Transcript
I was very unsettled about what I would share with you this morning. I told Steve this morning, my faithful companion in ministry, that I had altered what I was going to say 14 times. Maybe that's an example of what I'm about to speak about. I was an honors graduate from seminary (you can applaud right now). I won all kinds of student awards. I didn't just take Hebrew; I took Ugaritic. I took Comparative Semitics. I left seminary ready for the world - bring it on! I'm Paul freakin' Tripp. I got awards to prove it. I speak dead languages ... fluently.
Totally Unprepared for Ministry
But I want to say this, because I think it needs to be said: I was totally unprepared for ministry. I was completely unprepared for the dangers of regular, Gospel ministry - completely unprepared. I was unprepared for the deep, heart struggles that I would face in ministry. I was unaware of them, I was unprepared for them, I thought that I was a human being way above those things.
The Paul Tripp that I thought I was - can I say this? (I don't know why I'm asking permission, I'm go to) - didn't exist, won't ever exist. By grace, that delusion has been murdered. Praise God for that.
I was unprepared for the company of fears that would grip me in ministry, fears of other people, that deep need to be respected and accepted and esteemed that makes you all too cognizant, all too hyper-vigilant on how people are reacting to you. I had a hyper awareness of how everyone was responding to me in a meeting. I had a hyper-awareness of how people were responding to a sermon. I obsessed about my detractors. I was a living example of fear of man.
I had a huge fear of failure. I was the founding pastor of a little church in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That itself is an act of insanity; Scranton is a place where the American Dream died in 1950. And I was scared to death that I would be that guy that huge investments would be made into and I'd end up with a congregation of 13, eleven of them my relatives. That made me obsessive and controlling, trying to hold my fate in my hands, making sure that nothing would go wrong - I was a creepy person to minster alongside of.
I was afraid of the circumstances that would come down my pathway, because I had a bit of enough of theological knowledge to know that I was not quite sovereign. I called my brother Tedd once, he said something really humorous to me. I asked him, long-term pastor, how things were going at his church and he said, "Oh, great ... but it won't last." I love that, because there's an ebb and flow of ministry that's scary. I was afraid of the future. I was afraid.
But I want you to hear this: I think all of those fears were rooted in a much deeper, much more debilitating fear. And I want to say this: I am deeply persuaded that that fear lives in this room, right here, right now, today. You know how I know that? Because there are still artifacts of that fear inside of me.
I would like to say that I've arrived from this struggle. I would like to say that it's over for me. I would like to say that I can now look down from a sanctified mountaintop and help those who yet struggle ... but I can't.
The Fear Beneath It All
I want to posit that thing before I talk about that fear and take you to a passage of scripture. It is this - boy, it's taken me a long time to realize this, and it takes a war for me to live this. Did you hear what I said? It's taken a long time for me to realize this; it takes a war for me to live this.
Here it is: unless your ministry is rooted in the finished work of Christ, it will be uprooted some form of dysfunction. Did you hear what I said? Unless your ministry is firmly, deeply rooted in the finished work of Jesus for you, it will be uprooted by some form of ministry dysfunction.
Now, why? Because if you're not getting your identity at the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, if you're not getting your identity from those awesome, glorious words that were spoken in deep torture and pain - "It is finished!" - you will look for identity in your ministry.
You will ask your ministry to be your own personal savior. You will ask people you minister to to redeem you. You will ask the situations of life to make you feel good about yourself and give you reason to get up in the morning and reason to continue. Oh, I shouldn't have to say this to you, but ministry is a miserable place to look for identity. A miserable place!
But that's exactly what I did, and that's exactly what I continued in moments to slip into doing. And so I've got to be right and I've got to be successful; I've got to have control, I've got to win the day, I've got to be a better theologian than the guy next to me. I have to tell a better story. I have to have my ideas endorsed. And in so doing, I become a creepy, weird person to be around.
I'm going to say things this morning that people don't normally say - is that okay? (I don't really care if it is or not) But I find pastors, very often, weird, creepy individuals to be around. They're just freaks, because they're trying too hard. You don't have to tell a better story than me - stop it! You don't have to outdo my little ministry success with a better success story. If you're a reformed guy, you don't have to tell me that you know whiskey better than I do, and you can hold yours, by sanctifying grace. You don't have to walk round in a constant state of theological always-right-ism; let people stumble and bumble their way into understanding Jesus. You don't have to hurt their feelings.
Eric Mason told me once that he - he's a pastor committed to church planting; I love his zeal for that - he said, "You know, I kind of hate to go to church planting conferences." I say, "Why?" He said, "Because everybody lies. Because you don't want to say this church planting group paid $150,000 to help me plant this church and it's produced nothing." He said it's like a spitting contest.
Afraid to Face Who We Are
You see, all that is driven by fear; it's driven by something deep inside of me, and here it is: so many people in ministry are afraid to face who they are and what they've brought, what they've drug, into their ministries. They're afraid of standing in front of the mirror of the Word of God and saying, "I'm in ministry but I'm a bit of a mess!" And so we try to front, like we're grace graduates. We try to impress people with theological knowledge. We try to control our destiny by driven-ness. We create in our ministry culture a culture of achievement that's far from a culture of grace, because we're asking ministry to do for us what it was never supposed to do. Ministry was not given to give you peace of heart. Ministry was not given to give you rest of soul. Ministry was not given to make you feel like your life is worth it. Jesus was given for those things. And you are actually standing on the foundation of the finished work of Jesus, or you're asking your ministry to be your own personal Jesus - there it is. I should stop right now before I mess up that thought ... but I won't. Turn to First Timothy 1. I'm going to talk about this passage because this is one of these passages that gets me up in the morning and gives me reason to continue. All that I said so far was but a brief introduction.
Verse 12 - "I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." (1 Timothy 1:12-14, ESV)
Now, so far the passage is pretty comfortable. We can be pretty comfortable of owning our sins of the distant past. We can pretty comfortable with the "I once was, but I am not now" confessions, because those confessions don't actually expose you; those confessions actually applaud you. They're arrival confessions. And you hear a lot of those confessions with ministry people, and those can be genuine; you can look back at your past, you can be very thankful for what the grace of God has done, but it's not enough. And so, all the sudden, this comfortable passage becomes uncomfortable, gloriously uncomfortable, gospel uncomfortable, "praise be to Jesus" uncomfortable.
Because look what Paul says: "And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (and those people I have a lot of compassion for ... no, that's not what he says next) of whom I am the foremost."
This is Paul, not the one with the fuzzy mustache, the Apostle, saying, "Here's the gospel, here's what the gospel is about: Jesus came to save people like me, me who must be the foremost of all of those people, I must be the example of why Jesus had to come, why God had to harness the forces of nature and control the events of human history, so that at a certain time, his son would come and rescue people like me." Now, notice - this is very important in this passage - the verb he uses is present tense. This is not just a confession of past iniquity that I have been delivered from. This is a man who's saying, "This message that I am so passionate about, that by God's grace I've been called to be a spokesman of, is a message I desperately need right now! I'm that big of a sinner, I'm that much of a failure, I'm not arrived." Listen, it's not enough to you've failed in ministry - you will fail. What you have to say is that you come into ministry as a failure, because everyone in this room falls short of the glory of God. And that means it's impossible for me to ever think, write, speak, or teach anything in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that I don't desperately need myself, right here, right now. Paul Tripp has not arrived; Paul Tripp needs to be rescued from himself every day of his ministry.
Because the greatest dangers in me in ministry are not all those external things that I'm afraid of; the greatest dangers in ministry exist inside of my heart. It's how quickly the awe of God is replaced with awe of self. It's how shockingly self-righteous I can be. It's how quickly I can function like a gospel amnesiac. I am an example of what utter personal hopelessness would look like apart from Jesus. It's me, it's me. Listen - your weakness is not in the way of vibrant, gospel ministry. Your delusions of strength are, because the grace of Jesus Christ is up to the task of using people like us. Enough of fronting, enough of hiding, enough of the fear of being known, enough of giving non-answers to people's questions, enough of that. That burdensome, exhausting self-righteous way of living - God's grace is up to the task of taking messy, broken, failing, wandering, fickle people like us and using them to his glory. His grace is that powerful, because his work is complete. What an awesome declaration of the glory of God's grace in this passage. This is the Apostle Paul - wow. But he's not done. I love this. This is a verse that Luella, my wife, reads to me. "But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life." What a confession. Luella reads this to me because she can relate to the Savior's need for patience.
Paul says not only is grace up to the task of taking broken people like us and employing them in ministry - because that grace is that powerful, it's that complete, it's that restorative, it's that transformational, it's that complete - but it's patient, long-suffering, persevering grace.
Grace Upon Grace Upon Grace
It never runs out, it never gives up, it never turns its back and walks away, it never says, "I've given you seven opportunities and I'm tired of you." It's grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace (are you uncomfortable yet?) upon grace! A never-ending, patient flow of grace. Listen, that tells me Jesus knew exactly what it would be like to accept me into his family. He knew all the messiness that I was bringing. He knew what the process would have to look like to bring me from where I am to where I need to be. None of that is a surprise to him; none of that is an irritation to him; none of that brings regret to him. He knew exactly what it would mean to save me! It's not a surprise. The only person that it's a surprise to is me, because I came into this thing with such a distorted view of who I was. I've been surprised by how much I need grace, but my savior has not had one surprise yet.
Boy, am I passionate about this stuff? You can sense it down to my toes. Because, even in the face of everything I've said this morning, I am still capable of forgetting these glories and once again shopping horizontally for what I've already been given vertically. The full and complete nature of the work of Christ is absolutely unable to be thwarted by anything that this broken man would bring to the floor. I would ask you this morning: what are you wanting from your ministry that you shouldn't want? What are you asking of the people around you that you shouldn't ask? What are you telling yourself that's just not true? Be honest - how much of your ministry is driven by fear and not faith? Be honest - are you afraid of being known? Afraid of honestly confessing secret sins of the heart? Honestly seeking help for family dysfunction? For things like anger, pride, lust? How hard do you work to build a distance between your public ministry persona and the harsh realities of your everyday life? You see, all that stuff is the messy dysfunction of identity amnesia. Because if your ministry isn't rooted in being re-rooted again and again in the finished work of our Savior - brother, friend, the lamb, the king, the redeemer - Jesus Christ, our ministry will be fraud, with nasty dysfunction.
It's been sad to me to talk to people who've worked in ministries, ministries that we know, who say things like, "I never want to work in a ministry again. I have no desire to be in ministry again," because of the dysfunction that went on inside of that ministry culture. Because people forming that culture were asking things out of their ministry that they shouldn't ask that make for self-sovereignty and control and self-righteousness and the inability to listen and an inability to serve and fear of the gifts of other people and all those crazinesses that come because I've forgotten that I have everything I need in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. You don't need to save me; I'm saved! It sounds silly for me to ask this, but I'm going to ask this - oh ministry person, where are you seeking salvation? Don't answer quickly. Open your heart, in this holy moment that we have together. Could it be that there are things happening in your ministry that shouldn't happen because you're seeking salvation where it cannot be found? I welcome you into the rest of the finished work of Jesus. I welcome you away from the disappointment and the discouragement and the exhaustion of ministry that looks for salvation where it can't be found. I welcome you away from that disappointment and that discouragement and that fear. I welcome you into the Sabbath of rest that is found when you now are able to minister not seeking to be saved because you minister out of a salvation that is complete. What a beautiful place to be. And I welcome you into humbly confessing that there are ways in which the war I am describing will not be over until we're on the other side. And I need, again and again, to run away from my false saviors that I've once again collected, and run towards the one true Savior and find that rest again. And I will need to make that journey away from false saviors to the true Savior again and again and again until I'm at the Savior's feet and all the false saviors are dead and gone forever.
May God help us to root today, and re-root again and again, the ministries to which we have been called in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. His grace is fully sufficient to use people like us, and that Savior of grace is never surprised by how arduous the process is to bring you where you need to be. How beautiful is that? His work is complete. Run from your false savior; run to the true Savior and find his rest.
