Shall we pray? Our Father in Heaven, it has been our joy this morning to be able to sing the praises of our Redeemer and to know that no scheme of man, no power of hell, can drag our souls out of your hands and away from you. We pray that as we consider this morning your word and we look toward the coming year, your spirit would guide our thoughts and meet us at the point of our need. In Jesus' name we pray.
Thoughts for the New Year. I trust that what I have to share with you this morning will give you pause and perhaps cause you to think about your role in this fellowship and in this ministry. I did something that I can't say that I've ever done. I listened to my own message of July.
I can't say I've ever listened to one of my own messages before. I don't know what put it into my head to do that. I was kicked back in my lazy boy and I had my computer in front of me and I was actually looking for something else. And I realized when I listened to it that the key point at the very end was very, very badly expressed, very poorly enunciated coming out of my throat.
And my message in July was on the subject of love and I had said that with all of the apologetic literature and proof of Christianity that is accessible to us and that is powerful and wonderful and useful. There is something very powerful, unique and undeniable about love when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts and we are interacting with the unbeliever. The thing that we have consciousness of is to be able to say I love you. And that's the three words that I didn't really get out of my throat in July.
But that's very important. If you are able to say that and if you know that, what a testimony that is to yourself, that you have that love for the other, but also that it is the result of the love of Christ being shed abroad in our hearts, but also that the love of Christ is extended to and includes love of the other person. That you may be perhaps ministering to and that is my subject this morning. A couple of things, a couple of conversations I've had in the past six months, I went home, in fact was from this building a couple of times.
Shaking my head in wonder and feeling, I'll tell you what I felt, a sense of humiliation. In one case, a sister shared something with me and this sister is like, let's use the phrase low profile. Here I am up on this stage behind a pulpit. There's some profile here.
It's overstated. It's over emphasized. That's the point of my message actually. But a regular person, if I can use that phrase in this assembly, shared with me something that she had gone through and what she had learned.
And I felt, if I can learn that much, if I could grasp what that person has grasped through that terrible trial, that would be amazing for me as a believer. The Lord grabbed me in 1977 and someone who's a younger believer, much younger believer shared with me a struggle and how the Lord had brought them through that struggle. And I felt, wow, I don't know anything. Comparatively speaking, I have so much to learn.
I have so much to learn. What a heart lesson that lady gave me that day. And then it happened again with someone else a couple of months later. And I thought to myself, you know, this is ministry.
This might seem like ministry, but those things are ministry. They are very real ministry. A message on ministering and ministers and ministry, I think is very appropriate for a group of people who understand what it means to say brothers and sisters. When we speak of each other and refer to each other, I say to Brother Leccon, that I say Brother Leccon.
It's not some kind of a religious statement in a way. I'm not trying to be spiritual by putting Brother in front of Leccon. I honestly feel brotherhood with that brother. And this is nothing new to you.
You people here in this group, in this fellowship, have brothers and sisters that are real brothers and sisters to you. So when we talk about ministry and ministering and so on, it's very appropriate because we are the family of God. There's a great deal, as I have just said, that goes on in a low profile way. And I will argue that that's actually the most important thing that can go on in a fellowship.
It's very important. If you look at the back of the bulletin, you'll see that the leadership of this assembly, nominally, on paper, is five guys. Well, we are outnumbered in a very big way. And it is a very good thing that the ministry that takes place between you and among you and here as a fellowship does not wholly depend on the five guys in that list.
And you may be smiling at me like saying, Amen to that brother. You know, we have been given duties from the Lord, we believe. But we also, thanks brother. We also are very conscious that it doesn't all depend on us and it cannot all depend on us.
So I want to encourage you as you go toward 2019 to, I tried the scroll key. Oh, there it is. It's scroll up, not down. I want to encourage you as we come to 2019 to continue to minister to each other.
What does the Bible teach about your ministry? It has a lot to say. It has a lot to say about what ministry is and where it comes from. Ministry of ministering, what do these words mean?
I think sometimes they get... What could be a word? I have been thinking for a month, what could be a word for this? Religified, religio-sified.
To turn something into a completely loaded word that then gets kind of separated from its original meaning. This is not a good thing. It's not a good thing. We need to have basic understanding.
In university, you have prerequisites. You don't get to take my fourth year course unless you took my third year course and other people's courses. Those other people's courses and the prerequisites give you information, basic information. But you know they do more than that, hopefully.
They give you a certain intuition. And in the spiritual realm, I might call it an attitude of heart, a way of looking at things. If we have a grasp of the scriptures in terms of our relationships with each other, which with each other, we can bring to our fellowship the right attitude. Everybody knows that attitude is very important.
My mother was very fast at pointing out bad attitude. Don't give me your attitude. Attitude is very important, very important. Positive attitude, negative attitude.
How should we approach these things from the heart, from a general way of looking at these things? This is kind of a prerequisite to proceeding. I'm going to go inside my notes and scroll my notes with the scroll wheel if I'm careful, but it's not happening. So I'm only able to see part of my notes.
Thirdly, what we have, secondly what we have and thirdly what we can bring. So that's my thesis today. That is my body of ideas to try to bring together to the idea of ministry and ministering. And inside of that thesis is a parenthesis, a parenthesis on the life of Moses.
And I think that is a very good thing for us to think about because many of us may think, and some of us do think based on my conversations with you. And I look at my own life and I go, yeah, we think that, you know, I'm different. I have my history. You don't know my history.
I have a complex history. Actually, to tell you the truth, my history is a mess. My history is complicated and messy. I'm glad that you don't know it.
And I think I have a feeling that many people would probably tend to say the same thing. But you know who had a complex, messy history was Moses. And Moses was a man who got greatly used. And his history is absolutely fascinating.
Thinking about the words, what do such words and related words mean? Oh, I missed a D. Pastor, Reverend, Minister, the idea of clergy or clerics, bishop, priests. Wow.
These are all kind of, I would say, loaded words. They're kind of religious positions. And there is the tendency, I think, especially in modern Christendom, that we see, for example, the word pastor. And we put a capital P on it.
And I can't tell you the number of times Dave McDonald, or myself, other brothers sitting there by the front door, and someone comes in and says, who is the pastor here, please? And of course, I try to help them and give them an answer that they can work with. But my instinct is, look around. So all over here.
There's her and him and her and her. That's what's going on. That's what's going on. In the Old Testament, you actually had priests.
And not only were those primarily offices, they were inherited offices. The emphasis is on office, and the person inherited that office. So it's very much under the law, the age of the law, a very different system. Very different system.
You know the word eclectic? Eclectic means things that the average person really doesn't know about, right? Very eclectic realm of knowledge. It comes from clerical, out of the clergy, things that the priests and the special stuff, all that special religious stuff.
That's out of that. They know it. We don't really understand it. That's their sort of body of work and activity.
But the New Testament presents a very, very different picture. A very different picture. So when you read your New Testament, and you start reading Ephesians 4-11 about pastors, teachers, I don't want you to put a capital P on the pastor. I want you to understand that words like Deacon and Pastor have very ordinary meanings.
And the person who changed the culture, who did the major, you know, obviously the Lord Jesus, the one who taught us that we are in for a huge cultural shift was the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And he emphasized this coming, new culture, in fact over and over. But Jesus called them unto Him and saith unto them. You know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles, exercise lordship over them, and their great ones exercise authority upon them.
But so it shall not be among you for whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister. And whosoever of you will be the chiefest shall be servant of all. For even the Son of Man came not to minister, to be not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. So the Lord Jesus is our example.
As glorious and as high a person as he was, there was and never will be one like him, the incarnate Son of God. Even he did not come here to be ministered unto. He came here not only to minister, but to give his life as a ransom for many. There can be no higher example.
What you can see is that all of these words have an ordinary meaning. So when you read the New Testament and you come across these words, try to keep primary in your mind, their ordinary meaning. They don't have capital letters. There is no pastor with a capital P when you come across that word.
The word, it's a very good example of my thesis today, is shepherd, poyman. It's shepherd. So when the Lord Jesus said, I'm the great shepherd, it's the same word. So when we see in Ephesians 4, 11, pastors and te- it can easily be shepherds and teachers.
It is the same word. It is the common word in that society for people who literally looked after sheep. It is a very humble word. The word pastor.
The word, unfortunately, bishop in the King James Version sounds extremely religious and powerful and eclectic. Episcopos means to see, to scope, like telescope, epp over, to oversee. It is not a capital B bishop word. Comforter, I want to share with you a very important verse about comforting later.
The one who comes beside, comforter. Servant, du los diacranos, diacranos, where we get the word deacon. Servant, it's the word servant. There are two kinds depending on the contractual nature of the relationship.
But when you come across these words, do not religify them if that's a word. Try to remember that they have ordinary meanings that draw you into the responsibility to engage in those things. It also is important that you don't want to cause this kind of fellowship to devolve, not evolve, but to devolve into something of us and them. And then there's no, no, no, no, no.
That is a bad devolution of what a New Testament assembly is. There is a very real sense that I am you and you are me. We are a fellowship. If I am struggling, yes, people who come behind this pulpit sometimes have terrible struggles.
I can assure you of that. And when I am struggling, you, it teaches me in the Bible, can be struggling with me. And when I'm aware of your struggles, I can pray with you and hopefully be of comfort to you. So the idea that there is some kind of a line between those who are in New Testament leadership and the rest of the brothers and sisters, that's not a line that we want to paint with a big fat red line or anything of the kind.
We are a family. I'm not going today to go into the nature of New Testament church leadership. But it is important for every one of us to understand that the New Testament emphasis in all of these things is not on office. It is on function.
It is on function. We learn from each other. We are comforted by each other. We are served by each other.
We look out for each other. If none of those things are happening, it basically doesn't matter what names are on this piece of paper. It really doesn't. We need to be a family and to be looking out for each other.
As I have said, these words are common words having ordinary meanings. Let's be aware of that. And that the New Testament writers repeatedly emphasize function, not office. Now is my parenthesis.
The life of Moses. What a fascinating life. How many people do you know have ever been semi-orphaned or at risk and end up being floating in a river? Start your life as a baby floating in a river.
That's a little bit unusual. A vigorous child found by a princess and in the plan of God, the wet nurse becomes his own mother. He is brought up as a prince of Egypt. He is brought up in such a way that he sees his mother and knows his sister.
They are the ones who tell him who he really is. And then day by day, what does he have to do? He has to function as a prince of Egypt. How long?
40 years. You think about someone's professional life. That's a chunk of it. That's a chunk of it halfway through his professional life.
Turns out the man did live to be 120. But we think of a 40-year-old as an established adult. We think of a 40-year-old as someone who is the way they are. That's pretty much the way they are.
40-year-old man. It's hard to change a 40-year-old man. Believe me. He's a prince of Egypt.
He wears Egyptian clothes. He learns Egyptian project management, military strategy, astrology, astronomy, project management with his own people doing the hard work. Architecture, hieroglyphics, annubus, the cat God. How that must have been abhorrent to him.
Day by day by day. Hooropolis, priest, will, whole city devoted to all this stuff, this animism. Egyptian worship was full of animals. Beedles and cats and dogs and sphinxes and all.
This is the order of the day. And by the way, he's getting the best education in the world. And he becomes a 40-year-old man. And he knows what he is, but then he's in Egyptian.
Can you imagine the kind of conflict, internal conflict that he's kind of living in terms of his identity every day? Who am I? What am I doing? I'm being an Egyptian, but I'm not an Egyptian.
I'm benefiting, I'm living the lifestyles of the rich and famous. I'm a prince of Egypt, but I'm really not. What was rolling around in his head? Identity gets a huge amount of play and emphasis today in the media, identity.
Here's a man who was inherently through the first 40 years of his life, struggling, I would say, with the question of identity. What is going to happen? One fine day, his identity kind of burst out, and I've put there under, above Exodus 2, 12, we go from a floating baby prince of Egypt to an enraged Hebrew. He sees something, it's vertical, an enraged Hebrew.
He sees something that does something to him. He sees one of his own subordinates beating one of his own people, and he loses it, and he kills the guy on the spot. If he paused for a second, he might have said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, but I think after 40 years of being two things, of frustration, of identity crisis, something burst out of him, something very Hebrew, and he killed the Egyptian on the spot. Then his own people see him not long after, and they say, who made you a leader, our leader?
We know what you did. And Moses got scared and ran because he figured that if they know, everybody knows. It's not my days are numbered, my hours are numbered, and he ran. He ran out of there, and he went to a totally different kind of like block of life.
It's so incredibly different. It could hardly be more different than his previous 40 years. He waters some sheep, he meets a family, he marries a woman, he becomes a shepherd. I think sheep are fairly boring.
The word that the Bible uses as to where he is is the backside of the desert, some say the backside of the will, or the King James Version. How well put that you're in the boonies of the boonies, and you're watching sheep, and you know all about the learning of Egypt, and you're watching sheep. And then one day, we don't know the time span between the murder, but that's what it was. It was a murder.
We don't know the number of years or days between the murder, and then he marries and so on, and he's out in the wilderness and the backside of the wilderness, and he encounters a bush that is burning, but not burning. And he has to go and see. And he meets God. He meets God.
I am that I am. And then for 40 years, he watches sheep and spends time with the one who is I am that I am. That's amazing. That's absolutely amazing.
I would say that over those 40 years, what was happening is Egypt is leaving Moses. Moses has left Egypt, but over the next 40 years of that block of his life, Egypt is leaving Moses. I suggest to you also that here's a man who had a beneficial lifestyles of the richest famous kind of lifestyle, who enjoyed it, who murdered someone in anger and ran away from the situation. Do you think you get over that easily or quickly?
I don't think you get over that easily or quickly. By the grace of God and through meeting God and spending time with God, this man needed to put all of that behind him, not only in his memory, but in his soul and in his heart. He needed to leave Egypt and be brought into the presence of God. And he would be going back into the presence of God over and over for 40 years.
40 years, an 80 year old man. Think of that. To the point that he gets ready. God has a plan.
We use the phrase clean slate. When he had a, perhaps a clean slate, God said, now. But you know, I think it was more than that. That's kind of a secular phrase.
He needed a new heart and mind. He needed to be remade. Maybe at the beginning of the 40 years, and he realized that this process was underway. If he'd said to God, God, how long is this going to take?
Maybe God might have said to him, it will take as long as it will take. That is how I think it is with us. We aren't very patient with ourselves. We need to spend time with the Lord.
And in putting our past behind us, in our hearts and minds, it takes as long as it takes. We need the kind of genuine, redemptive spiritual healing and remaking and recreation within ourselves that only God can do and only can happen, can only happen by spending time with the Lord. And there is nothing that will replace that. There is nothing that can accomplish that like spending time with the Lord.
And what is that demand? He gets to be, he is now ready. God says, you're ready. You're my front man.
You're the leader. And what's the demand that he states to prepare for words? Think, Charlton has 10 commandments. Let my people go.
Let my people go. The previous Pharaoh had died. And he was standing there in that court and all that finery and all that architecture that he knew so well. And his goal was to be used of God, to see God bring his people out of that country.
Let my people go. Now that's interesting. When you read it, God says, this is what you will say to them. I found six places.
You, Pharaoh, must let my people go. So when Moses is saying, let my people go, he is repeating what God told him to say. And that's a good thing to remember in ministry. The first thing to remember is that you are God's people.
That's very important. You belong to God, first of all. You are not answerable, if you like. You are not primarily in your relationship to say senior believers.
In any sense, ours, we have to come to that place. We have to say to all of us, in all of our ministry to each other, you first belong to God. And maybe God can use me in your life. God told Moses to say, let my people go.
Moses, do you understand? This is not the people of God, the earthly children of God, going from the possession of Pharaoh to the possession of Moses. Do you understand? That's not what's happening.
You're going to lead them, but that's not what's happening. Let my people go means let God's people go. Let God's people worship in freedom and live in freedom. And so it's gone.
What do we see at the end of this parenthesis? And the Lord said unto him, this is the land which I swear unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give unto thee unto thy seed. I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord.
And he, God, buried him in a valley in the land of Moab over against Beth Peor, but no man knoweth his sepulchre unto this day. Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died. His eye was not them, nor his natural force abated. Isn't that wonderful?
Isn't that something? James tells us that Abraham was the friend of God. Moses communed with God. He spent time with God face to face.
And you can read that in verse 10 of the same chapter. He was a special man empowered by God and loved by God. That was where his power came from. He was that close to God that what he did was by the power of God in leading God's people.
Here's a lesson from the New Testament from Moses' life. Do you know this verse, these two verses? For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, strongholds, casting down imaginations. And every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
There it is. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. Moses picked up something and hit a man with a stroke and killed him. Is that how people are going to get out of slavery?
No, that's one guy and that's your flesh and that's not how this works. When we approach the spiritual challenges that we have, the first thing to remember is that the mechanisms and the tools are not clubs and swords or anything analogous to that. They are the knowledge of God because that's what these things are exalted against. They are exalted against what Moses had deep knowledge of, 40 years in the backside of the wilderness, knowledge of God.
That's what he had. What he was then able to do was to cast out those imaginations and those thoughts and every high thing inside of him from that high court that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and it was all put away. It was all evaporated. All of that stuff, it evaporated.
And his thoughts became obedient to Christ. That I think is one very important lesson from the life of Moses. And if we have complex personal histories, that's important to remember too. There is nothing like the knowledge of God.
There is nothing as valuable. I'll use a secular word. As therapeutic, there is nothing more profoundly healing and valuable than the knowledge of God and spending time with God. 40 years, God said, what takes 40 years?
It takes 40 years. It's up to me. You relinquish yourself to me. You spend time with me and everything can be changed.
Everything. What do we have as Christians? I have about four more verses to share with you at six minutes after twelve. Here are some things that we can know.
We can know that the Lord Jesus can help us. We all need help going through this life and this world and all its trials and tribulations and troubles. We need help. In that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to give succor to them that are tempted.
He is able to help. The word is help. But it is, I love the word succor in the King James because it's like a tangible word. Never feel that way.
I need tangible help, Lord. Yes, the Lord says I know. You're getting to the end of your rope. I need help.
The Lord said, the Bible says that he is able to give you succor. He is able to give you palpable help. He is able to give you real help. That's what we have.
We also have a Savior who said this, come on to me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me upon you and learn of me for I am me in lowly in heart and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. What a paradox.
But that is the inheritance of the born again Christian to know that we have a yoke of learning with the Lord Jesus, which turns out to be, although it is a yoke. The easiest way of living is to carry that particular kind of shared struggle. To struggle with the Lord is the only way to struggle. And oddly enough, it is the easiest way to struggle.
Try to do everything in a carnal way. See how that goes for you. I'll tell you it doesn't go well. I'm still learning not to do that.
We need to take his yoke upon us and find his special kind of rest. It is as though the Lord is saying to us, I'll work with you if you'll work with me. We need to work with the Lord and allow him to carry our burdens. So in ministry, ministering, ministers, you're all ministers, ministering, what can we bring?
Know this one? Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who comforteth us in all our tribulations, who comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort we're with, is the comfort we're with, we ourselves are comforted of God. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Mercies, I left that out, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them, which are in any trouble, by the comfort we're with, we ourselves are comforted of God. It's a great thing to be able to minister to people, but I'll tell you one thing you can't do.
You can't do it if God is not ministering to you. It's an awful hard thing to comfort people when you yourself know nothing of the comfort of God. You want to be able to comfort people? You have an infinite resource.
You have the comfort of God. This word, comfort, is the same word that the Lord Jesus says when he says he is promising that a comforter will come, is the same word, paracleycos. One who comes beside, has the Lord come beside you in your tribulations and troubles, and you have seen how he ministers to you? Yes.
Now perhaps perhaps you have a clue how you might minister to someone else, with the very comfort that you have experienced yourself. And from the point of view of maybe on the informational side, a great verses 1 Peter 3.15, but sanctify the Lord God in your heart and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. Are you ready to give an answer? Do you have a word in season?
If you're spending time with the Lord in 2019, you can expect to have a word in season. You can expect to have an answer for the person who says, you're different. What makes you tick? The reason, what's the reason that you have a hope in your heart and a smile on your face and you treat people as if you love them?
Because I'm loved of God and I love you too. That'd be a scary thing for one man to say to another. But in fact, do you have the love of God in your heart toward others? Do you know the comfort of God?
Do you know the hope of God? Do you know the reasoning behind Christianity and our belief system? I hope so. There's a great deal of resource out there in terms of understanding the reasonableness of believing in the Christian faith.
And that is good. I didn't give it to you. And that's part of the answer in yellow letters. It is part of the answer.
The substance, the information needs to be there. Make sure that you have it and make sure that you conduct yourself so that it is more than information. It is also your demeanor and your life. So in closing, there is a blessing that God told Moses to tell Aaron to speak to the people.
And it speaks about something that Moses himself experienced, that face to face with God that resulted in his face shining. And he came down to people and said, whoa, you've been with God and your face is shining. That's scary. That's amazing.
We are in awe of what has happened. I like this verse, which was part of what was on my wife and I's wedding invitation 30 years ago. And lo and behold, I saw it on my son's wedding invitation a couple of months ago. I didn't tell him to do that.
But it says, the Lord bless thee. I'm thinking of 2019 for everyone here. And keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. It says, you too? Moses has had an experience of that shine, that glory. You can actually also reflect something of God's glory because his face can shine on you.
Well, if it's shining on you, hopefully it also has some reflection to the world around you. Shall we pray? Our Father in heaven, we confess that we are weak people and we have our own attitudes and histories and things that you would really want to overrule by your spirit and teach us to move on. Help us, Father, to be people who move on by your spirit and to know the joy and 2019 of being able to minister to others as you have instructed us to do.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.