The Call to Ministry

Well, good evening. It’s a privilege for me to be here and to be with you tonight, and I want to invite you to turn to Ephesians and to chapter 3. I’m just going to read a few verses here, beginning in verse 7. Ephesians 3:7.

And Paul says, “Of this gospel”—to which he’s been referring since the very beginning of his letter—“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 … realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.”

And then he goes on to pray for them in the balance of what is chapter 3.

Let’s just pause and ask for God’s help:

Lord, in the evening hour, after all that this day has been, we come to seek you. We come to rejoice in singing your praise, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now we say,

Speak, O Lord, as we come to you
To receive the food of your Holy Word.
Take your truth, plant it deep in us;
Shape and fashion us in your likeness,[1]

we pray, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

What I would like to do this evening is to think with you—or to have you think with me, I hope—about something of the nature of gospel ministry. Much of what I have to say will, of course, be immediately applicable to some who are planning to go eventually—or hoping or compelled to go eventually—into pulpit ministry, but I trust that the way in which we approach it will be sufficient for each of us to understand exactly how this relates to us. The “I am”—I said we would have a second “I am”—the “I am” is there in verse 8: “To me, though I am the very least of all the saints…” So, this morning, “I am not ashamed of the gospel”;[2] tonight, “I am the … least of all the saints.”

Perhaps I can begin in this way: by telling you that I love pastors. I love pastors. Since a boy in church, I always wanted to meet the pastor. I wanted to shake his hand at the end of the service. I don’t know if every boy felt the same way. I think probably they did; I don’t know. I don’t know if it was weird. But I can still—I have vivid recollections of myself as a small boy, standing in line, often on my own, so that I could just look up to this fellow and shake his hand. And to this day, pastors have made a huge impact on my life. I could name so many: John, Jim, Derek, Stanley, Sinclair, George, Eric, Dick. We could go on for a long time, and you could add more. But the notion of ever being a pastor? No, I had no interest in that at all. None. I thought they were really good—super, what they did. I paid attention most of the time. But becoming one?

Because, you see, I knew a number of them up close. They would sometimes come to our home for Sunday lunch, and we would entertain them. My mother would cook for them. And often I would be left with them in the living room while lunch was being prepared, my father helping my mother. And so, I was the oldest of three siblings, and I was the one on the couch with these men. And they would sit up close to you, and often, after preaching, their breath could kill from about forty yards. And I could just still remember the way they would look at you and ask you questions. And then every so often they would drop the death-knell. This is what they would say: “Aye, sonny. You know, sonny, maybe God will make you a pastor one day!” I was like, “I’m going to my bedroom right now. I don’t know. No! No! I don’t think so.”

I’m not here to tell you my life story. But as you can tell, I have been all wrapped up in this business for a long time now. And… Yeah! I mean, when I was ordained into the gospel ministry at the age of twenty-four in 1976, the second Sunday in October, in Edinburgh, I wore a clerical collar on that day—something I had never done. You need to understand that in Scotland at that time, in the ’60s and ’70s, even sensible evangelical preachers wore clerical garb—not necessarily robes, but nevertheless, they were identified in that way. And so the man to whom I was assistant said to me, “Alistair, if you are ever going to wear a clerical collar, then I suggest that you wear it tomorrow morning, when you are ordained. And that way you will have broken your duck, as it were, and you will be off to the races.”

Well, I thought about it long and hard. I wasn’t convinced, but I loved this guy so much. I admired him. If he did it, I did it. That’s fine. And so I had to go into George Street in Edinburgh and buy myself a clerical collar and a stock that would go under my suit. I chose gray. Some people wear purple, and that would be drawing too much attention to yourself, so I went with gray. And I took it home. And when I got home to the apartment, my wife was out with my younger sister. She was nursing in Edinburgh at the time and staying with us. And I put this outfit on. And then I stood in the bathroom, and I looked at myself, and I didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or burst into tears. ‘Cause I looked, and I said, “What in the world are you doing? What are you becoming here?” I mean, it was an existential crisis—which was brought to a phenomenal conclusion when the door opened and my wife and my sister came in. I was standing in the hallway with my back to them, and when I turned around, they just bust out laughing. They thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen in their entire life, which did a lot for me in terms of both my—encouraged my self-esteem and everything.

Anyway, in the following morning, when I stood up to be ordained, I’m going to tell you that if I had been asked to stand up stark naked, it would not have had any greater an impact than it had for me in that moment. And it was such a solemn, solemn, solemn thing. And here, however long after that—you can do the mathematics yourself, from ’76 to 2023—here I stand.

People say to me in the community, “What is it exactly that you do? What is this?” And then there are other people who say, “I can do what you do.” I had one of the fellows in the church, a very effective chap. He flew fighter planes in Vietnam, he was Texan, and he had a pretty good grasp of life—at least he told me so. And one day he took me out to lunch. He took me out to lunch, and when we’re having lunch, he said that exact thing to me. He said, “You know, I don’t know what your deal is,” he says, “but I can do what you do.” I said, “What is it that I do?” He said, “You stand behind a box and talk.” And I said to him, “Bill, do you think that’s really what happens?” He said, “Yes, I do.”

Twenty-five years on, he’s now a pastor down in North Carolina, standing behind a box, apparently, and talking—unless he has actually discovered something of the nature of gospel ministry as described by Paul here in these verses: “Of this gospel I was made a minister.” “I was made a minister. I was made a servant.”

He’s already told the Ephesians in verse 6 that all the benefits that they enjoy as members of the same body and as partakers of the same promise is theirs “through the gospel.”[3] That’s the final phrase of verse 6. The mystery, in verse 3, has been revealed to him, and the ministry has been received by him. He neither created the mystery or discovered it on his own, nor did he sign up as a result of some enterprising endeavor at a Christian college somewhere that suggested that might be a cool thing to do. None of that happened to him at all. And he identifies himself quite clearly as a minister of the gospel.

And in doing so, he expresses surprise at God’s choice: “To me!” That’s why I read it like that. You thought I goofed up, maybe, but no. It is a comma here in the ESV, but I think he said, “To me,” like, “Woo!!”—double exclamation mark. “To me, though I am the very least of the saints, this grace was given.” He expresses surprise at God’s choice, and he understands simultaneously the task to which he has been assigned.

The gospel is God’s message of salvation through the death and resurrection of his Son, conveying divine power by grace to all who through faith believe.

Now, let me try and just gather our thoughts under three words. The first word is identity. The second word is humility. The third word is responsibility.

Identity

First of all: What is his identity? Well, it’s very clear, isn’t it? He is a servant, or “a minister,” of the gospel. Of the gospel. “Of this gospel.” Paul is always talking about the gospel, isn’t he? First Corinthians 15: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,” and so on, “and that he appeared to Cephas” and to the others.[4] And he goes on from there all the way into the chapter.

Let me just pause and say something about the gospel and about proclaiming the gospel and serving the gospel: When you have told somebody their need of the gospel, explained to them the benefits of receiving the gospel, or have warned them of the dangers of rejecting the gospel, you may have done all of that without ever having told them the gospel. And the people are sitting there listening to you and saying, “Well, I understand there’s a benefit to accepting. There’s a danger to rejecting. But what is the gospel?” If you’re going to be a servant of the gospel, you’re going to have to be able to say that the gospel is God’s message of salvation through the death and resurrection of his Son, conveying divine power by grace to all who through faith believe.

And so Paul says, “If you want to know who I am, I am a minister of the gospel.” He wasn’t in this position as a result of human ingenuity but as a result of divine initiative. He introduces himself in the longest way when he begins Romans: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through [the] prophets in the holy Scriptures,”[5] and so on.

Later on, in Ephesians, of course, he’s going to remind these people that the role that he plays as a servant of the gospel is a forerunner of all that will be discovered in those who are gifted to the church as pastors and teachers.[6] You don’t need to be reminded of this. It’s familiar material here—that the pastor-teacher is a gift of the ascended Christ to the church. So if someone says, “I know what you do,” they might want to think about it a little more.

Now, the English language is changing all the time. New words are put in, and old words, I guess, are taken out. The Oxford English Dictionary, the best dictionary in the world, just grows and grows and grows. French people are annoyed by how many English words have been absorbed by French and so on, but we won’t go into that just now. But one of the words… I am so old that the verb to grab was a bad word in the ’50s. When the confectionary was placed on the table with a group of children sitting round, one of the things that would be immediately said is, “Alistair, don’t grab. Don’t grab.” But everywhere I go, the grabbers are in full force: “Good morning, and welcome to the church. If you haven’t had a bulletin, grab one. If you would like to wait around till later on, grab a coffee. Why don’t you grab the person next to you and shake their hand? Why don’t you grab, grab, grab, grab, grab!” It’s not about grabbing! He didn’t grab! He was given. He was given, and he received. You think you’re going to be a pastor? Keep your hands off. Keep your hands in your pocket for the time being. You’re not going to grab this—or if you do grab it, pity help the people that you go to.

Notice how he makes it clear. This was given to him. In verse 2, if you look up: “assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you.” It was given to him. Down in verse 7: “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me.” And again, in verse 8, he comes to the same thing: “Though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach.”

No seminary, no Bible college makes a man a minister. Only God makes ministers of the gospel. The agency into which we find ourselves and from which we emerge is a tremendous, vital asset. But I have had in the past thirty-seven years in my church a number of gentlemen who successfully made their way through the credentialed opportunities of discovery of theology in some kind of institution who were—my best estimate of them was they were a royal pain in the neck. A complete pain in the neck. Because they had completed the education, but they had clearly not been called by God. And the fact that they had the education just made them a jolly nuisance to everybody else. They had made a grab at it, but it wasn’t there.

Paul was a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and he was a steward of God’s grace. And it is in dependence upon God’s grace, you will notice, that he ministers the grace of the gospel. This is something, again, that if you do end up in pastoral ministry, you and I, we need to remind one another of this: that gifts that are given by Christ for ministry do not raise us above those to whom we minister. The gifts that are given to us in Christ for ministry do not raise us above those to whom we minister. That’s why when we move amongst one another, we need to be gentle and humble in spirit.[7]

Now, Paul was absolutely convinced that he was what he was by the grace of God. He says it all the time. Because left to himself, he would have continued as a self-satisfied Pharisee. He tells us when he writes to Timothy that he was a persecutor, and he was a blasphemer.[8] He had heard the message about Jesus, and he had actually listened to the speech delivered by Stephen. But on that occasion, it wasn’t simply that he didn’t receive it. Luke tells us that he reviled it. It was the furthest thing from his mind that he would ever be in that position.

But what happened? Well, he encountered “the immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power toward[s] [those] who believe.”[9] When you read Ephesians from the beginning, it’s just one huge, big, long sentence, for which Paul is famous. And he says,

I [did] not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation [and] knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, [so] that you may know … the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward[s] us who believe.[10]

It wasn’t—as I said in passing this morning—it wasn’t that he just moved from one religious expression to another. No, he’s completely transformed. I mentioned this, but let me just read it—when he’s explaining to Timothy. “God is blessed,”[11] he says, and

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly [and] in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and [the] love that are in Christ Jesus.[12]

Now, you and I both know that he had a unique role as an apostle. That is not our role. He was a recipient and a communicator of this mystery which has been revealed to him, as he writes of it in this chapter. And that is true in a way that isn’t true of us. But with that said, the pattern, if you like, for gospel ministry, for the servanthood of the gospel, is actually fairly clear. The servant of the gospel is not self-appointed.

I may be just getting increasingly old and disgruntled—which I could check with my wife; I’ll call and ask. But it hasn’t happened in a while (I’m hoping that it’s faded out): letters that I get from young men telling me about how they are, you know, “ready” to go, and they outline, you know, what it is they’re looking for. They would like to be in a church that is in such and such a setting, that it is a multigenerational church, that it is one of these and one of those and one of the next things. And I say to myself, “Who does this guy think he is? Do you want to serve the gospel? Or is he just looking for ‘the spot’?”

I know you’ve got good sports here. I don’t know about your soccer team. I hope it’s good. But when I played for my school in Scotland, it was a really high-flying operation. (That’s irony, but…) We didn’t have—we had nothing. We had no buses. We barely had uniforms. And you found out on Friday lunchtime if you were on the team. You had to go to the chemistry lab, which always smelled of rotten eggs, and you sat up in the lab thing, and the games teacher came in and called out the names. And then you discovered whether you were in or whether you were out. And if you were in, he threw a jersey to you, and you took it. I must tell you: All I wanted was to be on that team. I don’t care what number he’s giving me. I don’t care if he wants me to run up and down, inside and out. I don’t care. I don’t care. I want to be on the team.

“Put me on the team, please. I want to serve you. I don’t have an agenda about where. I don’t have a plan about what. I want the jersey. I want to be on the team. Jesus, I want to be on your team. Now, you take care of it from there.” That’s as much as you need to do. Get in your bedroom, on your knees before God, and tell Jesus, “Lord Jesus Christ, I want to be on your team. I don’t want to grab anything for myself. I want to receive it. I’m not becoming an apostle. I’m just a servant of the gospel. And my identity is going to be that.”

Who are you? What do you have to say about yourself? That’s the thing, isn’t it? The role of the pastor-teacher is not chosen by us. A call that comes to us is a call that, ultimately, we cannot resist. Spurgeon said if you can stay out, stay out.[13] I think he was right, though others think he was wrong. But since I’m the one talking right now, there we go.

Humility

All right. I said enough on identity, and I want to say something now about humility. I’m very proud of this next section. And I did write a book, Humility and How I Have Attained It. And chapter 1 began, “I am not conceited, although I have every right to be so.” And it just went on from there.

But anyway, notice that Paul was overwhelmed by the wonder of God’s dealings with him. Now, think about this. Bcause Paul was a self-assured fellow: good background, perfect record, really, at school. He would have been a highflier. He was circumcised on the eighth day. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews.[14] He was a pupil of the right person,[15] and so on and so on and so on. Something dramatic has to happen to this guy for him to say, “But all of that I counted as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord.”[16] And that was the reality of it.

And so you find, as he writes in this way, this is not false modesty. This is not Uriah Heep. You remember in David Copperfield, where Uriah Heep was always telling him, “I am an ever so ’umble man, Master Copperfield. I am an ’umble man.” He wasn’t a humble man. He was a creep. And Dickens did a masterful job of portraying him in that way.

So when Paul says, “Though I am the very least of all the saints,” he’s telling the truth from his perspective. He wasn’t going around going, “Excuse me, I’m the apostle Paul. I’ve got quite a story to tell. I’d like to tell it to you. Many people are interested in me, and I’m sure you will be…” No. No, no, no, no. No.

No, he… I wonder: In what position was he when he said, “The Son of God … loved me and gave himself for me”?[17] “The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me? Though I am the least, that you would call me out? That you would give me gifts? That you would enable me to fulfill the purposes that you have had for me from all of eternity?”

Paul would have been happy with these songs tonight, from the first to the end. He’d be happy to sing with us often at Parkside,

O how the grace of God amazes me!
It loosed me from my [chains] and set me free.
What made it happen so?
His [own] will, this much I know,
Set me, as now I show, at liberty.[18]

In 1 Corinthians he refers to himself as “the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle.”[19] John Stott makes this observation: He says, you know, “Perhaps he was deliberately playing on the meaning of his name. For his Roman [name] ‘Paulus’ is Latin for ‘little’ or ‘small,’ and tradition says,” as we noted this morning, that “he was a little man. ‘I am little,’ he may be saying, ‘little by name, little in stature, and … spiritually littler than the littlest of all [the] Christians.’”[20] What a young man or a young woman is on their knees in the privacy of their own bedroom or in their sole-propriety ownership of their car as they drive down the freeway—what we are there is what we are, and nothing else. You can kid yourself as much as you like, but God, who searches and knows our hearts, knows the motives of our hearts. “To me? His grace was given to me?”

I read The Times of London, and I read other things as well. I read The Wall Street every so often. It’s kind of boring. But in The Times… Actually, this was in The Spectator magazine. A young lady called Zoe Strimpel (I don’t know who she is, but I love the name: “Hello, I’m Zoe Strimpel”)—anyway, she brought an article the other day that was called “Stop Broadcasting Your ‘Personal News.’” “Stop Broadcasting Your ‘Personal News.’” And she wrote about, you know, how the way it goes now is you’re announcing, you know, online, in a kind of pseudo-humble way, “You’ll be amazed at what has happened to me,” and so on. And she says, you know, this is getting completely out of control—and, she says, particularly in Britain. “What happened to good old-fashioned British self-deprecation,”[21] where litotes is the name of the game, so that by going down, you make the thing go up? I mean, it’s a real art form. And there is conceit in it and deceit in it as well, for sure, but by and large, you don’t find British people—especially the old sort of “British people”—you don’t find them going around and saying, “You know, I just finished at Oxford, and I’m going to Yale, and I will be coming from Yale.” No, no, no! They’d never do that at all. You’d need a screwdriver to find out where it is they went to school.

For example, my boss graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, with a history degree. Sinclair had known him his entire life, and Sinclair said to me the other day, “Where did you get that tie?”

I said, “Derek gave it to me.”

He said, “But what tie is it?”

I said, “Well, it’s his tie from Emmanuel College, Cambridge.”

He said, “Well, why are you wearing it?”

I said, “Because he gave it to me. What’s your problem?”

And he said, “I never knew that Derek went to Cambridge!” Because he’d never told him. There was no reason to. He was a servant of the gospel.

This is what the girl says: She says it’s rather “odd” and particularly “sad in [Britain] of all places, to consider that humankind’s dirty little secret—that each of us think we are the centre of the universe—is now out in the open.”[22] No longer are we going to conceal it. No! We’ll put it right on the front of Facebook. We’ll let everybody know who we are, what we’re doing, what we did for Christmas, what we’re planning on doing next, so that everybody can know every minute of the day just how wonderfully well it is going.

Can you imagine John the Baptist if he was on Facebook? Why, he would have been nothing! He’d never… Incidentally, I’m not on… What is it? Is it called Facebook? Meta is what it’s called now. I’m not on it. You say, “Yes, you are.” That’s not me. That’s them—that Truth For Life thing. That’s not me. I can’t get on it. I don’t know how you get on it, and so I don’t have to get off it.

But anyway, if you imagine John the Baptist… Because if you think about it, John the Baptist is a beauty when it comes to this. I mean, he was a weird guy. He was at Whole Foods before there was a Whole Foods. He was… Talk about the keto diet? This guy had knocked it dead, right? He’s wearing a garment of… And the leather belt, and chomping down on locusts and everything. Big jar of honey like Winnie-the-Pooh!

And they came to him, and they said, you know, “Who are you? Are you…” He said, “No, I’m not.” They said, “Are you?” He said, “No, I’m not.” They said, “Well, this is not going very well. What do you have to say about yourself?”[23] And he said, “Well, why don’t you sit down? This could take some time.” No. He said, “I’m a finger pointing. I’m a light shining. I’m a voice crying. My entire existence is a servant of the one that you will see on the other side of the riverbank. Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”[24]

If you go to London, as many of you will… What a boondoggle that is! You call that education? Anyway, off you go, and you go there, and then you go to Spurgeon’s grave. And you’ll be so disappointed, as I am when I visit it, that nobody keeps it up. Nobody really cares. There’s weeds all around. But carved right into the stone, one of Spurgeon’s favorite hymns, and a favorite line of the hymn:

E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme
And shall be till I die.[25]

“This is the one to whom I will look,” says the Lord: “he”—or she—“who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”[26]

I don’t know whether it’s fictitious or not, but they say that when Michelangelo was painting the frescoes on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, that he had a contraption that he had created around his head so that he could have a candle sticking out above his head so that in the work, his own shadow did not obscure what he was about.

Parenthetically (and I’ll come to the last point), in thirty-nine years here in the States, every collapse of a minister—and of that number there are too many, too sadly so—in every single case: pride. Pride. Doesn’t matter if it’s sexual. Doesn’t matter if it’s financial. Doesn’t matter what way it comes out. At the bottom is pride. Pride will kill you. Pride will destroy a church. Pride will destroy your ministry.

If, you know, somebody says to me, “You know, how do you work at humility?” I say, “Get a wife.” Because, you know, every pastor needs a wife if for no other reason than to keep him humble! When you come home, say, “How was the thing?” “Oh, it was fantastic! It was… I did the talk in the morning. It was quite good. The evening, it was a little worse, but I made it through and everything.” And Sue takes out a big pin just to burst the big head so that I can get through the bedroom door, so that she can get me back down onto the pillow, so that it’s not like, you know, a grapefruit on a toothpick, you know. “Heat!”—like that.

Or, at the other end: when you come home and say, “Oh, it was horrible; it was horrible,” and she’ll pick you up. I leave the ministry every Sunday night. You should know this. Every Sunday night, it’s the same thing. She doesn’t care anymore after all these years. But in the early days I used to go in and say, “Oh, what a day!” I said, “Tomorrow… Tomorrow I get a job. A real job! I may even grab it. That’s how interested I am in it. I’m going to get a real job.” She used to say, “Oh, honey, you’re fine. You’re always going to get…” Now she just goes, “Oh, go to sleep. You’re unemployable in any case. You would be hard-pressed to get anything going in Walmart or anything at all.” I freely admit it. Yeah.

Responsibility

So, identity as a servant of the gospel; humility as the very foundation of his servanthood; and his responsibility as a servant of the gospel is in order to speak to the gentiles, primarily.

He’s converted. The word is given to Ananias: “I want you to go to the street, and I want you to speak to this guy.” You know Ananias’s response. And God says to him, “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the gentiles.”[27]

“Before the gentiles? Lord, what are you talking about? This guy’s perfect for Jewish evangelism. I mean, he was a Hebrew. He can talk to all those people!”

“He’s my man before the gentiles.”

How amazing that God should choose someone who hated gentiles to be the very person to proclaim God’s love to them! God knows what he’s doing. He knows the plans he has for you.

That was his audience. His message was simply, in a word, Christ, the Lord Jesus. This is the real test of the gospel servant’s ministry: Does she, does he proclaim Christ in the place they’ve been set? Is he, like Paul, determined to know nothing more or less than Jesus Christ and him crucified so that those to whom they minister, that their faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God?[28]

The responsibility is not a political responsibility. Of all these years that I’ve been here, every time the elections come around, I know the people. They’re all coming back again and again and again: “Come on now, Pastor. Let’s get the thing going here. We’ve got to get America back on track. You’re the man to help us.” I tell them, “Well, I would like to see America get back on track, but actually, I don’t think that God has given me a mandate in terms of politics. The only mandate he’s given me is to be a servant of the gospel—therefore, to preach Christ. Nor has he given me a responsibility that is simply ethical or, if you like, moralistic.”

Paul knew that. The Jews were good at moralism. The pagan Romans were good at moralism. He wasn’t there to proclaim that. He was there in order to say, “The message of Christianity that I come to proclaim to you is Christ himself and all of the riches that are there in him”—“to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery,” and so on.

The great symphony, you know, with which this begins… And it is—if it was set to music, it would be transcendent, wouldn’t it? “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,”[29] and so on. By the time he’s finished, he’s just bursting the boundaries of it. God is unsearchable. He’s inscrutable. He’s inexplorable. He’s untraceable. He’s unfathomable. He’s inescapable. He’s incalculable. He’s infinite and so on. And so he says, “This is my whole responsibility: to make Jesus known.” How straightforward! How wonderful! What a privilege!

When Paul writes to the Corinthians, he makes it so perfectly clear. In fact, every time he writes, he makes it clear. But when he comes at the end of his opening salvo for the Corinthian letter, he says, you know, “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even [the] things that are not, to bring to nothing [the] things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”[30] You know, I think Paul had a problem with that. I think the reason he mentions this kind of stuff so much is because he knew he was prone to that. In fact, the thing that uncovered him, remember, was covetousness.[31] He says, “I was really good on most of those laws, but the thing that got me was number ten: covetousness.” That Paul was uncovered by covetousness? What did he covet? You know what I think he coveted? I think he coveted what Stephen had. And he saw his face like an angel,[32] and he looked at him. He must have said to himself, “I don’t know what that is, but I don’t have that.”

What is God actually doing with every single one of us? In a phrase: making us like Jesus.

“So that no human … might boast in the presence of God.” When he writes in 2 Corinthians—sorry, I just went back to humility again for a moment—but when he writes in 2 Corinthians, he’s dead honest on it, isn’t he? He says, “To keep me from getting a fat head…” That’s my paraphrase. “To keep me from becoming conceited, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan—so that I wouldn’t get a fat head!” So that the very things that he wanted to get removed from him… “Three times I asked for the Lord.” The Lord said, “No, no, no. That’s going to stay.” All of us will limp through our lives in one way or another, either obvious or unknown, but known to God and known to us. “My grace is sufficient for you. For my strength is made perfect in weakness.”[33]

And it’s in his weakness that he then goes on to say what he says: “When I came to you, I didn’t come like a big shot. I proclaimed to you the testimony of God, but not with lofty speech or wisdom.”[34] Why? Because he couldn’t do it? No, because he knew that the answer was found in a wisdom that was beyond the searching out. “I proclaimed to you righteousness. Aware of my sinfulness, God drew me to himself. I was actually, ultimately, afraid to approach God. But now a righteousness from God has become mine.”

Sanctification. Sanctification—the work, the middle part that we spoke about this morning: that I have been saved from sin’s penalty in that fountain filled with blood. One day, I will be saved from sin’s presence, but now, I am being saved from sin’s power. What is God actually doing with every single one of us? In a phrase: making us like Jesus. When Paul writes in Romans 8, he says that “those whom he foreknew he … predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son”[35]—that God’s purpose from eternity was to make you and me look more like Jesus. When Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, he says, “We … are being transformed into [his] image”[36]—so that God’s eternal purpose: to make us like Jesus. Our existential reality is to be conformed to Jesus. And when we see him, we will be like him, so that, I guess, eternally and existentially and eschatologically, the plan is the same. And redemption—all of it, all wrapped up in Jesus.

Well, some of you are looking at me, and some of you have already moved into the second stages of anesthesia, which is a good sign to stop. And some of you, maybe you’re saying, “Well, it wasn’t really what I was thinking, because, you know, I’m not going to be… My name is Julie, and I’m not going to be in pastoral ministry, Begg. If you don’t know anything about the Master’s, you don’t get to be in pastoral ministry here.” And that’s one of the reasons I like this place so much, incidentally. But that’s another story.

Wherever you’re going—as a bank teller, your identity is a servant of Christ. If you’re going to fly for United Airlines, you’ll fly as a servant of Christ. Humility is an inescapable part of what it means to become increasingly like Jesus, and the responsibility, while uniquely given to someone in pastoral ministry, is the exact same responsibility: to meet people in the thoroughfares of life and say, “You know something? I have got a really fantastic friend—a really good friend. He loved me before I ever knew him.[37] I’d love to tell you about him. If we could get a coffee, would you like to know about my friend?” Say, “Well, I don’t know. Yeah, sure, why not?” Tell them about Jesus! Tell them your identity is in Jesus. Tell them that you’re becoming more like Jesus—a little slow, but going. And tell them that it’s both a privilege and a responsibility to do what we’re doing as servants of the gospel.

I guess if this morning, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel”—we could say that was about bravery. And this rambling discourse, I think we should just say it was about humility, probably. And I don’t know about tomorrow morning. It’s not tomorrow morning yet!

What do we do now? We sing some more? We pray?

All right:

Lord, we thank you. We thank you for your Word. Thank you for the Lord Jesus. Thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit. Complete your purposes in us and through us, we pray, so that we might live to the praise of your glory. And we thank you for the joy of this day and for the company of one another, and we commend ourselves and our loved ones to your care. In Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “Speak, O Lord” (2005).

[2] Romans 1:16 (ESV).

[3] Ephesians 3:6 (ESV).

[4] 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 (ESV).

[5] Romans 1:1–2 (ESV).

[6] See Ephesians 4:11–12.

[7] See Matthew 11:29.

[8] See 1 Timothy 1:13.

[9] Ephesians 1:19 (ESV).

[10] Ephesians 1:16–19 (ESV).

[11] 1 Timothy 1:11 (paraphrased).

[12] 1 Timothy 1:12–14 (ESV).

[13] C. H. Spurgeon, “The Call to the Ministry,” in Lectures to My Students (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2001), 24.

[14] See Philippians 3:4–6.

[15] See Acts 22:3.

[16] Philippians 3:8 (paraphrased).

[17] Galatians 2:20 (paraphrased).

[18] Emmanuel T. Sibomana, trans. Rosemary Guillebaud, “O How the Grace of God Amazes Me” (1946).

[19] 1 Corinthians 15:9 (ESV).

[20] John Stott, The Message of Ephesians: God’s New Society, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1979), 119.

[21] Zoe Strimpel, “Stop Broadcasting Your ‘Personal News,’” The Spectator, January 26, 2023, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/stop-broadcasting-your-personal-news.

[22] Strimpel.

[23] John 1:19–22 (paraphrased).

[24] John 1:23, 28–29; 3:29–30; 5:35 (paraphrased).

[25] William Cowper, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” (1772).

[26] Isaiah 66:2 (ESV).

[27] Acts 9:11, 15 (paraphrased).

[28] See 1 Corinthians 2:2, 5.

[29] Ephesians 1:3 (ESV).

[30] 1 Corinthians 1:28–29 (ESV).

[31] See Romans 7:7.

[32] See Acts 6:15.

[33] 2 Corinthians 12:7–9 (paraphrased).

[34] 1 Corinthians 2:1 (paraphrased).

[35] Romans 8:29 (ESV).

[36] 2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV).

[37] James Grindlay Small, “I’ve Found a Friend” (1863).