God is not using a one-size-fits-all application. My pressure, my tribulation, my afflictions, my persecution may be different for me than it is for you. God knows my limits; I don't. I think I do, I always set them real low, and He says, “You're able. You're much more able, so I'll just pour a little bit more on you.” And then you think, “Oh, my God, I'm going to crush under this thing!” And He says, “Wait, there's more.” It's like an infomercial, “Wait, there's more, just a little bit more.” And you go, “Oh God, my back's going to break for the pressure.” “There's a little bit more in there.” And somehow you've just pulled through something that in your mind you, you were convinced you could never survive; but you're still here. ♪ ♪ I want to read the very last line of the twenty-third verse in the first chapter of the book of Colossians. It's kind of hard because it's in the middle of something, but that last line says, “Whereof I Paul am made a minister.” And if you read down to the opening of the twenty-fifth verse, “Whereof I am made a minister,” it's quite unusual to have that kind of repetition. Now, as I was analyzing the text I saw some, if you remember I showed you what a chiasmus looks like; kind of think of it as bookends, bookends that go A━A; B-B; and C, usually what's in the middle is the most vital something that both bookends are aiming towards. That's the easiest and most simplistic way to explain a chiasmus. I noticed there's a pattern there, but normally I'd jump on that and say, “Let's analyze that,” but there's something actually more important to discuss here. So the first thing I want to look at is this “I Paul am made a minister,” and that word, both, in both places is the Greek word, diakonos. And this is where we get our English word for “deacon” or “deaconess,” which carries with it any form of ministering servant, attendant. It was used for those responsible for alms as well in one or two cases as a synonym for an overseer. It was also referred to those who do basically menial tasks such as waiting on tables. But this is important, and the reason why it's important is because Paul calls himself that, “I am made a minister,” diakonos. We also know that there are other names attached to Paul, Paulos doulos, which we translate here, King James will say “servant” but it really a “bond slave” or a “slave” of Christ. Sometimes we are, we, I refer to the apostle Paul as just that apostle Paul, a “sent one.” So there's a diversity of titles and names. In another letter he says he's an ambassador for Christ, but there's something important about this particular word, and I want to take a couple of minutes to just kind of talk about it. Perhaps for some who are a little bit confused, and I realize that not everybody has been listening for thirty and forty years and has all the knowledge, but I find this to be a regular occurrence of confusion. And that may be because we've got people coming from different faiths and different denominations. There's only really, and let me say it like this. There's really only one ministry and there will only ever be one ministry. Despite what you hear when somebody says, “Oh I have a ministry of this, and somebody else has a ministry of that,” you've got to start with there's one ministry: that is ministry of servitude. Anybody who says they are a servant of God they're tasked with one━and you may say, “Well, aren't there multiple offices?” Yes, but they're tasked with one singular, uniform task at the core. Everything points back to the gospel. If you are in ministry, I'm now talking to some of my pastor friends and those who watch me, if you are in ministry, I don't care what you think you're doing, you are a servant, I am a servant. In fact everybody sitting in front of me is a servant. There is nobody that comes into the church of Jesus Christ and has some high prominence. This is why all of these titles, and I'll be specific, titles that humankind has attached to the ministry in terms of pecking order. Were there titles and terms and titles of responsibility that are laid out in the New Testament? Yes, absolutely. I've, I've spoken about these before. We toss around the word very lightly, “bishop,” but that Greek word, episkopos: epi-, “over,” seer; just an overseer. Someone who is charged with making sure the church stays on track. Now that overseer may be an overseer, but he's still or she is still diakonos. You go into the ninth chapter of Acts, which is the, what I call Paul's conversion, or the, the event on the Damascus road, Acts 9. You take a look at something that is said there, which will be repeated later in Acts 26:16 as well. So Acts 9, now you've got the whole introduction to the chapter where it says he was going out and “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.” It paints a picture of what was going on. Now as he was going towards Damascus, it says a light “shined round about him a light from heaven: he fell to the earth, he heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest it is heard for thee to kick against the pricks.” If you keep reading, and He tells him, “You go into the city, it will be told to you what you must do.” But read, I want you to read with me verse 15 and 16: “The Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.” So he's got a triple commission on him, not just the Gentiles. We tend to think of the apostle Paul and simply say the Gentiles, but not so; right here: Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. Now the passage I just mentioned, Acts 26, he's standing in front of King Agrippa, he will stand in front of Felix, so he will definitely preach in front of, and he does preach without shame in front of these kings. And then to the children of Israel, which is equally interesting. Verse 16 is what I want you to see, “For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake.” Now, again, as I said, that's repeated in Acts 26:16, that very concept, the fact that He'll show him what he must suffer. So the, what I'm looking at “made a minister,” there are a few things we can know. He did not volunteer. It wasn't as though he was looking forward to this his whole life, but God reached down into the stream of time, touching a man who may have been zealous for God, but was indeed an angry, we'll call it even what Jesus calls it when He says, “If you hate in your heart, you're as guilty as a murderer,” then he was murderer par excellence towards the Christians. And this is what I love about this. I want to take just a quick second to say this, because a lot of times I pass by this and don't say this. That's not to say that God only saves people who are so far the other way, but it should be something noteworthy to say, again, another one of these modern corruptions of what a man or a woman of God should be. The apostle Paul had, even though he had a background towards God he had a background of essentially being criminal against the church. And I think if we're honest, I think that's where most people, maybe not to the degree of the apostle Paul, but that's where most people start off, “Well, I don't want to be part of the church; are you crazy?” Have you ever talked to somebody and they have that, “Uh, NO! Don't even say the C-word.” That is what I'm talking about. There's a certain hostility that, as I've been talking for weeks, that's the carnal mind that's at enmity, against; an enemy of God. So we know he gets converted, he follows everything that's told to him to do, and he begins preaching. Now, if you analyze his preaching ministry you can see a pattern, and the pattern is that in some places he was received, but in many places he was questioned whether he was really authentically sent of God, chosen of God, called by God, whether he was really authentically speaking for God. And a lot of times; this is what I want you to just think about; it's just food for thought. A lot of times people out there in viewing-land, they will judge the minister superficially based on either their appearance, their speech, or maybe their life before ministry. Let's just say if we were serving on a deacon board of some form and we were going to judge the merits of letting the apostle Paul into ministry because he has this past, this is the way we've become, “Oh, no. He couldn't serve in that position. He's not, not only is he not qualified, but look at what he's done.” And that's the beauty of what God does. God says, “I make the choices; you don't. If you don't like them, too bad, and I will give the gifts to the ones I choose to give them to.” Not all will receive the same gifts. So the apostle Paul obviously received the gift of wisdom and understanding, and the ability to articulate that wisdom and understanding through the pen. I don't know what he sounded like when he spoke. We have a few places where he is quoted, but other than that we just have the letters, so God gave him that gift. And this is why when he wrote to the Corinthians, he said, “And God gave gifts,” just like the fruit of the Spirit; to everyone that receives the Spirit, God gave gifts. And I always have people say, “Well, if God gave these certain gifts, how come He's not giving them anymore?” Friend, look at the history from this book to this time. Not every age needs everything that was dispensed at another age and time. There were things that the people in the early and first church needed that we do not. They didn't have an Old and New Testament compiled together as we do. They didn't have the ability to have resources of libraries and concordances and dictionaries that are strictly to this. And they only were based, they were only going on somebody standing up and beginning to speak a word that could have been━hear me carefully: it could have been the greatest sermon ever delivered, but had the Spirit not been sent out on the Day of Pentecost, it might have just been another day where they might have said, “These men are just babblers.” And nothing else would have happened. So there's a lot that goes into this and I think that if we are looking for a pattern there is definitely a pattern through the Bible with the people that God chooses. Now, not all; I'm not saying to you not all are the same. You've got people like Jonah when he was called; he went the other way instead of going where God told him. He, he wanted to go the opposite direction, and trust me, you know, conveniently there was a vessel to take him in the opposite direction; conveniently. You've got people, as I said Moses is another one of these. Just because was schooled in the wisdom of Egypt didn't make him wise to the things of God. Just because someone gets a degree; you know how many people ask me, “Oh, is yours a theology degree?” No, it's not. And just because somebody does their degree in a certain field, and I'm speaking about ministry, doesn't mean that it, it's the piece of paper. There had to be something that God worked with in here and in here to bring forth. So these are the things when I read about “made a minister,” I think to myself, even from my own example and experience, there was a making process for me, and it didn't just happen overnight. My making process was started the day I first came here without knowing that that process was happening, and culminated in obviously me taking the ministry and the pulpit. And it still wasn't like “Okay, now I've arrived.” There was still a process going on, and there's still a process to this day. That's why it is imperative, whether you listen to me or you listen to somebody else, it's imperative you find someone who is a perpetual student in the book and someone who will basically not just rest on “Well, I, I've produced so many messages, go now I can just kind of rest on that and kind of just keep the motions going by treading water.” It doesn't work that way. You're either moving on in God's program or you're moving backwards. There is no neutral, stay-in-one-place zone. So let me go back to the text now and let me just say this. If we're looking for understanding about the role that the apostle Paul plays; forgive me, I'm going to take you to two other places to show an example of something, because these are the times when I show you these, I show you the Scriptures because I think a lot of times people are not following along, they're not turning, they're not reading it for themselves. You know what it is when somebody reads it for themselves, sees it with their own eyes and goes, “Okay” versus you just listen to me but you don't take what I'm saying because you might think it's still an opinion. This, and by the way, this must be a little bit of a curse of mine, because I, I try to help people and give them instruction, oh, they've got to do their own thing, they've got to make their own decision, they've got to, they have to━okay, fine. Do it yourself. I could have saved you a little bit of time here, but whatever. Sometimes that's the way you learn. You've got to leave people alone like that. Romans 15:16, Paul says, “That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles,” so it's a repetition, “ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost.” And you'll read many times over, there's another passage in 1 Timothy 1:12, “I thank Jesus Christ our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry.” So you can definitely see a few things. The apostle Paul is always grateful that God chose him, that God put him there, that God equipped him. There's never a sense of “Well, I have arrived.” But there is always a sense of him having to prove himself. And you'll read this, in different places you'll see this very obviously where it's as though, you remember I've delivered several times to you the message on the ministry of the thorn where it says a messenger from Satan buffeted him thrice. And I've always said there was nothing wrong with his eyes. He didn't have ophthalmia. The thing was that he was being buffeted by a messenger of Satan to remind him that the church that he loves in his letters so dearly he tried to stamp out and annihilate. And I believe that came to haunt him regularly. Second to that were the people who were “chosen” in ministry who maybe didn't have the track record like Paul had, who then when Paul came to town committed to preaching the gospel he had been entrusted with, I'm sure people with arms folded said, “Who's this little runt? You know, can you ever hear what he's saying? You know, is there any truth to what he says?” I'm sure that a lot of people attacked his preaching. And again, I just, sometimes you just have to read the Bible and you know, there's people who think this is just a collection of good stories. That's fine, that's your choice. I read this and I actually see a roadmap of my life because when I started preaching there were so many malicious people, “Oh, she can't even preach herself out of a paper bag.” I'm not sure why I'd be wearing a paper bag? You know, you could at least learn some better English, as you profess to speak English as your first language, you could at least learn some better expressions that would be more applicable. But I took that to mean that they thought that I sucked. And here's the thing: maybe I did, but God didn't think so. Maybe I did, but God said, “There's something there”" whether it's the tenacious spirit, whether it's the eyes of faith, the heart that says, “Lord, I trust You,” whatever that is, “I'm going with her.” And I can tell you something. I've never said to you that I'm the greatest orator. I've never said that my gift━this is something I, I have had to learn and get out of a comfort zone. But if God declares a thing, and I use the words of Paul, “made a minister,” then God knows how to make. You know, the mafia has a way of saying, you know, they have somebody who's “made,” right. You're going to love this. You'll never forget this. “You're made by actions of proving yourself.” Well, God makes a minister by actions of proving Himself, by saying, “Okay, you may not think so and the people around you may be absolutely saying, 'Absolutely not,' but I'll tell you I'll get the last word because what you are right now”━remember my message, “I will make you fishers of men to the fishermen. I; trust Me and I will make you something you are not.” And He did with them. And that's what He still does today, He takes people who would have never have asked for any position in ministry; hello; and said, “You, and you're going to step up to the plate.” “Me? Eh?” I mean I've told you, for the first little bit it was like, “Oh, no. I don't think I want to do this. I can't do this. I won't do this. No, no, no, no, no!” to well; now I have no choice. But I think that what I'm trying to say to you is God knows how to. When we try to make ourselves it's a disaster. And I can tell you there have been several individuals who left this ministry with very bad attitudes and bad mindsets, “Well, I'm going to just go start my own ministry, because Dr. Scott said that's what I should do.” No, he didn't say that. And actually you take that expression that he used and you make it so convenient, “If you can't follow him or me as I follow Christ, then get out and start your own thing. Get out on the street corner on point and do your own thing.” Well, see, that's too easy because what that does is it takes a stiff-necked, rebellious, arrogant, bean-head (I had to choose wisely), and feeds that to the rational brain that will rationalize every excuse to not conform and to not obey━and I'm sorry you don't like these words, but that's what words must be used here━to justify their own self-serving, self-willed, self-styled, self-appointed, and self-made person under the guise that they will go out and they will make themselves a minister. Let me tell you what happens with that. There is no burden for souls, there's only a burden for notoriety. There's no burden to have egos buried, but there is definitely an ego to be recognized. I could keep going on this, why, because I've been exposed to this over the years and I've seen it and there's just no escaping it. So I like the fact that Paul can say, “I am made a minister” and doesn't think that that basically abases him. I love the fact that he can say; let me put it in another way: God made me what I am, and no apology needed. Now let me just say a little sidebar. As he went, not to Colosse, because I don't think he went in person. It says in some place he longs to see their face, and I believe that he was in prison, because we know from the last chapter when he says here about he's in bonds, in 4:3, we know he's in prison while he's writing this letter. It's very safe to say that he didn't become resentful, mean, angry for the circumstances. He basically turned around and this is what he says, “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you━rejoicing of what's happening to me; I'm in prison.” And don't think of the prisons like today, which if you would juxtapose the, I don't know if he was in the Mamertine prison or dungeon at this point, but if you juxtapose what, what it was like in Paul's day versus what it's like in today's society it's a night-and-day difference. We're talking about being shackled. We're not talking about nice smooth handcuffs. We're talking about large irons, hands and feet, probably with an abundance of rats and God knows what else that, I mean there's probably something like it in third world countries. I've seen some of those jails and prisons that are that bad, but I'd say make it even worse so that he's, he's basically begging at some point for a cloak to be brought to him because he's cold. And so all I'm saying to you is it seems to me that if you would take Paul's circumstance and transplant into today you would have somebody saying, “Why am I doing this? This is a bunch of you-know-what! I shouldn't be here! It's all Your fault.” We'd have somebody that would be throwing it back. He says, “No, I rejoice at this. I am glad. This thrills my soul,” but not because he's some sadistic individual. Keep reading. He says for “now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind in the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church: whereof I am made a minister.” Stop right there. There's my sandwich for you. Now here is what we have to look at, This is the Greek, not of the whole verse 24, but of a good part of it. And there is some, you know, if I would have just left the English alone, but what plagued me was “and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.” So let's look at something. I want to look at these two words, because these will help us to unfold the verse. So this word, pathemasin and this word, which will be a little bit harder to translate, thliphsis, but it's -seon, so something like that. I think I missed a letter in there, but anyway, both of these words, one of them is “sufferings” the “sufferings,” and down here is “afflictions,” correct, “afflictions of Christ.” Now I want to show you this. This is important to try and help us understand the text. Now, one other thing, because then it will all make sense to you, “the” and I'm going to put in brackets, I'm adding this to help, “the [thing] which is”━wait for it, “lacking.” If you look up this word, usteremata, “that which is lacking.” Now you have a big problem. Oh, we might as well do this: “I fill up.” So “Now,” nun chiro, “I rejoice,” en tois, “in the sufferings,” we'll have to deal with this word, but I'm going to say here, I'm going to translate this “on behalf of” or “for the sake of” really, “for the sake of” umin, “you,” kai, “and,” which is our conjunction, “I fill up the [things] which are lacking of the afflictions of Christ in,” sarki, “flesh,” mou, “of me,” and I just kind of continued. This is a huge problem. And why is it a huge problem, because we have to ask some questions now. If, if you just read the translation it sounds like Paul is saying he must fill up something that's lacking in the afflictions of Christ. Now, when you find a text like this you have to stop everything and you have to look at theologically speaking what Paul does not mean, okay. What he does not mean is that; let me go back to the Gospels. In John's Gospel, Christ is on the cross, He says, “It is finished.” Tetelestai is the Greek, “It is finished.” That expression, or in another Gospel, where it says, “Into my Father's hands I commit my Spirit, and straightway he gave up the ghost,” we have understood from all the writing in the New Testament that Christ's sacrifice was complete, sufficient, enough; there's nothing lacking. So if theologically we're clear, what does this mean? Because if you read it again, “Now I rejoice in the sufferings for the sake of you, and I fill up the things which are, which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in the flesh of me.” Now, let me tell you what happened. In the middle ages this text was taken by Rome-ish interpreters to give license to the sale of indulgences. This, this passage and two others were the proof texts that Christ's sacrifice was not complete, was insufficient. And this is where you have to bear with me for just a second. You know, some people get a little bit overwhelmed when I do this type of stuff. I'm not even; I haven't introduced grammar or I haven't tagged anything morphologically. People get overwhelmed and sometimes, “Oh, I; it's too much for me.” Well, I'd like to say something but I have to&. You can either decide that you'd like to suck your thumb for the rest of your life, or you can grow up and figure out that there are things that are more important to discipline your mind over. I'm not, I'm not saying that you should learn Greek or any foreign language; that's your prerogative, but what I am saying is if you don't do this, or at least listen to what I'm doing, you'll never understand how errors come about. And if somebody says, “Well, this church has been doing this for, for hundreds of years, and so you're saying it's wrong?” Yes! From this text, in fact, Rome-ish doctrine basically, if you listen or if you're familiar, some of you have come out of the Catholic church, there are terms that are used to say basically these are additional sacrifices, like the priest does during the mass, “These are additional sacrifices to add to,” just like the virgin Mary, in their theology, adds to. But this kind of mindset basically completely negates the Scripture, every Scripture from Christ Himself to John to Peter and including the apostle Paul. So we can know what he did not mean. Get that straight. And again, as said, very easy for some of these commentators to go through this and say, “Well, we have to take the text,” because of lack of basically linguistic skills, “We have to take the text and we have to take it and basically, even if we think it's error, that's how we're going to describe it.” Let me show you a better way, and I want to show you using this very same word, “lacking.” I'm going to give you an example from the apostle Paul using this word about “lack” to show you how it may not mean what you and I think it means. Let's go to Philippians and we'll find that in Philippians; I'm going to be reading from the second chapter and the thirtieth verse, but I'm going to start at verse 25. The emphasis is verse 30, but I'm going to start at verse 25: “Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellowsoldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants. For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. For indeed he as sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not only on him, but also; but on my also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. Receive him therefore in the Lord with gladness; and hold such in reputation: because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, to supply your lack of service toward me”; “your lack of service,” the same word uster-, usteremata, this “lacking” in our text out of Colossians appears here in verse 30, “lack; your lack of service toward me.” Now, I will tell you what that means right there. The Philippian believers were so moved by the apostle Paul, his message, his desire to preach, to teach, to convey, they had a heart of gratitude. He's incarcerated, by the way, at the writing of Philippians and he's sent; the Philippians send Epaphroditus with a gift and probably some letters of appreciation or gratitude to Paul in prison. So these believers probably, I'm going to say it, they probably begged Epaphroditus, “Please, can you go to Paul. He's in prison. He probably thinks we've all forgotten about him, and he's rotting in that jail. Who knows how long he'll be there? But we want you to go to him and we want you to tell him we love him, we're grateful for him, we appreciate him, and we're sending a gift along.” And I think that had to be a gift of a collection of some type that they took up. So when it says, “Because for the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his life, but to supply your lack of service towards me,” he brought, Epaphroditus, to Paul in prison conveying, when it says “lack of service,” they could not go, for the distance was probably too great and they couldn't all go anyway. So Epaphroditus goes. As he went he took ill, that's for sure. We know that from what Paul says “sick unto death,” whether he made it to Paul and recovered, was sick on the way, or got sick when he got there. And Paul's sending him back with a message back to them. But this “because for the work of Christ, to supply your lack of service toward me” is not because they were lacking or, or they were deficient. It was, they desired to express this towards him to tell him, “You're not alone. You're loved, you're appreciated, and something more: we're sending something to you in the hands and the mouth of Epaphroditus.” So do you understand the lack in this case, we're dealing with some very antiquated and archaic expressions. “Lack” can also━it doesn't mean deficiency as in missing. In this case it would be they desired to send that to him, when he says “lack of service,” it should say “expression of gratitude.” Do you understand what I'm trying to point out? So if you understand how this might be applied, “lack of service toward me,” you go back to Colossians, and then there's a key for us to understand what exactly this means. But there's something else too. I, I should pause here, because sometimes I, I start going and then I remember, “Oh, there's a couple of important things I must not forget.” So bear with me for just a second, please. So, you remember I said these two words. Something very important theologically speaking that will help us to answer a question. See this word here, “the afflictions of Christ,” thlip━thlipsuen, this word is never used, ever, of Christ's suffering on the cross, of His salvific, redemptive work. It is never used of that. So we can know something, “which is lacking in the afflictions of Christ” has nothing to do━there would be another word being used in its place if it had to with salvation and redemption, but “the afflictions of Christ” have to do with something else. And if you read, you'll see it as clear as day. When it says “the afflictions of Christ in my flesh, for his body's sake, which is the church,” that expression right there says the church basically, what is going to happen. And probably, this is a hard thing for me to explain, but I'll say it like this. If you look at every single church in the New Testament you can see a pattern. The church gets established by somebody who comes along who's boldly preaching the gospel, and usually the first, the first incident that happens will be people that come along, like at Galatia. There were Judaizers that came and basically they started to undo the teaching of Paul, and they said, “Well, it's not just Jesus. You need to keep the law, and you need Jesus plus this.” They were perverting the gospel, which the gospel says, “No, Christ did away with this. He has set us free. The curse of the law fell on Him that we might pass out from underneath it,” but in every single church error crept in. The church at Corinth, another place where not only were the pagan issues so problematic, but they basically brought those issues right from their culture right into the church, which is why Paul had to say, “You ought to not being doing some sexual activities with your relatives in the church.” There's, there was a lot wrong there, okay, so it's very easy to see how error crept in, how people who under the guise of helping basically came in to twist, to pervert, to caricature. So you've got that first influx, if you will, of people doing despite or trying to undo. And then if you keep looking and you read long enough, you're going to find that we know the church became the ire of the Roman government to where anyone who openly professed that they were a Christian suffered persecution if you were found out. This is why they hid and they went underground into the catacombs and whatnot. So you almost have to understand when he says basically he's rejoicing. Remember the mindset; he's writing from prison “rejoice in my sufferings and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.” Chop that right there or “in the flesh,” chop it right there, “for his body's sake, which is the church.” In other words, it does not matter in what age, in what time, the church will always be under persecution to some degree or another; to some degree or another. Now, is that, is that a crazy statement? No. It in fact was foretold by Christ Himself. You go back into the Gospels, the easiest one for me is out of John, in John 15, beginning at verse 18, when He says, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would live its own: but because you not of the world, I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” Do you, don't you think that will bring on afflictions and persecution, because He said it would. “Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. And all these things they will do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me,” they don't know the Father. “And if I had not come and spoken unto them, and they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin. But he that hateth me hateth my Father also.” So and you've got this in different, in a diversity of places. He foretold this. I don't know why people come in to the church in today's society, this is the missing link for me; why come into a church if you're genuinely interested in what is being said here, there is no place where it says, “You are”━it's a paradox. You are set free and liberated; whom the Son sets free is free indeed, but trust me when I tell you, you've got a giant target on your back basically if you are living for Christ, if you are trusting Christ, if you are somebody like me who's proclaiming Christ, or somebody who just lives in the mindset of “I wish to live a godly life in Christ,” you will have your own to deal with. And these afflictions are not because of you. I've said this before. I've said it in a diversity of ways. I said it like sometimes how the devil will go after a person as if they've just escaped jail, a jailbreak. And that's how the devil will pursue you; you've got a giant target on your back. To others who already have the propensity to hate you for your faith, the minute they find out you're a Christian animosity comes, resentment comes, “Oh, you're one of those people.” Do you know how many people I meet on a weekly basis who they, they don't know what I do and I don't, I don't proselytize, so don't try and put it in people's faces. I actually let people ask me questions, and if they figure it out, great. Do you know how many times I meet people who will say, “Oh god, the church? Are you kidding me? It's a set of rules, it's condemnation; everybody's being condemned.” Well, I'm sorry, maybe what you've been exposed to, but this book is not an indictment on you; it's an indictment on humanity. And if we look to Him that indictment, that judgment is past, forgiveness, reconciliation, which I've talked about, forgiveness of sin, restoration; all the things that we desire come to us for simple faith. So the people who are labeling the church or the pastor as, you know, “Here's a bunch of set of rules, and you're coming for me too,” sorry, that's never, that was never the church of Jesus Christ. That may be the church in some southern state somewhere that's busy telling, you know, we all know the church where they go out and try and make trouble at soldiers' funerals or speaking out against celebrities. Listen, you don't need to speak out against celebrities; all they have to do is open their own mouth. They become their worst enemy. Why would you want to speak out about any celebrity? There's only one Person to talk about in the church of Jesus Christ, and that's Jesus Christ. What a novel concept! (applause) And what happened to “we glory in tribulations”? You know, you've got churches that, and some of these, and then they are charlatans, they'll say, “Well, if they're having so much trouble, they must be doing it wrong. We're gliding-g! Our life is smooth. We have no troubles.” Hello, then you may not be in the church of Jesus Christ, because the last time I checked, most people will be afflicted by something they can do nothing about. God does that deliberately to bring us to the place of actually talking to Him because we know only He can fix the impossible. You've got other places in the Bible, in 1 Peter 4 where it talks about “Rejoice insomuch as you are” what, “partakers of his suffering.” So what, what the apostle Paul is saying here is very much like what Peter said. There's nothing that we can do or that we'd want to do that could add to, because there's nothing to add: it's finished. And I could definitely see how people with a perverted mind would warp this a little bit to make it fit their agenda, but that's not what's being said. As I said we know the word for “afflictions,” this thliphsuen is never used of Christ's salvific redemption sufferings or His atonement; never. However this, this word that Paul is talking about “sufferings,” it's used six times of Christ, and he is, Paul is using it of himself because it's a word that can be applied to others as well as Christ. So that's how we know that these afflictions have nothing to do with salvation, but they do have to do with association. Now the other thing I want to talk about here before I go too far and jump out of this verse is the question of “I fill up.” See, in our text━keep going, coming and going out of the book━in our text when it says I, and “I fill up,” verb, let━all you need to know is it's present and active, but present is the big thing, which means something that happens in the now and keeps going, which to me, if you attach all of this, his sufferings, which would be ongoing are filling up something. But it's not a deficiency on the part of Christ. It's association with something else, and he says it very plainly: “the body's sake, which is the church.” And the church, the true church has always suffered some form of this. Now in our current climate, it's basically people who are trying to do away with, from as much as is humanly possible, anyone who is preaching the gospel. And I'm talking about anyone, man or woman. The, the war that's being waged right now because people do not read this book and study it is that Christianity somehow propagates or promulgates an elitist doctrine. Did I not just start all of this off by saying diakonos, “servant”? So there's no way you could get to that corner from actually looking. You could never get to the corner of supremacy of any kind except for the supremacy of Christ in the individuals in the church. See, this is why I said to you if you're not willing or if I'm not willing to apply common sense, critical thinking, do a little analysis to recognize that sometimes things are not cut-and-dry clear and you've got to peel back the layers to realize that's not, the interpretation cannot mean, as I've said, how they took it in the middle ages. And it cannot mean that there's something wrong or lacking with what Christ did. So what it does mean though is, brace yourself; what he's saying is “I'm rejoicing because basically I'm suffering on behalf of you and I count it all worthwhile.” You don't hear, “Oh, poor me! and pity me!” He says basically “I count it the highest honor,” because he knows what he's suffering for. He's suffering for the name of Christ, for the sake of Christ, for the message of Christ. And the people who are in the church belong to Christ, so there's a concept of association and another concept, which Paul is brilliant at, which is union with Christ; “Christ in you the hope of glory.” All of these expressions that tell you the mindset of the writer is that to suffer for Christ's sake is an honor, is a joy, and we should look upon this, and you know, it's pretty hard to say, because in this current day and age, we would all say, “Well, I don't want to suffer anything.” That's, you'd be, I think we'd all be lying if we didn't say, “Oh, I don't want that.” But then that's part of the price. If you're going to do something for God it's going to cost you. You don't just waltz into the kingdom and go, “Isn't it great I'm here, you know, finally, right.” When I say that I mean sometimes the cost can be different things for different people. And if I think back to the cost for some, all you've got to do is think about the Wycliffes of the world. Here is a man whose sole crime was putting the Bible into the common tongue of English, which is not very legible for us. We have that whole copy which is on our Website, which is the Wycliffe Bible. Now he wasn't martyred, but after he died they dug up his bones and they burnt his bones. There was such a great hatred for taking the word of God and “putting into such a corrupt and perverted language such as English!” Now didn't Jesus say, “Go into every nation and make disciples”? And He never once said, “You must say it only in this language!” It's, it's humanity's sickness that does these things that then gets the perversity, we'll call it this infusion that happens. If you and I were looking at how we could understand the sufferings from a Wycliffe to a man like Tyndale, who was burnt at the stake. And for what: for the word of God. And I could keep going to the Jan Huses, that great, we'll call it early-Reformation pocket that was going on, all the way to the Jim Elliots of the world, missionary and his five friends killed by the Auca Indians, all for the sake of Christ. And in this modern time, in these modern days, all you've got to do, if you can find it, because people in the news don't like to actually report the news to us, that there are people in different countries, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, little pockets, they're small, little pockets of Christians, specifically those in Egypt, the Coptic Christians who are persecuted to death. But see, we, we're in America, and even though things have maybe shifted a bit for some of us, we feel it shifted, we still have, still, at least for this little while, we still have the freedom to worship and to do things the way we want. And my point is this, persecution and suffering is part of the trip. Repeatedly the apostle Paul talks about this. The church does not speak very much about this, why, because it's not a popular message. It won't draw people to tell you, “Hey, come, come on in and worship Christ and suffer a little bit.” There might be suffering when you have to listen to some preaching. But my point is this is part and parcel. You ever wonder how, and maybe it's not that apparent for some, but do you ever wonder when you were out there doing something else, maybe you were in another church, maybe you were not in another church, maybe you were just out there doing your thing. You didn't have as many struggles as when you really came and you're heart's open now, “I want to know and I want to study,” and it feels like an avalanche of skubala has fallen on you and you can't figure out like, “Why?” Is that anybody's story here? That's a couple of you. That's my point. It's very few people that will come into the church, and I'm talking about the corporate church, not just this church; very few people will come in and be told this is part of the agenda in the making of a man or a woman of God. You don't make men or women of God by kind words, nor do you make them by hatred. But you do, that great expression, “Pressure never killed anybody,” what, “if it drives you to God it'll make you, and if it makes you run from God it'll break you” and not in a good way. My point is this. Paul is saying this is the lot of the church. And when he says, “I fill up,” it means from now on an ongoing basis, not one time; present and active, ongoing, this thing that follows me everywhere, this trouble, this persecution. Now I know there's people who believe this. There are people who believe that if you have all this stuff happen you're out of God's will. That's a lie! That book tells me that if you are in God's will that's part of the plan is you are going to be, you are going to be squeezed and put into God's winepress to bring out the best in you. And if you don't like that, that's how men and women are conformed to the image and likeness of Christ. There is no other way. There isn't you just sit there, and you know, it's like birds in a nest, you know regurgitate enough, right? It doesn't work that way! You have to do work. And the work is not work of works; the work is application in opening up your heart and your mind to realize as I've just said to you at the very beginning of this message. I will stay a student of the book. There's no one who knows everything that's in this book. There's no one who has all the answers. There's no one who can stand and say, “Hey now, if you complete boxes one through ten you've arrived.” Each person will have their own challenges and your persecutions, your afflictions, your issues may be very unique to you because God knows exactly what you need. And people take that to mean, “Oh, knows that I need a new pen&” No, we're not talking about that. God knows what is needed to make you. So when Paul said, “I am made a minister,” God knew what the apostle Paul needed to become that man for that time. You know what the tragedy of today's Christianity is? No one believes; I think very few do, that God still knows what we, what we need for this time and is more than able to bring that to pass to accomplish His purpose, if we'll only do one thing: trust Him. My message is always the same. You've got to take God at His word. There's nothing worse, and I'll just ask you this and then I'm done. Do you ever tell somebody something, it's, it's the truth from the heart, you explain at them, you lay it out, and they still don't listen, and you wonder why? “I just, I just told you the truth. I just told you everything, but you don't listen.” Now take that up a notch to God. God has poured out this truth and there are still people who don't want to listen. They want to come in, but their mindset is, “Just, just give me the stuff that makes me sure, that makes me feel good. Just give me the stuff that I can know the way superficial things operate” versus “If it requires deep down that the great Physician start rooting out the things that He doesn't like, and maybe He uses afflictions and persecutions, maybe He uses pressure and trouble; maybe He uses all of that to train me.” Any training that you're going to go through, serious training is going to be like that. I don't care what discipline you're in, law enforcement, you want to be any agency where there is a degree of training required, you're going to go through certain things. Why do we hear about the few that actually make it out of the Navy Seals' training? Why? It's designed to ferret out those who cannot, those who will not, and those who will never make it. “Well, that's not fair.” Well, that's the way it goes. Well, somebody might say, “That's not fair,” but that's the way it goes. But God is not using a one-size-fits-all application. My pressure, my tribulation, my afflictions, my persecution may be different for me than it is for you. God knows my limits; I don't. I think I do, I always set them real low, and He says, “You're able. You're much more able, so I'll just pour a little bit more on you.” And then you think, “Oh, my God, I'm going to crush under this thing!” And He says, “Wait, there's more.” It's like an infomercial, “Wait, there's more, just a little bit more.” And you go, “Oh God, my back's going to break for the pressure.” “There's a little bit more in there.” And somehow you've just pulled through something that in your mind you, you were convinced you could never survive; but you're still here. Isn't that special. So what I have to tell you is this. I take from the apostle Paul a few things here. To become a man or a woman of God is no small thing. I'm not talking about a minister. I'm talking about just to become a man or a woman of God is no small thing. And the process is not this pabulum, sweet, syrupy process that doesn't hurt at all. In fact, the growing pains in Christendom can be quite intense, to have to face yourself. You know, what's worse: when you didn't know God facing others and only having to deal with facing others you don't really know, or when you come to know God actually being honest and facing yourself? And I'll tell you something. You at first think that the first thing I said would be the toughest, but in reality, it's the last thing I said, because you realize that between you and God there is no hiding, there is not B.S.'ing, there is no concealing about what it is. It is what it is and He can see it all. So when I say that, I'm also saying to you, for those of you who are struggling a little bit, it's okay. God also knows your struggle, and knows that if you'll trust Him, He's able to get you through. That doesn't mean that God's like the genie in the bottle. He's just able to get you through, but you've got to start somewhere by trusting Him. Is it your mind? Do you have anxiety? Whatever it is that is coming against you as a Christian. I said to you a couple of weeks ago there's, there's definitely a storm a'brewing for Christians in this land. And that's all I'm going to say about that. And there'll either be people who will stand up and say, “I will protest,” that's where, why we became Protestants in the first place, “I will protest and I will not go quietly” or “I will just go along and I will follow in the flow.” And I'm not, listen, I'm not suggesting and I'm not giving advice or information. I'm simply saying this is what separates Christians from non-Christians. And it's not whether you've checked the boxes or whether you've breathed bad air, smoked cigars, taken a drink, or even cussed. It's whether or not you'll have the courage to follow Christ when it counts, not when things are good, but when things aren't so good. So all I'll say to you is Christ is more than able. If you'll trust Him, He'll take you though. That's all I have to say, but that's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com
