Looking in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul says, Therefore seeing we have
received this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint
not, but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking
in 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. But if our gospel be
hid, it is hid to them that are lost, or to them that perish,
in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them
which 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, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your
servants for Jesus' sake. Now Paul begins this chapter
with a declaration that the ministry
that he has been given is something he has received. He said, therefore
seeing we have this ministry. Now, one would not be able to
deny as you read the Scriptures that Paul was given a ministry,
a particular ministry. And I believe that all of God's
people are given a ministry. All of God's people are not given
the same ministry. But we are given the the calling and the duty, if
you want to call it that, of ministering to the saints. And
we are prepared for that by the gifts that the Lord gives to
His people to give to one another. And we prepare one another for
the work of the ministry. And the Lord has given teaching
gifts as a form of ministry, but that is not THE ministry.
Now some people, and well-meaning, no doubt, they believe when they
hear the term ministry or a minister, they automatically think of somebody
dressed in a suit and tie who, you know, walks into a pulpit
somewhere and opens up the Bible and he takes a text and he expounds
upon it. And that is what they say, well,
he is the minister. Well, that is a ministry. There
is no doubt about it. That is a ministry. But it is
not the ministry, because the ministry encompasses all of the
gifts that God has given to His people in order to help one another,
to build one another up in the most holy faith. And that's not
always a speaking gift. It's not always a teaching gift.
But it is a gift, a word of encouragement, a help, you know, a prayer. It's many things that
the Lord uses His people to do one for the other. Acts of kindness
or ministry. Showing hospitality one to the
other. That's ministry. or whatever,
bearing one another's burdens and so fulfilling the law of
Christ. That's ministry. So Paul is speaking
here of the fact that regardless of what the ministry is, it's
been given to us. We didn't decide, well, we're
going to do it. Now today it's kind of in vogue
that a man, if he thinks of the ministry as a profession, And
he thinks of the ministry as preaching. And he says, well,
I'm going to go to school, and I'm going to learn how to preach,
and I'm going to learn the Bible, and I'm going to learn techniques
and ways of saying things and the proper manner in which to
set forth these things, and therefore I'll be an effective speaker,
and besides that, I can make a living doing this. You will search in vain in the
Scripture to find such a thing ever described because it is
not found there. Now the Lord does give to some
men those types of gifts of preaching the Word, and I am glad that
He does. I have been blessed in my lifetime to receive from
those who have been given these gifts. and blessed by it, for
sure, no doubt about it. But that is not the sum total
of what is spoken of when the Scriptures speak about ministry.
And surely what Paul is speaking about here, though he is speaking
of his particular ministry, he says, we have received this thing,
we have this ministry. How did we get it? He said, As
we have received mercy, we faint not. I mean, whatever has been
given to us is by the mercy of God. We didn't figure it out.
We didn't plan it out. Because what was Paul planning?
He was planning threatenings and slaughters against the people
of God, was he not? I mean, his purpose was to destroy
the work of God. Now he was, as a Pharisee, that
was his plan. He figured it out. He went to
school, did he not? To learn how to do it. I mean,
he sat at the feet of Gamaliel. He knew the law. He knew all
those things. But he said, thank God. He said,
the ministry that I've been given, I've received, is because of
the mercy of God. Because, you see, it was the
mercy of God that arrested Paul on the road to Damascus, was
it not? I mean, Paul did not have any
inkling that he was not going to Damascus to perform the dire
deeds that he had planned. That was his mind. I mean, he
was zealous. He was going to kill some folks
in the name of the Lord. But you see, the Lord had mercy
on him. Now several things come to mind, but one is if the Lord
would have mercy on a man like that, is there anybody that would be
outside of the realm and scope of the mercy of God? You see,
if God, even while we were yet enemies, now some people think
that that means that God was our enemy. God has never been
the enemy of His people. When it says, we were yet enemies,
it's not that God was our enemy if we belonged to Him, but it
means that we were His enemies. We said, we don't want this man
to rule over us. We want to fight against it.
That's what Paul was. He said, I was an enemy against
Christ. He says, I saw the things of
God as being the things I wanted to war against. Or not as he
thought the things of God, as it turned out he understood them
they were. But he thought he was doing God
a service to do these things. But he said, we have received
mercy. As we have received mercy. Now
here he is going to give an explanation of how this mercy has affected
him. And then by teaching how this
mercy affects all of God's people. He says, as we have received
mercy, we faint not. We do not timidly go forth with
what the Lord has given us to do. Why? Because we have received
mercy. I was on the road to destruction
and I didn't even know it and I've received mercy and I can't
think back from what God has given me to do because I'm just
a beggar who's telling other beggars where they got their
bread. You remember the instance of
the lepers when I believe it was Ben Hadad had besieged the
city of Jerusalem and there was nothing left in the city for
them to eat. And these lepers that were in
the city there, they said, well, you know, we're going to die.
Worst thing that can happen if we go out here to this army is
they'll kill us. I mean, we're going to die anyway,
so let's just go on out there. Well, so when they got out there
in the middle of the night, the Lord had sent a noise of an approaching
army to these armies that had besieged Jerusalem, and they
had fled. And they got out there, and here's
all this food, you know, and everything, wine, and all these
different things. And boy, they sat eating, and
they were sitting, and after they ate a while, they got looking
around and they said, Here we are eating all this food, and
these people that are in the city, they are starving to death.
He said, we are not doing the right thing here. Why? Because
they realized they had been shown mercy. And so it was incumbent
upon them, was it not, that they go and say something about this?
I mean, does not a beggar who has found a source of food, would
he not have a desire to tell other beggars? where he got his
food. And so Paul says in that way,
as we have received mercy, we faint not. We are ministers of
mercy because we have been shown mercy. But we have, now listen
to what he says here, we have renounced the hidden things of
dishonesty. not walking in 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." Now see, we've got no desire to go out here and manipulate
and deceive men by craftiness. Now see, the human mind, It thinks
of ways to catch something, does it not? I mean, a fisherman,
he says, you know, there's fish out there in the water, and what
I'm going to do is I'm going to figure out a way to catch
these fish. And some people are more successful
at that than others, but they're crafty, are they not? They figure
it out. They work at it. Paul said, we're
not like that. We're not trying to catch somebody. We're not trying to trick somebody.
We're not trying to persuade somebody. We're not trying to
get people to follow our way of thinking. We're not doing
any of that. He said what we're doing is we're
taking the Word of God and we're simply declaring it as it is
and let the chips fall where they may. Not trying to persuade
people. Now, I used to think as a younger
man, as I came to see and understand some of the things of God, isn't
it amazing? And of course, you've got to
get older to understand this. But when you're young, you know
a lot of stuff. You know a lot of things. You've
got answers for just about everything. I used to have answers for everything.
I mean, I was way smarter than my daddy was. I knew way more
than he did. And the older that I got, the
more that I actually did know, but the more I came to understand
that I didn't know anything. And I can confess to you right
now, I'm more ignorant now than I ever was before in my whole
life, because I realize I don't know anything. I mean, if God
doesn't show it to me, And he doesn't teach me the meat of
it. What difference does anything else make? You know, it doesn't
matter what you know if you don't know the thing that is important.
And Paul said we are not interested in trying to cause people to
think we know something. Now, we all like to be esteemed
in other people's minds and eyes, don't we? I mean, that just would
be a normal way of humanity. But Paul said we don't come preaching
the Word of God in that fashion. We're not trying to get people
to pat us on the back and tell us what a good job we're doing. We're not walking in craftiness
or handling the Word of God deceitfully. We want to say what it is. Plainly,
if it's contrary to what we think it says or what we want it to
say, we're not going to change it. Now, a lot of times, people
will read the Scriptures and they just kind of ignore certain
things, don't they? They just kind of pass by them. And then later on, you're reading
and you come across something and you say, wow, I've read it
a hundred times, but I never saw that. Because you were not
ready to receive it yet. But you see, the truth of God
is always the truth of God. It is never going to change.
And it does not matter if it pleases men or not. Now there
is very little in this Bible that pleases men. Now they pick
certain things that they really like. But just like as Brother
Al's been teaching through the book of Exodus there, and we've
been looking at Pharaoh and the fact that God hardened Pharaoh's
heart. And he told Moses, I want you
to go down there and tell him these things, but I'm going to
harden his heart. He's not going to listen to you. Now a lot of people, you can
read, there's probably more books than would fit in this room that's
been written on how that's not really what happened. That's
not really what the Bible means. You know, when the scripture
says God hardened Pharaoh's heart, well, he didn't really harden
Pharaoh's heart. I mean, Pharaoh had a free will,
you know, and he could have done anything he wanted to, and Pharaoh
hardened his own heart. Well, the Scripture says Pharaoh
hardened his heart, did he not? But the moving cause of Pharaoh's
hardness of heart was, guess what? The Lord hardened Pharaoh's
heart. Now, if you like that, that's
okay. If you don't like it, that's
okay. Because it does not change the
fact that that is the truth of the matter. And you can try to
explain it any way you want to, but this is the fact. And we are not going to handle
it dishonestly or deceitfully with craftiness, Paul says, but
by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every
man's conscience in the sight of God. Is Paul saying there that he
wants everybody to agree with him? No. He just says he wants
everybody to know that he's telling them what the truth of the Scripture
is. That he's not trying to fool them. He's not trying to deceive
them. He doesn't care if they believe. Well, I'm not going
to say he doesn't care if they believe or not. Obviously, we want men
to believe the Scriptures. I don't want men to not believe
the Scriptures. I want them to believe the Scriptures.
But there's not anything in the world I can do to cause them
to believe the Scriptures. But I'm going to commend to their
conscience that I'm telling them the things of God. I don't want
them to think I'm trying to hoodwink them, you know, or tell them
one thing when the truth of the matter is something else. We
are commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
of God by the ministration of the truth. Now, we are the minister
of life unto life, the saver of life unto life to some, and
the saver of death unto death to others. Some men hear what
the Word of God says and they say, I don't want nothing to
do with that. That's just a bunch of baloney. And some men say,
tell me more. I want to hear about that. Because
I believe this is the words of life, and they're precious to
my soul, and I can't get enough of it. I've got to have it. And
Paul says, we want to commend ourselves to the conscience of
both kinds of men. We want some to say, well, he's
hopeless. All he does is talk about the
Bible. He actually believes the Bible is true. I mean, he's stupid. There's
plenty of people that believe that way, don't they? They say,
well, they're a bunch of idiots. They believe that this book really
means what it says. They believe that God is actually
God. Paul said, that's what I want
to do. I want to preach in such fashion that there is no doubt
as to what I'm saying and what the Word of God says. that we're
not equivocating on this. But if our gospel be hid, it
is hid to them that are lost. Now there's an interesting word
here, the word lost. Apollumi. It means to those that
perish. It's the same word that's used
over here in 1 Corinthians when Paul says that The gospel, the
foolishness of God, the gospel is the foolishness unto those
that perish. The gospel is foolishness, is
it not? To a man that is going to perish, to a man that does
perish, a man that is lost, he is perished. Now, those that
are lost, this term is sometimes not used correctly. Now, there
are men who are lost, and then there are men who are lost. Okay? Now, the sons of God, according to the grace of God,
whom He loved, the Scripture says, from before the foundation
of the world, they were lost from Him in the standpoint of
the fact that they didn't know Him. Paul, you could say on the
road to Damascus, was lost. Was he not? I mean, he was perishing.
He was dying. He was done for. But Paul was
not lost in the overall sense of the word because he was marked
out as a vessel of honor before God by the mercy of God. Saved him. But you see, when the Scripture
speaks about the lost here, it's not talking about somebody like
Paul. It's talking about, Paul said,
those that perish. You see, there are those who
are perishing who do not perish, and then there are those who
perish. And he says our gospel is not
hid to those who are perishing, Because all men by nature are
perishing in that sense. They are dying. They are dying
men. But some men, as Pharaoh was,
have a conscience which is seared with a hot iron. They perish. Pharaoh perished. He was lost. He was done for. Now why was
he done for? Because he was a wicked man.
God destroys wicked men. Don't ever forget this. Every
man that perishes, every man that is lost in this sense, deserves
exactly what he gets. Paul deserved to be destroyed,
did he not? But God who is rich in mercy
had mercy on Paul. And Paul says, we don't want
our gospel to be hid to those who are perishing, but only to
those who perish, those who can't see it, those who won't see it.
See, a man who can't see it is a man who won't see it. The Pharisees,
the Lord said, you will not come to Me that you might have life.
You won't do it. Your heart's hard. He says, you're
not going to come to Me. He says, you're not going to
believe these things. You won't do it. But it says
you're blinded. You can't see. You cannot come
to Me that you might have life. And so if our gospel is hid,
it's hid to them that are destroyed, to them that have no hope, in
whom the God of this world have blinded the minds of them which
believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,
whose the image of God should shine unto them." The God of this world has blinded
their eyes. There are men who are given over
to a reprobate mind. And of course, the God of this
world is speaking primarily of Satan, but it's speaking of that
natural tendency of men to go away from the way of God. They
delight in the things of this world. See, that's what man's
problem is, is it not? He's not interested in eternal
things. Oh, he doesn't want to go to
hell when he dies. But he wants to enjoy as much
of the world as he can while he's living. Because that's just a carnal
thing for a man to fear hell and desire to escape it. Now,
the Lord uses sometimes the fear of hell to get the attention
of His people. Don't get me wrong on that. But
the fear of hell itself or the desire to escape hell is not
an evidence of any spiritual understanding or any spiritual
desire. But it is simply the working
of the natural mind. Because you see, that which the
gospel sets forth is that those who are rescued by the hand of
God have been given a new heart. They've been given a new set
of ideals. They've been given a new desire. If any man be in Christ, he is
a new creature. Old things are passed away, all
things are become new. He has a desire after the things
of God. And therefore, he desires to
be in the presence of Christ. He wants to follow Christ. He
believes that what Christ has said is right. And the thing
that causes him the most grief is when he looks at himself and
he sees how far from that he is. See, that's the greatest
heartache for the child of God, is that he is so little conformed
to the image of Christ in what he sees. And it can drive a man
to despair except for one thing, the preaching of the gospel that
would tell him it does not matter what you see of yourself. What matters is how Christ sees
you, and if you be in Christ, then you are justified before
Him. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit. Not as an option. Now some people
say, oh, well, see there, there's no condemnation to those who
actually, you know, follow Christ now. Now there is some to those
that just kind of follow Christ sometimes, sometimes not, and
they're under condemnation, but they can get out of it and all
that. That's not what Paul's saying. He said there is no condemnation
to them which are where? In Christ Jesus. And then he
describes them. He says they walk not after the
flesh. Now does that mean they are not
doing anything of a fleshly nature? Of course not. As long as you
are in the flesh, you will be susceptible to the things of
the flesh, but it is not the desire of your heart to walk
that way if you be in Christ. I mean, that's what the Scripture
says. It says we walk not according to the flesh, but according to
the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in us. That's
what Paul said. Our Gospel is hid. And if it's
hid to anybody, it's hid to those who are lost, in whom the God
of this world has blinded the minds lest they see the light
of the glorious Gospel, that it shines unto them. It would
shine unto them if they weren't blind. But they are blind. Pharaoh would have let the children
of Israel go, but what? His heart was hardened. Now was
Pharaoh sitting around saying, I won't let the children of Israel
go? No. Because Pharaoh was what? Hardening his heart. He hated
the way of God. He hated these things. But had
God, who is rich in mercy, not hardened the heart of Pharaoh,
but had shown mercy to him, what would Pharaoh have done? He would
have wanted to go with Moses, would he not? If the Lord had
given Pharaoh a tender heart unto the things of God, he would
have said, well, let me go out there with you and worship Him.
I want to be among the people of God. Is that not true? And so Paul says, They would
see it if they could see it. But they can't see it. Now, you
can think, I kind of got off my train of thought a while ago
when I was talking about the things that I know. I used to
think that I could persuade men to believe the things of God.
I used to think, well, you know, if you could just get the right
argument and just show a man the truth of God, he'd believe
it. That's foolish. You can't do it. Because until
God, who is rich in mercy, opens a man's eyes to see the truth,
he can't see it. He won't see it. He doesn't want
to see it. But the converse of that is also true, that those
in whom the Lord is pleased to show mercy, they want to know
it. You can't tell a man that loves the way of God too much
truth. You can't tell him he's too free
in Christ. Some people get worried about,
well, you've got to be careful, you know, that you don't want
to give people too much leeway and freedom or whatnot, well,
they'll just go off the deep end. Well, not if they love Christ.
Not if the Spirit of God works in them, both are willing to
do it with good pleasure. Because it's the work of God.
It's the mercy of God. Who is at work in His people?
And he causes them to mourn for their sin and to desire righteousness
in the inward parts because of Christ. For he says, we preach
not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your
servants for Jesus' sake. We're not coming around promoting
ourselves. We're not plastering up a poster
on the lamppost saying, come follow old apostle so-and-so. I mean, Paul didn't go around
trying to get a following and say, come on down and hear so-and-so
and become one of his followers. No, he wasn't trying to gain
a following. He was just declaring the gospel of Christ. And he
knew that the Lord had some people. Remember when the angel appeared
to him and told him to go into Macedonia? He said, come over
into Macedonia and help us because I've got much people here. There's
much people here. And so he said, we're not trying
to promote ourselves. We're not trying to build a church.
We're not trying to get folks to come. Now would we delight
to have people come to hear the Word of God? Well, of course
we would. But our purpose is not to build up a congregation
so we can look and say, oh, look at what we've built. Why, we've
just done wonders. You know, people will ask, they
say, well, is your church growing? And what they mean is, You know,
are you getting a bunch of folks in? Because that's the whole
idea of what growing... Dear brethren, I'd rather meet
with three people that love the things of God than I had to meet
with a thousand that's just going through the motions. I'm not
interested in that. Paul said, I'm not interested
in that. He said, I'm not interested in causing men to like what I'm
saying and doing or whatever. I'm not promoting myself. But
he said, I want to exalt the name of Christ. And he said, we want to be your servants.
But he said, not even for your sake. He said, we love you. But he says, our service is unto
Christ. And we want to be your servant
for Christ's sake. Because what did the Lord say?
He said, whosoever will be the greatest among you, let him be
the servant of all. Paul said, we want to be your
servants. We want to serve you. We want
to lift you up. We want to help you. We want
to minister to you the words of eternal life. For God, who
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in
our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He said that's the reason. He
said because God who is rich in mercy, He commanded the light
to shine out of darkness. And Paul could tell that, could
he not? You see, he thought he was walking in the light when
he was going to Damascus. And the Scripture says, it's
kind of a funny thing in a way, Paul's walking, you know, he
thinks he's in this enlightened state. And he is zealous for
the kingdom of God in his mind, and he is going to Damascus to
put people in jail that are going around preaching about this man
Jesus. And the Scripture says, suddenly,
suddenly a light shone around about him, and he fell down. And he said, Who art thou? Because you see,
until the light shines out of darkness, we'll never be able
to see. But when it has, oh, look what
he said, but God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. See, the Lord
Jesus Christ is not just our ticket to heaven. See, some people
want to get their ticket punched to heaven, don't they? Oh, I
want to go to heaven. And so they say, I want to believe. But they never see the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The Lord said, you cannot see
my glory. No man can look on Me and live.
Yet, dear brethren, we have seen the glory of God, Paul said,
in the face of Jesus Christ. What does that tell us? It tells
us that He is God. Is that not right? He is not
a lesser God. He is God. The light of the knowledge
of the glory of God. has been shown to us in the face
of Jesus Christ. And we're not looking for another.
See, once a man's found Christ, he's not looking for anything
else. He found what he's looking for. The search is over. He's not on a quest to... I remember
one time a fellow, I won't mention any names, but his daddy was
a strong believer. And I don't know if his son was
a believer or not. He claimed to be and he may very
well be. But I don't think he understood
exactly what it was. He said, yes, my daddy was on
a lifelong quest for the truth. But that wasn't true. His daddy
was not on a lifelong quest for the truth. His daddy had seen the truth.
He was on a lifelong quest to be consumed by that truth. He already
knew what the truth was. He just didn't know all the ins
and outs of it. Now, dear brethren, that's what
you see. We want to have the truth of God applied to us in
power, do we not? Not for our sake, but that we
might know Him. Oh, that I might know Him and
the power of His resurrection being conformed to His image. May the Lord help us and give
us grace that we might indeed be those who confess with Paul
that He has shown us the light and that we seek the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ.