If you will, take your Bibles
and turn with me to 2 Corinthians, chapter 4. 2 Corinthians, chapter
4. 2 Corinthians, chapter 4. We'll
be looking at verses 1 through 11 this evening. And the title
of the message this evening is, Our Ministry. ministry. The Apostle says, therefore
seeing we have this ministry as we have received mercy, we
faint not. The Lord our God has purposed
and decreed the salvation of all of his people from eternity,
from the beginning. We saw this on Sunday morning
when I preached from Genesis 1-1. We saw that in the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without
form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. That's
us. That's us in darkness. And the Spirit of God moved.
And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. in the beginning
of the Word of God. These things that were hidden
and known only to God, He has revealed them unto us. These hidden mysteries, these
types and shadows of His anointed Christ were all through the Scriptures. From the beginning, He started
revealing a little, and then a little more, and then a little
more. But now Christ has already come. The light has dawned. The day has come, and the light
shines. Where does the darkness go? Well,
the darkness goes away. You put a light on something,
and if it's not bright enough, it'll cast a shadow. One thing
about this building is, we need more light. I always think that.
I see too many shadows. But I'll tell you what, you put
a bright enough light in here, there won't be any shadows. And
Jesus Christ is the light of the world. He is the light of
the world. God now having sent his Son,
of whom the whole Word of God speaks. If we study the Word
of God and we don't find Christ, we're not studying it right.
We're not looking at the Scriptures the way God intended for us to
look at them. I'll tell you, there's a lot
of people read these same verses and they get a lot of good stuff. They get a lot of good things
to do. But they miss Christ, they miss the whole thing. They
miss Christ, they miss the whole thing. He has revealed these
hidden mysteries first to His apostles and now unto us by their
works. by their word. Peter said, those
prophets that prophesied, they prophesied of things to come,
but yet they did not understand fully what they were saying. They did not understand fully
what they meant. But now, we have the full revelation. We have the full picture. We
have the full light of the gospel. These things that God had hid
only in Himself, He's now revealed by His Son. And even so, as God
has committed His Word, His sacred trust, this gospel of Christ,
He has committed this gospel, this ministry, unto us. First of all, he's delivered
this ministry to pastors and preachers of the gospel. The
Apostle Paul, he was an apostle of Jesus Christ, and he was given
the sacred trust of writing the Scriptures, of writing the Word
of God so that we would have it. Establishing these churches,
giving him authority over these churches. But now that these
Apostles are gone. There are no more apostles. And from what I understand, evangelists
are those who had gifts and were given special powers by the apostles,
like Philip, the evangelist, who went from place to place.
Now, there are what we call evangelist missionaries. We have missionaries
that go out. But this office of evangelist,
I believe that that too is not an office anymore. What do we
have? Pastors and teachers. That's
what God has ordained to give this ministry. And Paul said
this to Timothy. He said, he has put this into
my trust. A sacred trust to preach. The Word of God. Now Paul said,
woe is me if I preach not the gospel. Now he didn't say, woe
is me if I preach not. He said, woe is me if I preach
not the gospel that is committed to my sacred trust. And the same
is true to me. Woe is me if I don't tell you
the gospel. Woe is me. if I preach not the
gospel to you." The gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, this ministry
is not given to me or to other men because we are more gifted
than anybody else. This ministry is not given to
us because of our talents or our wisdom or our learning. It's not any of these reasons. Why do we have this ministry?
Look at that in verse 1 again. We have this ministry as we have
received mercy. How did you receive mercy? We
receive mercy by grace. Grace and mercy go together.
Because I'll tell you what, if you received mercy, you didn't
deserve it. Otherwise, it wouldn't be mercy.
It has to be undeserved. And friends, this ministry that
I have given here in this place truly is undeserved. It's mercy. It's grace that God has given
me this ministry. He puts men into the ministry. Men today look at this as a job.
As though it's something that you can just go out and obtain. Something that you can just learn
as you could learn to be a doctor. You can be a preacher. No, that's
not true. No, God puts. He thrusts them
out into the ministry. He compels us to preach the gospel. And He does this for your sakes. He does this for you. He does
this for all of His people. He has given pastors and teachers
for the edification, for the building up of the saints, for
the encouragement, for the strength of the gospel, to preach the
gospel to you. But I tell you that this ministry
that I have here, the ministry that God has given me here in
this place, is not just my ministry. It is our ministry. It is our
ministry. Paul said, see, we have this
ministry. We have this ministry. This ministry is not just mine,
but it's our ministry. What is a ministry? Is it not
simply service? Isn't that what a minister does?
A minister serves. Today we think about minister. When you say that word, people
automatically assume it's a high, lofty, place. Actually, to minister is to be
a slave, to serve one another. We'll see that in just a little
bit here, but this is our ministry. It is given to you as it is given
to me to preach the gospel. Go over to Acts chapter, hold
your place here, but go to Acts chapter 8. Acts chapter 8. This is just
after Stephen was stoned. And the church was scattered
because of Saul of Tarsus. And look at it with me in verse
4. It says, therefore they were
scattered abroad, went everywhere doing what? Preaching the Word. Then Philip went down to the
city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them." Now, these
two words are the same in our language, but in the original
text, they are not the same word. They're not the same word. This
word that is used in verse 4 is where we get our word to evangelize. That's where we get the word
from. They went everywhere evangelizing. What does that mean? That just
means to tell the gospel, to preach the gospel, to declare
the gospel. Everywhere they went, they proclaimed
the good news of Jesus Christ. They proclaimed it. This message we preach is a joyful
message. It's a joyful message to a sinner.
It's not so much to a self-righteous person, but this message is joyful
to a sinner. And they went everywhere joyfully
preaching the gospel. They preached the gospel everywhere
they went. Now what does that mean? Does
that mean that they stood up and preached? No. That's what
the second word means. When Philip went to preach the
gospel, that word means a public crier. In these days when Rome had a
law, they would have a man go out with a barreling voice and
he would stand in the middle of the square and he would shout
the law. He would shout it out so everybody
could hear what the Senate had said. That's what he did. He
was a public crier. That's the office and the ministry
that I am given to preach the gospel. You are given the ministry
of preaching the gospel where you are in a private ministry. I know that you know people that
I don't know. I know that. I didn't know Joe
until y'all brought him. I had no idea who he was. But I know this, you know them. And you should preach to the
people you know. What does that mean? It means
to live in front of them. Not just to say the words. Not
just to straighten their doctrine out. It is to live and breathe
Christ in front of them every day. That is your service. To all
that are around you. Go ye. I love the King James
Version because that word is very specific. Ye means singular,
personal. Not go you guys. Or you's guys. I heard that the other day. You's
guys. Into all the world. No. Go you. Singular. Into all the world. and preach the gospel to every
creature. This is the Great Commission. Jesus said, do men light a candle
and stick it under a barrel? No. What you do is you light
a candle and you put it up real high so it lights the whole room. Friends, you are the light of
the world. Is that not astonishing? Do you not feel the gravity of
your responsibility, of your duty to shine the light that
God has given to you, to shine it to others? He said, you take
that and you put it on a candlestick so that everybody can see. You
remember in 2 Kings when those four lepers were starving to
death outside that? Nobody had food inside the city.
It was a famine. I think they sold a horse's head
for I don't know how many pieces of silver. I mean, it just was...
I mean, they were starving to death. And these lepers said,
well, we can't go in there. Let's go on out here and maybe
these Assyrians will have mercy and they'll let us... And they
went out there and they found that the Assyrians were gone.
That God had killed them and drove them away. And there was
nothing there but all their stuff. And they ate. And they ate, and
they ate, and they got so full, they gathered up so much treasure,
and there was so much more left, they said, man, we just got to
tell somebody. We can't just have this to ourselves.
It's too much! Have you ever felt like that
about the gospel of Christ? That it's just too much for you
to stay right here, just at me? It's too big! I've got to tell! I've got to get this out, that
sinners can be saved by the grace of God. It's got to be too big. And they went back and they told
everybody, and then everybody came and fed. Everybody. They said that, you know, they
had a whole measure of wheat that sold for just a few pennies
that by the end of the day, there was so much stuff, so much food. But Philip, he proclaimed in
a public way, and my ministry is to all who will hear, all
who come here and hear the gospel. You come here to hear the gospel.
I pray that's your case. I pray that's what you desire
out of this, is to hear the voice of Christ, to hear the message
of forgiveness of sins. Good news. I'm here to extol, to exalt Christ, to preach Him
crucified and risen again. And it is your ministry. It is
your ministry. As you attend here, you are fulfilling
your ministry. In other words, you are identifying
with the message of Christ. You are identifying with the
gospel message that is preached in this place. And so everyone
that saw us go, everyone that saw us leave, they knew where
we were going. Then we testified that this is
where they should be. We testified this is where they
should go and hear the gospel. We witnessed to all men, not
just by words, but by our actions, by our life of service and love
for the gospel and for His people." Now, why do we have this ministry?
Why are we given this ministry? We're given this ministry out
of mercy. Look at that. He said, we have
received this by mercy. Why is it that we have believed
on Christ and others have not? Mercy. Mercy. The self-righteous religious
man is always trying to prove his ministry. He's always trying
to prove it. How? By good works and good deeds
and showing himself obedient to the law. That's how religious
men prove their ministry. They say, well, I was given this
ministry because I'm really good at talking, or I'm really good
at getting people to put money into places, or I'm really good
at building houses, so I must have a ministry. And so they
prove their ministry by what they do. Our ministry doesn't
come by what we do. Our ministry comes only because
God has given it to us, only because He's had mercy on us. We see the only cause, the only
reason for such a great gift is sovereign mercy. I'll tell you what, in this mortal
frame and sinful old man, I know this, we become weary and well-doing. Do you become weary? Do you feel like that little
hamster in the wheel that just keeps spinning? That poor guy. I identify with him. I understand. He just keeps rolling and going
nowhere. That's how I feel. I feel like you struggle and
you fight and you strive to do well and you just don't seem
to be going anywhere. O soul, are you weary and troubled? No light in the darkness, you
see. Is the trial too rough? Does
the mountain seem too steep? Well, if God the Holy Spirit
should ever put this in our hearts and keep it close to us, we would
not faint if we would recognize it's all of grace. We wouldn't
faint. He said, we've received this
by mercy, we faint not. God's people never quit believing. We always believe. We always believe that we are
saved by the grace and mercy of God through Jesus Christ alone. If we can see this, If we can
see it's by grace, then we can see it's of God. He's the God
of all grace, isn't He? So if this ministry that you've
been given to witness and to proclaim the gospel, if this
ministry that I have been given to cry out the gospel in a public
way, if we would see this as the gift and mercy of God, we wouldn't faint. We would faint
not. This ministry of the gospel has
never been and never will be sustained by our strength or
wisdom. Is that why we get where you
bet it is? We're trusting ourselves too
much in the ministry. We're trusting our wisdom instead
of the wisdom of God. I heard this just this evening.
If you witness to a man and you do the best job that anybody
could ever do, you lay out the arguments as straight and as
plain as can be, there's always going to be a but in there with
the lost man. But what about this? But what
about that? Now you can answer every question
and he still will not believe unless God the Holy Spirit give
it to him. You're not going to be able to
give it to them. You're not going to be able to
explain it enough. Doesn't that just take the burden
off? Doesn't that just relieve you of the burden? It should. It's not about our wisdom
or our strength. You know, we understand by faith. We believe and therefore we understand. It's not that we understand and
therefore we believe. We believe, therefore we know. We know whom we have believed. We know whom we believed. Therefore Paul calls this, he
said, we come not in the wisdom of man. Look over that in 1 Corinthians
chapter 1. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, I mean
chapter 2. Chapter 2 and verse 1. Paul says, And I, brethren, when
I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom,
declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not
to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness,
and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching
was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration
of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." You see, I proclaim
the gospel and trust the power of God to do with it as He pleases. It's the power of God. There's
no other way you would believe what I'm saying if it wasn't
the power of God. It's a revelation. It's not understanding and then
believing. It's believing. It's faith cometh
by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. The gospel that
we preach is not to trick men. We're not trying to trick people
to come. We're not trying to trick people
to believe it. Paul says in our text, in verse
2, he says, And we have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty,
not walking craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully,
but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every
man's conscience in the sight of God." He said, you remember.
You remember and see if you can find one thing that we've done
dishonest. One thing we've done to try to
trick you into believing. The gospel is a light. It is
our ministry. We set it up high above everything
else. So that if men will not see,
it's because they're blinded by their father, the devil. He said, if our gospel be hid,
it's hidden and they're lost. He said, I've made everything
as honest as I possibly can. You're a sinner and can't save
yourself. The only hope for you is that
God save you. And He only saves you by His
grace. He'll only save you through faith in Jesus Christ and Him
alone. To the world, that's foolishness.
To us, to us, it's altogether the power of God and salvation.
We believe. We believe the gospel and we
hold it up high. The ministry of the gospel does
not come by carnal learning, but by revelation. Well, how
is it then that we set this ministry up? If it's our ministry, if
it's your ministry, if it's my ministry to preach the gospel,
to declare the gospel of Christ, how is it that we set this gospel
up high so that everyone can see? Look at verse 5. What do we preach? Well, we preach
Not ourselves. You want to lift it up? Abase
yourself. You see, you and the gospel cannot
be on the same plane. We cannot lift up ourselves and
lift up Christ. It can't be done. We preach not
ourselves, but Jesus Christ the Lord. We are not here to promote this
church. I am not here to promote myself. And neither should we promote
anything of ourselves to others. One of the wisest things that
my pastor ever said to me when I was called to preach the gospel. He said, don't promote yourself.
If God calls you, surely He'll open the door. And He has. He has. We have this ministry by mercy,
and we are to promote only the Lord Jesus Christ. By God's grace,
I want to set Christ before you every single time I stand here. I just want you to see Christ.
I want you to see His beauty, His glory, His mercy, His majesty,
His death, His resurrection. I want you to see how glorious
God has made Him to sit on the throne of heaven, to rule all
things after the counsel of His own will, to do us good. We point men to a person, a person
we know. Somebody talks to me about Jesus,
and I don't know who they're talking about. I'm going to tell
them, I don't know who that is. You and I, we're talking about
two different men. Two different men. Jesus is the only salvation for
sinners. Our works and our religious deeds,
our decisions have nothing to do with our salvation. We promote not ourselves. In other words, we set ourselves
on the same level playing field as everyone else. Sinners. God help us not to look down
at anyone. I pray that God would help us. Help us to see who we really
are. And then we can have compassion
on someone else. See what God really has done
for us. Then we can really have compassion on someone else to
call them to come. How do we set this ministry up?
We do not promote ourselves. It is a ministry of mercy and
humility. Jesus Christ is Lord, and we
are your servants for Christ's sake. Your servants. I'm your servant. Not for your
sake. For Christ's sake. And you should be my servant. Not for my sake, but Christ's
sake. We should serve men. Serve them with the gospel. With
love. With mercy. With grace. Compassion. You know, Jesus said this. He
said, by this all men shall know that you're my disciples, that
you have love one for another. He didn't say, by your great
wisdom in theology, that he shall know that you are mine. No. He said, by your love. By your
love for each other. Service to each other. Service. And we truly love because He
first loved us. Let me ask you this. How precious
was the Lord Jesus Christ to make Himself of no reputation
and to suffer like He did? How much more precious was the
person of Christ than our person? How dare we boast of any right
not to serve one another? How arrogant would that be? Not to serve one another when
He condescended to such men of low estate. Who maketh thee to differ by
grace from another? Or what hast thou, thou hast
not received? And if you've received it, why are you acting like you
didn't? Why are you boasting? as though you didn't receive
it as a grace of God. How could we exalt ourselves? It's God that commanded the light. Look at that in verse 6. For
God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has
shined in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Who shined that
light in your heart? Who put that there? God did. Why'd He do it? You won't find any answer in
you or me. He did it because He would. Because
He loved you. It's God that shined out of this
empty, dark heart and gave us the understanding of Christ.
And when God gives us the light of life into our hearts, where
does the darkness go? He got on the light, where does
the darkness go? That's pretty simple, isn't it?
Goes away. I don't know where it goes, but
it goes away. It's gone. It's gone. As long as the light
is on, the darkness can't stay. And God created that light in
us and the darkness is gone. My sin is gone. Gone. Therefore, we should be confident
of this ministry. It's God that worketh in you
both the will and do of His good pleasure. We should be confident. We should declare it. without
compromise, declare it that it's by grace and show it by love. Where does this ministry reside?
Look in verse 7. But we have this treasure, where? In a clay pot. Now, I'll tell you what. Most
people don't put jewels in a clay pot, do they? If you had a bunch
of treasure, I'm sure that you wouldn't put it in your potted
plants outside. Nancy, you've got some potted
plants, don't you? You love to plant. You wouldn't put it in
a potted plant. Why? It breaks so easy. God put the treasure of His Son
in a clay pot. You. Treasure of His ministry. The
sacred trust of His ministry in such vessels, earthen vessels. This ministry is given, not to
the mighty of the wise, but to clay pots. Perishing things of clay, born
but for one brief day. And that's where God chose to
put His ministry. Believer in Christ, truly our
outward man perishes, but the inner man is renewed day by day. We see the mercies of God every
morning. It's the mercy of God I'm here
tonight. And it's the mercy of God you're here tonight. And
if we'll come back, it's by the mercy of God we come back. It's
by the mercy of God. And because it's in this clay
pot, Trouble will abound. Paul says this in verses 8 through
11. He says, we are troubled on every side. We are perplexed. We are persecuted. We are always
dying. We are delivered up to death. Now, if you were selling something,
would that be the pitch you would use? You are trying to sell something. I mean, would you just put it
in that kind of light? The Apostle is not trying to
sell anything. He is telling it how it is. If
we are to believe in Christ, we would take up our cross daily
and die daily. We are counted as sheep for the
slaughter. But through Christ, we are more
than conquerors. Are you troubled on every side?
Are you perplexed? Are you cast down? Do you bear
about the dying of the Lord in this mortal frame? That's what Jesus told us we'd
do. Why would we be surprised if it's any different? Why do
we get so surprised when we're troubled? This phrase here, we are troubled
on every side. We're troubled on the outside
and on the inside. Trouble from the right, trouble
from the left. Trouble from the top, trouble
from beneath. It's all around us. Trouble,
trouble, trouble, trouble. On every side. The prince of
darkness wants to destroy. He can't destroy our souls. He desires to destroy our testimony,
our ministry. Believer, we may be constantly
attacked, but look at this, we are not distressed. The word distressed means to
hem up. To narrow. I know that you heard this about
the Spartans when they went in that narrow passage and those
300 Spartans would kill thousands of those Persians that came through
there. They hymned them in a narrow way. We're not hymned in a narrow
way. God has placed us in a large
place. There's always room. There's
always room. We may be hated and accused.
We may be cast down by the enemy. We may be surrounded. Friends,
I'm justified. What can they do to me? That's
a large place to be justified, isn't it? To be justified by
God? That's a large place. Who are
you to condemn me? It's God that justify. Christ
that died. God justified us. Are we perplexed? This word perplexed, it means
not to know what to do. Now, I'll tell you what, I spend
almost all my days perplexed. I don't know what to do. How
many times have people asked, well, what is the will of God
in this? They're perplexed. They don't
know whether to go to the right or to the left. They don't know
whether to buy this or to not or to do this and do it. We're
always perplexed with questions. Always trying to diagnose something,
aren't we? Always trying, always doubting to be mentally
at a loss. We may always be perplexed by
the providence of God. Are you perplexed by that? Because
I am. I get perplexed. I don't know where to go. It
seems like God's moving in one direction and all of a sudden
I get hit in the face. And it's, nope, that's not where
I'd go. That's not a good place to go. But we who have Christ, no matter
how it appears, we're never without hope. We're never without a way. God will always make a way of
escape. God will always make a way for us and He'll always
show us the way. The best thing to do if you don't
know, wait. Wait. Wait on the Lord. Isn't that the best place to
be? If He's not giving you an answer,
wait. Surely we'll make the wrong choice.
Surely we will. We will be persecuted. This is
a prolonged causative form of the verb to flee. In other words,
we will be constantly, forever in this life, persecuted. In this day, we're not worried
about soldiers coming in yet. I said yet. Don't think we're
not far from it or don't think it's not possible to happen tomorrow.
if God will it to. But I'll tell you, the day we
live in, it's those of our own household who persecute us the
most. It is. Those we love the most
persecute us the most. They're always, and they don't
even know what they're doing. I don't think that most of this
is intentional. Most of this is because they
kick against God. They hate God. Can't get to God, they'll get
to you. But a believer in Christ, we
will never be forsaken. Look at that. He said, we are
perplexed, but not despaired. We are persecuted, but not forsaken. Not forsaken. I will never leave
thee. When is He going to leave you?
When will He leave you? Has He ever left you? Has He,
for one moment of your life, ever left you? No. He sticketh closer than a
brother. Cast down. How often are we thrown
to the ground in sorrow? Oh my God, my soul is cast down
within me. Believer, we will be cast down
by the chastening hand of God. Have you been chastened? Was that bad or good? The scripture says it's good
to be chastened. Because if you are not chastened,
then are you bastards and not sons. Praise God for His chastising
hand. He said, we are cast down, but
praise God we're not destroyed. Praise God He won't destroy us. When we are delivered unto death,
the world says, save yourself. But we say, we're already dead. I was listening to this man and
his story in World War II. He was talking to this young
guy who was scared. He was always afraid. He would never go into
battle. He was always lagging behind. And he said, you know what your
problem is? You've got hope that you're going to live. You see what confidence we would
have if we recognized we're already dead. Dead to the world. Dead to sin. Dead to the law. What confidence. What confidence
we would have in our ministry. How dead should we be to this
world? Well, how dead is dead? How dead is dead? Well, it's dead. We've died in Christ to this
world. And therefore, we yield up our
bodies daily as a sacrifice. We yield our flesh, our bones,
our body, our soul, our mind to what His ministry. I pray that God would help us
and give us strength, encouragement to endure. In the ministry of God's grace.
I stand will be dismissed in prayer.