New Covenant Ministers

This morning’s text picks up where we left off last week, in fact, if you noticed as Patty read, it overlaps a little bit, and our new identity piece this week is that we are New Covenant Ministers.

I know some of you grew up in churches that called people like me a “minister.” However, my job, according to Ephesians 4:12, is to equip you to be ministers. My job is not to simply inspire you with a great sermon, hype you up when you’re feeling down or give you words of wisdom when life gets tough – The role of a pastor/teacher is to give you the tools you need in order to do the work of ministry.

That means if you have been at River City for a while, and you are walking away week after week feeling less and less like you know how to carry the message of the gospel, then I am failing miserably at my job and should be fired. Or at very lease, rebuked by the elders. On the other hand, if you are walking away feeling more and more equipped, like, wow, that’s a helpful way to think about things – I’m excited to grow in this love for Jesus, and put it to work in my life and help others when I get the opportunity – then I’m doing my job according to Ephesians 4. Equipping you to be ministers, which Paul says here in 2 Corinthians that we all are.

That word minister, in the original language, is the word diakonos – which is the idea of a household servant. A maid. A butler. And since I doubt any of us in the Midwest have a butler, or personal maid, the next most relevant word picture I can give you is that of a server at a restaurant. Someone who sacrificially serves, meeting the needs of someone else. That is the idea of the word minister, and that’s what Paul says we all are when it comes to our identity as disciples.

So get your black and white outfits on, towel over the arm – that’s our identity. We are the butlers and maids – the servers – carrying the spiritual food to people who need it.

And the reason I think the message is important for us at River City is because I’d bet there are quite a few of us who would say, oh man, do I have to be a minister? I like the idea of serving, but more like serving coffee or cleaning up or stacking chairs. I don’t even mind rocking babies in the nursery. But being a minister? That gives me anxiety already.

Well, let me show you the finish line before we start to run, okay? Those of you who ran in high school or college know it’s always good, when you get into the starting blocks, to know where the finish line is. So here’s the finish line, this is where we’re headed today: This thing of being a minister is not in the HAVE TO category – this is in the GET TO category.

That’s where we’re headed. So, open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 3, we’ll pray, and then get cracking, okay?

PRAY

We are in 2 Corinthians, chapter 3, and Paul is defending himself against accusations that he is not qualified to preach the gospel because he doesn’t have the right credentials. There’s another group in town, called the Judaizers, and they are saying in order to be saved, in order to come to fullness of salvation, you have to adopt all the customs, practices, and laws of the Jewish people.

So we have two main threads today: Qualified vs unqualified, and then old covenant (Paul marks that with the letter, meaning the written documented law for how people should live in order to please God – all the dos and don’ts.) verses the new covenant (which Paul marks with the Spirit).

5 It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. So there is your “qualified vs not qualified” thread, and verse 6 He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. There is your old covenant verses new covenant thread.

How many of you ever get in situations where you want to be a witness for Jesus, but you’re kicking yourself because, man, I wanted to say something and I couldn’t put the words together, and then it was too late. Then it’s like 2 days later, and something brilliant comes to mind and you’re like AH! I should have said this… that would have been really great! Anyone besides me? Well, we are in good company, because…

#1: Ministering the Gospel Requires Supernatural Help…

Paul is clear in verses 5 and 6 that this isn’t something he’s just naturally gifted at. It’s not that we are competent, he says in verse 5. That word competent means “qualified” or “sufficient.” Maybe the best way to think about this that this past year, I was the Bible teacher at Pathway Christian School just North of Kalona, and I do not have the proper qualifications to teach. I have no degrees. No certificate of education. Nothing. I’m just a dad who knows his Bible. But, if someone with a greater authority than me sat in my classroom, observed my teaching, vouched for me, and gave me a review with helpful tips, they could basically declare me “qualified” or “competent” as a high school teacher – even though, on my own, even though a big part of my job is teaching every week, I’m technically not qualified to teach in an accredited high school. It has nothing to do with my skills. It has everything to do with meeting a standard.

For Paul it was the same way. To say Paul was not competent is nonsense. He was educated and trained by the best teacher there was. He was a brilliant, intelligent man. So it has nothing to do with Paul’s natural ability. In Philippians, Paul basically gives his bio, and based on his background, he’s more than competent to speak. But, as we’ll see in a second, he’s not hanging any of his ministry on those hooks.

Same with us – when it comes to actually sharing your faith and speaking the truth to your friends, speaking the gospel to your family, to your coworkers, to the other parents at the ballgame, our ability to form words creatively isn’t what that whole conversation hinges on. What it hinges on is the power of the Holy Spirit working in my life! It hinges on God, the one who has all authority in heaven and on earth, by his Spirit, filling you, vouching for you, giving you wisdom, and the words to say. Being a minister or server of the gospel requires supernatural help. You can’t do it otherwise. So God is the one who qualifies us.

Like I said, this overlaps with last week, because I think it’s important for us to hear this again – being a minister of the gospel – being a server that brings the good news to Christians and non-Christians alike doesn’t require you to have more training, or having a degree in ministry, although there’s nothing necessarily wrong with getting training. Being a server of the good news requires a supernatural help because it’s a supernatural message!

#2: …Because the Gospel is a Supernatural Message

The gospel is a supernatural message of grace. It’s a message that something supernatural has happened on our behalf, and our job is to respond to it in faith and love and confidence. That something supernatural is actually back a verse in 2 Corinthians 3:3 “You show that you are Christ’s letter, delivered by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God—not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

I am pretty sure those of you have been teachers at pretty much any level have come across something where you’ve said, “Ugh, I wish i could just take a hammer and pound this into your heads so you would get it!” Right? And I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you don’t actually try to do that, right? You know that’s way beyond our capacity. I can’t write information on my students’ brains – and neither can we write the gospel on someone’s heart…

BUT THE SPIRIT OF THE LIVING GOD CAN. It’s a supernatural message, delivered by humans through words, but it’s received supernaturally when the Spirit of God writes his will and his ways on our hearts. So whether you’re a young person wanting to bring Jesus into the conversations you’re having with your friends or your softball team or your baseball team, or you’re an adult who is wanting to bring Jesus into the conversations around your table, or at work, or the gym – we carry a supernatural message that of course is going to need supernatural help. We’re going to need to depend on the Spirit, not ourselves, AND, trust that he is able to write the glory of Jesus on their hearts in a way that no one and nothing else could.

Paul writes in 3:4, that’s where our confidence comes from. That’s the qualification thread. It’s not from our own intelligence, but because God the Holy Spirit is able to transform hearts. And that is something that will never change as long as the world endures. The Gospel will never be irrelevant. It’ll never be outdated or fade away like the law did.

#3: The Gospel will Never Be Irrelevant

In 1931, the New York City skyline welcomed the Empire State Building. The tallest building in the world. 1450 ft from the ground to the tip of the antenna, it was the first building in history to have over 100 floors.  It quickly became a major tourist attraction, with people flocking to the observation decks to take in the views. The building also became a popular backdrop in movies and television, adding to it’s popularity. Architects and engineers praised the building's innovative design and construction techniques, and the speed of its construction. For 40 years, it received all the glory that it was due as the tallest building on the planet.

Can you imagine how many people drove from all over the country, or how many visitors to NYC made sure they got to see the tallest building in the world, how many photographers worked hard to get to just the right view of the skyline? Until 1973. It’s glory faded a little bit as the World Trade Center North and South towers climbed 200 ft higher into the sky. And then the Sears Tower in Chicago just a year or two later climbed even higher. And the glory of the Empire State Building faded some more.

Then in 2009, the Burj Khalifa came along and smoked them all – over 2700 glorious, shiny, sparkling ft from the ground to the top. Almost 2x as tall as the Empire State Building. Half a mile tall, straight up into the clouds. And at that point, whatever glory the Empire State Building had as the tallest building on earth was gone. It’s still tall. It still has some glory on it’s own. The millions of people who still visit the building every year are not stupid. But the glory it used to have has faded, because it has been far surpassed by something with much, much, much more glory.

Are you tracking? Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians 3, the law was great, it served it’s purpose, but something better is here. Watch the comparison here as he writes:

7 Now if the ministry that brought death, chiseled in letters on stones, came with glory, so that the Israelites were not able to gaze steadily at Moses’s face because of its glory, which was set aside,

8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?

9 For if the ministry that brought condemnation had glory,

the ministry that brings righteousness overflows with even more glory.

10 In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison

because of the glory that surpasses it.

11 For if what was set aside was glorious,

what endures will be even more glorious.

Paul is like, look, you can talk about the Law all you want. The Old Covenant, that old agreement with God that if we kept his law we would be blessed, if we broke it we would be cursed… It had glory when it came…but when you depend on the Law for your right standing with God, you’re celebrating a building that has lost all of it’s glory. When you depend on following the rules, paying penance for your sins, or trying to get to heaven by being good – you’re playing in a swimming pool that has dried up. The law brings death. It brings condemnation. It’s written on stones. And it had an expiration date.

The new covenant, though, the gospel, brought life, it was written on the heart, it brought righteousness, and it lasts forever! This building will never be surpassed by a taller one. This righteousness will never go somewhere else. And Paul puts all of that together, in verse 12, and says, that’s the hope we have! That where our confidence and boldness comes from! We’re not preaching something that is fading away as the decades go along.

Can you imagine if it weren’t that way? Here we are, dropping several million dollars on a property and a new building, just sort of knowing that one day our message is going to be outdated. All the stuff we’re preaching today, yeah, it’s fading away, and something new is coming. We preach the new covenant in Christ’s blood now, but there’s a new, new covenant coming that God’s going to do something different. Right? What kind of confidence would we have in building ministries if we knew it was all going to be replaced? Probably not very high. Hey guys today, we want every man, woman, and child to have a gospel-centered interaction – but only until the gospel doesn’t work anymore. Then we’ll have to change things up.

But the reason River City can be confident and bold about investing in this city and in a property and ministry center is because of the guarantee right here in 2 Corinthians that the gospel will never be outdated for some future generation! The gospel will never fade away to where it’s not as powerful as it once was! The gospel will never be weak. It will always be, Romans 1:16 “… the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes! We don’t have to be ashamed that we’re sharing something that will one day discovered to be weak and ineffective! In fact, we can boldly pray for the city, boldly give our hard-earned money to finance the project, boldly open our mouths to share the truth with people, confidently go to work where the Lord has called us because the message of Jesus will never go away.

It was Paul’s motivation then, and it can be our motivation to continue to be ministers, or gospel-carriers to our communities today! It’s the reason to keep going, no matter how tough it might be, or how much opposition we might face.

Now, let’s close in on the finish line that I told you we were running toward at the beginning. Here’s how Paul begins chapter 4: “Therefore, since we have this ministry because we were shown mercy, we do not give up.

You know when you became a minister of the gospel? Paul is telling us right here. It was when God showed you mercy. Paul says back in 3:5-6 that only God can make us qualified. He has made us ministers of the new covenant. You know how he made you qualified to carry the gospel? He rescued you from the pit of sin when he forgave you of everything you’ve ever done – past, present, and the things you haven’t thought of doing yet – he willingly washed your sins away at an incredibly high cost to himself, then filled you with the Spirit of the living God – that was your call to be a merciful servant, carrying the good news with you everywhere you go!

And Paul implies here in Chapter 4 that there are only two options when it comes to the gospel – 

Either, chapter 4 verse 6, The same God who said, “Let there be light” on the first day of creation, also says “Let there be light” in our hearts, opening our spiritual eyes to see Jesus Christ as our living hope, bringing us from death to life; giving us a right standing with God instead of condemnation! OR

the god of this age (verse 4) blinds our minds to keep us from seeing the good news of Jesus, and keeps us from seeing that we are perishing. How does the god of this age – Satan and his team of fallen angels – how do they blind our minds?

Verse 2 – distorting the word of God by adding little deceptions to it

Genesis 3 – by telling us God can’t be trusted… that he’s not good

They keep us focused on trying to behave our way into heaven, be a good person, just be kind

See this isn’t just about did you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. There is a spiritual battle happening right now over your soul. It’s not a war of two equal powers, but it’s a battle nonetheless. And either God moves in us to open our eyes to the glory of Jesus, or the god of the age keeps us blind. There’s no neutral middle ground.

• So if you’re here today and you have not surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, I pray that today would be the day that you see Jesus as the Savior you MUST HAVE. There is not side door or back door into salvation – you MUST come through Jesus, or you don’t get there. So repent of your sin, turn to Jesus, call out to him by faith, and find that he is already there with open arms, waiting for your return.

And in Paul’s mind, when Jesus rescues you out of the kingdom of darkness that is ruled by Satan and his fallen angels, you have been shown mercy, and that is your motivation to be a minister yourself. Serving is a response to mercy.

#4: Serving is a Response to Mercy

There’s a scene in the Bible where Jesus is eating dinner with the religious leaders of the day, and in the middle of the meal, a woman walks in, dumps perfume on Jesus’ feet, lets down her hair ( a sensual move in that culture) and wipes off his feet with her hair.

The religious guys freak out. This whole scene is scandalous. Does Jesus not know who this woman is? Does he not know the social clues that she’s giving? And of course, not only does Jesus know the scandalous appearance of this, he knows the woman’s heart and he knows the religious leaders’ hearts. So he says, “the one who has been forgiven a lot, loves me alot. The ones who have been forgiven little only love me a little bit.”

What Jesus is saying is that when you realize how much you have been forgiven, you don’t look at being a minister as a “HAVE TO”, you look at it as a “get to.” You realize, man, I don’t even deserve to still be alive. If he treated me like my sins deserve, I would be in hell right now. When you realize that you have a lot more in common with the begger, the cripple, the prostitute, the outcast in the Bible than you do the religious leaders, you know you’ve been forgiven much – and you are blown away that you “get to” experience the grace and love of Jesus – you love taking Jesus with you and bringing him into every conversation you get a chance.

You know those people, right? You can just tell they love Jesus – they just ooze with his joy and his presence. That’s because carrying the message is a response to mercy. And because you’ve been shown mercy, there are two parts to being a minister;

We renounce secret and shameful things – Now Paul is once again comparing his ministry to the that of the Judaizers who had all kinds of loopholes, bait and switch, and back door tactics. And he says, we don’t roll that way. chapter 4 verse 2, we don’t act deceitfully or twist the word of God. We preach the truth, and we don’t add to or take anything away from it.

And secondly, at at the end of the day, chapter 4 verse 5, Paul says, we’re not proclaiming ourselves as the only ones who have the secret sauce. We’re not proclaiming our denomination or our network or our worship team, or our philosophy of ministry – We’re not proclaiming our category of whether we’re charismatic or reformed, pre-millennial or post-millennial. We’re not touting ourselves as “the ones who get it right” while the others just don’t get it. We’re simply saying Jesus Christ is Lord, and we’ll do whatever it takes to get you to Jesus, because the same God who said “let their be light” all the way back on the first day of creation has done the same thing in our hearts. He started a new creation when he opened our spiritual eyes to see Jesus, and the light flooded in, and mercy washed over us like we cannot explain.

So pull all the threads together now –

Speaking the gospel requires supernatural help, because it’s a supernatural message. It’s something that either the Spirit writes on your heart by faith, or you reject it because the god of this age has blinded you to it. You get to boldly speak the gospel no matter where you are, because you never have to worry that it won’t be relevant anymore. It never expires. It’s as powerful today as it was 2000 years ago, and if the Lord lets the world keep going another 2000 years, it’ll be just as power then as it is today. And the reason to keep sharing it is because you yourself have been shown mercy.

So as we move to prayer, begin with confession

Lord, I confess I haven’t loved my neighbor as myself. I haven’t let your mercy motivate me – I’ve allowed comparison to motivate me. I’ve let the law creep back into my gospel. I’ve compared myself to others and let shame keep me from stepping out in boldness. Thank you for your forgiveness.

Thank you for showing me mercy! You have opened the door to me!

It was your Spirit that opened my eyes to see Jesus – Lord, would you do that for ______. (The city, a person, our government leaders, family members, coworkers, classmates, friends, etc)

Benediction – 2 Corinthians 13:11–13 “Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice. Become mature, be encouraged, be of the same mind, be at peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you… All the saints send you greetings. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

SOURCES

John M’Clintock and James Strong, Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, 1891, 4, 331.

David Mathis, Know Your Covenant, https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/know-your-covenant

Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament: II Corinthians & Galatians, ed. Robert Frew, (London: Blackie & Son, 1884–1885), 54.