The Style of the Ministry (Col. 1:28a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/18/2017 9:51 PM

My Worship Time                                                                      Focus:  The Style of The Ministry

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Colossians 1:28a

            Message of the verse:  “And we proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom,”

            As we look at the first part of this verse we can see a passion of Paul’s and that was to proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ.  “Katangello (‘proclaim’) means to publicly declare a completed truth or happening.  It is a general term and is not restricted to formal preaching.  Paul’s proclamation included two aspects, one negative, one positive” writes John MacArthur.

            He goes on to state “Admonishing’ is from noutheteo.  It speaks of encouraging counsel in view of sin and coming punishment.  It is the responsibility of church leaders.”  We have been looking at verses from the 20^th chapter of Acts recently and want to go back to verse 31 of that chapter, a chapter where Paul describes his ministry at Ephesus as Luke writes “"Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.”  We can see the passion that Paul had for the Ephesian church as we read from this chapter of Acts, especially in this verse.  Paul loved the church; his passion was for the church to grow and to reproduce.  In the 11^th chapter of 2 Corinthians Paul talks of all of the physical things that he went through because of the cause of Christ, and they were many physical things that he went through, but at the end of his writing about them he then speaks of an inward distress “2Co 11:28 Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.”  Humaningly speaking one can hardly understand this.

            Paul writes to the Thessalonians in 2 Thess. 3:14-15 “14  If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him, so that he will be put to shame. 15 Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.”  Paul is stating that the responsibility is not only on him to proclaim the Lord, but also to believers.  Paul writes in Colossians 3:16 how this can be done “Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”  If the Word of God is richly dwelling in you then you can tell others about it very easily. 

            Now we move onto the word “Teaching” and MacArthur writes that this “refers to imparting positive truth.  It, too, is the responsibility of every believer (Col. 3:16), and is part of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:20).  It is especially the responsibility of church leaders.  ‘An overseer, then, must be…able to teach (1 Tim. 3:2).”

            Now as we look at the rest of our verse we can see that Admonishing and teaching must be done “with all wisdom.”  This is the larger context and when we move on into chapter two wisdom refers to practical discernment—understanding the biblical principles for holy conduct.  MacArthur concludes that “the consistent pattern of Paul’s ministry was to link teaching and admonishment and bring them together in the context of general doctrinal truths of the Word.  Doctorial teaching was invariably followed by practical admonitions.  That must also be the pattern for all ministries.

2/18/2017 10:18 PM 

           

The Subject of the Ministry (Col. 1:26-27)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/17/2017 8:46 PM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  The Subject of the Ministry

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Colossians 1:26-27

            Message of the verses:  “26  that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, 27  to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

            We can see what the ministry was that Paul was proclaiming which is “the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints.”  Now we go to a favorite verse of mine to show that there are some things that God does not reveal to anyone “"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law (Deuteronomy 29:29).”  Psalm 25:14 shows us that God reveals other things only to certain people “The secret of the LORD is for those who fear Him, And He will make them know His covenant.”  Proverbs 3:32 says “For the devious are an abomination to the LORD; But He is intimate with the upright.”  I have read a long time ago that when the word mystery is used in the New Testament that it is revealing things that was written in the Old Testament.  The Greek word for mystery is “musterion.”  MacArthur writes that “Paul use of this word is not to indicate a secret teaching, rite, or ceremony revealed only to some elite initiates (as in the mystery religions), but truth revealed to all believers in the New Testament.  This truth, that has now ‘been manifested to His saints,’ namely the Old Testament era and people.  ‘Now’ refers to the time of the writing of the New Testament.  Such newly revealed truth includes the mystery of the incarnate God (Col. 2:2-3, 9); of Israel’s unbelief (Rom. 11:25); of lawlessness (2 Thess. 2:7; cf. Rev. 17:5, 7); of the unity of Jew and Gentile in the church (Eph. 3:3-6); and of the rapture (1 Cor. 15:51).  This mystery truth is available only for those who are saints—true believers (cf. 1 Cor. 2:7-16).  The phrase ‘to whom God willed to make known’ clearly indicates that the mysteries are not discovered by the genius of man, but are revealed by the will and act of God.  It is God’s purpose that His people know this truth.”

            Now the most profound truth found in the New Testament is found in the statement found in verse 27, at the end of that verse where Paul writes “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  I began listening to the Bible on the first of January of this year and am doing it in a bit different way this year as I am listening to the ESV of the Bible and also reading a daily devotional written by John MacArthur in this devotional Bible.  You read from the OT each day and also from the OT book of Psalms each day and then a chapter or two, depending on the day from the New Testament each day.  Yes it does take a while, but I am glad that I can listen to it and not have to read it as there are some words in the OT that are difficult to pronounce.  While listening to these early chapters in the OT I have noticed some of the different prophecies concerning the Messiah and even when the tabernacle was built I can see Christ in it too.  Wood represents His humanity and gold His deity.  The bronze represents His judgment which will come when He returns again to planet earth.  It is good to find those jewels that speak of the coming Messiah either His first coming or His second coming.  However none of the OT prophecies of the coming Messiah revealed that the Holy Spirit would be living in the hearts of the believers and also that the Church would be mostly made up of Gentiles with only a few Jewish people in it, but those who are in the church are of one body.  MacArthur writes “That Christ indwells all believers is the source of their ‘hope of glory’ and is the subject or theme of the gospel ministry.  What makes that gospel attractive is not just that it promises present joy and help, but that it promises eternal honor, blessing, and glory.  When Christ comes to live in a believer, His presence is the anchor of the promise of heaven—the guarantee of future bliss eternally (Cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-5; Ephesians 1:13-14).  In the reality that Christ is living in the Christian is the experience of new life and hope of eternal glory.”

2/17/2017 9:17 PM

PT-2 "The Scope of the Ministry" (Col. 1:25b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/16/2017 11:12 PM

My Worship Time                                                          Focus:  PT-2 “The Scope of the Ministry”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Colossians 1:25b

            Message of the verses:  “that I might fully carry out the preaching of the Word of God.”

            We stated in our last SD that we would look at five reason that Jesus’ ministry was successful, remembering that He limited His ministry to God’s will as stated in John 5:30 “I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”  Jesus also limited His ministry to the region of Israel along with limited regions around Israel.        

            Now the first thing is that something we mentioned, and that is that He limited His ministry to God’s will.  In our study of the 17^th chapter of John which we are currently looking at in the morning SD we see that Jesus states in the first verse “the hour has come,” and this was a key in His ministry as the hour had come for Jesus to go to the cross to fulfill the will of the Father, to bring glory to Himself, and to the Father.

            Second, Jesus limited His ministry to God’s timing.  We have also been learning about this in our study of John’s gospel as we saw in our first point where we mentioned the timing of Jesus’ going to the cross which was in the perfect timing of God.

            Third, we see that Jesus limited His ministry to the objective of God.  Jesus knew that God had not sent Him to reach the entire world all by Himself.  We have also learned a lesson from John’s gospel about this reason and that is that Jesus told His disciples that it would be better for them if He went away, and the reason is that once Jesus died, was buried, and then resurrected from the dead, and after that ascended back into heaven the Father would send the Holy Spirit to the disciples, and we learned that when Jesus told them this was going to happen that He said that the Father would send another comforter which speaks of One like Him, who was the Holy Spirit.  So now you have every believer in the New Testament age having the Comforter in them doing the work of Jesus.  Jesus, in the form He came to earth could not do this, but now since He went back to heaven sending His Holy Spirit it can be done.  We as believers have to remember that we too have a sphere of ministry to work in.

            “Fourth, Jesus limited His ministry to God’s kingdom” writes John MacArthur.  “He refused to be drawn into the political controversies of His day.  When His opponents tried to embroil Him in one such controversy He replied, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s’ (Matt. 22:21).  He kept the political realm and the spiritual realm separate.  That is a lesson many in the contemporary church seem to have missed.”

            Fifth, we learn that Jesus limited Himself to God’s people.  As we look at the gospel record we see that Jesus only worked with a few men as He chose out of a larger group twelve men to work with and we can also see that He spent much more time with Peter, James, and John that the rest of those twelve men.

            John MacArthur concludes by stating “Those who desire truly effective ministries must learn the importance of limits.  If they concentrate on the depth of their ministries, God will take care of the breadth.”

2/16/2017 11:32 PM

The Scope of the Ministry (Col. 1:25b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/15/2017 11:27 PM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  The Scope of the Ministry

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Colossians 1:25b

            Message of the verse:  “that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God,”

            I suppose that one of the things in my life that I truly love is the preaching of the Word of God by someone who has taken the time to explain well what they have learned from God as the preach and teach the Word of God.  I have been fortunate to go to churches where the Word of God has been taught in a way that I can understand and learn from it.  I have only set under four preachers in my 43 years of being a believer and three of those preachers have taught me much while the other one hardly anything at all.  As one reads the letters that Paul has written along with the last half of the book of Acts one can tell the passion that Paul had for preaching the Word of God and also for writing the Word of God so we can read it even in today’s world. 

            Paul says the following in Acts 20:24 “"But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.”  The 20^th chapter of Acts actually reads like a letter from Paul as he is speaking to the Ephesian believers for the very last time.  Let us look at verse 27 “"For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.”  Paul writes to Timothy in the very last letter he wrote that is found in the New Testament, 2 Tim. 4:7 “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”  In a way this reminds me of what our Lord did, why He came to earth to die for our sins, and I know that Paul could not have done that but Paul did have a job to do as He was commissioned by our Lord and when he wrote to Timothy he realized that his job was almost done as soon he would be killed for the cause of Christ. 

            Paul, like all believers was or is given a job from the Lord and as believers we, like Paul have to try and understand what He desires for us to do and then go out and do that job through the power of the Spirit of God.  We need to do the job that Christ has called us to do.  Some are actually trying to win the world and that will not happen.  I continue to mention Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  This verse shows me that God has a plan for my life and I am to do what is in that plan for my life by the power of the Holy Spirit and by understanding the Word of God through personal Bible study and by being in a church where the Word of God is taught. 

            We cannot all be Paul’s who actually had a big part in reaching the entire world at that time as his ministry ended up in Rome and before that he traveled throughout most of the Roman Empire preaching and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ.  Think about Jesus who never left Palestine, and yet no one has come remotely close to having the impact on the world that He has.  MacArthur adds “Jesus’ ministry was effective because He limited it to doing what God wanted.” We will discuss more about His ministry in our next SD from this section.

2/15/2017 11:48 PM

PT-3 "The Suffering of the Ministry" (Col. 1:24b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/14/2017 10:35 PM

My Worship Time                                                    Focus:  PT-3 “The Suffering of the Ministry”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Colossians 1:24b

            Message of the verses:  “24 in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”

            I promised to give a rather long quote from the pen of John MacArthur as we finish up this section from Colossians 1:24b.

            “The statement ‘in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions’ has been the subject of much controversy.  Roman Catholics have imagined here a reference to the suffering of Christians in purgatory.  Christ’s suffering, they maintain, was not enough to purge us completely from our sins.  Christians must make up what was lacking in Christ’s suffering on their behalf by their own suffering after death.  That can hardly be Paul’s point, however.  He has just finished demonstrating that Christ alone is sufficient to reconcile us to God (1:20-23).  To do an about face now and teach that believers must help pay for their sins would undermine his whole argument.  The New Testament is clear that Christ’s sufferings need nothing added to them.  In Jesus’ death on the cross, the work of salvation was completed. Further, the Colossians heretics taught that human works were necessary for salvation.  To teach that believers’ suffering was necessary to help expiate their sins would be to play right into the errorists’ hands. The idea that Paul refers to suffering in purgatory is ruled out by both the general content of the epistle and the immediate context, as well as the obvious absence of any mention of a place like purgatory in Scripture.  Finally, thlipsis (‘afflictions’) is used nowhere in the New Testament to speak of Christ’s sufferings.

            “In my flesh’ refers to Paul’s physical pain.  When he says ‘I do my share on behalf of His body (which is the church) he is indicating that the physical pain he endures at the hands of Christ-hating persecutors is the result of what he does to benefit and build the church.  It was not his personality that offended and brought hostile injury to him, but his ministry for the Body of Christ.

            “In what sense were Paul’s sufferings ‘filling up that which is lacking in Christ’s afflictions?’  In that Paul was receiving the persecution that was intended for Christ.  Jesus, having ascended to heaven, was out of their reach.  But because His enemies had not filled up all the injuries they wanted to inflict on Him, they turned their hatred on those who preached the gospel.  It was in that sense that Paul filled up what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions.  In 2 Corinthians 1:5 he wrote that ‘the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance.’  He bore in his body the marks of the blows intended for Christ (Gal. 6:17; cf. 2 Cor. 11:23-28).  He not only suffered for Christ, but also for the sake of the church (2 Tim. 2:10).  Those who wish to represent Christ and serve His church must be willing to suffer for His name.”

2/14/2017 10:52 PM

 

PT-2 "The Suffering of the Ministry" (Col. 1:24b)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/13/2017 9:54 PM

My Worship Time                                                     Focus: PT-2 “The Suffering of the Ministry”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Colossians 1:24a

            Message of the verses:  “24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”

            When we left of yesterday we will looking at a number of reasons that suffering brings believers closer to Christ, and we looked at the first two reasons and will now begin this SD with the third reason which is that suffering brings a future reward.  I may state that some people do not think that we should live our lives on this earth in order to receive rewards from the Lord when we get to heaven.  I certainly do not agree with this for if a person is doing the things that the Lord has planned for them to do then that person will receive rewards from the Lord for obeying what He wants them to do.  “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).”  I have mentioned this verse a number of times in my Spiritual Diaries to make the point that I believe that the Lord has given us things to do in our walk with the Lord and have even said that I believe that they were pre-ordained for believers to do them before the foundation of the earth.  Now we want to get back to our third point here at this time.  Paul writes the following in Romans 8:17-18 “17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”  Paul also wrote more about this in 2 Corinthians 4:17 “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,” and if you want to look at those momentary, light afflictions you can go to the 11^th chapter of 2 Corinthians to see some of the difficult things that Paul and his co-workers went through.

            The fourth reason for suffering that will bring believers closer to the Lord is that our suffering may bring someone to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ as Church history is filled with accounts of those who came to Christ after watching other suffer.

            Now the fifth reason for suffering is that it frustrates Satan as Satan wants suffering to harm us but as Paul writes in Romans 8:28 “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”  Think about the suffering that Jesus Christ went through while on the cross and what came out of that suffering as everyone who is ever saved is saved because of what He did on the cross and even before He went to the cross He said that this would cause Satan’s judgment.

            Now I have to say that in his commentary John MacArthur writes a rather long couple of paragraphs that speak of how this verse is misused in the Roman Catholic Church and I think that the best way to understand it is to quote it in our next SD.

            My Spiritual Diaries in the evening are shorter than the ones that I do in the morning which takes me longer to go through the books that I study in the evening to get through, but I believe that the important thing is to understand what we are looking at even though it may take us a little longer to get through the book.

2/13/2017 10:12 PM

PT-1 "The Suffering of the Ministry" (Col. 1:24a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/12/2017 8:42 PM

My Worship Time                                                    Focus:  PT-1 “The Suffering of the Ministry”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Colossians 1:24a

            Message of the verses:  “In my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body (which is the church) in filling up that which is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”

            Now we have been discussing the aspect of joy in our past SD’s and we can see here that Paul wants to emphasize that his circumstances are independent of his joy as he writes “in my sufferings for your sake.”  Remember that Paul was in prison for proclaiming the gospel when he penned this letter, as he was suffering for the cause of Christ.  Even while in prison Paul could rejoice while in there because he always viewed himself as a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and not a prisoner of the Roman government, as we can see from another letter he wrote, “1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved brother and fellow worker, 9 yet for love’s sake I rather appeal to you-since I am such a person as Paul, the aged, and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus- 23  Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you, (Philem. 1:1, 9, 23).”

            We can see from the fifth chapter of the book of Acts that the early believers considered it a privilege to suffer for the cause of Jesus Christ as we read in Acts 5:41 “So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.”  Paul writes the following to the Philippians in 1:29 “29  For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.”

            We can see that suffering brings believers closer to Jesus Christ “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death (Phil. 3:10).”  When believers suffer for the cause of Jesus Christ they get a better understanding of what Christ went through in dying for their sins as He suffered on the cross paying for the sins of the world.

            Now we will look at one more reason for believer’s sufferings and then save some for our next SD as it is Sunday and I usually write shorter SD’s on Sunday.

            Second reason is that suffering assures that believers belong to Christ, and when you think about this you have to agree that if a person did not belong to Jesus Christ then he would not suffer for Him.  Jesus said in John 15:18 “"If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.”  Matthew 10:24 says “"A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master.”  If Jesus suffers then His followers will also suffer to because they belong to Him and He is in heaven and cannot be gotten to so the next best things are to get at His disciples.  When Jesus was talking to Saul of Tarsus who was persecuting the followers of Jesus Christ He asked him why he was persecuting “Me.” 

            Paul writes in his very last letter which was to Timothy in 2 Tim. 3:12 “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”  Peter tells the suffering believers he was writing to “If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you (1 Pet. 4:14).”  MacArthur adds “Suffering causes believers to sense the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, which gives assurance of salvation.”

2/12/2017 9:02 PM