If you’ve been following these past few weeks of my preaching on the topic of worship, you might be wondering, “When is he going to get to talking and focusing on ministry?” For we all know that worship is ministering as well. Worship is when we keep the nursery, or preach, or sing, or play, or pray, or encourage, or serve one another. Therefore, if all these things are acts of worship, then why has my focus been on God-centeredness and the need to have a heart that exults in God exalting himself?
I want to show you why that’s the case this morning from our text. However, before doing that, I want to say that I am now transitioning into what we need to be doing (i.e., the things I just mentioned) and how we should be doing them, but I’ve wanted to lay the foundation that I have laid thus far for a reason – a reason I want to show you this morning.
So why is it important to spend all these weeks laying a God-centered worldview in which one exults in God exalting himself before we talk about things we do as acts of worship? I think this question will be answered this morning.
To show this connection, we need to find out how it is that one ministers to another. Now we could all say a number of different things to answer this question, but to limit it to the most foundational answer, let’s start with the hardest case in which one must minister. That is, “How do you find joy and strength to minister when your heart has been ripped out and you feel that to minister only lays your wounded, bleeding heart bare for others to abuse? For if we can find out how to minister in this circumstance, surely we can answer how to minister in other circumstances.
Our text today is a great place to find this answer. For the Macedonians were in a time of great struggle. According to verse 2, they were in a “severe test of affliction” and were in “extreme poverty.” Therefore, in their great suffering and extreme poverty, we would expect them to be looking to themselves, complaining, and expecting others to be serving and caring for them. We find something completely different, however. Paul tells us, “For in a severe test of affliction their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity. For they gave according to their means … and beyond their means of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints” (8:2-3).
That is to say, in their affliction and poverty they were “begging … earnestly” for Paul to let them give in relieving the saints of their struggles. And they gave “according to their means” (i.e., what one might expect of them) and “beyond their means” (i.e., more than anyone might expect them to do – 8:3). Thus, Paul adds, “And this not as we expected” (8:4).
And to add onto this, they gave as “their abundance of joy … overflowed” (8:2). That is they had so much joy in their affliction and poverty that they couldn’t contain it all and had to let it overflow in loving ministry to their brothers and sisters in Christ.
So how did they get to that place and do that? Paul tells us in verse 5, saying, “They gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.”
Isn’t that incredible? It’s living out what we’ve been talking about for several weeks now.
So what does this mean for us as we head now into looking at some more tangible things as to what we do in worship and how we do it in the next several weeks? I’ve come up with four things that we must remember about worship and about ministering as worship unto the Lord based on this text.
For otherwise, you will find yourself committing yourself to men or the things of men – even love for men – to find your source of strength and joy for ministry; and that will not produce abundant overflowing joy. Paul tells us that the Macedonians “gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us” (8:5). I don’t think you can reverse this order and continually find strength and joy to minister out of your affliction and poverty.
Therefore the source of your strength and joy for ministry is found in first giving yourself to God. That is one of the reasons that I began with the importance of treasuring and valuing him and of finding delight in the God-centered way in which his creation works.
You cannot find yourself delighting in God and being filled with joy in his presence without then turning and letting that joy overflow to others. And that overflow of joy in God to others is what all ministry is borne out of.
Some people think that if you dwell on the kind of things that we have looked at for these past weeks that the end result will be sitting in the middle of a field, trying to be more about God and forgetting people. And no doubt some wrongly do this. However, God has geared us in such a way that if we are truly finding ourselves delighting joyfully in who he is, we will have to turn and pour that out to others. Otherwise, we will probably feel like we will explode.
That’s no doubt why the Macedonians didn’t just say, “Hey, Paul, let us know if we can do anything to help” but rather were (in Paul’s words) “begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints” (8:4).
C. S. Lewis points out how this works in his Reflections on the Psalms. For his dilemma is why God tells us to praise him, and then commands us to gather others to praise him. He writes, “But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or any thing – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought into check it. The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least …
I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?’ The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise god are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about he praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.”1
Did you notice there how Lewis pointed out that praise is an overflow of joy? And, in fact, that inviting others to praise is an overflow of your joy. And going further, praising and inviting others to join in praise completes the joy that one has.
In the same way, this is how ministry works. When you delight in God, not only does it overflow in praise, but it overflows in wanting others to see how great he is that they might find that same delight as well. And isn’t that what we are doing in ministry? We are ministering because we want others to see and delight in God more as their source of joy. Therefore, a God-centered life is one that should and must result in ministry.
I’ll show you the last part of the statement first. Paul tells us that the Macedonians were able to minister and worship like this because they first committed themselves to God. And he also tells us that they were able to do it because of an overflow of joy. Therefore, we see that committing oneself to God to see and delight in him brings joy to you.
But it doesn’t stop there. For Paul doesn’t begin all of this saying, “Aren’t these Macedonians great?” so that they are lifted up in the eyes of men. Rather, he begins, “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches at Macedonia” (8:1).
That is to say, Paul is showing how rich God’s grace has been in the lives of the believers in Macedonia. They are receiving great joy and their God is displaying his great glory through them. I pray for the same thing to occur among his people here.
For this is how you will find yourself ministering and worshiping all through life. That’s what we must constantly be after. George Mueller wrote in his autobiography, “I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished … I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God and to meditation on it.”2
I, too, think this must be our foremost and constant fight, for it is only out of a heart that delights in God that one will find overflowing joy – enough to fill your heart and to pour out to others in ministry – worshiping in ministry even when your heart is being ripped to shreds. That is why I felt we must begin this series the way we have, and it is why I believe we must continue the labor to see and delight in God above all else even as we proceed.
Therefore, this morning, if your heart is being ripped into shreds and you are in great affliction or poverty, ask God to show you how great he is and to fill your heart with joy in the face of him. And then as he does it, join with us as we praise him and invite others to join us as we sing and then join us as we go from this place to worship our Lord in ministering out of the abundance of joy that is overflowing in our hearts. Amen.