From Pastor Andrew’s Desk
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Greetings FCCBers!
I hope that all is well with you and you are having a great week. Please be praying for this first Sunday at the Fair for our friends from Middleton and also some of our “peeps”. And for this Sunday at the church we are looking forward to a fruitful time of worship and encouragement in the Lord!
We have now come to the fourth sermon on our identity series and we arrive at 2 Corinthians 4. Paul begins this chapter laying the context of a glorious ministry for those who share Christ. In the vernacular (my paraphrase), Paul says “hey yall” don’t lose heart….things are good! Knowing and serving the Lord is such a privilege and joy, so cheer up Christians! We have a glorious message to proclaim as we see the Lord open eyes and ears to the Truth of the Gospel….that is amazing! Therefore, not only do we not lose heart (v. 1), but we have renounced secret and shameful ways (v. 2). Secret and shameful ways hold us back from His best. They keep us stuck in a prison of guilt and shame. The Lord does not want us to live this way. Yet, to admit some painful secrets is very hard. Some of us may have been holding some secrets for years and they have kidnapped us to utter silence. May we come out of the dark and live in the light! When we share our painful secrets and challenges with a close confidant in the Lord, He truly begins to free us. He brings into the light and we are freed from our prison. What are we holding in that God wants us to release to Him and others for healing and forgiveness? There is a song from Amy Grant that I recently have rediscovered and I feel that it really speaks to these types of steps of faith of renouncing the old and receiving the new good things in Christ. Click on the link and I hope you enjoy! So instead of living in secret and shameful ways “we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God” (v. 2).
In other words, we live in the truth before the Lord and before others. What a freeing way to live! We just proclaim the truth and don’t put on any airs. We “tell it like it is.”…like the secret of the universe and the meaning of all life of existence and the only true hope for the whole world and eternal life.
Now that is truly telling it like it is if I ever heard it! The joy in this is that many people will receive this good Word with joy! Yet, some will not and this is hard. Maybe you have had the experience as I have had many times, of people rejecting the message of Christ. It hurts when this happens because we long for people to know Him and have true peace. Yet, we are in a spiritual battle for the hearts and minds of people because
“the God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (v. 4).
The “god of this age” is Satan. The Evil One hates the Gospel. And he has blinded eyes of unbelievers. The Lord has given Satan a long leash, but He is at work mightily to open blind eyes. Yet, some hearts are deeply hardened to the Gospel and become casualties in this spiritual battle. Pray for the Lord to open blind eyes.
Paul then reminds us in v. 5 that we “do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.”
This is good news for all of us! We know how frail we are and how our sufficiency only goes so far. If you are in sales you know the feeling of what one is selling might not be ‘fool proof’ and might not be all its cracked up to be. And even if the product is the best, it still will not fulfill the deepest longings of the heart….even if it is a great coffee product or a LL Bean vest! Instead, we preach Christ….the all sufficiency that is in Him!! He
“made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (v. 6).
Thanks be to God!
This treasure of the message of Christ does not come in gold plated jars or in elaborate ticker tape parades down streets paved beautifully for our message! No, the message of the power of the Gospel often comes stumbling out of our lips and in the face of great opposition. This is exactly the point! “This treasure in jars of clay shows that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (v. 7).
Read verses 8-9 because they are awesome and sum up this reality so beautifully! We carry around the sufferings and death of Jesus in us “so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body.” He demonstrates His power through our weakness, so much more clearly than our strength because it shows His ultimate power as so much greater than ours! So we work through suffering on behalf of the Gospel and on behalf of others for Christ’s life in them (v. 12).
Verse 16 concludes by returning back to this statement: “therefore we do not lose heart.”
We do not lose heart indeed due to all these truths we just read!
“Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
This verse does not minimize very real troubles and struggles that we endure. But it points out that in the light of eternity and the glory of Christ those struggles are transitory and incredibly brief in the big picture.
So what do we do to live in these truths day by day? Verse 18 gives us the final marching orders,
“so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Lord, give us eyes to see these profound realities and live them day by day. See you Sunday!! Blessings, Pastor Andrew |
