Embracing the Divine Call of Pastoral Ministry

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I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness, the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. [00:01:16]

The verses that I just concluded reading provide not only for the church at Colossae but for the church in every generation a standard by which we might determine what are the marks of a God-given ministry. What should pastors in general be doing, and how will we be able to assess what a God-given ministry looks like? [00:03:25]

The pastor does not choose his task or his mission. Pastoral ministry is given by God from on high, and that is modeled all the way through the Scriptures from the calling of God and his servants in the Old Testament all the way through the prophets and then into the disciples and into the apostles themselves. [00:06:43]

If it is right for a man to give himself completely to the ministry of the gospel, he will feel that it is the only thing he can do. John Ryle, a 19th-century bishop of Liverpool, had no early sense of call, and when he shared his decision to enter the ministry, it came as a complete surprise to everyone. [00:07:52]

Paul says that it is his express responsibility and privilege in verse 25 of chapter one to present to you the word of God in its fullness. That does not come about as a result of five minutes of study on a Saturday night. It comes about as a result of hours and hours and hours of study. [00:10:01]

The responsibility of the shepherd is to lead the sheep into the pasture, and they eat. So the real question is whether the shepherds in this church are leading you into the pastures. Then the question is, are you eating? For we don't anticipate that mature sheep will need to be spoon-fed and or with bottles. [00:13:22]

Therefore, any ministry which sets aside or denigrates the place and priority of the message of the fullness of God's proclamation is a ministry that will eventually tend to nothing. That's why, for example, when Peter is reinstated by Jesus, he says, then feed my lambs, feed my sheep. [00:11:35]

Paul is a preacher, and he is presenting to them, he says in verse 5, the word of God, and he is proclaiming to them in verse 8 all that they need. He is true to his calling, and this is exactly what we need, and this is the way in which we are to assess how well things are going. [00:14:58]

When I came to you, I did not come with impressive words of man's wisdom nor with superior eloquence. I recognize that the Jews demand a sign and the Greeks seek wisdom. I assess the consumer expectations perfectly, what it was they wanted, and determined to give them nothing of what they wanted. [00:18:47]

The purpose of pastoral ministry is to see the people of God become fully mature. Now the phraseology that he uses here is in the present continuous tense. In other words, he is speaking about continual and habitual action. He's talking about that which takes place over a period of time. [00:21:12]

If I've learned one thing in pastoral ministry, I've learned this: you better minister with a sense of history. And what I mean by that is simply this, and I tell my colleagues all the time, as much as we may desire to have a significant opportunity at this point in history, all that we may be being called of God to do at this point is to keep our foot in the door for another who will come after us. [00:21:55]

We do not use that as our own personal manner of assessment. What we do use is to see whether the people who are under our care are growing to maturity or whether we have a congregation of people that are always on their training wheels, who can never go very far from the door, who are not being prepared to step out and to share their faith. [00:22:59]

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