Buried deep inside the 70-verse list of returned exiles in Ezra 2 resides the story of a clerical error that has a hopeful twist that modern readers can readily identify with. The sons of Barzillai show up in Jerusalem intent on serving as priests in the new temple. But before they can pass go, the Jewish state presses pause on their application because of an administrative error. Ezra 2:62 reports, “These sought their registration among those enrolled in the genealogies, but they were not found there, and so they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean.” A providential error derailed these men’s good intentions.
When God Redirects
While the passage unquestionably speaks to a congregation’s need to guard the offices of the church from being corrupted by unqualified men as 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 affirm, it also speaks to those members who can no longer serve prominently in their local church. Though they desire to oversee a Sunday school class, disciple new mom, or serve as the deacon over facilities, they awake one day only to discover that God’s divine providence has put an end to their service. For some, old age and failing health rob them of the strength needed to keep teaching. For others, the arrival of their first child redirects their discipleship time to diapers and sleep schedules. For others, caring for a loved one battling cancer consumes all the energy that would have gone toward changing the shut-in’s air filters and light bulbs. Like the sons of Barzillai, Christians can find themselves barred from ministry. They have not openly violated God’s law and offered unholy sacrifices as the faithless priests had done in Leviticus 10. Rather, God’s providence which surpass human understanding had prevented their service.
Always for Glory
When God directs Christians out of public ministry, they can be tempted to complain about and disparage their new setting. Like the saints in Ezra 3:13 who mourned the construction of the second temple because they feared it would not be as physically glorious as the first temple, today’s sidelined Christians can be tempted to fear that their new season of less or different activity will bring God less glory than previous years of service.
Thankfully, the opposite is true. The believer’s ability to glorify God is not tied to his or her station in church but to being part of God’s people. The Lord stirred and directed the sons of Barzillai just as much as he stirred Jeshua and Zerubbabel who played a prominent part in the temple’s reconstruction. God called all of them to Jerusalem and assigned all of them to the place that he providentially knew would be best for them and his kingdom. What brought God glory was not the size or prominence of an exile’s post but his faithfulness in that post. God is just as glorified in the faithful prayers of the dear saint in her nursing home bed as he is by the prayers of elder standing behind the pulpit.
Consequently, when God directs men and women out of more prominent ministry roles, he is not sidelining them or putting them out to pasture. He is repurposing them. P.B. Powers rightfully offered the following encouragement to the chronically ill: “Sick man, you have a place of usefulness for God, not the old place, but his place – the place which is best in the eyes of the all-wise one (39).” For some, that service may take the form of prayer. For others, that may take the form of writing encouraging notes and emails. For others, that may take the form of listening to and glorifying God through reading, listening to sermons, and singing hymns.
Lloyd-Jones Agrees
At the end of his life, the famed twentieth-century preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones found himself sidelined from the pulpit because of his ongoing battle with cancer. Though many of his contemporaries assumed that Lloyd-Jones would be distraught over this change, Lloyd-Jones’ friend Ian Murray reported the opposite to be true. Lloyd-Jones told Murray, “Now I can pray for you men…People say to me it must be very trying for you not to be able to preach – No! Not at all! I was not living upon preaching.” In other words, Lloyd-Jones had no reason to be discouraged for God was just as glorified by Lloyd-Jones’ public preaching to thousands as he was in Lloyd-Jones’ private praying for tens and hundreds. In this sense, no believer can be truly sidelined from ministry for the Lord has designed every act of worship in every setting to glorify him. As Paul notes in Philippians 1:21, “To live is Christ.”
Final Thoughts
In short, all stations in life and the corresponding ministry are designed to glorify God. The eight-year-old bouncing through kids ministry by faith, the forty-year-old preaching to jam-packed auditoriums by faith, and as an eighty-year-old shuffling between chairs by faith can and do glorify God. To quote Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”
Moreover, God will always direct us to the place that is best for our soul and that will most glorify him even if he must move us about through a clerical error or cancer. Even in those moments, Christians can rest assured that God is working all things together for their good.
Dear believer, if you feel sidelined, take heart. You have not been sidelined but redeployed for the glory of God.