A Gospel Minister (Part 1 of 2)

When someone pursues becoming a pastor, is that person making a career choice or is it a calling?

And who writes the job description? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg points us to clear direction found in God's Word, Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And whether you're a pastor or a part of a congregation, it's important to understand this God-given assignment. 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. 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 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. Amen. Father, as we turn to the Bible now, we earnestly seek your help to speak truly and properly, to listen actively and humbly, to welcome your Word to us in order that we might be brought to living faith and secure trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen. Well, I heard on the radio that October is Pastor Appreciation Month. So I have been very appreciative of my pastors—my colleagues on the pastoral team, to whom I owe an indebtedness. And indeed, as I've been thinking about it, hearing of it, it made me recall the fact that even as a small boy, I think I appreciated my pastors. The first pastor I remember, his name was John. He seemed to me to be very tall, had huge, big hands.

There again, that might be because I was very small and had tiny little hands. But I loved him, and I liked to shake hands with him every Sunday if I could. He was replaced by a man called Stanley Collins, and I loved him too. He was English, but that was okay, and I still appreciated him. Then there was George, who used to cry in his own sermons. I used to cry in them too, but not for the same reasons. And then there was Jim, another Scott, who died just a few months ago, and whose memory I revere, and who taught me tons of stuff.

And then there was Derek. So we are grateful, aren't we, for the unique ministry that God gives to individuals—and especially given the fact that the whole notion of pastoral ministry and the idea of being a minister and so on is pretty well disregarded in contemporary America. I mean, one of the questions that one is almost inevitably confronted with in just public discourse is, What is it exactly you do? And it's usually asked like that.

It's not an inquiry as much as it is a challenge. You must be one of those people that only works one day a week, aren't you? Yeah, that would be me. Yes, I do.

That's what I do. And it's not only outside the church, but it's inside the church too. A long time ago, I had a member of this particular church take me out to lunch to help me understand what it is I was supposed to be doing.

And surely I needed all the help and still do. But anyway, in the course of that, he let me know that he was, quote, capable of standing behind a box and talking, just as I do. So I remember saying, Do you think that that's what it is to teach the Bible, that you stand behind a box and talk?

He said, Yeah, I do. I'm not going to tell you who it was. He's not here still, but he has changed his mind.

The reason is, I let him stand behind a box. And he tried talking. And he wasn't that good at it. And he discovered the difference between being entrusted with the ministry of the gospel and simply standing up and talking. Now, I begin in this way this morning not for any other reason than Paul is identifying himself very clearly as a minister of the gospel.

That's what he says here. Of this gospel, verse 7, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. When I have to fill something out on a form and it says a job description, I always write minister of the gospel, so that people would say, Well, what is the gospel? Rather than, you know, senior minister of Parkside Church.

That doesn't do much. No, I am a minister of the gospel, and so are my colleagues. And Paul has been explaining to the Ephesians, as we saw last time, particularly in the evening, that the mystery that has been entrusted to him in verse 6 is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise—equal heirs, equal members, equal partakers of the promise that has come in Jesus. And they have come to this awareness, he says, through the gospel. The mystery has been revealed to him, and this ministry has been entrusted to him. So you have this juxtaposition between this great mystery, which he has been privileged to understand and convey, and now this ministry that he is exercising. And he identifies himself very clearly as a minister.

The word is diakonos, which means servant. He is a servant of the gospel. He is a servant of the Word of God, if you like. He undertakes a task which he has had assigned to him, and in doing so, he helps us understand a number of things. And I want to try and gather the thoughts under just three simple words. First of all, identity, and then humility, and then responsibility.

Identity, first of all, in that he identifies himself so very clearly. He is proclaiming the gospel. Now, we need to be sure that we understand what we're saying when we say the gospel. The gospel is not a story about what you're supposed to do to try and make yourself a Christian. We haven't explained the gospel to anybody when we've said to them, you know, you need to believe the gospel.

Or, you know, it's a real problem if you don't believe the gospel. Now, we must explain to them what the gospel is—that it is the message of salvation through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ conveying divine power to save all those who believe. The story of the gospel is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

And the appeal of the gospel is to men and women to receive the reconciliation provided for them in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is Paul's message, and it was as a servant of this message that he was made a minister. Now, I want you to notice that he says, I was made a minister. So he didn't make himself a minister. No man makes himself a minister. He can give himself a title, he can do a number of things that may be ministerial in their performance, but that doesn't mean that he has been appointed by God. And Paul is not in this position as a result of his own ingenuity. He is serving in this way by divine initiative. This is not an unusual statement by Paul. When he begins his letters, he often identifies himself very clearly in this way—nowhere more so than as he opens Romans. I'll just quote the first verse for you. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.

A servant of Jesus called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God. Now, the verb that he uses—and it comes three times in the space of the easy verses—is the verb to give. If you notice in verse 2, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace, that was given to me.

It was given to me. He received it. He didn't seize it.

He didn't grab it. He didn't rest it to himself. In verse 7, the gift of God's grace, which was—here we go again—given me by the working of his power. You go down into verse 8, To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given. So, having identified himself as a prisoner for Jesus Christ and as a steward of God's grace, he is now depending upon God's grace and in turn ministering God's grace. In fact, it is vitally important that we recognize this—that the cycle, if you like, of things, is that here is Saul of Tarsus, who knows nothing of God's grace. He becomes the beneficiary of his grace. Now, having received his grace, now that he has understood who Jesus is and why he's come, he recognizes that God has set him apart to the responsibility of now conveying this same story of grace to those who are still as he was, without hope and without God in the world. Paul was absolutely convinced that he was what he was by the grace of God.

In fact, he says that on occasion, doesn't he? And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense, because left to himself, he would have continued to be a self-satisfied Pharisee, because that's what he was. He had a very good background and good training. He was a religious man. But he also tells us that he was a persecutor of the Christians, and he was a blasphemer. He actually had heard about Jesus and his preaching.

Otherwise, I don't think he would have been so vociferous in trying to shut the story down. If he had heard about Jesus, he had actually heard from Stephen. He had heard Stephen preach.

He had heard Stephen preach on the day that the jackets and coats were laid at the feet of Saul for the stoning of Stephen as he becomes the first Christian martyr. And having heard about Jesus and having heard from Stephen, it didn't mean a thing to him. In fact, it did mean something to him. It wasn't simply that he wouldn't receive the message that was conveyed. He reviled the idea of it, didn't he?

He was opposed to it. It's not as if somehow or another he had a predisposition to become a follower of Jesus, that he had a kind of… You know, that's what some of my friends often say. Well, I suppose if you have that predisposition, you know, if you've got a problem or you're at the end of your broken dreams, you know, then maybe there's a reason why you would need a Jesus. But not like me, they say. I mean, after all, I'm an intelligent individual. I've got a good background. I have a good job. I understand how things work.

I don't need any of this stuff. Uh-huh. So how does Paul get from that position to, I am a servant of the gospel? Well, the answer is in his phraseology. As a result, he says, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. Now, back in verse 19 of chapter 1—he has already mentioned this immeasurable greatness of his power. He says, you are coming to know the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead. In other words, he says, the power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that was put to work in my life to bring me from my animosity, from my blasphemy, from my persecution, and from my hatred. And he says, it is quite incredible that this grace was given to me.

Now, we recognize that he had received this mystery by way of revelation. There's a uniqueness to his situation in that he is an apostle. But with that said, he provides for us in this a pattern of gospel ministry—at least in this respect—that the minister of the gospel is not self-appointed. The role of pastor and teacher is not something we choose for ourselves. It is something to which we are called by God—called in such a way that ultimately we can't do anything other than do what it is we're called to do. You don't want, as your pastor, somebody who says, Well, I thought I might be a doctor, and then I considered law, and then I was going to go into engineering, but I just decided that the church was probably a pretty good option for me.

You probably don't want to have much to do with him. No, what you want is somebody who says, I would have been perfectly happy if I could have continued here, if I'd done that, if I'd gone there, but God laid hold upon me, arrested me, brought me to such a deep-seated conviction, and when I shared it with those who knew me, although they were at first surprised, they recognized in the context of the local church the rightness of what was happening, and therefore that sense of internal call to ministry was ratified by the external affirmation and approbation of those who looked on me. And that is what we do in ordination. That's why it is a sobering and a solemn thing. Funnily enough, interestingly, last Sunday was the fortieth anniversary of my ordination to the Christian ministry. A Sunday morning in Edinburgh, I wore a clerical collar. And I tell you without word of a lie that when I stood up in that pulpit on that Sunday morning in October of 76, I would have felt no more vulnerable if I had stood there stark naked than when I stood there. And when those guys laid their hands on me and shut me up to this task, I knew, this is my deal.

This is my life. I don't know what it means. I don't know where it goes.

I don't know what happens next. And I could have dissolved in tears instantly and run for my life quickly. What is this amazing thing that God does, setting apart to the ministry of the gospel? This is the one thing I did not want to be all of my life. Sorry to be so personal in my things, but it just comes to mind. I mean, I used to have ministers, I've told you before, who would come to my house on Sunday for lunch, and I would have to sit beside them on the couch while my mother was getting the lunch. And these old guys—I mean, younger than I am now—but these old guys would sit beside me and say, Hi, Sonny. Maybe one day you'll be a minister.

They'd scare me half to death, apart from their breath, just the whole deal. No! Whew! God forbid! Now I am one of those guys, sitting next to young guys, going, Maybe you'll be a minister. Identity. Secondly, humility.

Humility. Paul was overwhelmed by the wonder of God's dealings with him. To me, he says, I'm the very least of all the saints, and this grace was given. Paul, all the way through his writings, continues to marvel that the Son of God loved him and gave himself for him. He's humbled by the fact that God saved him, that God called him, that God had given to him all these gifts and resources that were necessary to fulfill the purposes that God had for him.

He never tires of this. He explains again and again to those who are prepared to read his letters, to Timothy particularly, who's under his tutelage, and to whom he's going to pass the baton of faith. He reminds Timothy very, very clearly. He says, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointed me to his service.

I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent opponent. I received mercy, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me. The saying is trustworthy, deserves full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Notice what he says next, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost sinner, as the worst of the pile, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. You may be here this morning. You say, I can tell you right now that there is no more unlikely person in this congregation than me.

That's what you're saying to yourself that will ever come to trust this Jesus stuff. Well, you'd be right up there with the apostle Paul, perhaps, and he displayed his perfect patience so that in and through the ministry of Paul others would believe for eternal life. Paul, we gladly have joined in singing so many of our songs, not least of all the one that has about twelve verses and begins, Oh, how the grace of God amazes me, that loosed me from my chains and set me free.

What made it happen so? His own will, this much I know, and set me, as now I know, at liberty. The thing I love about Paul here is that he recognizes he was not an obvious choice.

It's interesting, because previously he was really good at the resume stuff, wasn't he? I mean, when he writes in Philippians, he says, you know, we're thinking back on it, I had a really good upbringing, I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, I was a student of Gamaliel, I graduated from the right schools and everything else. But now, he says, I am actually the least likely, and I am the least of the apostles. And actually, he's trying to scramble language in such a way as to say, I am at the bottom of the pile.

I am less than the least. I'm unworthy, he says in 1 Corinthians, even to be called an apostle. Now, this is not Uriah Heep. This is not some kind of formalized self-deprecation.

This is not him trying to redress the balance. This is Paul. This is what he actually came to believe, because the grace of God had so showered upon him and flowed through him that he realized that the thing that he had to say to people was not who he was or what his background was, but who Jesus was and who Jesus is. Even though the Apostle Paul considered himself unworthy, his spirit-inspired words in Ephesians chapter 3 give us a definition of what it means for someone to be a gospel minister.

You're listening to Truth for Life. Early in today's message, Alistair Begg talked about some of the men who shaped his understanding of what it means to be a pastor. One of those men was the late Derek Prime. He was a pastor in the United Kingdom. He took Alistair under his wing many years ago. And much later, when Alistair's ministry at Parkside Church in Ohio had matured, the two seasoned shepherds collaborated together on a book called On Being a Pastor. Now, because October is Pastor Appreciation Month, maybe you'd like to give a copy of this book as a gift to a ministry leader in your church.

In the book, Alistair and Derek Prime cover a wide range of topics. They talk about things from leadership to preaching, balancing life and ministry. You can purchase the book On Being a Pastor online at truthforlife.org slash store. Keep in mind, it's not the purchase of books or resources that fuels the ministry of Truth for Life.

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Over the course of three years, Tim visited more than 80 museums. He photographed objects that tell the story of our Christian heritage. But this book isn't a mere photo album. Along with each of the 33 pictures in the book Epic, Tim gives us the history behind each of these artifacts, describing things like publishing the Gutenberg Bible, the significance of Calvin's chair, and the story behind John Bunyan's Jug. We'd love to send you a copy of the book Epic, written by Tim Challies. It comes with our thanks when you make a donation today at truthforlife.org slash donate, or you can donate by calling 888-588-7884. Shepherding a local congregation is one of the toughest and most rewarding responsibilities to fulfill. I'm Bob Lapine, hoping you'll join us again tomorrow as Alistair continues explaining the biblical assignment given to a minister of the gospel. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.