I invite you to turn with me in God's Word this morning to the Apostle Paul's second epistle to the church in Corinth. Today we're going to begin in chapter 2 verse 14 and continue through chapter 3 verse 6. It would be very helpful if you had the text of God's Word right in front of you the entire time so that you can keep your eyes fixed upon it and not on me. Before we turn and read, would you join me in prayer for the preaching of the Word of God? Father in heaven, we thank you that you are the God who has revealed yourself to the world that you have made. We thank you that you have enshrined who you are in this world, in the splendor of the work of your hands. But we thank you for the authoritative way that you have revealed to us by word how we are to know you, how we are to know about ourselves, and how we are to hear the good news of the gospel of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, of the righteousness that he has won in our stead. So Father, we pray as we turn in your word that by the working of your Spirit, you would give us to hear Christ. that we would hear His voice speaking to us by His Word and that the effect of the reading and the preaching of the Word of God would be to direct all of the attention of our hearts and our lives to Jesus Christ. For the glory of His name and for the joy of every one of us, we pray. Amen. Now from chapter 2, verse 14. But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To one a fragrance from death to death, from another a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not like so many peddlers of God's Word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again, or do we need, as some do, letters of commendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter of commendation, written on our hearts to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. such as the confidence that we have through Christ towards God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not with the letter but by the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." So far, the hearing of God's Word. This is what a pastor risks when he enjoys the Word of God so much and feels such a sense of privilege of being here with you. Forgive me for taking a second just to gather myself. Well, for this month, I thought it would be fitting on this occasion as a church, as you receive a new pastor who has come to serve you. and to love you that we would ask the questions that the Apostle Paul has wanted to pose to the church in Corinth from chapters 2 through to chapter 6. What is a pastor? What sort of things should he do? Who should he be like? What ought to be the effect of the ministry that he has among us? And how in the world are we to judge if he is faithful to that task or fruitful in the calling to which he has been called? The apostle Paul asked every one of these questions in chapters two through six to the church in Corinth. Now, the church in Corinth, as you know well, was no perfect church. They were no sinless church. There were several situations in their life that were very serious, and the Apostle Paul was concerned to address them about every one of these things. Their fellowship was divided amongst themselves. Some in their church life were taking up lawsuits against each other because of the business dealings amongst them that had gone sideways. When they came to celebrate the Lord's Supper, some of them came with selfish hearts, and they gobbled up all of the food so that by the time there was no bread and wine left to serve the entire church. Some of them were boasting against each other. But one of the most serious things that threatened the church in Corinth was the presence of some teachers. whom Paul called super apostles. And he called them this with a snide sense on his face as he surely wrote those words towards the end of this book where we find ourselves today. These were men who taught very well. They seemed to be very wise, or at least they claimed to be wise. They spoke fluently. There was a sense of power about them as they preached. Apparently, when they stood up to preach and teach, there was the effect in the church as they heard them of all of the people saying, wow, look at how great they are. which is a reminder to all of us, right? That it's very easy for us to be wowed by the impressive skill of those who lead us and teach us by the Word of God. And the corrective here is to ask ourselves, to whom do we look when the word of God is preached? What sort of one ought to be leading in the church of God? You see, Paul had already addressed the church in Corinth about this in his first book to them in chapter four. And he said, this is how I want you to think about pastors. This is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, he said, it is required of servants that they be found faithful. The concern of those who lead in the Church of Christ is not to wow those whom we serve. The concern is not to be powerful or to be impressive. Our charge is not to put on a show. Our charge is to be faithful to God's Word. and to the Lord who calls us to this task. And so the question that we have as a church, and especially that you want to have as you receive a new servant of the word of God, is what makes the man faithful? On what basis will we judge whether he is faithful or not? And that is exactly what the Apostle Paul is intending to do with the church in Corinth. It could be boiled down into three separate topics. Who a faithful servant of the Word of God is. what he does, and the effect of his work. Today, I want to begin with this very first thing, who a faithful servant of the Word of God is. And I bring this message to us with a prayer, a request. And I think I can speak for both Matt and for myself, that we covet your prayers. that the Lord Jesus would keep us faithful to what this text says we ought to be, so that we can love you in these authoritative and objective ways that God has called us to. Well, the first point is this, that a faithful servant of the Word of God is led by Jesus Christ. Look with me at verses 14 through 16. Paul begins by saying, thanks be to God. If we just looked just a few words ahead in verses 12 and 13, Paul recalls that when he came to Troas, he did not find Titus, his friend and fellow servant of the word. And because he didn't find Titus there, he was troubled. There was a sense within his heart of discomfort. And so he left Troas and came on to Macedonia and there was this sense about him of being discombobulated and whether he had made a misstep and if his friend Titus was going to be okay. And so the Apostle Paul knows that within himself his heart is full of turmoil and being upset. But in this occasion, he finds a reason to give thanks to God who always leads his church. I think he means this at least in several ways. First, he's using this pronoun us. Thanks be to God who leads us to refer to the apostles. But certainly he's speaking about Titus as well. And so he's speaking beyond the circle of the apostles to all of those who preach and teach and pastor. Church of Christ and perhaps we could even extend it beyond and say he's speaking about all of those who belong to Jesus Christ. That it is the Lord Jesus who leads us and places us right where he wants us to be. But he uses a picture here. He says, thanks be to God in Christ who always leads us in triumphal procession. And by this phrase, the apostle recalls what would have been well known in all of the provinces of Rome, what a triumph looked like in Rome. We happened to come into town on the weekend of the dream cruise. And all of you were very kind to warn us to stay as far away from the Dream Cruise as we possibly could so that we wouldn't get lost and we would find our way back here to church on Sunday morning. But I'm told by Baird and by others that the Dream Cruise is something of a parade. And I don't know if we could call the Dream Cruise the high holy day for all of you who live in the Detroit area, but. A triumph was something like that in Rome, although it was more. And there weren't Chevys and Fords that were parading down the center of the colonnade, but there were people. And chief among them was the Roman general who had just won a war. And he was seated high upon this chariot that apparently had two large wheels and was pulled by an entire train of horses. And he was lifted up above the rest of the people that would have all thronged out into the street to see him. And upon him would have been placed a purple robe and upon this robe a laurel wreath to show that all that Rome valued and longed for was embodied in him. He had won the triumph. To him belonged all of the spoils and so he was being paraded upon the praises of all of the citizens of Rome. Before him would have been led all of the captives that he had conquered, and they might have been connected to each other with chains. And behind him would be led, if it was that sort of war, all those whom he had freed, All of those who might have been held in this foreign land or kept by foreign powers and oppressed by them whom he had gone to save. And so you have the captors out front that are led in shame. And you have this warlord that has now set all of these people free who are following on behind him. And yet in the midst of all of this was one who was carrying incense. So to wave about the crowd this fragrance of smoke, that as they saw this man who had done such a great thing and saw all of their fellow countrymen that had come home, there would be this pleasant sense that was filling the entire street. You could picture that scene in your minds. And the Apostle Paul adopts this picture here to say what it is like in the life of the church, and even what it is like for him as the pastor in the midst of the church. Look at the second half of verse 14. He says, Paul, as the pastor, is the incense bearer. which means that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one seated upon the chariot. Jesus is the one, to him belongs all of the victory because he has come to set his church free from all the powers of sin and death. The Lord Jesus has come to bind the strong man, the devil himself. and leads on in his train all of the church whom the Lord Jesus has bought by his blood upon the cross. And the Apostle Paul says we are led by Christ as the incense bearers who are diffusing the place with this fragrance. So therefore, the church is referred to in verse 15 and in verse 16, those who are being saved and those who have been saved from life to life. And there's a second group here. He says in verses 15 and 16, there are also those who are perishing, present tense. Those who are being led from death to death. What's happening here? Well, the clue is in what this fragrance is. Paul says that the fragrance of the incense that is being dispensed is the knowledge of Christ. It is as the Word of God is being preached and is going out. The Word of God that is preached is for the purpose of Jesus Christ being known. Authoritatively. from his inspired word. That is the intent of every sermon, that you might come to know more about who Jesus Christ is, and knowing who he is, actually know him better. in your heart, in your life, in your soul. That is, as you would come to know Jesus Christ, that in the third place, you would come to love Him with all that you are. You would love Him with your mind, and you would love Him with your heart, and you would love Him with the fullness of your life. The preaching of the word is for the diffusing of the knowledge of Christ, but not all who hear that word preached embrace him. So every time the word of God goes forth, as the one gospel is being proclaimed, two things take place. Some of you are here, and as the word of God is going out, you are exercising faith and believing in this one who is preached. And so the word of God has a sanctifying effect in your life of drawing you closer and leading you on from life to life. And some of you are here, and we are so glad that you are here, and we want you to keep coming back week by week, but you have not yet come to a place where you believe in Jesus Christ. And so there is a warning here that if we disbelieve that the same gospel that is being preached that is helping some could hurt others, that it could actually have the effect in your life of leading you from death to death. The word perishing is in the present tense because that is what describes us who are outside of Christ. We are perishing now in our sin and every day that we fail to trust in Christ, we perish and die more and more. My friend, let me plead with you if you are in that place now. Today is the day of salvation. Do not harden your heart against Jesus Christ. Please turn to Him. Please come to him. Please repent of your sin. And if the Spirit of God is provoking you in your heart, right now as I say these words, please do not leave this place until you talk with someone about how you feel. And this is the prompt that causes the apostle to say, who is sufficient for these things? what mortal man is capable of withstanding this twin effect of the one gospel being preached. I stand before you as a mere, weak, feeble, sinful man. And I think Matt would say the exact same thing. Who are we? Who are we to herald this magnificent word? Who are we so encumbered by weakness and sinfulness as we are to declare the glories of this triumphant Jesus Christ? The answer to what he asks, who is sufficient for these things? The answer is no one. No one, not me, not any of you, no one is sufficient to do this cosmic from heaven to earth work of seeing the lost raised to life and of seeing people who do not even know that they are lost in the deadness of their sin being more and more hardened against the glories of the gospel of Christ. So what in the world are we doing? The second point is this. A faithful servant of the Word of God speaks in Christ. Look with me at verse 17. Now, the Apostle Paul is saying that a pastor doesn't just speak about Jesus Christ. That's not what he's saying, although that's true. A pastor speaks in Jesus Christ. He speaks as one who has been united to Jesus Christ by faith. He speaks with Jesus Christ as the mouthpiece of the Lord. And that is why the apostle says, we speak in the sight of God. or rather before God's face. There is no sense of shame about Paul as he declares the Word of God to the Church of God before the presence of the Holy God because he is declaring exactly what the Lord Jesus wants him to say because the mouth of the preacher is controlled by this book. Friends, that is why you want me behind this block of wood, because this block of wood holds this living book. And you want me to speak behind this book, not in front of this book, because my one job is to declare to you Jesus Christ from this book. not my thoughts about him, and not to say something else beside the word of God, and I dare not get out front of the word of God to say something beyond what God's word has said, but rather to make this book clearly plain for all of you that it might guide and fill the life of this church. We speak in Christ. Everything that the pastor says is to be by the Lord Jesus Christ addressing his church. Also, I think there's a tinge of what the apostle says when he writes to the church in Philippi, when he says that for him to live is Christ and to die is gain. The entire purpose of all that the pastor is, all that he does, his eating, and his sleeping, and his breathing, and his maturing, and his aging in the life of the church is all to see the church full of Jesus Christ. That's my prayer for this church, and I hope that's your prayer for this church. We want all of our hearts to be filled to the full with communion with Jesus Christ. We want to walk with him more. We want our thoughts to be acquainted and to be ruled by him more today than they were last week. We want our singing to be more full of love for Christ and more accented by the knowledge of the love that the Lord Jesus Christ has for us more next week than it was today. We want our love for the neighbors and the co-workers that we bump up against all week to be filled to the full with the knowledge and the love of Jesus Christ. In your prayer time, if you are scratching your head and thinking, what is one thing that I can pray for New City? Here's one thought. Pray that our church would be full of Christ. That as we meet in this place, Lord's Day by Lord's Day, that by the working of the Spirit, it would be as if the presence of God in this place is so thick and so heavy that none could enter in among us and not be conscious of the greatness of the grace of Jesus Christ. Could someone just say amen and agree with that? Isn't that what you want? What Paul is saying here is that he's not a perfect man. He's saying, I'm not a sinless man. He says, but I am a sincere man. And what he's contrasting himself against are these super apostles who have come into the church, who have appearance of power and impressive skill, and yet he says they are peddlers. They're peddlers. Have you ever been in a place where people are out in the street hawking goods and wares, and you might go up and buy something, and you think that you got a pretty good price, until you hear what the next person gets to pay behind you? Peddlers. Peddlers are out in the street, perhaps, at least in this context, not for your sake, but for their own sake. They're out to make a profit and to make a gain, and they're trying to earn as much income as they possibly can. And so the apostle says, this is what these super apostles are there for. They're there for financial gain. They're there doing what they're doing in the life of the church so that you will pay them. And God forbid that that sentiment would ever be present here. He said, don't you recall, Corinth, how I preached the gospel to you free of charge? I wasn't there to get from you. I wasn't there to profit off of you. I was there to give everything that I am for you in Jesus Christ. That's what he's saying here. Just this summer, I had an intern working with me who was a wonderful godly man who's out in seminary in California. And so I was asking him, tell me about the church that you have found that you attend while you're in seminary. And tell me about the pastor under whom you sit each Sunday. And he said the most marvelous thing, I wanna share it with you. He said, the pastor whose church I attend, is there for the church. The church isn't there for him. Now that might strike us as odd at first, but don't we live in a day and age of blogs and tweets and websites, conferences, articles? And if we're not very careful, we could want for our pastor to do those things, to have his name in the lights, as it were, to go off and to demonstrate his skill to a larger audience pool. And yet at the end of the day, isn't it such a marvelous thing to be brought back to this standard of God's truth and say, no, the minister is there not to climb on the backs of the church. but to bend his knees down before the church and to serve them. To serve them with every breath that he has in order to do what the apostle says, to be dying with the church. For his dying breath to be that they might live more and more in Jesus Christ. And that brings us to the third and last point. He says, a faithful servant of the Word of God receives his sufficiency from God. Chapter 3, verses 1 through 6. The gifts that God gives to him aren't for him, nor are they of the man. The gifts are all of God. He can take them away in a second. And they're not there to make the servant of the word look like anything at all, except a servant of the word. The gifts outfit the pastor for the building up of the church. So he says, look at you, Corinth. Look what God is doing. Look what he's done amongst you. In one way, the minister has the very best seat in all of the church because we get to look at all of you. And the more and more that we know you, the more and more that we know the circumstances in your life, and the sufferings that the Lord Jesus has brought into your life by his providence. We know some inkling of the reasons why the tears run down your cheek. And as we have this vantage point, we get to say, oh, Father, what a work you are doing in this people. Oh, what love you have for them. Oh, Lord Jesus, look at how you are working actively in the life of this church. Oh, Spirit of God, the way that you rest upon them is altogether marvelous. That's what he's saying here. He's saying, as I look out at you Corinth, I see that all of the promises of the new covenant are being realized in your life. The Spirit of God is writing words today. I do not, of course, mean that he is inspiring new texts beyond the 66 books of God's inspired and complete word. What I mean is the Spirit of God is taking this word and day by day is inscribing it on the interior of your life. so that you say, oh, as I hide the word of God in my heart, I am treasuring it more and more. Oh, I now see, not just with my eyes on the outside of who I am, but with my heart on the interior of all that I am, I know that this gospel is alive and is active inside of me, and I have the effect of me, myself, beginning to feel more and more full of Jesus Christ. God is doing this. We claim absolutely nothing for ourselves. New City, you are an amazing church. My family and I wanted to come here just to be a part of you. just to worship with you, to be your friends, to be your family, because we love what God is doing here. You are a marvelous church because we serve a amazing, marvelous, all-powerful, sovereign God who has set his love upon you. And every week he is showing that by causing the lost to be saved and to be born again. By causing those amongst us who are saved and born again to be sanctified and built up and grow in the grace of God. To cause children to be baptized and to receive the sign of belonging to God. For adult converts to come and to be baptized and to receive a new name and a new life. Church, that's what God is doing here and now. He's bringing us to greater life. So what is a pastor who is faithful to the word of God? He's one who wants your life to be filled to the maximum with Jesus Christ. Would you pray that for yourself? Would you pray that for your families and for your friends? Would you pray that for this church as a whole? Would you pray that for Matt and for me and for the session of this church as we seek to be faithful to God's word and to lead you in all of these ways? Could we all pray and ask God to do exactly what he has promised to do? To make Jesus Christ known. here our father we bow our heads and we pray and we ask that you would do this here amongst us now oh father would you glorify your son would you glorify him in this place would you glorify him in our lives both in the private and in public places oh father would you give your son all of the glory we pray in his name