So, we want to have some prayer, but before we do, I would like to take the liberty to add a little context to direct our praying as we are together as brothers.
You know, years ago, when I was in college, I was in a Baptist college. They had a summer session with a famous theologian named Dr. Beasley-Murray. He was the president of Spurgeon’s College in London, and he had just written the commentary on Ephesians. So, we studied Ephesians for the summer under Dr. Beasley-Murray—the guy who wrote the commentary.
We would get into class, and Beasley-Murray would start sharing and relating little bits—little Greek words and little things here and there. Then he would give a test, and his tests were quite deep. Some of us students said, “Well, you have not lectured this content. How can you give us a test on it?” He said, “It is all in the book.”
Now, when our brother felt that the burden for this time should be the ministry of God’s Word, I remembered a time when our brother shared on this ministry way back in 1990—before some of you were born.
I remember that we had a conference in Florida with a bunch of men from all various kinds of charismatic backgrounds and everything. I remember how much I was touched by our brother’s ministry when he ministered during that time.
Sure enough, in the Richmond tape library, they had those messages, which I had not heard for thirty years. Our dear brother Jeffrey, who must be the fastest typist I have ever known, typed out that book you have been reading, Ministering God’s Word, by our brother Stephen. That is actually the transcribed messages of our brother from 1990.
So, we are thankful that our brother can share; and even if he shares something a little brief, you have the book. He is annotating things as he feels the Spirit is leading him.
Which leads me to something of value that we should see: our dear brother is approaching 105 years. The only reason he is on this earth is because he is a minister of the Word of God.
Whatever he lacks in terms of content, you have already read—that is the content. But what he has in spirit is of tremendous help to us, if we realize it.
You know, the story in church tradition is that, when John the apostle was very old, occasionally he would come to the meeting in Ephesus. The brothers would carry him in because he could not walk. After they broke bread, they would always ask him to please share a word for everybody.
So he would get up there and say:
My little children, love one another.
And that was it.
Now, you know, I mean, I would have paid an extra dollar just to have heard the apostle John preach some message. But that little message came out with such life that it helped revive the church.
Our brother shared from the point in Acts 6 where Peter said:
But we will continue steadfastly in prayer, and in the ministry of the word.
—Acts 6:4
My deepest burden is that you brothers would no longer consider yourselves part-time philanderers in the Word—part-time distributors of the Word—but that you, to the best of your ability, would give yourselves to the ministry of God’s Word.
Our brother went on—do you remember in the book?—and explained a little about what Peter meant. He asked the question, “What was the Word of God to Peter?” They did not have the New Testament. There was no book written, and in Acts 6 the church was hardly born. But what was the Word of God?
He shared some precious things which I would just like to emphasize, because it is something we can pray about.
Basically, he said that the apostles were unique because they had personally walked with Jesus for three years. First, they shared the teachings and the ministry that Jesus carried out while He was upon this earth. This was unique to them: they walked with Him and talked with Him. They walked with the living Word.
They had that to share from their experience. In those early days, when they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching, all they taught was Christ: “I remember the day when He saw the fig tree. I remember the time there was a man who came on a bier, dead, and Jesus raised him up.”
These were the things they taught—the things they saw. They were eyewitnesses not only of what Jesus did, but also of His resurrection.
Second, as they looked back into the Old Testament, what happened? By the Holy Spirit, they saw Christ in the Old Testament. They began to see not merely history, prophecies, or laws, but Christ in the Old Testament by the Holy Spirit.
Third, there was another form of the Word of God that came to them. Because they were absolutely dependent upon the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Lord continued to reveal truths to them as they were able to bear them.
You remember this from John 16:
I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide you into all the truth.
—John 16:12–13
The Spirit of truth continued to open up things, and especially we see that in our dear brother Paul. All the disciples knew the greatness of Christ. They understood that He was the Son of the living God. But look at how revelation was expanded regarding the church, God’s eternal purpose, and all these things. This was seen in dependence upon the Holy Spirit.
They had Christ as their central view, and the Holy Spirit distributed Christ through the Old Testament and through the further revelation that they gave. So these apostles became the men who wrote the Word of God that we now have, because we are not eyewitnesses. But we have been given the Word of God.
The first thing I want us to think about praying for is this: when we say, “We will give ourselves to the ministry of the Word,” I want you to understand—and I do not want to say this in a wrong way—you should be in love with the Word of God.
I mean, not just an occasional looker-in, a devotional Bible reader. You should have your own leather-backed copy, and read it, digest it, underline it, and ask questions. You should be in love with the Word of God.
Just as Peter was in love with the Lord Jesus, the Word of God is now the Lord Jesus to us. It is the Logos come to us. We need to seriously pray about this.
I have heard too many sermons from dear brothers that showed they had an abysmal knowledge of what the Word of God was about. These things should not be. If we are going to be men of God, something has to deepen in our love.
If you do not love that Word of God, we will not have what the Lord wants in these last days. So, if we want to say, “We will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word,” we need to take that Bible seriously.
Just one more thing, because our brother mentioned it, and this is all in his book, by the way. I am saying nothing original here. The second thing he mentioned was this whole matter of the incarnational development of the Word of God in us.
This is John 1: the Word became flesh. That is what they call incarnational, right?
Now, we know that John, in context, had to write the Gospel of John not only to preach the gospel, that the lost might believe and be saved, but, as you know, it is a gospel of recovery to Christians.
What was the context John was speaking to? Here it is: by the time he wrote that Gospel, books had been written. Matthew, Mark, and Luke had been written. Paul’s epistles had already been written. A problem was developing in the church, and what was that?
The men of God were preaching doctrines, but devoid of dependence upon and revelation by the Holy Spirit. So, doctrines were proliferating through the church.
John brought the church back to the reality of recovery: do you not know that the Holy Spirit is your indwelling Comforter? You find that nowhere else except in Paul in certain places. He is the One who leads you into truth, and He is the One who reveals the things regarding Jesus.
But the church had lost that initial, full dependence upon the Holy Spirit to give revelation. So it was becoming doctrines, doctrines, doctrines.
I will just give you a little trivia bit. I do not know how many have read 1 Clement and 2 Clement. Do you know what those are? They were two epistles which the early church thought about putting into the New Testament.
When they were looking at different things, Clement was a disciple of Timothy and a leader of the church in Ephesus. But when they looked at these two epistles, they were long on doctrine but short on the Holy Spirit.
This is what John was trying to address. In other words, let me put it into today: what is the Lord trying to recover today in the ministry of the Word? Here it is: you and I have inundated the church with doctrines, and often without the Holy Spirit.
So we have become a people of great head knowledge, but the Spirit has not worked these things into our lives. Even the things we are talking about—I do not know if you can notice this—there are people who know how to preach on the eternal purpose of God who are not living as those in that eternal purpose.
There are people who talk about, “I have been crucified with Christ,” and their life is completely carnal. This is when doctrine becomes devoid of the Holy Spirit’s working in us, so that, in some small measure, the reality of the things we speak is a reality in here.
So I am thankful that we have a dear brother who has a reality that even exceeds what he can tell us by the Word of God.
I want us to pray that God will raise up some brothers who will seriously become servants of the Word of God and allow the Holy Spirit to recover this Spirit-anointed ministry of the Word of God—not just a ministry of doctrines.
We need an anointed ministry of the Word of God: the Word of God full of the Holy Spirit, dealt with by the Holy Spirit, so that it comes out of our own experience as rivers of living water, because it has been digested.
This is what we need today, brothers. If you came here to hear more doctrine, well, he is going to tell you about when he got saved. And you are not going to hear much from me either, because I am still trying to read and figure out his book. So I am in the school with you, in the school of Christ.
But do you think we could pray? We have until 11:30; we do not have to take it to that point. But brothers, I do not want to say this in the wrong way, but I do not feel the Spirit is completely satisfied with the ministry in our assemblies.
A lot of it is casual, flippant, half-done messages, and often without even a touch of the Holy Spirit. How long can we bear with the letter when the very basis of our ministry is new-covenant ministry: the Spirit writing Christ?
Oh, we need recovery. We need recovery. May it be that in our assemblies people say, “I am hearing the Spirit of God.”
We need that recovery of new-covenant ministry. I think our brother, God willing, will share on that tomorrow morning: new-covenant ministry, where the Spirit of God writes Christ on people’s hearts. What a refreshment, what a reviving, what a recovery to our assemblies. How we need this.
I start with myself. Why do we not have some time in prayer and seriously think about this? Listen, if you are thinking about it, and you are glad you are here, and you have some promise, and you are a smart guy, I would rather you went home if you are not serious about being full of the Holy Spirit when you speak the Word of God.
The Lord really wants this in these last days. May those who hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches repent, and let us open that Bible in a new and living way and depend upon the Holy Spirit.
Even as those early apostles, they were totally dependent. They did not know where to go the next day, and yet look how the Lord built the church. May the Lord recover the ministry of the Word of God. It is absolutely crucial to the church’s recovery.
Not half-done ministry, not so-so ministry, not layman’s ministry, but full-blown ministry that has come through the process of the Holy Spirit’s working.
Now, you have heard this, and I will just say it: if you are serious about ministering the Word of God, you are in the Lord’s tender trap. There is a song about love being a tender trap. The Holy Spirit has you in the tender trap, because here is what happens.
The more you minister the Word of God, the more the Word will haunt you—unless you forsake it.
You minister the Word of God, and the Lord will, just like Ezekiel, make you eat that Word. You talk about righteousness—go ahead, talk about righteousness in the assembly. The Lord will make you eat that Word.
You talk about love in the assembly. Praise God, the Lord will make you eat that Word. Ah, the Lord has been spooking me for years because He trapped me. He got me to preach the Word, and then He says, “You remember that?”
You know, you are caught in a trap. The Lord deals with His servants, but He transforms His servants and produces glorious servants, if we are serious about it.
Oh, in the last days, what is Peter’s word? “Be sober in all things.” In this matter of the ministry of the Word, may the Lord help us. No more casual business here.
Let us pray for the Lord to really lay hold of His servants in these last days. Give us revelation of the things that we speak as letter, so that they may become living Word.
Let us just have an open time. Our brother Ezra will come and close the time when it seems appropriate. Let us ask the Lord to recover the Word made flesh in these last days.