00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
All right, we're good now. It's interesting, what Mark was
talking about, the Lord's Supper there, providentially yesterday. Every
Saturday morning I do a Bible doctrine class on Zoom and on
YouTube, and one of our YouTube commenters asked this question,
should I take the supper if I lack assurance? Now, the whole discussion goes
around getting back to, you know, are you worthy? Well, of course
we're not. But the one in whom we believe
is. And that person, I don't know if it's a male or female,
that person's on there every week. They're not one of the
GCCers, so I don't know where they are. But you want assurance? Remember
what Christ did for you. You want to have a lack of assurance?
Look at yourself. That person needs to look at
Christ. That person needs to proclaim
to themselves Christ's death. as 1 Corinthians 11 tells us.
So, okay. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your
kindness, your kindness beyond measure. We thank you, Lord,
for your blessing beyond measure. We thank you for your grace.
We thank you for your long-suffering with us. We thank you for your
generosity in giving and giving and giving abundantly. to your
people. Father, as we open up your Word
today, Lord, help us just not to hear, but help us to live.
Help us, Lord, not just to hear, but help us to worship. And Lord,
help us not just to hear, but help us to love. In Jesus' name,
amen. Okay. All right, the Spirit of God told
us in James chapter 4 something. And we've got to be careful about
the plans we make. I know the context in James chapter
4 is talking about going here or there and spending a year
and making some money. It's talking about business there. But we
know that there's a broader application to what James tells us there
in James chapter 4. God tells us, though, in that
passage, you know not what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? The answer to the rhetorical
question, what is your life, is, for you are a mist that appears
for a little while and then vanishes. I know that we say we believe
those words in the Bible, and we do believe those words in
the Bible, like a lot of things that we hear in the Bible. We
confess that we believe them, and we accept them as true, and
we accept them as true up here. But sometimes life makes scripture
more personal than just knowing it to be true. We do not know
what tomorrow, we don't know what tomorrow will bring. We
don't know what 1130 is gonna bring. We don't know what noon
is gonna bring. I give you calendar year 2020. Think about a year
ago. Think about where you were a
year ago. On the Sunday after Christmas, okay, a year ago.
How much did you know about herd immunity a year ago? How much
did you know about Dominion voting software a year ago? You didn't
have a category. None of us, we didn't have a
category for living in a country where one man or one woman could
tell us when and how we're gonna meet. In America, we didn't have a category for
somebody telling us, you can't sing when you meet. We didn't
have a category for somebody telling us, you can't meet. We
didn't have a category for those things. We didn't have a category
for these things a year ago. You gotta wear a mask, go to
HEB. We didn't have a category for that a year ago. We didn't
have category for people telling us that you can't come within
six feet of somebody else. We didn't have a category for
being told that you shall not gather together with your family
at Thanksgiving or Christmas time. We didn't have a category
a year ago for how social media has divided much of the church
in the last year over multiple things, whether it be COVID,
whether it be politics, whether it be racial issues in light
of the George Floyd matter. We've got people. Good people. I know that whenever you say
good people in the reform circle, somebody's going to say there's
no one good. I know. But you've got sound people with
multiple perspectives on issues. be they coronavirus, be they
politics, be they racial issues, on social media saying all sorts
of things to each other from all sides of the equation, saying
it with sarcasm, condescension, anger, bitterness, misrepresentation,
ad hominem attacks, attacking the person instead of discussing
the issue that the phrase civil discourse no longer exists on
social media. But does not life happen? Life happens. Think back five
years ago, where you were five years ago. A lot of people in
here are young. I consider under 50 young myself. For the vast majority of you,
you are young. But think back, even in your
life, 5, 10, 15 years. Think about where you were. You
may not have been a Christian 5, 10, 15 years ago. You might
not have been a Christian a year ago. You weren't expecting it. When you're lost, Jesus Christ
invades your life. The Spirit of God brings you
from death to life, and you are born again. Maybe you had a Damascus Road
experience. Maybe it was something very quiet
and calm. Regardless, you are now a Christian. Well, so now
we get to 2020. Maybe not everything in 2020
has been bad for you. Maybe you've had a good year.
Maybe you got married, hypothetically. Maybe you got healed of something
this year. Maybe you did get that new. You
were not somebody who lost their job, but you got a better job.
But maybe somebody you know that you've been praying for to get
saved got saved this year. But in any event, who knows what
2021 is going to be like? We don't, do we? We are not omniscient. We are not prescient being able
to see into the future. What's it going to be like? I
think about a year ago in San Antonio. Did we know what a year
ago was going to be like in San Antonio in 2020? We didn't. Did
I know a year ago that Tim was going to leave? No. That's a pretty big deal in that
church when the church planter, after almost 20 years, leaves.
You throw in the coronavirus. You throw in George Floyd and
everything that has fallen out because of that. You throw in
lockdowns. You throw all that together in
the mix and we got 300 people in that building up on San Antonio
on hedges with 300 opinions every Sunday. How do you maintain unity
amongst 300 people in light of all of that? God has been very
kind to us this year. But where's your chapter and
verse that you can really go to to say, ah, OK, when a pandemic
hits, this is what you do. OK, when social media blows up,
this is what you do. What's 2021 going to look like?
We don't know. I don't know what's going to
happen, but I know this about 2021, just like in 2020 and in
2019 and every year going backwards, God is sovereign. God is not
asleep at the wheel. Now we profess that. We say that,
yeah, he is sovereign. Yeah, he did send the coronavirus. It's not merely that the coronavirus
caught him by surprise. He sent the coronavirus. Why? Hasn't told us though, has
he, specifically. What he has told us is that he
works all things together for good for those who love him or
are called according to his purpose. That much we do know. Even the
coronavirus, even the issues in the United States in 2020.
But how sovereign is God when your dad dies from the coronavirus? He's just as sovereign in that
as he was when your dad was alive. How sovereign is God? when we
have division amongst God's people over racial issues. He's just
as sovereign as He was before all this happened. Doesn't He
still work out all things according to the counsel of His will? Yes. Isn't He still in the heavens
doing as He pleases? Yes. And it's in light of this
sovereignty that Paul can say what he says in our passage today,
which is from 2 Corinthians 4. So if you have a Bible and you'd
like to follow along, open up to 2 Corinthians 4 and start
at verse 16. Verse 16 says, so we do not lose
heart. Though our outer self, and I
am reading from the ESV, 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.
And in light of that, the sermon is entitled 2020, A Light Momentary
Affliction. I don't want this sermon to be
an extended cliche. I know it could easily turn into
an extended cliche. And we could go, yeah, 2020 is
just this now nine months long since the virus hit, this nine
month long speed bump on the way to paradise. And we could
just dismiss 2020 as this aberration that's not going to happen again.
Now, could I go where Spurgeon goes when Spurgeon preaches on
this passage? Spurgeon preaches this passage
from verse 18, and Spurgeon preaches from one word in verse 18. Spurgeon
preaches from the word look in verse 18. He says there are six
ways you can define and look at that word look. Now, I'm not
going to do that. I'm not Charles Spurgeon. But the first point I want to
make here before we start at verse 16, I want to start in
verse 17 with a word that whether or not you have an ESV, a New
American Standard, a King James, or a New King James, they all
translate it the same way, and that is that word affliction.
One of the standard Greek lexicons says that that word which is
translated affliction is distress that is brought about by outward
circumstances. Paul knew whereof he spoke when
he talked about stress being caused by outward circumstances.
He lists them for us in this letter. They were real afflictions. Many physical, but not only physical. And so it is with my afflictions
and so it is with your afflictions. Our afflictions may be physical,
they may not be. They may be emotional. They may
be financial. They may be spiritual. Struggle
with assurance. And don't minimize your afflictions. I have brethren of a Pentecostal
persuasion who would tell me that what I'm going to talk about
today is speaking negativity, and you don't speak negativity.
I am speaking about reality, though. The life of the Christian
is not all wine and roses in this life. Ask Paul. Well, I'm going to ask Paul and
I'm going to read what Paul says about all of this. Paul, Acts
chapter 16, what happens in Acts chapter 16, he gets beaten, he
gets put into prison and put into stocks. If you don't know
what stocks are, Google it. If you're reading your Bible
on your phone, don't Google it now, okay? But Google what stocks
are. So Acts 9, he gets saved. Acts 16, he's beaten, put into
prison, and put into stocks. But all we have to do is look
earlier in this chapter in 2 Corinthians 4. Look up at verse 8. He's been afflicted. He's been
crushed. He's been perplexed. He's been
persecuted. He's been struck down. Turn a
page, if you have to, to chapter 6. Verse 4, what's happened to Paul there?
Afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots,
labors, sleepless nights, hunger. Verse 8, dishonor, slander, treated
as an imposter, unknown, dying, punished, sorrowful, poor, having
nothing. Chapter 11, 2 Corinthians. chapter 11, verse 23, imprisonments,
countless beatings, often near death, five times receiving 39
lashes, three times beaten with rods, stoned once, three times
shipwrecked, adrift at sea, in danger from rivers, danger from
robbers, danger from his own people, not Christians, but his
brethren according to the flesh, his fellow ethnic Jews who wanted
to kill him. He's in danger from Gentiles,
danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea,
danger from false brothers, toil and hardship, sleepless nights,
in hunger and thirst, often without food and cold and exposure, and
everything I just said had only to do with physical afflictions. Then he goes to emotional affliction,
the daily pressure on him due to his anxiety for all the churches. Paul, where is your faith? Why
are you anxious? Paul cared. That's why he was anxious. He
cared. There's a reason Paul wrote letters
to churches in and with tears. This letter was one of those
letters. He said that back in chapter 2. Acts chapter 20, he
says, he serves the Lord with tears. And he admonishes people
with tears. Philippians 3, he writes about
how he tells the Philippians with tears about those people
who walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. And I'm telling you
all these things because Paul knew what affliction was. You
can't say to Paul, you haven't been there, Paul. Now, has Paul
experienced every kind of affliction that each one of us has? Has
Paul experienced marital trouble? No, Paul was single. But don't
say that Paul didn't know what emotional affliction was, because
he knew. He did. He knew what it was like
to have hardship. We know from Philippians 4 that
he knew what it was like to have both plenty and to have little.
He understands all of this. Paul's been there. So Paul is
qualified to tell us how to deal with affliction. He did not write
on a merely theoretical basis. He wrote on an experiential basis. He's writing looking back at
all these things that have happened to him. You could say in one
sense, not in just the only sense, but in one sense, Paul's life
after Acts chapter 9 was 2020. in one sense. The reason I say
one sense, Paul's life was not only hardship. Paul was also
a man of joy at the same time. Don't forget that as well as
we talk about all the affliction. Paul was a man of contentment.
Paul was a man of peace. Paul was a man who had love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
and self-control. But the focus, based upon our
passage today, is about affliction. And he had it. He had it in abundance. My next point here that I want
to make is don't lose heart. Now, I know we don't tell our
kids, don't lose heart. That's not a phrase we use. We
don't hear our boss at work when things are going bad tell us,
don't lose heart. That's just not the verbiage that we use
in our society. But it's the second time Paul
has told the Corinthians this in this chapter, not merely in
the book, in the chapter. He said it back earlier in chapter
4. And if you just look upward in
chapter 4 in 2 Corinthians, he's already said it. In verse 1, he said, therefore,
having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. So what does he mean, though?
Since we don't talk like that, what does he mean? He means,
don't give up. King James says, faint not. Remain
standing. We go back to his charge to stand
firm. He says that, though, in light
of what he has just said before this in verse 16 of chapter 4.
In the ESV, we've got the translator saying, so we do not lose heart. Well, why do we not lose heart?
We do not lose heart because of what he has just talked about
before that. And what he has just talked about before that
was the hope of the resurrection. He wants to be in the presence
of Christ. Verse 14, knowing that he who
raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring
us with you into his presence. Christian, that's your verse
as well, not just for Paul. Knowing he who raised the Lord
Jesus will raise us in this room with Jesus and bring us with
you into his presence. There's hope here, hope in the
resurrection. The resurrection matters. Yes,
the cross is exceedingly abundantly important, but so is the resurrection. Now what he does in these three
verses is he uses a series of contrasts in order to make his
point. He makes four contrasts in this passage. And we're going to look at these
contrasts in a minute in more detail, but I'm just going to
state them up front to get them out there. The first contrast
here in the passages is the outer self as opposed to the inner
self, or the outer man as opposed to the inner man. Second contrast
is the light momentary affliction against an eternal weight of
glory. The third contrast is things that are seen versus things
that are unseen. And the last contrast is things
that are transient against things that are eternal. Now, think
about all those physical afflictions I ran through a minute ago. Those
affect the outer man. That affects this, this what
we look at. Paul calls it a tent as he starts
off chapter five, our physical bodies. But what's a tent? A
tent is somewhere where you live for a little while and you can
pick up and move on. People would have gotten the image there.
Now, I don't want us to get the idea that this body is merely
a shell that has no significance at all. This body, united with
our soul, is what makes us human. Is this body eternal though?
No. That's one of the points he wants
to make. Because, he says, it's wasting
away, in verse 16. So the physical is not necessarily
wicked. We're not Gnostic here. We're
not people who believe that, oh, it's physical, therefore
it's wicked. Therefore it's evil. Before Adam
and Eve fell, their physical bodies were not wicked. Jesus
Christ had a real body and still has a real body. His body is
not wicked. His body is not sinful. We don't have that yet though,
do we? We will have one day. It's interesting when you talk
to Christians, though. You ask them, what happens at
the resurrection on the last day? What happens when the end
of John 5 happens? Going to have the righteous resurrected,
the wicked resurrected. What's going to happen with that?
They don't think that you're going to have a real body for
all eternity. Far too often. And I'm just stunned
by the number of Christians who do not believe that upon the
resurrection, that when we read about the resurrection in John
5, we read about what happens with people being raised from
the grave in 1 Thessalonians 4, that people don't believe
that that results in a reuniting of body and soul. But it does. And we will have a body which
is imperishable, incorruptible, immortal for all eternity. That body which can see the face
of God in Revelation 22.4. Now, this body. Let's talk about
this body. I know people who are my age.
I'm 63. I know people my age and older who say, I don't feel
any older than I did 30 years ago. I'm not one of them. I feel older. I'm not going to lie to you.
Those people are blessed if they don't feel any older. I do. You may not get this, you all
for the most part being young, but I'm going to tell you when
I bend over to tie my shoes, the ground is a lot farther away
than it used to be. I'm telling you that when I stand
up or want to get out of bed, gravity is a lot stronger than
it was 30 years ago. Now, we know that's not true,
but my perception is because of how my body is deteriorating.
I know when I've been at HEB for 15 minutes because my knees
and hips start to hurt standing on concrete. I really miss having
cartilage in my knees. That cushion is a good thing,
those of you that still have it. But that's what happens. We are the, verse 7, jars of
clay, these bodies that we're in. Paul though here wants us
to not lose heart by looking at the contrast of this body
versus our inner man, our inner self. Now it's interesting in
the original, it doesn't matter whether you've got a New American
Standard or an ESV, if you were to literally go through that
I know the ESV's got a footnote here says, though our inner self,
we could say our inner man, is wasting away, our inner self
is being renewed day by day. In that second phrase of that
sentence, our inner self, when you compare it to our outer self
or our outer man before that, yeah, though our outer man, though
our outer anthropos is what it is. That's where we get our word
anthropology from, the study of man. So, though our outer
man is wasting away, if you're going to translate this verse
literally, you would go, though our outer man is wasting away,
our inner is being renewed day by day. Anthropos doesn't appear
in that second phrase. But what about this inner of
us that is being renewed day by day? It is that spiritual
element that comprises who we are, that which got breathed
into that pile of dust in Genesis 2, and Adam became a living soul
at that point, when soul and body were united. Paul here says
that inner man, our spiritual nature, is being renewed day
by day, like the song says, day by day, and with each passing moment. Day by day, day after day. Think
about what the psalmist says. The psalmist said this in Psalm
73. My flesh and heart may fail, but God is the strength of my
heart and my portion forever. I know the psalmist might be
mixing his metaphors here with the use of the word heart twice.
But you get what he's saying. This is going to deteriorate. This is going to die. Flesh, the stuff here. When I
pull up the flesh here, I've got old man hands. I have no
collagen in my skin anymore, okay? This is going to deteriorate. My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
We have these realities in our life that even as this deteriorates,
is not our inner man supposed to be growing? Contrast, deterioration
versus growth. Are you more mature than you
were five years ago, Christian? Are you more mature than you
were when you got saved? Are you growing in holiness?
Are you growing in love for the brethren? Are you growing in
grace and mercy? Are you growing in grace and
the knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord? That's the inner man. I know that it's not an exponentially
smooth upward curve. I know the curve goes like this.
But the trend better be upward, shouldn't it? If it's not, well, that's when
your self-examination needs to come into place. When you talk
to people and they tell you that their anger is no different now
than when they were lost, that's problematic. And they claim to
be born again. They look like they're born again.
But their anger or whatever you fill in the blank with sin is,
is no different than when they were claiming to be lost. That's
problematic. How is that person really walking
in newness of life? Has that person really been delivered
from the domain of darkness? Do you have victory? Are you
a conqueror or an overcomer? Think about those letters that
Jesus writes to those churches in Revelation. Who gets the crown? You gotta overcome. You gotta
conquer. There's a reason that William Hendrickson's commentary
on Revelation is called, More Than Conquerors. Because there's
victory there. That's military imagery. Conquering,
isn't it? Didn't David conquer all these
opposing armies? Yes, it's a battle. Yes, Ephesians
6 is still real. Yes, we do not wrestle against
flesh and blood, but we wrestle against what? We wrestle against
the powers, against principalities. We wrestle against that which
is in the spiritual realm, which touches our inner man. But how about this being renewed? When we think about what Paul
says in another letter, Romans 12, what do we know? Heard it earlier. You're being
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able
to test what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.
Is your mind being renewed? Now, renewal here just doesn't
mean pumping more stuff to get in back to where it was. Renewal
here is the sense of, is it growing? Is it maturing? Is your mind
renewing? The way you think is going to
result in the way you live. You can't separate. See, this
is where we get into this. We have people who want to, as
Mark said, you gotta be careful with the intellectual part. Christianity
is not merely intellectual, but it is not merely totally detached
from the intellectual as well. How we think dictates how we
live. What we believe dictates how
we live. And that is the inner part. Now, I know that there's a connection.
I know that our physical can affect our spiritual. That our
maladies can affect our spiritual. I know that our financial issues
can affect our spiritual. I know that our marriage issues,
or your relationship with your parents, or your friend, or your
employer, that can affect your soul. I get it. And vice versa. that if your soul is not at rest,
your body may be getting in bad shape as well. So there is an
organic relationship there. There's a unity between them.
We just don't have this soul and this body which are totally
distinct from one another. There's an interaction between
the two. But what Paul wants us to do here is to have this
renewal going on on a constant basis. This is always present
tense. This is not something that we did. This is something
that we do. 1145. We should be doing it 1146,
1147. We should be doing it three days after Christmas, four days
after Christmas. It's an ongoing thing. We don't
get to take a sabbatical from this renewal. As Christians, we don't get to
take a vacation from this. This is about this being this
being transformed into the image of Christ. That's what we have
been predestined for in Romans 8-29. So aren't we supposed to be growing?
Aren't we supposed to be growing in the grace and knowledge of
our Lord Jesus Christ? That's the question. How's your
anger compared to five years ago, Christian? How's your anger
compared to two years ago? How's your relationship with
your spouse? How's your relationship with your employer? How's your
relationship with your lost family members? Are you expecting them to act
like Christians when they're not? Funny thing, lost people
act like lost people because they're lost people. But think
about where you were when you were lost. You acted like a lost
guy because you were a lost guy. I acted like a lost guy because
I was a lost guy. I can say, well, I didn't hate
God. I just didn't care. Well, Scripture says, because
I didn't care, I hated God. But are not Christians supposed
to love that Jeff back then? Yes. Love your neighbor as yourself,
right? Still in effect, even if your
neighbor is insufferable, even if your parents, your children,
your siblings, where's the way out there? Love your neighbors
as yourself, except if they are, fill in the blank. There isn't
one. There's no wiggle room there.
How are we doing with that? We can only be doing better if
our inner man, if our inner self, is being renewed day by day with
each passing moment. Are we more thankful than we
were one year, two years, five years ago? Even at the end of
2020. Think about the world. How thankful
is this world at the end of 2020? They're not. They're miserable. They're miserable. They're terrified. They don't like us because we're
doing this. They think we don't love because
we're doing this. Well, they think that way because
they're lost. The problem becomes when people
who claim to be redeemed think that way, too, and then cast stones at us for
doing this today. But what about us individually? Is our renewal reflecting maturity
in our lives? Is it showing growth in our lives? Are we not caving into the same
sin as much as we used to? 1 Corinthians 10, 13 is still
in your Bible. There's always a way out. Always. Even in 2020, you can't say,
well, I couldn't help it. Nobody's making you hit send
on that tweet. You hit send because you want
to hit send. But how is our renewal doing?
Okay, next contrast. Light momentary affliction versus
the eternal weight of glory. Now, if we just had these three
verses here in our Bibles, we might think that Paul did not
know whereof he spoke. But we don't. We have all the
other issues that I already talked about. So we know that Paul had
this long laundry list of afflictions, and they were not insignificant
afflictions. 39 lashes, five times. 175 lashes, hurt. Pain is pain, regardless of the
source of a person's pain. One thing I learned when our
son died in 2002 is to never minimize another person's pain.
Maybe it's not physical pain. Maybe it is. We have a lady at
church with chronic severe back pain for years. You can't minimize
her physical pain. But what about people who are
having emotional pain? Maybe they've lost their spouse.
Maybe they've lost their brother. Maybe they've lost their job.
Maybe they've lost their home. Maybe they've lost their health.
Pain is pain. Pain hurts. Between our son dying
and between going into prison since 1996, I've learned that
pain hurts. when you're sitting nose to nose
with a guy, and he is aware of what his sin has caused him. He has lost his wife. He's lost
access to his kids. He's lost all of his material
possessions. And he may never get them back
because he's going to be on that side of the fence for 60 years. If I sit there and say, you deserved
it, well, in one sense, it's true from a criminal justice
sense. In God's court, why am I not
there? Why am I not there? When he's crying because he can't
talk to his kids, he has no idea where his kids are. That's pain. And we shall not minimize that
pain in another person because it's not our pain. His pain was
in his inner man there. It all hurts. Those 195 lashes,
they hurt. Paul, again, right before he
tells us in Philippians 3, verse 12, that he is still being perfected. He tells us in verse 10 of Philippians
3 that he wanted to share in the sufferings of Christ, becoming
like Christ in his death, so that he would know the power
of the resurrection. Here we again have Paul talking about
the resurrection, just like he does here in 2 Corinthians 4.
And that's as Paul, speaking as a man who he knows himself
is not yet, the inner man is not yet perfected. Being perfected,
yes. That's the renewal. Being perfected. His point here in verse 17 about
the contrast. Remember, these are all about
contrast. Light momentary affliction, eternal weight of glory. They're
at two ends of the spectrum. way far apart. Whatever we experience in this
life, his point is, it pales in comparison to the eternal
weight of glory. As much as these afflictions
may hurt, as much as they may be challenging, as bad as they
are, and they are afflictions, let's never deny, because we
may be suffering affliction because of evil. We may be suffering
affliction because of somebody else's evil, or we may be suffering
affliction because of our own sin. But it's still affliction. And as much as it hurts, as much
as we are tormented by it, it's insignificant compared to the
eternal way to glory. I know it's hard when you're
in the midst of it to think about that. Because it's so real, because
it can consume you so much. that when life is falling apart,
how do you think about the eternal weight of glory? Well, Paul charges
us with doing it, though. How do you do it? You decide
to do it. You're equipped, Christian, filled
with the Spirit, to do it. Can it be difficult to do? Of
course it can be difficult to do. But this isn't the only place
Paul uses this sort of looking beyond the here and now to make
his point. But when you compare that over
there, the eternal weight of glory, the heaviness, the Old
Testament, when you see glory in the Old Testament, the Hebrew
word there behind glory is weightiness, heaviness. There's sort of a
word play there going on. It's like he's saying the eternal
weight of weight. As bad as things can be now,
they're like this compared to that which is to come. So where
do you look? Well, as you're trying to look
over there to the eternal weight of glory, you still have to look
through life now to see it. But you don't want to stop looking
as far as life now. You want to look through it.
Just not at it, look through it and look past it to the eternal
weight of glory. What you have in your future. The inheritance reserved in heaven
for you. You have, Christian, a seat in
heaven right now, Ephesians chapter 2. You are seated right now in
the heavenly places with Christ Jesus, even as you are seated
in this room in Corpus Christi, Texas. Paul wants you to think
about not just being seated here, but he wants you to think about
both. He wants you to think about the eternal as you look at life
through the temporal, through the temporary. That's the contrast. Insignificance versus weight
of weight is his point he wants to make here. Now, when I read
that list a minute ago, I left out some words if you were following
along. Now I'm going to put those words in there, and I'm going
to be adding some inflection as I do this to make a point.
If we look at 2 Corinthians 4, verse 8. We are afflicted in
every way, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not driven to
despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. Chapter 6, verse 4. As servants
of God, we commend ourselves in every way, by great endurance,
in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots,
labors, sleepless nights, hunger, by purity, knowledge, patience,
kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech and
the power of God, with the weapons of righteousness for the right
hand and for the left, through honor and dishonor. Through slander
and praise, we are treated as imposters, and yet are true,
as unknown, and yet well-known, as dying. And behold, we live
as punished, and yet not killed, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,
as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, yet possessing
everything. One passage I have not yet touched
on is the first chapter of this book. So let's go there to the
first chapter of 2 Corinthians. Verse 8. For we do not want you to be
unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. Here's
our word again, affliction. For we were so utterly burdened
beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt
that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make
us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. 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. Paul
thought he was going to die. But why was he brought close
to death? He tells us here. And he tells
us it's an affliction. He does not minimize it as if
it is insignificant. He calls it an affliction. He
says, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. They thought
they were going to die. But why did they get the sentence
of death? He tells us it was to make us
to not rely on ourselves, but to rely on God who raises the
dead. 2020, have we been relying on God who
raises the dead or have we been relying on ourselves? Okay, you
can't fix 2020, but what about 2021? Are you going to rely on
God who raises the dead in the coming 12 months? Because maybe
2020 is a walk in the park compared to 2021. You don't know, do you? People want to live in the first
century church, we keep hearing. Okay, I'd love to live in the
time of the apostles. Be careful what you ask for.
You might get it. You may get the equivalent of
195 lashes. That was life for Paul. That
was life for the persecuted church. But how do you do it? You do
it by relying on God who raises the dead. And you can only do
that because of what he talks about and the way he talks about
the last two contrasts, which are really synonymous. There's
parallelism here in these last two contrasts. In verse 18, the things that
are seen are equivalent to the things that are transient. The
things that are unseen are equivalent to the things that are eternal. And we don't lose heart. We don't
give up. We remain standing. Why? Because of what Spurgeon
preached on here. We look. What are we looking
at? One of the missionary Bible translation
manuals looking at that verse and that word there says that
look is not strong enough. And I would affirm that. And Spurgeon goes there in the
sermon. But the point is, we just don't glance at it. Or,
okay, look at this, we say. Okay, oh, wow. Oh, did you see
this picture? Okay, wow, I look at it. And
then you take your eyes off of it. This looking is a looking
that remains. This looking is a setting your
focus on and keeping the camera in focus. Keeping your eyes focused. You know what it's like
when you can't get that camera in focus? You're trying to take
a picture of something here and then the focus keeps changing
and it goes in and out and it's driving you crazy. Paul wants
us here, as we focus, not on the things that are seen, but
focus on the things that are unseen. Because the things that
you can see are transient. They're gonna go away. But the
things that you cannot see are eternal. There is a reality beyond
what we can see. We do not live in merely the
physical. Think about the kingdom in which
we live now. We're in the kingdom. We are. You're born again. You can see the kingdom of God.
You're in the kingdom of God. But is the kingdom right now
physical? Not in the way it's going to be come the last day. So look. Don't glance. Don't look for a minute. Focus
and keep focused on it. Focus on what? Not that which
passes away. This body is going to pass away. I don't care how much I work
out, or let me rephrase that, if I would work out. Okay, I can go start lifting,
okay, and I can go ahead and drop 30 pounds, and you know
what? I'm still going to die. My body is still going to deteriorate
to the point of death, unless the Lord Jesus comes back in
the meantime. But failing that, this body is going to die. Your
body is going to die. But you know what? Your soul
is not. Whatever your soul is now will
be your soul for all eternity. is your focus on that realm rather
than merely the physical. I know, again, life can be challenging. And I know it can be challenging
when your child's throwing up as you're trying to change that
blowout and all that sort of stuff. I get it. But even in
that, Paul says, focus on the things that are eternal. I can't. Yes, you can. Yes, you can change
that blowout and clean up that vomit to the glory of God. Because
Paul says, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do
it all to the glory of God. All of it. Set your affection is what he's
talking about. And how do we do it? This is
all about faith. Faith. Remember what Hebrews
11 one says as our definition of faith. What is faith? It's the assurance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, the things which are
eternal, the unseen of verse 18. Paul's telling us nothing
more than what he tells the Colossians in chapter three when he told
the Colossians to set your affection as the King James would say,
set your affection on things that are above. Because the things
that are above are eternal. They're unchanging. Does it mean
that we're going to forget about everything? No. We've still got
life. We know. Peter's image of all
this stuff here, Peter says it's all going to burn. Now, what
that reality looks like is up for debate. But the point is,
it's going to pass away come the last day. Does Paul want
us to all sell our stuff and go sit on a big old mountain? saying kumbaya and wait for Jesus
to come back. Absolutely not. He still wants
you to be a mom. He still wants you to be a dad.
He still wants you to be a husband. He still wants you to be a wife,
to be an employee, to be an employer, to be a retiree, to be whatever
in the meantime. But even as you are doing that,
you do it with an eternal focus. I know it's been challenging
for me the last nine months. I'm in health care IT. My life
has been COVID for nine months. I'm now in COVID vaccine meetings
every day of the week. But as the bumper sticker that
used to be on everyone's car 35 years ago said, this too shall
pass, it really will. Okay, but we're
in the midst of all of these. We got doctors and our nurses,
and I get it, they're freaking out because we gotta maintain
inventory in a certain way, and the government wants this, and
the government wants that, and Sean might know what I'm talking
about, and we gotta have the transport this, you gotta have
this kind of refrigerator. Well, do you get a freezer? What
kind of temperature monitors do you have? Do you need backup
temperature monitors? Who's gonna keep track of all that stuff?
And you can get so caught up into that, you can forget about
the things that are above. But Paul says don't. He says
don't. And you're equipped to not forget
about the things that are above. Paul still lived here. Paul still
had to deal with all the stuff here. He's not saying anything
to us that he was not saying to himself at the same time.
But it is all gonna go away. This body is not our true eternal
home. As I talked about earlier, we're
gonna get a new one one day. and our true home when we die.
Where's our citizenship now? Paul says our citizenship is
in heaven now. Now we know even that the heaven
that we now have citizenship is going to be different on the
last day. That when creation is redeemed as well. When heaven
and earth become one. When we see the New Jerusalem,
and the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God is
not a brick-and-mortar city. The New Jerusalem is us, the
people of God. You read your last two chapters
in your Bible, keep that in mind. Everything that refers to a city
is us. It's people. And we will be a
city where evil cannot enter in. That's the imagery behind
there being no gate there. You don't need to keep evil out
because evil can't get in then. That is our true final eternal
hope. We are really going to a much
greater Eden than what we see early in our Bibles. That is
the eternal weight of glory that he wants us to think about over
there. So, 2020. It's almost 2021. What's it look
like? I don't know. What are we supposed
to do? Believe. What were we supposed to do a
year ago? Believe. Trust God. Years like this challenge our
affirmation as good reform folks about the sovereignty of God. What do you do when you really
have events, though, which really, really, really challenge your
sovereignty? What do you do on a day like
May 29, 2002 in our lives? What do you do when you get the
phone call that says your 19-year-old son has died? How is your Calvinism
then? It's not theory at that point.
Do you believe that God is sovereign? Do you believe God loves you,
Christian? when you get that phone call.
Now, we had had other 2020s in our past. We had some really
bad financial years in the past. There were months over the mid-'80s
when we had no food and the only food we had was because my best
friend brought us food. There was one winter during the
1990s where we could not afford to buy fuel oil the last month
and a half of winter. And you are five hours north
of Detroit. And in March, it's still cold. You kept the water running all
the time in the winter up there anyway, because your pipes could
freeze. But you had to run it more that winter. Yeah, we wore
coats in the house, because we didn't have money for fuel. We
couldn't heat the house. So we've had our 2020s. But what do you do when you've
got to bury your child? Is God still God? Yeah. God was kind to my wife and I
through all of that. But what do you do when your
13-year-old son is sitting there on the sofa, weeping, and for
the next six years is furious at God because he hates God because
God did not keep his brother from dying? How is your belief in the sovereignty
of God then? You look to the things that are
unseen. You look by faith. The evidence of things not seen. You look to what Paul talks about
in what we know as the beginning of chapter 5, to that house not
made with hands. To what Augustine called the
city of God. Because that's where our hope,
our hope is not in our children. parents, it's not. If your life falls
apart because of something that happens to your child, you have
made that child a basis for your hope. You have made an idol out
of your child. Don't do it. I'm telling you
from experience, don't do it. Praise God we didn't, but we
only did that by grace, not because of anything in us. It doesn't mean that we do not
cry when life happens, even as we're looking at the things that
are eternal. Paul cried, right? Because Paul cared. So whenever,
whatever level of 2020 happens in your life, don't deny the
reality of it. It's real. But even as you're
accepting the reality of your next 2020, what are you looking
at beyond that? The beyond that can get you through
your 2020. And only that. We know somebody
not too long after our son died that had a 19-year-old child
die. And their life fell apart because
of it. Because they did not have a looking
beyond the now to the eternal weight of glory. How do you cope? You cope with all this, Jesus
Christ, that's how. Because of what we remember about
what He did. The person on YouTube, they lack
assurance. Think about what Jesus Christ
has done for you. This is not about us, this is
about Him. This is about trusting Him. and
trusting Him that in that whom we cannot see, and trusting a
hope, a future that we cannot see. That's what faith is. We
know that one day our faith shall be sight as the song goes, but
we're not there yet. So, get ready. 2021's coming. Ready or not, here it comes. Are you ready? If you have Jesus
Christ, you're ready. But is Jesus Christ sufficient
for your readiness? If He is, you are really ready. Let's pray. Father, Father, we thank You for Jesus
Christ. We thank you for sending your Son because of your love
for the world. We thank you for what your Son
did in obedience and love for you and in love for us. We know that Jesus Christ saves
to the uttermost. We know that as Christians, we
are secure in the hands of the Son and of the Father. We know
that our names are graven on the palms of your hands, as Isaiah
49 tells us. Father, we know that, but we
need help in believing it. Father, we ask for that help
in believing it. We ask for that help in living
it day by day, day by day, Father. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
2020-A Light & Momentary Affliction
Due to technical difficulties there is no video for this message.
| Sermon ID | 1227201842283291 |
| Duration | 1:01:38 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 |
| Language | English |
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.