august 8, 2022

Peachtree Church is reading through the Bible together in 2022 with Quest: Exploring God’s Story Together. Devotionals are sent by email three days each week. Monday’s email includes additional background, history, and cultural information to help us better understand the texts. On Tuesday and Thursday you will receive a devotional based on one portion of the texts for this week.

Texts for this week

Mark 1:1-3:6

Matthew 5-7

John 15-17

Psalm 100

Introduction to the Texts

Ministry is work. Ministry is a “job of joy.” The word “ministry” comes into English from the Latin word ministerium, meaning the place, space, or station in which particular people, called ministers, do what they do. Ministry works when ministers work. But that work is a special kind of work.

When we think about work, we may think of it as a kind of service, a type of labor, or a modality of employment. Ministerial work can be any of these things, even all of them. But, as a biblical and theological notion, ministry is so much more. Every member of the body of Christ is a minister. Our ministry is service, freely rendered, a labor of love. And for some folks, it is even employment, yes—but it is work as more than a job, more than a gig. It is work as vocation and as a divine calling. It is a “job of joy.”

The texts for this week present for us the notion of divine calling; that is the work of ministry. Although the Gospel of Mark appears primarily evangelistic, the opening chapter mentions ministry twice in reference to our Savior Jesus Christ. But in both instances, Jesus is not working the work of ministry. Christ is receiving ministry from angels (Mark 1:13), then from Peter’s mother-in-law, whom Jesus had healed of a debilitating fever (Mark 1:30-31). Even the greatest of ministers, to do the work of ministry, must themselves, every now and then, be on the receiving end of ministry. No one is excluded from receiving ministry, hence, the sermon. The Word of God is for everyone.

Saint Augustine first coined the phrase “Sermon on the Mount” when he constructed a hermeneutic based on the Gospel of Matthew, and that phrase stuck. Among its several dire warnings is one against attempting to split the difference between two masters (Matthew 6:24). The freely rendered work of ministry must be single-mindedly rendered as well. And Christ Jesus, always one to “go there,” mentions that one master who competes with God more than any other is money.

Jesus offers his farewell speech in the Gospel of John 15-17. It is Jesus’ “long goodbye,” with a prayer (John 17:1-26). This is the “Jesus Prayer” of the Bible: not just a prayer to God the Father, but a prayer of Jesus, in which he declares, in close hearing distance of his disciples, that he has finished the work or “job of joy” that his Father has given him to do (John 17:4). The joy of the work of ministry, once begun, is not over until it’s over. And when that work is over for one minister, it is then to be continued by others. Interestingly, everyone should have a place of giving and receiving ministry—every member a minister and every member ministered to for the sake of the Cross of Christ.

Finally, Psalm 100 articulates not only that we serve, but that we serve and be glad about it—service not only with a smile, but with an intentional shout for joy and joyful songs (Psalm 100:1-2). This type of “worship response” is hard work. It calls for us to come out of our comfort zones, to be transparent with our intellect (mind) and emotions (heart) as unto the Lord—a labor of love. For God’s faithfulness and love toward us is forever (Psalm 100:5).

Devotional

The work of which these texts speak, the work of ministry, is not the service of the enslaved or the labor of the journeyman or the employment of the temp agency. In an era when people are working too much, too long, and often for too little, people are burdened. But God’s yoke is easy, and His burden is light. In the case of God’s Kingdom, the work of the ministry works differently. When God blesses the work of our hands, it is ministry for which we have been chosen. It is the work to which we have been called. It is the “job of joy” working in us as we are being who and what we truly are to be in Jesus Christ.

Canadian-Hungarian psychologist, physician, and author Gabor Maté presents to us that one of the most prevalent causes of addiction and mental illness in our world is that many of us are alienated from the work that we are to do. That is, we are strangers to our current work situation; it is foreign to us. We don’t know why we do it, or we do it with the strangest of motives. But in the work of God’s ministry, there is opportunity for us to do work precisely, because it is work by which we are reconciled to God. We are not strangers to this work. In the work of ministry, we learn and relearn, lest we forget who we are, where we are, and Whose we are. For we are God’s people and the sheep of His pasture. (Psalm 100:3)

For Reflection

What work of the ministry are you doing specifically at Peachtree Church?

Are you overworking or underworking in ministry, or perhaps are you not doing ministry at all?

Do you have a “job of joy” in God’s Kingdom?

Prayer

May the Lord comfort us, challenge us, and change our work efforts for HIS glory. An ancient prayer about God’s work, about our own work of the ministry:

“Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Relent, Lord! How long will it be?
Have compassion on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.
May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children. May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.”
 
Psalm 90:12-17