Sermon for Sunday September 19th, 2021: “We do not lose heart..."
(Please read 2 Corinthians 4: 1-18 – 2 Corinthians 5: 8; Hebrews 11: 1- 6 & the “Abraham account”)
A question for you – do you have “a hero” from the Bible?
For many reasons Paul is the bible character I most admire. He already had an amazing life “before Christ”. His dramatic meeting with the Risen Christ on the Road to Damascus is known even by those who’ve never opened a Bible. Paul is totally transformed, from a blood-thirsty persecutor of Christians (Saul of Tarsus) into a brilliant missionary for Christ. He became a teacher, and preacher, a writer-theologian; a planter of churches. That this man served the Gospel through the thick of success and the thin of beating and imprisonment and disability...this amazes me the most. Paul was revered and reviled, blessed and blamed (by men) in equal measure. His love of God saw him walk and talk and sail for God across many lands and down through the decades. What an example. What a hero.
He never gave up on the harder… “Road from Damascus”.
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 for us 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. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
Paul opens and closes this chapter (2 Corinthians 4) by saying, we do not lose heart. Not for a moment do I think he repeats that line because he’s never been tempted to lose heart. To the contrary, I think he repeats it because discouragement has been a very real temptation (maybe a temporary experience) for him.
8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. (1 Cor 1: 8-9)
Even the great Paul felt like throwing in the towel...
Even the great Paul had heard the tempter’s call to quit...to walk away from his great calling. But, in the end, another voice prevailed. 9 ...But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.
Through bitter experience (affliction) Paul learned to trust the deliverer…and hear his voice over the clamour of competing noises. When faced with the impossible, we start to rely on ourselves and it’s then that our circumstances (fear) begin to overwhelm us. That’s when we lose heart...that’s when we have no resilience, no capacity to bounce back.
Corrie Ten Boom, speaking of her experience in a concentration camp famously said, “There is no pit so deep that that Jesus’ love and light were not deeper still!”
In her nakedness and filth she and the other women (standing before cruel strangers) identified with the Saviour who lay bare upon the gory cross. In degradation, they knew power.
7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed…
It’s easy to lose heart when our gaze is (only) upon the world and its conflicts...the moral direction in which it is going...when we see our churches headed the way of the world...when we look at the endless burden of our own lives, and we say, “This isn’t what I signed up for! I’m gonna’ pack my bags and head for the hills! I’m as good as dead!”
Even at our best and most confident, we have no power. My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:10). We should admit it. In that weakness we find the power of God. That’s what Paul discovered...resurrection hope.
That’s why he reminds the church of the God who raises the dead.14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.
Paul has told the Corinthians that God always uses the ordinary vessel, the seemingly foolish and powerless person, to display his extraordinary power and his message...the message of the cross (1 Corinthians 1 & 2).
Paul wants to correct the vision of the church.
4 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. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. 6 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.
Because we know these things; because we have these things already, we do not dare give in to despair and discouragement. So, we do not lose heart! The trials we are going through are going somewhere. This dark vale is not my home; I’m just a wanderer here!
We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too. (2 Corinthians 1: 5, the Message).
You are not blind to these truths! Look (again) this way, Paul asks the church. Look past your current circumstances. You are “over the circumstances!” We can be content, even in these dire straits. We can be thankful for what we possess, in abundance, if only we look.
I suppose, Paul would hate the thought that he was anyone’s hero. For him, Jesus is the hero, the one at whose face we should be looking. Paul relied on God’s power – he himself was (probably) near blind and disabled!
Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 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.
Paul in no way denies or diminishes the painful realities of his or that of the church that he loves…but he does ask them to walk by faith, not by sight, to do what the Father of all those who believe did, to walk on, not because he could see it all mapped out before him, but because he believed in the One it was who made the promises.
8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going…
Abraham was “sure of what he hoped for and certain of what he did not (yet) see.”
10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
“For what is faith unless it is to believe what you do not see?” (St. Augustine). Believing is seeing, not the other way round. Even though they can’t see with physical eyes, the man or woman of faith sees with the eyes of faith…
We’ve been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies! The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less. 6-8 That’s why we live with such good cheer. It’s what we trust in but don’t yet see that keeps us going. Do you suppose a few ruts in the road or rocks in the path are going to stop us? When the time comes, we’ll be plenty ready to exchange exile for homecoming… (2 Corinthians 5, the Message)
The great modern tragedy is that there are billions of people who have nothing to look forward to. They have absolutely no idea of the God who loves them and can forgive them; the God who, in Jesus Christ, tells us that the best is yet to come; that, whatever may befall us here or be happening to us here below, the story is to be continued…
Pray for an Abraham’s faith, that “even though” faith that says, with prophet Habakkuk – even with the enemy at the very gates of the city…
17 (Even) Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, (Even) though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, (Even) though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls…
“It’s one thing to thank and praise God for all the good things in our lives, to rejoice in our blessings. It is quite another to rejoice in the midst of nothing…” (David Prior).
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. 19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights. (Habakkuk 3)
Even then, we do not lose heart.
MFR 16-09-21