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So good to worship the Lord together. If for some reason you are unaware,
our church has experienced a big loss this week. The pastor who
had served here shepherding this flock from about the year 2000
until about 2019 went home to be with the Lord this week. I
know probably all of you know that, though not all of you knew
him. Even if you didn't know him, you taste of the effects
of his ministry. And I want you to be aware of
this because if you didn't know him, just know that those around
you are hurting right now. Gary was a dear man, beloved
in the Lord, and the people around you are the very direct effects
of his ministry. Yesterday, some of us gathered
to pray and thank the Lord for Gary. And as we did so, the theme
that just kept on coming up was that Gary was a man who loved
Christ and held out the truth of God to Christ's people. So many, including myself, were
touched by the work that God gave Gary to do. And as a result,
there are many in this church who just feel a kind of a gaping
hole in their heart now because of his loss. It could be very
easy to turn this time into a eulogy, and there's an appropriate place
for that, but that's not my intention this morning. I think the passing
of Gary shows the need that we have as a church to consider
certain truths. Both for those who knew him and
for those who didn't, I want to preach this message to you. It's not so much a message of
direct comfort. You know that if Gary were here,
for those who knew him, to shepherd you through his death, you know
exactly what he would do. He'd turn you to this. And that's where we want to turn.
That's really the hope that we have, the truth of God's word.
And so in honor of Gary, but really more in honor of the Lord,
I want to keep our hearts attached to the very word of God. And
so with God's help, I intend to comfort those who are hurting,
but not necessarily in a directly traditional way. We're not turning
to a text on mourning, per se, or grieving, or death. As I sought
the Lord about what to bring to you this morning, my heart
kept on coming back to 2 Corinthians 4, verse 7. As I was drawn to this text,
I was considering the question that I've heard asked from some
of you, and I'm sure some are asking, why did this happen to
Gary? It's not an easy question, nor
is it necessary to try to gain all the answers to that question
in this moment. I think there are answers to
that, and there can be comfort in the answers that are found
in Scripture. This passage of Scripture is
comforting because it points you to the power of God. God is the only one who can offer
true comfort in moments like these. In surrounding death,
there are a lot of lies that vie for your attention, a lot
of platitudes that the world will offer in the wake of a death. But I don't want to give you
those. Even if the truth stings a bit at first, I'd rather give
you an antiseptic that cleans the wound rather than a warm
cloth filled with bacteria. The truth is always more comforting
than lies. The truth given in love is the
best way, and I love you. I love our church. I love the
church that, in a sense, I got to inherit from Gary's ministry. And I want to offer these words
to you to give you some sense of the truth about why this happened. It may take a few moments to
develop this, to get to the core. We're going to go through this
a bit like unwrapping an onion. It may take a little bit while
to get to the middle of it. But when we get there, I trust
that what we find will be encouraging to you. And so I ask you to hang
on, take the time as Gary would exhort you to stick into the
scriptures or look into the scriptures and see what's there. 2 Corinthians
chapter 4 verse 7 says this, Let's pray. Father, your word is always true. No matter the time, date, place,
and circumstances, culture, or society, the government we find
ourselves under, it's always true. Every word of it. Help us to rightly understand
this truth. and would you apply it like a
balm to our hearts? I ask in Jesus' name, amen. 2 Corinthians is a book that
we find the Apostle Paul defending his ministry. The Corinthians
looked at this man Paul and had some skepticism about him because
some people came into the church at Corinth and were casting aspersions
against Paul. And so he finds it necessary
to defend his ministry. That's really what the book of
2 Corinthians is about, Paul defending his ministry. His ministry
to fleshly eyes looked unimpressive. He looked unimpressive. Look
at chapter three, verse one. He says, are we beginning to
commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters
of recommendation to you or from you? The church at Corinth was
beginning to question Paul's legitimacy as an apostle, and
so Paul brings it up and asks if he needs to commend himself
to them again. Back in 1 Corinthians 2, verse
3, Paul says, and I was with you in weakness
and in fear and in much trembling. When Paul came to them, he didn't
look like he has it all together. He didn't look like this big
machismo guy. He came with fear and trembling,
weakness. He'd experienced much in ministry.
He'd experienced persecution and pain, suffering. And when he came to Corinth,
seems to be intimidating to him. And so he came, in a sense, in
his own weakness. In 2 Corinthians 10, verse 10,
we get a glimpse of what people were saying about Paul. For they say, his letters are
weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech
of no account. The people looked at Paul and
found him to be unimpressive. They thought that he could write
well, but when he gets up to speak, it just looked like he
didn't have it together. He didn't have the strength behind
him. So Paul writes this letter to the Corinthians to defend
his ministry, but he does not defend it in traditional ways.
He wouldn't flex his muscles. He didn't really have any muscles
to flex. He was not a muscle-bound pastor wearing a tight shirt. So he didn't come that way. He
didn't flash his money. He had none. He didn't show his
philosophical oratory. He said that he resolved to know
nothing among them except Christ crucified. So he would not resort to manipulative
ways in his ministry. And when he comes to defend himself,
he doesn't really come in a way that tries to build himself up
and show what a great guy he is. In chapter four, verse two, Paul
says, we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to
practice cunning or to 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. So as Paul goes to defend his
ministry, He was actually setting up the Corinthians to see that
his ministry is in agreement with who God is and the way that
God works. And that's the point I want to
make. Gary's life and ministry and death was consistent with
who God is and how God works. And that's the defense of his
ministry. The point that Paul will make
is that he is weak, and he is weak in order to show God's strength. The reason that Paul needed to
defend his ministry was because he carried that which was precious.
He carried the gospel. And so as he was attacked, in
a sense the gospel was attacked. And so he needed to let them
know that he was legitimate so that they would know the gospel
was legitimate. Because the most precious thing
that Paul had was the gospel. Unless anything would come to
malign the gospel, he would do whatever it took to make sure
the gospel would not be maligned. There was need to defend his
ministry because people expected something from Paul that he would
not give, and they expected something from Paul other than what he
really was. They wanted the person to match
the message in a worldly sense. They wanted the person to match
the message from a worldly perspective. They wanted a glorious message
and a glorious messenger. They wanted both. If that was
the case, then Paul would be reliving Acts 14 all over again. That's when Paul goes into Lystra,
and he heals a man who hadn't been able to walk from birth,
and the people see what he has done, and they begin proclaiming
that he's a God. And Paul tears his clothes and
stops them from sacrificing to them and says, we are just men
like you. And he points them to the one
true God. There can be another problem.
It's that the message that Paul preached is so amazing, so divine,
so true and so good, that you might mistake that the glory
resides in the messenger rather than in the message. And so to
keep the messengers humble and the message glorious, the messenger
is kept weak. It's not that the messenger is
powerful and the message is powerful. It's not that the messenger is
powerful and the message is weak. Nor is it that the messenger
is weak and the message is weak. There's only one combination
that works here. It is that the messenger is weak and the message
is powerful. Why is it that way? Look again at chapter 4, verse
7 of 2 Corinthians and consider the treasure of the gospel. Paul says, but we have this treasure
in jars of clay. Your translation might say earthen
vessels. Consider what it is to have the
treasure of the gospel. In chapter four, verse four,
it's called the gospel of the glory of Christ. In verse five,
it says, we do not proclaim ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord. In verse six, it says, the 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 Christ. The point is that the gospel
is glorious. The gospel that we see is the
glory of Jesus Christ. You recall when Jesus went up
on the Mount of Transfiguration, and he was transfigured before
Peter, James, and John, and he turned dazzling, and his clothes
were white, whiter than any launderer could bleach them. And his appearance
looked like lightning, like the very sun itself. And Peter, James,
and John are just stupefied at what they see. And they saw for
a moment the glimpse of the glory of Christ. We don't get a visual on Christ,
but as you come to the true gospel, and God shines his light into
your hearts, what you see is the glory of Jesus Christ in
his brilliance. You see the son of man who is
lifted up on a cross. You see the son of man who is
raised from the tomb, who is ascended. You see the one who
came to rescue us from sins. And it says in verse six that
God is the one who shines this truth into hearts so that you
have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. The glory of God is so powerful
that when Isaiah came to the temple, as we read earlier, he
considered himself to be undone, a man who was damned when he
entered into the presence of the glory of God. The glory of
God is so powerful that God says, no one can see me and live. The
glory of God is so powerful that when Moses asked to see his glory,
God said he would not let him see his face, but he would let
him see his backside. As he passed by and put him in
the cleft of the rock and shielded him from God's glory. And we, through the gospel, get
to see the glory of God. in the face of Jesus Christ.
The message is so glorious. And the way that the message
reaches us, reaches our hearts, the way that God shines the light
into our hearts is by the proclamation of that message through the mouth
of human messengers. Paul says in verse 5, The message
comes in a very personal way. Certainly you can read the message
as you open scripture and you just read it for yourself in
the quietness of your home. But most usually the way the
message of the gospel has come to us is by somebody telling
us the gospel. Somebody preaching it to us.
Someone befriending us. Someone coming alongside of us
and showing us what the glory of Christ is in the gospel. They
teach it to you. They instruct you. It could be
a friend, a pastor, a parent, a sibling, who ministered God's
word to you in a personal way. For the Corinthians, that human
agent was Paul. He proclaimed the gospel to them. The message becomes so attached,
in a sense, to the person who preached it, that you have a
hard time detaching the message from the person. They kind of
go hand in hand. But the focus in this first part
of the message is that we have the treasure. It's not so much
on the messenger, but you have a treasure. But still we can't
detach it from the fact that somebody preached it to you. For 20 years or so, Gary preached
the gospel. He preached the scriptures, the
whole counsel of God, the good news of the glory of Jesus Christ.
He preached it to you. And through him came the message
that guilty sinners can be made right with God through a sacrifice
that God made of his only son. Through him came the teaching
that a holy God of heaven loves you so much that he gave his
one and only son so that you might belong to God as a son
or daughter. You have been taught that the
man Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day vanquishing
sin and death and the devil. You have been taught that you
do not need to strive to receive this glorious gospel. You've
been taught that you simply receive it by faith like a child receives
a gift, that your good works are futile, that there's nothing in yourself
that you can do to merit this gift. You've been taught that for those
in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation now and forever. You have been taught that those
who by faith receive Christ also receive his spirit and that the
spirit dwells in you. You've been taught that those
who have tasted and received the spirit have power over sin. and that you have a measure of
victory now over sin in this life and perfection in the next
with the Holy Spirit as a down payment to you right now to guarantee
that you will be raised with Christ and inherit all of the
promises. You have been taught that you can live a righteous
life. Indeed, you are expected to,
that you have been set free from the slavery of sin and are now
a slave to righteousness. You have been taught that you
have access to God 24-7, 365. That the throne is never closed. And that you always have access
to the God who hears your prayers. You have been taught that not
only have you received all of these good gifts, but God in
his wisdom and love planned to give them specifically to you
before you ever existed and before the worlds were made. You have been taught that for
those who love God, all things work together for good. You have
been taught that Jesus Christ, the just, faithful, powerful
Lord with all authority in heaven and earth, will one day come
again and reign with absolute authority, and those who belong
to him will share in his kingdom. You've been taught all of that.
I hope for those who knew Gary, none of that sounds foreign to
you. You heard that. And for those who didn't know,
Gary, I hope that you've heard that from somebody else, that
somebody has taught you those truths. But not only were you
taught those things, you were shown them. And that's the amazing
thing about a faithful messenger. You saw a man who loved Christ.
You saw a man who lived by the Spirit. You saw a man who loved
you and sacrificed his time and his energy for you. You saw a
man who prayed for you, who counseled you, who pursued righteousness,
mercy, justice, and love, who gave comfort, who endured, and
who touched your life. Now if you put those together,
someone who taught you the most precious truths that this universe
can know, and then carried himself in agreement with those truths,
you've got an exceptionally dangerous combination. Because you can
quickly elevate someone like that to a status and position
that they don't deserve. It's dangerous because it might
look like the power that you have tasted came from the messenger
rather than the God who created the message. And so Paul says
in 2 Corinthians 4, verse seven, but we have this treasure in
jars of clay. So you consider the treasure
of the gospel and also consider the vessel that carried the gospel. It's not the glory of the messenger
that Paul focuses on. At this point, Paul paints a
vivid picture for us with just a few words. We have this treasure
in jars of clay. Picture it with your minds. Picture
a baked earthen vessel, just made out of clay, baked in the
fire, a pot that could be used to hold a variety of things.
But the pot is not nearly as valuable as the thing that it
holds. For modern vernacular, it would
be as if you took a bank full of hundreds and shoved them into
a garbage bag. You wouldn't be thinking as much
about the garbage bag as you would think about the treasure
that the garbage bag contains, and you'd be thinking, why is
a garbage bag holding a bunch of hundreds? Paul's the one painting this
picture, and he's painting it of himself. You can picture it
in your mind's eye. The vessels were just the common
pots used to hold water and other goods. When they broke, he discarded
them. So it's a picture of incongruity.
It's a picture of a message that is glorious and a container that's
not. The picture points to two realities
about Paul and other gospel ministers. The two realities is that they
are weak and that they are lowly. They are weak. The jars were
easily cracked and broken. Paul recognizes this in himself. In 2 Corinthians chapter 12,
verses eight and nine, we hear those famous verses. As Paul
has a thorn in the flesh, He says, three times I pleaded with
the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said
to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the
more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may
rest upon me. The messenger of the gospel is
an inherently weak vessel. proven by the various trials,
sufferings, difficulties, limitations, discouragements, setbacks that
they experience. They are frail. They're lowly. These jars were
common. They're all over the place in
ancient Israel, in the ancient world. They'd be all over in
Corinth, They're so common they were not particularly valuable.
There's a humility about them. They don't possess great positions. Gospel messengers should not
consider themselves great. They are vessels of earth holding
a treasure. For Paul, Where you see this
weakness and lowliness is what's laid out in the next few verses. In verse eight, he says, we are
afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven
to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not
destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus. afflicted, perplexed, persecuted,
struck down. Look at verse 11, always being
given over to death for Jesus' sake. Verse 16, our outer self
is wasting away. Chapter five, verse two, in this
tent we groan. Chapter five, verse four, while
we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened. It's both in the weakness of
his composition as a human as well as the, application of that
weakness to the circumstances he finds himself that shows that
he is an earthen vessel, he is but dust. For Paul and his companions,
his gospel ministers, they know that they are just gospel containers
carrying a precious message, as precious as can be thought
of in this world. I want you to consider why it
is this way. Why the gospel is carried in weak vessels. There's
a reason for this incongruity. A life-giving treasure is contained
in decaying vessels. Back at verse seven, we have
this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power
belongs to God and not to us. Where does the power of the gospel
lie? It lies not in what we have done, but in the truth of the
message of what Christ has done for us. Again, verse five. Excuse me. For what we proclaim
is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your
servants for Jesus' sake. It's God who has spoken in verse
six. He's the one who says, let light shine out of darkness.
God spoke, God is the one who has shown. And the emphasis is
made that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. Paul adds that last phrase. He
could have just said, the power belongs to God and stop, and
we'd understand it. But he goes on to make sure we
understand that the power of the gospel is not from us. It doesn't come from us. It's
not to us. The power belongs to God and to God alone. He emphasizes
the point. Why this must be so. Again, verse eight. We are afflicted. We are perplexed, persecuted,
struck down. Paul experienced the worst kind
of persecutions, the worst kind of weaknesses. But the basic
tenet of Paul's whole theology is this, that man in and of himself
is not capable of saving himself. And so Paul, as a gospel minister,
goes through life experiencing various hardships, persecutions,
even points where it would perplex him. And it would put him into
such corners that it would seem like there are no way out. And
Paul recognizes his frailty. He knows how weak he is, how
incapable he is of delivering himself from the situations he
finds himself in. And so when he says that he is
afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down, he goes on to clarify
what he means by that though. Because he doesn't want us to
think that he got stuck in a corner and he never gets out. It means
that he got stuck in a corner and he can never get out himself.
A fundamental tenet of his theology is not just that man is frail,
but that God is strong. Not just that man needs saving,
but that God saves. And so when he goes on in verse
eight to say, we are afflicted in every way, he doesn't stop
there, he goes on to say, but not crushed. Why? Not because of the strength of
the vessel, but because of the strength of the God. who sustains
that vessel. Kind of picture it like that
pot sitting on the ground. And somebody comes and takes
a sledgehammer and strikes it and expects it just to shatter
in a thousand pieces. And it doesn't. Why not? Not because of the strength of
the vessel. Something has happened to that
pot. What happened to it? Well, for Paul and other true
gospel ministers who experienced the pressures of the ministry,
who experienced the dangers that are engaged in it, the reason
it doesn't shatter into a thousand pieces is because God is the
one who keeps it from being crushed. Paul finds himself in perplexing
situations. But what does he say? But not
driven to despair. Why? Because he's a really hopeful
guy? A really positive optimist? No. In fact, he says that he reached
such a perplexing moment in his life that he despaired of life
himself, but that was to show that the power belongs to God
and not to him. And Paul learned that he puts
all of his trust in God, who sustains in perplexing moments. Because God gives hope. He's
persecuted, but what? Not forsaken. By whom? By God. He's just a vessel, but that
vessel has not been tossed into the junk pile after it gets stepped
on. God does not forsake him. He's struck down, but what? Not
destroyed. Why? Because Paul's so strong?
No, he admits his weakness. It's because of the strength
of his Savior. And so you've got this reality
of a cracked clay pot carrying a treasure that is sustained
through all of the wickedness of this world. Not by the strength
of the vessel, but by the strength of the God who carries him. We don't look at the challenges
of this life all the dangers, perplexities, vexing moments,
and think we are immune to it. We do not look at pain as something
that I can grit my teeth and get myself through it. We don't
look at grief and think, I can bear it. We don't look at disease
and think, I can conquer it. We don't look at persecution
and say, sticks and stones. We don't look at those things
and think ourselves immune to them. To do so would be like
a man drowning in the water to slap in the water and say, there,
I got you good with that one. You need a life preserver. That's where Paul found himself
all the time. And it was to show that the surpassing
power belongs to God and not to us. And so God developed this
system where the message is glorious and the vessel that preaches
that message is weak in order to show that the power of the
message is through God, not through the messenger. That's where I really wanted
to bring you this morning. The reason that the life and
work of Gary Cunarod was so profound and influential in your lives
was simply this. The gospel that Gary proclaimed was the very gospel that he needed. He was not superhuman. The ministry that he gave you
with the gospel was the same ministry that he needed in his
own heart. The love that he gave came from
love that he had received from Christ. The patience he showed
was a result of the patience that he had received from Christ. The trust that he encouraged
you to have was a result of the trust that he had in Christ.
And as he experienced the trials and difficulties of this life,
including the very weakness that took his life, it pointed him
back to the very power of God that he had given his life to
proclaiming. So that means that Gary's death
is both a testimony to his weakness and God's power. Why did Gary die? In his death, you could consider
it as his final testimony to you that he needed Christ. Consider it the final message,
the final testimonial that he could give you He didn't have
the strength in and of himself to conquer death, but he died
in hope, not because of himself, but because of Christ who conquered
the grave. 2 Corinthians 4, 14, Paul writes, Knowing that he who raised the
Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with
you into his presence. Verse 16. 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. Why did Gary die? There's a lot
of answers to that. But perhaps you could think of
it as it putting the final stamp on the legitimacy of the very
message that he spent his life proclaiming. that we are a weak,
frail, and sinful people who need a powerful God to rescue
us. So let his death confirm to your
hearts the very message that he taught you. Isn't that just
like Gary? Even in his death, he would still
point you to Christ. Let's pray. Wretched man that I am, who will
deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Father, we thank you that you've
made it so unmistakable that the power of the gospel resides
not in us, but in you. You've chosen to rescue a frail
people. And we thank you that you are powerful and you
have proven that you will bring your people through death that
you will shepherd them through the grave, that you will walk
through the valley of the shadow of death with them. And Lord,
how can we not but thank you for the testimony of Gary's life
and death, that he confirmed the message by the way that he
lived and the way that he died in Christ. Lord, we look forward
to seeing him again, and we thank you that that's a reality because
of your power. We thank you, in Jesus' name,
amen.
The Pastor's Frailty
Series Stand Alone Sermons
| Sermon ID | 102421164834547 |
| Duration | 39:47 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 2 Corinthians 4:7 |
| Language | English |
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