Praise the Lord. He went through hell and he went through the grave alone so that we would never have to. Praise his name. This is the final message in a series that we've been going through at Sandy Ridge through the month of December. And the messages have been structured around those verses and choruses of the song that we just sang, What Love My God. It's a powerful song. We did this last year as well where we went through and introduced a new song to the church so that we would have songs to sing and we would know from what parts of scripture they come from. And so this last stanza, this is what I'm going to be talking to you guys about, and specifically the last line. And I'll just go ahead and admit, when I read this last line and then I started looking at the scripture, this is something that's overwhelming to me. I'm going to do my best to talk to you through it and to preach, but just the words themselves are powerful. And they have the power to change even the farthest center the person who has the darkest heart, the person who is running from the Lord this morning, the Word of God has the power to reach you. And I'm glad to stand and know that we have a mighty God who will do everything that He intends on doing in our lives. And so let me read this last stanza to remind you of what we're going to be talking about. What love, my God, so gracious and extreme, was strong enough to come and fight for me, to go through hell and down into the grave and raise me up to see you face to face? You raise me up to see you face to face. This message is called Face to Face. It's going to be taken from 2 Corinthians chapter 4. We're going to look at verses 1 through 6. So you can go ahead and pull out your Bibles and turn there or turn your Bible on and scroll there. The main point that I'm going to focus on is found in verse 6, but there are three other points that I want to hit before we get to that one. And so while you're turning there or turning your phone on, I'm going to tell you a brief story. I was in Starbucks a few years ago, And I saw a table full of Chinese students who were talking. And I'm one of those people that I'm OK inviting myself into a conversation. And my wife says it's socially awkward, but she loves it. I mean, she likes being there to watch it unfold. She doesn't. She doesn't. Well, and then, of course, once you introduce yourself to the conversation and you get things going, you get the introductions out of the way, of course, you know, I like talking about the things you're not supposed to talk about. I like talking about religion. I like talking about politics. So we quickly went there. I said, hey, guys, you know what? I want to tell you the most important thing about me is this. I didn't grow up in a Christian home. But when I was 20 years old, I started to read the Bible. I started to see something that I've never seen before. And I started to see this story about God creating the heavens and the earth, about us owing everything to God, because everything we have comes from Him. We should worship and obey Him and glorify Him. But instead, we rebelled against God, and we wanted to have our own freedom. We wanted to have our own way. We sinned against God. And every single person after that is born with the same kind of sin nature. And thankfully, God didn't end the story there, but he sent Jesus to rescue us. He didn't want that to be the end of the story. And Jesus came, and he suffered on a cross to die for my sins, die for the world's sins, so that anyone who trusts in him, they'll have hope beyond this world. And he didn't just say those words and just say, hey, believe those words. They're good words to live by. He said, I'm going to prove it to you. On the third day, I'll be raised from the dead. And that's exactly what happened. And I said to these Chinese students, I said, one day when I was reading that, I've heard this story growing up. Every once in a while, I'd hear it. I go to church Christmas and Easter only. I was one of those people. And I said, I've heard that story a lot. But it became more than a story to me when I was 20 years old. And I began to see. that this is more than a story. This is real. This is reality. And really, there wasn't much of a choice in it for me anymore. I couldn't live my life the same anymore. I became a Christian. And then I turn and I said, has that happened to any of you? And so one of the guys, he says, we're all atheists. And it wasn't exactly the response that I thought that I was going to get. I was thinking they're going to turn to the Lord, or they're going to want to talk about Jesus. But there are times where people are going to hear the gospel, and they're going to reject it. And they're going to say we're atheists. And they're going to have different questions to ask us, and that sort of thing. Even people in our family, some of Sarah's family is Mormon. And there have been times where I've been in tears talking to them about Jesus is not the created one. He's the uncreated one, the divine son of God. He's not brothers with Lucifer. You know, God the father and God the mother didn't have spirit babies and stuff. That's not the God of the Bible. And I'd be in tears pleading with them to trust the Lord. And then they would go and they would say, don't talk to Zach anymore. OK, he's just, you don't need. And so part of the family, for a while, they stopped talking to me. So my question is, what do we do when the gospel that we love and we preach is rejected? What's our typical response? We usually get discouraged. And there are plenty of people that we would love to see them in our family come to the Lord. Not yet. It's just not happening. We're being misunderstood. We're being rejected. And so, this morning, we're going to see, you know, when things don't work out the way that we expect them to, is there any reason to have hope? We're going to look at Paul, who's a minister of the gospel, an apostle. He was far too familiar with grief in his life. And there were many people, even in his church, that would call into question his qualifications, his character, his abilities, his motives, and even the gospel that he preached. What was it that kept his heart full so that he would be able to say that he fought the good fight, that he ran a good race? Hopefully, that will become evident to you today. So let's read 2 Corinthians 4 1-6. God, I pray you would honor the reading of your word. Therefore, since we have this ministry, and we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully. but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, whose the image of God, should shine on them. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus's sake. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So here are the first of the four points that I want you to notice with me this morning. First, Paul says he doesn't lose heart. The greatness of your life's purpose, it flows from God. So look in verse one, therefore, since we have this ministry, we've received mercy. We don't lose heart. Paul's saying that we don't lose heart because of the greatness of the one who gave us our life's work. He didn't invent or imagine his life's purpose or goals. And some people, they think that they have to come up with their own meaning in life, and then they have to sustain that. They have to come up with something that's so important that their life matters. And that's absolutely exhausting, if you've ever tried it. It's a God-sized task that's only fit for the shoulders of the one who's created us and actually gives us our true purpose. So remember Paul's conversion story. In Acts chapter 22, he says that he was on the road to Damascus and he was going to imprison and murder Christians who said that Jesus was the Christ. And Christ interrupted his journey and knocked him onto his behind with light, and he spoke to him. And in that moment, he was converted. And then he received the mission to preach the good news to the Gentiles. And he immediately begins preaching in synagogues to Jews, and immediately he receives death threats from them. So he has to leave town. So one thing that we see in Paul's conversion is that right after he trusts the Lord, he becomes... Life doesn't become increasingly more comfortable and easy, but it's actually increasingly more difficult. Before Christ, he was born into the right family, he had the right education and the right morals and right religion and all that stuff, but when he met Christ, he gave it all up. In Philippians 3, 8, he said this. Yet indeed, I count all things as loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ. It's said that when Paul would go into a town, he wouldn't ask, so where's the best hotel here? He'd ask, how are the jails? Because he was often imprisoned for the message he was preaching. Why would he live this way? And we see it's really simple in that verse. Jesus is greater. It's simple. Jesus is greater. What's crystal clear and that we need to hear this morning is that Paul had experienced something on that road that wrecked him to the core. It almost sounds like the beginning of a country song on a dirt road. It transformed him that day on the dirt road to Damascus. He was like someone who had tasted the most potent and life-altering substance and nothing else this side of heaven would even get close to satisfy his craving for it again. Listen, Paul would rather face the most challenging day of his life on earth with all the pain and all the struggle and all the rejection and have Christ. rather than have everything this world has to offer and not have them. So first, the greatness of your life's purpose, it flows from God. Second, we don't lose heart because our life's work is new covenant work. And it's going to need a little bit of explaining. So what is this ministry, the new covenant that we have? It's found in chapter 3, and the old covenant is going to be contrasted with the New Covenant. And so what is the Old Covenant? It's when God brought His people, delivered them from Egyptian slavery, and He took them out of the wilderness to Mount Sinai where they would worship Him, and He spoke he spoke to Moses and gave him the Ten Commandments. And those Ten Commandments would be what the people of God would live by. These people who were formerly slaves now become the people of God with the promise that God would be their God and they would be his people. And you could see that Moses wanted to see the glory of God. And you see in Exodus 33, you can read more about it this afternoon if you want to. But what happened is that after God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, he goes down. And these people are worshiping a golden calf. And he destroys those tablets. And then he goes back. And God ends up etching, I'm sorry, Moses ends up etching the commands. And Moses is really discouraged. All of the people, instead of enjoying and appreciating these Ten Commandments that God is speaking to them, they set up an idol for themselves. And so he needed something. He needed God to encourage him, so he asked to see the glory of the Lord. And what had to happen was the glory of God is so bright and it's so great that he had to hide Moses in the cleft of a rock so that the glory could pass over and Moses could live. Now, this is a great glory, isn't it? I mean, that's pretty amazing. He saw, in a sense, not the face of God, the backside of God, and it was glorious, and his face changed. It literally changed. He had light that would stream from his face, and he had to put a veil over his face so that people, the Israelites, they wouldn't see the brightness of His face and they wouldn't be blinded by it. So this is something that Paul says, that's a great glory, but the new covenant, it far exceeds that glory. In fact, that old glory, it's passing away because of the glory of the Spirit of God in the face of Jesus. We see it even clearer. The Spirit, the old covenant brought death, and the new covenant brings life and righteousness. OK, so we're talking about glory. Well, what is it? Glory is simply you could say it this way. It is the outshining of the invisible perfection of Jesus. Like it's it's who God is going public so that people can see. And actually, because God's a spirit, he's invisible. So we can't see him. But it's the outshining of him making himself visible. And so what's awesome is that the old covenant, it has a type of perfection and a type of glory. But the face of Jesus, He makes God visible. He is the image of the invisible God. So this is, you know, we just simply can't see God and we wouldn't know Him unless He makes Himself known to us. Thankfully, He's done this in the face of Jesus. Paul, what does he mean in the phrase? He says, we don't lose heart. And it means this. It has some signs of what would it look like if we actually did lose heart and we stopped trusting in the glory of the new covenant and the new promise of God. A typical reaction that people have when they lose heart is they start to get manipulative and controlling. So instead of trusting in the Lord to save the people we love, instead of trusting in the Lord to sanctify them, we start getting manipulative, or we start getting controlling. We take things into our own hands. And so why would people do this? Well, they either don't trust the grace and the power of God to rescue those that they love, or there's some other agenda. And often, there were false teachers that were at Corinth. They had different alternative motives. They wanted glory for themselves and not glory for the Lord. I've heard someone say that if a man can convince you to become a Christian or to follow Jesus, another man can convince you to stop following him. So we need people in our lives to be changed by the glory of God, and not our inventions, and not our pressure, and not the way that we want to manipulate and to change them. They need to be changed by the Lord. Also, Paul says that we're changed by the new covenant. So he says that we don't deceitfully handle the word of God. And this is the same idea of people watering down wine and trying to sell it like it's the real stuff. Or taking a broken pottery or something like that with cracks, covering that up and trying to sell it like it's the real thing. I like to think of it like there's a Dollar General. You can get jewelry from the Dollar General, but if you try to hand someone that and say it's a diamond, it's a real diamond, we know that that's fake. We know that that's not real. And people will see right through us. If we try to water down the gospel and make it more palatable for people, it loses its power to actually save. It actually loses its power to transform people. So we can't water it down and we can't tamper with it. So Paul says, but by the manifestation of truth, we commend ourselves and our lives to you, to every man's conscience. So what he does is he's saying that he and Titus and Timothy, they've been transformed by the glory of the new covenant. And they live with integrity in front of people. And that's why he says, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience. This isn't a game that he's putting on when they're in front of the right people. They don't act a certain way in front of some people and then act a different way in front of someone else. And the reason for this is because they actually commend themselves in the sight of God. They trust that everywhere they go, privately and publicly, they are in the presence of God, in the sight of God. And so they live the same life. There's no duplicitousness going on. I don't know if that's a word, duplicitousness. It's a good one. But look, we know enough people who say that they love Jesus who don't live like they love Jesus. And I'm just telling you that people see right through that. OK, but there are many of us who love Jesus and who are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But God's changing us, right? We're not where we used to be. We're not where we want to be, but we're not where we used to be. So what happens when we shine the gospel clear and then you are living a life in front of people and you have good character? Still, many people don't believe the gospel. And so Paul, he tells us why that is. Look with me in verse three. He says, and even if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing. people who they don't see the need for Christ, or they read the Old Testament and they don't see Jesus in the Old Testament. They don't see that all of it is pointing to Christ. The law is to show us that we're imperfect. The sacrificial system is to show us that we need atonement for our sin. We're separated from God. There must be something to cover our sin. And so there's a veil that is over their eyes so that they cannot see. Look with me in verse four, it says, whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe. So the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who's the image of God, should shine on them. So we see something that's pretty troubling here. But this is what the Bible says, so we're just going to go with this. God is telling us the truth this morning. There are people who hear the gospel, who think it's a good idea maybe, but who do not trust it. They do not trust him. And what's happening is sometimes people think, well, maybe it's an intellectual reason. Maybe they just need more information. OK, some people say, well, maybe they're resistant to the gospel because they've been emotionally wounded and, you know, they just can't trust a heavenly father. And some people say, well, they're just stubborn. They just like they're willfully disobedient. And what we see is beyond that, back behind it is that Satan is blinding them to the glory of the gospel. It's beyond just more facts, please. It's beyond. Yeah, just you don't know what I've been through. It's beyond. I just don't really like it. The Bible says that Satan has veiled the light of the glory of the gospel to them. So. Those who reject the gospel, they actually understand sometimes precisely the claims of the gospel. Rationally, they get it. They do understand the exclusivity of Christ, that He's the only way to the Father, that He is the God-Man who came to suffer for sin, for God's glory, and for the good of those who turn to Him. They just hate it. They just despise Christ for what He has done. Jesus came into this world, and He was killed. He came into the world to his own and he was rejected. Satan has blinded the eyes of their heart so they don't see the light of the glory of God. They have no sense of the beauty of Christ in any of it. They have no sense of the goodness of God, of his excellency, or of his holiness, or the depth of his mercy and kindness. They're blind to it. And I've heard one person say that the mind will never accept what the heart has already rejected. So we've covered so far the greatness of your life's purpose. It flows from God. Number two, we don't lose heart because of our life's work is new covenant work. And number three, we don't lose heart because we preach Christ. And this is found in verse five, for we proclaim not ourselves, but Christ Jesus is Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus sake. And this is really connected closely with verse 2. They preach Christ as Lord. And so all of Paul's aim in all of his life was one simple message that Jesus is Lord. And there's one motivation that he does it from. Jesus is greater. And so you can look at their humble attitudes. He says that we ourselves are your bond servants for Jesus's sake. He understood that his role as a servant He understood that his role is a servant to the members of Christ's church. He's not a rock star, and everyone else is an audience member. And he's not a master over members, but he is a lead servant. And he didn't earn his position through his own efforts. It was the mercy of God that he received it. If you look at verse 1, it says, by God's mercy, we received this new covenant ministry to preach Christ. We didn't earn it. I'm standing up in front of you today. I didn't earn this. I don't deserve this. If you knew where I came from, you wouldn't be sitting there listening to me. But thanks be to God that, by his mercy, we received this kind of ministry. And you have, too. Praise the Lord. So fourth and finally, we don't lose heart because God sovereignly saves hopeless sinners by shining supernatural light on their hearts. I'm going to say it one more time because that's a bunch. We don't lose heart because God sovereignly saves hopeless sinners by shining supernatural light on their hearts. In verse six, he says, for God who said, let light shine out of the darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. Paul draws our attention to the one who is sovereign in creation and salvation. He takes us to Genesis 1. Before the canyons were carved, galaxies breathed out of the mouth of God. God said, let there be light. So we're caught up in something here that's beyond our imagination. God speaking something out of the nothingness. We see that God, he needs no permission or cooperation from the darkness to speak light into existence. He created something brand new that wasn't there before, and he saw that it was good, and it was good, and he did it for a purpose. So Paul has our mind's eye fixed on the fact that our sovereign God spoke light into existence out of nothing. Why? To what end? He's making a comparison with what follows. Just as God sovereignly created light from nothing, so he has shown in our hearts. This is supernatural light that shines immediately through the Holy Spirit to a sinner's heart and transforms them into a new creation. This transformation and rebirth of sinners, it happens in this sacred moment. You have to see that it's more than just mental ascent to facts and information. It does include our mind because it includes the facts of the gospel. But Paul says here that this light has shown in our hearts beyond just the intellect. So why do I say that it has to be more than just the intellect? Because Paul says in verse 4 that it... Paul doesn't say that our deepest obstacle is that we need more information. They actually know the facts of the gospel. But they don't have any sense of the light of the gospel. There's no sense of the beauty of Christ to them. Christians, before we were saved, we used to be blind as well. But then we discovered a sense of Christ's beauty. And that only comes from one source. And that source, it's not the darkened heart. It comes from God, sovereignly shining supernatural light on the heart of hopeless sinners, so that where there was no pulse, there has a pulse. Where there was no light, there's light. Where there was no desire for God, He gives us desire for God. The heart sees the light of the glory of Christ and simultaneously turns to the Lord. This is the way our God saves. He shines in our hearts. And he does so to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This is how we're able to face anything in life, any rejection, any misunderstanding, any tragedy, knowing not only with the head, but also with the heart as well. Having peace in the presence of great trials is only possible in the context of a relationship with Jesus Christ. It's not enough to believe in God in some general way. Paul says life transformation, it comes through saving faith only in relationship to Christ. This is the God we worship, and this is how he saves. This is how we can suffer and not lose heart. We behold the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ. And from that relationship with him, we count everything else as loss in comparison. And so those are my four points. I have a couple of things that I want to leave us with, but before that, I have a video that I want you to see. I was minding my own business on YouTube the other day. And I came across a video that somewhat gets to the heart of this. I'm going to set it up this way. There are people who are either born with hardly any hearing at all, or they were totally deaf. And they have the cochlear implants that are put in, so where they could not hear their voice of their parents. they could finally hear it. And I think this has something to do with the way that when we begin to hear the voice of our maker, when we begin to hear the voice of Christ through the gospel, we'd be able to see the light of the glory of the gospel. It changes us. And so I want you to turn your eyes with me and let's watch this. Hi, Cooper. Sit down for a second. Just be yourself. Now, that's, of course, someone hearing for the first time. They've never heard sound before, and it's overwhelming. But you have to see the comparison, though. There was a time in my life where I couldn't hear the voice of God. I didn't see the glory of God in the light of the gospel. I knew it, but it didn't affect me at all. But then one day, One day, I heard his voice. And in my heart, there was warmth towards him, where there wasn't any warmth. And I wanted to turn to him to see who it is that's getting my attention, who's telling me, I know what you've been through. I know what you've done. And I love you. And so, praise the Lord. It's unmistakable when they heard a sound, wasn't it? It is unmistakable when you have the light of the gospel shown upon your heart. It's unmistakable. It's undeniable. I literally, I can't go back and make sense of what happened other than I couldn't see, and then I could see. I couldn't hear, and then I could hear. And then I had something that I wanted to talk about. I had something that I wanted to show people. I want them to see the glory of God. I want them to see we're created for Him. We're created for Him. So some closing thoughts here. So for believers in Christ, there are people that we love in our family and friends and co-workers. And they're not responding to the gospel the way that we'd like for them to. And it is discouraging. And I want to remind you not to lose heart. Don't faint. We've received the ministry to be the letters of Christ to them, even if they are not responding, even if they're not there yet. We've received this ministry from God. We've received it when we received our salvation. And so let the way that we live our lives and the words that we speak to them make them ache to know this Jesus, make them ache to know Christ. But consider with me for a moment. When you think back through the recent conversations that you've had with family members and friends, maybe classmates in school, are we faithful to share the simple and powerful message of the gospel with them? If we're not, we're losing heart. And it may be that you've stopped sharing Christ with people. Or it may be a long time since you've had a spiritual conversation. Don't be too concerned with how people will receive you. We preach Christ. Love God and love the other person enough to share. Or maybe it isn't the fact that you don't share much. Maybe it's that you are just silent. And I've heard a statistic, and this really troubles me, and it should trouble all of us. It says that many Christians don't share the gospel their entire lives. They'll go through their entire life having experienced the voice of God and the light of God, but not wanting to share it with anyone, not wanting to see that happen in someone else's life. That's really troubling. And there's also an atheist from Penn and Teller that says this about that. He's not a Christian. He said, I've always said that I don't respect people who don't share the gospel. I don't respect that at all. If you believe that there's a heaven and a hell and you believe that people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think, well, it's not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward. How much do you have to hate someone to not share the good news with them? How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? If I believed without a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming for you, and you didn't believe it, and that that truck was bearing down on you, there's a certain point where I'd tackle you. And this is far more important than that. So God reminds us. that through Paul and the message to preach Christ, not yourself. If our message is rejected, it's because their hearts are blinded. We cannot control the response, but we can choose to share or not to share. So shine the light of the gospel straight and clear to your family, friends and coworkers. We've been given this mission. And you might feel unqualified to do this, like you just don't know enough. Sometimes we feel like we don't know all the objections. We don't have all the answers. So we just don't want to mess things up. Charles Spurgeon said this. The word of God can take care of itself and will do so if we preach it and cease defending it. See you that lion. They have caged him for his preservation. Shut him up behind the bars to secure him from all of his foes. See how a band of armed men have gathered around to protect this lion. What a clatter they make with their swords and spears. These mighty men are intent upon defending a lion. Oh, fools and slow of heart. Open that door. Let the Lord of the forest come forth free. Who will dare encounter him? What does he want with your guardian care? Let the pure gospel go forth in all its lion-like majesty, and it will soon clear its own way and ease itself of all its adversaries." We've been given a mission to preach Christ. We can't control the response. We need to shine the gospel clearly and trust his work. And then I do also want to add this for believers. Remember what Paul said about being bond servants for your sake? We're your bond servants. When we preach the gospel and when we share it, we don't need to be intimidating and domineering and arrogant. We're not the lion that's being let out of the cage, right? The Bible says we're sheep. So when we share this gospel and we preach it boldly, we need to do it with a humble attitude. We need to do it knowing that God will be pleased with that. Now, if you're not a Christian and you're visiting with us this morning, if you're not a Christian and you're maybe a member of our church, listen. If you don't have any warmth of the relationship with Jesus, if you don't have any sense of the beauty of Christ, no pleasure in serving Him, that means that you're still blinded and that there is a veil over your heart. We've already seen that people can know the facts about the gospel and still not be saved. They can intellectually agree that this is a good idea, it's a good story, They've done all the right things to be a good, Southern, moral, religious person. But if you don't have any sense of the beauty of Christ, we're still lost. We're still in our sin. And I want to encourage you with this. God, who created light to shine out of the darkness at the dawn of history, can also give you new light this morning. Nothing special about me. Nothing special about anyone else who has been changed by the gospel. We just simply realize that we're lost. And then we heard his voice through the good news. And so listen, if you have any inkling of a desire in your soul to turn to him, don't hesitate. Turn to him. Receive life. You were made for him. And so like the people we saw on the video, Hearing for the first time, there's nothing else greater than to hear His voice and to turn and to see Him. Nothing else is greater. So don't hesitate. Don't resist Him. So we're going to close. And thank you, Diane, if you'd come. And so that's the invitation this morning, is if you are trusting the Lord, don't lose heart. This Christmas season, tons of people, they're saying Merry Christmas. They're all wrapped up in the lights and the gifts and all the things. Continue to preach Christ. Continue to bring the gospel into the conversation with the people you care about. And even though when people aren't responding the way that we want them to, continue to share the gospel, continue to trust in the sovereignty of God. And I'll be down front. If you'd like to talk or if you'd