Having this ministry by the mercy
of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful,
underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning
or to tamper with God's Word. But by the open statement of
the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the
sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled,
it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the
God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers
to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory
of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is
not of ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord, with ourselves
as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, let light
shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in
jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God
and not to us. We are afflicted in every way,
but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven
to despair. We are persecuted, but not forsaken. We are struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the
death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested
in our bodies. For we who live are always being
given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus
also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at
work in us, but life at work in you. Since we have the same
spirit of faith according to what has been written, I believed
and so I spoke, we also believe and so we also speak, knowing
that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us up also with Jesus
and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your
sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may
increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. So we do not lose
heart. Though our outer self is wasting
away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this
light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight
of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things
that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things
that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen
are eternal. What do we do with all that?
What do we do with it? This week and last week I wanted
to really point to the necessity of the body together. The necessity
of the unification, of the intimacy, the fellowship, the koinonia,
the all things in common, the praying, the learning, the worshiping,
the thanksgiving, the joy and the sorrow of the church together.
Because I think sometimes we personalize Scripture to such
a degree that we forget to whom it was written. To the body of
Christ. For the sake of the body of Christ.
Our Christian life is not about us. It's not for us. It's not
for me. It's not that I can do what I want and get what I need
and have the joy that I desire. It's so that I may suffer for
your joy. God has saved a people, not a
person. God has called His body, not
the thumb. God has established His covenant
with His people so that to the praise of His glorious grace,
they together would grow into maturity. Not that I would be
mature, but that as we together grow, we all mature together. If we're not together, we're
living in rebellion. We're living in a place to where
we are expecting the grace of God to be given to us, but yet
we cannot find it, for we cannot find God's grace in the context
of encouragement and strength if we are not with the body of
Christ in that seeking. And that's hard. In America,
everything we do is for ourselves. Even our benevolence is for our
own self-esteem. It's for our own tax deduction.
It's for our own newspaper article. It's for our own plaque on the
back of a hymnal or a chair or an offering plate. Even our kindness
sometimes is to make us feel like we're worth something. Even
our ministry sometimes is to make us, I don't want to be the
ordinary Joe, so I'm going to go into the ministry so I can
feel better about me. When the Scripture is clear that
it's not about me. And it's not about you. Though
you and I are both significant in the scheme of things, we are
only significant as we are part of the body as a whole. And God
has established the church to function together in congregations
so that there is no stray sheep flying off the edge of a cliff,
being attacked and devoured by wolves. And sometimes we think
that wolves are those people and they come in the form of
people. And this false teaching or these people that are trying
to persecute the church. But friends, let me tell you that
the wolf starts inside our hearts. The wolf starts inside our minds
when we start thinking ridiculous things and start ascribing it
to God's Word and saying, this is what God must want from me.
How are we to be protected from the ravenousness of our own flesh
if we are not with the body of Christ? It cannot be. One of
the greatest sins in our country is the person that says that
he or she is okay reading their Bible and looking at sermons
on their own in the comfort of their own home. And a lot of
people would debate that with me and say, well, you're preaching
sort of like a Cumanism or a Catholicism. I am not. I'm preaching that
which the New Testament was written for. For the body of Christ to
function as a living, breathing family and community. Not getting
together in the big hot dog suppers. Not going door to door knocking
as a big unified unit. living together in the context
of our lives as we go day by day, teaching each other the
Gospel, living the Gospel, learning the Gospel, and loving the Gospel. Friends, there's no power to
overcome the sadness of loss without the body of Christ. You
can take drugs, you can look at things, you can read self-help,
you can find your own way, but ultimately, in the end, it is
blindness if you are not with the body of Christ. hearing the
Word, growing together, knowing someone knows your face, knows
what you normally look like, knows your heart, and knows what's
going on, so they're praying for you by name and by purpose
that they wake up and you're on their mind. God has not intended
for us to be commercialized in our congregationalism. And our
culture, since the 18th century, has bred that. And it's wicked,
and it's anti-Christ, and it's anti-gospel. And we've all fallen
prey to it. No matter how much, if we spent
the next 20 weeks dealing with this, just from a topical point
of view, we all have a lot of this wrong thinking to clean
out. And it's sometimes we're blinded to even see it. We think,
well, I've got to find the church that I like, a church that I
think is cool. I've got to find the stuff that I'm looking for.
But friends, let me give you something. If we're looking for
anything but intimate fellowship around the true Word of God,
we're not looking for the Gospel. We're not looking for Christ.
We're looking to pacify our Americanized religion, which sends us straight
to hell. Well, that's a harsh word, but
that's the truth. And just because I say it's the
truth doesn't make it the truth. You've got to look at it. You've got
to look at it. And 2 Corinthians chapter 4 is
so amazing to me. It's so amazing to me, first
and foremost, that the man who's writing this was a hater of the
church. He hated the church. He wanted
the church to be destroyed. He wanted Christianity to be
blotted from the world. And in his zeal for what he thought
was godliness, he persecuted the church from the time of his
approval of the stoning of Stephen in Acts chapter 6 until the time
of his salvation in Acts chapter 9. Saul of Tarsus was a maniacal
zealot against the way of Christ. He hated everything that had
to do with the new birth. He hated everything that had
to do with Christianity because it was an obstacle to his religion. It was an obstacle to his man-made
passion. It was an obstacle to his academic
pursuits. It was an obstacle to everything
that he felt confident in his own self about what he had been
able to do for the sake of the glory of God. It was an obstacle. And the only way that Saul of
Tarsus could be saved and redeemed was that Christ Himself stopped
him and saved him in his shoes. Period. You think there would
ever have been a Christian who would have been able to sit down
with Saul and say, can I just talk to you a little bit about
the way? He'd have been in chains in five seconds. He'd have been
imprisoned. His property would have been
confiscated. His children would have been sold. His wife would
have been locked up. All of his stuff would have been
given away. There was no evangelist going
to Saul without fear of death. Saul was not going to Damascus
to look for Jesus. Saul was going to Damascus to
kill Jesus' followers or to have them imprisoned. Not necessarily
kill. Oh, he didn't kill anybody. No. But you know the point. He'd
rather them be dead. We knew Saul. How could you say
such a thing? He approved the killing of Stephen. What did you think he wanted
to do with these people? Put them up in a bed and breakfast?
Put them in a nice white-collar prison and let them be taken
care of? No. He wanted them stopped at all costs. The law of God,
according to Saul, was that anyone who blasphemed God, so saying
that Jesus Christ was God who was raised from the dead for
the salvation of sins to be received by all the world, not just Israel,
was blasphemy. And the prescription for blasphemy
was stoning. Death. The reason Saul couldn't
kill everybody is because Rome just let Stephen slide. And Rome
said, okay, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll take over. You
arrest them, we'll put them in our prisons and we'll crucify
them on our crosses. That's the point. Saul hated
Christianity because it stood in the way of his man-centered
faith. It stood in the way of his religion. And it stood in
the way of how he felt he was in control of his truth. And
I love it, the fact that he wrote these words. And he wrote these
words on the other side of writing this letter that we know as 1
Corinthians. These people who are just... really got it wrong. They're acting wrong. They're
talking wrong. They're suing each other. They're
allowing sexual immorality and incest and all sorts of things.
They're allowing debates and argumentation. They're fighting
over who got what apostle led them to Jesus. All these different
things. They're just prideful, sinful,
messed up, orphan type believers and Paul writes to them because
of what? because he heard through Chloe
that they were lying about their report. So in the regard of what's
happened from 1 Corinthians to 2 Corinthians, I'm thinking this
is amazing. First, that Paul is writing these words. Secondly,
that he's writing them to these people who were really the misfits
of Christianity, if you will, if you could just bear with me. When we get through with 1 Corinthians,
what are we thinking? Paul's going to have to go down there
with a stick. Do I come with a rod? What he did is he came
with the Word of God. He wrote to them, and by God's
grace, they together received the word of God as the body of
Christ in Corinth. The elders of that city made
sure that it was taught and read and instructed and governed.
Governed in the sense of oversight. We give you the word and now
we're going to watch. We're going to take care of your soul. We're
going to look after you. Okay, brother, you heard what Paul
said. Why aren't you living that way?
You know what He told us to do with you if you didn't repent
of your sin? To kick you out of our fellowship. You can't
eat with us. You can't speak with us. You can't sit with us.
You can't come to our socials. You can't come to our houses.
You better not even stand in our yards until you repent of the
sin in which you're living because you have blasphemed the gospel
of Jesus Christ by saying that you are in Christ and by doing
that which is not Christlike. How do we do that? How do we
govern liars who blaspheme the gospel and defame the name of
God if we're not together. How do we deal with being able
to do stuff like that if we just think that Christianity is just
a personal faith? God didn't save you and He didn't
save me. For ourselves. He saved us for
His glory and His wisdom. He said that every member is
a part of a body. And if that part, even if it's
a thumbnail, is not where it's supposed to be, the body suffers.
I hear you say that all the time, Pastor, about thumbnails and
eyeballs. Why do you use that? Because
the eyeball is one of the most intricate parts of the body.
It's an amazing thing that these two things can see the way it
sees. And thumbnails are just an insignificant... I mean, you
know, when we see a thumbnail, it's sort of gross. Especially
one that's been clipped. You ever see people clip their
fingernails at a restaurant? I have. It's sort of weird. They
pile them up on their plate. That's gross. I'm like, that's
nasty. Don't even do that in your living
room. Do that somewhere else. You know? But to each his own.
Toenails and rice. Whatever it comes up with. That's
pretty good. But the point I'm making is that
you might think it's an insignificant thing. Rip your thumbnail off
and see how good your hand works. You ever peeled it? I've peeled
it back. I've hit it with a hammer. I know my grandfather's hit it.
I remember as a kid seeing his thumbs purple for weeks. Having to drill holes in them
to read the pleasure. No lie. So just damaging the thumbnail
opens up the nerves of the thumb to where you can't put your hand
in your pocket. What good is your hand if you can't even put
it in your pocket? What good is the church if there's no protection
of the thumb? You think the head is more important than the thumbnail?
Take it away. Your head won't do anything.
But, owie, ow, owie, ow, can't do anything. Can't read a book.
Can't drive a car. See the point? That's why the
Bible is full of these simple examples so that we can get it,
but we don't think through them enough. Oh yeah, I'm important
and I'm part of the body. I'm the director of fellowship,
so that makes me important. No, you are a human being who
should have love for each other, who should be praying for each
other. That's what makes you important to the body. Not because
you have a job. Because you are a part of it. You don't have to have a title.
You don't have to have responsibility to have responsibility. In our
house, I'm not the director of financial affairs. I just have
to write the checks. I wish we had a director of financial
affairs. Wouldn't that be neat? We don't have a landscape architect.
It's somebody on the lawn tractor cutting the grass. The responsibility
doesn't go away just because we don't have anybody to fill
it. And we don't need titles to do that which is normal for
us to do. In the body of Christ, we have
to be together. That's why last week when we
looked at Hebrews 10, one of the foundational areas of warning
is when people don't have a heart to be in fellowship on Sundays.
Warning, something's wrong with that person's faith when they're
not in church. See, we get it the other way
around. Oh, they're picking on me because I don't want to be in church.
Or I'm not in church. But really, where's your heart? Where's your
heart when you're not here? Are you relieved? Man, I'm glad
I didn't have to come to church today. Sure was nice. You know what's nice? Being together. We shouldn't love our spouse
and our home more than we love the people of God because guess
what? That home and that spouse are temporal. My wife is forever
my sister, for a little while my bride. And that frustrates
me, because in my selfishness, I wish marriage was forever.
But the whole point of it is it's for a greater purpose. In my selfishness, I wish we
could just stay in church all week long, while the bank took
all the stuff we own. While our yards grow up, and
our checks don't get written, and our kids don't get fed, we
just stay in our worship. Wouldn't it be great? Well, friends,
there'll come a day when we will be able to face-to-face worship
our Savior forever together as the body. We are in preparation
for that now. We are working to that end. And
let me tell you what's really frustrating. Why do people escape
the church? And I said that last week. People
don't want to be loved on. They don't want to be reproved.
They don't want to be ministered to. There's a problem typically
because they're living in sin. Even when someone is suffering
and not living in sin, And they go, I don't want to burden somebody
else with my burdens. That's sin. That's living in
sin. That's taking away the command of God for you to be part of
the body. And that when you suffer, we suffer. And when you rejoice,
we rejoice. The good thing is that there's
usually always somebody rejoicing over here and somebody suffering
over here. So there is always opportunity to both rejoice and
to suffer. There's opportunity to weep and to sing praises. There's always, in all things,
whether it be good or bad, opportunity for thanksgiving, as Paul is
talking about in the latter part of this chapter. And so there's
a lot I'd like to say. There's a lot I'd like to focus
on. But for today, as we get ready next week to start Philippians,
today I want you to see that the gospel of Jesus Christ creates
the church. that should be together for the
sake of thanksgiving to God, in their suffering, they are
to be more cohesive than they are without suffering. Now what
do I mean by that? I mean that, are you suffering? Are you suffering? In some way,
shape or form. Whether your stomach hurts, or
your life's falling apart. Are you suffering? Did your tire
blow out this morning? Or do you have migraines? Are you suffering? Are you emotionally
disturbed? What's going on? Are you suffering?
Yes, you're suffering. Everyone in here has a suffering
section, something in our lives. Even if it's just an annoying
thought. Are we going to see that the
only way God is going to heal that is by continued intimacy
and ministry through the church? And I'm not talking about meals
and money and sort of, you know, trying to think of something
with an M, but time together, meaningful relationships. I'm
talking about real life intimacy around the Word of God that you
could be encouraged to know that your suffering is not going to
end, but there's a purpose for it. There's a meaning for it. There is no suffering for the
church that is not purposeful. There is no thing that you're
going through right now that God has not intricately designed
for you right now. I cannot tell you how many times
people have said, well, the devil has messed with my life and has
caused me this pain and has given me this disease. and has ruined
my marriage, and this person is a child of God, and I just
want to take them by the shoulders and shake them till their head
pops off. How dare we give the devil credit for that which God
has ordained? Because even in the life of Job,
you talk about the song we just sang? Job sang that song, buddy.
Though you slay me, Yet I will praise you. Blessed be the name
of the Lord. And that's after he heard of
the death of his children. God is the author of all the
goodness of our life. And even the bad is goodness. See, this is where we have a
messed up theology. We think differently about God
because we're too American. Suffering seems to be abnormal
for us in the context of our life and our social structure.
And we think it's strange when it comes like something we've
done wrong or something God has failed to perform. When in all
reality, I think it's the one thing humanity has in common
other than their sin, it's their suffering. And in some sense,
I think that we who desire to live a godly life, according
to Timothy, or according to Paul writing to Timothy, will suffer
persecution. Who does the enemy of God care
more about? God's people or not God's people? God's people. Does the enemy
of a particular army care about another army that's not involved
in the conflict? No. It doesn't care about them. It
doesn't hurt their enemy. For God's children, for the church
of Jesus Christ, there's one thing that's always going to
be there, and that is suffering. That is doubt, worry, fear, anxiety,
frustration, disease, death, persecution, hatred. It's going
to be given to us. If it's not, we're not realizing
the reality of being the body of Christ. It's not normal for a Christian
not to be suffering in some way. Thankfully, and I say that truly,
because I want revival. At the same time, I am thankful
that I'm not suffering the way some of our brothers and sisters
are suffering across the world. Scared to go out of their house.
They cannot walk around with their Bibles. And in order to
worship together, it takes them hours to get together, knowing
that they're probably one day going to be found out and murdered. We're going to suffer as God's
people. It's a given. But it's not for nothing. Let's
look at this text. Paul, as he writes here, is saying
to these Corinthian Christians who were the problem child of
1 Corinthians, who are now being encouraged to be comforted Blessed
be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Listen
to what he says in the opening line of this letter. The Father
of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our afflictions
so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction
with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. See, that's the occasion for
this letter. That's the purpose of this writing
is that the church of Corinth and the church of Claxton would
see that the only hope we have in being comforted is that we
as the body of Christ give the comfort that God has given us
to each other and vice versa. And he has told them that they
are beloved, and that they are different than the rest of the
world whose eyes and hearts have been hardened against the gospel
and unbelief, and that the veil had been taken off their eyes,
and that we as the people of God have been transformed into
something new. We are not the old self, for
it has died. and now we're new creatures in
Christ. This is the argument of Paul. Paul is now saying that
we are forgiven ministers of a new covenant transformed by
the graciousness of God, who in and through the church and
through the gospel of Jesus, through His Word, He gives comfort
to all those who are His. Therefore, Having this ministry
by the mercy, the grace, the comfort, the kindness of God,
we do not lose heart. So if I were to entitle this,
I'm terrible about putting titles to a sermon. I just can't do
it. It'd probably help me be more focused if I did. But if
I were to entitle this message, it would probably be three sentences. But let's try it for a second. For the church to not lose heart,
she must be together. Let's just do it that way. And
then we have to put two or three subtitles in there because we're
going to talk about suffering. See what I mean? It's hard. You need
to pay somebody to be the director of titles. Having this ministry by the mercy
of God, we do not lose heart. Now let me just stop there and
we're going to go on over to verse in the teens. I can't preach all this. But
what's happening here is that Paul is saying that we don't
lose heart because of God's grace in our lives. We do not lose
heart. You know what it means to lose
heart? To give up. To feel hopeless. To thought
there's, why is this happening? What is going to happen tomorrow?
Do you ever find yourself in a season of your life where you've
looked forward to tomorrow for so long that yesterday is gone
and today didn't even exist? I just can't wait until, I just
can't wait until, I just can't wait until, and all of a sudden
it's like, oh gosh, all those days of waiting until, now the
day is here and look at what all the untils did. Nothing.
They just wasted. But it's not too late. Losing
heart is thinking that it's too late. Losing heart is the thinking
that there's no hope. Losing heart is that mindset
that if this doesn't change for me, if this doesn't come out
the way I think it should, that there's not going to be any joy
in me. That's not true. If God doesn't heal me, then
I'm going to lose heart. No, you're not. And in some sense, what Paul
begins to say is, he says, we've renounced disgraceful, underhanded
ways of cunningness and tampering with God's Word. So what happens
in relationship to what I want to talk about today is that there
are people who would rather twist the Word of God, not just for
salvation, but twist the Word of God to say things that it
doesn't say. Like, you don't have to suffer
as a Christian if you have enough faith. Well, if we're going to be like
Christ in our suffering, did Christ have lack of faith? Did Christ have a crisis of faith
that he failed to believe in the Father? Never. But yet he suffered. Why? For
glory. For the sake of glory. For the
sake of the glory of the Father, Christ suffered. So we're going
to just say these things, we're going to say the truth, and if
the gospel is veiled, it's because Satan has blinded the eyes of
unbelievers to keep them from believing the gospel, to keep
from seeing the light of God in the face of Christ. But God
is faithful, verse 6, for He who says, let light shine out
of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give us the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. So,
we have a treasure here, and the treasure is the gospel. Treasure
is the gospel, and this gospel is powerful, but we're not the
powerful ones. We're not the strong ones. It's
not because we've got good resolve, Paul's saying. We're not the
people who are the type A personalities whom God has found to go, you
know what, that's a strong guy I can give my stuff to, and give
my church to, and give my message to. That's the kind of strength
that I'm looking for. God doesn't say that. As a matter
of fact, we know what Paul argues in chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians,
don't we? He argues what? He says it's
the lowly things, it's the weak things, it's the small things,
it's the nothings of the world that bring to nothing the things
that are. It's the ones without wisdom. It's the ones without
good birthright. It's the ones that aren't strong. Paul himself
says, I come to you not in strength and in power or strength and
in ability, but I come to you in weakness, trembling, barely
able to stand. I come and I preach Christ and
Him crucified. It's all I know. It's all I want
to know. I don't want to know anything
else. I can't come to you with anything else. I can't show you
my resolve. I can't show you my credentials.
I can't show you my eloquence. I can't show this to you. I have
to show you Christ. I have to show you the Lamb of
God slain. I have to show you Him hanging
on the cross. I have to show you the life leaving His body
and the judgment of God satisfied. I have to show you that He was
placed in the ground in the grave and on the third day He raised
with power and with glory and with with certainty that He said
He would raise you, beloved. He's going to raise you. There's
the gospel. You are the product of God's
mercy. You are the product of God's
grace, church. And this is all that Paul said
that he knew. I've forsaken all things, all that lays behind
me, all that I've learned, all that I've accumulated, all that
I've accomplished. I lay it down for the priceless
gain of knowing Christ as my Savior and my Lord. You see that? You've got to read Paul with
Paul in heart and head. You've got to read what Paul
says of the Corinthians with what he says of the Philippians
in your heart. You've got to read your Bible, church. You've
got to study the Scripture. It's not of ourselves. We have
a treasure, this Gospel about Jesus, who is God, who came as
a man and He lived and He died and He was raised from the dead
by the power of God. We have this Gospel in jars of
clay. We are clay jars. We're being
stepped on and we're dying and we're suffering and we're hurting. And the reason God gave it to
us, these weak, fragile vessels, is so that the unsurpassing power,
that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. And look what he says in verse
8. We're afflicted in every way. How is he afflicted? And he's
talking about we there in the context of the apostles, those
that are with him. How are they afflicted? They've been rejected by their
culture, they've been rejected by their people. I mean, just
in that, is that not affliction? Do you like it when you hear
that people hate you? Do you like it when people say
that they don't like you anymore? Or they speak ill of you? Or
they lie about you? Does it make you feel good? You're like, ah,
no problem. No, it hurts. It causes affliction. I think
that's probably one of the greatest afflictions in my life. When
I hear somebody thinks that I'm something that I'm not and I
want to fix it. And God's helped me see that through the years,
that's really selfish. I don't want to fix it. Just
live out that which God's called me to live by His grace. And
to heck with those lies. Not the liars. We hope that they
come to the knowledge of truth. But don't sit there and worry
about how to correct every lie in your life, every lie against
you, every lie on the internet. You'll never fix it. There's
much more error than there is truth. They're afflicted in every
way, and then they're on the run. Every town they go to, what
does Paul say? I don't know what's going to
happen, but one thing I know that's going to happen when I go here is I'm going to be
imprisoned. God's told me that. I'm going to suffer. He was stoned,
left for dead, didn't die. He was in prison, beaten, let
out. What did Paul do in prison? Worshiped. What did Silas do? They sang songs. with the raw
flesh of their backs open to the elements. Possibly their
ribs even showing, being whipped the way they were. And they throw
them in a jail cell, put chains on them. What do they do? Oh,
woe is me! I can't believe God allowed me
to do this! Somebody bring me a band-aid!
No, they sang worship songs to God. They thanked God for the
privilege. What does it say in Acts? That
the disciples, when they were prisoned, when they got out,
they rejoiced that they had been found worthy to be beaten for
the gospel. Praise You, Father! You have
used me! And they hate me! And they arrested
me! And they beat me! Hallelujah! How come we only hear hallelujah
when a check comes? Or when a job opens up? When
the car cranks up? We don't hear hallelujah when
all hell breaks loose. We've got it mixed up. You know
why we don't? Because we're not in intimacy enough and as often
in our understanding to see it. God hasn't promised us a job.
God hasn't promised us a dollar. God hasn't promised us anything
but eternal life in Christ. He says with our daily bread,
how much bread do you need? Some of us may need a little
bit more, but all in all, in the end, a piece a day. See, we've got it mixed up in
our heads. And at the same time, God as
our Father does give us an abundance. All of us in this room have an
abundance today. And in comparison to the world
at large, we are filthy rich. The clothes on our body would
feed most families for a year at goodwill prices. I mean, you think about it. But they're afflicted in every
way. But they're not crushed. They're
perplexed. They're like, what's happening?
They don't really grasp the whole idea. But they're not driven
to despair. They may not understand the fullness
of what's happening to them or why or the outcome which God
has purposed for it. But they're not in despair. They're
hopeful. They're persecuted. They're hated. They're ostracized. They're persecuted. But what? They're not forsaken. They're not alone. They're together.
And their God is with them. They're struck down, but they're
not destroyed. Always, always... You notice
how Paul says that. Always. Not sometimes. Not in
seasons. Not momentarily. Always carrying
in the body the death of Jesus. In other words, in their ministry,
they're always carrying the odor, the aroma of the death of Jesus
Christ in their actual lives. That everywhere they go, they're
hated. Friends, do you know that if
our ministry is effective, we will be hated more than we will
be loved? Now, well, I know a lot of people's
ministries who are hated because they're mean. Well, that's because
they're hated because they're mean. But when we're hated because
we're loving, because the people who hear the message don't like
the gospel, it's not our problem. These apostles, they carry in
their body the death of Jesus. Why? Why would they do such a
thing? Why would they rejoice? Why would
Paul put that in here in the sense of saying, you know, we'll
always have it? that the life of Jesus may also
be manifest in the world. So what Paul is saying here is
that the suffering and the death that we endure, and the word
death there in that context is the full nature of it. From decay
to decomposition. All of it. Not just that they're
dying in the physical sense, but they're dying already. They're
dying right now. We're dying as we sit here. All of us. Abigail
was born on October 28th. a year ago, and from that day
forward, she's getting closer to the day she'll die. On the
cellular level, it may not be so, but on the timeline level,
it's absolutely true. We don't get younger and younger.
We get older and older. And death is no respecter of
age. But why do we carry it? so that
the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For
we who live are always being given over to death for the sake
of Jesus. So that the life of Jesus may
also be manifested in our mortal flesh. So he's saying here that
we live in Christ now as we die in our flesh now. Not just in
a spiritual sense, but in a physical sense. And the worse we get,
the greater Christ gets. The lower we come in our flesh,
the greater the gospel is in our life. The closer we see our
mortality, the more powerful the life of Jesus is in us. When did they write these letters?
When they were locked up and dying. Who's got time to write
when they're busy? Who's got time to think and to
focus when they're in the trenches? There's a season for it. And
I think that what we've seen here is that when Paul's saying,
that the life of Christ may also be manifest from mortal flesh
is teaching us that we are, even as we live today in death, in
our dying state, the life of Christ is continuing to grow
in us. Because isn't it now our understanding that when we are
absent from the body, we are present with the Lord? What does
he tell the Philippians? I don't know which I choose.
to stay here with you, or to go with Christ. It's far better
for me if I go. It's far better for you that
I stay, so I know that I'll stay, for I do that I ought to do for
your sake." He's about to say the same thing. So death is at
work in us, but life is at work in you. That's what he says,
verse 12. So the suffering of the apostles
and all their persecution that is certain, see Paul is certain
it's going to end in death. He's not trying to survive out
there. He's just doing that which God
has called him to do, knowing that one day it will be the day
that they take his head off. It's going to happen. And he
knows it. But he's saying that life in their body is going,
but life in Christ in their body is building, and that He is dying
in His life so that the church may live in theirs. Because that
which I do is for the sake of your life, church. And Paul died in Christ to get
these letters to you, beloved. So that the life of Christ may
be in you. And Paul couldn't have done any
of it except the Holy Spirit of God pushed it all through.
That's how he survived a shipwreck. Stoning. Whippings. Beatings. imprisonment. That's how he survived
it. Because God would not let him
die. Did not God tell Saul shortly
after his conversion that he would suffer greatly? Verse 13, we get really focused
here and I want to move to the end. Since we have the same spirit
of faith, listen, we now, we, the apostles and the Corinthians
and us, Has the church have the same spirit of faith according
to what has been written? And he quotes Psalm 116 verse
10, I believe. I believe and so I spoke. And
I think the remainder of that in Psalm 116 is it says, I am
afflicted. He says, we also believe and
so we also speak. So what's Paul saying there?
We have the same faith. And when I'm persecuted, my faith
that's been given to me allows me to speak the truth of the
Gospel. So I'm telling you now that I'm not going to sit here
and wallow in my suffering, though I make no light of it. It's real. Paul mentions his suffering a
lot during the New Testament, doesn't he? Not in a whining
way, but in a glorious way. He says, look, I'm not going
to lie to you about what I'm enduring, because you're going
to endure some of the same stuff. But Christ has endured much greater.
And the reason this is happening is because Christ is alive in
me. Because Christ is alive in me, the world will put me to
death. Because sin will put us to death anyway in the flesh.
And the world, when we're born again in the Spirit, will hate
us even more. So they'll try to put us to death
in the flesh. So we've got two-fold death coming at us. We believe and so we also speak,
knowing, verse 14, that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise
us also with Jesus and bring us with You into His presence.
See that unity? See that culmination? We are
suffering and we will be raised and you will be raised and we
will be together. For it is all for your sake.
What is? Our suffering is all for your
sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may
increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. And there's a lot
of grammatical frustration there in the Greek, so I think the
ESV does a good job with it. And what it's telling us here
is that our suffering is for your sake, So that grace will
extend to more and more people as we continue to preach the
gospel and to spread the gospel through our preaching and through
our writing. So that the body of Christ will be born and multiply
and grow. And then grow as a people together
unto the praise of His glorious grace. He just says it a different
way. Thanksgiving to the glory of God. What does he mean? The whole
reason God created the church to begin with. To give Him praise.
Worship. Thank Him. To give Him glory
and honor. And because we are suffering
for your sake so that God may be glorified more and more and
more as more people come to the knowledge of truth and are saved
by the Gospel, we do not lose heart. Look at verse 16. We do
not lose heart. And he reminds his readers, we're
not talking about we're not losing heart because we just lose ourselves
in thanksgiving. Though our outer self is wasting away. Remember,
we're suffering. Our world is upside down. But
we do not lose heart. And our inner self is being renewed
day by day. Verse 17 and 18 is where I want
to just soak for a second. for this light momentary affliction
is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Now, several things are happening
here. Paul is saying we are doing what we do for the sake of the
body of Christ, that they may be a people to the praise of
His glorious grace. Therefore, we do not lose heart,
for we know that what we are suffering is for the sake of
You, the elect, the beloved, the church. For this light, affliction, momentary
affliction. Now see, some people look at
that out of context and say, Paul's saying that our afflictions in
Christ are going to be light and they're not going to last
for long if we're in Christ. He's already said, always carrying
in the body the death of Jesus. But what he's showing here is
a comparison. that suffering, get this, suffering,
hear this, suffering, as the people of God, is going to happen,
and we are to suffer together with thanksgiving, encouraging
one another, suffering and learning, as we go back to the very beginning
of the whole letter, as God equips us and ministers to us, then
we equip and minister to each other, as we have gotten through
our suffering, and it doesn't mean that it's ended, but we've
endured. We've come out of the pity into
the party. And that might be silly, it just
popped in my head. We're out of this little pity party into
the praise party. There we go, that's a better
one. We're not wallowing in our suffering,
woe is me. We're celebrating our suffering.
Glory, glory, glory. Worthy, worthy, worthy is the
Lamb. We're worshiping Christ. We're
worshiping our Father. We're worshiping. And we know
that our suffering, though it is never-ending in this life,
though it is absolutely unbearable, we know that it's light and that
it's momentary in comparison to the glory that is awaiting
us, that we are being prepared for through our suffering. So
church, and then I'm going to impose some of my thinking on
this in a minute. I'm going to have to recant it
or think of it, think through it. Here's what I think based
on the text Paul is trying to show us in numerous places. I think Paul is saying that the
Christian who suffers, that that suffering is building in them
a glorious, incomparable, glory of praise and affection for God
that will culminate at the resurrection. Okay? So if that is true, then
if we are not suffering as people of God, we are not being prepared
for glory. If we are not suffering We do
not have opportunity to praise apart from our flesh in the Spirit. And we're probably not in Christ. And the sad truth is that whether
we're in Christ or not in Christ, we're going to suffer. But the
suffering of this life is opportunity for praise as we together as
the church are working to see this glory beyond all comparison. But look at the descriptives.
For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal
weight of glory beyond all comparison. What does that look like? Light
momentary affliction, eternal weight of glory. Eternal weight of glory, incomparable
eternal weight of glory, like momentary affliction. That no
matter how hard it is, when they cut us into pieces and burn our
children in front of us. That's so livid. Why would you
say that? Because that's what's happening across the world. Certain places of the globe right
now, if you are found to be proselytizing the faith of Christ, they will
chop your head off in front of your family. Paul says that's light and momentary
affliction. That prepares not only the sufferer,
but the witnesses for an eternal incomparable weight of glory. As we look, see here's what we
do, here's how it looks in our life. As we look, as we look,
not to this world, not to the suffering, not to the sea receding
back and having a reprieve from our suffering, not to the things
that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. The things that are seen are
temporal. The things that are unseen are eternal. Now, this
is where I told you we might have to come back. But what does
it mean to be prepared for an eternal weight of glory? What
does it look like? I don't know how to say it. But let me think for a second.
If I were just to scan my little brain in that little box over
here where I keep all the attributes of Jesus and all those praiseworthy
things that the Scripture has taught me in my mind, in my mind. If I peel through them, I file
them, and I pull them out of the files, and I start thinking
through all those things. You know what I'm talking about.
And we see all the glorious beauty of Christ, who is the Lamb, who
is our Savior, who is our Friend, who is the eternal visible image
of the invisible God, who is the face of God, who is the Word,
All of these things, all of this just innumerable expressions
that build upon themselves over and over and over and over again
that we are unable to really put our hands on or our arms
around. And it just puts us in awe to
consider that the world that we know and the universe and
the cosmos and its infinity would come into being because Jesus Christ,
according to Paul and Colossians, said that He spoke and it was. He created all that there is
to reflect His glory, to reflect His omniscience, His power, His
wisdom. and that He's holy beyond all
comparison, that His holiness is a display of His intrinsic
worth, and that we are not even able to look at the train of
the tail of the robe of the holiness of God lest we die. And we tremble
at the word when we see that which in simple grammar reflects
that in story and in narrative and in doctrine. And we're overwhelmed
by the absolute and affability of our God, but yet the Scripture
says we know Him intimately, and that in His wisdom, He came
to give us life, and He saved us out of the darkness of our
own demise, and our own rebellion, and our own father Adam, who
because of he and Eve's sin, we are condemned. Because of
our Adamic nature, we rebel purposely against God and are condemned.
And we see Christ And we see Christ in comparison to everything
else the world gives us. And we look at all the world.
We look at the peace that we want, and the stuff that we want,
and the family that we want, and the harmony that we want,
and the love that we want, and the way of life that we want.
And we see the words of John when he says, Don't love these
things, for the love of the Father is not in the one who loves these
things. And so we drive away the world
and our love for the world, because our love for Christ is just amazingly
overwhelming. As we are together as the church,
moving into that place where we worship more today than we
did yesterday, and we drive deep into the heart of the Word, so
that we can dive deep into the heart of Christ, so that together,
as my worship is rising, and your worship and love for Christ
is rising, our worship culminates to such a thing that is absolutely
overwhelming for even the angels of heaven to see, much less the
world of the lost. And so we are worshiping as we
suffer. We are being glorified as we
die. We are going to live though we
suffer and die in this world. And so as we look at this eternal
weight of glory, I think that it comes to this. that the reward
of heaven is Jesus Christ alone, and the way that the world sees
it is that we want something Jesus gives us. The way that
the church sees it is that we want to be more in love with
Jesus, and so if Christ is the prize of heaven, If He's the
crown of life, if He's the mansion on a hilltop, if He's the cattle
on a thousand hills that we're looking for in the world to come
that is eternal, then if our affection for Him is not growing
more and more and more and more and more, and our longing for
Him is not getting deeper and deeper and deeper, then when
we see Him face to face, we will miss something. We'll miss something. Suffering prepares us for that.
Because suffering is God's grace. Suffering and death for the Christian
is a gracious gift. I'll tell you why. Because if God answered my fleshly
prayers, I'd never want to leave this God-forsaken world. If God answered my prayers, He'd
be nothing more than a big daddy genie in the sky giving me everything
that made me happy. And I'm saying fleshly prayers.
I'm not talking about prayers of the Spirit, prayers that are
God's will. When we suffer, we learn as the
children of God to let go of this world. And we learn to grab
hold of Christ. in such a way that we don't care
about all this. Because our reward is Christ. And if we are always at odds
trying to figure out which one we love more, friends, I would
say we're not in Christ. And so God's suffering for His
children, as we see in Hebrews, is a way of sanctifying us. as
a way of growing us to know that it's not about this world. And
that God is gracious in allowing us to suffer and allowing us
to die so that we can put a temporal perspective on a temporal reality. So we can see what John says
in chapter 2 of his first epistle when he says, the world and everything
in it is passing away. So that we can understand that
thanksgiving to God doesn't come through treasures on earth, but
through an expectant glory. How are we being prepared for
glory? When we can have an affection that is incomparable for the
glorious One. That's what I believe. And I think that is the whole
point of Paul, and as we go into chapter 5 of 2 Corinthians, he
just paints the picture. We're new creation. We don't
belong in this world. We belong in the world that is
to come. And so we wait for that day with great praise. So at the end of it, what I wanted
to argue for today is that I know you're suffering. And even if you don't think you
need the body of Christ to help you endure in the suffering,
the body of Christ needs you. And so to eliminate yourself
from continued intimacy from the church is to push away that
which God has designed for you in suffering. You see how that
changes the scope of what we call our ecclesiology, our understanding
of what the church is, what the church should be doing, what
the church should be saying, what the church should be teaching. Because at the end of the day,
when you're standing by the bed of a loved one who's dying, you're
standing over the casket of a four-year-old who got killed. You're standing
over the body of a 12-year-old who was shot in the streets of
Oakland. Or you watch a man die of a heart attack at your feet.
Or a man who died in the street by my house of an overdose. When
you see that stuff, you think, what hope did they have? What good was all this? We know there's more. We know
that as Christians, the suffering we endure is for the glory of
God. That as we love him more, his
name is great. And what does it say? Greatly
to be praised. The grace of God has come to
us, beloved, and we have seen the face of God. The question
is, are you trusting? Are you believing? Are you holding
to the confession of hope in Jesus Christ alone? Are you looking
for a method or a way or a reason or a prayer? Are you just trusting
in God's mercy? I pray that you trust alone in
Christ and that you who are suffering know that the greatest thing
As we look at those moments when this life is hard, in death or
in destruction or in whatever, we can look at it and we can
say, the outcome of this is for me to praise my God. And when
I praise my God, I get a greater gift than if all of this was
taken away from me. So praise me to God. Praise be
to God. Let's pray. We thank You, Father, that our
suffering is purposeful, meaningful. It's preparing us to see You,
to love You. It helps us to know You more,
God. And I thank You for Your Word in this. And I thank You for Your love and Your affection and Your
Gospel and Your Son. Help us to see the application
of such things that it's not just for us to sit alone and
just glory in our suffering for Your name's sake, but Lord, that
we suffer together for the sake of each other and
for the sake of Your name. And Lord, though we pray that
the suffering would pass, that we would pray that You would
take the cup from us, Lord, we worship You anyway. We thank
You anyway that Your will would be done either through the removing
and the enduring of that season of suffering or, Lord, the culmination
of our death into Your presence. We pray that we could see that. Father, by ourselves we are unable
to hold to that. You and Your Spirit and Your
people, we must be together so that we can encourage each other,
that we can spur one another, that we can pray for each other. So Father, we thank you that
we are not forsaken. We are not crushed. We are not
destroyed. We are not driven to despair. But Father, we rejoice. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.