Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] You.
[00:00:06] Amen. Let's continue our prayers now. Our Heavenly Father indeed. How great you are. Your grace is so wonderful, so pure, so holy and so enriching and so everlasting. Lord, thank you for forgiving our sins. They are many, they are dark, they are shameful and disgraceful. We come here this morning not in the pride of our own hearts, in the fervor of our own strength, but recognizing that all of our sufficiency is from you and from you alone. We ask, O Lord, that you would remind us of our freedom in Christ, of the lack of condemnation and the proclamation of justification.
[00:00:59] We also ask, Lord, for Your reminder and Your assurance that you are at work as the word of Christ dwells richly in us, transforming us and making us more and more like Him. We ask that you would continue these blessings now in the reading and preaching of Your Word to you, be all the glory forever and ever. Amen.
[00:01:22] Let's turn to God's word in two Corinthians, please. Two corinthians Chapter 14 Here in two Corinthians four, paul continues to address the accusations that have been made against him and all those who would faithfully minister Christ in the world.
[00:02:01] And he gives us instructions and encouragement regarding the mode of Gospel ministry. Let's hear his word. I'll read verses one through six, but our focus this morning will be on verses one and two.
[00:02:16] Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.
[00:02:22] But we have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's Word. But by open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.
[00:02:39] 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 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 shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
[00:03:16] Amen. You may be seated.
[00:03:34] If you are in taking our Covenant Life class, which happens during our Sunday school time, as an orientation of the life of the Church, one of the things that we focus on in that class is talking about what the core works of the Church are divine worship, mutual edification. And the third is Gospel witness.
[00:03:57] Witness to the gospel. It's one of the three things that the Church is called to do. And this passage addresses the way in which we do that work, the way in which God calls us to do that work, and in contrast, the ways in which we're not to do that work as we witness to. The Gospel of Christ as we disciple others, as we tell people about Him, as we call them to freedom in him. What we learn in the scriptures is that there are bad ways to do that. Now, we know that God is a God of grace and he's very capable all the time, and he does this all the time, where he takes bad things and turns them into good things. But that doesn't mean that they aren't bad to begin with and shouldn't be avoided.
[00:04:48] There are bad ways to witness to Christ, and Paul is talking about that here. He renounces, he says in verse two, disgraceful and underhanded ways.
[00:04:59] You might think about it this way. There can be a mismatch between the ministry of Christ and what is said in that ministry or supposed to be said, and the mode in which it comes. The way in which it comes.
[00:05:13] Sometimes this mismatch happens. You might imagine it like putting a car seat on a horse as using that for a saddle. It's just not going to fit, it's not going to work, it's not going to be comfortable or do its job, or imagine throwing a birthday party for a friend in a fit of anger, right? These things don't go together. This is not how we do these things and they ought to be avoided. Well, what ought to be avoided when we bring people to Christ, when we do the work of gospel ministry? Or to put it in a positive way, what does a ministry look and feel like when it is grounded in the mercy of God? So this is what Paul talks to us about today. We'll think about this in three sections. First, what is the mode of ministry, a gospel mode of ministry? Where does it come from? And then what are the results that we can expect?
[00:06:15] So what is this mode of ministry? There's lots of ways to describe it. Not all of it is described here in this passage, but we could summarize it in this way. It is a sincere and plain mode of speaking and way of speaking.
[00:06:32] Paul says we renounce disgraceful and underhanded ways.
[00:06:37] What does disgraceful mean? It means shameful. It means presenting and sharing the Gospel, discipling people in ways that do not lead to happiness, that do not lead us to be proud and bold in the Lord good things. But instead, doing something in a disgraceful way means doing it in a way that makes us embarrassed, or should make us embarrassed, at least. Ways that make us want to shrink and hide and not really reveal exactly what's happening because it's embarrassing, it's disgraceful.
[00:07:14] This mode of ministry that he is renouncing is a way that makes us feel like we're worthy of rejection, because the things that we're doing are worthy of rejection.
[00:07:26] They are ways that humiliate us when exposed to the light of God, when God says how are you doing? How are you doing the work of ministry? And he shines that light on us and we cringe a little bit and we say that means that we're doing things in a disgraceful way.
[00:07:45] Underhanded ways mean tricky ways, deceptive ways, manipulative ways, concealing or covering. Underhanded here doesn't mean like an underhanded pitch, it means underhanded as in like covering up, right, sneaky, hiding, doing things, administering Christ in a way that is deceptive in some way.
[00:08:11] Well, to help us understand this, Paul has this contrast. First he gives us the negative and then he gives us the positive. Let's think about each of these. First the negative. He says we refuse to practice cunning, that's deception. And then he says or tamper with God's word. We could to keep a little alliteration. We could call that distortion or dissolution.
[00:08:36] So deception first practice cunning. What are ways in which cunning can be practiced and sometimes is practiced when it comes to the ministry of the gospel?
[00:08:48] Well, cunning often has to do with deception, as I said, tricking. Often it means offering one thing, but giving another. This is one of many ways in which deception can happen. Let's focus on just this one. What are ways in which the ministry of Christ can come to us? Or ways in which we can give it to people which is deceptive? Well, one of them is promising the law, or promising the gospel rather, but then giving the law, promising to give good news and the promise of salvation, but then simply telling people what to do.
[00:09:24] Or promising prosperity, but then only giving poverty, promising strength, but giving weakness, promising freedom, but giving slavery, promising freedom and righteousness, but then giving slavery and condemnation. Now, there's all kinds of ways in which this happens both through the formal preaching and ministry of the Word, from a minister of the Word, and in just the culture and life of a church as it shines its light to the world. There are ways in which we can use the gospel, let's say, as a slogan and stamp it on things and call this Christ centered and that Christ centered and those kind of things use good language that sort of makes it seem like things are right, makes it seem like we're offering the ministry of mercy.
[00:10:16] But then, if it's all about performance, if it's all about our own sufficiency, if it's all about making sure everybody fits in in exactly the right place, then we take away what we promise to give. And that's deceptive.
[00:10:32] Sometimes that's intentional, sometimes it's unintentional. But in this intentional sense, this practice of cunning, it ought to be avoided. And there are people that do this in the world and we ought to be mindful of it.
[00:10:49] There are people who promise to you Christ, promise to you health, promise to you prosperity, promise to you forgiveness of sins, but then they say to follow them or they say to follow their system or buy their book or their courses. And if you do these things and do all of these things, then you will be saved.
[00:11:11] And we know it's effective that this deception is effective because there are people that have lots of fame and lots of wealth off of the backs of people who give into these lies. And often I don't know if often is the right word. I guess I don't know. But I have seen it to be true that there are well meaning Christians who are deceived by these things.
[00:11:39] I remember an example of one person telling me that they had just had a fight, him and his wife. Things were really hard.
[00:11:50] Seeking to kind of get out of that moment, he turns on the TV. He turns to a preacher on TV who happens to be talking about marriage, and he says, wow, this is amazing. I'm having this marriage problem. I turn on the TV, here's this preacher talking about marriage. And this preacher tells him all about how in the trouble of our marriages, the Lord is there and the Lord promises to bless it and help it and be there for us. All good things, things that should warm the heart of a Christian right should encourage and build up faith. But then this preacher then follows with and if you want these things, you must send your love gift, your donation, whatever, to my ministry. And then upon receiving this donation, I will then pray for you, and you will be blessed and your marriage will be well. And so he wrote a check and put it in the mail and sent it off. Why?
[00:12:46] Because he felt the Lord was speaking to him.
[00:12:49] He was having a problem. He turns on the TV. There is this person talking about marriage, addressing his problem, pointing him to the Lord and telling him, here's what to do.
[00:13:00] But this is a trick. It is deceptive and manipulative because the Gospel and the promises of health and prosperity and sanctification and growth, they don't come by sort of paying off one particular person.
[00:13:18] They come through faith and faith alone. Jesus says, Come and buy you who don't even have any money, come and take you who don't have anything to give or pay with. Come to me all who are weary and heavily laden, and I will give you rest. I am totally sufficient. The Lord says, I have bought and paid for everything that you need.
[00:13:41] There are people, though, who use that message for their own financial gain or power or other things. And we have to be aware.
[00:13:53] There's also the tampering with and distortion and dissolution of God's word. This comes in all kinds of forms. Censoring the Bible is one way. Sometimes we have examples of people in history, famous people, simply taking the parts out of the Bible that they don't like and then just saying, okay, here, this is going to be my Bible. That's tampering with God's word.
[00:14:21] Diluting it, taking things away from it or adding to it, saying, yes, that's good. This is what the Pharaoh or the Judaizers were doing. Yes, that's all good. Christ is all good, just as long as you also get circumcised, follow the law of Moses, et cetera, et cetera. This is distorting tampering with diluting, God's word. It happens in subtle ways. Sometimes it's overemphasis, sometimes it's under emphasis, often it's mixing worldly wisdom and human cunning with God's word.
[00:14:56] Imagine a pharmacist, right? We might call a pharmacist a minister of medicine, right? They are administering, hopefully administering healing things, things that are meant to make you better.
[00:15:09] Imagine a pharmacist who practiced cunning for your health, right, who told you one thing, offered one thing, but then gave you another.
[00:15:23] Imagine how terrible and dangerous that would be. Imagine a pharmacist who distorted or diluted your medicine, especially without telling you, mixes it with some other way, gives you a half dose or a partial dose, or laces it with some other thing for their own benefit in some way.
[00:15:44] You would be outraged, right? You're like, I came here because I trusted you. You have a degree and training and licensure and all of these things to ensure that when I say or when my doctor says, get this, that, at the other end, I get that, that thing. And that's why when you go to the pharmacy in a lot of our pharmacies, they check your name and your birthday multiple times, they make sure they read and reread and all these kinds of things to ensure that nothing is diluted, nothing is distorted, that you're getting exactly what you're supposed to get.
[00:16:21] And we're right to care about that. It's a big deal. And praise God for our awesome pharmacists who take care of us in all of these ways.
[00:16:30] But if this is true for our bodies, how much more for our souls?
[00:16:36] Do we really care and really want to make sure we get the right medicine? But then, when it comes to the Word of God, we're whatever licensed, not licensed, trained, untrained, it doesn't really matter, does it?
[00:16:52] If it's diluted, if it's mixed, as long as it's mostly there, I should be fine.
[00:16:56] That's not what Paul does. Paul says he refuses to practice cunning and to tamper with God's word. And because of that, and because of God's own protection of his own Word through the apostolic ministry, you can be confident that you have the word of God, and that's a good thing. You have a prescription for your soul, and God continues to preserve that word throughout history and giving to us that heavenly medicine over and over again.
[00:17:36] Now, obviously this has a very high level of importance when it comes to those who are ordained as ministers of the Word, but it's also true of all of us, because the work of gospel witness is a work that the church holds together. It's a work that we all have a part in, in some way.
[00:17:58] So we all have to be committed to never practicing cunning or tampering with God's Word.
[00:18:08] So we might think about how we discuss the Bible in our Bible studies, how we meditate on the Bible when we spend time in God's word when we share God's word with neighbors, when we analyze it in light. Of the books that we read. When we think about the ministers that we ordain or the kind of churches that we go to and support, we ought to be thinking about these things. Every single person has a part to play in this, in the ministry of the Word, in the light of the gospel as it goes out. We must refuse with Paul to practice cunning or tamper with God's Word. That's part of the mode of ministry.
[00:18:51] The second half of this is the positive side. How does Paul put it? He says, by the open statement of the truth. And this of course reminds us that we can't avoid the first danger by simply being quiet. Right? There is a requirement to openly state, right? Silence is not the option. We can't just remove this work of the church and say, well, we'll just not tell people about Jesus. We are called to go and make disciples. This is part of our calling as the church. Part of following Jesus, part of being a disciple is discipling others. And we could even go another step further and say part of being a disciple and discipling others is discipling others to disciple others. Right? That's what it means to follow him.
[00:19:44] The church follows Jesus in this command about disciple making as we do in worship.
[00:19:52] We can't simply choose not to worship because there are ways to get it wrong. We must seek to do it right.
[00:19:59] And when it comes to gospel witness and discipleship, the ministry of the gospel, we must be a church that states the truth and does it openly and does it plainly.
[00:20:13] People value today as they always have style over substance.
[00:20:20] It's just the way it is, cleverness over content. And sometimes it's hard when you have people speaking to you in really fast ways and especially when they sound so smart and there's so many beautiful turns of phrases and the images and the structure is so interesting and vibrant. It can be hard sometimes to pay attention to the content.
[00:20:51] Style should of course elevate the content, should make it clearer, should make it more understandable and helpful. But sometimes style is used as a covering to hide content, right? By using different words, by moving fast, by being fancy and clever. You can use style in a way to allied concepts, to conflate things, to be vague, to never really be specific and to try to just make people happy and impressed.
[00:21:29] That's not what Paul does.
[00:21:31] Sincerity, he said earlier. Simplicity, open statement of the truth.
[00:21:39] This is something Paul had to have very clear in his mind because he was living in a world that prized rhetoric even more highly than our own.
[00:21:50] Charming people, fast talkers, people who are quick on their feet and good with their words have a kind of elevated status in our society and even more so back then. And people attacked. Paul, as beautiful as his language is, as interesting as it is, as forceful and powerful it is even on worldly standards, it didn't quite elevate to the standards that they had for speech.
[00:22:19] Paul, you don't seem very fancy. Paul, you don't seem very glorious. Look at all the ways in which you suffer. He talks in some places about being nervous, shaking when he talks, quivers in his voice and people laughing. Like, what kind of kind of public speaking disaster is this, right?
[00:22:40] There was a lot of pressure to do and to be very good. We thought a lot about this in one corinthians, and I won't rehearse all of that here.
[00:22:53] Paul makes this conscious decision, though, not to be well, let me put it positively. He makes this conscious decision to prioritize clarity and an open statement of the truth over style.
[00:23:10] Now, Paul uses beautiful turns of phrases, powerful images. He's not garbled or confusing, right? But his priority is not to impress us with his words. His priority is to communicate his words and to communicate it clearly.
[00:23:30] That's what he means here, and that's his Mo.
[00:23:34] Now, it takes wisdom, of course, to discern the difference between somebody who speaks well and has good content and it's helpful and persuasive and somebody who speaks well and doesn't.
[00:23:48] But that's one of the reasons why we want to spend a lot of time in God's word and exegete it carefully, listen to it carefully to grow in our discernment, to grow in our ability to think carefully through scripture and its arguments. If we are not discerning, if we don't know God's Word, it becomes more difficult to see deception where it is because it's intended to be deceptive, right? If it was obvious, right, no one would fall. Well, maybe, you know what I mean, it would be more difficult.
[00:24:25] So this is Paul's Ministry. This is the mode on which he decides to operate. And this is not random, right? He operates this way because of something. He's not just trying to be countercultural for the sake of being countercultural or make a specific niche for himself. He's doing it because the ministry he has is by the mercy of God. That's what verse one says. It's by the mercy of God.
[00:24:59] This has meaning at multiple levels. One way we can understand this is as those who have been themselves received mercy and as the message that they give.
[00:25:14] Where does this mode come from? What drives this particular way of ministering the gospel? It comes from this. It comes from the Lord and his mercy.
[00:25:27] We receive this opportunity to share his light and share it in this way as those who are in the light, as those who shine with the light, as those who have the light of the mercy of God.
[00:25:41] So when we think about, okay, this is the work of the Church, and I need to be involved in that in some way, and here's the how of how we do that together.
[00:25:51] We have to go down a level and think about where's the source of this? Why does it happen this way? And it happens when we remember what God has done for us.
[00:26:03] We don't depend on human craftiness and cunning and elegance and wisdom, because that's not where our salvation is from.
[00:26:15] If our salvation was in people doing really well and excellent at things and then saying, hey, if you follow my method, you can be lifted up and also have all of these great things, then that's what we would do. That's how we would live. But as Christians, we don't live that way because we despise of our inability. We give up on our ability.
[00:26:40] We look at ourselves and we say, I'm a sinful person.
[00:26:45] My heart is often tricked. My emotions often take control of me. I don't desire the things I ought to do. I'm not going to depend on myself to achieve glory, to achieve success. Instead, I am going to depend on the mercy of God because that's where salvation is.
[00:27:08] When Jesus came into the world, you can consider his ministry as examples of this.
[00:27:14] What did he do?
[00:27:16] Did he give everyone three good things to do? And then when they had it, he came and gave them the reward?
[00:27:23] No. He said, Be healed, be forgiven, enter into light, enter into salvation, receive a cleansing simply out of his love for them.
[00:27:39] Mercy describes not only God's work of grace, but this work that he does when we don't deserve it. He looks at us in our weakness, he looks at us in our inability, and he has mercy on us.
[00:27:53] He comes to us because we are ineffective, because we don't have what we need, because we're lacking in so many ways.
[00:28:02] He comes to us in this way, he comes to us in this ministry of mercy because we don't have in us what it takes.
[00:28:14] If we reject that promise, if we reject the Lord's ministry of mercy, if we reject his grace that comes to us in our weakness, then what are we left with?
[00:28:27] Ourselves.
[00:28:30] Ourselves that are not capable of achieving the things that we want to mean and need to achieve. And so do we do.
[00:28:37] It's almost like we're forced to rely on deception and trickery if we're going to promise these kinds of things, right? We rely on weak things and then act as if they're strong. And that's the promise that comes to us in that way, in this worldly way. But Paul is rooting the ministry in something deeper, in something more solid. The source is God's own mercy. We can put it simply this way.
[00:29:05] When our faith is in Him, the mode follows.
[00:29:10] If it's his mercy that is at work in us, then certain things are going to fall out of that. Why would we rely on ourselves or on our eloquence when the power is in Him? There's no need to. There's even no desire to when our faith is in Him.
[00:29:27] There's power in the plainness of the Gospel, because that's how God comes to us. When Jesus comes into the world, he doesn't come as this giant mighty hero. He comes as a little baby born in a manger.
[00:29:42] He comes as one who endures suffering and rejection and humiliation. But he's really clear in the whole.
[00:29:52] By the time we get to the end of his ministry, there's no mistaking why he came, because he tells us, I came to seek and save the lost. I came to die for the ungodly. I came to raise sick and dying and dead people unto eternal life.
[00:30:12] And that happens through him.
[00:30:15] When we remember that promise and the power that is in the word of Christ, then our mode changes.
[00:30:26] We don't rely on the things of this world, but we rely on Him.
[00:30:31] And what are the results then? What are the results of that? Well, one is boldness.
[00:30:37] Paul says, because we have this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have heart instead. We're strong and encouraged. Paul says in Romans that the Gospel is the power of God into salvation. It means that we can go to a neighbor and friend and tell them about Jesus and just let it be that we don't have to think like, okay, I got to be really fancy and got to do all these things and use all this amazing eloquence. Just tell them about Jesus from our hearts to their hearts. And the Lord promises to do his work in that it means that Paul doesn't have to worry about being impressive or making sure people think he's impressive. He can just depend on the Lord and the Lord's work and the Lord's salvation. That's one of the results of this kind of ministry is heart, encouragement, strength, boldness, a lack of fear, and a growth of hope.
[00:31:40] The second is freedom of conscience. He says, we refuse to practice cunning and 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.
[00:31:55] They can commend themselves to other people because in Himself He knows he's right. He's not trying to show one thing, but actually be another. He simply does what he needs to do.
[00:32:13] He has freedom of conscience in his justification because he's been forgiven, and he has freedom of conscience in his sanctification because he's serving the Lord and the Lord is working in Him and through Him. And as he does that, then we can analyze our own hearts as we hear this word and know it to be true. And that leads to the last is that the result of this kind of ministry is power and effectiveness.
[00:32:41] Remember Jesus'words in the Parable about the two people that build their houses in these different ways. One builds it on sand and another builds it on the rock. When we offer to our other people, when we say, put your hope in the word of God, in Christ, we set them on a rock that's powerful and strong and able to withstand the storms of life, even as God enables us to withstand the storms of life. But if we mess around and tamper with God's Word and try to sort of say, well, I don't really want to give them Christ, so I'll give them this diluted thing or halfway thing or another thing, what do we do for people?
[00:33:29] We give them a foundation of sand. We do nothing that'll get all washed away and destroyed in a moment when trials and testing come. But if we offer to people the Lord, because we have boldness in ourself and we have encouragement for them, because there is power and effectiveness in God's Word, these are the results of a ministry that is rooted in the mercy of God.
[00:34:01] And so I'd like to encourage you to remember the God's mercy in your own lives, to reflect on it, hold fast to it, to cling to it, to understand it and develop your understanding in it, to practice living in his mercy every day.
[00:34:18] And I would encourage you also as a church to imagine this. What would our church look like if we went even deeper into trusting in the mercy of God, especially in the work of witness? What would it look like if we, as a congregation looked at the mercy of God, understood it and trusted Him even more as we sought to disciple other people, as we sought to witness and share that light of Christ?
[00:34:49] How much bolder might we be? How much freer might we be? How much more effective might we be? How much more glory would God receive in knowing that it was his work and his sufficiency that drove us, motivated us and shaped us?
[00:35:08] Let's pray for that now.
[00:35:12] Our Lord, we thank you for the Gospel, the mercy of God that comes to us in Christ.
[00:35:18] We thank you for the forgiveness of our sins and the promise of resurrection.
[00:35:25] We thank you for your encouragement and strength, for both fighting sin in this life and also helping others to fight sin and to follow after you.
[00:35:36] As we reflect on the strength of the work of Christ, as we reflect on his healing power, of his great promises, of the rest that he provides, as we reflect on our. Own lives and all of the things that you have done in them, the way in which you preserve us and keep us, help us to weather against the storms of life. Lord, we ask and we pray for encouragement.
[00:36:03] We pray that we would have even clearer in our eyes and in our hearts the mercy that we have received from you.
[00:36:13] Let our faith be dependent entirely on it, on you and Your work for us. Let us find our sufficiency in you. And as that happens, Lord, we ask that you would encourage us, that you would give us boldness and strength hearts that love you and love others and want to share that Word with the world. We ask that you would give us freedom and effectiveness and that through the Ministry of the Word, the ministry of that mercy, the Ministry of Christ, that many would be saved, that the minds of unbelievers would be unblinded. And that they would come to see not us, not our strength, not our eloquence, not our righteousness, but you. That they would see the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ.
[00:37:12] Lord, let us be Christ centered and lovers of the Gospel, not in name only, not by slogan or by association, but by faith in Jesus Christ. As our Lord.
[00:37:30] And Lord, as you rule and reign in our hearts, as you subdue us to Yourself, we ask that you would help us to be servants for Your sake. Help us as we consider this work of our Church that you have given to us and to take on that task together, each in our own particular part, each in our own particular context. Let us work together and shine brightly in our community that many would come to know you and give you glory. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
