As we come together to look at the nature of the Christian call and not simply the divine aspect but the human aspect, what we are engaged in is an examination of ourselves and our God, the ministry to which he has appointed us, the resources with which he has surrounded us and the sanctity of what we do because if our self-understanding is mad, we will find you will find and we together will observe that there will be catastrophic results both personally and kingdom-wise because if we ever begin to doubt or misunderstand the nature of what God has said about us and our task, we will marve a kingdom and the irreparably scar our own lives. Let me draw your attention to the words of our Master, where in the 15th chapter of John's Gospel, our Lord speaks and let me read to you from the 12th verse, this is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you, greater love has no one than this but one laid on his life for his friends, you are my friends, if you do what I command you, no longer do I call you slaves for the slave does not know what his Master is doing but I have called you friends for all things that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you, you did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain and whatever you ask of the Father in my name. He will give to you. Amen. These are the words of Jesus and they have a double application, when our Lord spoke to them, they were addressed to the 11 disciples that gathered with Him and yet they were addressed to 11 who were also the first Christian missionaries and in the words of our Master were given the charge that echoes down to the present day in terms of the nature of our call and we see as a first reality that Jesus chose some people and in specifically invested them with a distinct pastoral office. Now it would seem reasonable for us to assume that and yet there is and you will encounter it if you are not already a part of it, there is in the North American and perhaps a spreading contagion, Christian understanding that suggests that there is no distinction in the pastoral office between cleric and lay and whether it is spoken or unspoken, the understanding that is brought of the ministry and priesthood of all believers has acted in a way that has broken down the distinctiveness of the cold office and the nature of the specific Christian there are wonderful books written, historical introductions in American life as to the way in which that has taken place and as a consequence you see what develops instead of the pastoral office is a populism that gives place to the one who is able to stand up and with demagoguery draw people to themselves. That is nothing to do with call that is simple but human attempt to gather a crowd now here. Jesus tells 11 missionaries, I have called you, you did not choose me, you are my friends but in the very nature of that friendship it is imperative to understand I choose you. That lies in the face of much of our modern thinking and I remember even when I was first ordained sitting on a bus, traveling to preach in Swansea and I was at next to someone who started a conversation with me as they were doing whales and said what do you want, what are you doing and I said well I am going to preach, he said oh good are you a full time Christian worker I said yes so I am a minister of the gospel he said yes so am I I am a postman and there was a sense of course in which he is right he was a full time Christian worker God has appointed but what he meant very clearly was I am the same as you, you just get paid for doing what you do I am a full time worker that does not get paid and you will find that that is not an unusual attitude engendered in churches because of a misunderstanding of the priesthood of all believers it is not that one is better than another it is that there are some appointed to specific task and call by the hand of God for whom there is double honor because they stand in the place of double judgment and as you receive the call from God it is important to realize that here you see that emphasized because our Lord is addressing words for the disciples and not the whole world he is addressing them in the context of solemn hours that have been unrivaled in all the moral history of humankind and he is addressing missionaries whose task it is to bring forth food God has a purpose in those in whom he invests the specific call to pastoral office that they should bring forth a unique food while our Lord gave to his disciples both opportunity and freedom to betray him yet nonetheless they do that within the whole of the context of his divine sovereignty and in their several predestinations they are given the freedom to respond or not respond to that divine call to betray or to fail in it and that mandate has not changed nor that grace which is why we see called people who fail and why we see uncalled people take up the challenge and why we see the fruit that is the fruit of God grace often unfound and introduced here our Lord as he speaks to the call reminds them that his love had been both deeper than theirs and prior to theirs that he had planted them in a vineyard so that they would produce a fruit and that that fruit might be bountiful that charge the purpose of the call the production of fruit is an unchanged mandate to God's unointed people and when we speak of the ministry as a chosen profession it involves a human decision just as it involves a divine call and in the elements of that human decision there are in the New Testament five constituent parts that all who have been called of God to the Pacific Office of Pastoral Ministry distinct from every other vocational charge distinct from the call that is to all believers to follow him and to serve him there is a distinction as those who are trained and set apart to the pastoral ministry that in their calling they find certain true there are five quick elements these are not the substance of what I plan to address this morning however they may take some time to elaborate I forgot what time I started and therefore I have no idea what time I am supposed to finish you need to know that there are 30 minutes and as I can't remember what I studied who knows when we will end there there are five elements important to understand the nature of the individual call the first of them is as our master makes clear here that a disciple called to the pastoral ministry has first of all to be yielded yielded to a mysterious attraction that has drawn him on for these disciples the attraction was the person of Jesus Christ they were not all clear what it was that had drawn them to him except that it was Jesus himself and the fact that Jesus is at work in the lives of his own called more than simply producing sanctity though he always does that as he invites people to join him as commission missionaries to the pastoral ministry he invites them that they might yield for the mystery of his own incarnate presence and if you have not yielded there drawn by Jesus not the task nor the challenge nor the opportunity but drawn by Jesus then the call is absent to you and your yielded first to him and then a second word is you are guided by force of circumstance by natural taste and sympathy by elite capacities God created you you are guided by all those things together with the yieldedness to his person so that you are drawn at a time and a place and an opportunity to be able to be set apart and then there is a third element in every call you are directed by council by education by force of gift by other people you are directed towards that like our Lord Jesus does that with all these disciples that is nothing I'm saying but it's not found in the four verses but we're out together as theological students I am not going to try and proof text everything I said go back to the text it better than I will convince you of anything that is here and if there is anything I say that you do not find in the text ignore it here's our exploration and our authority they were directed they were directed in this instance by the voice of God in his son he counseled them this is what you must do and as you come to prepare yourself and as you prepare yourselves to go out into the mission field you will find that you are directed by the council of other because that is an appropriate and integral part of the call and fourth element is that you have been influenced these were influenced the disciples were influenced by the mind of the master with whom they came in contact the call involves the influence direct and real of others who are godly who have shaped you by experience and enthusiasm for Christ for the task of ministry and that's what your teachers whether they are in churches or in seminary have done they have shaped you are you do not accept every word that they say you challenge it according to the word of God but nonetheless you are directed people because called people are directed the uncalled are the un teachable the called are teachable from the hand of God and his appointed means and if you are not teachable then there is no calling for you are not tutored of God then fifthly you have followed the disciples followed the guidance of the master and in the light of his grace they grew stronger and as the years passed so their souls fed upon him few of us have heard a sensible voice turn and say Robner I call you now the voice of God some of you may have done that but it is not given to many to hear that sensible voice of God audible and echoing in here and in high I once believe I said that I don't know that anybody else would ever have heard it only once I was the most miserable of all people I was just desperate I had been sent off by the Presbyterian Church in Canada to a place called Lost River a town deserving of that name and many other names the minister who had picked me up at the airport and I had never been to North America till I arrived at Montreal airport I was picked up by the minister I shall not name him who immediately conveyed me down to this desolate wasteland and said there's where you're staying this sort of outhouse that they had built and he said preach tomorrow he tossed me out of the car and drove off with relief I walked into this room which had electricity they gave me a pole lighter on the bed that they said whenever you get into bed pull that light and if you put the light up without turning off the refrigerator it was the only electricity in the little hobble that they gave me and the bathroom I said anxiously oh you'll find that out there in the trees they said and I did in exasperation I had never met more skaters and so the next morning when I preached I had 31 visible bites and myriad other but I was at the end of that first experience where I preached 14 people in a church which I also had to play the organ and singing the choir at the end of that awful, awful next morning I went for a walk through the 19 houses and made up lost rivers I came to a great big flat block and I sat there and I cried I said look what an awful case I met I hate it I don't know what I'm going to do I have never been anywhere like this and I haven't got enough money to go home there's no telephone there's no help nothing what am I going to do and whether it was the sound of the window whether it was a voice speaking to my soul or whether who knows I heard God said I put him now maybe nobody else would have heard it if there was that next to me it would be my bowling but it was enough and for the next seven weeks I labored there and at the end of seven weeks the hundred and six people were in church and they were people converted and I hated it so badly that the following year I went back to this hobble that got worse I got out of bed and I fell straight through into the cellar everything had rotted and I loved it and I just was jamful of people I still played the organ then someone else played it better than I and I went back I thought I was crazed to go back the God had called and where he called his blesses and Christ completes the inward subjective choice by his own affirmation and you must know that that uncalled is ultimately to be unencouraged in the face of trial now that was a long time ago but I had not forgotten that audible sensible encouragement of Christ but there is another sight to the core beyond that simply the way in which the Lord addresses his disciples and calls them on there is also the commission that is the body of Christ he has set you apart for himself but ultimately others also unite you in his confirmation so that you are able to see that fruit and so the inward core but ultimately is the true ordination of Christ is matched by an outward ordination that is the affirmation of his people congruent in their minds with him and without the inward core then all you will become is a ministerial machine but without the outward core you are incomplete like a budding tree that never burst into full flower for God's people always do that it is the sense in which you see it now there is in our generation a heresy no different than that of the third century where pelagianism touch not simply doctrine don't ever be deceived pelagianism is not simply a doctrinal affirmation it is a mindset that eats its spiritual life it was hateful to the Christian community of the early church it should be hateful to you for what pelagianism does attacks the sense of inner core making everything a sheer materialism what I can do not what Christ can do in me and you will find yourself drawing attention to who you are what your gifts are and what your capacities are because you can work to do the ministry in absence of the core of God a pelagianism ultimately produces dynamism in personality absence of true blessing and we live in a world in which that pelagianism has touched on in history where people can think you find to draw attention to themselves and the dynamic of their energy and the effort of their hand and the ingenuity of their mind and produce great results absolute power of God and ultimately the fruit of God is absent to them blessings and abundance and conversion but that same pelagianism touches the other side the alpha call of the church so that you produce to this generation selection schools you all have been through them selection schools that in their rigidity determine who is and who is not called for the ministry and will reject on arbitrary tasks I went to one they would have rejected me I think except the church I was involved in had already gone ahead and set me apart for ordination and so they didn't feel that it was worth it they rejected others if a selection school rejects you remember that this rich said election school rejected G Campbell Morgan and told him he had no capacity to preach or teach and so he had to go to Westminster Chapel instead of to the Methodist ministry they have turned down all manner of people to be discarded by that there is a pelagianism that says these are the people that we want they look for this model of Christ says you are my friends I have chosen you and ultimately know this if you were persevere because you are called you will be set apart by the body of Christ and are haunted by him because he will arrange it to us and if you have been called and failed some miserable part of the process it too can be encouragement to keep going to overcome the call of Christ must and will as this text tells us always produce a single result the fruit the fruit is not church growth the fruit is a moral quality about your life not simply a relationship with God it is that a relationship with the supreme being is changed into a relationship with the moral supreme being the quality of the fruit is the character of righteousness that is replicated in you for he is the fruit and unless he is producing you then he has not caused you and you do not want him I have a vivid memory of a grandmother who loved bargain and I used to go with her and she loved to plant all sorts of things in the garden she went and so on special offer some tulip bulbs which we duly bought at some great price and planted with great glee in her garden and then later were horrified to find that tulips did not grow but onions did she had planted onions and however much she wanted something else to grow they grew what she had planted ultimately the fruit that demonstrates itself in the quality of your life is only what is planted there for the plant will grow through to itself and if onions are produced then it was onions you planted however much you want to pretend that they were something else what you plant will grow and the fruit of the righteousness of Christ planted in the core will be that which grows through to form the call of Christ is given the call of to his people is extended and is important for various reasons now the call of Christ is necessitated because of the nature of the Christ what is it it is that you might produce fruit and you cannot produce that fruit without him because the fruit is Christ the Christianity or a system of simply teaching entirely in a cord with the instincts of our fallen nature you could do it without him but because it is not because it is a relationship with God and because it calls men and women to that which is by miracle alone produced in them a moral quality that of themselves they would deny the fruit you are looking for in yourself and seek to offer as example and as product of your ministry requires divine blessing you cannot absent a miracle produce the conversion of a soul you cannot absent a miracle produce a moral righteousness therefore unless you are called you will not be able to see or affect what is ultimately the call of Christ you remember what Paul wrote and said to Timothy in the second Timothy 412 you cannot do that absent a call you will get very tired of constantly removing, rebuking, exhorting and teaching sound doctrine so people who do not want it unless the call of Christ is that which sustains you there is the call there is the task and remember that the ministry to which the Lord appoints you is not that which is defined by the world I remember a very eminent name because he is not here and he can't get me at the moment a very eminent leader of the university for great Oliver Buckley some of you will know Oliver he always argued with me and with others suggesting that the ministry was simply the technical expert explaining the text of the scripture that's because he had no instinct for what our donation was he said well you're only the technical side of life that's not true you are not technicians it's not a technician that returns rebuks, exhorts with sound doctrine surely you have technique surely you understand the things of God and of the scripture that when you simply see yourself as a technical individual the gifts in understanding that others don't then you will have diminished yourself and the parachurch movement tries to make ministry back because they do not understand that the church of Christ to which he appoints offices distinct and real using the purpose of God a holy sacred and distinct calling never forget that your church may forget it your offices may forget your congregation may forget it and other people may forget it but you can never forget it because when you do you diminish who you are and what God has appointed you to do and beyond that there are the people who will see you simply as the official philanthropist is your job to make everything happen in a genuine happy stimulating way one of those who would define you in that way strangely enough was President Reagan who saw the church as the philanthropic answer to the needs of society as opposed to the state it isn't back we do not get our definition even from president's conservative president and from Christ that's not our function we are set because we are called to the nature of the task which is a fruit for God and as a consequence we need the divine call which will enable us to master biblical scholarship we need a divine call that will enable us to consider every effort to do what the gospel ministry requires but ultimately the call of the ministry is to deal with the human soul it is to reveal the human soul to itself and then to reveal God to it and to lead that soul in the light of the revelation of Christ that it might be washed and renewed in his spirit washed in his blood renewed in the grace of Christ and thus meet it such that it desires the taste of the word of God so that when the powers of this world come it is the task of the ministry to watch carefully the soul that is entrusted to its charge to struggle for that soul in prayer to earnestly contend for it and to translate into the daily work of life the divine care and that does not come naturally it does not come by technical training and it will not be produced by any amount of expert attention it will be produced by God only for the passion in your soul for him and his people for the success is defined by the cure of souls and leading them to the cross and to the blood and to the cleansing and to the stability that is the fruit of the gospel at work in you and in them requires a divine initiative that it requires a did not divine support