WRITTEN MINISTRY
Gary M Chellberg
I came across verse 19 of this chapter, “All this said David, in writing, by Jehovah's hand upon me, instructing as to all the works of the pattern”. I was struck with that. I believe, it may be some of the first written ministry that we know of.
Ministry can be divided into many different fields, if you will. There is the ministry of evangelism, the ministry of teaching, of separating, and so on. There are many different ways of looking at ministry. And the same applies to service; any service that you do Godward would be considered ministry. The priests of old served God. But I would like to bring in a brief word as to the written ministry and the value of it in relation to us growing as worshippers. The scripture I read at the end of Timothy is the last writing to Timothy. And Paul says to bring the writings, especially the parchments and the books. It may have been some of his letters. I do not know what it involved, but it was written ministry. It was not newspapers and magazines of the day, but they were things that Paul associated with value that would be an encouragement to him in his time in prison. He asked for his cloak to be brought to him; so we know it was not exactly pleasant circumstances in prison. But even there, he valued the written word. That is what I want to call attention to.
It strikes me that in 1 Chronicles 22, David prepares in his affliction all these things of gold and he counts it out, v 14. In this chapter, David gives the pattern. And then in the last chapter of 1 Chronicles, he again speaks of what he had gathered in his affection for Jehovah. Those are two different things, his affliction and his affection. David gathered this immeasurable wealth, almost uncountable wealth. I think the nearest estimate I read one time was billions of dollars, in our money, for this one building. But in any case, especially in those days when ordinary people would not earn much per year, the wealth used was basically without number. It was immense wealth. David prepared these things and he gathered them. God had told him it was not for him to build the house because he was a man of blood; he had been at war. But it was going to be for Solomon, who is a type of the Lord Jesus in the millennium, to do. But I was struck that when David goes through all this, he says that he gave his son the pattern and details of the house to Solomon. And then it says in verse 19, “All this said David, in writing, by Jehovah's hand upon me, instructing as to all the works of the pattern”. I think that is a great example of what ministry is to be. It is to be that which is of great value passed along from generation to generation. David had amassed all this gold and silver and iron and all these stones and everything was all prepared. They are piled up in these giant piles; at least the way I picture it. But it would be useless if you did not have a pattern. Perhaps we might think that David had gathered all that together; leaving it as Solomon's job to inquire of God to get the pattern. But God wanted to pass along this important lesson, and that is the importance of ministry.
The ministries that we know and value are ministries that have stood the test of time, and that is the most important qualification of any ministry, that it stands the test of time. Some things may sound right today, but be proven not right tomorrow. And there is a great danger in the day in which we live, when information is so incredibly available. I carry in my back pocket 350 different commentaries on Scripture, Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias, and an unknown number of atlases. I can watch videos of the Holy Land: it is all available on a phone. And the danger of that is we take something and we assume it is ministry because it is sold under the name of Christianity, but I would encourage us to weigh what we read against the truth and the measure of time. Has it stood over time? I am not saying there is no need for fresh ministry because if that was the case, I would not stand up and speak - we do need fresh ministry, and we need application of ministry.
I think that is what David sets out; he gave the pattern. It is like the blueprint. He said, ‘This is the way God told me to build His house. This is where the rooms are. This is how tall, this is how wide. Here is all of this, and all the materials are over here.’ And that was proved when Solomon became king. He did not need to change the pattern or re-adapt it to his time, which is what we hear a lot of today. It stood the test of time.
What really triggered this whole impression was thinking about the gate of the old wall in Nehemiah's time. That suggests to me looking back through history and measuring where God had been, what God had done over the centuries - for us, all the way back to Acts 2. And then from there, you can look back all the way to Genesis 1. And from there, you can look all the way back to the gospel of John chapter 1, as far back as we can see in the beginning: “the Word was with God and the Word was God”, v 1. You look back and, when you look back in a right way, you then are able to find where you are today. But it is useless to try that if you only use modern methods. You have to look back through time.
There is a value to what we have in the written ministry that we need to avail ourselves of. I know I am challenging myself right now to read more ministry because I lack in doing that, and perhaps we all do in some measure, but we need to do that in a right way, looking back through time to see how God has worked, right back from the beginning. And when you read right ministry there is no change. The truth is not altered every so many hundred years. The things of God have never changed. We might look at the New Testament, when they asked Jesus about the matter of divorce, for instance, and He said, there is what was written right back in the beginning, Matt 19: 8. Also, He quotes Scripture when Satan tempted Him. He had the right to say, ‘No, you are wrong. I am not going to do this. I'm not going to bow down to you’, but what He did was to quote the Scripture.
I want to be very clear that this book we are all holding here is the word of God; the word of God singular. There is only one word of God, and that is the Holy Scriptures. Nothing can be added to it and nothing can be taken away from it. It is the word of God. Then you have the words of God plural, and that involves all the written ministries. It involves spoken ministry, what I am doing right now, if it is of the Holy Spirit, and I trust it is. If what I am saying right now is of the Holy Spirit, it is the words of God; it is ministry that we can benefit from. It is the truth that, when we hear words spoken that bring us closer to God, that is ministry; it does not matter who says it. It could be - and I speak carefully - that even an unbeliever could say something that would move you closer to God.
What I wanted to call attention to for our own gain is this idea of written ministry. And I thought it was so fascinating that it says, “all this said David, in writing”. It is because he did not want to leave anything to chance, because God had said things to him; and what he passed along is exactly what God said to him. The Holy Spirit, when He speaks, uses Scripture to speak. Although He is God, He does not speak from Himself, John 16: 13. Speaking reverently and carefully, He says what He is given. And He goes to the treasury and takes out things old and new.
I would encourage each one of us to consider the importance of right ministry, because I think as we use it and benefit from it, it will help us to grow as worshippers. That is really our goal. The purpose of ministry is not just knowledge. It is not just doctrine for the sake of doctrine, but it is ministry to bring you closer to God. And if you read ministry and it leaves you with unresolved questions, I would immediately question the entire ministry of whoever was speaking, because it may not be in the Holy Spirit's power. There is a lot of wrong and dangerous material out there. It is a very hard thing to navigate through. I think the secret is, as we have in Nehemiah, that you come to the old gate. We also have the sheep gate; that speaks of our salvation. We have the fish gate, which suggests evangelism going out. And then you come to the old gate, because we need to find out where we are at. We need to take stock of ourselves and find where we are today. Why are we here today? And the only way you can find that is not by a crystal ball looking into the future. It is by looking back at the way God has worked since the beginning of time. Nothing in the way that God has worked since the beginning of time has ever changed. That is a very comforting thing that is spoken of in the Old Testament as a nail in a sure place, Is 22: 23. You can pin your hopes on that, because God has never changed. He never will change. He says something, and He does it. And it is our portion and our privilege to take advantage of what He has saved up for us and prepared for us.
There is a lot to be gained in that. Later on, we come to what David had stored up in his affection for God. And when you come to that in the last chapter of 1 Chronicles, it is interesting, because right away you get this idea of the people willingly offering something. That is worship; that is true worship. You are not there because you have to be. You are not here because somebody told you to do it this way or that way. You are there because you want to be there, and you give something willingly to God. And that is how that whole event takes place at the end of this book. It is one of the most beautiful prayers ever recorded in Scripture. “But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer willingly after this manner?”, 1 Chron 29: 14. As David looks back at that massive pile of wealth, he thinks of it as nothing. It is just a little thing that he wanted to use to build God a house where God could come and dwell. Therefore, we want to use ministry to grow as worshippers.
I trust we would each one be encouraged in this, because it is very important in our day to weigh what we read, to measure it against history, to look back over time at the old gate. We should not just read something and say, ‘Oh, I like that’. It has got to be right. Weigh it against what has gone before, all the way back to the beginning of Genesis, because God has never changed.
For His Name's sake. Amen.
Wheaton IL
10th July 2025