I'm so very hopeful that the
Lord will enable us to do what we just sang, adore the Lamb.
He said, if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men to myself. And if
any man come unto me, I will in no wise cast him out. I'm hopeful and prayerful that
the Lord will be pleased to do that for us this morning. We're
going to continue our study in 2 Corinthians. If you want to
open your Bibles with me. I want to thank Michael and Hugo
for last Sunday. What a blessing there. ministry
of the gospel, which is what 2 Corinthians chapter 4 is about,
the ministry of the gospel. And what a blessing it was to
me, and I know it was to you. We had good services in Lexington. Thank you for your prayers. Terry
Petrowski was in rehab, as you know, for a week or two, and
last night she fell and broke her hip. She is back in the hospital
at Florida Hospital East, which I think is the one on Lake Underhill. And they said that she was too
frail to do surgery, so I'm not sure what the prognosis is for
Terry, but they want us to pray for her. Let's ask the Lord's blessings. Our merciful Heavenly Father,
we're so very thankful that we have a Lamb, a Lamb that was
slain before the foundations of the world, the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world,
one to whom we can look and find all our righteousness, all our
justification, all our salvation. We ask, Father, that you would
Give to us the faith to look to him, to set our affections
on him, to believe him, to rest in him. For we know that he himself
is the gospel of your grace. We thank you for his finished
work. Lord, we come before your throne as sinners in need of
grace and in need of mercy. We ask, Father, that you would
pity us and that you would give to us hope in Christ. Father, we do pray for Terri,
and we ask, Lord, for your hand of comfort and strength to be
upon her. We ask, Lord, that you would
give to her heart the faith to look to Christ. We thank you
for the confession that she has made, and Lord, we pray that
you'd be merciful toward her. We pray for Jerry and Marianne
and Rich as they tend to her needs, and Lord, that you would
bless their families. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. Seeing how chapter 4 in 2nd Corinthians
begins with the word, therefore, we'll go back to the last few
verses in chapter 3 to see what it's there for. In verse 13, The scripture says, relating
to the law and grace, that's what chapter 3 is about, the
contrast that there is between the Old Testament economy of
the law and the New Testament economy of God's free grace. in the accomplished work of the
Lord Jesus Christ and how much better grace is. And in chapter
13, verse 13, it says, Not as Moses, not as Moses, which put
a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not
steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. Now,
what he's speaking of is the law. and the end of the law is
Christ. And so what he's saying is that
the Old Testament Israelites saw the law but they didn't see
the end of the law. They didn't see that there was
one who was promised to come who would fulfill all the demands
of God's holy law. But their minds were blinded.
They could not see. For until this day remaineth
the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament,
which veil is done away in Christ. So the natural man still has
a veil over his face, even as Moses, who is a type of Christ
in this passage, had a veil over his face. The natural man cannot
see the end of that which was abolished. He can't see Christ.
He can read the Bible, he can understand it as precepts, he
can see it as a rule of life, he can take it as a book of rules
and regulations and laws, but he can't see that these are they
which testify of me. He cannot see Christ in the scriptures. But even unto this day, when
Moses is read, the veil is still upon their hearts. Nevertheless,
when it, what? The heart. When the heart is
turned, how is it going to be turned? God's going to have to
turn it. Our hearts are desperately wicked. Our hearts won't believe. They won't turn. You can't turn
your own heart. God has to turn it. So when the
heart is turned, when it is turned, unto the Lord, then the veil
should be taken away." When God gives to his people a new heart,
when he takes out the heart of stone and puts in a heart of
flesh, when he gives us faith to believe, when he gives us
eyes to see Christ, then, and only then, is the veil taken
away so that we can understand who God is and how it is he saves
sinners in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the Lord
is that spirit. He's the one that has to give
the new heart. He's the one that has to take away the veil. He's
the one that has to turn us and give us the ability to see. And
where the spirit of the Lord is, There's liberty. There's
freedom from the law. The curse of the law, cursed
is everyone who hangeth upon a tree. The Lord Jesus Christ
hung on Calvary's cross to be cursed in our stead so that the
demands of God's justice could be filled. And now, where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. There's no fear. There's
no judgment. There's no condemnation. The
law has nothing to say to the child of God, to whom the veil's
been taken away. The one who's looking to Christ.
He's not looking to the law. He's not looking to the letter
of the law. He's looking to Christ. And he finds in the Lord Jesus
Christ liberty. The law, the letter of the law,
it killeth. That's what verse, look at verse
6 in chapter 3. God has made us to be able ministers
of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit.
For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. The letter
of the law, all the law can do is kill. All it can do is condemn. All it can do is judge. That's
what the law does. The law makes sin utterly sinful. The purpose of the law is to
be a schoolmaster. What was the schoolmaster to
do? To take the child, the pupil, to the rabbi. That was the schoolmaster's
responsibility. And that's all the law can do.
It reveals us to be what we are, sinners, and it leads us to Christ. It causes us to see our need
for a Savior. And so where the Spirit is, there's
liberty. Why? The law says don't do it
or you'll be punished. The spirit of the law says Not,
don't do it. God loves you and has a wonderful
plan for your life. That's not the spirit of the
law. The spirit of the law says, you've done it. You're guilty. That's what the law says. The
law says you have broken every one of God's laws. You violated
them all. That's the spirit of the law.
Flee to Christ and find in him all your salvation and all your
strength and whatever whatever power there is in the child of
God to restrain sin from breaking out it'll only be as they look
to Christ it is the love of Christ that
restraineth us so the spirit of the law says you're guilty
you're guilty you've done it flee to Christ and in Christ
there's liberty if the Lord if if the Lord set us free look
look what he says but we all with an open face beholding as
in a glass the glory of the Lord so what is the glory of the Lord
it's Christ he's the he's the perfect obedient child of God
who has satisfied the demands of the law, who has suffered
in order to pay the penalty for the sins of his people. He's
the glory of the Lord. So when we, when the heart's
been turned and the veil's been removed and we're able to see
the purpose of the law is to condemn us as being guilty and
force us to flee to Christ and find in Him all our salvation,
then the glory of the Lord is revealed And we are changed into
that same image from glory to glory even by the Spirit of the
Lord. Now what does that mean? What
does that mean? Does that mean that now we're
going to be just like Christ in this life? We're going to
live a life of perfect obedience? The Lord is going to change us? What that means is that we've
been given a new nature, and that new nature is perfect. It's perfect. He that sanctifieth
and they that are sanctified are one. As he is, so are we in this world right now. So when the scripture says that
we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even
as by the Spirit of the Lord, it's the Spirit of the Lord that
comforts us in causing us to realize that the hope of our
salvation is that before God, before God, we are just like
the Lord Jesus Christ in the person of Christ. Only the child of God can see
themselves that way. You look at your outward appearance,
you say, well, I'm not like Christ. But through the eyes of faith,
looking to Christ, we've been changed into His very glory. And there's all of our hope. all of our hope that we are accepted
in the beloved, that we are just like the Lord Jesus Christ before
God. Have you been changed from glory
to glory? Can you say, yes, I believe that
the Lord Jesus Christ is my advocate with the Father, that as he is,
so am I. because he's turned my heart
and he's removed the veil and I'm not looking to my obedience
to the law as the hope of my salvation I'm looking to Christ
who kept the law perfectly and fulfilled it all on my behalf
and in him I am perfect before God therefore therefore in light
of that Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, what ministry?
The ministry of the gospel. That's what God's given to the
church. That's the only ministry we have,
the ministry of the gospel. We're not diverting our attention
to anything else. Paul said the church is the pillar
and the ground of the truth. That's its purpose. It doesn't
serve any other... People comment, what do you have
for my children? What do you have for me? They look to the church for something
else other than the gospel. Oh, that the Lord would keep
us faithful to give a hundred percent of our time and energy
to the gospel of God's free grace in the accomplished work of the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's the purpose of the church.
That's our only purpose. You want something for your children?
I mean, we live in the entertainment capital of the world, don't we?
I mean, you just drive 10 miles in any direction, you find plenty
to entertain your kids. That's not what the church is
for. What we have for your children is the same thing we have for
the adults. And it's the only thing that we have. And it's
the one thing that they can't get anywhere else. Nowhere. Where are you going
to hear the gospel? You're not going to hear it.
You're not going to hear it in religion. You're not going to
hear it in education. You're not going to hear it in
politics. You're not going to hear it anywhere else. The ministry
of the gospel has been given exclusively to the church of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's all of our effort
and all of our attention. Because we've got no place else
to go for that, do we? Seeing, therefore, that we have
this ministry, we've received mercy, we faint not." There's so much opposition to
the gospel, isn't there? There's opposition in the world.
There's opposition in our own flesh. There's so many things
that would cause us to give up on the gospel and to divert our
attention somewhere else. But we've been given this ministry,
and we've been given faith and mercy to receive it. And so we
faint not. But we've renounced the hidden
things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness. We're not trying
to entertain men or deceive men into thinking that something
they do is going to earn them favor with God. Nor do we handle
the Word of God deceitfully. You know, I mentioned this Wednesday
night, preaching the gospel is nothing more and nothing less
than just telling God's people what God's already said. That's
all we do. That's why we just stick to the
Scriptures. And we just go verse by verse
and declare the truth as God's revealed it. And so we're not handling the
Word of God. Peter said there are those who
rest the Scriptures to their destruction. They cause the scriptures
to say things that the scriptures don't mean. And they begin with
a presupposition. If you go to this book with the
presupposition that most men have, and that presupposition
is God loves everybody, Christ died for everybody, God wants
everybody to be saved, and the Bible is a rule book for Christian
living. If you go to this book with that
presupposition, then you're going to have to rest the scriptures. You're going to have to be crafty.
You're going to have to twist and turn the scriptures to meet
that presupposition. And that's what men do. They
go to the Bible with their already preconceived ideas of what truth
is. And then they twist the Bible
to meet that preconceived idea. And that's what Paul said, we
don't do that. We don't do that. We just declare the simplicity
of the truth of God's Word, but by manifestation of the truth,
commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
of God. The truth is that the truth commends itself. We don't
have to defend the truth. We don't have to argue the truth.
We just declare it. And the truth recommends itself.
When you hear the truth, you know it's true. You know, even
unbelievers, when they hear the truth, they may fight against
it, they may try to argue it because they don't like it. But
the truth is that the truth recommends itself. It's not complicated. The truth doesn't require a high
IQ. The problem with not believing
the truth has nothing to do with IQ. It has everything to do with
I will. And if a man's will is in opposition
against God, he's going to resist the truth. But if God has submitted
our will to him, then when we hear the truth, what do we say?
Amen. Amen. I believe that. That's
the truth. And so he says, we don't have
to be deceitful. We just declare the truth and
recommend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
of God. But if our gospel be hid, if it's not understood and
not believed, it's hid to them that are lost. It's hid to those who have been
blinded by the God of this world. That's the only ones that can't
see the truth. I love our Lord's conversation
with Pilate, don't you? For this cause came I into the
world, and for this reason was I born, to bear witness unto
the truth. They that are of the truth, they
that are of the truth, hear my voice. They just hear it. They know it. They believe it.
They don't argue it. They don't debate it. They don't
want to have to defend it. Am I suggesting that we understand
it in all of its depths? Oh, no. No. We're not called to understand
it. We're called to believe it. We're called to hear it and believe
it. And if the Lord gives us faith, that's what we'll do.
How can they call upon Him in whom they've not believed? How can they believe on Him in
whom they've not understood? No, in whom they've not heard.
And how can they hear without a preacher? So it's not a matter
of understanding, it's a matter of hearing. God just has to give
us ears to hear, doesn't he? And we hear it. We just believe
it. Why? Because it's true. And because
we're no longer lost. We're no longer in darkness.
We've been translated from the world of darkness to the world
of light. And so he says, he says, in whom, verse four, the
God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe
not. Now, if you're a believer, you
know there was a time when you believed not. And the reason
you believed not is because the God of this world had blinded
your eyes. In other words, you were held captive by Satan. And only by the grace of God
did the Lord Jesus Christ set you free from that captivity.
and shine the light of the gospel in your heart in the face of
the Lord Jesus Christ as he's going to go on to say look what
he says in the God of this world have blinded the minds of them
that believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ
who is the image of God should shine unto them for we preach
not ourselves This is not a mutual admiration society. We're not
promoting men's glory. We're not promoting ourselves. Paul said we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord. He's the sum and subject of our
preaching, isn't he? He's the one we're pointing to. What is preaching he's saying
is just what John the Baptist did. Behold the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sins of the world. He must increase and I must decrease. We preach not ourselves but Christ
the Christ. the Messiah, the anointed one,
the one who was sent of God in the full power of the Spirit
of God to accomplish God's purpose, to finish the work. That's what
Christ means. Jesus, why is his name called
Jesus? You shall call his name Jesus for he what? Shall save
his people. That's his name. He's gonna do
it. He's not gonna, it's not an offer
of salvation, this is an accomplished salvation. And he is the Lord. He reigns sovereign. You don't
make Him Lord. If you believe or don't believe,
He still reigns Lord over your life. This foolishness that men
talk about making Jesus Lord of your life, it's just foolishness. How are you going to make Him
something He already is? God's made Him to be Lord. You can't
make Him something God's already declared Him to be. He reigns
as Lord. And God's people who've had the
veil removed, and who see the end of the law in the fulfillment
of the Lord Jesus Christ and who understand that they are
guilty and that Christ is their righteousness before God, they
like, they love the fact that Jesus is the Christ, the Lord. They're not fighting that. And
ourselves, your servants, there's the... You know, the disciples were
arguing about who was going to be first in the kingdom of God,
weren't they? Who was going to sit on the right hand and who
was going to sit on the left hand? The Lord said the greatest was
the servant of all, didn't he? And there's the ministry of grace
in the church. It is that God's people, God's
people esteem one another more highly than themselves. They
really do believe themselves to be in need of grace more than
anyone else. And I mentioned this Wednesday
night, why has the Lord chosen to use the foolishness of preaching
to save them which believe? Why has he done that? And it's
because this ministry of preaching is so humbling to everybody,
to everybody. It's humbling to you because
you don't have any contribution to make. And trust me on this
one. And if you don't believe me,
you just come up here and try it sometime. It is most humbling
for the man who has to stand and speak. Most humbling. It just humbles everybody. And
that's the reason that the Lord Jesus Christ would be exalted
and that we would be nothing but unprofitable servants. That's
what we are. He's the one who gets all the
glory. for God who commanded the light
to shine out of darkness." Susan was asking me this morning, she
said, I'm fixing to teach from Genesis chapter 1 to the children
and I noticed in the Bible that light came before the illuminaries,
before the sun and the moon, the stars, wherever created light
was there. And so we were able to talk about
that a little bit and realize that that light was Christ. He's
the He's the source of all light. And the light, according to John
chapter 1, is the life of man. And so he says here, the light
has shined out of darkness. The light isn't dependent upon
the sun or the stars or the moon as its source. They are dependent
upon Christ for their source. He is that light and he shined
out of darkness and shined in our hearts. Paul speaks of himself
as being the pattern of all believers conversion. How was he, how was
Paul saved? He was an enemy of Christ, an
enemy of God. He was persecuting the church.
He said I was a blasphemer. And that's true of every one
of God's people. Before the Lord shines the light from heaven
and knocks them off their high horse into the dirt and causes
them to hear his voice. Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me? Who art thou, Lord? I'm Jesus,
whom thou persecutest. Oh, Lord, what would you have
me to do? The light shined, didn't it? And there it is, it shines
in our hearts, through the preaching of the gospel, through His Word.
I pray right now, the Lord's turning the light on. Do you
remember when the Lord turned the light on for you? And all
of a sudden, for the first time, you heard these words, but they
didn't mean anything. And then one day, the Lord shined
light in your dark heart and caused you to see that Christ
is that only light that everything else is darkness. To give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ
the Lord Jesus Christ is the glory of God he's the fullness
of the Godhead bodily and so when we look to Christ
we're looking to God the Lord said if you've seen me you've
seen the Father have I been with you so long that you don't know
that? The glory of God is ultimately
what it's all about. It's what it's all about. It's not about your salvation,
it's not about your comfort, it's not about my comfort, it's
not about my happiness, it's not about your happiness, it's
about the glory of God. That's the first cause of all
things, God's glory. And when the veil's removed,
and you see that the Lord Jesus Christ is the glory of God, then
that's enough. That's enough. As for us, we have this treasure. We have this treasure. What a
treasure it is. When God gives it to you, it's
the pearl of great price. You won't You won't trade anything
for it. What did Pilate say when the
Lord said, for truth came I into the world? Pilate said, truth? Truth? What is that? Is that
what this is all about? Are you willing to die for truth?
What about you? Is truth important to you? Is everything on the line for
truth? The Lord told the rich young
ruler, sell all that you have. Sell all that you have. Does
that mean we have to take all of our earthly possessions and
go down to goodwill and sell them? No, no. Or give them away?
Well, no. But we have to let everything go, don't we? We have
this treasure. Lord, whatever it takes, whatever. Lord, I need Christ. Christ alone
is everything to me. everything. We have this treasure in earthen
vessels. There we are, just an earthen
vessel. And an empty vessel at that. You remember the story
of the prophet and the widow who didn't have what she needed
to pay her creditors and they were going to take her sons away
from her as payment and she went and cried to the prophet and
he said, gather together some empty vessels. and now fill the
empty vessels with oil. And the oil continued to flow
as long as there were empty vessels. And what happened? As soon as
she ran out of empty vessels, the scripture says the oil stayed.
It stopped flowing. She had sufficient to pay off
her debtors as a result of that. But the point of that is that
the oil of gladness, the oil of the Spirit of God, only flows
into empty vessels. We've got to be empty. Lord,
I don't have anything. I don't know anything. I can't
do anything. I'm just an empty vessel, an
earthen vessel. The treasure of the gospel is
not in me, it's in Christ. We have this treasure in earthen
vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not
of us. His power is made known in our
weakness. That's the upside down of the
gospel, isn't it? It's just the opposite of what
the world says. The world says, no, your power is in your arrogance. It's in your dominance. It's
in your ability. It's in your controlling other
men. It's in all these things that
put you on the top. No. No. We have this treasure in earthen
vessels that the excellency of the power might be of God and
not of us. This is the gospel, isn't it?
It just keeps coming back to Christ, doesn't it? Everything
we read and everything we say just keeps giving to Christ all
the glory. We are troubled on every side. We've got troubles in our flesh. We've got troubles in the world.
We've got troubles in relationships. We have troubles from spiritual
powers, Satan who fires his fiery darts at us. We're troubled on
every side and yet not distressed. We're not overwhelmed with that
trouble. We're not defeated by it. We
are perplexed and a lot of things we don't understand. That's what
the word perplexed means. Lord, I don't know why you're
doing what you're doing in my life right now. I don't understand
it. It's not what I would have chosen. But I'm not in despair. Because
I know that right where I'm at is exactly where I need to be.
Exactly where I need to be. I'm not in despair. I believe
that you work all things together for good. For them who love you
and those who are called according to your purpose. Truth is, if you and I had the
power of God, we would change everything. If we had the knowledge of God,
we would change nothing. Nothing. You think about that. That's true. If you had the power
of God, you'd change everything. If you had the knowledge of God,
you wouldn't change a thing. You'd know that everything's
right on schedule. Right where it's supposed to
be. So he says, we're troubled on every side, but we're not
distressed. We're perplexed. We're confused about things.
We don't know why things are happening the way they're happening,
but we know who's doing it. And we know that he's in control.
And so we're not in despair. We're persecuted. We're persecuted
by the enemies of the gospel, but we're not forsaken. If God
before us, who can be against us? We've got God on our side,
so it doesn't matter if the whole world turns against us. We're
not forsaken. We're cast down, but we're not destroyed. Every
time we fall, the Lord's there to lift us up, put us back on
our feet. Always bearing about in the body
the dying of the Lord Jesus What does it mean the Lord said
unless you bear your cross You cannot be his disciple deny yourself
take up your cross and follow him and People say well, that's
my cross to bear. I've just got this trouble. I've
got this sickness. I've got this problem child I've
got it. You know I've got a Whatever
it is. No, that's not the cross. The
cross represents one thing and that's death. That's what the
cross represents. So to deny yourself to take up
your cross and to follow Christ is to die to yourself. It's to
say, Lord, everything about me is death. My only hope of life
is found in Christ. And so he says, in this body
we are dying of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus might
be made manifest in our body. The only hope of our flesh being
animated to the glory of God in any way is the life of the
Lord Jesus Christ. So if you seek to gain your life,
you'll lose it. If you lose your life for my
name's sake, you'll gain life. So we're crucified with Christ. What Paul said, nevertheless,
we do live. Yet it's not us that lives, but it's Christ that lives
in us. So the life that we now live, we live by the faith of
the Son of God who loved us and died for us. That's our hope,
isn't it? He is our hope. For we which live, we which are
alive in this world, and we are, are always delivered unto death
for Jesus' sake. That's where the Spirit of God
takes us. What does the Spirit of the Law, what does the Law
say? Guilty. Dead. Dying. Sentence is death. That's what the Law says. You've
done it all. Flee to Christ. Find in him your
life He's the only life you've got no life outside of Christ We which live are always delivered
unto death for Jesus sake that the life also that Jesus the
life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh Lord, the life that I live, this
is my hope. Christ is my life. So that what
we do, whether we eat, or whether we drink, or whatsoever we do,
we do it all to the glory of God. The only hope of our flesh
manifesting the glory of God is to be looking to Christ. So then death worketh in us,
but life in you. Death has to work in every believer,
but it's through death that life comes. We have in the same spirit of
faith, what is faith? It's the substance
of things hoped for. It's the evidence of things not
seen. Faith is a childlike quality. Lest you become as little child,
you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Faith is not some
stalwart masculine strength that you develop and become a great
warrior of faith. No, it's just the opposite. It's just the opposite. Faith
is falling on your face before God. Faith is saying, Lord, I
don't have any strength. I don't have any power. I don't
have any ability. I'm just a poor mercy beggar. I'm needy. That's what faith
is. We have the same faith. It's all the same. The same spirit
of faith. Every believer has that. That's
faith for every child of God. Now, there may be different degrees
of faith. But the object of the faith is
the same and the quality of that faith is the same. According as it is written, I
believed and therefore have I spoken. We also believe and therefore
we speak. We speak what we believe. unless we believe in our hearts
and confess with our mouth Jesus is Lord. I have no confidence
in a faith person who thinks they have faith who's not willing
to express that faith, not willing to follow Christ in baptism,
not willing to show the evidence of their faith through a testimony
of Christ as Lord. We believe, therefore we've spoken. Out of the mouth flows the issues
of life. We say what we believe. You listen to a person and you'll
find out what they believe by what they say. And the same thing's
true for you and me, isn't it? All right, let's take a break. Thanks for your time, sir.