A Precise Explanation of Ministry, Part 2

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul told his friends that God was holding a secret and it was time for them to embrace it. Paul said, God wanted you to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you. And he added, this is the secret, Christ lives in you.

Well today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll helps us understand the life-altering implications of this statement, not only for the Colossians, but for you and me as well. Chuck titled his message, A Precise Explanation of Ministry, and we begin with prayer. We're grateful Father for those milestones in life such as graduation. How good you have been to provide all that was needed, the health, the discipline, the determination, the commitment, and now the reward. I pray for those who were still engaged in the process, those in educational pursuit, those in business, those serving you in some capacity in your work, others who have finished their work and are now in their retirement years. I pray that you'll remind them today of your grace, giving to us what we don't deserve and can never, ever repay. For you never look for repayment, you look for our lives. And we want you to know Father, we want to live for you strictly out of love for you, not because we have to, but because we are in love with you.

And you have shown us in that love relationship that it is enriching and rewarding. In his matchless name, we give and we pray. Everyone said, Amen.

You're listening to Insight for Living. To search the scriptures with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures Studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck called A Precise Explanation of Ministry.

Let's look at the ministry itself. I have marked in highlight five words in verses 24 to 29. Let me give you the words before we look at each one, working our way through them. The word suffering, verse 24, I'm participating in the sufferings of Christ. A little later, we read the church by proclaiming his entire message to you. So let's mark that word proclaiming. Drop down to verse 29, warning everyone. And finally, I work and struggle so hard depending on Christ's mighty power, depending, or whatever word your Bible version may have. Ministry is a life of dependence.

So let's pick the words apart and apply them and see what they mean. He says, I'm glad when I suffer for you. What an interesting comment. That's his attitude towards suffering. I'm glad when I suffer for you in my body.

Why? See the little word for? It explains why. Because I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church.

What does that mean? Well, we know it does not mean what Christ suffered on the cross. That's redemptive suffering and that's complete. Jesus said it is finished. This has to do with the body of Christ, which is here, the church.

You see it? The sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church. So what does it mean? A ministry that is healthy and wholesome enters into the suffering of other people. People are not made to be ashamed that they're suffering.

Furthermore, there isn't a hint of self-pity or resentment on Paul's part. He said, I'm glad when I am able to enter into your world, your suffering, for I'm participating in a very important part of the ministry and that's suffering in the body, the church. Remember the words of Philippians 3 10? Paul wrote, the Amplified Bible, that I may know him, that is, that I may intimately, that I may become more intimately and progressively in touch with him, in so many words, through the fellowship of his suffering. This is part of the fellowship of his suffering. Christ was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief, so the man or woman of God must have a place in his or her life for sorrow and grief. It is not our task to fix people who are hurting.

It is not the task of someone in the church who ministers to another going through a deep valley to try to jerk them out of the valley. We get in the valley with them. We identify with the pain. We feel the hurt.

One of my tasks as a minister and and others task is to help people live through the pain and survive and to assist if I possibly can in helping them figure out some of the causes. That's a very delicate, intimate relationship that develops. Pastors who are too busy to do that are too busy. People who enter into the lives of others take time. We listen. We care. At times we weep. At times we grieve. Paul says, I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings that Christ continues for his body, the church.

So much for that. A ministry is not healthy or wholesome if there is not entering into the suffering of one another. Second, proclaiming.

Look at 25 through 27. God has given me the responsibility of serving his church. How?

By proclaiming his entire message to you. To whom? People of Colossae.

Who were they? Gentiles mainly. Not Jews mainly. Gentiles. Gentiles. And in the first century a Gentile was called a dog by those who were proud Jews.

These people have lived on the back end of prejudice. They've been kind of left out of the blessings of God until Paul comes along with his message proclaiming the secret. Look at it. My job is to proclaim his entire message to you. This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past. Your Bible may include the word mystery. Mystery. A musterion translated mystery in our Bible is a sacred secret hidden in the past but now fully revealed. For the longest time God was at work wanting to get the message to you. That's why he sent Jonah to Nineveh but Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh.

Remember the story? He didn't want to mess around with those Ninevites, all those Gentiles. He doesn't want to see them trust in the living God because Jonah is a prejudiced prophet. So he's now saying the veil of prejudice is lifted.

Look at this. This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past. Now it's been revealed to God's people. God wanted to know, wanted them to know that the riches and glory of forgive me, for God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles too and this is the secret. Christ lives in you. Now you hear that and you're sitting in this 21st century setting and you think well big deal.

Oh wait. If you lived in the first century and lived under the threat that Gentiles lived under, the awful awful cloud of prejudice, you would think oh how magnificent is this that God gives us the assurance of sharing his glory. Christ lives in me of all people. It's like the Emancipation Proclamation announced to slaves. You are free. You are free. You are no longer owned by someone. You can be free in this land and little by little, the message finally was believed and finally little by little, the prejudice was set aside. Little by little, the slaves came to know liberty and freedom. In this case, the Gentiles are those.

Let me just give you the practical side of this. Prejudice has no place in the local church. Whether the church is in the south or the north, whether the church is in America or Canada or South America, whether the church is in Africa or Asia, if there's one place a person ought to know the joy of being free of prejudice, it is the local church. Paul says, I have the joy of proclaiming that the secret is now known.

God lives in you. It's a message for all Jews and Gentile alike. You're no longer excluded from the glory and the riches of God's grace. You were once hopeless and helpless. Ephesians 2 tells us that. But now, now that predicament has been removed, you were filled with hope since Christ lives in you, empowering you to please him.

We now tell others about Christ, he says in verse 28. Prejudice. Bishop John Bishop John Green of Sydney, Australia, told about working with a group of boys, some of them of aboriginal blood, some of English descent. Racial tension was so great they could not sit peaceably with each other on the same bus. One day when things were getting heated, Bishop Green stopped the bus and had all the boys get off.

He spoke with great passion, exclaiming that they were no longer black and white, no longer aboriginal and English. From now on, you're all green. You're green.

He then lined them up in alternate order and made them repeat the same two words as they got back on the bus. I'm green. I'm green.

Can't you hear those boys doing that? I'm green. I'm green. And they get on the bus, hear the rest of the story. They rode along quietly, integrated, quote unquote, until he heard a voice from the back of the bus.

Okay, light green on one side, dark green on the other. We can't get rid of it unless it's done in the power of Christ. It cannot be legislated. The heart has to be changed. And I speak as a southern born young man from days past, having grown up by southern born parents, having been around southern prejudice. And I can tell you, the more I read passages like this, the more grateful I am that God can deliver us from a life of prejudice.

Some of you need that deliverance. You still entertain secret feelings of prejudice. It still impacts you and your treatment of others, of another race or color. A church that's healthy and wholesome has no place for that. If the gentiles of the first century were freed, certainly all races are freed. Once they come to Christ, we're all one in the body. That's what it would be like in heaven, by the way, freed of all of that hang up. Verse 28. So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone.

There's the third word. A church that's wholesome and healthy and healthy warns everyone. As I said earlier, this is the negative side of the ministry of the word. It includes admonition, instruction, reproof, discipline. This word, from which the word warning comes, means to counsel about avoidance or cessation of an improper course of conduct. Those are big words that say you need to stop doing certain things. A church whose pulpit no longer says words like that is not a healthy church. If all you hear is the positive, you're not getting a good diet.

You need a diet that includes admonition. Paul uses the word when he speaks to the Ephesian elders, saying you remember how I warned you that there would be wolves that would come right from your own midst who would take advantage of you. Acts 20, that warning, appears. I heard a televangelist interviewed on one occasion in a talk show and the televangelist, well-known, big following, was asked by the interviewer, why is it I never hear you use the word sin? Do you use the word sin?

And the man responded, oh absolutely not. People already know they're sinners. They need to be told how good they are. Really.

Is that right? I have found that it's helpful to know at times how wrong things are. If I were a physician and only gave you good news, I'd lie to you about having cancer. That's called malpractice. You can malpractice in ministry by telling someone only what they want to hear rather than warning.

This church stays healthy because there are warnings warning everyone. That's the negative. Now look at the positive. Teaching everyone. This is the positive side of instructing and read on.

Teaching with all wisdom that God has given us, we want to present everyone to God, mature in their relationship to Christ. So it isn't all negative. It is an all warning. Otherwise it'd be like driving and all the signs on the side of the road will tell you on the sign where the road does not lead. You never get to your destination. This will not get you to that destination. This will not get you to that. This will not get you here.

That's just the negative. You've got to have the other side as well. And when you get the other side and the teaching is such that it comes with wisdom, you have a balanced diet. And again it's for every one of us. So we're learning about five ingredients in a healthy church. We enter into people's suffering. We're involved in proclaiming. Some of the proclaiming is warning. Others proclaiming is teaching.

And now I love this last part. That's why I work and struggle so hard depending on Christ's mighty power that works within me. A ministry that gets the job done is exhausting.

No ministry is authentically a healthy and wholesome ministry without hard work, without a deep and exacting commitment. Paul uses two words, I work and I struggle. The first word for work is a word for labor as when he made tents.

And he uses it in that way in another place of one of his letters. The second word struggle is agonizomai. We get the word agony from the word.

I agonize, but all the while I am depending, I'm depending on Christ's power to stay at it. There are days at the end of a day of ministry that you are exhausted. Same thing I have a saying we share with each other. We call it a 30-second night. Usually it's right after we brush our teeth, getting ready to go to bed, and I'm going to go to bed and I'll say to her, my tongue is a little thick, this is a 30-second night. And about the time my head hits the pillow, I'm snoring.

And she says to me the next morning, it was actually a 10-second night that you had. I love the line from Dwight L. Moody, who at bedtime after a laborious day rolled his sizable bulk into the bed and his prayer was, Lord, I'm tired. Amen.

Not a bad prayer. If you love golf more than ministry, don't go into the ministry. If you love some hobby more than ministry, don't waste our time. Just do your hobby. But when you are engaged in ministry, you can count on it.

It will be times of work and agony, but you'll be able to make it because of your dependence on the Lord Jesus. Mark it down. Sloth is an enemy of a great ministry.

It has no place in a pastor's life. So here it is. This is how we do it. We depend on Christ's mighty power.

When you and I depend on Christ's power, don't miss this. We don't watch the clock. We don't feel sorry for ourselves. We don't move to another church because we'll make more money. We don't run from hard tasks. We don't brag about how hard we're working.

We stay energized and excited and motivated. We cannot wait for the next day to begin. I confess to you. I am addicted to what I'm doing and I can't get up early enough to get started on it. I mean, why is everybody else asleep at five o'clock?

Preferably four o'clock. My kids were so glad to leave the house because they said, Dad, you're the loudest person at four o'clock anybody could possibly be. You're moving things around. I said, well, I just like you to get up. It's time for us to get up. And I'm all excited about what? About ministry. About what's in front of me. The opportunity. The privilege. The joy of teaching Colossians.

And if not teaching it, studying it. And the privilege of being with colleagues who are engaged in the same thing and being around people who love it. This is energizing stuff. So let's see what this says to all of us. And then I'm through. Four things.

Number one. We're appointed as servants. We're not hired to hold a job.

You'll hear it. Never hear me refer to ministry as a job. It's a calling.

We are appointed as servants, not hired to hold a job. Number two. We're thankful for suffering, not resentful of it. It's important that I as a minister don't try to interrupt what God's teaching you through your suffering. I need to stay out of the way and stand alongside you and hurt with you, but not try to make you ignore it or get past it. We're thankful for suffering.

Number three. We're telling everyone the secret. We're not keeping it to ourselves. Everyone deserves to know the good news and what a privilege it is to share it.

We don't pay attention to what race a person is or what color our joy is to share the good news. It's God's job to take it up from there. Fourth and finally, we're giving ourselves a chance to we're giving it our all. We're not holding back. One of my favorite lines comes from the martyred missionary Jim Elliott.

Get this. Wherever you are, be all there. Isn't that a great line? Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.

I have the privilege of living in that world and it's perhaps the highest of all privileges. Bow with me, will you please? You've sat through this patiently listening and it may be the reason you got a little bored is you may not know the Savior.

I don't know. It's my job to tell you about it. It's what my calling includes. The Savior died that you might have life. He paid the price for your sin so you didn't have to pay it. And because of that, He's ready to give you His life if you'll receive His gift of eternal life.

Take it right now. And as you do, give Him thanks for coming and living within you, turning you in the right direction, giving you a promise of eternity, a future, and a hope. A future and a hope. We can help you in that decision. That's why we exist.

Connect with us in any way you wish and we will offer you hope and a way to go on. Help us all, our Father, to realize that our hope is in you and not really in our times. That suffering has a purpose.

It isn't designed just to make us squirm and feel pain. That proclamation is a privilege and we who are under the teaching of the Scriptures consider it a great joy to be instructed in truth. Help us, our Father, to live lives of character and integrity and honesty so that people are not disillusioned when they find out that has not been going on. Guard us from anything that would interrupt the precious fellowship that is ours at Stonebriar. Guard us from wolves that would come in among the flock. Guard us from the cults that prey on those who are not well versed in the Scriptures.

Guard us from sloth lest we become lazy and perfunctory in our task. Give us the joy of serving. May it mark our lives forever. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Everyone sing. Amen.

Amen. We hope today's study in Colossians has helped you better understand God's design for ministry and that it guides you to a local church where these principles are modeled as well. You're listening to Insight for Living and the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. He's presenting a brand new verse-by-verse study through Paul's letter to the Colossians.

And to learn more about this study and our ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. In addition, you'll be pleased to learn Chuck has written a commentary on Colossians. In fact, this hardbound volume includes his commentary on Philippians and Philemon as well. This is the kind of book you'll likely spread open next to your Bible as you dig deeper into this satisfying letter from Paul.

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Join us when Chuck Swindoll describes what he calls wise counsel from a concerned apostle, Thursday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, A Precise Explanation of Ministry, was copyrighted in 2004. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2022 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.