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.