I'm going to read from my text
this morning from the book of 2 Corinthians, the 4th chapter. Let's read verse 5. Now, what
I'd like to do, if you have a Bible convenient, I wish you'd take
it and open it and follow along with me. I'm going to, in this
message, cover verses 1 through 7 and make some comments about
each one of these verses. So if you'll take your Bible,
and there by the television, and follow with me as I read.
But for my text, this is my subject, we preach not ourselves, but
Christ Jesus the Lord. That's my subject. And the text
is found in verse 5, in which Paul says, we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus'
sake. Now Paul, this is something that
he repeated several times. He often said this, we preach
Christ. We preach Christ and Him crucified.
I'm determined. Even when he went down to Corinth,
to that city of knowledge and wisdom and debate and so forth
and politics and power, he said, I'm determined to know nothing
among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Was it because
he couldn't have known anything else? No, that's not the reason.
Paul was perhaps one of the most well-educated men of his day,
one of the most well-read men of his day. But he said, I'm
determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him
crucified. We preach Christ. We preach Christ. Not ourselves, but Christ. Now,
look at the text. Let's go back to verse 1 and
read some of these verses and see what the Apostle Paul has
to say to us here. First of all, in verse 1 of 2
Corinthians 4, The Apostle says, therefore seeing, we have this
ministry. We have this ministry. Now, contrary
to what most people are saying today, this is not a word only
for preachers. Every believer is in the ministry.
I wish I could get that across. Every believer is in the ministry.
We, Paul said, this is Paul writing to you, the church there at Corinth. He says to these people, we have
a ministry. Therefore, seeing we have this
ministry, and every believer, whether he's in the pulpit or
whether he's praying in the pew, or whether he's witnessing in
the home, or whether he's witnessing in the shop, or whether he's
supporting those who are preaching, or praying for those who are
preaching, we're all in the ministry of Christ. We're all the body
of Christ. And if you'll read 1 Corinthians
12, you'll find that the body of Christ is revealed or expressed
in this way. Christ is the head, and we're
the body. And as the body has many members,
here's a hand, an arm, and feet, and legs, and different members
of the body, even so the body of Christ has different members
and different functions of different people. We have different gifts,
we have different talents, but we're all in the ministry, seeing
we have this ministry. Our Lord said, he that's not
with me is against me. And I believe by that, he that's
not against Christ is with Christ. So we have a ministry. It's our
ministry. It's not mine. It's our ministry. And I wish we could understand
that. I wish we could see how important.
And actually, Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 talks about some of the members
that aren't so prominent and some who are quite insignificant
being the most important and the ones upon whom we depend
the most. So don't gauge a man's importance
in the ministry of Christ or in the body of Christ by the
fact that he's seen more or heard more. That's not it at all. God
looks not on the outward countenance but on the heart. And here's
another thing now. This ministry which we have is
not a ministry of law. It's a ministry of grace. We're
not preaching do this and live. We're preaching believe and live.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. and thou shalt have eternal life.
We're not preaching a ministry of do good and God will bless
you. We're preaching a message for
sinners, a message of hope for lost people, for everybody. I've got a message for everybody
who will listen to me. I'm not preaching just to the
righteous and to the good and to the holy and to the moral.
I've got a message for every son of Adam. It's not a message
of law. It's a message of grace. It's
not a message of flesh, it's a message of spirit. It's the
spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. That which
is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit
is spirit. It's a spiritual message. It's a message of grace, a message
of hope, a message of mercy, not merit, mercy, and it's a
message of spirit, not flesh. Somebody gave a definition of
grace and mercy some time ago. He said grace. God giving us
what we don't deserve and Mercy is God not giving us what we
do deserve This is our ministry. This is our ministry. Therefore
Paul says seeing we have this ministry you Have it. I have it every believer. We
have this ministry and it's a ministry of grace a ministry of mercy
a ministry of spirit a ministry for sinners Oh, we have good
news for you. Good news for you who need Christ,
who are lost, who cannot help yourself. And then notice the
second verse. He said, we have renounced the
hidden things of dishonesty. Now, I'm sure that the apostle
had a twofold motive in his ministry. I'm as sure of that as I'm standing
here. I know the secret things belong to God and the revealed
things belong to us who believe. And I know there's much in God's
Word I don't understand. There's much about the Word of
Paul and the message of Paul, the ministry of Paul. I'm not
the Apostle Paul. And I couldn't, as John the Baptist
said, I can't unlace the shoelaces of the Master. I don't feel that
I could lace the shoelaces of the Apostle Paul. But I do know
this about him. And I do share this in common
with him. The Apostle Paul had a twofold objective in his ministry. First of all, he preached for
the glory of God. That was his one object, the
glory of God. He said, whatever you do in word
or deed, whether you eat or drink, do it for the glory of God. If
you can't do it for the glory of God, let it go. The glory
of God. And secondly, for the good of
his heroes. Paul wanted people to be saved. He said, I have
a burning desire, my prayer to God is for Israel that they might
be saved. He said something I can't say. I wish I could. He said,
I could wish myself a curse from Christ for my brethren according
to the flesh. In other words, it sounds like
to me, and I know the theologian tries to run this out somewhere
and explain it away, but it sounds like to me he's saying, if I
could take their place under the judgment of God and let them
have my place, I'd do it. And somebody said, well, he couldn't,
loving God and knowing God, he couldn't want to be separated
from God. Well, Christ did. Our Lord was under the wrath
of God, and under the judgment of God, and under the condemnation
of God for our sins. He loved us that much. Maybe
Paul did share in common something in intercessory prayer with the
Master, but these two things are true. He preached for the
glory of God, and he preached for the good of his heroes. And
something needs to be said, and I want to read you what I wrote
down here. Something needs to be said in this day. Somebody
needs to say something. about what's going on today under
this disguise of religion and under the cloak of religion.
It makes the heart of every true believer weep when he beholds
the entertainment and the covetousness and the materialism and the legalism
and the fleshly methods and gimmicks and the exaltation of the flesh
that's going on today in churches over the television and in special
meetings and tent meetings in the name of God. I tell you,
Paul said this, he said, they're making merchandise out of you,
they're religious hucksters, and you're nothing in the world
to them but a means and a way to get the things of this world
that their hearts covet and desire. He said they're using the ministry
as a cloak for their covetousness and religion is a cloak for their
covetousness and materialism and their desire for filthy lucre. It's a shame. It's such a terrible,
terrible shame. But handling the word of God
deceitfully. Paul said we have a ministry,
but we've renounced the hidden things. And they're hidden. They're
under a cloak of religion. They're hidden under a cloak
of righteousness and a cloak of prayer and all of this sort
of thing, you know. Paul says we've renounced the
hidden things of dishonesty. We don't handle the Word of God
deceitfully. We preach the Word of God for
the glory of our Lord. I think sometimes when I see
all of this foolishness, and I picture the Apostle Paul, would
he do that? Would he put on a show like that?
Would he go around with a microphone stuck in his mouth with fancy
shirts and diamond rings and and take up offerings and wash
tubs and break crutches over backs of seats and push wheelchairs
down the aisle and put on all of this show of emotionalism
and fleshly entertainment. Would Paul take part in things
like that? You say, I can't imagine Paul doing that. Then why would
you want to do it? Why would you want? You think
Paul was interested in numbers and statistics and personal fame
and putting on a show and And having his name in the light,
you think he'd be interested in that? Well, why do you do
it? This is what bothers me. We can stop and visualize our
master taking part in a forest like this. And telling people,
not telling people the truth, dishonesty. Dishonesty. God will take care of his ministry
and his work. God will supply our needs. We
don't have to beg. We don't have to sell records
and pictures and books and and deceive people and give away
special offers. We don't have to do that. God
will pay his bills if he's in it. And the reason we have to
resort to this trickery and gimmicks is because God's not in it. And
it's a shame and a disgrace and it makes the heart of believers
weak. Making merchandise of the souls of men, handling the Word
of God deceitfully. Paul said we don't do that. But
look at verse 3. If our gospel be hid, it's hid
to them that are lost. What is our gospel? Paul talks
about the gospel that we preach in this ministry being hid. It
is hid to them who are lost. What is our gospel? Well, first
of all, our gospel is the gospel of God. It's not the Baptist
gospel or the Catholic gospel. It's God's gospel. It originated
with God. He planned it, He executed it,
He applies it, He sustains it, and He will perfect it. It's
God's gospel. That's what he said in Romans
chapter 1, verse 1, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, a bond slave,
separated to the gospel of God. We're not preaching what the
Baptists believe, we're preaching what God says. This is the thing,
if we could just dedicate ourselves to God's gospel. It's the gospel
of God, it's the ancient gospel. He said it's the gospel which
he promised before by the prophets through the Holy Scripture. You
take the Bible and go through it, and you'll find Christ all
the way through. In Genesis, he's the woman's seed. He's Abel's
sacrifice. In Exodus, he's the Passover
lamb. In Leviticus, he's the great
atonement. In Numbers, he is the brazen serpent lifted up.
All the way through, he's Rahab the harlot's lion. He's Ruth,
kinsman, redeemer. He's David's shepherd. He's Isaiah's
substitute. All the way through the Bible,
it's the Lord Jesus Christ. To Him give all the prophets
witness. The Old Testament is Christ in
picture. The New Testament is Christ in
person. And it's not only God's gospel and the gospel concerning
His Son, and the gospel, the ancient gospel, the gospel, God's
never saved anybody but one way, and that's through Christ. You
see, when Abel brought that sacrifice, The blood of that animal couldn't
put away a man's sin. An animal can't die for a man.
That's no substitution. But that animal's blood represented
the blood of God's Lamb that would come, the Lamb of God Christ
Jesus. And all the way through the Old Testament, the priest,
when he went into the Holy of Holies and put the blood on the
mercy seat over the broken log, Well, that blood of that animal
over that law written on tables of stone wouldn't justify a sinner
before the presence of God. It represented something. It
represented something. And the Lord's table is the same
thing now. You take the broken bread and
the poured wine, it represents Christ. We don't hope by bringing
that bread and breaking it and eating it that we're being saved
by eating that bread and drinking that wine, but we are saved by
the broken body and shed blood of Christ. So the same thing
in the Old Testament, those types and pictures and symbols point
to Calvary, and baptism and the Lord's table point back to Calvary,
and we believe on Christ. It's the gospel concerning his
Son. It's the gospel of God's grace. It's the gospel of substitution. It's the gospel of eternal life.
Now, verse 3 says, if our gospel be healed, It talks about it
being hidden. What does it mean by that? Well,
here's what it means by that. The natural man, the man who
is not taught by the Spirit of God, the natural man does not
understand the gospel. He just doesn't do it. In 1 Corinthians
2, it says this, I have not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath
it entered the heart of man. the things that God's prepared
for them that love him, but he has revealed them unto us by
his Spirit. What you need to pray, my friend,
is this. You see, the natural mind does not understand God. The natural mind is enmity. The
natural mind cannot understand spiritual things. It has to be
revealed. That's the reason Christ said to Nicodemus, a man's got
to be born again to understand the kingdom of God, to understand
the gospel. A man by nature does not understand
substitution. He understands do and live. We'll swap this to God for something
in return. He understands that kind of talk.
But pure grace, he doesn't understand. Unmerited favor, he doesn't understand. Pure mercy, he doesn't understand.
Sovereign love, he doesn't understand. Divine substitution, he doesn't
understand. God being just and justifying
the ungodly through the merits of his son, he doesn't understand.
It has to be revealed. One day our Lord said to his
disciples, He said, Whom do men say that I am? Here he was. The
word was made flesh and dwelt among us. God took on himself
a human body. God incarnated. He came, the
virgin son, the Messiah, David's son, standing on this earth. He was in the world, and the
world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received
him not. He was a fulfillment of every Jewish sacrifice, every
Jewish promise, every Jewish prophecy, every Jewish type,
and yet they didn't recognize him. His own didn't know him.
And he said to the disciples, well, what are they saying out
there? Who do they say I am? Who do you say that Jesus Christ
is? Some reformer like Confucius or Buddha or Muhammad? Is he
some failure or is he some another messenger God sent that didn't
work either? Who is Jesus? Well, the disciples
said, they're saying different things, Lord, that some of them
bleed your Elijah, who's come back from the grave, and some
of them even bleed your John the Baptist, and they're saying
you're a great prophet, but he said, whom do you say that I
am? And Peter said, Thou art the
Christ, Thou art the Messiah, Thou art that prophet of whom
Moses wrote, Thou art the Redeemer of Israel, Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the Living God, God in human flesh. And our Lord
looked at him and he said, Blessed are you, blessed are you, Simon
Barjona, flesh and blood did not reveal that to you. A man
doesn't know that by nature, doesn't understand that by nature,
can't comprehend that by nature, doesn't see the necessity of
it by nature. Flesh and blood didn't reveal
that to you, but my Father which is in heaven, that's how it comes.
Our gospel has to be revealed. The gospel is hid to them that
are lost. The gospel has to be revealed.
And look at verse 4. What happened to them? Well,
the God of this world hath blinded them. Who is the God of this
world? That's Satan. That's who that has to be, the
God of this world, Satan. He's called the God of this world. He's called the adversary. He's called the deceiver of men. And if it were possible, The
Scripture said he would deceive the very elect. You know how
Satan blinds men? It says the God of this world
hath blinded the natural man. Satan hath blinded the natural
man. You know how he blinds men? He blinds men with pride. Pride. Pride goeth before destruction,
a haughty spirit before the fall. We are proud people. You see,
salvation, eternal life, is a gift of mercy, and we're just not
the type that that think we need mercy. We want what's coming
to us. Well, that's what we're going
to get someday, what's coming to us. We don't want what's coming
to us. We don't want justice. We want mercy. You don't want
what's coming to you. The wages of sin is death, and
that's what's coming to you. That's payday someday. But you
want mercy. But your pride won't let you
come to the back door of mercy and say, Lord, I'd sure be much
obliged if you'd do something for me by your grace. You don't
have to, but I wish you would. And then he blinds men with a
false concept of God. There are not many men who say,
well, this is the way I see God. Well, how does the Word of God
reveal God? Now, that's how we better see
God and understand God and know what we know about God is as
He's revealed in the Scripture. No man has seen God at any time
save the Son, and He to whom the Son will reveal Him. And
Satan blinds men with a false concept of God and a false concept
of sin, and he blinds men with self-righteousness. Lord, the
Pharisees said, I thank you I'm not like other men. I'm this
and I'm that and I'm the other. He blinds men with pleasure.
He blinds men with materialism. He blinds men with false religious
profession. He's the great deceiver. He's
the great imposter. And Paul wrote to the church
at Corinth in chapter 11, verse 3 of the 2nd epistle, he said,
I fear, I fear, I'm afraid. Paul wasn't afraid of many things.
He wasn't afraid of men. He wasn't afraid of men. He wasn't
afraid of prison and persecution. But Paul feared this. He said, I fear lest by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve, deceived her. through his subtlety. He's crafty. He's subtle. You're
not dealing with another man. You're dealing with the great
imposter, the great deceiver, and he's an expert at deceiving
human flesh. He knows more about human nature
than anybody but God. He's been in the business of
deceiving men for 6,000 years. And Paul says, I fear lest Satan,
through his subtlety, should corrupt your minds from the simplicity
of Christ. And then he comes to our text,
verse 5, for he said, we preach not ourselves. We have this ministry. We preach not ourselves, but
Jesus Christ, the Lord. Let me ask you a question. I
want you to think about this a few minutes. When can it be
said that a man is preaching himself? Now let's think about
this. Paul said, and this is very emphatic
here, we preach not ourselves. We preach Christ. When can it
be said that a man is not preaching Christ, but he's preaching himself?
Could I offer some suggestions? First of all, we preach ourselves
when we preach what we think instead of what God says. That's
right. We preach ourselves when we preach
what we think instead of what God says. Secondly, we preach
ourselves when we preach what men want to hear. instead of
what God wants them to hear or what they ought to hear. Does
that ever go through your mind if you're a preacher or a deacon
or a Sunday school teacher? Do you preach what men want to
hear or want you to preach, or do you preach what men ought
to hear? We preach ourselves when we take the offense out
of the cross and seek to please men. Paul said, if I please men,
I'm not the servant of Christ. And then we preach ourselves
when we set up ourselves as authorities over the heritage, over the conscience,
over the people of God. I turn you and point you to Christ.
Now I see in this world those who claim to be authorities,
those who receive worship to themselves and receive followers
to themselves and have men called by their names. And we're preaching
ourselves when we set ourselves up as authorities over the consciences,
over the free spirits, over the liberty and hearts of other men. Don't you look to me. You look
to Christ the Lord. We're just ministers. People
say, well, I am of Paul, they said in Corinth. I am of Cephas.
I am of Paul. Paul said, who are these men?
They're nothing but ministers by whom you receive the gospel
or heard the gospel. I planted a palace of waters,
God gives the increase. He that planteth, he's nothing.
He that watereth, he's nothing. See if you can get that preacher
you listen to to say he's nothing and turn your eyes away from
him to Christ. We preach ourselves when we seek
to impress men with our wisdom and intellect and our piety. Am I trying to impress you with
what I know about the Bible that I'm preaching myself? Am I trying
to impress you with my education or intellect or my piety or goodness? I wish we'd quit saying you and
start saying we when we're preaching. We are sinners. It's not you're
a sinner and you need God. I need God as much as you need
God. I'm a sinner as much as you're
a sinner. We preach ourselves when we try to impress people
with our wisdom and knowledge and our Our theology, you know,
and our intellect, and we're not preaching Christ. We're putting
on a show of what we're doing. And we preach ourselves when
we get ambitious. Preachers get ambitious, did
you know that? They want a boast of great numbers. They want more
than they had last Sunday. I don't know, they didn't do
anything with that bunch they had last Sunday. I don't know why they
want more. You know, a fellow said to Spurgeon one time, said,
why should we sing over a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's
praise when we're not using the one tongue? that we have to sing
our great Redeemer's praise. Why should he give us a thousand?
Why should we want more heroes when we're not telling them anything?
When we go to boasting of our converts and building great buildings
and great monuments to the flesh? We're preaching ourselves. That's
what we're doing. We're not preaching Christ. And we preach ourselves
when we fear men. Do you fear men? Court their
favor, court their friendship, court their approval at the expense
of the truth? What shall it profit a man if
he gained the whole world and lose his soul? We preach as those
who must give an account, and not to men. We're not going to
be tried before the tribunal of human flesh. We're going to
stand before the King of kings and the Lord of lords. We preach
ourselves when we preach salvation by any other means than the grace
of God through the blood of Jesus Christ. We preach ourselves when
we preach for any other reason or any other reward than the
glory of God. Paul says we preach not ourselves.
What do we preach? We preach Christ the Lord. He's
their God of their God. He's surety of the eternal covenant. He's man, our representative
in the flesh. He's our sin offering and sacrifice. He's our risen Redeemer. He's
our only mediator between God and men. My hope is built on
nothing less than Jesus' blood and His righteousness. I dare
not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.