The Ministry of Life for the Body, Message 8

My Great Delight in God's Word

The Experience, Growth, and Ministry of Life for the Body, Message 8

Living a Sacrificing Life in the Body and Ministering Life to the Body for the Growth and the Body

Hallelujah! We are at the last lesson of this series now. I'm so thankful to the Lord for His ever-sufficient grace that is always provided to me when I do the services for Him. I have been really enjoying sharing the truth from the bible, even though there may be only few people who would come to read my extraordinarily long posts. I hope that you will enjoy this season finale, which is about sacrificing life and ministering life.

Our God is truly amazing. He never calls us to do what He has not first done for us. And He never asks us to give up anything, without promising to replace it with a far greater and better one.

For instance, given that the Lord asks us to give up our lives to His wonderful purpose, He has already shown it by giving up His own life, being a substitutionary atonement (or dying as a substitute for us) on the cross for the redemption of our sins. Moreover, He also promises to give us the eternal life, which we can be received only from Him, as the life-giving Spirit.

I'm going to start the message with our calling from God to offer ourselves as a drink offering to Him, and end it with some additional ideas regarding the ministry of life.

Living a sacrificing life

In the Old Testament, there are 5 types of offerings that had to be done by the priest. They consist of burnt offering, grain offering, peace offering, sin offering and trespass offering. All of them are just the shadow to the true sacrifice, Jesus Christ, and thereby need not to be done today.

Here, we are going to have a look at the "drink offering," which is not listed in these 5 offerings. It appears only few times in the bible, one of which is Numbers 15:4-5, and may be considered a part of grain offering. Nevertheless, it teaches us something about Christ's offering, which we should hold up as an example and imitate Him.

⁴ then he who presents his offering to the LORD shall bring a grain offering of one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with one-fourth of a hin of oil;
⁵ and one-fourth of a hin of wine as a drink offering you shall prepare with the burnt offering or the sacrifice, for each lamb. (Numbers 15:4-5 NKJV)

Actually, this is not the first time the drink offering has been mentioned in the Old Testament. The first person who gave this offering to God is Jacob.

So Jacob set up a pillar in the place where He talked with him, a pillar of stone; and he poured a drink offering on it, and he poured oil on it. (Genesis 35:14 NKJV)

As indicated in Numbers 15, the drink offering is not just water or any other kind of drink. It specifically is "wine." And what is the effect of the wine offering? The bible says that the wine cheers both God and men!

But the vine said to them, ' Should I cease my new wine, Which cheers both God and men, And go to sway over trees?' (Judge 9:13 NKJV)

Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ as the true vine sacrificed everything of Himself in order to produce wine and thereby cheer God and men. Christ suffered even unto death, so that the wine was produced, and both God and men would be made happy. O how great is His sacrificial love!

Nevertheless, this cheering effect cannot happen in us, unless we come to experience Christ as the wine-producing vine. Surely, if I have got a glass of wine and just look at it, I will never enjoy its wonderful taste along with its health-promoting effects. I need to drink it. Likewise, we need to come to the Lord and experience Him by drinking Him, not just learning about Him. Would you like to come to drink this wine and be made happy today?

This really is our privilege to have the Lord as the wine that cheers us. Despite the circumstances, we can still have joy, because He is always here with us and within us, ready to comfort us and cheer us. On the contrary, the joy of those who do not know Christ totally depends upon the circumstances. Unfortunately, it is more likely to be in adverse situations than favourable ones in this dark world, is it not?

One beloved colleague of mine is an atheist. Whenever I met him, he seldom looked happy and almost always complained about many things. And his complaints seemed to be exactly the same every time I met him, like replaying an audio record, with addition of more things to complain about. This was because he did not have the Lord as the wine-producing vine. May God have mercy on him that he may come to know Him one day, so that he will be delivered from this loop of unhappiness.

Praise the Lord that we can come to drink this wine anytime we need and as frequently as we would like to. And the more we experience Christ as wine-producing vine which cheers both God and men, the more we will be like Him. We will be energised to live a sacrificing life, willing to give up our lives to produce something that cheers both God and others. The happiness of God and others, instead of our own happiness, will be our priority. We will be transformed from being self-centred to being God-centred and others-centred.

The apostle Paul is a good example. He experienced Christ as wine-producing vine, and became more like Him. Eventually, having adopted the mind and the heart of Christ, he was willing to give up his own life to be a drink offering. He wrote in his epistles that:

¹⁷ Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.
¹⁸ For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me. (Philippians 2:17-18 NKJV)
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. (2 Timothy 4:6 NKJV)

May God help us that we will have the mind of Christ. As we experience Christ as wine-producing vine each day, may we also become the wine-producing vine that cheers God and our brothers and sisters. May we present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service.

Living a ministering life

As the ministry of life has already been discussed in detail (massage 6 of this series), I'm not going to reiterate it. But I'm going to discuss some additional important points of it.

⁸ We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
⁹ persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed ---
¹⁰ always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
¹¹ For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
¹² So then death is working in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4:8-12 NKJV)

Brother Watchman Nee says that, "Where there is no Cross there is no life, and no ministry of life." You may have heard the concept of, "no pain, no gain." Regarding the ministry of life, we may also say that, "no death, no life." Yes, unless the death of Christ is working in us, or our natural lives are terminated on the cross with Him, His divine life can never be manifested in us.

If we read the verses 10 to 12 carefully, we will see some implications of this bible passage regarding the ministry of life. In all the 3 verses, we can see that "dying" or "death" occurs in us (us, our body). In verses 10-12, the life of Jesus is also manifested in us (our body, our mortal flesh). However, this life is manifested in "you" instead in verse 12. What does this mean?

Brother Watchman Nee clearly explains that, "When the manifestation is in me I call it life, when in others I call it ministry." Yes, the ministry of life occurs when death works in us, and life works in others. Firstly, we must allow the death of Christ to operate in us, so that His life can be manifested in our body. Then, we need to be the vessel through which His life operates in others. This simply is the definition of the "ministry of life."

Brothers and sisters, would you like to see the Church grow in life? Let's start with ourselves. We need to gain more life each day by using our spirit to contact God. As we are members of one Body, the Church will also receive what we receive. Therefore the more life we have from God, the more life the Church will have and the more life we can also minister to other members in the Body. This will create an amplifying loop of exponential growth in life of the Body.

Let me conclude this series with the thought-provoking words form brother Watchman Nee:

Do you want to build up the church? Then let it be built up in you. What you receive from the Head, the Church, His Body, spontaneously receives; and what you have not received, it can never receive through you. The question of ministry is settled when the question of receiving is settled; and the question of receiving is settled by "the dying of Jesus."

Further reading

• The Holy Word for Morning Revival: The Experience, Growth, and Ministry of Life for the Body, week 8.

• The Collected Works of Watchman Nee, volume 40, pp. 111, 124-127.

Thirayost Nimmanon (Tony)