Preacher Diaries

What is God’s definition of success in ministry?  What are the indicators that one is doing well or has done well in the assignments from God?  Is it the size of the followership?  Is it the generous reception that one gets from those to whom one is sent?  Is it the massive hosannahs and lavish palm fronds with which the way is paved for the sent one?  Or is it the cross that the call attracts?

In Exodus 3:16-19, God sent Moses to two groups: the elders of Israel and Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.  Of the elders, God assured Moses that they would receive his message, that “they shall hearken to thy voice.”  That was good news.  That is the kind of reception every messenger expects for his efforts.

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Once in a while, the time comes to fast rather than feast.  The wrong choice at such times is usually not without significant consequences.

Many years ago, when that word first came, I published it across the land.  Then I got invited to an eminent peoples meal function in an eminent hotel by an eminent Christian outfit.  I accepted with hesitation to be present, but it became clearer with time that the season had changed.  I went.  From the very entrance to the banquet, one was welcomed to a variety of inviting delicacies.  I cast a sober glance at the tables and walked on, with no reproach against those who stopped where I couldn’t.  We probably hadn’t all heard the same sound in that season.

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One day, Moses happened upon two fierce street fighters and intervened on the side of his brother, the Jewish slave. He believed that he was on the side of God and good, fulfilling a divine mission.  By the next day, he could hardly take another open walk along the same streets. They had become unsafe.  He had tried to intervene in another street fight between two brothers and had been rudely put away by the aggressor, with a veiled threat that referenced his yesterday.

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7.  Ananias

In the life of Paul, we find a similar priest, Ananias, whom God specifically sent to ordain him; the first person to lay hands on him, even before the Church at Antioch had commissioned him (Acts 9:10-12; 13:1-3).  Before his meeting with Paul, we had heard nothing of Ananias.  After laying hands on Paul and having him filled with the Holy Ghost, he disappears back into his high priestly quiver, until the Lord would choose to shoot him out again on another ‘special mission’ (Isaiah 49:2).

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4.  The Pattern of Gethsemane

I remember Gethsemane: all the disciples (priests) entered with Jesus the High Priest into that garden of Passover prayers, but none went with Him beyond their sleeping points to the “yonder” holiest place of sweat and blood, where the ‘covering cherub’ over the ark of that location appeared to Him “from heaven, strengthening him” for the coming day (Luke 22:43-46; Matthew 26:36).   While as High Priest Jesus groaned through the night in that holiest place of intense prayers, all the priests who had entered with Him, at their outer-court station, slept off.

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1.  Frequency and Value

Is value commensurate with frequency of use?  Can we determine the worth of something based on how often it is used?  Sometimes, in our minds, that is how it works. If a kitchen knife is used more often than a butcher’s knife, it must be more important; since the AK-47 is handier, more popular, and its voice is heard more often on the battlefield than the dumb atomic bomb, it must be superior to the less deployed.  In Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, I find a model that might suitably address this mystery of the relationship between service and value, between quantity and quality, between frequency of activities and divine significance.

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8.  Slay Them

The adversaries swore to “slay them.”  The deaths were going to be multiple – all the workers.  Can an agenda be so ruthless as not to mind how many it slays?  Can killers be so callous as not to care about the rivers of tears they force to flow and the streams of blood that turn the vegetation red?  Can they be so deaf to the wails of the maimed and the agony of orphans and widows multiplied?  What creed or malice blinds them to the graves of all sizes that have overtaken worksites and farmlands?  Will they eliminate entire populations to achieve one evil goal?

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4.  Our Adversaries

What is after your brother could be after you, too.  It may be only a matter of time before you know it.  In our text, the objects of concern were “OUR adversaries,” not “MY adversaries.”  Not only the speaker was under threat; everybody was.  If anyone supposed that Nehemiah alone was the target, because he was the leader, they were tragically mistaken.

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And our adversaries said, They shall not know, neither see, till we come in the midst among them, and slay them, and cause the work to cease.

Nehemiah 4:11

1.  Direct and Indirect Attacks

Let’s imagine that you were working at a construction site, and a gang of men came to take away your tools or to seal off the place; they would thus have halted or permanently stopped your work.  Sometimes, that is what the enemy of our souls does to stop what we do – by directly attacking the project or the project materials.

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1.  The Unpardonable Sin of Date-Setting

There is a new iniquity in the canons of contemporary Christianity, an abomination comparable to the unpardonable sin.  Some call it the sin of date-setting, others call it date-fixing.  It is the sin someone commits when they claim that by any stroke of divine prerogative, they were allowed a peep into the calendar of God.  The sin is more unforgivable if they should further claim that they have been privy to a mystical date that none is supposed to know, not even the angels in heaven.  That iniquity is unpardonable because, by claiming such forbidden knowledge, the prophet or dreamer or whatever they are called, make themselves equal with God and place themselves not only above the angels of God but also above the weary Jesus of Galilee who longingly sought food from a fig tree one hungry afternoon (Mark 11:12-14), who sat thirsty by an unlikely well, asking an afternoon drink from a very unlikely woman (John 4:6-7), who fell so deeply asleep during a boat ride that even the boat-rocking waves and storms could not wake Him out of His wearied slumber (Mark 4:37-38).

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