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 20th 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 11th 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
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