Mark Chapters 1-2         “Some Marks of a Biblical Ministry”

      One of the things that should differentiate a Christian church from other kinds of groups and religious organizations is that it should be marked by a ministry that is Biblical.  As Christians, we are not free to do “whatever we please” in ministry, but should always take our cue from scripture.  That is, we take the directions and standards for what we do from the word of God. 

     In my Bible readings for 2012 so far, I have been reading in Psalms, Genesis and Mark every day.  In my readings in Mark, I have seen a number of different passages in which Jesus models for us what our ministries are to be like.  Since we had our “All-Church Ministry Committee Meeting” tonight, and as many of us in our Sunday evening crowd are involved in ministry in some way, I thought it would be good to share some of these different insights from the word of God which can help us be effective – and most importantly, BIBLICAL – in our ministries this year.

 I.  Spirit-led

1:12 “Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.”

     We saw in our Wednesday evening Bible Study a couple of weeks ago that the word “immediately” is featured throughout the Book of Mark.  Mark is a fast-moving back, with a focus on action, moving quickly from story to story, without some of the longer teaching sections like the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7.  This word “immediately” is used 10 times just in the first chapter of Mark – and 40 times in the whole book! 

     But what was it that led Jesus out immediately – or rather we should say “Who” led Him?  “The Spirit”, :12 says.  It was the Holy Spirit of God who led Jesus up.  This is one of the keys to an effective, Biblical ministry: we must rely on the leadership and power of the Holy Spirit. 

     This vital ingredient of ministry has been too often neglected in our churches.  Too many Baptists, especially, act as if there were only TWO Persons in the Trinity: The Father and the Son!  But there are THREE Persons: The Father, The Son, AND the Holy Spirit.  A lot of us get “nervous” when it comes to the Holy Spirit because of the excesses of the charismatic movement.  And surely, there are many people who have done odd and crazy things, supposedly because “the Holy Spirit led them to.”  But for us to ignore the Holy Spirit because some people have abused His name is akin to never using electricity, because we once heard about someone who was electrocuted!  We are missing vital elements for life and ministry if we neglect the Person and ministry of the Holy Spirit. 

     We MUST have His leadership and power to be effective in ministry.  That means we need to be holy (He is the HOLY Spirit; we must seek to be holy to be useful to Him); that means we need to spend time with the Lord every day, that we might be filled with His Spirit (Jesus gave us an example of that in :35); and we need to consciously rely on His Spirit for direction and power.  Remember, in Acts 1:8 Jesus did NOT just say, “You shall be My witnesses inJerusalem, Judea,Samariaand the uttermost parts of the earth.”  FIRST He said, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses.”  We must not forget the Source of our vital power.  Jesus said that without Him, we can do nothing.  Oh, we can try to “do some things” – but we are not going to be effective without His power and leadership. 

     It would be like trying to trim a hedge using an electric hedge trimmer without plugging it in – just moving it back and forth over the hedge.  Anyone watching a person doing that would say, “How ridiculous!  Why would they even do that?  They need to plug that thing in to really accomplish anything!”  How much more must the angelic watchers exclaim over us, when they see us try to do the work of the Kingdom of God without the power of the Holy Spirit!  We can accomplish nothing of eternal value without Him!  We need His power! 

     And we need His direction.  Jesus followed the leadership of the Holy Spirit to the wilderness.  Many might not have understood that direction – why would He go out there?  Here was Jesus just beginning His ministry – why go to the wilderness?  We now know that this episode was vital – Jesus would undergo a series of temptations, and overcome them, and emerge purified for His mission.  It might not have made sense to many, but that trip to the wilderness was vital for God’s direction for His ministry. 

     In the same way, we need to be sensitive to the Spirit’s leadership in our lives, every moment, of every day.  He does want to lead us, and we need to be sensitive to His leadership.  There are some who do not believe that the Holy Spirit actually “leads” a person in daily life like that.  J.I. Packer in his “Lectures on the Puritans” says that the Puritan theologians had an ongoing debate over whether God could lead you through His Holy Spirit – would He give you leadings and impressions? – or could He only speak to you through His word.  I know there is a similar debate still ongoing today.  I personally believe the answer is “yes” – God can and does lead us through His Holy Spirit who is in us – He gives us impressions and warnings and leadings.  Of course we have to careful about how we interpret these.  We need to learn when it is the Spirit speaking, and when it is just our own impression.  And we need to remember that He will never lead you to do anything that is contrary to scripture.  But even if we make mistakes along the way, we need to make sure that we do not “throw the baby out with the bath water”, and ignore or neglect the vital ministry of the Holy Spirit. We must have His leadership and power, or we will not have Biblical, effective ministries. 

 II.  Evangelistic

There are several indicators of this in Mark 1 & 2:

— First of all, when Jesus comes back from His time of temptation in the wilderness, and He begins preaching, it is a simple gospel message: 1:15 “repent and believe in the gospel”.

— Then, when He calls His disciples, He tells them in :17 “follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men”.  Jesus told those whom He was calling that if they followed Him, they would become evangelists: “fishers of men.”  Christian ministry is evangelistic ministry. 

— Wednesday night, we looked at 2:1-12, where we saw that they brought a man to Jesus, carried by 4 friends on a pallet, because he was paralyzed and could not carry Himself.  And when they famously lowered him through the roof to Jesus, Jesus looked at him and said, “My son, your SINS are forgiven you.”  NOT: “My son, rise up and walk”, not anything else.  Jesus addressed the single most important need this man had, first: the issue of his sin, which was keeping him from being right with God.  Jesus demonstrated there that evangelism is to be at the heart of Christian ministry. 

     We need to remember that, this year, as each of us plans and carries out our ministries: evangelism should be at the forefront of minds. 

— As we do our Sunday School work, we should think about how to reach new people and bring them in.  Our Sunday School work should not be about just getting absentees to come, or taking care of our own people – though it SHOULD be that as well.  But as an organization, we need to purposefully do things that are designed to reach people.  As you serve in your individual class, ask yourself: are we doing something to reach people?  Pray and plan together and ask God to help you do something to reach new people for your class.  Don’t be content for it to be the infamous: “Us Four And No More”!  Make sure that your class is evangelistic.

 — and it is not just the Sunday School, either.  If you are a ministry leader of any kind, look for ways to reach people through your ministry.  When you plan activities, think about the best ways to invite lost friends and neighbors.  And more than that, purposefully PLAN activities that are designed specifically to reach people.  In every decision you make in our church, in whatever class or committee or ministry you are involved in, think about how it affects evangelism.  Reaching people was at the heart of Jesus’ ministry.  He said: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”  And it should be at the heart of every Biblical ministry as well. 

 III.  Focused

:38 “He said to them, ‘Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also; for that is what I came for.’”  Jesus told His disciples that He was not going to allow Himself to be side-tracked from the ministry God had called Him to.  Now, in this case, the “distraction” actually looked like a wide-open ministry opportunity in Capernaum.  After Simon’s mother-in-law was healed, so many people came to Jesus that :33 says “The whole city had gathered at the door.”  Most of us would have said, “This is a terrific ministry!  SO many people are coming!  Let’s stay and watch this grow!”  But that is not what God had called Jesus to do.  Verse 38 says that Jesus was supposed to go and preach to a number of different towns in the area.  And Jesus didn’t allow Himself to take a “bypath” and get distracted from what God had called Him to do.

     Every Christian ministry faces temptations to lose its focus.  It can happen in a lot of ways: 

— You can totally lose focus and concentrate on the wrong thing: like focusing so much on money that you lose sight of ministering to people.    

— Or it may be a gradual shift of the balance of your focus, from a healthy, Biblical, balanced ministry, to where you are more concerned just with the numbers involved, and not whether Biblical standards and convictions are being upheld.  Numbers are important, because each one of them represents a soul.  But Biblical ministry is not JUST about numbers; sometimes when Jesus proclaimed hard truths, people left.  We can’t let our focus be just about numbers, or money, or anything else, but a balanced, obedient Biblical ministry.     

— You can lose focus through conflict and controversy.  Satan loves to try to de-rail us from our ministry by divisive distractions.  I Peter 5 says that Satan goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.  And he adds: “We are not ignorant of his schemes.”  We need to be aware that he wants to use anything that he can to divide us, distract us, and get our focus OFF of the ministries that God has called us to. 

     I remember years ago, a wise old pastor told some deacons: every church has little “brush fires” that come up from time to time.  He looked at the men and said, “Every one of you carries a bucket in each hand: one is a can of gasoline, and the other is a bucket of water.  Whenever you see a ‘brush fire’ in a church, you have a choice: you can either add to the fire with the gasoline – or you can put it out with the water.  Which will you use?”  That was a great word, and a challenge for each of us to do everything we can to keep the focus of our church on the ministries that God has called us to – and not be distracted by anything else.  Jesus didn’t allow Himself to get sidetracked, and we mustn’t either.  A biblical ministry is a focused ministry. 

 IV.  God-pleasing!

1:11 “You are My Beloved Son, In You I am well-pleased.”

     We looked at the parallel passage to this one in Matthew 3 last week.  If you read earlier in Matthew 3, John the Baptist had tried to dissuade Jesus from being baptized; saying, “I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?”  John didn’t think Jesus needed to be baptized, but Jesus knew what He needed to do to fulfill all righteousness.  He did what pleased His Heavenly Father, and listened to His voice.  That is a key to effective ministry: we need to listen to the One voice that matters, the voice of our Heavenly Father.

     A few years back, Bristow, Oklahoma was a big basketball town.  And at halftime they had some big promotions.  In one of them, they would blindfold a person, and scatter a bunch of cash around the gym floor, and let the person run around and try to pick up as much as they could in 60 seconds (or whatever the time period was).  Whenever they gave the signal, the blindfolded person would generally run around like crazy, and everyone in the stands would scream and shout, and tell them which way to go, and most of the contestants did not fare very well.  But one night, the fan who was selected did exceptionally well, running right to the biggest denomination bills, and accumulating far more than anyone before.  He had been appropriately blindfolded.  They asked him: how did you do so well?  He responded: “I listened to one voice.  I picked one person out of the crowd that I would listen to, and just let that one person tell me which way to go.”  Instead of frantically listening to everything, he chose just voice to follow, and as a result he didn’t get mixed up, and was able to pick up more cash than anyone before him had.

     Well, his choice is good model for us, too, isn’t it?  “Listen to One Voice.”  We will become frantic and scattered in life when we try to do everything that everyone around us calls for us to do – but what we need to do is listen to ONE VOICE: and that voice is the voice of God the Father.  Do what pleases HIM, and you will be successful, both in ministry, and in life.

     Now, again, it is always wise to keep a balance: it is good to get input from other people; it is good to get wise counsel from godly believers.  None of us should try to make it as a “Lone Ranger” Christian, just ourselves and the Lord; we NEED other believers to help us stay on track. 

     But in the end, it is not what everyone else thinks about you that matters.  In the end, make sure that there is ONE voice you can hear: the voice of the Father, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into your reward.”  Make sure that your Heavenly Father will say of you, “This is My beloved child, in whom I am well-pleased.”  If you hear that from God, then you will know that you have had a Biblical ministry!