Apostolic Foundations for Modern Ministry: Insights from Joel R. Beeke

In this sermon, Joel R. Beeke discusses the apostolic model for ministry, focusing on pastoral ministry. Beeke, a professor and pastor, utilizes his extensive experience and knowledge in systematic theology and homiletics to explore how apostolic methods can inform and inspire modern pastoral practices.

The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.

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I’ve ordered some tapes, but quite frankly, I thought I’ll never get there until Tom Ascool called me last year, and my immediate response was, why are you asking me, a paedo Baptist? And he said, well, we’re going to convert you before you get there. But then he added something. He said, all we want you to do is come and preach like a Puritan. I said, well, I don’t know how to preach any other way, so I guess I can just be myself.

I do have many baptist friends around the world. In fact, I just got back ten days ago from preaching in Spurgeon’s church and doing a conference there throughout the week and preaching actually 15 times in Wales and England. And I said to my wife on the way home, I just realized all 15 occasions were the baptist churches. So I’ve also had many baptist books. In fact, I had a friend come in once and look in my library and said, how did you get so many baptist books? I said, well, I’ve got a good wife.

She doesn’t complain when I buy books. In fact, my library has been a great help to many ministers because many ministers have come in and looked at my books and have said, can’t wait till I tell my wife. Two weeks ago I was in Malcolm Watts library. Malcolm Watts is a well known baptist minister in Salisbury, England. It’s got a great antiquarian library, especially on covenant theology. Yes, he’s a Baptist.

And he was telling me that someone came up to him because he loved books so much and said it reminded me of what was read to us this morning. Said to him, now, what would you pick between your wife or your books if your house ran fire and you can only take one out? Malcolm said, I said to him, I take my wife out. I’d say, honey, let’s go in and get the books. But Paul, Paul was waiting for the executioner’s axe, wasn’t he, at the end of his life?

And he said, bring me the books and the parchments. He was reading to the end. And the burden of what I want to bring you in these three messages is that we, particularly we who are ministers of the gospel, must be living on the growing edge. We must be reading men, we must be godly men, we must be mature men. If I could put a title over my three addresses, it would certainly be the church’s need for mature ministers.

I want to look at this theme of maturity in the ministry as a critical theme because the church’s level of doctrinal understanding and the people’s level of holiness, as John Owen said, will seldom rise above the level of their pastor. That’s a frightening thing if you’re a pastor. So, I want to look at it from three sides tonight: from a doctrinal side by understanding the apostolic trinitarian model for ministry in Christ. The portion read to you, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. Tomorrow evening, we want to look at it from the experiential side.

We must be experientially mature ministers, and we’re going to look at that through the theme of enduring Satan’s sifting through Christ. We’ll see what it means to live out of this threefold office experientially. And then on Friday, we want to look at it from the practical side, glancing at how the Puritans persevered in discouraging times by Christ, looking at Hebrews 4:14. So the church’s need for mature ministers doctrinally, experientially, and practically. And tonight our focus is on the apostolic model for Christian ministry.

And I believe what Paul sets before us here in these five verses is a fourfold aspect to his model. There’s, first of all, the faithful minister’s self-conscious role. Notice how self-conscious he is:

¹ And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1, NKJV)

He’s very much aware of what he’s called to. He’s called to be a witness to the Father’s testimony. Second, the mature faithful minister has a comprehensive testimony.

Verse two,

² For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2, NKJV)

Third, the faithful mature minister has a powerful reliance. Look at verses three and four, the reliance of the Holy Spirit. So there you have the trinitarian model. And then in verse five, you see the faithful minister’s ultimate goal, the glory of the triune God through faith. So that’s Paul’s blueprint, a fourfold aspect to the apostolic model of Christian ministry. Let’s look at those point by point.

First, we need to say by way of introduction that the Corinthian church was not an easy church to deal with. You know that very well. Paul’s purpose in writing 1 Corinthians is to guide this problem-infested church to biblical solutions. Now, what is most remarkable throughout both epistles is whenever Paul comes upon a problem, his answer, in one word, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. He already begins that way in the first chapter, doesn’t he? He says, you’ve got a problem. you’ve got divisions in your ranks. One says, I’m a Paul.

One says, I’m a Paulus. One says, I’m obset. But you should all be of Jesus Christ. And so, in response to this first problem, as was read earlier today from 1 Corinthians, Paul begins in verse 17, chapter one, to explain that the reason for the gospel is to draw attention away from men. Paul doesn’t want a Pauline faction within the body of Christ. He says that would leave people impressed with the wrong person. And if they are impressed with the wrong person, they will get the wrong gospel. Verse 17 B.

The cross of Christ should then be made of none effect. So what Paul says from verses 17 through 31 is twofold. First, he says, I have come to preach the gospel because the gospel is the only thing that will save sinners. No other message will do. And in 1930, he shows that the foolishness of God, put that in quotes, is wiser than man’s highest wisdom. Man’s highest wisdom, he said, would never have connived the idea of a God man’s salvation.

God, therefore, has set out to destroy human wisdom and to show that he alone saves and he alone saves through the message of a gospel of sovereign grace. And secondly, Paul underscores that when God saves, God gets all the glory for it. Verse 31,

³¹ that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord .” (1 Corinthians 1:31, NKJV)

You see, God does the work. He uses sinful men. But God is no spectator in the process. God is involved in his own program of redemption. Men are saved, yes, but it is God who does it.

So that no man may boast in his presence, no minister may boast, no convert may boast. God saves in a glorious way, and all the glory belongs to him. So Paul says, there are no factions in the gospel ministry. Both the form of Christian ministry and the content of Christian ministry are shaped by gospel truth. There is simply no room to talk about ministers. And so in our text, Paul applies this matter of the exclusive power of the Christian gospel to Christian ministry itself. And here he does something surprising.

He sets up his own ministry as a model, even though he just said, we won’t talk about ministers. He sets up his own ministry as a model, to be an example, to be a mentor; however, not to focus on him, but to focus on Christ. And so, you see throughout our text tonight how many times he uses the word I and my. But it’s not to be self-centered. It’s rather to teach younger ministers. Here are the four aspects that I believe belong to the model of true Christian ministry.

So the first aspect in verse one is a self-conscious role that I serve as a minister of the gospel, as a witness to the testimony of God the Father. Paul is reminding the Corinthians, “I have not come to bring my own testimony, but I have come to bring the message of the living God.” And therefore, he says, “I haven’t come with excellency of speech or wisdom.”

I haven’t come to impress you with polished oratorical form, excellency of speech, or with philosophical depth, wisdom, though Paul could have done both, for Paul had the gifts to do both. But he says, I come to draw your attention simply to the message of God the Father. I’m not concerned about what I could say, but I’m concerned about what God has said. I am come as an ambassador. I am come to convey the mind of my heavenly Father, and no more and no less.

So Paul comes as God’s herald, as God’s herald, to declare the testimony, or as the original Greek has it, the mystery of God’s gospel. Now, there is nothing glamorous about being a witness. A witness claims no originality, no cleverness, nor profound insights. Paul says, this is what I have said. This is what I’ve heard. This is what the Lord has testified. I should say to you and brothers in the ministry here tonight, that is your job description. You are to preach the words of God only.

You are to do nothing more than bring your father’s testimony. And this is the only reason that you have a right for people to sit in a pew and listen to what you have to say. It’s not because you or I are part of something ingenious or profound that people need to hear us. It’s only because we’re bringing the word of our heavenly God and father. That is your simple, your lofty, your solemn, your humbling, your bold task. Martin Luther said it bluntly. He said most things bluntly. When the preacher speaks, God speaks.

And whoever cannot boast like that should leave preaching alone, for otherwise he will surely deny and blaspheme the living God. That’s a self-conscious rule. It’s a bold rule, it’s an audacious rule, but it’s a God-ordained role. And that’s why when the Puritan ministers stood before their people, they brought them the word of God. John Owen said, the first and principal duty of a pastor is to feed the flock by diligent preaching of the word of God. Pastor Edward Deering, Puritan Edward Deering said this.

The faithful minister likened to Christ is one that preacheth nothing but the word of God. You see, the sermon is not just hinged to scripture, but it quite literally exists inside the word of God. The text is not in the sermon, but the sermon is in the text. That’s the task of every minister of the gospel. And that means, brothers, hard work. It means that we have to penetrate the mind of God in holy scripture.

That involves earnest prayer on the one hand, and on the other, the arduous task of tracing the etymology of words, tracking down the intricacies of grammar, laboring over points, and expressing the text at hand as fully and as accurately as possible. But it also involves wrestling with that and agonizing to lay hold of God’s testimony.

And then, having engaged in this hard labor, to seek with all our might to open the mind of God in dependency upon the Spirit to our people with such simplicity and clarity that even young children will be able to understand the gist of what we’re saying. And so, that means that you and I must ever remain a student of holy scripture. We must search the word. We must love the word. We must embody the word. We must pray and preach and teach from that word in season and out of season.

We must let the word of God master us, that we may master it. It must form and mold us under the tutelage of the spirit, that we may form our people from it by the same spirit. Preaching God’s message is what preaching is all about. And you, dear wives that are present, you can help your husbands here. Ministers wives are our best critics. Sometimes people are slow on being honest with ministers. But you do your husband a favor when you are honest with him.

I’ll do it with love, and do it gently, but do it firmly. My wife says to me after I preach a sermon, “Honey, it was all right, but it wasn’t your best one.” I know something’s coming. That’s her gentle approach. But I listen to what she has to say. She’s usually right on target because she hears what the pew hears.

And when we abandon scriptural, exegetical preaching in any way, shape, or form, take our doctrine, our experimental preaching, our practical preaching, and divorce it from our text at hand in any way, you women need to correct us as well as our elders and deacons. So our wives need to be our accountability partners in this matter of remaining faithful to the testimony of the word of God. What our people must feel from us, you see that we are gripped by holy scripture, that we are immersed in it. We are captivated by it.

How else are we going to captivate them to the word of God if we are not moved to it ourselves? See, the puritan preacher believed that the Bible was a living, breathing book. They loved the scripture. They lived it. They breathed it. They relished the power of the Spirit that accompanied the word, and they made their people feel the reality of that. The 66 books of scripture Puritan John Rogers called the library of the Holy Spirit. You see, they viewed scripture as God’s library, speaking to us as a father speaks to his children.

They saw the word as truth, as to trust in and rest upon to all eternity. They saw it empowered, empowered by the Spirit to renew minds and transform lives. They believed that God would work with his word as he spoke it. How critical that is, that we don’t give in to the cynicism of our age. Believe, brother, if you’re a minister of the gospel, believe self-consciously that you are called to declare the testimony of God the Father. But now, secondly, what precisely is God the Father’s testimony that we as ministers must declare?

Well, Paul goes on to tell us in verse two, he says,

² For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2, ESV)

So the message of the Father, Paul says, is a message about his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. Now notice what Paul says. “I determined I resolved to know nothing else. I resolved to let nothing else into my ministry, nothing to penetrate my thinking, to fill my mind, to take me away from Christ and him crucified.” This was Paul’s driving conviction. This was his deliberate renunciation, inwardly and outwardly.

He would deliberately renunciate every consideration, but Christ crucified. Now you say, but we live in a society so ripe with all kinds of issues to address. Well, so did Paul. Paul was an educated man. He had philosophers who wanted to engage him. He could have involved himself in all kinds of civil and political problems and vices. There was so much to be said. Paul said, “I deny myself. I renounce everything else so that I may preach Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Yes, but what does exactly that mean?

Does that mean that Paul only preached the scenes of the cross? Obviously not. Yes, he did say to the Galatians that before your eyes, Jesus was publicly portrayed as crucified. And he no doubt did that everywhere so that believers would gain an appreciation of the cost of their redemption and that the lost might be evangelized. Paul taught that to preach Christ crucified is indeed to preach somber overtones of divine wrath against human sin, as well as to proclaim Christ on the cross as God’s propitiation.

As the one who absorbed that full weight of divine wrath against sin, so that wrath and curse may be turned away and God receive sinners in his favor. You see, Paul taught, didn’t he, everywhere, that the only way our sin can be dealt with is by the agony and bloody sweat of Jesus Christ.

By Christ going down into death for us, tasting death for us, taking our death into the grave, entering the lake of fire for us, going into the bottomless pit in his agonies as our substitute, hanging in the naked flame of his father’s wrath, crying out the most awesome cry of dereliction ever uttered from human lips: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

⁴⁶ And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, ESV)

Golgotha was indeed a terrible place. Perhaps you’ve been there. I’ve stood by the spot. It’s so beautiful today. It’s so touristy, so clean. But in Jesus’ day, it wasn’t clean.

It was a revolting place. Skulls and putrid flesh lying about. The absence of all that is pleasant and beautiful and refreshing to the senses. It was an ugly place, an atrocious place, a despised place, a revolting place. Everything about Golgotha had an odious look in Jesus day. No attempt for order and harmony and decency on Golgotha. Three crosses, dingy, blood stained, supporting three naked bodies, ghastly and blood stained too. All in keeping with the surroundings. The God man on the center cross and every insult heaped on him.

The soldiers, the robes, the elders in their holy robes of office, the priests all focused on him. “Come down from the cross if thou be the Christ.” Only one lonely voice raised in his behalf: a despicable, murderous thief. The pure-minded women, silent disciples who loved him, cowered and terrified and far away. No one catches his eye. No one glances up to the cross and says, “Jesus, we understand what you’re going through.” He’s an alien from his father’s house. His friends, his brethren have forsaken his fellowship. He’s hanging between heaven and earth.

Rejected by heaven, rejected by earth, rejected by hell. One old Puritan said, the devil went around and loosened all the traps of hell and called every devil to come out and to consume himself upon Christ. But the greatest agony is the withdrawal of his own father’s friendly face. His own father turning his back. His own father pushing him away with both hands. O my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

This is what your sin and my sin have cost our savior. Do we have another message to preach? But Christ and him crucified.

Brothers, our only plea is guilty. Our only plea is, Lord, cover my life, cover my sin. Have mercy upon me and this glorious savior. Lord, I abhor myself and dust and ashes at the foot of Calvary. Oh, let us be determined to preach the gospel with passion and with unction, to see sin as it really is and to see propitiation as it really is.

Thomas Watson said we can tremble before God’s wrath at the thunderings of Mount Sinai, but in the face of the red glass of Christ’s sufferings, we learn the horrible heinousness and essence of what sin is. Part of the preaching, part of the reason for so little reception of our preaching, sometimes I’m afraid, brothers, at least in my own ministry, is that when we don’t preach the cross with passion, it’s because we don’t understand the seriousness of sin. We don’t teach the hellishness of sin with passion.

We don’t preach, as Bunyan said, every truth I preach, I smartingly feel. If we preach sin in all its awful color, Golgotha would come to life in its vivid color as well. You see, our total depravity is so important to preach because it reveals the total ability of God in the face of our total inability and total depravity. Our total depravity makes God’s total salvation a total reality for sinners who have nowhere else to go.

Our total depravity demands total transformation of the whole man to God by a total savior, and that demands our full-time attention. We don’t have time for other things if we’re ministers of the gospel. We need all our time to study the wonders of Golgotha. But Paul says yet more. You see, Thomas Brooks puts it this way. I just read this yesterday on the plane flying here from Omaha. Let me read it to you.

He says, the very sins that Satan paints as small and puts new names and colors upon cost the best blood, the noblest blood, the light blood, the heart blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That Christ should come forth from the eternal bosom of his father to a region of sorrow and death, that God should be manifest in the flesh. The creator made a creature, that he that was clothed with glory should be wrapped with rags of flesh. He that filled heaven and earth with his glory should be cradled in the manger.

The power of God should fly from weak man, the God of Israel, into Egypt, that the God of the law should be subject to the law, the God of the circumcision, circumcised, the God that has made the heavens working at Joseph’s homely trade. That he that binds devils in chains should be tempted. That he whose is the world in the fullness thereof should hunger and thirst. That the God of strength should be weary. The judge of all flesh condemned, the God of life put to death.

That he that is one with his father should cry out of his misery, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” That he that had the keys of hell and death in his girdle should lie imprisoned in the sepulchre of another. That that head before which the angels do cast down their crowns should be crowned with thorns. And those eyes purer than the sun put out by the darkness of death.

Those ears which hear nothing but hallelujahs of saints and angels, to hear the blasphemies of the multitude; that face that was fairer than the sons of men be spit upon. That mouth and tongue that spake as never man spake, be accused for blasphemy. Those hands that freely swayed the sceptre of heaven nailed to the cross; those feet like unto fine brass nailed to the cross for our sins. That every human sense of Jesus should be distressed.

His feeling or touching with a spear and nails, his smell with stinking flavor, the place of skulls, his taste with vinegar and gall, his hearing with reproaches, and sight of his mother and disciples bemoaning him, is soul comfortless and forsaken. All this is for your very sins that Satan paints and puts fine colors upon. O, how should the consideration of these things stir up your soul against sin and work the soul to fly from it and to use all holy means whereby sin may be subdued and destroyed.

Brothers, we’ve got to be sin haters, Christ lovers, and holiness pursuers if we’re going to be ministers of the gospel. And yet, this is not all Paul preached. He preached the whole counsel of God. What does he mean? Saying, “I determined to preach nothing but Christ and him crucified.” Paul is talking in our text in comprehensive terms. He’s employed comprehensive terminology several times already in this epistle. Look back at verse 17, chapter one:

¹⁷ For Christ didn’t send me to baptize, but to preach the Good News—and not with clever speech, for fear that the cross of Christ would lose its power. (1 Corinthians 1:17, NLT)

Comprehensive term, verse 18: “The preaching of the cross.” Comprehensive term, verse 23:

²³ but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, (1 Corinthians 1:23, NKJV)

Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 2:2 that all that he brings is in one way or another tied to the message of Jesus’ saviorhood and lordship, to the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s saying that the Lord Jesus is the center of all this preaching because the Father says he must be, and because he deserves to be, and because he is the Lord from heaven in whom the world is reconciled to God. There’s no other savior, and there’s no other Lord.

Spurgeon said after preaching 15 years in the tabernacle, I’ve been preaching nothing but this name. That, brethren, is the magnet. He will draw his own to himself. If we cry out to seek conversion, this must be our preaching, more constant preaching of Jesus Christ. He must be in every sermon. He must be the top and bottom of all the theology that we preach. May I ask not only ministers, but also every Christian sitting here tonight. Is this the goal of our lives? That our entire lives and those of us who preach our entire preaching?

Is this our resolution, that Jesus Christ in all his glory may be portrayed by us before men and women and boys and girls, not just for the sake of evangelism, as important as that is, but also for the growth in grace, the spiritual maturity of all those related to us in the home, in the church, and in society? You see, what Paul is saying is, I preach Jesus Christ and him crucified not only evangelistically but also for growth of Christians growing in the Christian life.

It is growing in the knowledge of Christ’s person and the knowledge of his work. So we get in verse two a glimpse into Paul’s hermeneutic. Hermeneutic means interpretation of the gospel, how he interprets the gospel. He says, my hermeneutic is to preach the whole counsel of God by preaching Jesus Christ. Theology, proper anthropology, christology, soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology, Paul is saying, is christology is the grand central theme, and all the other branches of theology have their rightful place. Yes, but they are all tied to Christ.

They all lead to Christ, and they all draw out of Christ. Every aspect of truth has Christ as the overarching theme. Take away Christ and we have no theology to bring. For all the promises of God are yea and amen in Christ Jesus. And once we grab hold of that, brothers, our entire ministries are infected and transformed.

And we will understand, like Paul, that every problem we ever confront is a problem among our people, which we take and find and search and guide and lead our people in the way that it leads back to the Lord Jesus Christ. So follow Paul through the epistles.

¹³ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1 Corinthians 1:13, ESV)

It brings them to Christ. Is the problem an immoral man in the assembly later on, Chapter 5?

⁷ Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. (1 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV)

He leads him to Christ. It’s the problem, dealing perhaps with your own immoral temptations in the ministry. Christ is the answer. Such were some of you.

¹¹ And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11, NKJV)

Do we need instruction in the home? It is to Christ Paul leads us.

²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, (Ephesians 5:22, 25, NKJV)

You see, everything leads to Christ. Everything. When Paul says, “forgive one another,” he says, “forgive each other, as Christ forgave you.”

³² Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32, ESV)

When he exhorts us to be generous in our giving, he reminds us:

⁹ For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9, NKJV)

When he exhorts us to humility, he tells us to put on the mind of Christ. When he exhorts us to everyday holiness, it is on the ground that we have crucified and risen with Christ, to have new life in him. So to the lost and to the saved, Paul says, I have nothing else but Christ to preach. He’s all I preach. He’s the sum and substance of my ministry. He’s everything. That’s what the Puritans were all about. With all their intensity against sin, with all their stress on holiness.

They were aiming to preach the Lord Jesus Christ, to preach him with theological articulation, to preach him with divine grandeur, and to teach him with holy passion. Richard Sibbes said, preaching is the chariot that carries Christ up and down in the world. And so they spent whole treatises revealing Christ: Thomas Taylor, “Christ Revealed”; Thomas Goodwin, “Christ Our Mediator”; Alexander Gross, “Never Reprinted,” though he was a Westminster divine; “The Happiness of Enjoying and Making the Speedy Use of Christ,” a wonderful 400-page book; Isaac Ambrose, “Looking Unto Jesus.”

Ralph Robinson and Philip Henry both wrote a book called Christ all and in all. John Owen, the glorious mystery of the person of Christ. James, Christ crucified. And when they preached Christ, they preached the whole Christ to the whole man. They offered him as prophet, as priest, and as king. They didn’t separate his benefits from his person. They didn’t offer him as a savior from sin while ignoring his claims as Lord to preach the whole Christ. Listen to Joseph Elaine in his model evangelistic tract, a tract of 150 pages called Alarm to the Unconverted.

All of Christ is accepted by the sincere convert; he loves not only the wages, but the work of Christ. Not only the benefits, but the burden of Christ. He is willing not only to tread out the corn, but to draw under the yoke. The new convert takes up the commands of Christ, yea, the cross of Christ. The unsolved, sound convert takes Christ by halves. He is all for the salvation of Christ, but he is not for the sanctification of Christ. He is for the privileges of Christ, but does not appropriate the person of Christ.

He divides the offices and benefits of Christ. This is an error in the very foundation. Whoever loves his eternal life, let him beware here. This is an undoing mistake of which you have often been more, and yet none is more common. So much for the Lordship controversy. It was addressed four centuries ago. And the line doesn’t call them carnal Christians, he calls them no Christians. They’re not saved. The true card, Bertie says, is willing to have Christ upon any terms.

He goes on to say, is willing to have the dominion of Christ, as well as the deliverance of Christ.

² For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2, ESV)

Brothers, the Puritans were balanced men, and they taught that true balance means always getting to Christ.

Well, thirdly, I hasten on the faithful minister’s powerful reliance, verses three and four. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.

³ And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, ⁴ and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, (1 Corinthians 2:3-4, ESV)

What’s Paul doing here? Well, in verse three, he’s describing the state of his mind when he came to Corinth. It was a wicked city. The task ahead must have seemed impossible for him. Have you ever walked through a big city like Chicago or New York, and thought to yourself, as a minister, what would it be like to be a minister here, in the center of New York City? It would be overwhelming, wouldn’t it?

That’s how Paul felt coming to Corinth, to you in weakness. I was over my head. This calling was too high. I was out of my league. You see, Paul didn’t come to Corinth carrying revival in his briefcase, as so many evangelists claim to do today. When they come to town revival meeting, they announce what the Holy Spirit is going to do before he does it. That’s the work of man. Paul said, I came with weakness. I came insufficient. I didn’t come able to make men have decisions for Christ. I came just with the gospel.

I didn’t have what it takes in myself. But notice verse four. Happily, the story doesn’t end with verse three. I came in weakness, I came in fear, I came in trembling.

⁴ and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, (1 Corinthians 2:4, ESV)

John Owen said, just as sin is always behind our elbow, so Paul had the Holy Spirit behind his elbow. And when he brought the word, the Spirit joined in with it. You see?

And the Puritans taught that when Christ is preached as a full savior for full sinners, the Spirit cannot restrain himself from joining with the preaching because he delights to see Christ honored. So the Spirit joins himself to the word and he brings it home with power to the heart. And so what happens? Paul gets up on the pulpit, he preaches to the Corinthians. He preaches so weak, so full of fear, so much of trembling with himself. But at the same time he’s confident.

He’s confident because he has the Holy Spirit, and he knows that the Spirit will take the word and bring it home to the heart. That’s his power. Nothing in him, in fact, he can say God’s strength. Remember that in 2 Corinthians, strength is made perfect in weakness. Witness, brothers. Isn’t that exactly what happens to you when you get up in the pulpit, when you’re in the right frame of mind? You get up on the pulpit conscious of the incredibly solemn task you have. You know you’re over your league.

You’re full of fear and trembling and weakness, and yet you know the faithfulness of the Spirit and you’re only going to bring his word. And so you rely and you lean upon him. And when you come down from the pulpit, you have to say, with all due humility, the Spirit of God has helped me through one more time. Not that you think you have a great sermon. Thomas Shepard. You know, the Puritans were very hard on themselves in terms of rating their own sermons.

One of our problems today is that ministers think they’re always preaching great sermons. I have it in my seminary. “How’d you do, student, when they come back from the church?” “Oh, yeah, it went great.” “How’d you do next week?” “Oh, it went great.” “Yeah, next week?” “Great.” Does it ever flop? I’m a shepherd, so I can count on one hand the number of sermons I’ve ever preached in my life.

Now that may be a little too hard on himself, but I have to say for myself, there’s probably two or three times a year that I step into the van and say to my wife, you don’t have to ask. I don’t have to ask you today how the sermon went. I felt a conscious sense from beginning to end that the Spirit of God was taking the words out of my mouth. I don’t even have to say that to her, because she feels it, too.

But, brothers, we don’t have that kind of unction every week, and we ought to have a certain measure. I say it in love. I hope I don’t say it too harshly. We ought to have a certain measure of dissatisfaction, satisfaction with our own preaching that will press us to the throne, press us into this dependency upon the Holy Spirit of God. Our confidence is not in ourselves; our confidence is in the Spirit of God. And what Paul says is, this completes the trinitarian apostolic model for Christian ministry.

I bring the testimony of the Father, the message Jesus Christ and him crucified, and I do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. And then finally, Paul says, I have an ultimate goal, and the ultimate goal is that my people may stand through faith in the power of God. Verse five, so that God may be glorified. You see, Paul carefully intended that his ministry direct people to trust in God alone. To run to Paul would not do. They must run to God. So unlike many modern ministers, Paul never attempted to be the Holy Spirit.

He was never so arrogant as to assume the spirit’s role. He knew it wouldn’t work. Paul was concerned only about one thing, about a God-directed faith that would bring God the glory. And, brothers, that’s the kind of ministry that we need.

What does it matter when you come down from the pulpit, what you think of the sermon? What matters is what God thinks of the sermon. And what matters is what the Holy Spirit does with that sermon. The old Puritans used to say, there are no good sermons that aren’t applied sermons.

The good sermon is the applied sermon. One Puritan said, whenever someone says to me, “I was really blessed by the sermon,” I say to them, “How? Tell me what happened.” you see, we use the word blessed, and our people use it so lightly, so flippantly. But if we’re truly blessed, you see, something happened. We’re moved toward God. We’re moved by faith. We’re moved to glorify God. That’s the goal. Not so long ago, I sat down in a restaurant with a retired minister.

And as I’m fond of doing with older ministers, I say to them, I said to him, tell me, what was the goal of your ministry? For 52 years at ministry, what was your goal? And what can you teach your younger minister, you young ministers should be doing that all the time with your older brethren. But I’ll never forget what he said. He said I was satisfied only when I saw sinners draw closer to my savior. So simple. But isn’t that a minister’s real wages? Oh, yes. It’s nice to get paid for it, too, monetarily.

But as a minister, when something is deposited in our account by our deacons or however else we receive our money, we should be amazed that we get paid for doing this work on top of it. This is a glorious work. It’s the most glorious work in all the world to lead sinners, to be a co-laborer with the Holy Spirit.

²⁸ Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. (Acts 20:28, NKJV)

If he gave his life for his sheep, ought we not give our lives for those same sheep? So do away with all the cynicism that afflicts and cripples your ministry, and look positively to what the Holy Spirit will do with it, and see your real wages as sinners being moved to faith and then to greater faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And please don’t give yourself 1oz of glory for it when you’re in the right place.

There’s nothing so humiliating, nothing so humbling, not humiliating, nothing so humbling in all the world as to see and to know and to hear that God has used sinful, wretched, unlovable, unworthy, hell-worthy me to lead a sinner closer to the Lord Jesus Christ. I can’t comprehend it. But to him, be all the glory, Paul says. And you see, when that happens, then not only you, but also your people will stand back and be amazed at what God has done.

We’ve had a few times in our church, some of our churches where we’ve had what I call a mini revival, say, 20 to 40 people or so being converted in a period of six months and time. They were the busiest times of ministry, because you were going from house to house, and then you hear of another person brought under, saving concerns, and you go to that house.

And what happened in those few blessed times of my ministry, I felt like I was a spectator in a way, like I was standing on the sidelines and watching the Holy Spirit work from home to home. There wasn’t for a moment entered my mind. This is my appreciativeness. That’s sheer stupidity. I can preach my heart out all my life, and I can’t convert one person. I found that out. I spent six months in the army, I talked to hundreds of soldiers, and I’m not aware of one single fruit.

It would be wonderful to hear of some fruit on the great day, but I don’t know of a single fruit. You see, you and I can’t convert people, but we bring the word of God, and we trust in this trinitarian framework that the whole triune God will be involved to take the foolishness of preaching, to work in the lives and hearts of those who must believe, and therefore in our personal lives and in our ministries. We must love the whole trinity, and we must see, seek the whole Trinity’s glory.

In fact, we must focus more on the glory of God even than on the souls of men. And God will bring the souls of men in through the proclamation of his glory. Samuel Rutherford said, and with this I close tonight, I know not which divine person I love the most, but this I know I love, and I need all three. May God help us to run a ministry, the center in the triumph of God. Amen.