The Person and Work of the Holy Sprit Lesson 34

All right, well, it's great to be able to lead this study with you guys again this morning. I appreciate having this opportunity to do this. And it was really neat. I've been kind of reading forward in the book. by Rideout and came across this section that we're going to be dealing with today. And it was just very, very applicable to many of the things that Laura's been showing me, teaching me recently. And I knew that Mike was going to be covering it. And then the way the class goes, we sometimes get a little bit behind what we think we'll be. My message just said, hey, can you cover off the rest of this, what is it, Lesson 34, I think. And I said, yeah, I would love to do that.

So it gave me an excuse to dig in a little bit more to some of these things here. So correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think we finished off with question two. How does one become intelligent in the things of God? and had some really good discussion around that last week. I was actually hoping to go back and re-listen to that audio because it was really good. Sorry, was someone commenting to me?

I didn't quite catch that. But anyway, we're moving on into question three is where we're going to pick up here. And The question is, is all ministry by the Spirit of God? And explain. So... If you're going to answer, you've got to explain it, but... In the print book, which is what I have, it's on page 178. And I believe it's page 79 in the PDF, so depending on what you're reading. Anyone want to... take a stab at that question, or have any thoughts on that?

I think, you know, one thing that's really important to address for that question is, well, what is ministry? Depending on maybe your background or whatever the term ministry may mean, Maybe something different. I mean, I did a little bit, you look up the word ministry or minister in the dictionary, and you're going to get some interesting definitions, right? I mean, one of the definitions of minister is a professional, a vocation within the church, kind of something along those lines. But we know that that's not what, ministry is not a profession. Actually, I'm not very familiar with U.S. politics, but I know in Canada here, we have ministers of everything in our political realm. You know, for instance, our prime minister is the, you know, but then we have the, you know, all of the ministers under him, and then provincially as well, you know, minister of whatever department.

And the word minister in our English language, it just comes from the Latin for servant. which actually was kind of interesting. I looked it up in the dictionary, and I realized that the word minister comes from the word minus or less. And so a servant or a minister is someone who is lesser. You're a lower than.

And that's just the English, but you know, within the body of Christ, everyone is to be, we could say, in ministry. Of course, depending on your context, your mindset, that may not I mean, it may give you visions of, you know, that you need to be teaching a class or leadership in some ways, but that's not, I don't believe that's what we mean.

I'll read what Rideau says about that. He says, all ministry is by the Spirit of God. I have already spoken of ordination and will not refer to it here. The Spirit calls, selects, and sends forth whom He chooses. He also abundantly sustains and guides them.

So, the ministry that goes on in the body of Christ, as I understand it through scripture, is that every member is involved in the strengthening and building up of the body. And that is more varied than we often realize, I think. We, you know, even when we try to think of the different ways that different members of the body minister to one another, I think we're somewhat limited even at what we recognize. And yet, the Holy Spirit himself is the one doing that work through each member, supplying to the other members what is needed. I think sometimes apart from, maybe quite often, apart from even the awareness of the person doing the ministry, if that makes sense.

Because the Holy Spirit uses you in someone else's life in a way that's meaningful to them and perhaps didn't seem that significant to you. But he's able to do that work very powerfully. You know, it's interesting about ministers or a ministry. You are a servant, that's what you do. But the issue of, you know, the question is, does all ministry have to be spiritual? Well, it by definition has to be because the whole ministry of the church is spiritual.

And so a lot of times I think you have, you know, the old story, well so-and-so who was a school teacher, a really good school teacher, came to Christ, they would make a good Sunday school teacher, not necessarily. And so when you start talking about definitions of ministers of God's Word, there's so much that goes into that, and it isn't because the the person that's doing the ministering has necessarily come from a biblical education background, although he or she knows the Bible. It's because, like you said, like the write-up says, it's because the Lord calls them, and then he suits them out and gets them ready to be a minister. And I think we all, if anything, In contemporary Christianity, because of seminaries and the way the system operates, we have lost sight of the minister who's sitting right next to you, who is probably better prepared than somebody else just because he or she pays close attention to God's Word.

Yeah, I really appreciate that input, Mike. And I'm talking about teaching. There's a jillion other ones, you know, where you serve the body of Christ, and every single one of them is spiritual. I don't care what the task is, because it's the body of Christ that's spiritual. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think sometimes, you know, I see glimpses of it now and then, but the preparation of the Holy Spirit. Some of your comments, Mike, we're starting to get into the next question, so we'll go there pretty soon, talking about preparation for ministry.

But I think that the preparation that the Holy Spirit gives us individually is incredibly specific. to certain needs that we're unaware of, you know, when he's doing the preparatory work in our lives. But somewhere down the road, it's amazing how often you'll find that someone, as if they were, as if, but you see that they were specifically, carefully prepared for a specific need within the body of Christ. And you don't get that kind of preparation from a professor. They don't know the needs that are coming down the road, but the Holy Spirit does.

And so the preparation that He gives you is specifically or carefully curated to exactly what's going to be needed. That's really important because your ministry might be totally behind the scenes, nobody knows what's going on, and it may just be for, you know, one thing or one person.

And you've been suited out for that. You're the right one. And that's enough. You know, if that's what the Lord has called you, that's enough. You don't need it. You don't need to get, you don't need crowds, and you don't need numbers, and you don't need recognition. It's what the Lord has done.

Miles, this is actually Courtney upstairs from Mike. Courtney's upstairs from me, yeah. Yeah. One of the things, you know, I think, Beverly, to say specifically for someone in Minister, Is it the first Corinthians one where you're comforted by which, you know, you can comfort others by which God comforted you?

He goes specifically through something and, you know, why am I going through this trial? Well, then you're able to help somebody in that same trial. So the ministry, you know, the Lord's prepared you by going through it yourself. You can look at somebody else and say, hey, you know, come beside him and say, this is how the Lord worked me through this trial or this, you know, whatever. So I think that's kind of prepared specifically for quote that ministry to that person. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, just a little specific example I had this morning, and it's I've heard this comment so many times, but it's amazing how often the hungry heart readings are are specifically prepared for something that you are going through today. you know, only the Holy Spirit could, you know, could be still ministering through Miles Stanford, you know, and preparing that, because He knew, the Lord knew, what date, you know, in history you're going to need, you're going to need to read what you read today.

It's surprisingly regular, and if that just happened to me this morning, you know, I mentioned earlier before the class here that Alyssa and I were gone the last couple of days out west, and I didn't, I'd been hoping to do a little bit more preparation for this morning.

I woke up this morning feeling a little bit less prepared than I would have liked to be, and picked up the Hungry Harna. There's the information that I needed for this morning. And the Holy Spirit didn't give it to me in advance, but He did provide it at the right time. So, it's just an example of how He does the preparatory work. even when I didn't go out to seek it. And that's not to say that I shouldn't prepare for teaching or for a lesson, but in that case, he did provide that and is very specific to a need. But let's ask the next question because we're getting into it here.

Number four, what dangers to preparation for ministry does the author elaborate on? what dangers to preparation for ministry does the author elaborate on? And Mike, you wrote that question, I mean, when I first read that, the word dangers, you know, it's an interesting It's an interesting word to put on it because it's very appropriate. You know, I don't think that would, yeah, I think that word came from your own. But, you know, as I thought about that, I have seen, sadly, in my own life as well, when I have gained some, you know, some new, let's just call it biblical knowledge, that can be an incredibly destructive tool. It sounds strange, but We're actually as one of the first we're starting a group this fall with some of the young kids up here I'm gonna be teaching a group of between 11 12 and and 16 year old years old and probably 9 or 10 kids and We're gonna be teaching them some you know some basic Bible study tools and that sort of thing but the first lesson that I want to teach them is um is on handling a sharp tool or handling a sharp weapon.

Actually, I was just, it just reminded me, I put a, I put a horse, a shoe, a shoenail into my finger on the weekend. It's still kind of, kind of hurting. I was trying to shoe a horse. Those nails are really, really sharp and pretty easy to cut yourself on them. And but, but a sharp tool, is very, very important, but to be wielded by yourself, for yourself, can have some nasty consequences.

And so, you know, when I was beginning to get really eager about Scripture and studying and learning all I could, I, you know, my own pride, how do we turn that around into something very destructive and damage the number of relationships because of my pride in the wrong use of truth. So, I'll read here what kind of how Rideau puts this, it's on page 178, and he says, an education, even an intellectual knowledge of scripture, is not preparatory for the ministry.

He says, far be it for me to decry true knowledge, and let us covet to know more and more. Let us seek ability to read the scripture in the original tongues. Let us study history, archaeology, everything that can illustrate the truths of God. Let us know more of that world of nature all about us that speaks of God and of Christ to the attentive and devout soul.

But these are not necessarily the preparation for ministry. I think a really quite an amazing statement because all the things he described there are exactly the things that we go to Bible school or seminary to learn, basically. And those are some of the things that we're going to be teaching these young people in this group. We're going to be doing some introductory Greek. We're going to be doing the history and biblical context. giving them these skills, but they're not necessarily preparatory for ministry. He acknowledges, right out of acknowledges, that, you know, we should covet to know more and more, but that is not the preparation for ministry.

Because he says, he says, the Spirit of God may use any and all of these. So those things aren't worthless. But he and he alone can prepare a man for ministry. And that's because, like we referred to a little bit earlier here, it's a personal thing. It's not an intellectual thing. It's a personal and spiritual thing.

He comments here on, I mean, I find this interesting, his book is at least, it's over 100 years old, and, you know, he says, I need hardly refer to educational institutions, most of the secular, and alas, many of the religious are in the hands of the enemy. That was already true in his day.

Where infidelity is taught, where the Word of God is dissected and criticized, these are not places for godly youth to learn the truth and ways of God. Is if they go there it should be as doubly armed against all the subtlety of the enemy Sad indeed it is to give such a warning sadder still the necessity for it And uh, oh my if that was true if that was true in his day, how much how much more so today? um You know the only uh in canada here, um, there's one there's one bible school that still is fairly um has a decent reputation as being biblical, and yet they're very much a Reformed, you know, theology perspective. At least they believe that the Word of God is the authority, that's the, you know, but it's, other than that, you know, there is no, there's no educational institution you could seek out to that wouldn't fit what Rideout is talking about here. I know there's some sound options within the U.S., but even there, you know, the technical skills, the technical abilities and so forth are not what prepares an individual to serve, to be a minister in the body of Christ.

That was very, as I kind of mentioned earlier, very valuable for me to read this and write it and to think about this because, in fact, this whole section I shared these two or so pages with the parents of the kids that were going to be teaching, because I wanted them to read this and to get a bit of an idea, a bit of an understanding that, yeah, there's value in an education, but it's not It's on its own, as I said earlier, on its own, it's actually can be very, it can be a big negative. There's a lot of people in the, I think, in the church who have a lot of education, you know, and that's some of them. One of the things I think of about that, which years ago, when I actually spent a lot of time with Miles Stanford, Miles Stanford had no academic credentials. He had no seminary, none of that, you know, never went to college.

And yet here's a guy that God used, you know, in a tremendous way. And to be honest, that was an encouragement to me because it kept me from going down that road. that, you know, if I hope someday to serve the Lord, do I need to go to seminary and get some degrees and do I need to, you know, have a job somehow in a Christian world and on and on it went.

And after coming to know him pretty well and watch what he was doing and the things he was writing, When a guy like Sammy Rideout starts talking about the Holy Spirit being the one who outfits you for your ministry and it doesn't come necessarily from an institution, it comes directly from Him, that was very encouraging to me because I thought, you know, anybody can serve the Lord and you don't have to be a scholar to do it. Yeah, you have to, as you go along, you have to become more and more familiar with what God's word is, but that's a work he does too. And, you know, the type of ministry, everything that goes along with it, it's from him to you without world accreditation. I think that's a critical point that we contemporary Christianity has really bought into. world accreditation, you know, not that you don't need to test the spirits and not that you don't need to be as accurate as you can.

But it's between you and the Holy Spirit. That's where it really lies. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think the Holy Spirit does a much better job orchestrating your education for we'll just use that word um than what any man-made institution you know man-made institution can come up with a course of studies you know and you need to learn this and that and the other and it's not it's not wrong to you know to go there necessarily or to learn you know um from from some of these teachers but um at the same time the holy spirit is working in in your life to develop specific needs so that you hunger for exactly the truth that he desires and intends to bring to your attention at that time. And he'll do that through his word. You know, as you hunger for a specific thing and you begin to, you know, search his word for understanding in that area, He's the one doing that work rather than you.

I have a nephew that just started his first year of Bible school, you know, and it's interesting. He's got a heavy course load, or you know, it sounded like it. First week, he texted us and said, hey, you know, I've got to read like five books of the Bible this week. And that's great. He's going to get some familiarity with the Word of God, maybe, like he has them. before, but it's a course requirement. It's not necessarily just like, hey, I'm so desirous to sit down and read five books of the Bible this week. It's just like, you know, there is some there for sure. I mean, he chose to go to Bible school. There's some hunger there. There's some desire there, for sure. I think the Holy Spirit's at work in that.

But sometimes, you know, I know it was for me as a process of learning, man, cramming my head with intellectual knowledge just, you know, for the sake of knowing it or as I've kind of, you know, being able to win arguments, essentially, you know, being able to know it so that I, you know, can prove to you something. is just a wrong spirit, a wrong motivation.

I've been there, but I wanted to read here from today's Hungry Heart, and this I think is very valuable to what we're talking about here. He says, the Lord Jesus himself, and not even truth about him, must be filling our hearts if we are to grow. I don't know how old this particular quote is, but he says, this is no unnecessary admonition in a day when knowledge of the most sacred truths may be intellectually attained by so small an effort. And I know all these quotes are at least a little bit dated, but, you know, today we are, I mean, to gain, you know, knowledge of truths is so easy. It's probably also easy to gain knowledge of deceptions, too. I mean, you can Google search things and who knows what you're going to come up with.

But I mean, just the, you know, I think of the digital Bible apps that we have today, you know, and just about any person can go on and find the Greek for that. you know, look at the word means, and that's valuable stuff, that's worth, that's great, those are great tools.

But it's so important to understand that just knowledge, you know, even truth about Him is not what's to be filling our hearts. It's the Lord Jesus Himself. To know Him, not truth about Him. That's a very different thing. I think I kind of made a comment on that a week or two ago. You know, like in any close relationship, you can know about someone, you can know lots about someone without knowing them, without intimacy with them. And that's what, really, of what value is it to know lots about Jesus if we don't know Him intimately. Let's go to question five.

What is needed for the spirit to use one for ministry? What is needed for the spirit to use one for ministry? Any thoughts on that? We've kind of already smashed the the golden calf of seminary education. So what is needed? He points out that there's a necessity for the Spirit's presence and power in the person. He also, at the end of his presentation in the book, the necessity to be a broken vessel.

And maybe you can enlighten us on those. Very good. Yeah, yeah. That there, specifically, that comment is one of the things that I've been needing to learn a lot about. And it's very slow in coming. That's a long-term kind of a lesson here that I think I'm being taught. And what does it mean to be a broken vessel?

Righto makes the comment, he says, the main preparation is in the secret life and with the Word of God. And then he says, it ever remains that the Holy Spirit amply qualifies every vessel that he may choose for the ministry. So that's precisely what we've been talking about here this morning, you know, it's him who qualifies for for ministry. Because it's his work, it's not our work.

That, I think, is the error that we run into with the term ministry. You know, we often have this idea in our minds that, well, what ministry Am I going to choose to be involved in this fall? It's time at the local church to sign up for a fall ministry. The fall ministry schedule is kicking off or whatever. And that completely fails to recognize that it's not about my schedule or my program.

It's what is the Holy Spirit doing through each member of the body, and that's his work. I found this statement from Rideout quite awesome. He says, Ah brethren, the man who knows one thing is the man who will speak in the demonstration of the spirit and of power. The context for that comment, to back up a little bit, he says, how often has he, the Lord, done a vast work in the conversion of souls through some, quote, unlearned and ignorant man? How often has the humble blue-collar worker a deeper, broader knowledge of divine truth than the learned professor? And I just, you know, he puts the one thing in quotes there. Ah, brethren, the man who knows one thing is the man who will speak in a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

And I'm not, I think, at least it brought to my mind right away 1 Corinthians 2 verse 2, that section there, where Paul says, for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." And, you know, if we know that one thing, if we have latched on to that one thing, and if we are able to minister that one thing, you know, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, then there's a powerful work that the Spirit can do through that. And you know, I think so often that the person who has that, just that one thing, in so many ways is more useful to the Spirit because all their all their knowledge, all their learning doesn't get in the way of the thing that is Jesus Christ. Again, not that we should disdain you know, learning the deep things of God, but if we ever, in all that, if we lose our attention, our focus on Jesus Christ and who He is, then what's the use of the rest of that?

And that's what he says, he says, but on the other hand, every true minister of Christ will hunger for greater fitness and fuller knowledge. And so there is a growing in that, that happens, but it has to be, it has to be a, well, he says, it will be, however, knowledge of the Word of God, which he prays, and to that he will give time and prayer beyond all else. And so that desire to know Christ, and to make him known.

That actually was a quote that's almost precisely a hundred years ago. That was the vision statement of L.E. Maxwell for the Bible school just down the road from here, to know Christ and to make him known. Someone shared that with me just a couple of weeks ago here. And that really should summarize all ministry, I think, is that. If you have a hunger for greater fitness and fuller knowledge, it should be because of a desire to know Him and then in turn to share that, to make Him known personally to others.

So, that brings us to to time. There's one question left on that set of notes, and it's to do with the salvation of souls, as Rideout puts it, or evangelism, and it kind of is the way he caps and summarizes this little section, and there's a lot there, and it's really valuable, so we'll pick up with that next time.

So let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we've had this morning to be able to enjoy the fellowship that we have in the body of Christ. And Lord, thank you that we can Just think on the incredible value of knowing Christ and of sharing that intimate knowledge of Him with others around us. And we pray that you would give each of us a greater hunger and desire for that. And thank you that you are doing that. As you orchestrate the circumstances and situations of our lives, that's precisely what you are working to do, to draw us into deeper, intimate knowledge of Christ. And so we just thank you for these things in Jesus' name. Amen.