Fulfill Your Ministry

Fulfill Your Ministry.  Millennia before the modern, secular mantra existed, which says, you do you, Paul charged his protégé, Timothy, with these words: “Fulfill your ministry” (2 Tim. 4:5). Different in nature and scope from our contemporary, secular creed, which enshrines self-expression as an inalienable human right, Paul seeks to motivate and maintain Timothy on his present course of Christian service.

Paul’s charge to Timothy is remarkably simple without being remotely simplistic. Cause to fill up completely to the point of overflowing, steel yourself toward the intentional satisfaction of your calling, entirely discharge the duty that God has entrusted you to do—this is not at all automatic, because it invokes a command. Saying Yes to this life involves saying No to ten thousand other things in life, which otherwise may be entirely good and wholesome.

A few observations make this verse stick. Notice that it is not, “fulfill ministry,” in a nebulous, all-inclusive, and unmeasurable sense. Similarly, it is not “fulfill my ministry,” in the sense that Paul had unfinished business that he is saddling upon the shoulders of young Timothy to complete. Or even worse, it is not “fulfill Christ’s ministry,” in some Messiah-complex sort of way. No, there is only one Messiah, and he perfectly fulfilled his ministry already; Christ does not need our help. Instead, the command for Timothy is “fulfill your ministry.”

Also notice that, even though it is given to Timothy, it is not necessarily for Timothy—because it is ministry. Ministry, at its very heart, is for others, to others, and with others. Therefore, Timothy’s charge is not the same as saying: “only do what only you can do,” which is incredibly self-focused and self-actualized. Timothy’s charge is not a job, but a ministry. Lastly, Timothy’s charge is contained in the grammar of the second-person singular, aorist, active, imperative—which is to say, it is not directly applicable to any person other than Timothy. Timothy’s mother or grandmother, for instance, cannot obey this for Timothy. We cannot assume Timothy’s mantle in Ephesus or elsewhere and think that his armor will fit our dimensions.

A principle, however, is transferable from Timothy’s commission to our situation. We all have a duty to discharge, a ministry to cultivate that has been entrusted to us by God himself. It may be a class of toddlers, a grandchild, a group of co-workers, or a local church—we all have some flock to tend. Timothy’s calling was explicit, while ours may remain implicit. Nonetheless, we have all been named as “God’s fellow workers” (1 Cor. 3:9).

Yes and Amen

Yes and Amen. It takes more than courage to look at how far one has come, as opposed to how far one still must go—it requires faith. Compared to faith, courage is easy, though courage is never easy. Compared to courage, faith is alien. Courage is the road less taken, so to speak, whereas faith is deconstructing the existing road to build a new one. Courage often opts for Plan B while faith checks None of the Above and puts the pencil down. Courage is important. Faith is essential, for “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). Faith both rallies around and finds refuge at the word and work of Christ. “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Cor. 1:20).

With courage, reading the headline news is a terrifying obstacle to overcome. With faith, reading the headline news is a prayer list. This week alone: in addition to a funeral this afternoon locally, there is a submarine lost in the ocean depths quickly losing oxygen, a war of attrition in Ukraine, and several layers of multiple scandals that embroil many world leaders. Yet, far scarier than those examples are the everyday evils that don’t make the headline news: the crimes committed against unprotected sectors of our society, new versions of the Final Solution dreamed up in some prison cell by a warped mind against his perceived enemies, and the lies, corruptions, and predatory behaviors that gleefully ruin families, communities, and generations. Even worse than the 42 children and teachers who, this week, were hacked and/or burned in their sleep at a school in western Uganda were the 8 girls abducted by the cowards who torched the rest.

Courage says, “Something must be done. Someone must pay.” Faith says, “Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done” even if the starting place for God’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” begins with me, my sin, my prejudice, my violence imagined, my passivity, and my disbelief. Over a hundred years ago, journalist, humorist, and occasional apologete, G. K. Chesterton, delivered a similar faith-over-courage response when asked in a letter, “What’s wrong with the world?” He replied simply: “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” Almost predictably and certainly indicative of our Post-Truth Age, that quote is questioned because the original letter written to The London Times cannot be located (despite two World Wars fought), although Chesterton seems to have written an entire book after the incident (What’s Wrong with the World, 1910). Regardless of provenance, courage never says, “I am the problem,” but faith never forgets it.

Peace I Leave With You

Peace I Leave With You.  Forewarning does not always prepare us for loss, insulate us from pain, or isolate us from anxiety. Yet we commonly feel that if we had known a major trial were soon arriving then we would be more ready to face it. Eh, maybe/maybe not. For the disciples, ample forewarning did not galvanize them against the reality of Jesus’ departure. Christ had told them at least three times directly that he was going to die and how it would happen (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33). Yet mere hours before it happened, they were still not ready for it (John 13:37). However, which of us is truly ready for death, departure of a loved one, grim diagnosis, or sharp disparity between what we think should happen with what is about to happen? None of us is ever completely ready, but Christ is completely aware of our frailty. Therefore, it was wise and indicative of his entire ministry that Christ, even though he had given his disciples information about his end, at the last breath before the big plunge instead gave them peace. “Peace I leave with you” (John 14:27a). Christ knows that in the crucible of our confusion, even more than an antidote, explanation, or resolution to pain, what we need most is peace.

Ever the teacher, Christ adds a clarifying comment about the peace that he is leaving with them, and with us by extension. It was his peace and, therefore, his gift to give. “My peace I give to you” (John 14:27b). His peace is not one of the many counterfeits of peace that infiltrate the world’s operating system: diversions, distractions, and denials. Christ’s peace does not dilute our pain or trick the brain for half an hour that pain doesn’t matter. Christ’s peace wiggles past our armor, joins us inside our pain, and pays the bitter entrance fee. “Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27c). He does not shame us about our fear but assures us through our fear that a Day awaits that will be far better than any day that ever was. Because on that Day, he will abolish all loss, pain, and anxiety. “I am going away, and I will come to you” (John 14:28), so that “you may believe” (John 14:29). By faith, pain is an opportunity for increased faith when the peace of Christ is present.

For Your Joy

For Your Joy.  Through the gospel of Christ’s grace, it is a privilege to be positioned and enabled to pray for the congregation. Ministry, not to mention ministry leadership, is exactly upside-down in this regard as compared to the other forms of leadership. Shepherds pray for the sheep, whereas wolves prey upon the sheep. 

In the wider world, the stereotypical boss steers the organization and its thralls toward his or her advancement and ease. The phrase that Jesus used of this kind of I-win/you-lose leadership style is ironic: these lords “lord it over them” (Matt. 20:25), which is to say that they leverage their position toward their exaltation. But Jesus, who is the Lord of all lords—who has the right but does not leverage it here—counters conventional leadership practice and thereby redefines it: “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant” (Matt. 20:26). According to our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13), greatness is measured not by amassing servants, but by serving others in love (Gal. 5:6). 

Paul applies Jesus’ “upside-down” servant-leadership to the church, particularly in terms of prayer, specifically during a time when the church doubts Paul’s trustworthiness as a shepherd. Obliquely mentioning a trial in Asia that “burdened [us] beyond our strength” (2 Cor. 1:8), Paul writes: “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many” (2 Cor. 1:11). Apparently, Paul had indicated that he would visit Corinth, but when Paul was delayed, the church interpreted his absence as evidence of neglect. Pressed into an uncomfortable position of needing to defend himself, Paul measured his ministry against Jesus’ words and assured Corinth that his love was pure, and his leadership was pastoral. “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith” (2 Cor. 1:24).

Paul was not working against them for his own joy but working with them, even at a distance, for their own joy, even at a cost to himself. Principally, his off-site labor for them was praying for them, writing to them, and sending people to minister to them when he was delayed. 

A Living Being

A Living Being.  Living is more than doing or achieving, just like going is more than arriving at a destination or making good time. After all, making good time is rather disconnected from making time good. A lost art exists in off-ramping the super-highway of gettin’ stuff done, taking instead the inefficient backroads and wandering a while. In this way, prioritizing the essence of being over the efficiency at doing is one of the multiple ways that we bear the image of our Creator. “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). 

Among the most stupendous details about God’s creation is not so much that he accomplished a “very good” work in six short days (Gen. 1:31), but that he took six long days to do a work that might have taken a fraction of a nanosecond. God clearly moved intentionally slower than his ability allowed. Maximum speed evidently is not God’s highest value.

When God made the earth, he left it intentionally under-cultivated, idyllic but not perfected. Notably, God planted the garden after he formed the human (Gen. 2:8). In other words, God did not make a worker to manage his creation, he made a companion to join his work of cultivation—a living being who could and would reflect and represent God in the created order, a privilege which God unmistakably gifted to both male and female humans individually and in harmony together (Gen. 1:26-28).

This apparent slowness of God within the week of creation halts, or at least challenges the insatiable, modern demand for better, faster, stronger. God’s patience, therefore, explains Job’s misery, and not the other way around. God’s promise outlasts Abram and Sarai’s fortitude to wait twenty-five years for the son of promise. God’s goodness frames the forty years Moses tended sheep in the desert and Israel’s forty years as wandering “sheep” in the same desert. Joshua’s decades-long task of conquering the Promised Land, David’s nearly ten years on the lam, Elijah’s entire ministry without a single friend before God provided Elisha, Jeremiah’s fifty-year career with zero “fruit” (so called), and Paul’s many years “on the shelf” between preaching in Damascus and teaching in Antioch—these all demonstrate that God is never late, never early, never rushed, and never frustrated. 

The Word of Our God Will Stand Forever

Isaiah 40:1-31

 ¹ Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

 ² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.

 ³ A voice cries: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

 ⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

 ⁵ And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

 ⁶ A voice says, "Cry!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

 ⁷ The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass.

 ⁸ The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

 ⁹ Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!"

 ¹⁰ Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.

 ¹¹ He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

 ¹² Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?

 ¹³ Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD, or what man shows him his counsel?

 ¹⁴ Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?

 ¹⁵ Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.

 ¹⁶ Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.

 ¹⁷ All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

 ¹⁸ To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?

 ¹⁹ An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains.

 ²⁰ He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move.

 ²¹ Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

 ²² It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;

 ²³ who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

 ²⁴ Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

 ²⁵ To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.

 ²⁶ Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing.

 ²⁷ Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?

 ²⁸ Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.

 ²⁹ He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.

 ³⁰ Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted;

 ³¹ but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

Comfort

Comfort My People. Except for a brief, historical interlude regarding the miraculous deliverance of Jerusalem from the Assyrian army under the command of King Sennacherib in chapters 36-39, the book of Isaiah divides into two halves. Chapters 1-35 (sometimes categorized as chapters 1-39) in Isaiah are filled with woe for everyone in the ancient Middle East, except a faithful remnant who, though they will suffer alongside the rest of the people in the Fertile Crescent, retain the promises of return and restoration. Chapters 40-66 in Isaiah are filled with the glory of a future Deliverer, unexpectedly named the Suffering Servant of Yahweh. His deliverance will come through his vicarious suffering for the sins of the people. He will absorb God’s wrath on their behalf and extend grace to them through the New Covenant (Isa. 54:13).

The two halves of Isaiah are so striking and distinct that many theologians, especially in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, suppose that there must be two separate authors—the “two Isaiahs,” or the Deutero-Isaiah Theory. Of course, that theory is moot since Jesus quotes from both “halves” of the book of Isaiah yet while naming only one Isaiah. But the 40^th chapter of Isaiah nevertheless shines against the dark gloom of impending doom with the remarkable brilliance of hope. Hope is not a military or political solution; it will be spiritual in nature.

The prophetic tone in the first half of Isaiah was typified by Isaiah 34:2, “For the Lord is enraged against all the nations, and furious against all their host; he has devoted them to destruction, has given them over for slaughter.” Against that approaching drumbeat for war, Isaiah 40:1 is shockingly tender: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” For even with the bare arm of God’s judgment there is yet a hand of kindness extended. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Isa. 40:2). God does not promise to cure our governments of their corruption, but to displace them with his glory.

The solution to rampant injustice, ruthless invasion, and religious idolatry is divine visitation. “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground will become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken’” (Isa. 40:3-4). Before he judges all, he offers salvation to all. One day, all will be well.