Faithfulness in Ministry

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Turn with me in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 4. Galatians chapter 4. Now there are a lot of people in our world who think that the Bible has absolutely nothing to do with real life.

I don’t see how they can think that other than that they’ve never read it. The situations in it, the principles of it apply to every aspect of our lives. Many of you will be able to identify with Paul’s position of what we’re going to look at tonight as he speaks to the believers in Galatia.

Many of you have probably been through situations similar to his. Have any of you ever had somebody that was close to you turn on you because you told them the truth and they didn’t want to hear it? Why in the world would that make somebody mad?

You didn’t have to raise your hands. I can tell some of you by the looks on your faces. Why in the world would it make them mad?

I would be mad if somebody lied to me. And yet a lot of times we don’t want to hear the truth because it’s painful or because it’s inconvenient, not to steal from the title of Al Gore’s book. but sometimes the truth is inconvenient.

Sometimes the truth is painful. Sometimes the truth is not what we want to hear. If we’re wise, we’ll listen to our friends when they tell us the truth.

There’s a verse, I believe, in Proverbs that I was looking at last week that says the wounds of a friend are faithful as opposed to flattery from an enemy. And what that means is sometimes you need people who are close to you to tell you the truth, even when it’s difficult, and you may not want to hear it, but it’s what you need to hear. and it’s good for you to take heed to those things.

And from time to time, I’ve had to take heed to those things. When somebody tells me something I don’t want to hear, I try not to get mad at them and just say, you know what, it’s the truth, and they told me for a reason. It may not feel good, but it’s for my own good.

Well, Paul told the churches in Galatia the truth, and they turned on him for it. I mean, there were obviously enough people in the Galatian churches that were still interested enough in what Paul had to say that they would take this letter, that they would read this letter, but by and large, there were a lot of people in the churches that were mad at him for telling them the truth. Well, what in the world did he say?

The things that we’ve been talking about up to this point. The fact that Jesus Christ died for them, that Jesus Christ had fulfilled the law, that they were no longer bound under the law, but they were under grace. All of these things, and it made them mad.

Because, see, it goes to our, it goes to our, what do you call it, our self-esteem, our pride, to think all of a sudden there’s nothing we can do. Salvation is not something that comes as a result of us being good. It’s a prideful thing to think, hey, look at how good I can be before God.

Oh, God accepts me because I’m so good. And to hear all of a sudden, no, it has nothing to do with your goodness. It has nothing to do with anything you’ve done.

It has everything to do with what Christ did that you couldn’t accomplish for yourself. It was a little bit of a blow to their pride, and they turned on Him as a result. Starting in verse 15 of Galatians chapter 4, if you’ll recall from last week, we ended up with him talking about how when he came to them and he preached the gospel for the first time, when he preached Christ to them, they received him gladly.

He said, even in the midst of his temptations and his flesh, they despised him not nor rejected him, but received him as an angel or a messenger of God, even as Christ Jesus. We start in verse 15 tonight where he says, where is then the blessedness you spake of? Where is the blessedness you spake of?

And people have speculated, and I tend to agree with them, that what he’s talking about are the blessings. In context with what he talks about, their interaction with each other, he’s talking about blessings that they poured out on him. You know, you would come to.

. . I love being a pastor, but I used to also love, in a different way, being the guy who comes into a church, preaches, and then gets out of town and leaves the pastor to deal with the mess.

Not that I would make a mess, or I’d try not to make a mess. but there’s something enjoyable about being the guy that gets to come in and preach God’s Word and everybody likes you because you’re just there for a day or a week or whatever and you preach and you go home and everybody thinks, oh yeah, we like that guy because I don’t have to deal with their everyday problems. That’s a different kind of ministry. I’m not saying that I enjoy it more than what I’m doing now.

Just enjoy it a little bit differently. And he came in and he was this guy who preached to him. And I don’t know if any of you have ever been, Brother Phil, you may have been in this position before of getting to go preach at different churches.

And you come in and they’ll hug you and they’ll slop sugar and they’ll, oh, that was the greatest thing. They just love you, don’t they? And these people, I’m sure, did the same kind of thing.

They just poured out blessings and we just love you so much, Brother Paul. Why don’t you stay with us longer? Oh, Brother Paul, can’t you come back?

And they just blessed him so much. And he’s asking, where is then the blessedness you spoke of? These blessings you had, this love you had, Where did all that go?

For I bear you record that if it had been possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me. And I read that and thought, there’s a passage of the Bible I seem to have missed these past 20 some odd years. I don’t ever recall seeing this before.

I was actually looking at my Bible software when I saw that, and I had to run and get the paper copy to make sure they hadn’t snuck something in on me. He said, I bear you record. Let me remind you, Galatian believers, that at one point you would have been willing to pluck out your eyes and give them to me.

And I thought, well, that’s an odd show of love toward the visiting preacher. And some people have speculated because of this that when Paul talked about his thorn in the flesh, that it was eye problems. And so what they were doing was offering to meet a need. I think based on other evidence from his letters, he probably did have eye problems, probably was fairly nearsighted.

But when he talked about the thorn in the flesh, I think that was probably something different. And so when they say, we’re willing to pull our eyes out for you and give them to you, other than the thought of, ooh, the second thought is they were offering to meet a need. But also come to find out that this was a proverb.

You know, we would say of somebody in our day, he would give you the shirt off of his back. Now, I’ve never seen, I’ve known people who would give you the shirt off their backs. Some of you are that way, but I’ve never actually seen somebody take the shirt off their back and give it to somebody else.

It’s an expression. And it indicates somebody of a very genuinely generous spirit. Well, apparently this was also a saying, kind of like that, in their Greek world that he’s so generous, he’s so giving, he would give you the eyes out of his face.

Next time you want to describe somebody as generous, try that phrase. That’ll shock some people. He’s the nicest guy.

He’d give you the eyes right out of his face. That’s what they were saying. They said to Paul, we love you so much.

Oh, Brother Paul, we just love you. We give you the shirt off of our backs. He said, I’m reminding you, I bear you record, that at one point you would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me.

Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? See, Paul recognized that something in the relationship had changed somewhere along the way. That they had loved him and they had sloped sugar on him and they had been so generous with him.

And he realized that the relationship has changed. And we can see that when we think back to what we’ve already read through of the earlier chapters, where he’s talking to them about the people among them who would pervert the gospel, and talking about some in the church that let them be accursed because they come preaching another gospel, and these things, and talking about this conflict he was having with the churches in Galatia. Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?

See, something had changed in their relationship, and it all came about as a result of them starting to drift toward the idea that they needed to be justified by the law all over again. And when he stepped in and told them, folks, not something new. It’s not like Paul said, oh, now that you’ve fallen back into the law, let me tell you the rest of the story.

You’re not justified by the law. Folks, this is the same gospel he’d been preaching to them in its entirety all along. And they wandered away from it.

They were the ones who changed their ideas, and he came back in and corrected them and said, no, you are not justified by the law. You’re justified by faith. You’re not saved by your own righteousness.

You’re saved by the grace of God. And as a result, some of them had become very angry. Some of them had turned on him.

He said, am I your enemy because I tell you the truth? Folks, sometimes, a lot of times, we will run into people in our world who will like us so much until we tell them the truth. And then they treat us like an enemy.

There will be times in our world where we’ve got that neighbor or that co-worker or what have you that just loves us so much, we’re their favorite person. Some people have a lot of one favorite person. He’s my favorite person.

She’s my favorite. You only get one. But they’ll treat us like we’re their favorite person.

And we open our mouths at some point to share the gospel. And you can expect that somebody, not everybody’s going to do this to you, but you can expect at some point when you open your mouth to tell somebody the truth, you’re an enemy. They don’t want to hear it.

They zealously affect you, he said in verse 17, but not well. Yea, they would exclude you that you might affect them. This word affect also means to seek.

And so what he’s talking about is the people in their churches who are promoting these false doctrines. And he said, there are people in your churches that zealously, I mean, with enthusiasm, with passion, they seek after you. He says, but not well.

They seek after you. They’re interested in you. They encourage you.

They teach you. They invest in you. but it’s not for your own good as they pretend it is.

He said, yea, they would exclude you that you might affect them. And what he’s saying is there are these false teachers in your churches, Galatians, that are coming in, they’re teaching these new doctrines, and these new doctrines sound exciting, and they sound almost biblical. They sound good. They sound solid.

And these people, these teachers are interested in you. They encourage you. They invest in you.

They do all these things, and you think, man, these people really care about me. He says, but what they’re really after is trying to alienate you from me and from the rest of the Christian community so that they can then get you to seek after them, to follow after them. Their ultimate goal, he says, is not your good, not your spiritual betterment, but for you to build up a kingdom for them.

What they’re teaching, they’re in for their own good. He said, verse 18, but it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing. It’s always good to be zealously sought, sought after, treated with enthusiasm in a good thing.

He said if it’s somebody ministering the gospel to you, somebody teaching you the truth, somebody taking the time to invest in your life and point you on the correct path to God through Jesus Christ, it’s a good thing. And not only when I’m present with you. And what he’s saying here is if there are faithful people there to minister to you, it’s a good thing.

And he’s not the only one that could minister to them. But it was a good thing for them to be ministered to in the right thing, in the right teaching, instead of these people who only pretended to care about them but were leading them captive spiritually. And his tone kind of softens here in verse 19.

My little children. See, they’ve made Paul their enemy, but to him, they’re still his little children in the faith. My little children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.

I desire to be present with you now and to change my voice, for I stand in doubt of you. So he tells them, he calls them his children in the faith. And he says, of whom I travail in birth.

That word travail, most of the time when you see it in the Bible, it indicates labor as in childbirth. My little children, for whom I’m in labor, again, until Christ be formed in you. What he was doing was, he was at work in their lives.

He was investing in them. He’d been discipling them. He says, until Christ be fully formed in you.

This didn’t mean they were unbelievers or that salvation was a process that they had to do certain things or Paul had to do certain things. What he’s talking about is discipling them and growing them into mature Christians. He’s talking about it being the same as labor, really, because you’re birthing a new child into the kingdom and then you work with them.

And those of you that have raised children, it’s work, isn’t it? I never realized. My dad looked at me last night and said Benjamin was just running wild.

Well, for him, he was running wild in the living room. It’s not like he was screaming and had us all tied up. But he was running wild in the living room, and I was getting a little frustrated.

And my dad looked at me and said, How many do you want again, son? Well, still the same number, but just maybe with an office where the door locks at home. Some place to hide out.

Somebody said, Good luck. Thanks. I can dream.

It’s hard work, isn’t it? And the work doesn’t end at labor. And that’s what he’s saying with him there.

He had brought them into the kingdom. He had led them to Christ. He had birthed them into the kingdom, so to speak. But now his work wasn’t finished.

He’d still been at work in them until Christ be formed in you. He’s talking about discipling them. And he said, I desire to be present with you now and to change my voice for I stand in doubt of you.

When he says, I want to change my voice, I had to double check on that one because it wasn’t immediately obvious to me what that meant. He’s not talking about, now I need to lower my voice or now I need to start talking with a British accent. He’s not talking about changing his voice, but his tone, the tone he spoke to them in.

Because, see, he’s writing from, I can’t remember where he wrote the letter of Galatians from. Brother Phil, do you know offhand? I believe it may have been Philippi, but don’t take me, I mean, don’t take that as gospel truth.

That’s just my memory. He wrote this from a long way away to the churches in Galatia, and he’s dealing with an immediate threat. Did you find it?

Okay. So either way, he’s. .

. Those are two different directions from Galatia. But either way, he’s still a long ways away.

And he’s hearing about problems that are springing up in the church, and by the time word gets back to him, or in the churches, by the time word gets back to him, he’s probably got a full-blown heresy going on his hands. And he’s trying to deal with their problems, and yeah, he’s going to be a little harsh. Again, go back to the early chapters.

He’s very harsh, but rightfully so. But he talks about how he wants to come and be among them and change his tone of voice, to be there with them. Because I believe as their father in the faith, if they could see him, if they could hear his voice, if they could see how troubled he was for them, if they could see the pain he was going through for them as a result of their drifting from the faith, I think that would have made a huge impact as well.

But he desired to be present with them. I believe to plead with them because he stands in doubt of them. He stands in doubt of where they stand in the faith.

He says in verse 21, Tell me that ye desire to be under the law. Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? He said, those of you who desire, who want to go back to being under the law and being justified by the law, or pretending to be justified by the law, let me ask you one question.

Do you hear the law? Do you know what the law says? And he goes back again to the books of the law, and he brings Abraham to their attention.

He says, For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid and the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise. And there are which things are an allegory, for these are the two covenants.

And by the way, when he says these things are an allegory, Paul is not suggesting that they didn’t really happen. Paul is not suggesting that they are not historical fact. What he’s saying is this is historical fact written down in God’s Word that also was orchestrated God to tell a story, to impart a deeper spiritual truth.

But let’s not cave into some of the so-called scholars who say, oh, all this stuff from the Old Testament is an allegory. It didn’t really happen. It’s just symbolic.

When Paul says it’s an allegory, he’s not questioning that it’s historical fact. And he says, Abraham had two sons. The one, Ishmael, was born to the bondwoman Hagar, or Hagar.

The other, Isaac, was born to the free woman, Sarah. And he said, one of them was the child of promise. That was Isaac.

He said the other was born of the flesh. That was Ishmael. He says that he makes the distinction because God had promised Abraham that he would have a child.

Abraham was a hundred years old. Folks, they doubted. God had promised even before this when Abraham was up in years, and he had doubted God’s promise.

I think he initially believed it, unlike his wife who laughed. He initially believed, but as time went by, no child. He began to doubt God’s promise and said, I’ve got to take things into my own hands.

And he had a child with Hagar. That was not the child of promise. It was the child of the flesh.

And God, on the other hand, had promised Isaac to come through Sarah, who was 90 years old. Something only God could do. Which things are an allegory, for these are the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai, which engendereth to bondage, which is Hagar.

For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem, which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem, which is above, is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice thou barren that bearest not.

Break forth and cry, thou that travailest not. For the desolate hath many more children than she which hath a husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.

He refers them back again to what he talked about chapters earlier that we talked about a few weeks ago, that it was those who had come to Christ by faith who were the spiritual descendants of Abraham. They had put so much stock in being Abraham’s descendants and that that somehow was going to make them righteous before God that they ignored the fact that it was written in the law they professed to believe that Abraham was justified because of his faith and that it was those who bore the same faith as Abraham who were his real descendants. Those who believed God’s promise to deal with the problem of sin.

And he says, we like Isaac are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him, that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. And he said, those that were born after the flesh were not part of the promise, were not part of the covenant.

And ladies and gentlemen, that’s true today. In our fleshly state, we’re outside of the covenants of God. We enter in by faith.

We enter in when we’re justified by believing that Jesus Christ shed His blood as the perfect sacrifice on our behalf for our sins. That God did, in fact, deal with the sin problem like He promised to Abraham. And the flesh persecutes the Spirit.

And in his day, it was those who wanted to return to the so-called covenant of the flesh that were persecuting those who were of the promise. Those in the churches of Galatia who believed were justified by faith, folks, they were being crowded out by those who said, no, we’re going back to the law. And he said, this persecution has been going on since the days of Hagar.

It’s been going on since the days of Isaac and Ishmael. Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son, For the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.

And ladies and gentlemen, he’s not saying here that her descendants cannot be saved. He’s talking here about the allegory. He’s talking here about the symbolism behind the historical fact.

To say that, to take that literally where Paul did not intend it to be literal, would be to say today that Arabs cannot come to Christ. Folks, it’s unfortunate, but in some parts of the Middle East, As few Arab Christians as there are, as few Muslim background Christians as there are in some parts of the Middle East, Arabs are coming to Christ in greater numbers than Jews. What he’s talking here is about those who are under the covenant of the flesh, the covenant of works. He said they will not be heirs with the son of the free woman, as those who are under the promise.

They don’t receive the same inheritance. Folks, what is our inheritance? It’s eternal life.

Those that are under the flesh, under the law, do not receive the same inheritance as those who are promised. And folks, like I said last week, we are not born into the promise. We enter in by faith.

By grace through faith, we’re saved. And so then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. He brings Abraham back up to them again to point out that there’s a difference between attempting to be justified by the law and the works of the flesh, the works of the law, trying to do enough.

There’s a difference between that and being justified by what Christ did. By being justified by faith. There is a difference.

And he tells them, you’re so hung up on Abraham that you don’t even realize that by going back to trying to be justified by the law, you’re taking yourselves out of the promise that you’re hoping to be part of. You’re excluding yourselves from the promise. Folks, that doesn’t mean they lose their salvation.

What that means is if they can really fully and ultimately go back to trusting in in what they trusted in before their own goodness, their own works, the law, then they never had faith in the first place. And they were excluding themselves. Folks, this passage tells us a lot about theology.

It tells us a lot about the state of the church. I want to go back as we did in the beginning of this message and see what this shows us about Paul’s ministry and about our ministry. Because ultimately, we’re not all called to the same ministry.

We’re not all called to the same specific calling, but we are all called to the ministry as Paul was. Folks, as Christian believers, we all have a role to play in ministry. We all have something to do.

I know I’ve talked about this recently, but just to cover it again. Do you remember me telling you the story about the headlights on the car? That was the senior saints, wasn’t it?

That wasn’t in here. Anybody remember? Help me out.

Okay. Just very briefly, a few years ago, several years ago I guess now, When I was in the youth group at Southgate, I was just hanging out at the church one day, because that’s what I did. When I wasn’t at work or school, I went to church.

And I was up there talking one day, and a lady came in who was a member of the church but didn’t come a whole lot, and she came in and said she had a headlight that needed to be changed on her car. At that point in our town, the police would pull you over if you had a burned-out light and you could get a ticket. She had this light burned out, and she needed it changed.

I had already surrendered to ministry, and I spent a lot of time up there because I was able to learn things from these men. I was able to glean things from them. She came in with this light that needed to be changed, and she said the garage wanted to charge her X number of dollars.

It was just outrageous for what she needed done. At that point, I didn’t know anything about cars, and neither did the youth pastor. He said, sure, we’ll change the light for you.

I said, we will. So we got out there, and we had screwdrivers and a hammer, I don’t know, maybe a chainsaw, whatever else we could find. We’re out there trying to figure out how to get the, I don’t even know what you call it, the plastic thing on the front, get that off so we can get back there and take the old light bulb out.

And we spent probably an hour out there in the summertime Oklahoma heat trying to change this woman’s headlight. We finally got it done, and we’re putting everything back together and praying there aren’t screws left over when we get done. and he looks at me and he said, do you know what this was?

And I think I told the senior saints, if you don’t know me real well on a personal level yet, you’ll find out I speak sarcasm like a second language. But he said, do you know what that was? And I said, headlight.

Headlight. And he said, no, that was ministry. I said, shut up.

That was ministry? I didn’t get that yet. That was ministry.

And through the years since then, as he and I have done things together, he’ll look at me and say, you know what that was? Ministry. Yeah.

Or I’ll say it to him. He probably gets tired of me saying it to him. You know what that was?

Yes, that was ministry. I’m sorry I ever taught you that. Folks, changing the headlight for that lady was ministry.

We’re all called to ministry. This is, if you weren’t at the Senior Saints last month, you missed out because this is what we talked about and how we as a group could do ministry and came up with specific ideas that we might try sooner or later. But that was ministry.

Folks, ministry is not just what happens here in the pulpit. This is a specific ministry, but it’s not all there is to ministry. Each and every one of you should have a ministry.

Some of you teach children’s church. You know what? That’s a ministry.

That’s a ministry. Some of you play the piano. Some of you lead music. God bless you.

I had to lead music for years and preach, and I did not enjoy it. That’s a ministry. Some of you do things outside the church.

Some of you make food for people who are sick or in the hospital or what have you. Folks, that’s a ministry. Ministry doesn’t just take place inside these walls.

As a matter of fact, more ministry needs to take place outside these walls than what takes place inside. He’s not here tonight, so I’m going to talk about him. How many of you have seen Gene Mitchell and his badges?

Okay, you have. Most of you have seen him. Today, he walked in with one that said, I can’t remember exactly what it said, but basically, I believe the God of the Bible is the creator of the universe.

He put a big sign on himself, and he wears it to Walmart. Folks, God bless him. That’s a ministry.

Apparently, he gets to talk to people about Jesus because of that. Folks, anything you do for somebody else in the name of Jesus Christ is ministry, whether you do it in these four walls or not. We’re all called to ministry.

And there are some things that we need to learn in just the next few minutes from Paul, from his situation about ministry. First of all, being faithful to the gospel in ministry will not always win us friends. It’s not always going to win us friends.

Folks, sometimes not even within the church will it win us friends. Now, some people walk around with the idea that you’ve got to irritate people or you’ve got to get in their face about the gospel or you’re not doing it right. I used to do street ministry with a man like that, and he could get away with things like that.

If I’d said half the things he said, or in the way he said them, as he did, I’d have had to have a lot more dental work than I did. And folks, he could get in people’s faces, but that’s not the only way you do it. And you will make some people mad that way, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about what I mentioned earlier. You’ve got the friend at work. You’ve got the neighbor.

That they like you. They enjoy your company. But you open your mouth to share the gospel, and suddenly you’re on their list. We’ve all had that happen.

And folks, we wonder why. What’s wrong with me? Folks, nothing.

The Apostle Paul, probably one of the best Christians that ever lived, and he had the same problem in the churches. Folks, when you’re faithful to the gospel, you’re not always going to win friends over it. Sometimes people are going to think you take it too seriously.

I can’t remember the name of the preacher, but I read somebody this week who said, he’s long dead, but he said, people have criticized me, other preachers have criticized me for how seriously I took the gospel. And he said, and I really doubt that I’m going to say, it was Leonard Ravenhill. He said, I seriously doubt I’m going to stand before God one day and have him say, Leonard, you took me too seriously.

You cared too much, Leonard. Folks, sometimes people are going to think we’re fanatics about the gospel. If we’re faithful to it, if we’re faithful to sharing it with people, if we make sure it’s correct, if we make sure it’s correct.

There was a trend I noticed at a church we were at before where they would talk about telling the kids to ask Jesus into their heart. And folks, I understand what they mean by that. And if you’ve ever used that phrase, I’m not getting on to you because I understand what you mean.

And it doesn’t automatically negate everything else you tell them. When my mother led me in prayer, when I accepted Christ, I said something about Jesus coming into my heart. But folks, I also knew that Jesus Christ died for my sins, that he shed his blood for my sins.

That it wasn’t just I was saved because I asked him into my heart. But I realized that