Patrick: 00:13

Thank you for listening to First Today. I am Patrick Cooley, pastor of Northport Methodist Church. You can visit the podcast website at www.firstday.us on Facebook at First Day, and you can listen to us on Amazon Podcast, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. If you enjoy the program, if you enjoy this show, enjoy part of being a part of this podcast, you please think about sharing and liking and subscribing. So we're gonna continue on here with 2 Corinthians chapter 4.

Patrick: 00:55

Paul writes at verse number 1, Therefore since we have this ministry because we were shown mercy, we do not give up. Instead we are instead we have renounced secret and shameful things, not acting deceitfully or distorting the word of God, but commending ourselves before God to everyone's conscience by an open display of the truth. Paul spends much of chapter 4 discussing the ministry of the Spirit. In verse 6 he states that we that's himself, the Corinthians, and even the church today have been made competent members of the new covenant through the Spirit. In performing this ministry, the church becomes the aroma of the knowledge of Christ and brings life and brings life and is a ministry of the church in which we have no right to participate, yet God has brought us in out of grace and mercy to give us a reason, to give us a purpose.

Patrick: 02:04

Paul states that it is because of God's mercy that we have become Christ's credentials in this world. We did not receive the death that we deserved, but through Christ we have received mercy. And this motivates Paul and it should motivate the Corinthian church to continue moving toward the life of Christ. Having been entrusted with this ministry, the faithful must cease acting on their own interests and begin only acting for God's. This same message is repeated from chapter 1.

Patrick: 02:42

We are to live openly and honestly, thus revealing the truth of the gospel. This act is not going to make us rich or powerful or even liked by many people in the world, but it will prove that the kingdom of God is here and the purpose of this ministry is obvious. Verse number 3, But if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, which is the image of God. For we are not proclaiming ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as the servants for Jesus' sake.

Patrick: 03:33

For God, who said, 'Let light shine in the darkness,' has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. So if the gospel message is not understood by those who are not walking with Christ, it is because the god of this age prevents them from seeing Christ for who he is. Paul states that it is the image of God, the image of God is what shines forth from us and it is that image that the god of the world, the god of this age, does not want to shine out into the world because that image brings glory and reconciliation and hope and mercy and grace. Jesus cannot be understood to be anything else other than this great image of God, not only a good, wise, or righteous man, not even an exemplary man, apart from his status as the image of God. This is why Paul can tell the Corinthians what he did in 1 Corinthians, that human understanding did not bring them to their knowledge of God.

Patrick: 04:58

The message that Paul proclaims is not concerned with what is possible for humanity if it chooses to follow Jesus' example, but rather that the image of the glory of God is the Lord and not even the best human being. Let me say that maybe possibly another way here or restate that. The gospel message that Paul teaches to the Corinthians is not that Jesus is just some human being that we should all live into the example of and that this human being named Jesus who is righteous and holy is doing these things by his own power and if he has done them by his own power, we can too. That's not Paul's message to the Corinthians. That's not Paul's message to us.

Patrick: 05:56

Paul's message is that Jesus is the image and the glory of God that is far greater and surpasses the best that any human being can possibly do. Remember what Jesus said to Peter, what is impossible for men is possible for God. I hope that is too horribly, horribly confusing here. But, you know, so often in the church today there are people who say, well, Jesus was just an incredible man and an example that we should be living into and striving to achieve. But he was just a man.

Patrick: 06:35

He's the best man. No. Paul would say he is the image of the glory of God. He is what we cannot do on our own. He is what we can never hope to achieve on our own.

Patrick: 06:51

This is I think what Paul is saying here to us and to the Corinthians. Verse 7. Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. Clay jars, what a fitting description. Regardless of its size, drop a clay jar from a certain height onto a hardened up surface and you know what happens.

Patrick: 07:21

We cannot be lords. We cannot create anything that truly lasts. We cannot even be the heroes of our own stories because of the fragility of our own lives. And it is this way intentionally so that we cannot boast that by our authority, design and power and conniving we have overcome the world. We are what we are so that all people everywhere might know that only God's power can bring complete and lasting transformation.

Patrick: 07:57

As much as I love Star Trek, we simply don't have what's in us to make that a reality. Perhaps this is why God made us from clay, the dust of the ground, and not out of the trees, who knows, or out of diamonds. Just we're dust that God lets talk. Verse number 8. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed.

Patrick: 08:22

We are perplexed but not a despair. We are persecuted but not abandoned. We are struck down but not destroyed. We are always carrying the death of Jesus in our body so that the life of Jesus may be displayed in our body. Consider how Jesus lived and what he experienced.

Patrick: 08:43

Consider the practices and lives from which Paul told the Corinthians they should distance themselves, they should distance themselves from social status, wealth, influence, self promotion, and self elevation. Only when we have nowhere left to turn, nothing of our own to rely upon, can the life of Christ, that which is the only way to make anything that lasts, which can make anything new, it is only then that the life of Christ can be made known when we've got nowhere else to turn. Jars of clay. Paul says here that only in our impotence and our unimportance can that which matters be revealed. Verse 11.

Patrick: 09:32

For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that Jesus' life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh. So then death is at work in us, but life in you. So Paul tells the Corinthians that all the struggles and the afflictions that he has experienced, all of the failures and the setbacks and the weaknesses, the stammering and the ineloquence and the imperfections, everything that the Greeks and Romans and modern day Westerners and Americans consider undesirable, These he was willing to experience and live so that the life of Christ, the life we are to live, might shine. He decreases in order that Christ might increase. In his death, Jesus' life is working in Corinth in Paul's death.

Patrick: 10:30

In Paul's decreasing, Jesus' life is working and present and increasing in Corinth. Remember, Titus has brought Paul good news concerning them. Probably the first time ever Paul has received good news about the Corinthians. This is why they are the proof of his apostolic authority. Verse number 13.

Patrick: 10:54

And since we have the same spirit of faith in keeping with what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe and therefore speak. For we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you. Indeed, everything is for your benefit, so that as grace extends through more and more people it may cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God. Paul quotes here the Septuagint's Psalm 116 verse 10, I believed, therefore I have spoken. I was greatly afflicted.

Patrick: 11:39

Although the following reading of Psalm 116 is from the NRSV 1989 which uses the Masoretic text, the message is the same. It is a thanksgiving for the recovery from illness. I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications, because he inclined his ear to me. Therefore, I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompass me.

Patrick: 12:08

The pangs of Sheol lay hold of me. I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord. O Lord, I pray, save my life. Gracious is the Lord and righteous.

Patrick: 12:23

Our God is merciful. The Lord protects the simple. When I was brought low, he saved me. Return, oh my soul, to your rest for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.

Patrick: 12:42

I walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I kept my faith even when I said I am greatly afflicted. I said in my consternation, everyone is a liar. What shall I return to the lord for all the bounty to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.

Patrick: 13:04

I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones. Oh, Lord, I am your servant. I am your servant, the child of your servant girl. You have loosed my bonds.

Patrick: 13:22

I will offer you a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord. With shades of Job's struggle and hints of Jonah's descent into the depths, Paul lays claim to the power of Jesus' life, his suffering and his death and all that he has done, but he also lays claim and lays hold to Jesus' resurrection. By dying a death like his and suffering for the sake of God's will, suffering in righteousness, we will be able to claim his eternal life.

Patrick: 14:08

So it's not just about saying the magic words. It's about laying claim to the life of God through suffering and righteousness. Verse number, 2 Corinthians 4:16. Therefore we do not give up Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.

Patrick: 14:40

So we do not focus on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. To be raised to new life in Christ is worth dying to ourselves, worth the affliction and scorn of the world, Paul tells the Corinthians. For the patron and the client alike, the life of Christ, that new life, is worth putting aside social mobility, worth putting aside wealth, worth putting aside authority, worth putting aside control over other people's lives. And when we compare what we are going through with what will be produced through us by Christ's life, whatever struggle we experience has but the weight of a feather and is as lasting as a sheet of toilet paper in a thunderstorm.

Patrick: 15:42

John Wesley's covenant prayer immediately comes to mind when trying to summarize Paul's message here in chapter 4. I am no longer my own but yours. Put me to what you will. Place me with whom you will. Put me to doing.

Patrick: 15:58

Put me to suffering. Let me be put to work for you or set aside for you. Praised for you praised for you or criticized for you. Let me be full. Let me be empty.

Patrick: 16:11

Let me have all things. Let me have nothing. I freely and fully surrender all things to the glory, to your glory and service. And now, oh wonderful and holy God, creator, redeemer, and sustainer, you are mine and I am yours. So be it.

Patrick: 16:30

And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it also be made in heaven. Amen. When the Christian can say, my desires no longer matter because it is not about me but about you, God. I don't have to have my way. It is then that we prepare ourselves to receive the eternal weight of glory.

Patrick: 16:56

When we care about and treat others better than we do ourselves, when we are kind and merciful to the wicked and the ungracious, then we have laid down our own lives and died to ourselves so that Christ can live in us. Then we can be called children of the Most High. Thank you for listening to this commentary, on lesson on 2 Corinthians 4. I'm Patrick Cooley, pastor of Northport Methodist Church. Please visit the website at 1stday.us if you have any questions or comments.

Patrick: 17:38

So until next time, blessings, and we will see you then. Goodbye for now.