Being in the Ministry of Grace or Ministry of Worldly Religion

And now we've moved to, I guess, the more practical outworkings of the gospel and how it influences our practice, how it influences our daily lives. And in particular, the focus this morning is on ministry. And Paul wants to highlight the two different styles or the two different practices of ministry, that there is a gospel ministry, a gospel motivated ministry, and that there is a religion or works ministry. And so he plays these off against each other. So far, we've learnt about how the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ changes our realities.

We've seen how the gospel rescues us like a person drifting at sea, and that the gospel is a life rope that has been thrown to us. We've seen that it sets us free from slavery to being good enough. Sets us free from guilt and shame about our inability and gives us hope about God's ability to restore us. We've seen how the gospel changes our motives, how we act, how we treat others based upon what we have received from God, which is an uncountable gift, a gift of amazing worth. And this, in turn, gives us a whole perspective, a whole new perspective on things like jealousy, on anger, on envy, on bitterness.

Because all those things will habitually fade away if we are able to focus our minds on the surpassing greatness of God's amazing grace. So that's what we've been working through these last few months. And so far, we've looked at all these things regarding how the gospel relates to us personally. But now we're going to be moving into how the gospel relates to others.

Paul moves from our condition and our situation to talking about how the gospel does ministry. Today, we're dealing with ministry, and it's appropriate therefore that we talk about our church, very focused on ministry. How we serve others, how we share the love of Christ with others, how we help others to grow in this love. So let's have a look at Galatians 4:8-20. Galatians 4:8-20.

Paul continues his letter saying, formally, when you didn't know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you are known by God, how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved all over again? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years.

I fear for you that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you. I plead with you, brothers, become like me for I became like you. You have done me no wrong. As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you. Even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn.

Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself. What has happened to all your joy? I can testify that if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good.

What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may be zealous for them. It is fine to be zealous provided the purpose is good, and to be so always and not just when I am with you. My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. How I wish I could be with you now and change my tone because I am perplexed about you. So far, our reading.

What we find here is obviously not a checklist of ministry. Step one, start a church. Step two, do this. Step three, develop that. What we're dealing with here is the underlying motivation of why Paul did ministry in the first place.

We are going to look at the principles of the gospel, and then we'll understand how ministry, our ministry flows from that. In verses 8 to 11, the first part there, Paul transitions from the previous passage that we did last week. Remember, it was regarding adoption, that really important theology of being brought into the family of God. Now Paul wraps that up by saying, you've been adopted as spiritual street kids, and you've been placed into Buckingham Palace. God is your dad now.

Verses 8 and 9, Paul goes and says, formally when you were street kids, you didn't know God. You were slaves. You were in bondage to sin, to idols, to bad dads, to the mistresses or the masters of this orphanage. But now that you've come to know God as your father, now that you've come to know God as your father, why do you want to turn back to those things? Why do you wanna turn back to the idols?

Why do you wanna turn back to that enslavement to sin? Do you want to become enslaved by them all over again? Paul asked. It doesn't make any sense. In these verses, 8 to 11, the key word here that Paul uses often is the word to know.

To know. Paul makes a comparison between being a slave to an impersonal and non existent idol and to know the true God. They're opposites. But then he seems to almost correct himself. He says, now that you know God, or rather, are known by God, in verse 9. It seems like he's sort of mid sentence trying to correct his theology.

Paul isn't saying that they don't know God, however. John 17:3 makes it abundantly clear that anyone who has eternal life knows God. But the word we have translated here, which is "rather", means more importantly. More importantly. So Paul says here, how can you turn back to idols since you know God and more importantly are known by God.

The deep assurance we have as Christians is not so much us knowing God, but His knowing us. That's our deep assurance and security. Because in the Bible, to know, the verb to know means much more than an intellectual awareness. To know someone means you enter into a personal relationship with them. It's dynamic.

In 1 Corinthians 8:3, Paul says that anyone who loves God does so because God knows them. It's not so much our regard or our love for God, but rather His regard and His love for us. And that is what makes us a Christian. Our knowing of God, and you might attest to this, our knowing of God rises and falls, doesn't it? It is so tumultuous.

It is so up and down. And it depends on so many things. It depends on our pain, on our suffering, on our doubt. It depends on our happiness, our bank statement. It can be changed by a good sounding argument.

But God's knowledge of you is fixed, absolutely solid. It doesn't waver. It never fluctuates. It is constant. This is what it means to be adopted as sons and daughters of God.

Just like any child, we have the assurance and the security that daddy is in the house. He's just in the other room. When we're scared of the boogeyman under our bed, we know Dad is there. We just have to yell out. But for the Galatians, this was the heart of their desire to turn away from God.

And their desire was to turn back to nothing. It was turning back to obeying rules and regulations in order to please God. But you see, if you don't realise, like the Galatians, if you don't realise that you are known by God, you will live with a deep insecurity because you will feel like you fall short. We, like the Galatians, can turn to idols and false gods. We can turn back to our own gifts and our own abilities.

We can turn back to our security in our status, in our workplace. We can turn to these false gods because of an insecurity regarding our acceptance with God. We look at our knowing of him, which is volatile and temperamental, rather than His knowing of us. When we take security by acting a certain way, when we take and put stock in security of traditions, of how we dress, of what we eat, of who we hang out with, we are trying to firm up our positive self image. We're trying to say to ourselves, you're okay, mate.

And that is our downfall. Paul reminds us that the gospel shows us we don't need to make ourselves more beautiful. We don't need to make ourselves more lovable for God to accept us. God knows us completely, and yet He still loves us. If that's the case, why make an idol out of other people's approval for us?

Why make an idol out of our own self approval? The flaw that Paul wants to point out is that the basis of a Christian's peace of mind is not so much how much our hearts are set on God, how much we can worship Him and our joy and our exuberance for Him, but how unshakable His heart is set on us. If we begin to grasp that we are known by God, we won't seek to bolster our self image or our standing before Him through what we do. Neither will we worship any idol because we will love God completely and passionately because we are overwhelmed by the fact that He is the one who knows us. That's what Paul tries to drive at here in verses 8 to 11.

This is what you have. You have been adopted into God's family. You are in Buckingham Palace with the King. He knows you, warts and all, and yet He loves you. Now having driven that home, having really driven that home in his arguments, that we are God's adopted children, that we are known and valued by Him, Paul comes to talk about his ministry to these Galatian Christians.

Now it might seem weird that Paul moves to this, but we'll see how this fits in. In essence, what Paul tries to stress here is the authority by which he's trying to communicate with the Galatians. He's just finished nailing down, he's just finished nailing down this very important point, and now he's moving to why we should believe him. Paul talks about ministry, and in particular, he's going to highlight two types of ministry that exists. Verses 12 to 16 is the first type of ministry that Paul wants to highlight.

It's the ministry that's motivated by the gospel. The second type is the type of ministry founded in verses 17 to 20, and that's a ministry that is motivated by self salvation, by what we can do and our ability. Paul reminds them of his ministry amongst them. Remember, he's writing from a distant country. He's writing from Ephesus perhaps or Corinth.

And he has been there for a few years. So Paul wants to show to them what it was like when he was with them. He reminds them what his ministry looked like. The first thing he points out is that gospel ministry is flexible. In verse 12, he says, I became like you.

I became like you. Remember that? A ministry that's motivated by the gospel is flexible. It's adaptable. Paul was the epitome of contextualisation, which is a big word meaning to take the gospel and the message of the gospel and to fit it into the context of its listeners.

Paul was the master of it. He's a model of someone who truly comes close to the lives of the people he's seeking to reach. Just as Christ did in His incarnation. Paul lived with these non believers, with these gentiles. He ate pork with them.

He went to their houses and had wine with them. He played with their kids. He talked and he walked with them. He worked in the marketplace as a tentmaker with them. He sought to answer all their weird and their wonderful problems and questions about religion and God daily.

And that's a sign of a ministry that's energised by the gospel. Because it's not tied to a culture. It's not tied or limited to a tradition. Its leaders can come and truly live among people that they are seeking to reach. They're able to adapt their ministry and to truly love the people they are seeking to serve.

On the flip side, one of the marks of a legalistic ministry is that it is inflexible. It's obsessed with details, of ticking the boxes, of getting things right in order to be pleasing to God. But before we start worrying that we might have to adapt too much, and that we have to throw out all details, we see that the other side of gospel motivated ministry is transparency. Paul says, I became like you, now become like me.

Paul had been so personally involved in these people's lives, but he also was transparent about his life. He didn't eat pork with these guys just for the sake of having a good pork chop. He wanted to show these guys that God is a God of freedom, that the gospel has set him free from that. Paul was open about his faith, so open that he can invite the Galatians to imitate him. Isn't that an amazing thing?

They knew him so well. They know how he did life so well because he was so transparent about it. And as soon as he says, imitate me, they know exactly what to imitate. They know exactly how Paul lived. Our words, friends, are not sufficient in persuading others about the truth of Christ.

Our words aren't sufficient. People have to be able to look at our hearts, look at our lives, to assess how we handle trouble, how we deal with upsets, how we deal with disappointments, how we value relationships. People have to be able to look at how we do all those things. Why? So that they can see and feel how Christ transforms lives.

So that they can feel and understand Christ as being someone that actually affects our day to day living. Generally, I believe people find faith mainly through relationships with joyful, yet flawed but honest Christians. They don't become convinced through arguments. They don't become convinced with a download of information, referring them to a website, paying for a book and giving it to them. They don't, they aren't convinced by that.

Gospel shaped ministry is transparent and says, this is who I am. This is who I was. This is who I hope to become. Lastly, what Paul wants to show us about gospel ministry is that it's not easy. It's not easy.

Paul says that it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you. He says that in verse 13. Now scholars don't agree to exactly what this illness was. They don't really know what caused Paul to stay in Galatia. But you can infer from the verse here that talks about, if you could, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me, as perhaps referring to some illness, some disease that he had with his eyes.

But regardless of what it was, Paul wants to make the point that his visit to Galatia was actually a detour. It was a detour in his ministry plan. The illness is what forced him to go there. When Paul writes about ministry here, he isn't talking to Bible college students. When Paul writes about ministry here, he's not talking to pastors.

He's not talking to elders perhaps even. He's talking to the church, to people like you and me, to carpenters and statesmen and physicians. But the ministry, he says, motivated by grace can be difficult. God allowing suffering and pain is one of the most challenging parts of Christianity. How can a loving God allow His children to suffer?

But here we see how the suffering of one man who believed that this was God's work in his life, how the suffering of one man changed the lives of hundreds of people in Galatia. How God overturned the well made plans of Paul to bring an enormous good through his pain. Was it comfortable for Paul? No. God doesn't promise to bless Christians by removing suffering, but to bless Christians through the suffering.

God uses and can use our suffering to bring about good. Romans 8:28, in all things, all things pleasant or painful, God works for the good of those who love Him. Sometimes this good involves circumstances, and other times this good is brought out in our character. But God works for the good of those who love Him. And I am so thankful that Paul put this in his letter.

It is such an assurance for pastors, I can assure you. Because it's a reminder that ministry doesn't happen strictly according to our plans. The plan we are unveiling this morning, although we've prayed about it a lot, and although we've sought God's guidance on it, this plan can still be changed. God can flip the whole thing on its head. And while we can't infer from what we read here that strategic plans aren't necessarily evil, because Paul still went on and he planned his missionary journeys, and he still went to all the major hubs in the regions and started there, what it does teach us is that we must be relaxed and willing to adapt and let God edit our plans.

We have to be willing to have Him overhaul the whole thing if needs be. Many of us, I'm sure, can provide testimonies as well of how God has used you and used your circumstances powerfully. How through your mistakes and your disasters, God has been able to change lives dramatically. Gospel ministry realises that God can and does change our plans, and that we should be humble about how we do our planning. So Paul mentions in these passages how gospel ministry is flexible.

I became like you, how it's transparent, become like me, and that God uses our ministry sometimes in difficult circumstances. But then Paul finally moves to illustrating how this ministry is contrasted with how not to do it. Here, he talks about the false teachers that the Galatians had been listening to. He says in verse 17 that the goal for these teachers is that these new Christians may be zealous for them. Zealous for them.

And our NIV translation misses some of the nuances in this sentence. But Paul is saying, in essence, these teachers are flattering you and making you feel good and making much of you, so that you will flatter and make much of them. These false teachers were ministering in order to be flattered and to be puffed up. They were doing it in order to be sure that God loves them. Just as they were calling these Galatian Christians to earn their salvation through works and through obeying rituals and, you know, keeping these seasons and these months and these years.

These teachers were trying to earn their salvation through their ministry. They needed to have people who were emotionally dependent upon them. They needed to feel that they were wrapped up by these adoring fans. Because only this can assure them that they are good believers. By contrast, Paul says in verse 19, he is in agony until Christ is formed in you.

Paul says he is in agony until Christ is formed in you. Despite Paul's plea in verse 12 to become like me, Paul's ultimate goal is that he may only be an example to these Galatians, so that they may be changed into the likeness of Christ. That is his goal. He's not trying to get fans. He's not trying to get groupies.

He's trying to get people to love Christ and to follow Him. Gospel energised ministry does not need to have fans who are emotionally dependent on their leaders. Our ministry is not about making people dependent on us. Listen, ministry leaders, that's not our goal. Our ministry is not making people dependent on us, but dependent on Christ.

The false teachers wanted followers to glorify them, to build them up, to make them feel good. Paul wants partners who glorify Christ. The gospel frees us from the need for people's approval. The gospel frees us from comparing our church numbers with the church's numbers down the road. The gospel frees us from these things and yet challenges our insecurities.

Because gospel ministry seeks to hold out the gospel rather than the praise. That's my prayer for this church. As we talk about these plans, and that's good, but my prayer, my hope for this church is that we will hold the gospel as a vehicle to bring praise to the one who deserves it. That's not me. That's not our worship team.

That's not our great strategic planning committee. The praise belongs to Christ. Ascribe to Him the greatness. We need to hold out the gospel because it's the message that brings people to Christ dependence. It's the message that shapes people's lives into Christ likeness, and it provokes people to Christ praise.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, this is such a challenge for men and women who feel so involved and so caught up in ministry. We feel, Lord, and we can so often stumble into that, that it is about us, even just a fraction. That we will be recognised and that we will be known by what we do for You. But the truth is, Lord, we want to celebrate what You have done for us.

We want to make known what You have done. Lord, we just want to channel that back to You. We just wanna bring that back to You. We wanna create. We wanna enable worshippers.

God, we lay our ministry before You. As ministry leaders, Lord, we wanna bring what we do as an offering to You. We wanna pray that You will bless it and that You will refine it, that You will correct us of our thinking, of our insecurities. Help us to rest in the absolute assurance that we are known by You, wholly and completely, that we are valued much more than we even value ourselves. Help us to know that.

Help us to grasp that and to make it an essential part of our living and our thinking. God, as we discuss this vision, this hope for our church, the future, Lord, we pray that You will keep us humble and flexible, that You will keep us transparent, knowing our weaknesses and rejoicing in our strengths. We sacrifice. We bring all these things to You as an offering. We ask, Lord, that You will use it to Your purposes.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.