It is very precious to be together and to hear the children speaking of the mysteries of God. May the Lord help those children to treasure those songs in their hearts and one day truly understand.
The Lord would have us all enter into the mysteries of God. They are not to be mysteries that we leave outside. The Lord has given us His Holy Spirit so that all who are truly seeking after the Lord Jesus may come to understand the wonderful mysteries that motivate all that God is doing in these last days.
We want to read some Scriptures tonight and conclude with some thoughts that I am calling “Paul’s Stewardship of the Testimony.”
If we could turn to Ephesians 4, I want us to, as it were, pick up from last night’s message on the mystery of grace.
This is a tremendous chapter on the unity of the Spirit, even as we sang in the song by Count Zinzendorf. Beginning with Ephesians 4:7:
But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
Therefore it says,
“When He ascended on high,
He led captive a host of captives,
And He gave gifts to men.”Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth?
He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things.
And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,
for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ;
until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.
Then, just where we began on Monday night, 2 Timothy and Paul’s, as it were, parting testimony that he makes to Timothy on the eve of his martyrdom, as it appears: 2 Timothy 4.
How wonderful when a Christian’s life can be an offering to the Lord upon the whole body of Christ. The drink offering was that which was poured on top of an offering of animal parts. Here Paul says:
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.
I have fought the good fight,
I have finished the course,
I have kept the faith;
in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day;
and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.
Our Father, we thank You for being with us over these days, for ministering and stewarding to us by the Holy Spirit all the truth that is in Jesus.
We want to know Him in all His fullness, and we pursue after Him, even that we may understand and be stewards of the mysteries of Christ. With that in mind, we come to this last message and pray that Your Spirit once again will write Christ upon our hearts as we are together studying Your Word.
How wonderful to be in the midst of saints who know the unity of the Spirit and who are pressing on to attain the unity of the faith. Do help us, Lord, we implore You. In Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
We noticed there in Ephesians 4 a progression which will help explain what I am trying to share tonight. It is a difficult thing to share: Paul’s stewardship of the testimony.
As it says there in Ephesians 4, “To each of us grace has been given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” We began last night speaking about this mystery of grace which we have all received, and talking about our response to that grace in order to complete the cycle of the life and love that is sent from His throne unto us.
As we step forward by faith with the grace we have received, it becomes a gift—a gift to the body of Christ. Whether it is a very simple gift of hospitality, arranging chairs, welcoming saints, or some gift of a higher level, still it all comes from the Lord. We are thankful for all the times we see the grace of God manifested in the body of Christ.
Now the Lord has ascended up to heaven, poured out His Spirit upon us, and His intention is to fill all things. We heard our brother Stephen share even this morning about God’s ultimate purpose in Christ and seeing all things filled in Christ. Here we are, His body.
The Lord Jesus, having been exalted at the right hand of the Father, has so much of His Spirit to spare that He pours it freely out upon His children, for all who would receive from heaven.
Then in that context, in a very strange way—it does not seem to follow—He says, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, until we all attain the unity of the faith, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
There we see yet a deeper dimension of this whole mystery of a steward. Those stewards who have received the grace of God and exercised this grace by faith, so that it has become a gift helpful to the church—with their faithful stewardship of that which they have been given, even their gifts—they become a gift to the church.
When this list is given in Ephesians 4:11, it is not mentioning positions or status: first as apostles, then evangelists. No, no. What he is saying is that Christ poured out His gifts upon us, and He included some brothers and sisters who are gifts as persons.
Beyond just their ministry, they are not merely one who has the gift of prophecy. They have become a prophet—not merely a prophet as a position in the church, but they have become a person and a gift to the church.
So we immediately see that this whole matter of stewardship becomes very personal. It is not merely an administration of gifts, teachings, miracles, or whatever your gift may be.
This whole matter of stewardship is a stewardship of life—life giving life, personal life.
Paul was not an apostle as if it were some position where he received a papal crown and some kind of staff. Paul was given to you and to me as a gift: a life that we could look at and see Christ.
It was a life with Christ pouring out of him so that the church might be built up. It was the same whether they were evangelists, pastors, or teachers. He was not giving an exhaustive list. He was speaking about those who were traveling about, and every place they went, they laid down their lives and you saw Christ.
So stewardship is more than merely a ministry. It is a person—a person who has seen something and a person who has been transformed in such a way that when they minister to us, they minister Christ.
We watched Paul—or we can imagine his spiritual growth between the lines of the Scriptures that we have received. We saw him on the road to Damascus, and he saw a heavenly vision.
Not merely the mysteries of God, although it was that; not even merely a heavenly vision, although it was that. He saw a Person.
The rest of his life was lived under the purview of that Person. I do not think it ever became to Paul, “My vision,” as if it were some kind of list of ways we should do things. It always became, “The Person I met on the road.”
“I was looking for God, and I met Jesus. Jesus opened the door, and I met God.”
As I met God in Jesus, I also met my brothers and sisters. When Ananias prayed for me, only three days as a Christian, he said, “Brother Saul.” I had never heard anybody in the whole Jewish economy call me brother. But here was Ananias, and I was part of a brotherhood.
Ananias was not ministering some kind of power of healing, although Paul was healed when Ananias laid hands on him. Ananias ministered Christ: “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus has sent me to you.” Is that not personal? Ministry is so personal.
Now, under that heavenly vision, Saul was ready to conquer the world. He was going to preach Christ. He went to the synagogue of Damascus and started preaching away. He got in so much trouble so quickly that they had to send him over the wall in a basket.
Even though he wanted to be a steward of the mysteries—even the mystery that he saw—he was not yet equipped to be a steward of what he saw.
I do not know how many of you have seen something of Christ in a revelation. You see it, but you cannot even explain it.
I remember when I first started hearing our brother Lance and our brother Stephen back in the seventies, when I came to my first Richmond conference. As long as I was sitting in the meeting, I would say, “Yeah, I see it. Yeah, I see it.” I would get out the door and say, “What did I see? What did I see?”
It seemed like I could see it. Maybe I would even say to my wife, “I saw a revelation in Jesus.” She would say, “Okay, what did you see?” “Well, I cannot explain.”
Becoming a steward of the mysteries of God is not merely seeing something and saying, “Oh, well, now I can be a steward.” No. You see something that takes hold of you and begins to reshape your life.
You can read the record of how much reshaping Paul went through: a lot of dealings, heavenly visions, thorns in the flesh. God dealt with his flesh. God dealt with his Jewishness. God dealt with his self-righteousness. God dealt with his brilliant mind. God dealt with his strong will.
In doing so, he began to grow as a steward. First, he became a steward of the gospel. He started witnessing how Jesus saved him and how one can be saved by grace.
But as he ministered the gospel, he became more than merely a steward of the gospel. He became a steward of the mystery of the gospel. The mystery of the gospel is not the four points of salvation or the doctrine of justification by faith. The mystery of the gospel is this: salvation is a Person—Jesus.
Then, as he grew, he discipled those who had been saved. He discovered yet greater secrets about Jesus in his own personal life. After much defeat in trying to control his sins, he came to a realization: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I am alive now on the resurrection side. I am walking on resurrection ground. This is what grace is about. I am free.”
Those who had been saved, he went back to and said, “No, wait, wait. I have more to tell you. Every man in Christ is a new creation. Old things have passed away. All things have become new. Let me explain what that means.”
Paul would share this mystery of grace: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The early Christians knew what it meant: the Christ-life exchanged for the self-life. Unfortunately, many have lost that to this day.
The more he was dealt with, and the more faithful he was to the stewardship he had, the greater became his measure and sphere. He became a prophet and teacher in the church of Antioch and bore fruit for God along with Barnabas in the time he was there.
Then God said, “Okay, Paul, I have called you from your mother’s womb to be an apostle to the Gentiles.” God gave him a specific stewardship.
A few years before, Paul might have said, “You know what? I would rather go to the Jews.” But no, he was a bondservant of Jesus. Jesus said, “No, no, not to the Jews. You go to the Gentiles.” “But I understand the Jews.” “Gentiles.”
It was not a small thing that Paul had to learn how to love the Gentiles. Leaving that aside, Paul began to minister as a steward of the mysteries of God, the mysteries of Christ, and the mysteries of the church—only able to steward those things as he saw them himself and was living in them himself.
I remember my own tussle. Forgive me for going back to my own experience, but I actually came here for a couple of years when I was still in the in-between land. I was still a minister in a church, and I was coming here and hearing that the church was not what I was ministering in. It was a very confusing time.
I would come into the meeting and understand, then leave the meeting and lose the understanding. Finally, I caught on to the problem: if you are going to understand this great mystery about the church, you are going to have to live in it.
So I had to leave whatever ministry I had in that church. I had to gather together with some people who met in a home. It was a small group of people, but they had seen the church and were trying to live it out. I became one of those, and that is when I began to understand the mystery of Christ in the church.
You cannot understand these things if you are not living in them. It is not a theory. It is not an abstract thing.
Most of you have had experiences I have experienced many times. I can almost tell now, because I have read these things enough, when somebody is preaching from chapter 6 of Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Church Life, “The Church and the Local Churches.”
The words are familiar. The order is familiar. A lot of people can read Watchman Nee and preach Watchman Nee, but unless they are living in the experience of it, you will say, “That was a good teaching, was it not? It was solid. It had a lot of good facts in it. I had the fragments of Watchman Nee.”
Although it was administration, it was not a living stewardship of a mystery, because the person himself was not living in it.
Stewardship is a very personal thing. You have to be personally involved with the mysterious One you are talking about. Paul was, and Paul was faithful.
We come to Paul and watch him from that very moment when he saw Christ on the road to Damascus. We see that his ministry was very personal.
One of our often-quoted verses is Galatians 4:19. You see right there what his apostleship, burden, and stewardship were all about:
My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.
Did he say, “I am in travail because I am praying for twenty-five more souls to be saved in your city”? That is not what he said. Did he say, “I am praying for you that you would find a new building to meet in”? No, he did not say that. “I am praying that you would raise up some more evangelists”? No, no, no.
He says, “You know what? I am trying to steward a Person into your life, and I am burdened until Christ be fully formed in you. Please listen to my words, and let the Spirit steward you into the fullness of Christ.”
Now, that is an impossible job. You are stewarding a Person. How do you do that? You can steward almost anything—money, teaching, anything—but now, steward a Person.
We have 2 Corinthians, which is really a whole book that is a testimony about Paul’s ministry. Once he understood the mysteries of God and Christ in the church, he stewarded Christ—the Person.
Let us look at a few Scriptures in 2 Corinthians, beginning in 2 Corinthians 3:4. We have to pick up in the middle of the story. I trust you know this context.
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.
Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,
who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit;
for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Now, what is he talking about? Let us go back to verse 2:
You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men;
being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God,
not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Corinthians, you are a letter—not of Christian things, not of Christian doctrine, not of Christian ministry. You are a letter of the Person of Christ.
Paul defines what new covenant ministry is. Basically, he is defining what our ministry is as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ: we are to write Christ on the hearts of one another.
Now, who is adequate for that? Give me a Scripture and I will preach. Ask me to write Christ in somebody’s heart, and now there is a mystery involved. Suddenly, it becomes very personal.
So I call this “the steward of the testimony,” because what I am trying to say is that, in the end—and please excuse this, because I am partially wrong in saying it this way—in the end, he is not really a steward of the church. He is a steward of Jesus Christ, who is the church.
That is something on a higher level, and it involves more personal dealing in our lives than if it were merely ministry that we give one to another.
The first thing I want to say about this stewardship before we go any further is that there is a contrast regarding stewardship that is very important to see, because it is a very personal thing.
Here is the contrast: being stewards of the mysteries of Christ and being stewards of His living testimony. The first thing we have to remember is that we are servants—just servants, nothing more, just servants.
Why do I say that? Because it is easy in this relationship of ministry with Christ to begin to think one is something more than just a servant.
Let me be clear about this. When the Lord entrusts us with some ministry, whether it is the ministry of handing out tracts on George Street in Sydney, Australia, or whether it is being hospitable, providing for the needs of those in need, whatever it is, this is a personal ministry.
When you have been entrusted with a stewardship, God will give you all the grace you need, all the power you need, and all the authority you need in order to fulfill that stewardship. Now, that can be a heady thing. Do you understand?
If you are entrusted with some responsibility in the body of Christ, He will give you all the grace, authority, and life necessary for you to fulfill that specific stewardship.
Think of Eliezer, as our brother mentioned the other night. He was the steward of Abraham. Abraham arguably was the richest man in Canaan, though he owned no land except a grave.
But he was incredibly rich. Eliezer was always counting up Abraham’s sheep, camels, gold, and jewelry. Even when Abraham sent him out to get Rebekah, he said, “Take a quarter of a million worth of stuff and send it to the family.”
So he took out the finest silk from China. He took out the wonderful rings. Rebekah had rings in her nose and her ears, and they gave rings out to the family. He was ministering all these riches, yet he was only a servant.
A faithful servant never says, like Gehazi, “Please, would you give me some of those coats for me?” Eliezer never wore Abraham’s smock, but he got to touch and handle glorious things.
There is Paul. He is just a servant. Yet you know what it means when you are a steward of the living Lord: sometimes you see a little glimpse of His glory. Maybe you will be caught up to the third heaven and hear things you cannot even explain.
There were moments of rapture because, as a steward, the Lord loves to reveal little secrets to you when He knows you can keep the secret. Paul saw wonderful things. He was caught up into paradise, but he was still just a servant.
I have to confess that, in my background, I am a musician. I am always concerned about the choruses we sing and so on and so forth.
In the present fads of choruses, I am a little uneasy. This is what I am uneasy about: I know the Lord loves us, and we love the Lord, but a lot of times we forget that we are servants and we get a little too cushy.
“Oh, Lord, I just want to see You. I want to sit at Your feet. Matter of fact, can I sit in Your lap? Lord, I just want to hug You.”
It sounds very loving, and Jesus is very approachable. In one sense, He is. But in another sense, it is improper for a servant to disrespect the Lord in such a way.
I do not know if you understand what I am saying, but one thing a good servant knows is his place. He does not take advantage of even his open communication with the Master.
If you truly love your Master, you treat Him like a Master, with the kind of respect by which other people will respect Him.
I remember only a few years ago that our brother Lance came through New York to go back to Israel after traveling here at the conference and around. He came and spoke once or twice there in Manhattan in our little fellowship.
He shared a wonderful word one night. After he finished sharing, one of the young Turks—you know, one of the young guys—came up to Lance and said to him, a little flippantly, “So, Lance, tell me anyway, what do you do?”
Lance looked him in the eye and gave him a pretty stern response. You know what he said? “I am a servant of the Lord.”
Now, this young man was immediately aware that he had overstepped his bounds. He had become too familiar. He was being too smug.
But as much as Lance could only say that he was a servant of the Lord, he said it with respect: “I am a servant of the Lord.”
On the one hand, in this stewardship we have, we are just servants. You cannot claim things: “Oh yeah, I was part of that. It was all Jesus’ grace. Well, if it had not been for me, Corinth would have fallen apart.” No, no, no.
The living Lord Jesus, by His Holy Spirit, is stewarding the things of God. We get the opportunity and the privilege to work along with the Holy Spirit.
Paul says, “I may have planted, and somebody else watered, but I am watching the Holy Spirit bring that church up in a living way. The plant is growing by the Holy Spirit, not because of me. I am a servant.” We got it? A steward is only a servant.
The other side seems a little paradoxical. When we read such portions as Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we know that his stewardship had become much more personal. It was the pursuit of love.
He was just a servant, but he could say, “I have left everything behind, and I am pressing forward to the One I love. I am reaching out for the high goal of the calling of God in Christ Jesus. He laid hold of me back there on the road to Damascus, and I have been trying to lay hold of Him ever since. I am running after Him.”
That is what will happen to His stewards. You might fall in love with your Boss.
We have this strange paradox: you are just a servant, yet if you are a faithful servant and the Lord opens up and you begin to see who He is, I think you are going to fall in love.
Your stewardship becomes a love affair, running after the Lord, and you find He is running after you.
Stewardship is a very personal thing in the end. We know from Paul’s comments that he is very aware of things that are very personal like this.
He loves the Lord so much that he would not dare do something that would hurt Him. He is afraid it might hurt the reputation of the Lord.
Another mark of a good steward is this: he is always looking at his watch. Not like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland: “I am late, I am late, for a very important date. No time to say hello, goodbye. I am late, late, late.”
“I am sorry, I am a banker. I do not have time to talk to you. I am sorry, I have a deal to make.” No. He is always looking at his watch because his watch has a time thing on it. He is not sure exactly when it will go off, but it says, “Jesus is coming.”
A steward is always aware that the Master is coming. He is gauging his work with that in mind: the Master is coming.
The work may be really tough, and one may get thrown in jail, as the Apostle Paul did, but it is okay because I am looking to the One who is going to crown me with the crown of righteousness. He is going to crown and reward everybody who has the same watch—those who love His appearing.
There is a reward for stewards, but they are in a time zone all their own. They are not merely living in this world, satiating their desires in this world, getting all the toys they can.
They have a different goal, different motives, and a different sense of timing. We see this in the Apostle Paul.
With that in mind, now that we see what I am trying to convey—that it is really a stewardship of the testimony of Jesus Himself, a stewardship of Jesus Christ in the body of Christ and even in the gospel to the world—there are a few personal things Paul is very aware of.
The first thing is that a steward will not be a good steward if his conscience goes bad. Conscience is absolutely essential. We must keep a good conscience.
Here in 2 Corinthians 1:12, Paul says:
For our proud confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you.
Paul was not only a steward of the mysteries, but he was also trying to help Timothy as Timothy laid hold of those things entrusted to him.
You remember 1 Timothy 1. Paul says to Timothy, “Fight the good fight of faith.” Do you remember what the next phrase is?
“Keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.”
Do you know what happens to a steward who has a bad conscience? Do you know what it is to be disobedient, to be covering up things? Do you know what happens when your conscience goes bad as a steward?
You are liable for your faith and your doctrines to fall into error.
The reason some servants of God who go astray in moral error begin to take up strange doctrines is that their faith has been shipwrecked. They make overstatements of things in the Scripture.
Paul mentions two men whose doctrines were still being preached, but they were shipwrecked in their faith because their conscience had not been kept pure.
Paul says that, as a good steward, you have to keep your conscience clear if you want to be a steward. He mentions holiness, godliness, and sincerity.
Why is it such an issue? Because you are representing a Person, and people are looking for Christ in you. If you misrepresent who the Lord is, it is a serious matter.
You remember Moses. After all those years of faithfulness, he misrepresented the Lord, and he was not to enter the promised land.
A second thing I would mention regarding this whole matter is that a servant of the Lord has to face the fact that people will look to you and even imitate you.
I know we say, “God forbid,” and nobody would like to take this on. But notice Paul in 1 Corinthians 4:16:
Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me.
Wow. You had better have a clean life and a pure conscience.
Then in 1 Corinthians 11:1:
Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.
Ah, now there we go. Paul knows that he is a sinner. You need to take Paul to the cross. But you can imitate him in his faithfulness, holiness, and so on.
In 1 Thessalonians, Paul is writing to some very young Christians. They had not been Christians very long, and Paul was trying to help them along the way. In 1 Thessalonians 1:6, he says:
You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit.
When Paul came to town—well, in the case of the Thessalonians, it would have been with Silas, maybe Luke—these young Christians had just been saved. We are not talking about idolatry here. We are not talking about lifting up men.
But young Christians imitate older Christians. Go to any church where there has been a pastor in the pulpit for twenty years, and the people talk like him, pray like him, and have the same attitudes he has. They just imitate the man.
A young person is going to imitate their father or mother, and a young Christian is going to look at Paul and say, “That is what it means to be a Christian.” That is why your conscience had better be clear.
Of course, the child of God grows to the place where they discover the life of the Lord Jesus inside of them. They begin to understand who the Lord is, and they do not need to imitate. But young Christians will do that. That is the fact of life.
Do not think, if you are a leader, teacher, or responsible brother, that people will not look up to you and say, “Now that is a Christian.” That is why we need the fear of God, lest we misrepresent our Lord.
Another thing Paul is very aware of in his own life is the distinction between himself as the vessel and the treasure he contains.
In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul basically says, “God has put me through the mill in order to comfort me, that I could be a comforter to you.” Paul is a comforter as a steward of the mysteries of God. When Paul talks to you, writes to you, or prays for you, you sense the comfort of God coming through him.
In 2 Corinthians 2:14-16, Paul says:
But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.
For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing;
to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life.
And who is adequate for these things?
Here is the point: a steward has Christ in him, and Paul says the fragrance and aroma of Christ comes out of a Christian’s life.
That is heady stuff. It is the fragrance of Christ, but it is coming out of me. You have to understand the context. Paul is saying, in the verses preceding, “I had an opportunity to preach the gospel in Troas, and I got so concerned about you Corinthians that I did not take that opportunity.”
In other words, “I failed in a stewardship of the gospel.” Nevertheless, sometimes in faithfulness, and sometimes in seeming failure, the aroma of Christ comes out of me.
Because I could not preach the gospel, still the aroma of Christ came out of my love for you Corinthians.
A vessel is you and I, as the Apostle Paul, and yet the fragrance comes out.
In 2 Corinthians 3, we have already touched upon this. In chapter 4, what does he say? A servant and a steward becomes aware that there is a treasure in them, but again Paul makes the distinction.
Paul says, “I know I have ministered things to you and you have appreciated them. I am just a vessel. When God breaks me, His treasure comes out.”
“I, as a vessel, go through continual breaking because I am just a servant. I am just a human being. I am just a vessel. Yet I am aware of the fact that I am bearing precious treasure within me.”
Brothers and sisters, when you realize the treasure that is in you as Christ in you, it will change the way you dress, the way you act, and the way you talk.
It is not because you are something special. You have precious stuff. You know things that most Christians do not know.
The Lord wants to break us so those treasures can come out, so that Christ can be seen.
Paul says that 2 Corinthians 4 is basically about being knocked down, persecuted, sometimes confused, and dazed by circumstances. But no matter what happens, even when death is working in me, life is working in you.
That is the life of a steward—very personal. There are personal things coming forth.
Look at chapter 5. I look like I am making you a little uncomfortable because you want to say, “Oh, no, no, no, it is all of God.” It is all of God, but God wants to use human beings as the vessels of this treasure. Otherwise, He would have sent angels to earth to do it.
Yes, Paul is flawed. He is not perfect. Yet look how the Lord is shining through this man.
Listen to what he says in 2 Corinthians 5:20:
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us;
we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
That sounds very important, and Paul realizes his mission is very important. As an ambassador of God, when I say, “Be reconciled to God,” it is as if God has come alongside you saying, “Be reconciled to God.”
That is an important messenger. This ambassador has come straight from heaven with a portfolio that says, “Be reconciled to God.” It is as if God Himself were saying that to you when Paul said it as an ambassador.
What am I saying here? Are we supposed to toot our horn and say, “Oh yeah, we are special people. We are ambassadors. Fragrance. Oh, you smell Jesus here in your auditorium tonight”? No, no, no.
We are not trying to puff anybody up. Believe me, if we are stewards and serving the Lord as He wants us to serve, we will be broken as vessels plenty—plenty enough that people can see our humanness.
When we see Paul, David, Moses, or anybody, we see not only servants of God and vessels containing treasure, but human beings. God loves it that way.
He does not want you to stop being a human being. He wants Christ in your life to come out as fragrance, as comfort, as writing on people’s hearts, as an ambassador.
Your life—can you believe He wants your life to be like that? A steward of the mysteries of God.
Another aspect of this personal stewardship is this: if we are stewards of the mysteries of God, one of our important responsibilities, believe it or not, is passing on the torch of the testimony to other people.
It is a very personal thing. Paul, in 2 Timothy, was about to be martyred. One of the foremost burdens on his heart was, “Timothy, lay hold of the torch before I die.”
Let us look at 2 Timothy 2. Paul says to Timothy—these are some of his last words, so they must be important:
You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
Here is the picture. This is one of four pictures Paul uses to illustrate to Timothy the importance of being a steward of the mysteries of God and passing on the things he has received.
This first picture is a marathon runner. He has four people there. Paul says, “The things you heard from me, pass on to faithful men, and then they will be able to teach others also.”
There is a torch of the testimony. It is not the torch of merely teachings. It is not merely the wonderful things that Paul remembers because he took some notes down at a conference.
“Timothy, who is going to carry the torch of the testimony if you do not?”
That shows us in a very simple way that it is a very personal thing to be a steward of the testimony and a very personal thing to pass it on to other people. It is not enough merely to preach it, but to pass it on.
You can imagine, by these two letters to Timothy and by Timothy accompanying Paul on many of his journeys, how much personal input Paul gave into Timothy’s life. It was a great sacrifice of Paul’s own time, health, problems, and considerations.
“Timothy, sit down. Let us talk about this. Timothy, let us pray about this. Timothy, no, no, no, you are not seeing that right. You are not seeing that in light of God’s purpose.”
Constantly putting in, putting in, putting in, to pass on the testimony to Timothy.
There can be no Timothys without some personal counsel and personal stewardship. It is true that a servant of God has to learn in a self-motivated way to pursue the Lord himself, but he still needs encouragement.
I mentioned this last night, but let us turn to Acts 19. Paul was in Ephesus for three years, and when he had to leave, he sent a bunch of people hither and yon.
It is remarkable to me that in the three years Paul was in Ephesus as a steward of the mysteries of God, he not only preached the gospel almost daily, but he also trained and discipled servants of God whom he sent out to Colossae, Laodicea, and other places.
Here we see a list of some ten, if you will let me add a few, who were traveling with Paul. In Acts 19:22, it says:
Having sent into Macedonia two of those who ministered to him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.
Then, in Acts 20:4, during the same period of time:
He was accompanied by Sopater of Berea, the son of Pyrrhus, and by Aristarchus and Secundus of the Thessalonians, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy, and Tychicus and Trophimus of Asia.
You have to add to that list Archippus, Epaphras, Demas, and Luke. Who are these people? Have you ever heard of them before?
It turns out Epaphras brought the gospel to Colossae. This brother went here and that brother went there. I do not really know their ages. I am not sure they were all young men. We do not know.
But they learned the mysteries. They became stewards of the mysteries. They were sent and coordinated.
Maybe somebody like Titus was quite capable and strong, and Paul sent Titus to some place. Maybe Timothy had to go with Epaphras to help and encourage him, and they went as a team. We do not know.
But for three years, there was some kind of coordination so that it was said the gospel of Christ was known all over Asia by the time Paul left. In three years, that is an amazing thing.
It is a testimony to a great deal of personal counsel, prayer, help, encouragement, direction, wisdom, restraint, patience—just like Jesus and the twelve impossible disciples. That is what we should really call them, right? Jesus and His twelve impossible disciples.
Every one of them became a steward of the mysteries of God.
Oh, brothers, a generation has passed in the Richmond Conference—forty years. Some, like myself, laid hold of some of these wonderful things forty years ago.
I wish I could say we have passed things on even to our own children.
We trained up our children in the Lord, but somehow the world got them, for many of us.
I wish I could say differently. After forty years, I wish we could count more young men and young women who knew the mysteries of Christ, who were stewards of the mysteries, who were laying down their lives.
I am not sure we were faithful in this.
So much has been ministered, and now, a generation later, my hope is that there is a new generation of fervent young people and that somehow they can take hold of that torch before we die.
It is a very serious matter. It is a very personal matter.
If we would be good stewards, it is not enough merely for us to administer these things, but to prepare and help others who have such a heart to come into this stewardship as well.
Well, now I have discouraged you. So let me make a statement about the Holy Spirit, who is the ultimate Steward.
He uses us to the ability that He can, as flawed as we may be. But in the end, if we cannot trust God to do what He has appointed to do and raise up stewards of the mysteries, then we are of all men most pitiful.
It is not really up to us, though we should be responsible. The testimony of the centuries has been that God has raised up stewards, sometimes sovereignly in the most amazing ways.
He took some people out of the darkness of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and brought light to them. Down through the generations, God has called stewards.
You understand that a steward has a specific entrustment, as Luther received, as Calvin received, as Zinzendorf received, as the Wesley brothers received, as George Whitefield received, and as J. N. Darby received.
A specific entrustment—something that opened up once again the curtain of the mysteries that keeps being drawn back by the unfaithfulness of people over the generations.
These men have stood as testimonies. When you read their lives, you see that they were very human. Sometimes they had very big flaws.
But there are two things that you should mark in their lives. Number one, they bore suffering, persecution, and loss for the sake of their Lord, and bore the marks of Jesus.
In the end, as any good servant becomes, when you look beyond Luther’s picture—I do not know if you have seen portraits of some of these men, but some of them look pretty scary. They have strange pointed beards and all kinds of things. You say, “Whoa, who is that fellow?”
But I will tell you the truth, brothers and sisters. If you met every one of them—Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, Zinzendorf, or Charles Wesley—and if you abode with them for more than a couple of minutes, I guarantee you that you would see Christ in them.
They were bearing more than merely doctrines. They were bearing, in fact, the testimony of Jesus down through the centuries.
Even in the twentieth century, we have seen some amazing men. You have heard much talk about Brother Sparks. I do not know how many of you have read of this man.
He came up in a time in England when England was just busy, busy, busy: Christians busy, missionaries busy, work and service busy, churches busy, busy, busy, busy.
Brother Sparks came along and opened a curtain to the size and dimensions of Christ, His supremacy, and His all-sufficiency.
The testimony of Jesus could be seen in the ministry and life of this brother, who was much dealt with.
You have heard mentioned a few times Brother Bakht Singh. His influence has gone much further than merely the thousand or more assemblies that he was partly responsible for starting there in India.
This man saw clear to God on the mountaintop. He knew the testimony of Jesus.
We hear much about Watchman Nee. I think many of you know of his testimony, which has gone so far beyond China.
It was a marvelous testimony of a man in whom you could see Christ. Imperfect—all of them are—but bearing the fragrance, bearing the comfort, bearing the testimony of Jesus, ambassadors of Christ.
For those of us who were so thankful, we remember our brother Lance. I miss him so much.
He served the Lord for sixty years. He became famous in the last years in Israel, but his life was basically going from house to house, living in people’s homes through their hospitality and food.
He went to little places like Richmond, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, South Jersey, Raleigh, and different places, staying in people’s homes and sharing the Lord. He shared the mysteries of Christ with us for years and years.
Then, in the strange ways of God, Lance found out late in his life, after he had been serving the Lord for some thirty years, that he was Jewish.
You might say that is very strange. It is a long story, and I do not want to go into the whole thing. But he found out that his father had, in fact, been martyred in one of the Nazi prison camps during the Second World War.
He discovered that he was a Jew, and he became a citizen of Israel. With all of that intercession and the burden he had for Israel, God gave him a special stewardship to the church: to bring to us an understanding of what the Bible calls the mystery of Israel.
There are a lot of people ministering regarding Israel, praying for Israel, and having all kinds of ministries regarding Israel. But Lance brought to us revelation of Israel in such a way that we could see the God of Jacob.
I am so thankful that I got to hear Lance and see not only the God of Jacob but, truly in my heart, love Jacob and Israel. Somehow they are part of us and connected to us. It is a mystery.
I have to admit, it was only when Lance was here that I understood that mystery. But he ministered that to us. You see what I mean? It was a specific stewardship. How the Lord blessed us through it.
Finally, I will mention our brother Stephen. He stewarded the mysteries of Christ to us for years. Is it not interesting how God gave him a specific stewardship?
I do not know what it was that laid necessity upon him to translate the messages and notes of Watchman Nee’s ministry. I do not know the story behind that. I just know he spent his whole life translating those messages and giving them to us at cost.
I have read other translations of some of the same things our brother translated. In them I see similar examples and some similar doctrines, but I just want to tell you for myself: our brother Stephen did not merely translate Watchman Nee. He gave us Watchman Nee.
I do not know the man, but I know him. I know his spirit. I know his heart. I know the God whom he served, because those translations are living translations where you can sense the heart of the man behind the message.
A human being, but with a specific stewardship. The Lord has multiplied that and sent it around the world. I hope it continues.
I do not know how long before Jesus comes back. I know people do not read books anymore, except you. I think you have sold out a whole bunch of books over at the bookstore. I do not know if you use them as doorstops or if you read them.
But people do not read books anymore. We have a whole bunch of young people meeting with us in Manhattan. Most of them do not read books. They read on the thing. So we have e-books now, by the way. You can get those things if you want them.
Brother DeVern Fromke said a funny thing. I think he said it to Ben. We had a committee of people together, and we wanted to edit this hymnbook called Christ in Song—songs about Christ.
We were editing the book, and somewhere along the line Ben mentioned to DeVern Fromke that we were printing up a hymnbook. He said, “Printing a hymnbook? Nobody does that today. It is like selling horse collars. Who wants to make horse collars?”
You know what that is: you put collars on horses so they can pull a cart. “You might as well make horse collars. Nobody is going to buy a hymnbook.”
I do not know if you read anymore, but there is a richness out there if you care to touch the life of a servant of God in our brother Watchman Nee.
The final thing I want to say is this: I hope, as a steward of the mysteries of God, that your clock is set watching for the Master’s return.
We do not really know when it is going to be. Some of us feel it is quite close, but that usually happens to older people for some reason.
Let me say this: you will receive your reward if, when your spirit expires, it is expiring looking up, waiting for His appearing.
If this world can satisfy you, then you have not met enough of your Master.
When we meet this One who loves us so by grace, you will realize that the best this world could offer is not enough until the Master comes back.
This world is just not going to spin right until the Master comes back.
If your heart is set on this world, you are in for a rough next few years.
What does the Lord say? What does the Master say to those stewards? He says, “When you see these things, look up. Your redemption is drawing near.”
I hope you have your watch set for Jesus coming back. I hope you are truly watching.
Remember, that is one of the last things Jesus said to His own disciples: “Watch and pray. You do not know the hour. Watch and pray.”
Do not be a sleepy steward. Do not be a steward who thinks, “He is not coming back.” Watch and pray. Can I ask you that much?
Every once in a while, somebody remembers that in our prayer meeting, and they pray, “Oh, Lord Jesus, come back.” We all remember, “Why did we not all pray that?” But we are too busy with earthly things.
How the Lord longs for His stewards to say, “Lord, thank You for this entrustment. Thank You for this grace You have given me. Thank You for the tastes of heaven that I have received here and there, fellowshipping with the saints there at Longwood. Thank You for all of these blessings, but, oh Jesus, if You would just come back.”
Then it would put the top stone on the whole thing. Our brother Jerry broke down crying. He was just so thankful to be here with such precious people and said, “Precious children. Oh, what a day when Jesus comes back. Oh, what a day.”
I hope you are such a servant, that you have that on your timetable, and that you are figuring your own life, success, and future in light of His coming back.
Whatever you do—if you are a young person, if you are getting married, whatever—fine. Praise God. But are you watching and praying? Because the Master is coming.
A good steward knows that deep in his heart. It puts a little hold on this world and has us looking for a better world that will happen when Jesus returns.
May the Lord help us. We are stewards of a living testimony—the testimony of Jesus. We are representing Jesus before the world today, not merely doctrines, policies regarding this or that, or political statements. We are representing Jesus.
It is a very personal thing. We must be dealt with and alive before the vision of who Jesus is if we would be useful to the Master in the last days.
The world is just done with the church as they know it. They see that outward church as a big encumbrance—a bunch of dinosaurs. They need to go to Jurassic Park and hide behind the walls in 3D.
But the real church is manifesting Christ, holding the torch of the testimony of Jesus. People who are hungry in this dark world can still find Jesus because there are some who are holding up His life.
That is our stewardship. Together, we hold up His life until He comes. May the Lord help us.
Our Father, we thank You so much that You sent Jesus our way. Then You put that torch in our hands, and You said, “Be faithful.”
Lord, we want to be faithful, and we want to be trustworthy. We realize our first obligation is to watch and pray for Jesus to be crowned King upon this earth.
We do not know all that entails. We do not know all these last-days things and how they will unfold. But we know that if we are ready, we will be caught up.
Then we will enjoy Your presence, and we will discover what our life was really for. Help us to be faithful in these days.
We know that Your grace is sufficient and Your Spirit is poured out upon us. So we thank You in Jesus’ name. Amen.