The Holy Spirit and Biblical Equipping

If I have not heard what Jesus has said, the Holy Spirit is perfectly content to not bring anything to my mind. Yes, He is protecting. Yes, He is controlling. Yes, He is all of these wonderful and amazing things, but He can also be quenched. He can also be grieved. He will willingly restrain Himself or allow Himself to be restrained. And so far as we are not operating from a biblically equipped position. In fact, Ephesians 4 is going to talk to us about grieving the Holy Spirit in the weeks to come.

The Privilege of Ministry

Now all of this we see the privilege actually. That's one of the biggest things to take away from this is that this isn't just an obligation technically necessarily at all. This is a privilege. This is an opportunity every single individual within this room right now has the ability to be ministers. And that beautiful privilege that we had saw from 2 Corinthians 9 of people that are just so overwhelmed by you. So longing to be around you and that are praying for you and praying for success within your lives. People that you would be ministering to. That's yours.

The opportunity is right here within the pages of Scripture for you guys as you continue within youth ministry and go into college ministry and go into adult ministry. It's like you're graduating like now you're in the big leagues right. That's how it goes. It's like oh I'm in big kid church now. I get to listen to the main teaching pastor. All of that is specifically yours. There are guidelines. There are rules that are instructions on how to be effective and how to do these things absolutely but it is yours.

And this all results in a specific privilege and a specific blessing and benefit: unity, maturity, Christ-likeness, security, stability. These are all blessed results of ministry that you would be stable in your life. You would not be kicked all over the place. You would not be extorted. You would not be taken advantage of. You would not be deceived. That these are all results of ministry and the most blessed reality of a Christian to become more and more like Jesus Christ. The greatest man that ever lived. The man who lived with people killing him and the wrath of the Father on him and yet was able to experience suffering like we will never imagine or know or understand or ever experience and did so with joy.

So that joy is yours but it's by abiding in me in doing what I say. Being equipped for ministry causes everybody to get to this position whereby which we are more mature spiritually, mature spiritually unified with other individuals and the more that we become unified the more that it's like Spartans stacking their shields next to each other to become an impenetrable force. That's the stability that's the security that ultimately exists there of course in a spiritual concept.

Ministry will help you not be thrown all over the place. It's chaos to not be ministered to and to not be equipped and it starts with bad doctrine with bad teaching. There's a reason why Paul gave us the categories where we're to be equipped on. Every teaching that does not come from the word of God is bogus and jacks up your life.

Whenever we're listening to sources of how we're supposed to live, what we're supposed to do, what we're supposed to be like, what we're supposed to behave like, example psychology, example, unChristian friends, example, secular teachers, examples out the wazoo of individuals that will ultimately come out of the woodwork to be able to give you bad doctrine and to mess up your life and when you guys get into college that's where it totally happens left and right. You get a math teacher and he's going to tell you Jesus doesn't exist. You'll get world religions teachers. You'll get all sorts of secular teachers, all sorts of people that will give you bad doctrine, bad teaching.

He's talking about things that affect your beliefs, your philosophies, your outlooks on life, your behavior, your relationships, your goals, your hopes, your dreams, these kinds of things, bad doctrine will lead you astray. This kind of teaching is trickery. This verb trickery comes from the Greek word that means to play with dice. It's exactly what bad doctrine is. It's you go to somebody who's a secular philosopher, you go to somebody who's a heretic who's a false teacher and all they're doing is rolling the dice in reference to your life.

What are you supposed to do right now? Well, let's see here. All right, snake eyes. Here's what you're supposed to do. It's playing dice. It's playing around with your life and it's not coming up with anything that is ultimately going to be valuable to you. And of course, the main idea is to cheat you. Bad doctrine is intended to cheat you out of what you should be experiencing in life and somebody then by teaching you bad doctrine can take from you what you should be experiencing within life.

Non-biblical teaching pertaining to matters of life as somebody should be living or what kind of behavior they should have. It's dishonest, it's unfair and it's taking advantage of you. If it's not from the word of God, you are being cheated. And it also means that you're not being equipped for this glorious concept of ministry. Nor are you being ministered to. It's craftiness. Which also carries the idea of deceiving somebody, taking advantage of them. Basically, it's a teacher who's very skilled at manipulating you in order to make you do what they want. And it happens more often than not. They even resort to threats or extortions.

If you're not doing what I'm saying, I'm going to expose you for being a terrible person. That's the beautiful thing about being a sinner is that you have already confessed to being a terrible person. You've already opened up your arms to the God who is able to save you and said, I am wretched. I am sinful. Christ, take care of me. I'm clinging to the righteousness of Christ. Of course I'm a terrible person. Of course I am. Teaching that is not grounded in and comes from the word of God will lead you astray.

Negative Consequences of Unequipped Ministry

Now notice that there are positive consequences of doing ministry. We're going to flip these in reverse and see some negative consequences here. Number one, the entire body isn't functioning properly. The entire body isn't functioning properly if there exists even one person that's not equipped for ministry. Everybody else is affected by unequipped Christians. That's why the Bible even talks about a little bit of leaven, the whole lump, even a little bit of sin. Hebrews talks about bitterness, can defile everyone else.

And in this context, the idea of not even one person being effectively equipped for ministry, the entire body of Christ, or at least that local congregation as a representation of the body of Christ, isn't functioning properly. Following after unbiblical concepts and doctrines as a Christian causes others to not be able to properly contribute to the proper function of the body of Christ.

Notice the verse 16 terminology using equipped ones again. It talks about how the whole body supposed to be held together by equipped joints, by joints that are thoroughly equipped and thoroughly adequate to be a joint, to be able to be something that is holding a particular body part connected to another body part. One person who is not equipped is one person that is not ministering. That's the logic that you can see there. And even if a person is attempting to do a ministry not equipped, by virtue of being not equipped, they're not doing ministry.

One person in the body not doing ministry is a body that can't grow. And even if it's growing numerically where there's tons and tons of people coming in, all you're doing is basically creating a scenario like a paralytic and you're just making him fatter. Just expanding and expanding and expanding with no ability to move, no ability to be accurate. There's no movement in this kind of a church.

The word of God is what is going to drive the equipping and the equipping drives the ministry. There is a responsibility, absolutely on pastors, to handle the word of God accurately and faithfully and to present this so that they're actually equipping the saints from ministry. But it's also the reality of individuals who should be receiving these concepts and being equipped from ministry.

Don't try to be equipped from ministry from non-biblical sources even if that person is claiming that it's from God. There's so many people that exist in Christian circles that feel that they're the conduit for God's word to come into the world and that it doesn't matter about Scripture itself, they're just going to continually receive revelation from God.

Colossians 2:8-19: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition... Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions... puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.”

We need more Christ. We don't need somebody's personal experiences. We don't need all of these other different sources or different opportunities. We need Christ. We need His Word. This is how ministry is going to exist.