Sound Doctrine

Guest (Male): Pastor Jeff says planning is an important part of successful ministry. You want to be successful in your ministry. What is the plan? You need to have a plan.

Jeff Johnson: What is your vision? Without a vision, the people perish. We all need to have a vision of what God wants to do with me. What would I like to see happen? I would like to teach a class in the Bible college. Well, then you need to start going for that. That is a good vision. God is going to be with you.

I would like to be a Sunday school teacher. That is a great vision. We need more of you. I would like to be an usher. Well, go for it. What is it? What do you want? What do you want to get involved in? Then just step out.

Guest (Male): What does a successful ministry look like? Some would say gather a following, become well-known and liked. But today on Sound Doctrine, we pause to consider how God would answer that question. Pastor Jeff has noticed six ingredients in the recipe for success found in Romans chapter 15.

To help you remember them, each point starts with the letter P. The first is power, reminding us we need God's power. The second is profile, keep a low profile. There are four more we will cover today. So let's get started. Here is Jeff to take it from there.

Jeff Johnson: Always the word needs to go before. The Holy Spirit is the whole thing. I think that is the most important thing because I look at the Holy Spirit as the steam that drives the locomotive down the track. The Holy Spirit is not just something you blow your little whistle with. I speak in tongues and you are blowing your whistle. No, it does more than that. It moves us down the track.

The Holy Spirit keeps us going in these tough days. He gives us the power to be a witness. He gives us boldness and a love for the Lord and a love for his word that we never had before. That is what it is to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Check yourself out. Is that where you are at? If not, you need to say, "Okay, I have received Jesus, but I am not doing what Jeff is talking about. I do not have that."

Well, you need to check into it. It is real and, if you would like, go into the prayer room today after we dismiss. There is a little pamphlet we have. We will give it to you. You can go check it out in the scriptures. I think I just shared this last week, but anyhow, those of you that did not hear me last week, get that little pamphlet. You check it out. Find out if it is not an experience that you can have with the Holy Spirit, with Jesus.

That is probably the most important part of your Christian walk and then comes all the other things following: the humility, the fruit of your ministry. We see here that he made it a priority to preach the gospel. That is the next part. It is priority. Put that down: priority. Because it was. He was bold, he was filled with the Holy Spirit to evangelize.

Charles Spurgeon said this, and I think this is an awesome way to share with somebody. He was asked, "How do you defend the Bible? How do you do it? I just cannot do it. I do not know the first thing to do." And he looked at the person and he said, "Defend the Bible? Well, let me ask you this. How do you defend a roaring lion? You just let him out. Let him out and watch what he does."

So share the word. Watch and see what the Lion of the tribe of Judah will do through his word, but let it out. Let it out. Remember what Paul said? "I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God unto salvation." And when I share the gospel, it is the power of God to bring someone to Christ. Know that it is the most powerful thing on this earth right now or ever has been since Jesus came: the gospel.

It is changing hearts and lives, preparing men and women for heaven. It is changing a heart that is a stony thing, making it into a fleshly thing to experience and receive God's love that just melts a man or woman. Now, another key to success, verse 20. Romans 15:20: "Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation."

The next thing, if you are taking notes here, is policy. To the uttermost, that is what Paul's policy or God's policy is: to take the gospel to the whole world. Let's go over it again: power first, number one, baptism of the Holy Spirit. Profile, walk humbly before your God. Perish is the next one. And then priority of preaching, Paul had that. And then here, the policy.

These are the sweet peas in Paul's garden and he is just giving us one pea at a time. So, policy. What was his policy? Well, he wrestled. It says in verse 20, "I strive." The word strive there means to contend. It means to wrestle or struggle. You see, Paul was a pioneer. Pioneering a work is not an easy thing.

In many ways, we are like he was. We are pioneers at our job. We are pioneers at our school. We are pioneers in our neighborhood. We are doing a work that is not easy. It is tough and there is going to be wrestling. There is going to be struggling. God's word is contrary to the world and man's philosophy. So when we share it, people react differently.

Some get upset. Some will call you names. You say, "That's why I don't do it. I don't want anybody calling me a Jesus freak." Why not? I loved it back in the day when I was a young Christian. I would go down Downey Mall with a megaphone. And it was on Christmas. It was not being freaky or anything. I went into every store and preached the gospel, told about baby Jesus.

That is just what I do. Some people thought that guy is whack, but others were listening. It is the gospel. I am not saying you are to go out and do that. You do what God tells you to do. I will do what God tells me to do. Everybody is different. But I think just taking somebody on at work or taking somebody on at school and just planting seeds, just sharing with them the simple gospel, it is so powerful.

It will shake them up in their lives. That is what Paul is talking about here. He wrestled in this, but he did it. Now, there are a lot of people going around seeking to deceive and to stop the gospel from going out. This is what gets my dander up. This is what gets to me: to see these people that I would call sheep-stealers.

They are going around to healthy bodies, healthy places of worship, and they are trying to undermine. They were always trying to undermine Paul's message in their deceiving and they are seeking to feed off of the work of others. They are fishing in someone else's aquarium. What are you doing here? Why are you here? "We are just here to share the good news that we have and the message that we have."

And yet, they have come to draw many away after themselves. The Bible talks about this over and over again. It is the same way today. Over in 2nd Peter, chapter 2, verse 1, he talks about false prophets among the people. He talks about false teachers among you, right in your very midst, that will bring damnable heresies in your midst. In other words, lies.

Many shall follow their pernicious ways. They are going to be so wise about what they are doing they are going to rip people off from your very midst. Then he goes on to say through covetousness and money with feigned words, big-shot words, they are going to make merchandise of you. And God says their damnation is coming. They are going to be dealt with.

But be warned that there are many false prophets. There are many that are seeking to draw many after themselves, to win them over to these false teachings. They always move around an area that is already established, that is set up, and they seek to, they are saying, to evangelize. I have to question that because what do you mean evangelize? These people are saved already. What are you evangelizing Christians?

We just want to talk to them. We just want to share the good news that we have and the message that we have. It happens all the time. Notice verse 20 again. He says it is not my style, it is not God's policy. This is my policy: to go where there is no one else there. It is not to be a sheep-stealer or a rustler, if you will.

What did they do with rustlers back in the old days? I would not want to be a rustler stealing sheep, but there are people that go around doing that. We had them right across the street one year. Do you remember when they had this big thing going on over here? They had a big screen they set up over in the school, right next door.

Here we are at church and they said, "No, you guys are not doing it. We are going to go over here and we are going to do it." They set up a big screen and they had this guy who was somewhere else preaching a message and he was on the screen. Then they had a brand new car in there and said, "Come to church. We will have a drawing and you can win a car."

I think some of you were over there. If you were, you are forgiven. You made it out without getting rustled. But unbelievable, right across the street and then down the street. There are all kinds of things going on. Places and things going on that are wrong and off the wall, but they are there. It will continue to be this way.

But his policy and his success was not doing that, going where others have already gone and established a work. No, his policy and God's policy is to go where no gospel has gone before, to get out there and to be fishers of men, to plant churches where God's word is needed. It is not needed in this area right around us right now. It is being done.

And that is what Paul is talking about. He had a 1,400-mile area that he was talking about here that he had a vision for. He sought to reach the unreached with the gospel, especially the big cities. He knew that if in a big city you go and establish a work in that large populated center, like Los Angeles, well, I think every city needs a work of God big time.

If there is not a work of God going on in that city, we need to look into getting a work going on where they are teaching the word verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and people are getting saved and lives are being changed. Now, in so many cities today, there are a lot of churches that have just died and they have a few people showing up in these cathedrals.

What is going on? It is dead. There is nothing going on. The young people are doing their thing, drive-bys or whatever. There needs to be a church established there. The gospel is needed in that city. And then from there, it will touch the city and change the things that are going on. We have seen it here.

So it is important to go in those areas of need so it will spread. Verse 21, Paul says, "But as it is written, to whom he was not spoken of." When he says, "As it is written," he is reaching back in the Old Testament and he is talking about a prophecy. You see, Paul, his confidence was in God's word and what God said he would do if we would just obey him.

And so he says, "It is written, to whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand." And this is a prophecy that is actually out of Isaiah 52:15. It is powerful. Paul rested on it, said this is what is going to happen if we do it God's way. So we are to go to the highways and byways, Jesus said.

This is why we are seeking to continue to go into the high schools today. They are not going to come to us. So we are just going to go into the high schools. We are going to go to the streets of Los Angeles. We are going to go to Hollywood. And we have groups that go down there on a constant basis. If you want to get hooked up, just call the office and we will get you hooked up.

To the malls at Christmas time. We have the kids going, the college and career group going, the choir going, just reaching out to the malls, to the piers near our beaches and stadiums. We are going into stadiums and other countries. Why are we doing this? Well, this is exactly what Jesus said he wants us to do.

It is over in Matthew chapter 28, verse 19: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: I am with you always." Go for it, guys. Go into all the world. And so we take his last command as our first concern.

We say that is what he wants us to do, so let's go out. And so we have been going out. We are going out to the mission field. I had a sister just hit me up last service saying, "I am going to the mission field. I am going for 18 years and I really want to go sent out from Calvary Downey and I am really doing my studies, I am getting ready."

She is going for it. She wants to go to the unreached Muslim communities. She wants to go with a team that is going to be supporting one another so they do not get ripped off and wiped out. So that is very wise and there is a way to do that. And so there is a turning going on in our fellowship that we are sending missionaries out.

Check our missionary wall out. Pray for those guys. They are on the cutting edge. Go on a short-term mission trip. Have your mind totally blown and see how much of the world is living today. Go down to just Yucatan and check that out. It is unbelievable what God is doing and yet what God is doing through Christians and churches that are seeking the Lord and teaching his word.

Do you remember at Pentecost, Peter gave an answer to what was going on? There was some confusion. We are always to use scripture for our practice. Always what we do in the church needs to be backed up by scripture. If you do not see it in the Bible, if you do not see where it is at in the Bible, do not do it.

I was talking to the girl that I go by in Jack in the Box and get coffee on Sunday morning and I was telling her about the baptism yesterday. I said, "Oh, you missed it." And she goes, "What? What did I miss?" And I said, "We had a baptism down at the beach. There were just masses of people like John the Baptist's days. It was right there in Pirate's Cove, it was so great."

And she is looking at me weird and she goes, "Well yeah, but I am a Catholic and we do not believe in that. We believe in baptizing babies." I said, "Well yeah, okay, I understand that, but I am just telling you about the baptism and really when you look in the scriptures, there is nothing in there that says anything about baptizing a baby."

"It says you are to believe and then get baptized." That is what the Bible says. Now, if it is not in the Bible, why are you doing it? That is a little scary. Well, it is traditions and commandments of men. We are not to be following that. That is why God gave us this. We are not following men or commandments of men, we are following God in his word.

It is awesome. God has given it to us, we need to hold very close to it. So Peter, there was a skirmish up in the upper room and there were these guys speaking in other languages and there was a whole lot of people that spoke these other languages and they heard them speak the wonderful works of God. They said, "Peter, what is this? What is happening?"

And Peter all of a sudden, by the Lord, got this wisdom of the Lord and said... oh, they said, "What is this?" and Peter said, "This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel." And he quoted scripture in the Old Testament to quiet everyone. "It is okay, what they are doing up there is fine, it is scriptural."

And God says it was going to come, it is here, it is happening. There is an excitement going on, but we need to back it up, everything, with the word. Now, verse 22. "For which cause," Paul says, "I have been much hindered from coming to you." I wonder if the hindering power is God.

Anytime you are hindered from doing something, it is God, or maybe you are doing something you are not supposed to be doing. God is waiting for you to get it right so he can then send you. But he was hindered. It all goes before his throne first anyhow, right? I mean, we are being led of his Spirit, it is his timing, it is his will that we need to long for.

So Paul says, "But now having no more place in these parts," I mean I do not have any more work to do, God is sending me on, "having a great desire for these many years to come to you, whensoever I take my journey into Spain." See, Paul's will and desire was to go to Spain. Get into more of Europe.

Get the gospel. Boy, the Spanish even today, they need the gospel in Spain like never before. Well, Paul probably had that on his heart. "And I will come to you then before I go to Spain and I trust to see you in my journey and to be brought on my way thitherward by you if first I be somewhat filled with your company."

I long to be with you guys to spend some time with you. The last P here in these Paulisms as far as going into having a successful ministry would be plan. Someone has said, first plan your work, then work your plan. I love what is said in... go with me to Romans chapter 1. You are right there.

Just go to Romans 1:10 and let's see what Paul first said about going. He said, "I am making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God." Notice, by the will of God. I want God's will. "To come unto you. For I long to see you that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift."

"That I may be a blessing to you, to the end that you may be established. That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me." In other words, I really long to have fellowship with you guys, to pray with you guys, to encourage one another. I need encouragement too.

So it is a plan, I believe, that God will always bless. And that is that he could share the gospel, his desire was to share the gospel, his faith, to see it spread in Rome and then from Rome to the world. I would ask you this morning, what is your plan? You want to be successful in your ministry. What is the plan? You need to have a plan.

What is your vision? Without a vision, the people perish. We all need to have a vision of what God wants to do with me. What would I like to see happen? I would like to teach a class in the Bible college. Well, then you need to start going for that. That is a good vision. God is going to be with you.

I would like to be a Sunday school teacher. That is a great vision. We need more of you. I would like to be an usher. Well, go for it. What is it? What do you want? What do you want to get involved in? Then just step out. Remember what it says in Philippians 2:5: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."

What is that mind of Christ? It is to reach out, it is to do something. It is to share. It is to take up your cross and follow him. It is to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the mind of Christ. Lord, give us your mind. His plan is a good plan. It is ordained of God to be involved in outreach.

To do something, to choose to not compromise with this world, to choose to come out from amongst it and be separate, says the Lord. There is a choice that we need to make on a daily basis whether we are going to go the way of the world or the way of God. Daily basis. Remember Moses back in Hebrews chapter 11.

I love this. Hebrews 11:24: "By faith Moses, when he was come to years," God had done a work in his life, "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter." I will not go the way of Egypt. I will not go the way of sin for a season. It goes on to say, verse 25, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

He saw Egypt, he saw all the stuff that they were into as sin. It is just... sin is missing God's mark. What is God's mark on my life? What does God want me to do? He wants me to be a light. He wants me to be a witness. And so he fills me with his Holy Spirit. He will fill you with his Spirit and cause you to be a witness, to be bold in your faith.

Guest (Male): Pastor Jeff Johnson has been describing what a successful ministry looks like today on Sound Doctrine. He will be back in a moment. If you enjoyed today's message from Pastor Jeff Johnson from the magnificent book of Romans, I would like to remind you that you can hear it again on several different venues.

First, you can go online to sounddoctrineradio.org where you can hear today's study as well as make a donation to this radio outreach. That is at sounddoctrineradio.org. You can also listen at oneplace.com and also through the Sound Doctrine Radio podcast app.

And of course, speaking of podcasts, Sound Doctrine can be heard wherever you enjoy podcasts, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Now with a brief recap, here is Pastor Jeff once again.

Jeff Johnson: The bottom line is success in the ministry is to do what God has told us to do. Receive his power from on high, number one. With a low profile, humble yourselves before the Lord. He will use you as his servant, number two. To your parish, to those you are ministering to. You are going to have fruit in your life, number three.

With the gospel as priority, giving out the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, number four. And unsaved are being reached why? Because of the policy. We are going where no man has gone before. We are going to the unreached, to those that are not church people, to those that have hardly any background. And we are sharing the gospel with them, number five.

And then of course, that is the policy. And then to follow his plan, number six. Follow his plan. That is success.

Guest (Male): Well, there you have it. That is what successful ministry looks like. And next time on Sound Doctrine, Pastor Jeff will talk about our desire and God's will. Join us then as our series in Romans continues. This program is listener-supported and brought to you by Calvary Chapel Downey.