we might enter into the salvation that You have provided in Christ, and then You have gifted us, given us the indwelling presence of Your Spirit so that we can persevere, not grow weary, not lose heart, not turn aside from the ministry of glory. May we be faithful, individually and as a church as we look forward to the ultimate glory that You have prepared for those who love Christ. We pray in His name, amen.