The Suffering No.4 Why we will never give up

Second Corinthians in chapter four. Tim has taken you through three of these studies, now we're into this fourth chapter as we make our way through Paul's epistle to the Corinthians, the second Corinthians epistle. Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.

That's the title of our address about holding on. We do not lose heart, rather we have renounced secret and shameful ways. We do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God.

On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly, we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of God.

Who is the image of God? For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

Read together with me to the 12th verse. We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not in despair.

Persecuted, but not abandoned. Struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. Now Paul goes on and gives us a little bit of background information from the Old Testament and works out certain things as a result.

It is written, I believed, therefore I have spoken. With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.

Now together, therefore we do not lose heart, 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. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord, no tender voice like thine can peace afford.

Whatever it is that may be troubling you this morning, just write that into your thoughts as you're singing these verses and ask for God's assistance. I need thee, O blest Thee, Thou my Saviour, I come to Thee. I need thee every hour, keep on making me, I need thee, Thou blest Son, I need Thee, O I need Thee, And have your Bibles open at the chapter I've just read.

There are three things the devil would settle for in your life. One is to rob you of your faith, but if you're a true believer, that's impossible. The second is to blunt the evangelistic edge of your life, so that in effect your danger to him in terms of influencing others is minimized.

And the third is to create such a spirit of fear, having pressed the panic button in your personality, that that reduces you to such a massive jelly that you can't really make much impact in this world and share your faith with someone else. I think that that broadly describes his strategy. And he went full blast at the Apostle Paul as he turns his guns on everyone.

Endeavoring to rob him of his faith or make him ineffective as an evangelist, he was utterly unsuccessful. And here in the fourth chapter, you've got one of these great statements of the courage of the Apostle Paul, the way that he was able to cope. But Paul speaks not just for you, he also speaks for me.

And he not only speaks for himself, therefore. So what I want to do is to take these verses and, under the heading that we've been given, why we will never give up, examine them together. Do you know the story of Hugh Latimer? He was a wonderful man.

One of my great regrets is that not that many people read church history. Hugh Latimer was Bishop of Worcester, was educated at Cambridge. His ministry actually spanned the reign of three kings, or two kings and one rather infamous queen.

The whole period of the reign of Henry VIII, he made quite an impact, but not sufficient. And the one who followed him, Edward VI, who was a remarkable king who, alas, did not reign for very long. And then Mary, Queen of Scots, took over, Bloody Mary.

And there along she had the four or five great preachers of the day in the Tower of London. And amongst them was Hugh Latimer. On one occasion, he was taken back to Oxford.

And there he had to pray the supreme price for being a Christian. And for preaching the truth of the Reformation. He was in the company of another great man, Bishop Ridley.

And on one occasion, as they were making their way towards the stake, he uttered, did Latimer, those famous words, Be of good comfort, brother Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle that by God's grace in England, as I trust shall never be put out. And the question is, how on earth does a man faced with being ignited as a part of a bonfire, how does he cope with that situation and utter these words? Or to shift it from the century of the reign of Queen Mary and bring it to the 20th century, just in case you think that, you know, the greats ran out in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

What about Joseph Tom, a man to whom I've often made reference, who before the security forces in Romania, when Ceausescu's men pointed their revolvers at his brains and were about to blow him to bits. Joseph Tom, the leader of the Baptist churches in Bucharest and indeed throughout Romania, said, all right, go ahead. Blow my brains out, but you'll baptize my tapes with my blood, and that will do good service for the kingdom of Christ, because you will not stop people who are already listening, passing on what I have said, because my tapes will be baptized in my blood.

Ah, but you say, well, you know, it's Latimer, it's Tom, but I live in Worthing and I'm not a preacher anyway. You know, the best sermons that I've ever come across, I've learned from the examples of people within Worthingtown. This last week was a case in point.

Lady esteemed by many people here suddenly finds that she has the ravages of a malignant disease to cope with and her time at the human level, therefore, is limited. And just to listen to someone who's only just received that news, working it through in terms of the faith that they have and ministering as a spinoff to the pastor who comes to visit, that surely is a living illustration that it is possible under great pressures and great troubles to be able to cope because, well, you've got a handle on the Christian faith that will keep you through all the difficulties of life. And that's what Paul here is saying.

You could take the 16th verse through to the end as a sort of summary statement. It's not completely appraise-y, but it will serve sufficiently for us to extract from there three pointers on which we can hang all that is said in the previous verses. For here the apostle talks about himself not losing heart, picking up on that same term in the first verse, and he speaks about what immediately is happening to him.

And then, if you'll allow me to use this as another hook on which to hang what he has to teach, he speaks about his physical circumstances and you find the word outwardly, the second word in the second sentence in the 16th verse, immediately, outwardly, and then he peers into the future and he makes reference to what is in store. And so, if you'll permit this, he uses the concept of the ultimate, or ultimately, and he tells us as a result of these three emphases, which you find within this chapter, that there is no doubt, how it is that he never gave up when faced with, as far as he was concerned, not only the pressures of persecution, but ultimately, the pressures of martyrdom. Well then, let's use that as, as I say, a little cameo, a little summary statement to open up the rest of the verses, 16th through to the 18th.

Therefore, we do not lose heart. Why, Paul? Well, he'll tell you more explicitly in the first verse. We do not lose heart because we have this ministry.

What ministry is he referring to? Well, Tim made it very clear as he took you through the rather complex argument of the apostle in the previous chapter. In the eighth verse of the third chapter, he talks about the ministry of the Spirit and he contrasts what, in effect, is the good news of Jesus to the news that Moses brought down Sinai. Now, when Moses brought the law to the Israelites, it was wonderful.

In one sense, it was a further indication of the revelation of God and there was a great amount of light, spiritually speaking, which Moses was able to share. But when the Lord Jesus came along and he gave us his great and glorious gospel, then that old ministry, that old covenant, what the Old Testament stands for in some degree, well, it seems to not lose its significance but pale by comparison with this greater revelation of God. You get these spotlights and as you see them now, as I look into them with the darkness of the roof, I see the light.

But if you could take this roof away and allow me for a moment, a sunny day with the sun just shining in down towards this pulpit, I would hardly be able to work out the light of the spotlights because they would be subsumed, taken over, rendered inadequate by the greater light of the sunshine. And so it is with the gospel. If you like, this is the greater covenant and this is what the Apostle Paul is making reference to.

Having received this ministry, we do not faint. It's the gospel. He spells it out in the fourth verse, the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

This is the immediate circumstance of Paul. He has received the gospel. You have received the gospel.

How highly do you esteem the gospel? And incidentally, why did you receive it? By grit or by grace? By merit or by mercy? Paul gives you the answer. Since through God's mercy we have this ministry, we have this gospel, there's nothing that I could do to make myself a Christian. All I could do is to confess the sin from which I needed to be to be saved.

And in the grace of God, he gives me the ability so to do. And this is the wonder of the gospel, that I can be reconciled to God, not through grit, not through merit, but through grace and through mercy. Now this is a wonderful revelation.

It goes beyond that of Moses and it needs to be shared with other people. But when you receive this gospel, its reception demands, says Paul, renunciation. You see, he's now speaking as a preacher.

There are certain things that he will not do as a preacher that others have been doing. What are those things? Well, there are at least two. He says, we never tamper with the scriptures.

Look at verse two, the heart of it, the heart of it. We do not use deception. We always tell the gospel as it actually is.

What is more, we unfurl the gospel so that it can be applied to every man's conscience in the sight of God. You see, what he's saying is this, that there are out there, as far as he's concerned in the Roman world, many people who desperately need this gospel and their hearts have been activated towards it. They've got a hunger.

They don't know what it is that they're looking for, but they do know that there's something else in life, which is very, very precious, which is very vital. Ask, says the apostle, I have this gospel. I will not tamper with it.

I will in no way top it or tail it. I will spread it out in front of them, and I will believe that it will start to affect the consciences of many people. What is more, because this gospel speaks of the glory of Christ, verse 5, there is no way, says the apostle, in which I will put the spotlight on myself.

The gospel is not to promote me. It is to proclaim Jesus. We do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord.

That's one of the consistent characteristics of the apostle Paul. He never engages in a personality cult. Now, I think this is important.

It's very important in the 20th century, and particularly in the last decade of this century. I had on my desk this last week a glossy brochure, which must have cost, I would have thought, 60 or 70p to produce. Presumably it's been produced in its thousands.

And this brochure was basically just spotlighting one man and one man's ministry, and the way how somehow or other he has restored or is restoring the church to apostolic times. But the leaflet spoke just of himself, and just about what he was able to do. And there were the pictures, and all the bag of tricks that really goes along with almost a TV or a Hollywood celebrity.

And I had great difficulty in relating that document to the apostle, who says, we do not preach ourselves, but Christ as Lord. You see, this gospel is so great, it is so wonderful, that the only one who should get glory as a result of the gospel is the gospel himself. I mean, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lamb has all the glory in Emmanuel's land, my friend. The Lamb should have all the glory in the kingdom of God, in its manifestation on earth. No one else, not the preacher, not the church, just the Lord of the gospel.

Because this gospel is so wonderful. The apostle not only indicates what he will renounce because he has received the gospel, but he'll also explain why it is that there are those who reject what he unfurls and puts in front of them. Verse three, if our gospel is veiled, he's backtracking because you remember the veil on Moses's face when he came down Sinai, and the apostle talks about the veil elsewhere that is on Jewish eyes.

Well, says the apostle, if I unfurl this great news of the gospel, and men and women do not rush to embrace it, there is only one explanation. What is it, Paul? The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. But you see, your position is different.

You are like Paul. Your eyes have been opened. You perceive these truths.

That means that God has blessed you incredibly. And you are to take the truth of this gospel and not only share it with other people, but having a handle on this gospel, it will enable you to cope with all the pressures and the problems that come during your short uncertain earthly life and pilgrimage. So whether you're a faggot, as Latimer did, and encourage your brothers, or stand between your other Christian friends and in the era of Ceausescu, his secret police, and defy them, because come bullets or come freedom, you cannot lose.

Or God forbid, if some creeping disease comes into your finite body, you will still be able to hang in because you know something of this great gospel that affects not only time but eternity and guarantees your future. The apostle develops his argument. He speaks about God who eons ago utters the words and light came into the world.

He also takes up the theme that not only did God as creator bring light into the world, physical natural light, but God as recreator sent his son to be the light of the world. And Jesus, who is the image of God, points men and women from the darkness into the immediate presence of his father. Now, says the apostle, there's only one thing you can do with such a message as that, and that is to hold on to it and to preach it, to preach it with all your might and with all your main, and to believe that others as they respond to the gospel of Christ, in effect, they will have the same experience as mother earth did years ago when the physical light shone and the darkness was banished.

So as Jesus, the light shines into your heart, you will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. Now, that's immediate. You understand? This is what has happened to Paul.

This is his ministry. He renounces certain things as a result. He can explain the reason why certain people don't respond to what he has to say, but this is his blessing.

There's no one who can take it from him. Now, if that is immediate, let's have a look at my second word, which was outwardly, the outward. This gospel has been placed within a human vessel, says the apostle.

Look at verse 7. We have this treasure in jars of clay. Now, I don't know what you think of your body. I'm having increasing problems.

I just wish that the guarantee was a little better and that longevity was built into my birth and that there would not be a tendency for eyes to become dim or for memory to fail. Now, I'm sure that some of you don't have this problem at all, but 99% of you do. Here is Paul.

He's speaking of his vessel. He's speaking of his body. You see, man is of the earth.

The Lord God takes a handful of dust and breathes into it his life and Adam is created. But this earthly casket of ours, as a result of the fall, is not destined for eternity. There's wear and there's tear on it.

And here is this great gospel, far more powerful than the physical light, far more wonderful than the literal sunshine. And this gospel has been placed within an inadequate clay vessel. And says the apostle, what I'm finding is this, that as the years go by with the pressures in my life, my body can't stand the strain.

But he says, in one sense, this is good, because there is no one who can explain the impact of my ministry on the basis of my frail body or my limited gifts. Why is the apostle making such an impact? Well, it's the all-surpassing power that there is in the gospel. It comes from God.

It doesn't come from him. And he goes on in the 8th verse to give you some rough idea as to the lifestyle that he's living and the difficulties that, as a result, he's having to cope with. Go up to the 10th and the 11th verses before we backtrack on the 8th and notice how he uses twice the words always.

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus. And in the 11th verse, we who are alive are always being given over to death. You see, another thing that I got from this brochure which really did upset me was the idea that coming to Christ will resolve all your problems.

Now our Lord can touch the funeral beer and cause life to come into a corpse. Of that, I have utterly no problems, no doubts at all. I have seen, on one occasion, the contours of a man's face turn to normal as a result of prayer when I was out in Southeast Asia.

But there is no way, no way at all, in which you can bring into the so-called blessings of the gospel perpetual health and prosperity unqualified this side of eternity. That is saying too much. This is not what the gospel says.

What the gospel says is this, that in your clay vessel you can cope because you have this handle on the promises of God. So here is the apostle and he tells us that he's pressed on every side. The steamroller goes over him, verse 8, but amazingly he's not crushed.

He's confounded or if you like perplexed. I'm sorry, he's confused or if you like perplexed. But he's not confounded.

He's not in total despair. He's hunted like some wild animal. That's the verb in verse 9. And yet he's not been abandoned by God who says, under no circumstances will I forsake you.

Another translation of Hebrews 7.5. He's struck down but he's not annihilated. Chapter 11 of verse 23 tells us that the apostle Paul is constantly facing death. But you see, our Lord Jesus taught that we were not to be afraid of any who might seem to have power over death.

What we are to be afraid of is him who can destroy the soul. And the apostle knows that his soul cannot be destroyed. It might well be that he dices with danger that ultimately he will pay the supreme penalty as indeed I've indicated he did.

But what he does know is that his soul's salvation is safe in the promises of the gospel. And don't you see, you know that and I know that because we've trusted the Lord Jesus as our saviour. If we die with him, we will live with him.

If we affirm him, he will confess us. So we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake. There was a sense in which the martyrdom of Paul is not to be seen in terms of what happened in Rome.

The martyrdom of Doolord and the day when God sent his angels to carry Paul into his heavenly presence. You see, we are called to a life of daily crucifixion. How you work that out is between you and the Holy Spirit.

But this is what the Bible is certainly teaching. So I must hasten on. If we've looked at what I've called immediately and if we've looked at outwardly, the outward body wasting away, yet the inward man being renewed, that comes of course by reading scripture, by prayer, by being faithful around the Lord's table, by coming under the regular exposition of his word.

These are some of the disciplines. There is also this ultimate, what is round the corner. For our light and momentary troubles, verse 17, are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

Now backtrack to verse 13 because he expands on the ultimate. You know, since I've been back from Africa, I've had the privilege of conducting the memorial service of two of our very dear friends, Florence Bowen and Frieda Robinson. They're both very different in many ways.

And yet they both had this in common. They were hungry for the word of God. To preach to people like that is so easy.

You could catch the eyes of them as you were ministering God's word. Florence, very concerned about the second advent of Christ and Frieda, a dignified lady who would constantly be in at our prayer meetings and so utterly reliable, dependable. At Florence's memorial service on Thursday, Friday up at the creme, I said that there was something about her and there's something that the apostle Paul brings out here which dovetails.

She believed in what I call the theology of the afterward. And I went so far as to say to the folks who gathered at the memorial service, you know, when I was at Sunday school, when I was a kid back in the north of England, I'd really got the Christmas parties sussed out. You never went for too many sandwiches because if you ate too many sandwiches when the jelly and the blancmange and the trifle came and then the cakes, you were so bunged up with sandwiches you couldn't, you see, I really wanted them to reverse the menu but I could never convince the Sunday school superintendent.

And don't you see that as far as the gospel is concerned, it affects the now but it's also the theology of the afterward. And the apostle Paul says that afterwards there is an eternal benefit which is ours as we move into the presence of God. Therefore to live and to have a handle on the life, this side of eternity, as though that's the only thing that matters is indeed to be myopic, is to be short-sighted.

The apostle takes us back to an Old Testament character. Psalm 13 is the quotation from, verse 13 is a quotation from Psalm 116. Where the psalmist is in great difficulty, like the apostle Paul, the context is almost the same.

So Paul plunders it, I believed therefore I have spoken. He believed when it looked as though all things were pressing in against him and that there was there was no future at all apart from the deliverance of God. And Paul says, well that's just just like me with that same spirit of faith.

We also believe. I don't think that Paul is here referring to the the Holy Spirit, I think he's referring to, if you like, that impetus that the believer has to continue. We have that same impetus, the same impetus that kept the psalmist, that keeps the apostle Paul, that kept Latimer, that kept Pan, that keeps my friend in a cancerous condition.

We have this, the same spirit of faith. We believe and therefore we speak. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

It's a baptismal formula that Paul smuggles in at this particular point. We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will future also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. You see the ultimate, the glory, he's working it out.

He is a creature of time but he doesn't cling on to time as though and life as though that's the only thing that there is. He's constantly got the beyond in front of him and he thinks doubtless of our Lord Jesus who for the joy that was before him endured the cross and so forth. So says the apostle, if I suffer this side of eternity, well verse 15 it doesn't really matter.

It's no basic cost to me. I don't even compute it because that means that the grace of the gospel is reaching more and more people. If I live the crucified life and as a result more people are affected by the gospel, well to God be the glory.

It overflows to the glory of God. And then verse 17 the most amazing statement I think that any man ever wrote in terms of discipleship. Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

Light? Light? Good grief man you're beside yourself. Light? Look at chapter 6. As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way etc. Hardships, distresses, inbeatings, imprisonments, riots, hard work, sleepless nights, hunger, purity.

Understanding patience and kindness and what have you. But take that little cameo in verse 5. Beatings, imprisonments, riots. I would want front page headlines in the Christian Herald wouldn't you? If you'd gone through this lot.

But the apostle Paul he tots it all up and he says it's just a light momentary trouble. You see when you can cope with your circumstances like this then you know why it is that we've run into this chapter with the title Why We Will Never Give Up. Hugh Latimer had a colleague whose name was John Bradford.

Bradford was a great preacher at the same time as Latimer. He came from Manchester grammar school and eventually like all folks in the north who tried to make an impact on the south he came down and tried to civilize the southerners. And he was very successful joking aside as a preacher but he fell foul of Mary and on one occasion he's taken out to Smithfield marketplace in London and he too is going to pay the supreme penalty for his faith in the reformation, the gospel of the reformation.

There's a young man who is going to die alongside him and his name is John, John Leaf. And Bradford says be of good comfort brother John. Now this is a man who's he's actually been tied to the stake and they're getting the fire bringing it towards him and he says this, be of good comfort brother John for we shall have a merry supper with our Lord tonight.

Now that's the faith that I want for you. It's the faith that I want for myself. It's doubtful that we will ever have to confront in this country in our lifetime faggots and bonfires and that sort of thing.

But there are incredible pressures that can break in upon a Christian even in this country. And this word therefore is for you. You can cope with the decaying of the outward when you have in mind the ultimate and when you appreciate the blessings, the immediate blessings of the gospel.

So I take you back to that verse in the psalm with which I opened our service this morning where the psalmist says, be at rest once more oh my soul for the Lord has been good to you. That's the psalm from which Paul quoted earlier in the chapter, the fourth chapter of 2 Corinthians as you remember. So my friend here's the word of God for you this morning.

Take it, apply it and run with it and thank God for it. Let's sing our final hymn number nine in the supplement in which we talk to ourselves. Be still my soul the Lord is on thy side.

Be still my soul Father we thank you for the assurance of the apostle Paul which can be our assurance too and we pray that by your grace it may be. We bless you for the blessings of the gospel which we have immediately and though outwardly our earthy body decays we thank you for future prospects which are so glorious that they make all the problems of life pale almost into insignificance. Be with those who are going through a rough patch at this moment, those who need their faith buttress Lord we pray those who are coping with the last hours or days or weeks of life on this earth be very near to them we ask of you and Lord as we come around your holy table in a moment may this bread and this wine become to us the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus as spiritually he presents himself and makes himself felt.

Now whether we stay or go may we know your blessing the blessing of almighty God Father Son and Holy Spirit now and always and the people of God said Amen. Good morning