1 Peter 2:4 As you come to him, the living Stone--rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him-- 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For in Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." 7 Now the honor is to you who believe, but to those who do not believe, "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone, 8 and, "A stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the message--which is also what they were destined for. 9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Introduction: Taking Ministry Lightly
Several years ago I got a phone call from a little church in Buena Vista. They asked me if I could preach the following Sunday since their pastor was going to be gone. I was not pastoring a church at the time, so I had the freedom to accept, and was thrilled for the opportunity to preach. So I prepared a sermon, and when Sunday morning came I got up very early, since it was a 2.5 hour drive, and just before I left, the phone rang. They were calling to make sure I would be there, and just before we hung up she said, “We’re doing some extra music, so you’ll have about 10 minutes to preach.” Ten minutes is fine if you know in advance it is ten minutes, but finding out it is ten minutes after spending all those hours preparing a full sermon – that was not really what I wanted to hear. And during the long drive up there I am developing more and more of a bad attitude. Five hours of driving so I could speak ten minutes. That is a lot of gas and a lot of time for a devotional.
By the time I got up there I had such a bad attitude I just tossed my notes on the floor of my car. I figured, “I’ll just share from my heart for a few minutes and then sit down.” So I just grabbed my Bible and went inside. The service started, they sang a couple songs, and then the song leader said, “We have a guest speaker, and I don’t want to short change him, so Darrell, come on up.” And as I passed him on the way to the platform he leaned over and said, “You have an hour.” Now that’s great if you are Jeff Roets, but I do not preach extemporaneously. I go from a word-for-word manuscript. If I don’t have my notes I have a tough time remembering which chapter I am preaching from. So I arrive at the pulpit and I have nothing with me but my Bible, a bad attitude, and an eager congregation, and an hour.
Well, I bumbled my way through and finally closed in prayer and sat down. After the service, as I was making my way out this old, white-haired man walked up to me and introduced himself. He said, “I’m Dwight Pentecost.” Dwight Pentecost is a world-famous evangelical scholar. He has written twenty books, and he is one of only two men to ever receive the honor of Distinguished Professor of Bible Exposition, Emeritus, at Dallas Theological Seminary.
All my life I have daydreamed about someday preaching a sermon and having a famous Bible scholar be in the congregation. I never thought it would actually happen. And the one time in my entire life when I preached a full sermon with no notes because of a bad attitude, it happens to be the day that an eminent theologian is vacationing in Buena Vista. In my daydream it ends with the famous scholar being so impressed that he recommends me as a pastor of some huge church. But in reality I got a handshake and a sympathetic smile.
That happened because I had taken something lightly that turned out to be important. I thought it was going to be small and it turned out to be big. And as I drove home it just really hit me that I should have known it was important because the thing that made it important was not the fact that Dwight Pentecost was there. It was important because it was a gathering of the church. I don’t know if you have ever blown something off only to discover later that it was very important, but I can tell you that I am convinced the purpose of today’s passage is to keep us from making that mistake.
We have been studying verse by verse through the book of 1 Peter, and we come today to one of those paragraphs in Scripture that has such massive, grandiose language in describing the importance of church ministry that you have to just stop and let the words sink in or you can easily miss it. It is like when someone tells you how large the solar system is. If you just hear the numbers and do not take some time to make some comparisons with the size of the earth and so on, the numbers don’t mean anything. But after you stop and think it through for a while, you are just bowled over by the staggering size. If you are not bowled over with the magnitude of our mission as a church by the end of the sermon today, then I have not done a good job presenting the message of this text.
Descriptions of Israel
Peter gives us seven massive truths about what the Church is. Let’s start with the first four.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God
If you have any familiarity with the Old Testament at all you know right away that those are all descriptions of the nation of Israel. In Deuteronomy 7, Israel is identified as God’s chosen race, a people belonging to God and a holy nation. In Exodus 19:6 they are called a kingdom of priests. In Jeremiah 31:33, they are called the people of God.
Israel’s Exaltation
Think for a moment about how important Israel is to God. Of all the nations, they alone are His treasured possession. The word refers to a possession of such great value that you hide it away to protect it. Priesthood means they are the only people who can approach God’s presence. Royal priesthood means they will reign with God over the world. Chosen points to God’s desire – He wanted them. Treasured possession points to God’s delight – His enjoyment of them. And royal priesthood points to their privileged access to God and exalted status before God.
Has it ever just hit you how important the nation of Israel is? The entire Old Testament is about Israel and God. When God communicated to man, He did so through the Jews. The Jewish nation is incredibly important to God. Why?
Israel’s Mission: Praise
Israel is important to God because of the monster calling they have. (I thought about titling the sermon “Monster Call”.) Israel was called to do nothing less than bless the entire world.
Genesis 28:14 All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.
That is repeated five times in Genesis. God’s reason for calling Abraham was to set in motion His plan to bless humanity through Abraham’s offspring (Israel). Ultimately that happens through the Messiah, who came from Israel. But what about the individual Jew – what is his role? What is the mission statement for the nation of Israel?
Isaiah 43:20 … my people, my chosen 21 the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.
Israel’s job is to proclaim the praises of God. Their monster calling is to bring blessing to the whole world by revealing the truth about God and then publishing that world-wide. God created them for His praise.
Why is that OK?
Sometimes people ask, “Why is it OK for God to seek praise for Himself?” If we see a person who is constantly seeking praise, we regard that person as immature at best. So why is it OK for God?
Even if you do not know the answer to that question, you can probably just feel intuitively that there is something different about it. If you are around a group of people and one of them is fishing for complements, and finally he gets them – you are thinking, “Oh please – get me out of here.” But you don’t feel that way when people are praising God. When the saints gather and you see all the people around you enraptured in worship, maybe even tears streaming down their face, lifting their hands, kneeling on the floor – shouting praises; or when you are standing in the hall with a few friends and someone is talking about how incredibly powerful God is, or they are going on about God’s wisdom or love or justice – that does not make you disgusted. It feeds your soul. It fills up your joy. It has an up-building, cleansing, purifying effect on you, and you walk away feeling like you are a better person.
Praise Benefits the Hearer
The reason seeking praise is such a bad thing for us to do and such a good thing for God to do is the best thing that can ever happen to a person is to see the glory of God and take delight in it. When you look upon His glory it improves your soul. It heals you and strengthens you and purifies you and transforms you.
2 Corinthians 3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all behold the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory
The more you look upon His glory the more you are transformed. In fact, that will be the method God will use when Jesus returns to finish the job of completely transforming you. He will do that simply by allowing you to look upon His glory.
1 John 3:2 when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
So the best thing that can ever happen to you is to see His glory. And the worst thing that can happen, then, is to have your attention diverted from His glory. So when I come along and I seek praise or glory for myself – that is an unloving action because I am diverting your attention away from the thing that can really benefit you onto something that cannot benefit you. Seeing my glory does you no good whatsoever. So I am doing you a great disservice by trying to get you to look at me, pay attention to me, praise me. That hurts you because it pulls your attention from God’s glory. But it is not at all unloving for God to call you to behold and enjoy His glory, because that is the best thing that can happen to you. That is why it is different.
If a chef creates the most delicious meal ever made, and it is also really good for you and will cure cancer – the most loving thing he can do is advertise it. And seeing God’s glory is more beneficial and life-giving than eating that meal. So the kindest thing God can do is put His glory on display. And when He does so, and we are ignoring it, and scrounging around in the mud looking at things that do nothing but harm us, it is loving for God to say, “No, turn your eyes this way.”
Because Praise is Fitting
Praise (which is nothing more than seeing and expressing your delight in the glory of God) benefits the person who does it. However, even if it did not benefit us – still it would be good to praise Him. It would be good simply because God being honored is the best thing that can ever happen. If a soldier dives on a hand grenade to save his comrades and he somehow survives and gets a medal, we say, “I’m glad he got that medal. He deserves it.” It is just good when someone who deserves honor gets honor. And the more they deserve it, the better it is when they get it. And God is infinitely deserving of honor, and so it is infinitely good when He gets it. It is the best thing that can possibly happen.
So why is Israel so important? They are important because of their monster calling. Their mission is to accomplish the most important task there is – the revelation of the truth about God. So God gave them an incredibly exalted, privileged status so that they could accomplish that work. But then Peter comes along and takes the exact terminology from all those passages about their exalted, privileged status and applies it all to us. It is very explicit. Peter might as well have just said, “You are Israel.”
Israel is Unique
That is a problem because in the Old Testament those descriptions are presented as being uniquely true of Israel. It is not like Israel is one of multiple chosen nations.
2 Samuel 7:23 who is like your people Israel--the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself…
So these privileges are for Israel and only Israel.
The Church’s Exaltation
The Relationship between the Church and Israel
So how can Peter apply them to us? Who is the chosen race – the Church or Israel? Or both? Are there two separate chosen races? Or did the Church replace Israel? Are we spiritual Israel? And if so, is God finished with ethnic Israel? We need to know the answers to these questions because it is through His chosen people that God does what He does in this world, and we need to know what our involvement in that is. And we also need to know how much of the Old Testament applies to us – especially when it comes to the promises. To what extent do the promises made to Israel apply to the Church?
The Church did not Replace Israel
One of the mistakes people often make in trying to answer those questions is to oversimplify the issue and run to one of the extremes. One extreme is too much identification of the Church as Israel, and the other extreme is too much separation between the Church and Israel. Some of our Reformed, Covenant Theology friends make that first mistake – too much identification, so the Church is the new Israel and the Jews are no longer the people of God in any sense. They see passages like this and say, “See, the Church has completely, permanently, totally replaced Israel as the people of God.”
The problem with that view is Romans 11:26-29, which says those Jews who are now enemies of the gospel are still loved because of the promises to Israel, and those promises are still in force. So the significance of being ethnically Jewish has not been erased. In Romans 3:1, Paul says there is a great advantage – now in this age – in being Jewish. So the Church has not replaced Israel.
But on the other hand, some of our dispensational friends get carried away on the other side. They want to make such an extreme, total distinction between the Church and Israel that there is no sense whatsoever in which the Church can be identified with Israel. They say, “The Church and Israel are two completely distinct entities.”
The Church is Identified with Israel
The problem with that is passages like 1 Peter 2, where Peter takes all these unique descriptions of Israel and applies them to the Church.
Galatians 3:29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
That is the definition of Israel – descendents of Abraham. Galatians 6:16 even calls us the Israel of God. There is just no getting around the fact that the Church is identified in very significant ways with Israel. The promise of the New Covenant itself was made to Israel (Jer.31:33), and yet Hebrews 8 is very clear that the fulfillment of that is the Church.
We are an Aspect of Israel
So instead of running to one extreme or the other, I think we need to acknowledge two things:
1. We have to leave room in our theology for a future for ethnic Israel in God’s plan.
2. We have to leave room in our theology for the fact that many, many promises made to Israel in the Old Testament are fulfilled in the Church.
The promises made to Israel have complex fulfillments. Some are realized in ethnic Israel, others in Christ, others in the Church, and others in combinations of the three.
There are times when God looks at ethnic Israel and says, “Not My people.” Many of the promises are conditioned on Israel’s faithfulness. So if they disobey God, they cannot count on those promises during that time of disobedience. For example,
Exodus 19:5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession … 6 you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.'
They will be God’s holy nation, treasured possession, and kingdom of priests if they are faithful to His covenant. But they were not faithful. So at one point God even said this:
Hosea 1:9 Then the Lord said … you are not my people, and I am not your God.”
Now, in the verses that follow God makes it very clear that that would be a temporary thing, and one day they would once again be His people. But you can see that when Israel is unfaithful, there is a sense in which they are set aside to a degree. And now, in the New Testament era, is one of those times when Israel is not at all faithful to God. They have turned away from God and are in rebellion as a nation. And as a result, according to Romans 11, those Jews who do not believe have been cut off from the vine, and in their place gentile Christians have been grafted in.
Matthew 21:43 Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.
That setting aside is a temporary situation, but it is the situation right now.
So here is the bottom line: in this age, the task of the Church is to function as Israel. All those glorious, world-wide purposes God had for Israel – that is now our job! We have inherited the monster call. That is our mission. And do you remember what it is – the center of this mission? According to Isaiah 43:20, God created Israel for the purpose of declaring His praises. What about us? In our role as the people of God, do we inherit that same mission?
The Church’s Mission: Praise
Look back at verses 9-10. We have received the same super-exalted status as Israel, and for the same purpose.
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God…
Why?
…in order that you may declare the excellencies of him who called you
Your Bible might say “declare the praises of Him who called you,” but a better translation of this word is “excellencies.” It refers to those things that are excellent or praise-worthy about a person. There are a lot of great, excellent, praise-worthy things about God (we call them attributes, or excellencies), and our job as the Church is to publish those things – unveil them and make them known. He chose us, desired us, treasures us, takes delight in us, and He set us aside as holy and gave us special access and elevated us to an exalted, privileged status – even making us royalty. And He did all that to make us His printing press – publishers of His praise. We have inherited Israel’s monster call. The Church exists for the purpose of praise.
Praise as the Basis for Ministry
That is really a summary of our whole mission. Think about it - what do we do that is not rooted in praise? We praise Him in song, as we sing to one another with songs, hymns, and spiritual songs as Scripture commands. But that is not the only thing we do that is rooted in praise. How about evangelism? When you share the gospel with someone, what are you doing? You are telling the person what is so great about Jesus Christ. You are giving the person reasons to trust in Jesus Christ. You are presenting Jesus as the great treasure that is worth giving up the whole world to obtain. That is all praise - making known the excellencies of God. Our message to the world is this: “You should become a Christian because of how marvelous Jesus Christ is.” I hope you do not ever leave out the part about “…because of how marvelous Jesus Christ is.” We are witnesses giving testimony. Testimony of what? The greatness and goodness and superiority and sufficiency and excellencies of God. We let the world know that Christ is an all-satisfying treasure that is worth any price to obtain, He is the Author of life, He forgives sins, He rewards faith, He is holy and righteous and just and loving, His way is better than any other way – come to Him.
So evangelism is rooted in praise. What about ministry to one another in the Church? That is all rooted in praise too. You go to your small group and one person talks about how much he needs God, and someone else responds by talking about how sufficient God is to meet that need. Praise is at the core of everything we do. We are a God-centered, God-focused church or we are not a church.
The Solution to Feeling Worthless
We need to hear that again and again because we are so prone to focusing on ourselves. Whenever Scripture starts talking about our exalted identity, it is very common for people to latch on to those passages for the purpose of increasing self-esteem. I talked to a woman the other day who was telling me about how absolutely worthless she felt. She said she grew up in a home where children were treated as having no value and that had a devastating effect on her life. She said, “I am so messed up in so many ways because I’ve always just felt so worthless.”
The world calls that low self-esteem or self-loathing. The Bible calls it self-condemnation. But whatever you call it, it is a problem that can become so crippling that it can ruin a person’s whole life.
What is the solution? Most of the time the solution we seek for a problem will be dictated by the label we put on that problem. So if we say the problem is low self-esteem, the solution is obvious – learn to esteem yourself more highly. If the problem is that you feel worthless, the solution is to start thinking of yourself as having great value.
That is what psychology will tell you to do. And Christian psychology will tell you the same thing, except with a Christian flavor to it. The counselors who want to mix psychology and the Bible will say, “The solution is for you to understand your identity in Christ. Study what the Bible says about how important you are in His eyes, and how valuable you are, and that will help you think more highly of yourself, and your problem will be solved.” That sounds very biblical, but it is based on the world’s diagnosis of the problem. They start by saying, “We will accept the world’s description of the problem – low self-esteem, and then we will look to the Bible for a solution.” But when you do that you are going to be looking for the wrong solution because the world distorts the nature of the problem with their labels.
The problem is not low self-esteem. People who think highly of themselves are just as messed up as people who are down on themselves. Pride is not the solution to anything. Egotistical, puffed-up people are every bit as messed up as self-condemning, self-loathing people. And the solution to both problems is to become enraptured with the glory of God. The solution to feeling small is not feeling big. The solution to feeling small or feeling ugly or feeling dumb or feeling worthless is having your attention diverted from yourself altogether onto something really worth looking at. I am always amazed when I see some video footage of a concert with some really famous rock band. Talk about a worship service. What those people in the front row are doing is 100%, unadulterated worship. And the amazing thing is, they pay to do it. No one has to drag them out of bed and badger them into going to worship. They will pay hundreds of dollars to get a front row seat.
Why? Normally, in our pride, we like to be made much of, right? But nobody is making much of you when you are one of thousands of fans at a concert. No one even sees you. You are not being praised or applauded or attended to in any way. So why do people like to do that? It is because they see what is happening on the stage as true greatness or true beauty or true excellence of some kind, and there is something in us that loves beholding greatness and being engulfed in a crowd of worshippers. We are designed for worship, and if we are blind to God we will find something to worship, even if it is a guy with a guitar on a stage.
If you feel like you are too short or too tall or too fat or too ugly or too dumb - the solution to being down on yourself is not to get a more inflated opinion of yourself. The solution is to have your attention diverted from yourself to something truly great and beautiful and excellent and awesome, and to become engulfed in an ocean of worshippers who are ecstatic with joy, and whose joy increases the more they express it.
The Importance of the Church
I think the reason for this amazing list in verses 9-10 is Peter just wants us to wake up to what an absolutely staggering thing it is to be a member of a church. You get to be Israel in this age. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus said, “I will build My Church.” After He ascended into heaven, a lot of people did a lot of terrible things and nothing happened, but when a particular Pharisee began to ravage the Church, Jesus came down, confronted him in person, blinded him, smacked him to the ground, and demanded an explanation, saying, “Why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4) In Ephesians 5 and 2 Corinthians 11:2 we are described as Christ’s wife. In 1 Corinthians 3 we are warned that if anyone destroys a church, God will destroy him. The church is the very house of God. We are the headquarters for the presence of God in the world, and we are His very family. In Ephesians 3:10-12 we read in grandiose language about God’s eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is the whole ball of wax – the grand, sweeping, eternal purpose of God is accomplished through the Church.
10 His intent was that now, by means of the church, the multifaceted wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according to his eternal purpose
Would you agree that that is even bigger than Dwight Pentecost? The importance of the Church is beyond human ability to conceive. When you let it sink it, it feels like mission impossible. It seems farfetched that a group like us could pull something of such cosmic importance off. It is not mission impossible, but it is mission imperative. It must be done! And it can be done if we go about it the way God’s Word tells us to go about it, and if we do so with the zeal and passion and energy and enthusiasm and drive that come from realizing our identity.
Romans 12:11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.
If we work with fervor and zeal we can succeed where Israel failed. It is possible – even though you are busy.
Slivers of time
Jesus died to make you a functioning part of His body, the Church. And many people are not functioning in any ministry in the church because they do not have time. Because to do anything really significant it would take a lot of time, right? Let’s just do that math - We know that God wants you to be a good employee, right? So that takes up a good forty, fifty or sixty hours a week. We also know God wants you to be a good husband or wife, and a good father or mother – a good student. He wants you to spend adequate time with your family. He wants you to fulfill your responsibilities, to get proper rest. So if God wants all of you to do all that, how much time does that leave for ministry at church? A tiny sliver of time.
And what is amazing to me is that this is God’s design. God’s design is for the Church – the most important, most powerful, most influential institution in the world – to be operated completely by people’s leftover fragments of time.
Please, do not ever say, “I’m so busy, all I have is such a tiny little sliver of time to devote to church ministry – it’s not even worth it. My little sliver of time won’t make any difference.” No – God designed this entire, massive, worldwide operation to be run almost entirely off everyone’s tiny slivers of time and energy. It is that way by God’s design. He wants to feed the multitudes with a little boy’s tiny lunch. He wants to defeat the vast Assyrian army with Gideon’s unarmed little group. He wants the one who kills the giant champion to be a little shepherd boy. He wants this treasure to be in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us (2 Cor 4:7). And He wants to turn the world upside down not by a lot of powerful, brilliant people all working full time, but by the leftover scraps of time of ordinary tired folks.
And look at what God accomplishes that way. Think of the most impressive organization you know of to compare the Church to. Microsoft is a huge corporation. They accomplish a lot. But what they accomplish is nothing compared to what the Church accomplishes worldwide. Exxon-Mobile is a huge company – biggest in the world, but compared to the Church it is a Popsicle stand. Think of the complexity of the Church worldwide – the millions of gifts and how they fit together in all the places everywhere in the world. The reason Exxon-Mobile is able to function as it does is because they have a headquarters and an organizational chart, and everyone in the organization gets a salary so they can put their full time into it, and they all have specific, written job descriptions. But the far greater organization – the Church has no worldly headquarters, and it is run completely by leftover time fragments of people who get no salary – in fact they put money in the plate!
It is true those who have the job of teaching are full time, because that is a task that requires a man’s full time. But do not think the pastors are the Church. All the pastors in the world could never even begin do the work of the Church. We just equip the people to use their time fragments to do the work of the Church.
The incalculable, amazing wondrous work of the Church is made up of all the countless little wonderful things the Holy Spirit does through all of you. If Agape were nothing more than me standing up here running off at the mouth it would be nothing. Agape is all the amazing, wonderful things you all do with your little fragments. Take that away and you have no church.
Can you see how important your fragment is? Can you see how absolutely essential it is that each of us be faithful with our fragment? People think, “If I don’t give my little two hours, so what? What difference will it make?” It will make all the difference, because that is all the Church is! Christ has given this massive, cosmic job description to the Church, and the only way to get it done is with each believer being faithful with his or her little sliver of time. This is mission imperative. It is a monster calling. People’s lives are at stake. Eternity hangs in the balance, based on our faithfulness. We have the responsibility to function as Israel – the people of God – and nothing less than the very glory of God is at stake. We must succeed in publishing the excellencies of God and making them known, and whatever your role in accomplishing that work is, do it! God has given you such a precious few hours to get your part done – let’s not squander a single moment of that time.
Don’t Take it for Granted
God save us from ever taking such a high calling for granted, or despising it as something small. Sometimes we fall into treating it like it is our birthright or something. Peter reminds us - it’s not.
9 … [He] called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
We did not make ourselves the people of God. It was graciously granted to us, and Romans 11:20 says…
Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. 22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off.
We do not deserve any of this, and if we are not faithful it can be taken away from us just like it was from unbelieving Jews. The church in Revelation 2:5 was warned that if they continued in unfaithfulness Jesus would remove their lampstand – their place in the Temple.
How many of you have been shown mercy by God? How many of you were hopelessly mired in darkness and were called by God into His wonderful light? How many of you have now become God’s treasured possession? How many of you have been set apart as holy, like God’s fine china? If God did all that, He did it for a reason. He did not do it so you could spend all your time playing video games or watching TV. He did it to place you into a position where you could pull off the highest, most demanding, most important, and most humanly impossible task there is – the task of playing your role in the church’s effort to publish far and wide and deep the excellencies of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Benediction: Psalm 100:1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. 2 Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. 5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
1:25 Questions
1. When you think about the fragment of time in your life that God expects to be devoted to church ministry, how much time do you think that is?
2. How would you assess your level of zeal in ministry? Is there something you could do to make the earnestness of your labor in the Lord match more closely the importance of our task?
3. Do you feel you have a good understanding of your gifts and calling at Agape?
