The Presentation of Members Understanding Ministry

The speaker is discussing the book of Colossians, specifically chapter 1. They mention that the chapter is made up of six sentences, one of which is a long sentence spanning from verse 21 to verse 29. The speaker explains that although the sentence is long, it contains valuable information about the responsibility of believers and the ministry they have to fulfill. They emphasize the importance of living as children of God and representing Him well. The speaker also mentions that ministry involves suffering and sacrifice, but it is done out of joy and in fulfillment of God's purpose. They discuss the subject of ministry, which is a mystery that has been hidden for ages and generations, but is now made known to believers. They explain that God keeps some secrets and reveals them to special people throughout history, including His saints. The speaker encourages the audience to seek understanding and knowledge of ministry according to what the Bible teaches. If you have your Bibles, turn to Colossians chapter 1. Colossians chapter 1. We will be finishing up this chapter today and then get ready to move on into chapter number 2. But one of the neat things about chapter 1 is it's actually just six sentences. And we're in the middle of a great big sentence now that actually covers all the way from verse 21 to verse 29. And when you see long sentences like this, kind of like pastors sometimes with long services, all of a sudden Paul has got to talking about something and he gets so excited and he just doesn't want to put a period there. And so, man, he just adds these semicolons and these colons and he just keeps on going. And the next thing, man, he's just going on and on and on. But there's some really, really good stuff that we find here in this passage of Scripture. And so, I want us to actually go back to verse 21 and read this entire sentence this morning before we finish out these last few thoughts on the participation of members. We have a ministry to do. We have a responsibility to do. And Paul is going to address this this morning. He starts in verse 21 and he begins with the words, and you, and you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death to present you holy and blamable and unreprovable in His sight. If you continue in the faith grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven, whereof I, Paul, am made a minister who now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake, which is the church, whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you to fulfill the Word of God for even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints, to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus, whereunto I also labor, striving according to His working which worketh in me mightily. Father, we just thank You so much for Your love. We thank You for not leaving us as enemies, not leaving us as strangers, but, Father, loving us and offering forgiveness so that we can be reconciled and we can become Your children. And Father, because of that, we have a tremendous responsibility to live as a child of the King, the child of the Almighty God, the Creator of this world. And Father, we just ask You today through Your Word that You will take us and that You will help us to become more perfect, more complete, and more looking like You as we go through our everyday life so that other people will see You through us and will glorify the Father which is in Heaven. Thank You. We love You. In Your name we pray, Amen. If you have your book here, if you remember last week in the bulletin, and I kind of printed it for two different weeks that was there, but in our bulletin last week we talked about the source of ministry. And we said that God is the One that does the calling. Paul said in verse 21, I am made a minister. We didn't choose to be a minister. I didn't want to be a pastor. I didn't want to be a minister. I had my life planned out. I had my desires there. But God made me a minister. And I'm sure many of you have gone through the same thing when you were growing up and looking at your life and saying, man, what am I going to do with my life? Minister and ministering for God probably wasn't in the top five or ten. But yet, God says once we're saved, because He has reconciled us, we are to be ministers. And so God did it. So then we looked at the spirit of ministry. And that is joy. We ought to do it joyfully. You know, we have too many Christians today walking around, well, I have to go to church, or I have to go to men's meeting, or I have to go on visitation, right? No, we ought to be doing this out of joy. The fact that I got to wake up this morning and breathe God's wonderful air and to come and be around His children and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it ought to be a joyous thing. I look forward to ministry for God. I look forward to being around God's people and to leading people to Jesus Christ. And so He says, man, our spirit ought to be joy. But then we looked at the suffering of the ministry. And the bad news is, is guess what? If you're in the ministry, you're going to suffer. You're going to have to give some things up. You're going to lose some things. You may not be able to reach all of the goals and dreams that you want to do, but you're doing it for Christ and for His church that He bought with His precious blood. And so we need to understand we're not suffering just to be suffering. We're suffering for a purpose. I allow suffering to happen to me for Christ and for the church's sake. And then the last thing we finished off with last week is the scope of the ministry. We are to do it. We are to be actively involved in the ministry. Why? Because we are fulfilling our purpose. We are doing what God has called us to do. And so this morning, what I want to do is hopefully we will understand exactly what ministry is today. And so since we saw these four things today, we're going to look at four other things that will help us to understand what ministry is. Because today, it doesn't take long. You go pick up books on ministry and stuff and you find out that there's a lot of misconceptions about what ministry is. You know, well, we think ministry is vacation Bible school or church camp or maybe feeding the hungry or doing this or doing that. But what does the Bible say is ministry? Because that's what's important. And so if you'll look here, first of all, notice the subject of ministry. The subject of ministry. He says in verse 26, Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations but now is made manifest to his saints. I want you to understand when we look at the subject of ministry, I want you to understand He says that it has been hid from ages and from generations. Ages here is referring to time. And it's been hid for a long period of time. And then He mentions generations. Not only has it been hid for a long period of time, but it has also been hid from a lot of people. Generations. The people that is there. So He speaks in time and people. Now one thing that we all like, and I'm a mystery kind of guy. I love mysteries on TV. I love reading mysteries. I love trying to solve mysteries. I'm just fascinated with that kind of stuff. And yet when you get to the Bible and all of a sudden you see that word mystery, we kind of light up, right? Alright, man, this is something for us to solve. This is something for us to get. Especially a mystery that has been withheld for all the times and generations that's been going on. And so we get excited. And we start talking about God and mentioning mysteries. Now I want you to understand a couple of things about mysteries. Number one, is God has always kept some secrets. God has always kept some secrets. He doesn't let us know everything all the time. And so there are some secrets. Probably one of my favorite verses in the Bible that my father actually taught me a long time ago when I first started surrendering to preach. He said, man, there are going to be some questions when you're studying the Bible and some things that's going to come up that you're just not going to have the answer to, right? Somebody's going to come up and ask you a question about life or eternity. There's just nothing there about that. And so he gave me this verse because he said you can always give them a Scripture. In Deuteronomy 29, 29 is that verse that says the secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of this law. There's just some things that God just keeps secret. No matter how hard you study the Bible, no matter how much you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you're just not going to see it or hear it because God just doesn't want us to know everything. I think if God let us know every single thing all at one time, I think we would literally be scared to death. You know, just reading the picture of what it's going to be like in the last days, right? It's scary enough, but can you imagine if we actually knew the reality and the details of everything? It would just totally blow our mind. And so God has always kept something secret. Number two, God chooses to reveal some secrets to special people throughout history. When you go through the Old Testament and you look, there were certain people that God would open up these mysteries, these secrets to, so that they could understand. In Psalms 25.14, He said, The secrets of the Lord is with them that wide fear Him, and He will show them His covenant. Another passage of Scripture in Proverbs 3.32 says the foreword is an abomination to the Lord, but His secret is with the righteousness. There are some things that only God knows. There's also some other things that He would allow to special people, those people that fear God, those people that believe God and are obeying God and are following God, to be able to understand and to know. And so as we serve Him, as we follow Him, as we are living righteously on this earth, God will reveal more and more things to us. But the third thing is God chooses to reveal some secrets to His saints. And that's who you and I are today. The saints are those that have been chosen, that have been called, that have received salvation and have accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. We find here in this passage of Scripture in v. 26, even the mystery, which has been hid from ages and from generations but now, is made manifest in His saints. And so some secrets are for His saints. And so we're going to define mystery here. Because I want us to understand what exactly is this mystery? This sacred secret that is hidden in the past that is now revealed in the New Testament. What is this secret? Because when you study the Bible and you look at the Bible, there are a lot of mysteries revealed in the New Testament. If you go down and you do a word search of mysteries, you will find out that there is the mystery of iniquity. You will find that there is the mystery of the rapture. There is the mystery of Babylon. The mystery of the bride of Christ. The mystery of Israel's unbelief. The mystery of godliness. The mystery of Christ's incarnation. And so how does this relate to our ministry? What is He talking about? With all of these different ministries and all of these different secrets that God is revealing to us, what exactly in our passage of Scripture is Paul's secret that he's trying to reveal to us? And so we see in the fullness of the New Testament this revelation. And the fullness of the New Testament revelation is what makes the Old Testament studies meaningful. You know, the more that we understand and we get out of the New Testament, the more exciting the Old Testament becomes because the Old Testament is shrouded in this secrecy. There are some things that the Jews just couldn't handle. There were some things that they just wouldn't believe. There are some things that they just would not accept. And now that we have seen the fulfillment of the Old Testament, now we can look back and man, it is exciting to study the Old Testament. And so our message then is that the Old Testament promises have come to the New Testament through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the key to understanding the mysteries. What once was hidden has now been revealed through Jesus Christ. So this mystery is not some mystical thing. It's merely something that was in the past that is now revealed. A lot of people today want to make this some kind of a mystery or something mystical that only a few people can know and a few people can understand. But Jesus Christ through the Apostle Paul here writing to the church at Colossae has a mystery that was hid that He now wants us to understand and know this morning. And so look at verse 27. He defines the mystery for us. The secret that He has. He says, "...to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this ministry among the Gentiles." Among the Gentiles, which is what? Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now there's a whole lot that I can say about this, but I'm not going to go into it all this morning. I'm going to give you just a little bit of an idea and you can go follow this on your own. What did the Jews have to do to get to God? They had to have a sacrifice, didn't they? They had to have a priest. Where was God? God was in the tabernacle, right? And so they had to get to the tabernacle. If they wanted to get to God, they had to go through there. They had to come with an offering. They had to come with a sacrifice. They had to have something. Everything to get to know God and to know God was what? Set up in that tabernacle. But guess what? When Jesus Christ came onto the scene and now offers to us salvation, guess what? Now, Paul tells us that we have become the temple of God. We're a tabernacle. In other words, we don't have to go up to the tabernacle because Christ is living in us and each and every one of you as believers is a temple. Now this was totally confusing to the people of that day because why? God chose the Jews, right? And they had to go to the tabernacle, but now all of a sudden the secret is that the Gentiles, because the Jews rejected Jesus Christ, the Gentiles are accepting Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is living in them. That's a pretty cool deal. I don't have to go to Jerusalem to the temple. I don't have to go to the tabernacle because Christ lives in me. And so, man, that is the mystery. That is the secret that He is getting across. And when we think about that, He says there that we may know the riches of His glory. See, because He is in me, because I am my own temple, my own housing and dwelling place for God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, there is a lot of riches and wealth that come with that. There is a lot of riches. It may not be physical stuff, but there is a ton of spiritual stuff. And so the subject of ministry is the announcement to the world that God can live in them, but God also can live in me. That is the mystery. That is the subject of ministry. So if we're doing ministry, that's what it has to be focused around. That Christ can live in you. That Christ wants to live in you. So now, what's the style? How do we go about doing this ministry? You know, when you look at all of these different books and all of these books on ministry and everything else, how do we do this? Well, look at what Paul said in verse 28. Whom we preach. Whom we preach. There you go. He says, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. So what is the style of ministry? It is preaching. Paul told the church at Corinth. It is the preaching of the cross that is foolishness to men. Folks, our ministry is preaching. Now, I want you to understand something for just a minute, because I know immediately what your mind is. Everybody looks at me this morning and I am the one preaching, right? A preacher is one that gets up behind a pulpit and preaches, right? So I'm the preacher. So all of a sudden, you phased out and you said, well, if the ministry is preaching, then guess what? If Donny's responsibility and we don't have to do anything but support him and energize him and clap him, get him to go on, right? Absolutely not. But when you look at this word, what it actually means is to proclaim. To proclaim. It's not talking about getting up behind a pulpit and giving a formal address. What it's talking about is proclaiming this mystery, this secret that Christ is in you. Guess what? Every single one of you should be proclaimers. Every one of you are to be preachers. If you have been saved by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, you are a proclaimer. The Great Commission was not just for me and pastors to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. No, it's for you as you go through the world, you are to preach, to proclaim, to announce that Jesus Christ wants to live in you. That is our ministry. That is our message. And we have to live for Jesus Christ. But listen, and here's the key that we forget about. In order to proclaim something, you have to open your mouth. You know, I'm not against bumper stickers. I'm not against Christian t-shirts. I'm not against you putting a Christian flag in your yard. But let me tell you something this morning. As great and wonderful as all of them things are, every once in a while, you're going to have to open up your mouth. Because, see, just looking at pictures and just looking at t-shirts and just looking at bumper stickers and stuff is not going to convince you of the mystery of Jesus Christ. So we have to open up our mouth. You remember, that's what He told His disciples right before He ascended in Acts 1. He said, go to Jerusalem and wait, and the Spirit will come upon you and you shall be what? Witnesses. You will be proclaimers. Where? In Jerusalem, where you're at. But guess what? I'm going to make you proclaimers in Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost part of the earth. In other words, what's going to happen? When the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you're going to go about opening up your mouth. And wow, when they walked out of there, that 120, there was 3,000 that accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior that day, were baptized, added to the church. In the very next chapter, these 3,000 have gone out and what are they doing? They're opening their mouth. They're not wearing t-shirts. They're not putting Christian symbols on their bikes or the back of their donkeys or whatever. No, what are they doing? They're proclaiming Jesus Christ. It says in the next chapter there was 5,000 added. And then it got to where these people are going out and proclaiming Jesus Christ and they're talking about Jesus Christ. And it says, man, they are adding to the church daily. Daily! And then all of a sudden, you jump forward 2,000 years and we get excited if we add one person in a year. What happened? The problem is we've allowed fear to keep us from talking. We think, well, we built this big old church here. We announce all of our times. We're on Facebook, right? We've got our sign out there. We send out stuff all the time. We're getting information out. If people want to know about Jesus Christ, they can come here and learn about Jesus Christ, right? That's not God's plan. God says, here's the secret. Here's the mystery. Here's your ministry. To go out and proclaim. To share. To talk to somebody. And so that is our ministry. That is the style of our ministry. But notice it comes in two parts. There's a negative part, and then there's a positive part. The negative part, notice He says, whom we preach, and then He uses the word warning every man. What is a warning? A warning is something that is negative, right? You don't warn when good things are happening, right? I'm going to warn you, my parents are coming over tonight, right? When I tell my wife that, she knows, uh-oh, what's going on, right? It's a negative type of a way when I warn something is about to happen. And so what is He talking about? Man, as we proclaim, we have to warn people. And what He means by warning people in this negative context is, we need to be willing to speak up and we need to be telling them that what we're learning literally means to admonish. In other words, encouraging counsel in view of sin and coming judgment and punishment. We have to tell people that guess what? You are living in sin and judgment is going to happen. Now I want you to be honest with me for just a minute. I want you to really think for just a second. Do you really think a lot of the garbage that's happening in our world at such a great rate right now is happening because most of the Christians are stepping back and we're getting quiet and we're not saying anything? Or do you think it would actually slow things down a little bit if we stepped up and we warned people of what was happening? You know, I see the sin and the wickedness and the craziness that's going on in our society today, because nobody wants to say it. We don't want to warn people. Well, if you want to find out, come to my church and I will teach you. No, we need to be warning these people that what they're doing and the way that they're acting and the way that they're behaving is not becoming of Christ. It's not becoming of what God created us to be. God created us in the very beginning what? In His image. To have fellowship with Him, but that fellowship has been broken and that doesn't give us a right to just live and do what we want to do and make up what we want to do. No, we still have a responsibility to that God who gave His Son to die to pay for the penalty. We've already went through that up there that He has already reconciled us. And so we need to warn people. In 2 Thessalonians 3.14, Paul told the church at Thessalonica, any man obey not our word by this epistle. Note that man and have no company with him that he may be ashamed. Note them. Right? Have no company with him. And then do what? So that he might be ashamed and he might know that his actions are bad. That he might know that guess what? This is not appropriate. This is not what we are supposed to be doing. But he doesn't stop there. Look at the next verse. Because this is the part that I don't think we ever think about. We're good at noting people, right? We're good at not having company with that individual and everything. But look at what it says in verse 15. Yet count him not as a what? An enemy. An enemy, but what? Admonish him as a brother. That word admonish is the same word as when we preach, we warn. We warn. In other words, I think what we have seen in Christianity today is we have made a group of individuals the enemy. Right? And we have put them out there as enemies of Christ and as enemies of the church. But he says don't treat them like enemies. You don't have to hang around them. You don't have to accept what they're doing. You don't have to agree with them. But what do you do? You admonish them as a brother. You talk to them. You warn them what their actions are going to cost them and what it's going to do. Just like you would a family member that you love and care for. You wouldn't just ignore and just let their life fall apart. No, you would admonish them. You would tell them, hey, if you keep going down this path, guess what? This is where it leads. Here is the statistics. Here's what is happening. And so, don't count them as the enemy, but admonish them as a brother. Another passage of Scripture in Colossians 3.16. It says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. And remember what wisdom was? We already talked about that up in verse 9. That wisdom is what? Making them principles of the Word of God. Making principles that we can do what? Make application. Wisdom is making the principles of what we are to do. Spiritual understanding is applying what we know. And so he says, dwelling you richly in all wisdom. As you're reading the Bible and studying the Bible, you ought to be forming principles that God has for your life. Good principles, bad principles, and indifferent principles. And then he says, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. People need to be warned. People need to be warned. Just like little children. They have to be warned about sin. They have to be warned about false doctrine. They have to be warned about the consequences of disobedience. They have to be warned about spiritual laziness. If we love them, we need to warn them, right? We just sang the last song we sang this morning is people need the Lord. And they need to be warned that without the Lord, there's going to be some problems. And so listen, sometimes I have to preach hard messages. I have to warn you. I have to admonish you. I have to preach some negative messages. And it's not because I hate you. It's because I love you. And I want you to know that the hard messages, the admonishing messages, are the ones that are hard. They're the ones that I have to spend hours praying about and many sleepless nights because I know it's not going to be easy. It's not easy to deliver. It's not always easy to accept. But we do it out of love because I don't want you to stand there at the judgment seat of Christ. I don't want you to stand before God and say, hey, Brother Donnie never warned me about that. Brother Donnie didn't warn me about this. But then there's not only the negative side, but there's also the positive side. Look at this. He said there's teaching. There's teaching. And sometimes we get good at doing the warning, right? We will warn and we will admonish, but then we forget to teach. But preaching or proclaiming Jesus Christ takes both. You have to have the negative and you have to have the bad. If all you talk about is that we are sinners and the wages of sin is death and you never give the positive side of our death, no one could ever be saved. See, God has to be a God of justice, the negative of wrath, but He's also a God of grace and mercy. And so we have to be able to balance and see both sides effectively. So what about teaching? What are we talking about when we refer to teaching? When we talk about teaching, we're imparting positive doctrine. Those principles that we have learned in the Bible. Those things that we know to be good that God has placed upon our heart. We come to the believer and the conversation may go something like this. All of you know somebody that is not a believer. Somebody that is living a life that is dangerous, that is away from God, and here's the way we may have a conversation with them. You know, if you keep living the way you live and you keep rejecting God and Christ, I want to warn you, my brother or my sister, what's going to happen. That's the warning. If you continue down this road, I'm afraid this is going to happen. But then you don't need to stop there. Don't just give them the warning in the negative side, but then you need to say to the unbeliever, let me teach you what you need to do and how to correct it. Let me teach you how to find the proper answer. And these two things apply in the church. You see, the Christian sinning, you warn, but then you also instruct. And so what are we warning? What are we teaching? Well, let's go back to our text this morning in verse 28. It says, "...whom we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in what? All wisdom." Remember, where does wisdom begin? With the fear of the Lord, right? If you don't remember this, go back and listen to a few weeks ago or about a month ago to the message there. We talked about this wisdom that was there. Back up in verse 9. He says, "...for this cause also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding." And so we are praying that they will what? They will be able to accept the knowledge of God's will in their life. Through what? Wisdom, principles coming out of the Word of God, and spiritual understanding, the application. Our job is not to solve the world's problems. Our job is not to solve the world's problems. Our job is not to solve the economical problems, the political problems, all of these things that are out there in the world today. You know what our problem is? Our problem is simply to proclaim Jesus Christ. He's the One that fixes everything. He's the One that is the answer to everything. Could you imagine the impact? Let's forget about the world. Let's just talk about us that are here this morning. The group in Mina. Hopefully, they're still on Facebook Live. Can you just imagine if these two groups of individuals all of a sudden this morning would just begin to simply again open our mouth, warn people of their negative behavior, and teach them positively the principles of the Word of God. Can you imagine the impact that we would have upon our county? And then how that county would then spread to other counties and to states and to the world. The reason the Gospel is not going out and having an impact on the world is because we're sitting here in our churches and we're comfortable and we're saying, you know what, they're doing what they want to do and God will judge them and God will take care of them. But we're not warning them. We're not teaching them what needs to be done. This is my ministry. This is what God has called me to do. It is the ministry and making this our ministry, because it's not just my ministry, it's your ministry. And when we take this two ministries together, then it becomes our ministry. And so as you go out through the life that you're living and you meet people and you talk to people, you need to be warning. You need to be teaching. You need to be proclaiming Jesus Christ. The mystery that guess what? No matter how evil, no matter how wicked you are, because we are all sinners and we all deserve death, right? But Christ wants to live in you. He wants to be invited to live into your life. That's the proclamation. That's what we are to be proclaiming. That is our ministry. And so we need to be proclaimers. But Paul doesn't stop with that. Notice what he says. The sum of the ministry. The sum. Why do we continue to proclaim Jesus Christ? Why do we continue to proclaim that Jesus Christ lives in us? Look at the last part of verse 28. That we may present every man perfect... Where? In. In Christ Jesus. That's the goal. That is the goal. My goal as a pastor is to make sure that every one of you are presented in Christ Jesus. That when you walk out of here, that you know that you are in Christ and Christ is in you. When I walk outside of these doors, my job does not change. Everyone that I run into, it is my responsibility to make sure that they know that Christ wants to live in them and Christ can live in them. If they will repent and accept Him as their Sacrifice and Savior. And so what ultimately happens? Our goal and our purpose is to mature the saints. To bring us up to maturity. To get us to grow up. How many times did Paul say grow up? You know, it takes a grown-up. It takes a strong individual, a strong adult to warn and also teach and instruct. Anybody, a baby gets mad and angry. A baby will isolate themselves from it. A baby will say, well, I'll take my toys and go play somewhere else. But it's the parent, it's the mature individual that says, hey, I have to warn you about your behavior and here's how we can correct it. Here's what we can do. And man, we need this in our world and our society today. And as we mature, notice Ephesians 4 and verse 12. He goes up, if you read the verses before that, he says he gave some churches pastors and apostles and ministers and teachers and all of this. And here's the reason that we come together. For the perfecting of the saints. And then notice, the work of... there's that word again, the ministry. The work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ. What is the body of Christ? The church. If you are saved and Christ is living in you, guess what? The church is not this building. The church is when all of us with Christ come together and we gather together, guess what? We form the body of Christ. Because listen, I cannot be fully the body of Christ. Because I may be a hand and I may need Brother Morris' mouth. I may need Brother Eric's legs. Or whatever. He says we're all different parts and we're all different bodies. We all have different ministries. And so it takes all of us coming together. And when we are assembled together as a body, then all of a sudden, ministry is starting to happen. Maturity is beginning to take place. In Galatians 3, verse 3, Paul said, are you foolish? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh? If you've studied and read the book of Galatians, basically what Paul's saying is how in the world can you trust Jesus Christ at the very beginning for your salvation? How do we come to Jesus Christ for salvation? We are a sinner, right? We're lost. We're no good. We're dead. We're separated from God. But what? In His grace and His mercy, He came and He died on the cross for our sins. And He gave His life for our sins. And so what happened? He says why in the world did you accept salvation by grace through faith, and then all of a sudden now try to start fixing things in the flesh? It don't make sense, does it? And so Jesus Christ said that we are born of the Spirit, therefore we should walk in the Spirit, live in the Spirit. We have been born again. We have become a new creation. Old things are passed away. The verse that He read this morning follows after, for by grace are you saved through faith that not of your filth. It is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. But however, now that you're saved, now that you've entered into that relationship, now that Christ has come into you, you have become His workmanship. He is now molding you and shaping you through principles, through understanding of the Bible, through application of the Bible. He is maturing you for the work of the ministry. You have a job. There are people that you will reach that I'll never meet. There are people that you will reach that I will never come in contact with. And so all of us have to do our ministry. How do we mature? How do we mature? How do we grow up? Well, Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.16 through the Scriptures. See, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is what? Profitable. Scripture is profitable. All part of the Scripture is profitable. All of the Scripture is profitable. For what? For reproof? For warning us, right? When we've done something wrong? When we're not in the right place? Sometimes I read the Bible and all of a sudden it convicts me, man, I am not doing what God wants me to do. Right? And one of two things can happen. Typically, because I am a stubborn person, usually the first time I run across it, I slam my Bible shut and man, I've got to go work in the yard or I've got to go do something, right? Because I don't take criticism to will right at the first. I don't like warnings too much. And so God gives me time to wear out and wear down, right? And then I come back to Him and I come back and I open up my Bible again and say, you know what, God? Teach me something. And so then He starts teaching me. And then I say, you know what, God? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And I find out that the Bible is there to warn me, but it also tells me how to correct the situation. What do I need to do? What do I need to do? And then, guess what? It also gives me instruction into righteousness. How do I keep living this way? How do I not get back into the shape that I was when I was reading earlier this morning? And notice why He does all of this. All Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness so that the men of God may be what? Perfect. Mature. Mature. Thoroughly furnished unto all good works. What's the all good works? The ministry that God has placed with you. That ministry may be behind a pulpit. Your ministry may be singing specials. Your ministry may be teaching a class. Your ministry may be praying for those that are out there on the front line. Your ministry may be stuffing an envelope, writing a card to somebody that visits or whatever. We all have different ministries. But the thing is, is ultimately it comes down to every one of us has to open our mouth and proclaim. Tell them, teach them. Look at what He says in Colossians 1.28. Whom we preach. We preach, warning every man, teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Did you catch it on a key phrase there? Who are we to proclaim to? Who is our ministry for? For everybody, every man, every man, every man. Three times in that verse it says every man. Listen to me, I'm going to shock you for just a minute, but my ministry is not Kentucky Missionary Baptist Church. Our ministry is not Kentucky Missionary Baptist Church. Our ministry is every man. Every man. Everywhere we go. Everywhere we come in contact with. We've got a lot of people that are serving the church, but we need people serving the world. We need people ministering to the world. People need to know that Jesus Christ can live in them. They don't have to do anything special. They don't have to go somewhere special. Christ is in them. That is the ministry. So the subject of the ministry is Christ in you. We are to take that ministry through proclamation. That's the style. The style is it doesn't matter what we do as long as we are proclaiming that Jesus is in you. If we're just having a Bible school to do facts and all of that, then guess what? We're not doing ministry. But if we're doing ministry, we're going to proclaim Jesus Christ. The sum of that ministry is that people are going to be maturing. People are going to be growing up. You know, one of the biggest ways that I check my ministry, and right now I'm getting into that end of the year where I start to review this last year, and I start looking at, hey, the sermons that I preach, what have I done? Has there been any maturity in the church? Are people growing? Are people getting more like you? And I start looking and seeing different things and different ones. So maybe I don't judge my ministry all the time on how many people have showed up. Are we making grounds where we're at? Because that's when it comes to maturity. Because if I can get you mature, if I can get you to Jesus Christ where you are going to proclaim, then guess what? The growth will happen. The growth will take place because it's done by... Remember where we got the power from? It's in Jesus Christ, not us. And so, man, the sum of the ministry is we all become mature and we start looking and acting like Jesus Christ. But notice the last thing. The strength of the ministry. The strength of the ministry is Jesus Christ. Look at verse 29. Whereunto Paul says, I also labor, striving according to His working which worketh in me mightily. I also labor, striving. How in the world are we going to do this? How in the world are we going to accomplish ministry? How are we going to do it? Well, notice what he says there. If you're going to do it, you have to work hard. It's not just going to happen. If we're going to reach Slene County with Jesus Christ, if we're going to reach every one membership of the Kentucky Missionary Baptist Church and mature you, and then go and mature everybody in Slene County, guess what? It's going to take work. Right? It's not going to just happen. They're not lining up. My answering machine is not full. Every afternoon a people come in. Hey man, how can I minister? How can I work? How can I help you? It's not there. It's not happening. So what do we do? We have to work. We have to work hard. And then he also mentions strive. That striving is actually an athletic word. It actually means agonizing. In other words, what he's talking about is this athletic word is you can't be lazy. You've got to get up in the morning. You've got to be looking for opportunities. You've got to be looking for things. I talked to a person the other day in Walmart, and I would have never started a conversation with her if I wasn't thinking about it. If I wasn't looking for the opportunity. But I was able to talk with her and share with her and hopefully give her a little bit of warning and teaching in the few minutes that we were there. Man, we've got to be focused on it. It's hard work. You know, I don't always want to proclaim. I don't always want to warn. Sometimes, you know, I just want to get away. Sometimes I just want to get in a boat and go fishing. But you know what? God puts somebody there at that ramp or somebody comes up to a brush pile and guess what? I can't just be relaxing. I need to guide my ministries to proclaim. And so man, we have to work hard. And number two, if you're going to keep doing it, you're going to have to get the energy from Jesus Christ. Because guess what? We will burn out. You will get tired doing ministry. Even Jesus Christ would have to take time alone to pray and to rest and to eat and to recharge. And so man, it is tiring. But where do we get our energy? Where do we get that from? We get it from Jesus Christ. See, when Christ is working in us, He's able to give us all things that we need, right? If Jesus Christ is in me, Colossians 1 and verse 16, you remember what it said? That in Christ, by Christ, through Christ was all things created and all things what? Exist. So my existence is determined upon Jesus Christ, right? And so if I'm getting tired, then who do I need to go and get more energy from? Jesus Christ, the One who created me and sustained me. Hey, Jesus, I need a little bit of extra energy today, right? I guarantee you on many Sunday mornings, I get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and I say, hey God, can I have just a little bit of extra energy today? I need You. I just physically can't do this. My head's hurting. I'm tired. I didn't sleep good last night. I rassled. I at least snored all night long or coughed all night long or whatever. I just need a little bit of energy. You know what? He always comes through. He always comes through. He always provides. And so we've got to get our energy from Jesus Christ and quit trying to do it on our own. So here's the question that I want to ask you this morning. Are you participating in ministry? If it is all of our job, if you're a member of Kentucky Missionary Baptist Church and it is your job and your responsibility to minister, are you participating in ministry? God has called you. God has empowered you that you might suffer with joy proclaiming the mystery that Christ can be in them and in you. Are you ministering? And if you're not ministering, you don't owe me an apology. You don't owe each other an apology. You need to owe God an apology. Because God placed you in the ministry. The ministry of reconciliation. It is our job to reconcile sinners to Jesus Christ, to teach them and mature them so that they go out and proclaim the message of God so that they reach people and reconcile with people with Jesus Christ. And they mature them. And see, that's how discipleship works. Each one of us doing our own things. And what happens? We all begin to multiply. We begin to mature. And ministry begins to take place. That's what God created us for. That's what we're here for. And that's the mystery. How many of you know somebody right now? Think of them in your mind. Family members. Think about loved ones. Think about people you hang out with on Friday night at the football game that you know that are hurting that could be better off with Christ in them. But maybe their lifestyle's not what it ought to be. Who is somebody, just one person. I'm not asking you to go out and tell everybody this week. Just find one person this week that you can go and preach to, that you can proclaim. Warn them, but teach them that Jesus Christ loves them. He's forgiven them. And He wants to be a part of their life. And teach them that Christ can actually come and live in them. That's our job. It doesn't matter how you do it. Once you do it, that's what ministry looks like. And as we stand and have a verse of invitation this morning, are you participating in ministry?