Grace Greeley Teaching

Hebrews 4:1-3

Well, I want to ask you to turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 4, and we’re going to continue in this study of Hebrews and contemplate this concept tonight of entering God’s rest, entering God’s rest.

We are only kind of dipping our toe into the text tonight, even though we’ll read this, this fuller portion. But we’re only going to kind of get into the initial part of it because there’s just so much here, as I’ve discovered, kind of in the middle of an argument that the pastor is making. And we’re reconnecting with the point that the author started back in Hebrews 3 in verse 6. He started there, and then he uses the rest of chapter 3 and then most of chapter 4 to make his point.

And so what is this pastor’s point? What point is he making from Hebrews 3:6 all the way through Hebrews 4:13? His point in Hebrews 3:6 is to see that those who belong to the household of God, that they continue to hold fast their confidence and the boast of their hope.

He wants to make sure, and especially as he’s writing as a pastor to his congregation to his church, he wants to see that they who belong to the household of God, that they continue to hold fast the confidence and the boast of their hope.

So, fully confident in their hope and even boastful that their heart is filled with rejoicings to such a degree that they boast in this hope that they have, which kind of leads them to be expressive about it, to teach about it, to evangelize.

So why is the author of Hebrews, who, as I said, is a pastor, why is he making this point? As one who deeply loves these people, he’s their pastor after all, as one who is deeply convicted in the truth, one who loves and fears God, and also who loves the Lord Jesus Christ, loves his gospel, he has a concern.

And his concern is he thinks that he is seeing history repeat itself yet again in his own church, among some of the people at his own church. After all, this is written to the Hebrews. So these are Hebrew Christians, Jewish. And he’s seeing that the Jewish people once again, at least some of them, are turning away from the hope of the gospel, and they’re trusting in something other than God.

In the terms of the text in Hebrews 4, they’re seeking their own rest. They’re trying to rescue themselves from social trouble, that is all around them in Rome. So for this pastor, these Jewish people, they’re not remote figures to him who are in the text in Scripture, someone from history, someone he doesn’t know. He knows these people personally, he knows them by name. He knows their families, he knows their kids, their grandkids, and he loves them. So he’s got a deep concern for what he’s seeing in front of them.

So as he’s thinking about them, as he’s thinking through the Old Testament, as he’s thinking through the gospel, the times he lives in, the trouble that’s facing his church, a key text comes to mind.

And this key text that comes to mind is perfect, he sees, to encourage his believing congregation, but also to warn or even evangelize the unbelieving people who are among his congregation, who are in attendance there, or maybe members there, but seem now to be adrift.

And that key text that comes to mind, as we’ve seen in chapter 3 and coming into chapter 4, is Psalm 95. And we actually learn from this text that it’s a psalm of David. He cites, as we’ve seen, several verses of Psalm 95 in Hebrews 3:7-11, they happen to be Psalm 95:7-11, and cites those verses there in Hebrews 3:7-11, and then Hebrews 3:12-4:10.

He’s kind of giving a selected, not a full exposition, but a selected exposition, a targeted exposition of that text to drive home its key message. Maybe if I were just to kind of summarize the gist of it, he’s trying to tell his people, we need to take heed to this as well, here’s the message: God is not a God to be trifled with. God is not a God to be trifled with.

When he offers to you, to us, gospel hope, you need to snatch that promise up right away. Trust him. Obey him. Why would you not do that? Not to take him up on his promise, not to cling fast to that promise of the gospel, is really an affront to his grace.

That’s really what the message is of this big section from Hebrews 3, starting at after verse 6 into verse 7 all the way through chapter 4 verse 10, that’s the main message.

So again, go back to Hebrews chapter 3 verses 7 through 11. The pastor sets forth this text from Psalm 95, and then in verses 12 to 19, he warns any in his church who don’t believe of the dire consequences and the company they keep in their unbelief.

I’ll read that again. I’ll back up to verse 6. He says, “Christ was faithful as a Son over His house, whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope. Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried Me by testing Me and saw My works for 40 years.

“‘Therefore I was angry with this generation and said, “They always go astray in their heart, and they did not know my ways, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.”’”

Here’s where he drives home the implications to them. “See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

“For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.’

“For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.”

Now we spent several weeks in that section. I’m not going to rehash the warning to the unbelieving. There were also believers in his church, true Christians, who were succumbing to the pressure to leave their fellowship, to return to the synagogue.

And so this warning to the unbelieving has a dual purpose, kind of warning the believing, too, to kind of wake them up, to bring them to their senses so they can see what they’re doing and see that they don’t want to keep that kind of company. They want to stick with the faithful and the believing.

So having emphasized the warning of Psalm 95, the pastor shifts his focus now to the promise of Psalm 95. And as you’re going to hear in verses 1 to 13 of chapter 4, he really traces this promise through the history of Israel, even returning back to its original form in Genesis 2. And he’s doing this as an encouragement to his church, to the believing in his church. And I hope it’s an encouragement to you as well.

He starts out in chapter 4 verse 1 with the word, Therefore. “Therefore” in verse 1 wraps up the previous point by summarizing and then urging appropriate action to take. And as you’ll see as we read, there are two more uses of the word, therefore, one in verse 6, one in verse 11. They perform that same function. They kind of tie up the point and then move the argument forward.

So with that in mind, I think you’ll spot them as we go. But let’s read Hebrews 4:1-13. “Therefore, let us fear, lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have fallen short of it. For indeed we have had good news proclaimed to us, just as they also; but the word that was heard did not profit those who were not united with faith among those who heard.

“For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, ‘As I swore in My wrath, “They shall not enter My rest,”’ although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has spoken somewhere in this way concerning the seventh day: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works’; and again in this passage, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’

“Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news proclaimed to them failed to enter because of disobedience, He again determines a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.’

“For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.

“Therefore, let us be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall into the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we have an account to give.”

So the pastor is making the point in this section that’s found in verse 9, that there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. That’s the main point, here, in this section. But why does he sense the need to make this point?

Because as we’ve just said, some church members, having professed Christ, they’ve lost sight of the promise. They have failed to see the importance of “the rest,” and thus they’ve failed to see this danger that they’re in.

This is the pattern that their forefathers fell into and that sealed their fate in unbelief, in disobedience, and being cast aside, and not attaining to the promise. He wants them to understand this.

A promise from God represents both opportunity and responsibility. The opportunity is to enter God’s rest. The responsibility then is to believe and obey the promise. And the alternative, then, is to disbelieve. And then he goes, go find some other rest, go find their own rest.

They’re seeking their own rest. They’re trying to rescue themselves from social trouble, that is all around them in Rome.” Travis Allen

The fundamental error in the thinking of some of these people, some of these church members, which the pastor addresses in this text, some of them do not acknowledge a certain continuity that exists between the past and the present, a certain continuity that exists between the people of the past and themselves in that day.

And we would, I would say that we do the same thing. We don’t see the continuity between the figures of Scripture and ourselves. We tend to read from a kind of a safe distance.

They don’t acknowledge that continuity between past and present, between the people of the past and themselves, and between the promise of God and the consequences of rejecting the promises of God then and now. They fail to see the continuity, that God continues his ways from the very beginning of time to this very moment.

So notice in this text that we read that the pastor refers to several points in Israel’s history. Entering into this text, he was talking about the wilderness generation, end of the previous chapter, the wilderness generation, which sets the context for verses 1 and 2. That generation left Egypt, but they failed to enter the Promised Land under Moses because of disobedience and unbelief.

Then in verses 3 to 5 that we read, the pastor makes the connection to his own congregation. He wants them to see the continuity, and he assures them, “We who have believed enter that rest,” verse 3. “We escaped the wrathful curse of judgment that came upon the unbelieving.” He says that in verse 4. As believers they sought the Sabbath rest of God, and he makes that connection all the way back to Genesis 2 verse 2.

Then the pastor draws their attention to another point in Israel’s history in verses 6 and 7 when he cites Psalm 95, which is David’s generation. And David’s generation, that’s a generation that shared more in common with the generation that entered into the Promised Land under Joshua. Clearly, the warning was needed for them, too.

Note kind of the different circumstances of the Moses generation in contrast to the Joshua and David generations. Think about the circumstances of each of those people in the time that they lived in their lifetime.

What were the circumstances of the Moses generation? They grew up in Egypt as slaves. They grew up under oppression, great difficulty, under hard task-masters. They experienced, coming out of that time, God’s miraculous rescue out of their oppression from the Egyptians.

But then, after they experienced that miraculous rescue, passing through the Red Sea, the entire Egyptian army drowned at the bottom of the Red Sea as the walls of water crushed them, fell down on them, they spent their final forty years, because of unbelief, wandering in the wilderness of Sinai until they all died off.

So you see this magnificent, marvelous, amazing time of miracles, but on either side of it, great hardship, right? That’s the Moses generation. Now, what kind of rest would that generation long for? They kept longing for plenty, right? They kept longing for the leeks and the the onions and all that kind of stuff from Egypt. They want to go back to their hardship and their slavery because at least there they could fill their bellies.

So they’re wandering through the wilderness, and so what does rest look like for them? Provision. While they’re wandering, they’re constantly exposed to enemy attacks, so what would they long for? Safety. Protection.

You ever tried wandering around in a desert for forty years? How about two days? I’ve done some of that, and I don’t recommend it, let alone for forty years living in tents. You can imagine the kind of rest the Moses generation longed for. Makes perfect sense to us.

What about the circumstances of the Joshua-David generations? Quite different, aren’t they? Those generations were conquering, they were ascendant. They became settled and established under Joshua in Canaan going into the Promised Land, and then under David, the united kingdom of Israel, headquartered in Jerusalem.

God forged Israel into a nation and then handed it to Joshua, and so it had its own law code, its civil, ceremonial, moral law, and gave this basically society, culture-in-a-box and said, Here, be a people, be a nation, no longer slaves. Now you’re God’s people, God’s nation.

God protected them, provided abundantly for them, under Joshua sent them into Canaan, conquered Canaanite enemies, powerful enemies, giants. Then he settled them in the land, established them in the land, elevated the kingdom under Saul, then the Davidic kingdom, Jerusalem. All Israel was a land of health, wealth, and prosperity.

Did the generations of Joshua and David, did they need rest? They did need rest. And what kind of a rest did they need? They needed a spiritual rest. They needed a rest for their souls, a repose in God, because their sins are forgiven, because they’re in a right relationship with God, because whatever God has done has satisfied his demand for their perfect righteousness. Only then, only when they are justified by God, will their hearts be at rest. And that is the first and initial and needful thing, the primary thing.

So the pastor says, Yes, they needed rest, and David put his finger directly on that need in Psalm 95, as we see in Hebrews 4:7-8. “He again determines a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David after so long a time, as just as been said before, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.’ For if Joshua,” which is a parallel kind of a circumstance to David, “for if Joshua had given them rest, then he would not have spoken of another day after that.”

Joshua, the rest in Canaan, the Promised Land did not satisfy their need for rest. And that’s why God spoke through David of another day, another day of rest.

So there is a continuity that I want you to see between then and the contemporary time of the Hebrews and now, our own time. There’s a continuity between those people and us people. There’s also a continuity all the way through to today, and regardless of circumstance, a continuity of the promise itself, a continuity of the promise itself to enter God’s rest.

In verses 1 and 2, there are three points here in verses 1 and 2: the implication of a promise, the proclamation of a promise, and the participation of a believer. So implication, proclamation, participation.

First, the implication of a promise; that is to ask the question, what is implied by the offer of a promise? The pastor writes in verse 1, “Therefore, let us fear.” Another translation kind of puts it this way: Let us be wary, let us be mindful.

But the word is phobeomai. It’s phobos, the word fear, and he’s not talking about reverential or respect or anything like that. It’s not talking about fear of God. It’s talking about fear of our own condition, a wariness, a cautiousness about the temptations, the things that kind of elicit our own heart’s affections and draw us away.

“Let us fear, therefore, lest while a promise remains of entering His rest, anyone of you may seem to have fallen short of it.” So the word promise, here, if God promises rest, verse 1, “a promise remains of entering his rest,” what does a promise imply? What is required for us to attain that promise?

Believe. Faith. That is the demand made by a promise. You either believe that promise, or you don’t believe that promise. Faith is the critical issue. The implication of a promise is that it demands faith. You’ve got to believe it.

Biblically speaking, if we’re going to use the Bible to define our terms, not our own intuition, not a cultural definition, to believe is a radical thing. When I say radical, I don’t mean, Whoa, radical! I mean deep. I mean fundamental, radical. It is a radical thing. Going down to the depths of the heart sets the direction of the heart. It captures and captivates the life, sets the direction for one who believes.

Who were the standout believers in Moses’ generation? Joshua and Caleb. Wow! Two of the spies came back with a good report, and they didn’t die in the wilderness, and they entered into the Promised Land, right? Did Joshua and Caleb then enter God’s rest? Yes.

And I’m just going to say, if they entered God’s rest, why do they keep fighting battles? Is that restful? Joshua 21:44, I believe, where basically God says he gave them the rest. He gave them rest.

There’s a very true sense in which they did enter into rest by entering into the Promised Land. But really more fundamentally, we know Joshua and Caleb entered into that rest because they believed.

And yet they fought. They had to fight. They had to war, they had to cast out Canaanites. They had to do the, the dirty business of doing battle. So we’re going to come back to this. It’s important.

So what is this rest? Consider the terms, here, very quickly. In our English versions, there are ten references to rest in these eleven verses, these first eleven verses; and all but one of them are related to the verb katapauo. The noun is katapausis. It’s built on the root verb of pauo, which basically means just to stop, cease, leave off, halt. That’s pauo.

But with the preposition that’s added, kata, it’s an intensifying of the root verb, and it means to stop, cease, restrain, but then with a positive sense, to make to rest or to give rest. So it’s the idea of making an activity end, making something cease in order to bring to a place, a state, or a condition of rest. That’s the chief term, here, refers to a cessation of some work or some activity which leads to a state of rest or a condition of restfulness.

And I’ll just throw in here, this cessation of work or activity is tied directly to the gospel, verse 2. It’s a result of the gospel which was on offer since Genesis 2:2, when God rested on the seventh day from all of his work.

Next, notice in verse 2, and again, we’ll come back to this, we’ll unpack more of it, but the proclamation of the gospel, number two, the proclamation of the gospel. “Indeed, we have had good news proclaimed to us, just as they also.”

You want to take a guess as to what that proclaimed good news verb is? To evangelize. Evangelize. Yeah, euangelizo euangelizo, euangelizomai. We get the word evangelize from it. We’re familiar with this term euangelizo, mostly preaching the good news because that was the preaching of Jesus. Mark 1:15 says, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is in hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.” So he’s preaching the gospel. It’s the euangelizomai verb, there.

But what about the, they? “Just as they also.” So we’ve had the good news preached to us. We, obviously, we’re living on this side of the cross, this side of the resurrection. We understand that Jesus came preaching the gospel.

What about the, they, in that sentence? “We have had good news proclaimed to us,” the pastor says to his believing Christian congregation, “just as they also.” Who’s the they? How did they have the gospel proclaimed to them? Were they not recipients merely of the law, the law of Moses? What gospel?

The pastor is making the point that there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” Travis Allen

The very first proclamation of the gospel comes where? What’s the proto-euangeleon? Genesis 3:15, right? “Yahweh said to the serpent, ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed, her seed. He shall bruise you on the head. You shall bruise him on the heel.’” That is the gospel, the very first proclamation of the gospel that they must believe. There’s a promise, there. There’s a promise implied.

It goes on through the Old Testament. If those Old Testament saints treated the Law as something that they could obey and gain a good standing before God and maintain their good standing before God, then that was a law of works.

If, on the other hand, they believed the God who revealed himself to them in the Shema, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one, and you shall love the Lord your God,” and if they gravitated to him, they have a new nature, they put their faith in him, they trust him, they see this law as a blessed provision of living a blessed life, that in this law you follow, you’ll have life.

If it’s no longer a law of righteousness to earn a good standing before God, but rather is just a way for them to walk in his ways, all of a sudden that’s a whole different scenario, isn’t it? That’s a believing heart in his treatment of the law.

Basically, what you see in the exodus from Egypt and the entrance into the Promised Land, what you see there is a geopolitical demonstration of the gospel: rescue from slavery in Egypt, entering into the Promised Land.

And who did they enter into under? His name was Joshua. You know the word for Joshua in Greek, here? Iesous, Jesus, same name. It means Yahweh saves, Yahweh saves, and he brings you into a blessed promised land. It’s the land of promise. The land of what promise? The promise of the gospel, the promise of forgiven sin, the promise of his righteousness granted to you, and you just embrace it by faith.

There is gospel all through the Old Testament. There’s figures and types, ceremonies; there’s the geopolitical example of the exodus from Egypt and entrance into the Promised Land. There’s also their entire sacramental, sacrificial system that points to the need for a savior, the need for forgiven sin, a need for perfect righteousness, one that they’d forfeited with their very first sin.

So, what gospel? Gospel was illustrated everywhere, and through the law and the time of the prophets all the way up to Christ, there was increasing clarity in glory about clarity of of the gospel and fulfilled finally in Christ.

So remember this term, then, from verse 1, katapausis, which is about the cessation of work or activity, leads to a, a place, state, condition of rest. This rest is tied directly to the gospel in verse 2. It’s a result of believing the gospel, and it’s been on offer since Genesis 2:2.

He calls it throughout this text: his rest, that rest, my rest, God rested from his work. So it’s tied directly to a rest of God, and we’ll have to talk about what that is and get clarity on that.

So this promise of rest has to do with the cessation of some kind of work or activity which is tied directly to the gospel. And so this is the rest that God has provided in Christ. And he refers to this rest as his rest, and yet in Genesis 2:2, he speaks of this rest as having been available to mankind since the end of creation week.

Okay, we’ll come back to this, too. I’m just trying to raise issues for you that we need to answer as we go through Hebrews 4.

So we’ve got the implication of a promise. To receive what’s promised, you must believe it. We’ve got the proclamation of a gospel. There were preachers that preached the gospel then and now.

And then, third, the participation of a people. How do people participate or partake of a promised rest? It says, end of verse 2, “But the word that was heard did not profit those who were not united with faith among those who heard.”

That statement, if it sounds clunky in English, it’s because it’s clunky in Greek, and I’ll actually unpack it next time. But that’s not actually the best way to translate that. But it’s a little technical, and I’ll have more time next time to unpack that.

But “the word that wasn’t heard didn’t profit those” who heard that gospel. Whatever generation they were in, when they heard the proclamation of the gospel, when they read it on the pages of Scripture, when they heard it preached to them, taught to them by the priests, it didn’t profit them.

Why? Because they didn’t believe it. Verse 3: “We who have believed enter that rest,” are entering that rest. “We who have believed,” perfect tense, so it’s past completed action with results continuing, “we enter in,” present tense “are entering in,” we are entering into that rest. Same gospel of promise offered by divine grace, received through faith, proclaimed to a people then, proclaimed to a people now; heard by people then, heard by people now.

Only those who believe what has been preached to them, what they have heard, only those who believe gain what’s promised and enter into that rest.

So the concept of rest and the nature of that rest is kind of what’s on offer in the gospel. And that’s what generations in the times of Moses and David forfeited through their unbelief. It’s what the pastor’s own generation, some of them were in danger of losing this, too.

Many modern people today risk forfeiting this promise of rest as well. And I wonder, do they sense any need for rest? Do people today sense their need for rest? You think they think that, or you think, hey, I’m good?

I talked to somebody recently who’s going through very great difficulty in life, great, great difficulty, an unbeliever. And for a while wanted my counsel, but then, knowing that I was going to draw a bead to the gospel, said, “Hey, no, thank you.”

Going through great travail, some of the hardest things, and doesn’t want, doesn’t sense his need for rest. He wants out of that situation. He wants that to be fixed. Temporal problems, relational problems, whatever. Doesn’t sense his deepest need for rest. He doesn’t believe.

And I just want to ask, do you sense the need for rest? Do you think people today sense the need for rest? But do you sense the need for rest? And when I ask that, I’m not trying to say, are you a believer or unbeliever? I’m assuming as I speak to you, I’m speaking to believers.

Do you sense the need for rest? And so, yes, you could say, Hey, I rest. I’m not trying to work for my salvation. I’m not trying to gain favor with God. I totally believe in the promise of Christ. I believe I’ve entered into that rest.”

But can a weariness creep up in your soul? Do you feel like maybe Joshua, Caleb, maybe David, as was mentioned earlier? Do you feel like in the times of Joshua, Caleb, David, that, always enemies, always things, always trouble? Well, I think that this text answers that. It answers the both-and. There’s an already-rest. There’s a not-yet rest that is still on offer for us.

So as we wrap up, I just want to draw some lessons. First, I just want to encourage you to do this as you think through this text, number one, find the connections that exist between yourself and the characters and the situations in Scripture.

Because there is a clear continuity in the fallen human condition then and now. Those sinners and these sinners and we sinners, we’re all the same. We’re all dealing with the same stuff, have the same maladies, have the same deepest needs. So see the continuity.

Be sure to read and see yourself in Scripture, in both the bad and the good, in both the unbelieving tendencies, but also the believing as well. Let your heart be both encouraged but also provoked, challenged, convicted. Do not just side with the good guys in the text all the time. You’ll get a false sense of yourself if you don’t take your continuity with all the characters in Scripture seriously.

Second, take note of the ways that people sought rest on their own. Whether they were in plenty or in want, whether they were experiencing poverty and hardship or health, wealth and prosperity, take note of the ways that they sought rest on their own, apart from God. Consider yourself and think about how you tend to seek your own forms of rest. Call yourself out, call yourself to repentance and return to his rest.

Number three, one more thing to consider, here. Consider the excellence of the rest that God provides in Christ, which is grounded in promise, which means that the benefit of that promise is procured by faith alone. Believe and you will find rest, but as you believe, be sure your faith looks like that of Moses, Joshua, Caleb, David, too, this pastor of the Hebrew Christians in Rome.

Take note of these examples of true, saving faith. Look for that in your own life. Look for it to be developed and strengthened in your own life. And consider how God’s rest led to changes in the thinking of the characters in Scripture, deepened their conviction, sometimes led to greater trouble, temporal trouble on earth, but at the same time they always gained the victory.

We’re going to see a whole litany, a hall of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 whenever we get there. So we got a lot more to learn about this rest, its nature, its already-not–yet character, so a present enjoyment of rest, a future attainment of a final rest, which is our abiding hope. But for now, let’s pray.

Our Father, we thank you for this time in Hebrews 4 and just kind of really an introduction into this concept of rest. I think for every believing person, they would give testimony to some deep, deep level of abiding rest that they have in Christ, in the gospel, in your grace. At the same time, I think every believing heart could also profess just a need for a full and final rest. And we’ve experienced both.

We want to give you thanks that you have caused us to enter into this rest. We pray that you would help us in our pilgrimage as we travel, traverse through this life, to walk faithfully, not turning to the right or to the left to chase after lesser forms of rest, that we keep our eyes fixed on Christ, that you’d help us in our pilgrimage to walk faithfully to you, that we would enter into that final rest that the people of God have always sought after. We love you and thank you for how you teach us and how you encourage our hearts. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Colossians 3:16

We are back in our study of Colossians this morning. So if you would turn in your Bibles to Colossians 3:16, Colossians 3:16. And while you’re turning there, I’ll read that text to you.

It says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God.”

I have a lot to say about this verse, and it’s more than I can get in in this sermon. And so I will say what I want to say this morning, what I’ve prepared for you. But I will have some more that’s going to leak out next week as well.

This week, one verse, and in this verse, Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” it would be very easy for us to rush past this phrase, “the word of Christ,” to rush past that concept in this sentence, which we often tend to do, and then fail to see the uniqueness of that expression, “the word of Christ,” what it points to, what it reveals, what it means for it to dwell richly in us and among us. And so we’re not going to let ourselves be robbed of the joy of learning what is in that phrase, what is in this sentence.

As it’s written in the Greek language, ho logos, that’s, the word; tou Christou, that’s, of Christ. That phrase as it’s written in the Greek language is unique in the New Testament. This is the only place where you’re going to find that exact expression in this exact form.

He doesn’t simply say, Let the word dwell richly in you. He doesn’t say, The word of God, let that dwell richly in you. But it’s specific: “Let the word of Christ dwell richly in you.”

Some of you may be thinking to yourselves, well, what about Romans 10:17, that “faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ”? Isn’t that the exact same expression? And I thought that, too. But then when I checked the Greek of that text, I found it’s not the same.

In the original it is different. There are no definite articles in Romans 10:17. So, no “the,” the word of the Christ, those are, those definite articles are not there.

And it’s also a different word for, word. Instead of the word logos, like we find here in Colossians 3:16, which is a very common and broad comprehensive word, Paul uses in Romans 10:17 uses the word rhema, rhema. Rhema refers to the sayings of Christ or the teachings of Christ, his message, his Gospel, what he said, what he spoke, what his teachings were, which is very fitting if you follow the context of Romans chapter 10.

But here for this context, the most fitting expression for this context in Colossians 3:16 is the broader word for word, which is logos, and he modifies it, here, with “of Christ.”

It’s the perfect way, as we’ve been studying through the Colossian letter, this is the perfect way for Paul to correct the precise error that was facing the Colossians in their own context, in their own church, because this is what we’ve been studying together for this past year. Some in the Colossian church had stopped regarding the word of Christ.

They had become susceptible to error. They were set adrift from simple faith in Jesus Christ and sought to add other things to it. So they were in danger of being taken captive, Colossians 2:8 says, “being taken captive through philosophy and empty deception,” philosophy and empty deception regarding traditions and opinions of men.

So instead of progressing in the faith, they were regressing, they were actually returning to pagan thinking, pagan religion. They were being re-enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world, and we covered that in some detail when we went through that section.

So Paul is, here in Colossians 3:16, he’s reasserting the supremacy of Christ, and he’s doing that also in the entire letter, reasserting the supremacy of Christ. He needs, here once again, to remind the Colossians of what at least some in their church had forgotten.

And he’s also reasserting to the rest of them, there is no higher and better philosophy than Christ. There is no better, higher teaching. There is nothing else. “For in him,” Colossians 2:3 says, “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

So get digging, he’s saying. Get into those treasures, open them up, look at them, handle them, make use of them, is what he’s saying. Let this word dwell richly in and among you so that you keep on reminding yourself, and so that you never take for granted that in him and in him alone, in the precious word of Christ, there’s unmitigated glory, there’s unparalleled clarity, unrivaled beauty, and unequalled supremacy.

If you’re taking notes, those are key words for the four points in an outline: glory, clarity, beauty, and then supremacy. So I’ll give you those words: glory, clarity, beauty, supremacy, repeat them as we go. But here’s the first word, first point, number one, the glory of this word, the glory of this word, number one.

We could argue that the highest Christology in the New Testament is found in Colossians 1:15-20. Christ is set as equal to God. He shares the essence of God. He is the divine agent of creation and redemption.

And so, as the New Testament teaches, and as Paul taught to the Colossians, if you have Christ, you have God. If you claim to have God, it is only going to be in and through Christ. There were many false teachers in Colossae that were saying, you can have God; you don’t really need Christ. Okay, if you Christians want to have him, that’s okay. But you also need to kind of placate these other mediators as well, to get the fullness of God, to get the full experience of God.

So some of the Colossians were failing to discern the implications of the false teaching that they’ve been listening to. Add anything to Christ, whether as expedient to commune better with the divine, as the false teachers were saying, that is really to diminish Christ. It’s an affront to this one perfect mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. It’s an affront to that mediator God has provided, to add anything to him.

Another error is to distract people from Christ even slightly, to draw the focus away from Christ, whether it’s for religious or social reasons, as with the Colossians, or whether it’s for cultural or political reasons, as with us American evangelicals. This is to detract from Christ, which is to face the peril of denying Christ. The Apostle John warned, “He who denies the Son,” that is the Christ, “he who denies the Son does not have the Father,” 1 John 2:23.

One must confess the Son, and in confessing the Son, the word confess is homologeo. Homo, understand, is same. Logeo is to say or to speak. So you must say or speak in your confession the same thing that God in his revelation about the Christ says and speaks about him.

To confess the son does not mean just to walk around saying, I’m a Christian, I’m a Christian, I’m a Christian. It means to know who he is and live according to that truth, confessing the son.

One must confess the son, 1 John. And in confessing the Son, we confess him as he truly is: Jesus, the man of Nazareth, and also the Christ of God. “That one who confesses the Son, he has the Father, also.”

The false teachers of Colossae taught that there were other important deities, smaller deities, maybe, but deities that they had to placate, satisfy in order to get the fullest experience of communion with God. There were other mediators that could aid them, boost them in gaining access to God.

And their teaching in their own time, in their own context, in the first century in the Lycus Valley, their teaching for them was subtle because it mixed the principles of their contemporary philosophical, religious thought and language and the forms of Judaism and Christianity.

They took revealed things from the Bible, they took concepts from the Apostles and blended them in and layered them over their own principles and teaching. They just layered biblical doctrine, biblical language, theological argumentation on top of a foundation of pagan principles that had never been uprooted and cast away.

So Colossian Christians were emerging from the exact same soil as the false teachers came out of, and so they were susceptible hearing to the siren song of the errors that those false teachers promoted. Those tunes sounded familiar. The words sounded refreshing.

Kind of like Christians today who do not see the implications of evolutionary thinking, evolutionary ideology that is really, evolutionary thinking, spilling the banks of biology to encroach on every area of science, hard sciences and soft sciences as well, ideas of evolution that really infect our economics that our children are raised with in their education systems, and is rife within our politics as well.

Or we could point to the many areas of psychology, all built from an atheistic foundation from Sigmund Freud and others that denies God, denies sin, denies the immaterial aspect of man’s nature.

When you deny those things, you’re not even close to the truth. You cannot fix the human condition if you deny sin. They claim to. Now this psychological thinking has saturated everything, and I could mention economics, politics, all culture that has so saturated our system that the healthcare industry, businesses feel they must compensate employees who need to take a mental health break.

What is that? It’s an adulterated psychology. Mental, refers to mind, the immaterial aspect of man’s nature. Health, refers to the physical health of mankind. You blend those two words, mental and health, and you’ve got an oxymoron. You’ve got something that doesn’t fit together. And yet people throw around those terms all the time. You hear them. I hear them.

And it saddens me when I hear Christians use these terms. Sometimes we use the terms just to, we’re in the conversation with people in the world, and I understand that. I’m not trying to condemn anybody who uses the word mental health.

But listen, we need to understand this comes straight from psychology. It is irrational on its face. How do they think that with irrationality they can get to the actual human condition and heal anybody, help anybody?

Do we need to speak in our day of the Marxist thinking that is winning elections everywhere, isn’t it? Economic theory that is, that casts the world into two classes of oppressor and oppressed.

And this Marxist ideology shapes not only the social and political instincts of all the generations younger than you, but also how they react to relational difficulties, how they react to things they don’t like. They cast everything into oppressor-oppressed categories and move on from there.

Don’t like your parents criticizing how you and your spouse raise and parent their grandkids? Oh, oppressor-oppressed. Set boundaries. If they cross them, if those parents cross them, then force a no-contact policy.

I don’t know if you’ve been reading the articles out there, but the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, they’re all picking up on this “no contact” rule coming from the adult kids toward their adult parents. They want to avoid being harmed psychologically, traumatized by toxic parental control.

You don’t like pastoral correction, especially if it offends an uber-sensitive wife and kids? Let’s just label those pastors and those elders as oppressive. They’re toxic leaders, controlling, harmful narcissists, those guys. You go online, you gather yourself a little band of sympathizers, post about your trauma, and never let yourself come under toxic leadership ever again.

Listen, I could go on with example after example. These are the things that we all see, we all experience. Some people in this room have experienced these kind of, flip the script on you and turn your love into oppression kind of stuff. If you’ve experienced this personally, it’s hurt you. I understand that.

We need to realize, though, that Christians today, professing Christians, true Christians, we emerge from the same native soil as the non-Christians of today. We come from the same stuff. And that means we are just as susceptible to the errors of our culture as the Colossians were to the errors of their culture.

And so when we look at the Colossian context and say, How could anybody be tempted to placate deities to get to Yahweh in Christ’s name? How could they ever be tempted to that? Well, just maybe consider some of the errors that we are susceptible to, and it’ll give you a gracious way of thinking about them. And you will also be able to principalize Paul’s instructions to them and port it over to your own time, your own situation, so that you can apply it here.

The way to keep emerging from your native soil, the way to escape from its grasp and remain truly free, is by an increasingly clear vision of the glory of God in Christ, the glory of Christ in the word of Christ, to bring it back to our first point.

It is “in Christ in whom all the fullness of deity dwells bodily,” Colossians 2:9; and then in verse 10, “It is in Christ that you have been filled.”

Interesting word. Just a note about the verb, “You have been filled.” It’s germane, really, to what Paul is driving at and prescribing in Colossians 3:16. The verb, to be filled or to fill is pleroo. Here, it’s in the participle form. It’s a perfect passive participle. So the perfect tense describes what’s been done to believers by God’s sovereign grace.

Passive tense means it’s done to believers. This is what God has done. He has filled. You have been filled. It’s been done to you. This is really a declaration in the perfect tense, a declaration about their position in Christ.

But the perfect tense also points ahead to an, a continual filling, to an ongoing need for filling and filling up in him. “You have been filled,” Colossians 2:10, “You have been filled,” completed action in the past that asserts the believer’s position in Christ.

But the result of our position in Christ, those results continue into the present, points us to a continuous, ongoing filling, which is what we are to do in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” Don’t go for a glass half empty or even half full. Go for filled to overflowing in Christ.

If we’re not being consciously, continuously filled, increasingly filled with a clear vision of Christ and his glory in the word of Christ, we, too, can become susceptible to the same kinds of errors of the Colossians. We’ll fail to see the supremacy of Christ.

And that weakness is dangerous. It makes us open to every other kind of error as well. To put anything above Christ, to see anything in our life as supreme, to see family as supreme, to see work commitments as supreme, to see money as supreme, to see bills, health, relational issues, to see anything else as supreme and more important, then you are risking idolatry. You are risking putting anything over as a rival to Christ. Don’t do that. The only way to avoid it is to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”

Now, no need to re-preach what we’ve already studied in chapter 1, but I do kind of want to remind you from Colossians 1:15 if you go back there. Then, just, this will help us to consider this point about the word of Christ in Colossians 3:16 and the glory aspect of it.

It says in Colossians 1:15 that “he is the image of the invisible God.” He’s talking about Christ, here. “He’s the image of the invisible God. He is the firstborn of all creation, for in Him all things were created.” Paul is, here in this verse, backing up prior to the act of creation, prior to the creation of matter and motion and time.

He backs up to before Genesis 1:1. We don’t call it the time before Genesis 1:1 because time was created in Genesis 1:1. How do we say that as humans trapped in time and space? Before Genesis 1:1. That’s how we say it. It’s before Genesis 1:1 when God created the heavens and the earth.

The only thing prior to that verse in the Bible is the subject of that first verse in the Bible: God, one being whose essence is to exist. His existence is his essence, and it’s an essence that is perfect, singular, simple, infinite, eternal.

It’s an essence that is spiritual, so therefore not visible. This Being who is being itself exists eternally in three Persons, and one of the three Persons is the “Who” of Colossians 1:15. He is set apart from another of the three Persons in this verse. So two divine Persons in this verse. One is the image, the eikon of God, and the other is the invisible God, two Persons.

The idea, here, in Colossians 1:15, we learned this when we studied it, I’m not going to re-preach it, but this image is the image of God, not in the terms of, of manifestation, making the invisible visible since this is prior to Genesis 1:1. Nothing is visible there. So this is not manifestation, that happens at incarnation, right, when God took on human nature, human flesh in Jesus Christ.

Image, here, is about representation. The Son perfectly represents God. Christ perfectly represents God. The second person of the Trinity perfectly represents the first Person of the Trinity. Christ represents the true essence of God as he is the true essence of God in all his attributes.

The Father, in the eternal generation of the Son, a mystery that we do not understand or comprehend for sure, the Son relates to the Father in terms of affiliation. The Spirit relates to Father and the Son in terms of spiration.

But this eternal generation, Father to Son and affiliation, it’s beyond our understanding. There’s no beginning. There’s no start. There’s a conceptual relation there that we don’t comprehend. The Christ is the true essence of God.

So we take this incomprehensible teaching concept from Colossians 1:15 and we trace its implications through the rest of the section. So of course, he’s the firstborn of creation. When everything comes into being, he’s there. Yeah, he’s pre-eminent over all. He’s the highest rank.

He is supreme as the divine agent of creation, “For in him all things are created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.”

All these things: the invisible foundation of intangible, immaterial laws, and then the superstructure of the physical world that rises up from that invisible foundation, not to mention the entire realm of angelic beings.

All these things, verse 17, Colossians chapter 1, are contingent. They’re dependent on the almighty power of Christ, none of them necessary beings, all of them freely created by God’s freedom, his grace.

Paul’s not finished. Reasserting Christ’s glory for the Colossians, Paul is reminding the Colossians that Christ is not only God, the creator and sustainer of all creation, heaven and earth. He’s also the Redeemer and the reconciler and the head of the church.

So some of the Colossians were failing to discern the implications of the false teaching that they’ve been listening to.” Travis Allen

Keep reading in verse 18. It says that “He is the head of the body of the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything, both in creation and in redemption.”

He is preeminent. He’s the firstborn. He’s the highest ranked, supreme. “For in Him,” verse 19, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross, through Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven.

“And although you were formerly alienated and enemies in mind and in evil deeds, but now He’s reconciled you in the body of His flesh through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach, if indeed you continue in the faith, firmly grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you’ve heard, and which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.”

Paul saw his ministry as an ambassadorship among other things; but as an Apostle, he was an ambassador of Christ. And as was preached eloquently and well a few weeks ago from 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 20. Paul says, “We beg you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God.”

He says that as a, as an emissary, as an ambassador, as if he were deployed from the throne of Christ himself in heaven and deployed down to earth and deployed down to the Colossians, deployed down to the Corinthians, deployed down to these churches.

And he’s saying, Listen, I represent a different kingdom. I represent a different realm. I represent a different king, and I’m begging you on his behalf, I’m sent by him. And here’s what he’s saying: Be reconciled to God. Be reconciled to God. Now is the time of salvation. Today. This is the favorable time. Heed the warning.

Christ reconciles us to the father by the merit of his death and his resurrection. He’s the atoning sacrifice for our sins, an atonement that he offered as our substitute on the cross. He offers it to us and gives to us the righteousness of his perfect life.

And that righteousness, that perfect righteousness, which God demands of every single one of us and cannot be met in any one of us, that perfect righteousness of Christ given to us, by that we are accepted and approved by God. Christ was accepted by God. He did not remain in the grave, but he was resurrected the third day. And in him we, too, will be resurrected one day. That’s reconciliation, that’s redemption.

And Christ is not only the Creator, but he is the Redeemer of a fallen humanity. And those who refuse that offer of peace, they will be reconciled later, because God will reconcile all things to himself. But they’ll be reconciled by force. At Christ’s second coming, when he comes to execute God’s judgment, he comes then on a mission of pacification, to subdue all God’s enemies, to force them all to bow the knee in homage to him.

But we live in an age of grace right now. We live after the advent of his first coming, which was a mission of peace, a mission of mercy, a mission of God’s compassion to send the message that sinners can be reconciled right now by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. As he says in verse 20, he’s made peace through the blood of his cross.

If they refuse to repent and believe in the age of grace, during this time, they will be made to reconcile when Christ comes again to judge. Because he will, not he might, not he’s planning to, he will reconcile all things to himself.

This Christ that the Colossians were being tempted to turn away from, to minimize, to be distracted from, do you see the glory of this Christ, that there is none more glorious, that there’s no greater savior, there’s no greater king, there’s no greater mediator?

So Paul’s trying to show, here, all this glory is revealing God’s chosen one is truly God. He’s the Creator and the sustainer of all things. He’s the lawgiver, the judge, the executioner of divine justice as well.

And Christ is also the agent of grace. He’s the agent of divine redemption. He’s the one who won divine redemption. So he’s the reconciler. He’s the one mediator between God and man, and he is our mediator. If he’s your savior, he’s your mediator, too. You belong to him, but by divine right he belongs to you as well.

As our mediator, he occupies and uses three offices of his grace: prophet, priest, king. As God’s final prophet, he reveals and preaches and proclaims and teaches, and he sends the Holy Spirit to illuminate the truth to us, to teach the truth to us, to motivate us to understand the truth, give us curiosity, a holy curiosity to investigate, to study, to learn, to know God as he’s revealed himself in his Word.

If you do not have that curiosity, and if you are superficial in your understanding, my friend, will you repent? You’re ignoring your birthright. You’re, you’re not here on this earth to become wealthy, to pad your nest, to make your life comfortable, to do that last little thing on your bucket list. No, your birthright is to know God. Don’t sell yourself short. That’s God’s offer to us of a great high priest, final high priest.

This is really a huge subject in Hebrews. As our great High Priest, Christ cares for us. He sympathizes with our weaknesses as we heard earlier out of Hebrews 4. He’s been “tempted in all points, as we are, and yet without sin.”

He’s the only one who is in the position to help us. He’s been tested and proven, shown to be sinless. He’s the one who, as we struggle and suffer, as we’re anxious, he prays for us, intercedes for us. He’s very close in proximity to the father, being at the father’s right hand. He sends the Spirit, who also “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words,” and then the Spirit comes to comfort us and encourage us.

So much more we could say. But as our perfect king, prophet, priest, and then king, he’s a king like no other. Christ himself, I mean, think, is there any president, prime minister, king, royalty in the world ever in history who’s gone out in front of his army and said, you guys stay home. I’ll fight this entire army myself. No.

Kings, presidents, governors recruit. They institute a draft, and they force people into service to protect the country. This King goes out to fight the great enemy of his people on his own. It’s the only way it could, the victory could be won. And he did win. He didn’t recruit an army to fight his battles. He did what none of us could do. He won the war, the greatest war, against sin and death and the devil.

Colossians 2, look at Colossians 2:14-15, which we’ve studied. But here’s what our king has done. “He has cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which is hostile to us.” God’s “taken that out of the way, having nailed it to the cross; and having disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them in Him.” Who’s that? The king, Christ.

Listen, we need to know him, we need to learn him, we need to bow down and worship him. Our souls cry out for an outlet to praise this one for his glorious grace and to thank him for ministering to us, continuing to minister to us in these ways as our prophet and priest and our king.

This is why we must, in our church, in our own hearts, “let the word of Christ dwell richly within us.” Because it’s the Word of Christ about Christ that points us to who he is, what he’s like, what he does, what his heart is for sinners, what his heart is for you and me.

It’s this word of Christ that tells us about these offices, about his continuing ministry to us, tells us about his eternal ministry to us. We need to know this, this message we’ve received, which we believed, this message that we’ve loved about a Savior that we love. This is what we now teach, the message about Christ and all his glory. It’s a message that our weary, sin-sick souls so desperately need to hear, to go deeper in, every single day.

Now, before I come to the next point, we need to know what it is for this word, to dwell richly in us. What is this? Interesting imagery that Paul employs, here, isn’t it? He takes something conceptual, “the word of Christ,” which I actually haven’t fully unpacked for you. I’ll do that the next point.

But he takes this conceptual thing, the word of Christ, and he kind of personifies the concept as if he’s telling us to treat the word of Christ as a most honored, highly esteemed house guest. The word that Paul, the verb that Paul uses, here, in Colossians 3:16, to live in or dwell in, is the verb enoikeo. Oikos is the word for house or home. En is a preposition. It means in, inside, within, among. It’s actually a pretty versatile preposition in the Greek.

But he joins these two things together. In the home, is what this verb means. Let the word of Christ dwell richly in your home, in you, among you, in your church, in the midst of your fellowship, and most certainly in your own hearts.

Now, how might you show hospitality to a most-honored guest, one that you want to dwell richly in your home? Think of some noble person, highly esteemed in your own mind, in your own heart. I know for every single one of us, we have people like that.

And it kind of depends on our gifting, depends on our bent, our disposition, maybe our field of expertise. We have certain people that we’re like, Man, if I could get 24 hours with that guy, that person, that woman, to understand and unpack and learn and grow from what they have to say. And I’d love to show them how much I think of them and esteem them by how I show hospitality to them.

What rich abundance would you want that one to enjoy in your home? Would you close off any portion of your home to that person? Obviously not. You’d want him to have the run of the house, enter every room, wherever he wants to go, at his pleasure.

To dwell richly: refers to a comprehensiveness, doesn’t it? Would you limit the use of anything in your home? Would you keep him from enjoying access, keep him from using whatever he finds expedient and convenient? Obviously not. You wouldn’t say, Well, I’m sorry, that that bathroom’s off limits. Oh, I’m sorry, that refrigerator is kind of for the family. Oh, that pantry, that’s where my goodies are, so don’t, I bought these for you. You’d want him to abide in your home in luxury, wouldn’t you? Make use of everything in your home?

So dwell richly, certainly means luxuriously, intensively. Would you deny this one any desire of his? Would you refuse any request? Would you stifle any inquiry? Would you limit any interest? No, no, and no. So dwell richly and abundantly in your home means to dwell attentively, to show great attentiveness, seeing, searching out his interest and serving it, if you can.

The imagery, though, speaks more specifically than this. Because it’s not our personal homes that Paul is thinking about, here, though they’re affected by implication. It’s not even our hearts that Paul is thinking about, here, though they are affected and involved by necessary implication.

It turns out that, rather than us making Christ feel at home in our house, turns out God is making us his personal home in this text. For the word of a deity, which is to dwell richly, which is attended to daily, comprehensively and intensively, all that happens, what’s the other word for the home of a deity? Temple. All that happens in the temple of the deity, which is God’s home. He’s the host, then. We are the servants of his Word in his temple.

So Paul is calling on imagery familiar to these Colossians, who are versed, read in the Old Testament Scriptures. And as they understand, as in the temple of the Jews, every dimension was dictated by the Word of God, wasn’t it?

Every measurement dictated by the Word of God, every stitch and seam, every material, every fabric, every piece of furniture, every accoutrement of worship, the manner of entering and exiting that home, that temple, the work of the priest and the servant within the temple, everything dictated by the Word of God, wasn’t it?

As Paul explains in Ephesians, which is parallel to Colossians, he says in Ephesians 2:22, “We are in Christ and it’s in Him that this whole building being joined together is growing into a holy sanctuary in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”

Same imagery is being used and employed in Colossians 3:16. This same word, enoikeo, is used in 2 Corinthians 6:16, where you find more temple language. “For we are the temple of the living God, just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them.’” That’s it again. “‘I’ll walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’”

Listen, when the word of Christ dwells richly in and among us in our churches, the Christ who indwells us by the Spirit, the will of the God who sent him to minister his word to his redeemed. A prophet is there to teach us, our priest is there to care for us and console us and comfort us, our King is there to provide for us and protect us. He won the war. He’s going to win all of our little battles, too.

This is the glory of the incarnate God in Christ. And the word about this Christ is what we need to see with greater and greater clarity and understanding, that he’s glorified to us, in us, through us, kind of as the Shekinah glory of God of old, only ever brighter and fuller and more glorious as we learn, as we gain clarity.

And that brings us to a second needful thing, the second word, clarity; number two, the clarity of this word. The clarity of this word. How will the glory of Christ be known among us and made manifest and dwell richly within us as a chosen race, as we, a royal priesthood, we become agents of Christ?

And notice how Paul is continuing, here in Colossians 3:16, he says we’re to “let the word of Christ dwell richly within us with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another.” That one another says we are all involved in training one another.

You know where you can’t obey this verse? At home, online, not gathered. You know where you can’t obey this verse? On the lake, fishing. You know where you can’t obey, you know, fill in the gap, right? What’s required to do this one another? People, faces, relationships, a body, a church, a local church, a gathering, an assembly, in person. We’re all involved in this project.

Christians are a priestly class. And so we with all wisdom we teach and we admonish one another, and we do that to gain further and greater clarity about the Word, about Christ.

Now, in the interests of clarity, let’s clarify an interpretive point, here. Is the word of Christ, the word that Christ speaks, the word that Christ himself spoke? That would be to interpret “of Christ” as a subjective genitive. Or is the word about, is the word about Christ, that is, to treat of Christ as an objective genitive, that is, he is the object of the teaching and of the speaking.

If this is talking about the word that Christ speaks or spoke, then Paul is telling us, here, to use in our own teaching, in our own admonishing, whatever Christ himself spoke, whatever he taught. Use his words, use his teaching. Make that the theme of your own ministry. Teach with that, admonish with that. Find wisdom in it, and use that wisdom in your teaching and admonishing.

We could really see merit in this view. We just learned by virtue of who Christ is in all his glory as the essence of God, the divine agent of his creative and redemptive work, that whatever Christ speaks, God speaks. No difference.

So when he speaks, considering his essence, he speaks an eternal, or you could take all of his attributes and use them as adjectives in front of the word “word.” When he speaks, he speaks an eternal word, an immortal word, an unchanging word, an immutable word, and so on and so forth, because all of them come from his divine essence.

Since Christ is the Creator and the Sustainer, he speaks a living word. He is life itself. He speaks a powerful, effectual word. He’s able to call worlds into existence. He sustains all things by his word. If he says the word, speaks the word, or withholds a word, things evaporate. They disintegrate. His word is an almighty word. It’s an omnipotent word. It’s an all-knowing word.

All that is true by virtue of who Christ is. And when Christ speaks, God speaks; and that’s why there should be no difference in your thinking about a Bible that has red letters and black letters. They’re all letters that come from God by his Spirit.

Paul’s point, here, is different, though. When Paul writes, “the word of Christ,” he’s not referring to Christ’s word as in the word Christ speaks, though that is contained in what this, the real view is.

Paul focuses, here, the attention on the word about Christ. It’s an objective genitive. He’s, he’s not, it’s not a subjective genitive. It’s an objective genitive. It’s the message about Christ. It’s what’s spoken, what’s said, what’s taught about Christ. He’s the object.

It’s the Word that proclaims Christ, preaches Christ, teaches Christ, instructs about Christ. That’s why Jesus, in all his teaching, remember that he was so Scripture-focused. He’s always going back to the written Word of God. He’s eager to teach its true meaning. It’s, God’s Word has always been perverted, distorted, chained, twisted by sinful men and sinful teaching.

And that’s what he came to do in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, “You’ve heard it said, but I say to you.” Remember that pattern in Matthew chapter 5? He’s doing that all the time. He’s correcting their misunderstandings about the written Word of God. He’s helping them to see and interpret it truly, rightly, for its benefit and profit.

But why does he do that? He does that, eager to teach its true meaning, because that Scripture pointed people to salvation in him. He said to the Jews, John chapter 5, “‘You search the Scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life. But it’s these that bear witness of me.’”

So my Jewish brothers and sisters, quit persecuting me. Don’t turn away from me. You search the Scriptures, but you treat them as a dead word. You don’t see that in them you have life because in the life, it comes from me.

Go to your Bibles, yes, but go to true Bible study which glorifies Christ. It’s after the resurrection, Jesus told his disciples to study, Luke 24:44, “‘all the things which are written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms.’” That’s the entirety of the Old Testament. For the Scriptures glorify Christ. It’s Christ we need.

Same sense here as well, as Paul’s using here. The “word of Christ” refers to all that God has revealed in Holy Scripture about Christ. All the revealed Word of God is pointing to Christ, from the Old Testament to the, through the New Testament.

So in other words, “the word of Christ,” not just another synonym for the Word of God. Paul’s being more specific, here, knowing that the Colossians needed clarity from Scripture, that it all points to Christ and all will be fulfilled in Christ, and they dare not turn away from Christ.

So any text that these false teachers tried to use in their systems, anything that they tried to marshal from Scripture, whether the law, the prophets, or psalms, if the arguments ended up detracting from Christ, diminishing Christ, turning attention away from Christ, they’re false. The system’s false. That theology is false. The teachers are false. The lot of them are to be disregarded, rejected.

That’s the clarity that the word about Christ, that’s the clarity that’s needed, for otherwise, we are all prone to drift into that which is not at all glorious, but instead is odious, sinful, which brings darkness to the mind, not light. It brings obfuscation and confusion, not clarity and conviction.

We need teaching. And by the way, we need admonition. We need both of those in wisdom. That’s what the apostolic ministry was all about. Colossians 1:28, as Paul is unpacking his own ministry to the Colossians, he said, “We proclaim him.”

Paul said, we Apostles, all who are working with me, that’s what we do. “We proclaim him, and we are admonishing every man, and we’re teaching every man with all wisdom so we may present every man complete or mature in Christ.”

Now, here he enlists the entire church to join in the work. Teaching: common verb didasko, declare, teach, explain the truth, instruct using the truth. So teaching the Bible: expositional ministry. Expositional ministry is to be the beating heart of every evangelical pulpit. It’s the chief means that the Word of Christ is going to be made clear to Christians.

It’s an affront to that mediator God has provided, to add anything to him.” Travis Allen

Teaching the truth, it aims at mental reasoning in the heart. It brings clarity about sin, righteousness, and judgment. It brings clarity about Christ and his great salvation. It brings clarity about God. Our great eternal reward brings clarity to us about what our life is for, the stewardship that we have of this blessed, eternal life that we’ve received from him. We need teaching.

Also admonishing: the verb noutheteo. The positive expression is called exhortation. Its negative expression, though, is admonition. So, strong encouragement, strong encouragement. There’s kind of, in admonition, kind of a bite sometimes in the warning.

Biblical instruction in the church is always to come with authority. We’re not to be mealy-mouthed about what the Word says. We’re to be clear, authoritative, give the voice of command. Exhortation is for that; it commands obedience.

Admonition prohibits disobedience, censures disobedience. Why do we need this? Why do we need admonition? Come on. You know yourself. I know myself. We need admonition because we need to turn from our sin, don’t we? We need to turn away from what’s so alluring, so tempting, so enticing.

Sin is a great hindrance, a great, great obstacle that keeps us from seeing with clarity Christ in all of his glory, in all of his mediatorial glory. Sin clouds the vision, it darkens the mind, it distorts the reasoning, it corrupts the heart. Got to get rid of it. That’s what admonition’s for.

The Colossians needed this admonishment. Some had strayed from Christ, clearly darkened in their understanding. And the others in the church, couldn’t be just Paul doing it, couldn’t just be Epaphras. The others in the church need to look out for one another, in love and in wisdom, by exhortation and by admonition, too.

To exhort, admonish, confront, correct. This is to be a ministry that we all take up together, not just ordained ministers, pastors, elders, shepherds, overseers. They set an example for the church, but the whole church has to be involved in this.

Paul told Timothy, as his apostolic emissary, as his appointed man, and kind of sets the tone for pastoral ministry for us, Timothy and Titus both, Paul told Timothy, In speech, conduct, love, faith, purity, Timothy, you show yourself to be an example of those who believe, primarily in the public and private ministry that he had of teaching, admonishing the flock with all wisdom.

But then he says this, “Timothy, preach the word,” 2 Timothy 4:2. “You be ready in season and out of season.” That is to say, doesn’t matter if it’s popular or not, you preach it. “You preach it with authority, and I charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, preach the word.”

That’s the teaching part. And then he says after that, Reprove, rebuke, exhort. There’s the admonishing part. But then he says do this ministry carefully. He says, “Do this with great patience and instruction,” which is the “with all wisdom” part. Timothy does that as a matter of course in his ministry, but he’s setting an example for everyone else in that church.

All of this brings clarity about the Word of Christ, about the message about Christ: truth apprehended by the mental reasoning of the heart. It’s embraced by the emotional affections of the heart for the volitional decision-making of the will of the heart. So we obey from the heart. That’s what all this is about. This is how the Word of Christ dwells richly within us. We think, speak, act with clarity about the Word about Christ.

And with that clarity, we have a deepening conviction which fills out our life, which strengthens us in our ministry as the Word of Christ is growing us into the temple of God that we are. As that happens, Paul told the Ephesians, the manifold wisdom of God is going to be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places.

What do the angels admire most in God’s wisdom? Well, with bright clarity, they see in the wisdom of God, in the church, the manifold wisdom of God, they see the beauty of Christ’s glory. So we come to a third point, number three, beauty, the beauty of this Word, the beauty of this Word.

The angels respond to God’s wisdom on display in the church with worship and praise. And we, we Christians, we redeemed, we get to join the angelic chorus, as Paul says here in Colossians 3:16, “with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”

Never minimize your role in the church service to be singing, to be teaching one another with all wisdom, and to be doing so with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, which is the height of our instruction to one another.

As we gain increasing clarity about Christ, as the truth is taught clearly, wisely, as our lives conform more fully to him by the exhortation and the admonition that we receive; the more Christ is glorified to us, the brighter his glory comes to us, the more beautiful he’s revealed to be; we simply must find fitting expressions of beauty to respond to the beauty that we find in him.

There’s a call in Psalm 96, verse 9, to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” That verse, and others like it, has kind of opened up an entire field of study called the theology of aesthetics. Its aim really is to understand more fully so that we meditate more deeply on divine beauty.

And if it’s a divine beauty, then there is an objectivity to it because God is one thing: He is true. And so beauty is one thing and it is true. When we see that beauty in God, in Christ, in his Word, in the Word about Christ, in the way that Scripture tells the story about Christ, it resonates in our hearts because we’re creatures created in his image. We respond. We love what we hear, what we see. We just, we just got to sing.

Contrary to the false modern notion, romanticism, all that stuff, that beauty is subjective, beauty is entirely in the eye of the beholder; and so you take some weird thing from Picasso, two eyes on the side of a face. It’s not beautiful, it’s grotesque. We can all admit it. You can even walk through the Louvre and admit it openly. Say it.

Beauty is an objective thing. There are objective properties, transcendent elements that are recognized by all, known and responded to innately, intuitively, universally about beauty. Of course, that’s right because God is a creator of beauty, and he is objective. He’s true. Since we’re made in his image, we respond to what’s true and good and beautiful, as the Triumvirate is put.

In writing about theological aesthetics, or the theology of beauty, Jonathan King says this, “Beauty is discerned via objective properties.” And he lists several of them: “proportion, unity, variety, symmetry, harmony, intricacy, simplicity.” These and other properties are objective. We can see them. We respond to them. We know them when we see them.

He goes on to say that when we perceive, the human heart perceives beauty, beauty that’s revealed about God, about Christ, revealed by God about Christ, that beauty, he says, quote, “pleases the mind by displaying a certain kind of fittingness.”

There’s a fittingness in beauty. You can see when someone is put together on the outside: hair done well, they’ve showered in the last week or so. They put on a fresh clean suit of clothes, they’re pressed, doesn’t look like they’ve slept in their suit. There’s a fittingness to that. But if he wears the suit to a baseball game down at Rockies Stadium, it’s not fitting, but you still note: put together, right?

There’s a fittingness, an appropriateness that pleases the mind in what God has revealed about Christ, everything. And when the mind finds pleasure in what is fitting, in the proportionality of truth; in the unity of truth; in the variety of truth in all that God has created and made; in the symmetry of the redemption story that starts with the Fall and ends with a redemption; in the harmony of the truth, how every part harmonizes and complements and supports the other; in the simplicity of the truth; all of this thrills our hearts with delight, energizes our wills to act, gives us confidence to move forward because we know we’re standing on something true and beautiful.

We recognize beauty, don’t we, because it’s grounded in metaphysical reality. What do I mean by that? Beyond physics, beyond the physical properties, is the metaphysical. The immaterial God, a transcendent God, grounds all of our understanding of beauty.

So our notions of beauty are grounded in real things, like the essence of the transcendent God. Beauty corresponds to the attributes of God, and it’s revealed in Jesus Christ.

So whether in the triune God, the hypostatic union of the God-man, Jesus Christ; in the accomplished work of redemption; in his ongoing application at redemption by the Holy Spirit to us, his people; we see beauty in him. We see beauty in the story. We see the integrity, the clarity, the proportionality in Christ. We see it in his finished work. Beauty incarnate is beauty supreme.

How does our regenerate, converted, sanctified heart resonate with that beauty? With delight. With joy, as Peter describes as “joy inexpressible and full of glory.” We’re filled with a longing for him. We wonder in amazement at him. We’re eager to gaze upon his glory and marvel over all of his works.

The beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ evokes from us and calls forth from us the need to produce something, to do something. The beauty of his holiness and the splendor of his glory as it resonates in our hearts, it does so such that we just can’t help but respond to what is awe-inspiring, wondrous, with things that are artistically, aesthetically pleasing, with poetically excellent expressions of worship.

Our delight in perceiving his beauty comes forth from us in verbal expressions of praise. So when the Word of Christ dwells richly in us, when we perceive his glory, when we gain clarity, it ignites our affections. It directs our wills. It delights our hearts to worship him like this “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”

Just quickly, psalms refers to the Hebrew psalter. It’s talking about the, the canonical psalms of Scripture revealed by God through these human writers. Many of them were written by David, sweet psalmist of Israel, but that was the official song book of Israel.

And it really is the quintessence of literary poetic and lyrical beauty. And the key feature of Hebrew poetry is not that it rhymes. They’re not meant to be catchy, popular ancient tunes of Middle Eastern culture that everybody dances to. No. Hebrew poetry is so brilliant in targeting the mind with truth.

And if you understand Hebrew, if you can read Hebrew, you see it. You see it graphically portrayed before you on the page. It’s incredible, it feeds the mind and stirs the affections to worship in the truth.

You know this even being an English reader, and that’s good enough to appreciate the Psalms and all their beauty. They’re comprehensive, aren’t they, in covering the full spectrum of human emotion, everything from the sublime heights of joy down to the depths of dark valleys of shadows of death, even times when the heart is dead, cold against God.

Man, the psalms are comprehensive. They’re written by the God who knows us and the God who loves us. And he gave these psalms to minister to our souls.

Also, though, he gives us the psalms, these divinely inspired words that are so perfectly fitting, these appropriate forms of expressions of worship. So he gives us the form, the fitting form, to verbalize our response to truth, the substance, to give voice to our praises, thanksgivings, meditations, petitions, commitments, and many other things we could say.

The word hymn, just briefly, the word hymn is a broad term for religious praise given to a deity. The term is in existence and in use in the Greek world and the Roman world. But as Christians, obviously we sing hymns to one deity. There is only one God, the true and living God.

We sing hymns to him, but unlike the psalms, hymns are not inspired poetry. They’re not inspired, but they do use inspired truth, doctrine, theology put to poetry, lyrical excellence so that we can sing about doctrine, sing about theology, sing about truth. They’re instructive, they’re meditative.

The word songs, specifically spiritual songs, here, I believe these are responses of the believer to the truth that’s revealed in the psalms and to the doctrine and the theology that’s revealed and taught in the hymns.

So these three terms, in response to the beauty of Christ, we express our thanks and our praise. Our hearts ascend from the mundane to the sublime according to our design in an aesthetic of beauty, literary beauty with lyrical excellence set to pleasing music that’s fitting accompaniment, to put the words on display so we can hear one another as we sing to one another in these psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

This is the heart’s response to the beauty we find when we get clarity from the Word of Christ about Christ, when we see with increasing clarity the beauty of Christ. Lyrical, musical beauty put, puts revealed beauty of divine truth on display. It gives our hearts opportunity to do what we long to do, which is to sing praises and give thanksgiving to God.

With the glory of the Word of Christ, with the clarity of the Word of Christ, shows the beauty of the Word of Christ, and our hearts rejoice, finally, just briefly, in the supremacy of this word, number four, the supremacy of this word.

The supremacy of the Word of Christ is in its singular power to accomplish the mission of Christ, which is to reconcile us to God, which is the proof of that, end of verse 16, that we sing “with gratefulness in our hearts to God.”

Christ came to bring us to God, to redeem us for God, so that we would give honor and glory and praise and thanks to God. So if Christ is glorified in the message that points us to him; if the message is taught with clarity, and we’re admonished to obey it, so that we see it with even greater clarity because our eyes are unobstructed by sin; if the clarity of this Word that allows Christ’s glory to shine ever brighter in our hearts and our mind shows the beauty of Christ in his Word; well, we know that the Word of Christ is dwelling richly within us when our hearts are filled with grateful singing to God, when our church is filled with grateful singing to God.

The supremacy of this Word is that it reveals the true supremacy of Christ, our redeemer. And the end of his work is to bring us the supreme delight, supreme satisfaction in our soul of being reconciled to God, join us to him who is our eternal reward.

It’s in God, through Christ, in his unmitigated glory, his unparalleled clarity, his unrivaled beauty, and unequaled supremacy that we find our heart’s delight. That’s what happens when the Word of Christ dwells in us richly. Believe it or not, I’ve got more to say, but we’ll close now.

Father, thank you. Thank you for who you are, for who Christ is for, for giving us the privilege and the, the joy of having hearts filled with gratitude, that we can express our our praise and worship in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to you.

We thank you for redeeming us in Christ. We thank you for introducing us to such a savior as this, who is the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And this mediator is a mediator perfect in every way, fulfilling the roles and the offices of prophet, priest and king to each and every one of us. What brilliance in your plan, what beauty in it, and what joy we have to discover!

And I just pray for any cold heart here today, maybe someone who’s been sitting in churches for decades, but they’ve grown stale, stagnant, complacent. Perhaps there’s nothing but just a faintly smoking wick, a bent reed, bruised and bent over and unable to support any weight.

I pray that you would cause that faintly burning wick to grow into a flicker, then a flame, and then a roaring fire, that you’d take that bruised and broken reed, you’d make it whole, that it would grow up as a mighty stalk and then a trunk to support branches and leaves and bear fruit.

I pray that you would do these things for us, that we would bear the weight of your glory; that we would seek out, search out, be curious about above all other curiosities, that we’d be curious about you because you, father, you are our reward. You are heaven to us.

We long to be with you. We long to know you more fully. We long to be, to shed these dying bodies and put on our eternal home, to be glorified, to be in the company of Christ and his angels, to gaze on your glory.

We love you, father, we thank you for what you’ve taught us this morning, and we pray that you would press it into every heart today. Save some. Sanctify all, for your glory. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

Matthew 6:25-34

Matthew 6:25-34

1 Samuel 17:55-58

2 Corinthians 5:18-21

Well, we now come to the preaching of the Word, and it’s our time in our worship service where his Word is opened, explained, and exhorted. So we’re going to do that from 2 Corinthians chapter 5, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and we’ll be looking at verses 18 to 21.

There’s nothing like the delight and glow on someone’s face when giving them even a small or simple gift, when you’ve thought about that gift for a while and planned ahead of time how you’re going to give it to them, and it’s received better than you can imagine, it meant more to them than you thought it would. That’s satisfying, isn’t it? That’s pleasing.

Well, maybe the gift was not long thought about, but it was exactly what they needed, and it was exactly when they needed it. And so the relief and the reception of the gift showed that it meant so much to them. That’s pleasing to the giver. But our gifts are small. And even though small, the delight can be great.

But God’s gifts are infinite, but the delight sometimes can be harder to detect, and there can be all kinds of reasons for that. And I want us to see this morning the heart of God, see that he is the most gracious, generous gift-giver so that we would be helped in our delight in God and our thankfulness to him.

We need help in this area, not every now and then, but every day because our bodies are weak, our minds are forgetful, and our hearts are distracted and we’re prone to complaining. Or is that just me? Hopefully you can relate. And I pray that we see and are affected by the heart of God this morning, and we’re going to get to know him more, that he is a God who gives and who gives and who gives.

He is by nature a giving God. He has the ability to give. He has the authority to give, the autonomy to give. His giving is the key in one of the most known verses of all time, John 3:16, “‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.’”

John says later everything we have is from God, John 3:27: “‘A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.’” James 1:17, “Every good thing given, and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”

And referring to our spiritual needs, and Paul says in Romans 8, you know it well, verse 31, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?” Verse 32, “He who indeed did not spare his own Son, but delivered him over for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?” If God would give of himself while we were enemies, how much more can we trust him as his children?

Consider where we’ve been in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. His gifts are everywhere if you have the right perspective. We see in verse 1 that we have the gift of a promised building, the gift of certainty of resurrection, the gift of good courage in verse 6, good courage because of his provision; the gift of satisfying ambition to please him, the gift of future rewards out of his generosity, the gift of the fear of the Lord in verse 11, which results in a clean conscience, which is priceless, and also the gift of caring more about what’s in the heart than what’s on the outside.

Also the gift of knowing the love of Christ so that we would not live for ourselves, which is unsatisfying, but live for him, which is all satisfying. Also the gift of new perception to graciously see one another as those clothed in righteousness, the righteousness of Christ. Also the gift in verse 17 of the of the new birth, essentially the new creation in Christ, positionally new, becoming renewed day by day.

Even in this short section, we have ample reasons to see God as the giver of good gifts, and return thanks to him. And we can agree with David in Psalm 23 that “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.”

God is a gift-giving God. His gifts are exactly what we need, and they’re given exactly when we need them, and their value is unknowable. So have this characteristic of God in your mind as we read the text today. Let’s read 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 18 through 21.

“Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

“So then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as God is pleading through us. But we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

There should be no surprise when I say today that we’ve come to a monumental text. Its truths span from eternity past to eternity future. And to place this text in the context, Paul has shown them why he does not lose heart in ministry and in suffering, verses 1 to 10, because he has a great hope of the future. And he has defended his ministry and integrity and what constrains him in verses 11 to 17.

And now he takes a moment to declare the call and content of his ministry, namely the call of God through him and the gift of God’s son to a lost and dying world. And we need to treasure these truths today and ponder them in our hearts, as we sung, “ponder anew.”

We need to ponder them in our hearts as gifts from God. He gives and gives and gives his best. He gives generously, lavishly and abundantly, and there is no stinginess in his giving. His giving is sacrificial and costly.

And this is Paul’s mission, to tell the world about God, who gives his great gift of gracious reconciliation in Christ Jesus. And so if you cut Paul, this is what is written in his DNA: the gospel that saved him and that he loves to tell the world about.

So this morning, if you’re taking notes, we’re going to see four gifts for God’s children to treasure, four gifts for God’s children to treasure, and so that we would not live for ourselves, but for him who died and rose again on our behalf. Four gifts for God’s children to treasure, four gifts for God’s people to ponder.

The first gift to treasure in your heart is reconciliation. So point one: Treasure the gift of reconciliation. You can see this gift of reconciliation really in every verse in this text. Each verse in this portion of Scripture declares and depicts an element of the gift of reconciliation.

Verse 18 says, “God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ.” Verse 19, “that God was in Christ reconciling,” and verse 20, “God is pleading through us.” Verse 21, “He, God, made Him who knew no sin to be sin.”

I want to focus on the phrases in verses 18 and 19. God reconciled us to himself through Christ, and God was in Christ reconciling. Here we see God in unified pursuit to seek and to save the lost, the father pursuing the lost through the son.

Jesus was not a mere method used to reconcile, not an ordinary instrument or a device to accomplish a goal. God is personally involved in reconciling the world to himself. “The fullness of deity dwells bodily in the man Christ Jesus,” Colossians 2:9.

And Jesus said in John 10:30, “‘I and the Father are one.’” And in verse 38 of that same chapter, “‘The Father is in me, and I in the Father.’” And John 6:38 says, “‘I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.’” And what is the father’s will? The next verse, verse 39 of chapter 6 of John, “‘that all that he has given me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.’”

The Holy Spirit is not absent in God’s reconciling work. He regenerates us, opens hearts, opens eyes. But in this text, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, the focus is God the Father and God the Son.

And so the gift we celebrate at Christmas, the incarnation, this is God drawing near in Christ Jesus. He’s drawing near to sinners who were far off, sinners who were lost, rejecting God, raised fists against God, resisting God in every way, refusing him.

But we see here God drawing near, and it’s illustrated in the most humbling way in Luke 15, when the father of the lost son gathers himself, and “while the lost son was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” This is the heart of the father who shows his grace in Christ Jesus. He draws near to reconcile.

And why did he have to draw near? Reconciliation is making things right between two opposing parties, and God is taking the initiative. What did the other party do? Why does God draw near? We have to go back to the beginning to understand just how bad our separation and alienation from God was so that we can appreciate how good and glorious this gift of reconciliation really is.

And so in Genesis, Adam and Eve were in paradise conditions. They were in paradise, and they rebelled against God. They had lush surroundings, abundance, everything taken care of. They lived out Psalm 23 verse 1, which says “Yahweh is my shepherd, I shall not want.” They were in want of nothing.

And it was in paradise that they rejected God. And this destroys the sometimes-heard excuse of, well, if my circumstances were better, I would have walked in God’s ways. Genesis 1 to 3, Adam and Eve proved that that is not so. In paradise, rather, they choose evil. They go their own way and reject God’s ways and are separated from him.

They’re like the sheep in New Zealand. I think I’ve told you how many sheep we have. It’s a lot. So they frequently come to mind, and they’re a called-upon example. Plus they’re in Scripture, so I’m in good company.

But Adam and Eve are like sheep, and if you’re in New Zealand, you’re driving along a country road, and you see sheep in the paddock, and rather than eat the grass that’s carefully, selectively provided by the farmer, constantly you see them jamming their heads through a small gap in the fence to eat whatever awful grass is growing on the other side between the fence and the road.

And so over here you had this abundance, beautiful green grass, rolling hills, wisely selected and provided by the farmer who cares for them. And they say, no, I’d rather have the garbage grass growing on the side of the road that I had to hurt my neck to get to.

That’s kind of like us. And that’s one way of looking at Adam and Eve: all this good food to freely eat, and they choose the one that disobeys God and separates them from him.

And so the whole human race is then plunged into perilous depths of sin and separation from God, and they have no way of getting back on account of themselves. They don’t want to reconcile; they want to hide.

And we can experience this, can’t we, on a relational level. When we sin against each other, we prevent harmony between each other, and that’s in a horizontal sense. But it’s far more severe and far more eternally devastating between God and man.

Isaiah 59, verse 2 says, “Your sins have separated you from your God.” Colossians 1:21, “You are alienated from God, enemies of him.” Romans 8:7, “We were at enmity with God, hostile toward God because of our sin.” “But God, being rich in mercy,” Ephesians 2:4; he “demonstrated his love toward us,” Romans 5:8, “and from heaven he came and sought us.” Luke 19:10: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

And so God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. He, God, the offended party, did not stand back with his arms folded. He didn’t stiff-arm us, or he didn’t stay away. He took the initiative and sent his son to reconcile us.

And so for Adam and Eve, like the father and the lost son, God comes after them in the garden. He doesn’t leave them lost, foolishly attempting to hide their sin and shame. He pursues them, and he seeks them out. He says, “‘Where are you?’”

And this is the character of God. He lovingly comes after you for your good. “The Son of God in all his glory emptied Himself,” Philippians 2, “of that glory. For our sake, He took on the form of a slave for you and for me, and God took on flesh and became a man, humbled Himself for us.” He was aligned with the father’s will and was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

He came and sought us and he did this, the Nicene Creed says, and I know there are some young students in here that know this, and you can say it with me, “He came,” the Nicene Creed says, “for us and for our salvation.”

The gift of reconciliation is that God took the initiative. He came near in Christ. He did all the work for lost sinners who were dead in their trespasses and had no spiritual pulse to pursue God, even though there was a physical pulse. And people make attempts to be good people and nice people, or not as expressly evil as the next guy.

But what do the Scriptures say? Our attempts at righteousness can be likened to a filthy rag, foul and unclean, Isaiah 64:6. They’re unacceptable in the sight of a holy God. And it seems impossible, then, that man in his hostility could be reconciled, to be in harmony with God.

And it is impossible for man. “‘With people this is impossible,’” Jesus said, “‘but with God all things are possible.’” Matthew 19:26, where he says, “‘It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.” And so the disciples say, “‘Well, then, who can be saved?’” “‘With people it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God,’” Mark 10:27. Luke 1:37, “‘For nothing will be impossible with God.’”

And what they in the Gospels didn’t piece together at the time, was that the man standing in front of them, speaking to them, was none other than the Son of God himself, sent to the world by the Father by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God,” Acts 2:23, to initiate a reconciling work of salvation for sinners at enmity with God.

Reconciliation was God’s plan. It was his good pleasure to do this. He was not obligated. Ephesians 1:5, we read it earlier, “It was the good pleasure of his will.” And you see that in Isaiah 53:10, “But Yahweh was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief. If you would place his soul as a guilt offering, he will see his seed, he will prolong his days, and the good pleasure of Yahweh will succeed in his hand.”

And so if you’re in Christ today, you are in him because of the good pleasure of God. The father was pleased to crush his Son, because in doing that it satisfied his justice and rendered a people for his own possession. There’s no other way except through his son that he sent.

When we sin against each other, we prevent harmony between each other, and that’s in a horizontal sense.” Reuben Pickering

God himself is coming after sinners, and we see that in verse 20, where God is pleading, “Come to me, receive my Son. In him you will find present and eternal rest for your soul.” And we see in verse 21 that God is working. It’s God who’s initiating in the phrase, “He made him.”

It was God the Father who caused the cross, and it was his plan, his initiative: “God made him.” God made his son our substitute so that we would be reconciled to God. This is the gracious, giving, generous heart of God. He lavishly gives his gift of reconciliation of his own initiative to those who, like us all, loved our own way.

The best sports captains, best coaches, best CEO’s, best managers, best lawyers are those who find a way. And this is what God did. He with all power and authority and wisdom, he made a way in Christ to reconcile us to himself. And so we can exclaim with Paul in 2 Corinthians 9:15, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.”

How did he reconcile us? Well, to begin answering that we need to look at a second gift, and this one is precious. The second gift to treasure in your heart is exoneration; number two, treasure the gift of exoneration.

This is the gift of forgiveness, “pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,” compassion, mercy, a cancellation of debt owed. He exonerated those in Christ by, verse 19, “not counting their sins against them.” “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their sins against them.”

Someone who is exonerated in the courtroom is someone who was previously convicted of a crime and then officially cleared of guilt, relieved of all consequences because new evidence proves their innocence.

And if you’re reconciled in Christ today, this is your reality. New evidence has been revealed. The blood of Christ, the words he uttered, “‘It is finished,’” his hands, his feet, his side, the empty tomb, the folded grave clothes, the father who then highly exalted him, this seat that he sits on at the right hand of God, it’s all new evidence for the previously guilty who embrace Christ and are now authoritatively declared forgiven.

How can God do this? He has to remove the problem of our separation from him. He has to remove our sin problem. God does not reckon or charge or count your sins against you. They are not accounted to your ledger. He has to remove the grounds for offense to him, and he has to take away the sin that angers him, the sin that cannot dwell in his presence.

To have fellowship with you, your name must be cleared of all charges of sin, and this is impossible with man, but God has made a way, and God has made it possible, and it cost the highest price, and it was his good pleasure to do so.

The only way to clear your name was for God to charge the guilt of all your sin to the account of the Son of God, the man Jesus Christ. And this is expressed in Psalm 1:30, which says, “If you should keep iniquities, O Yah, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” In verse 7 of Psalm 130, “For with Yahweh there is lovingkindness, and with him is abundant redemption.”

Our only hope is that somehow God would not count our sins against us. We have no way of paying for them ourselves. We have no way of clearing our name, no way of dealing with the guilt that is on our heads. For we are in Adam, separated from God, and we have lived in sin against him. And that was our old nature, which could do nothing else.

And so the psalmist says, “If you were to count our ways, our sins against us, who could stand before you?” And the answer is nobody. There is no one. No one can stand. We don’t even need his judgment pronounced, for we already know we are guilty before our holy God. We are utterly unholy, entirely self-centered, fixated on the fulfillment of our flesh. And you can feel the hopelessness of our state before him.

But with God and God only, there is forgiveness. There is relief, pardon, mercy, exoneration before a holy judge. And we need to steep our hearts in this glorious truth, our only hope. We need to treasure forgiveness with God.

We need to be floored by his grace, and how tragic it is when we all grow accustomed to the forgiveness of our sins, to the reality that he does not count our sins against us, charge them to our account. He remembers them no more. He removes them as far as the east is from the west. And Isaiah says, “You’ve cast all my sins behind your back.” They’re gone, dealt with, and you’ve been made clean, washed, able to stand before a holy God.

Once you had the position where God counts your sin against you, but God, in his pursuit to reconcile you and to bring you back into favor with him, he has taken it upon himself, taking it upon himself, to count your sin to his son and to execute eternal judgment on him for your sake and for mine.

John Bunyan writes that the weight of sin is described as a great and heavy burden strapped to a person’s back. And in his famous allegory, Christian bends and staggers under the insurmountable load. With every step he stumbles. It’s too much for him to bear.

And he talks about how terrifying is the weight: “It’s enough to sink me lower,” he said, “lower than the grave, and I shall fall into the depths of Hell.” The crushing pressure causes him to weep, and he is seen trembling and crying in deep distress until he finally reaches the cross, the cross at Calvary, when the burden loosens and is rolled away, when he looked to Christ, and the burden of his heart rolled away.

And brothers and sisters, it might have been some time since you were saved, since you were positionally relieved of your burden before God. But may it be today that you and I appreciate in a meaningful and fresh way just what it means for us to stand before God, forgiven, no sin charged to our account, no burden on our back. What was impossible with man was made possible with God. And Paul is exclaiming the ministry of reconciliation, here.

And can I recommend another ministry to you? I call it the ministry of rumination. This is not an emptying of the mind, but a mulling over the truths of Scripture. And this is time well-spent. Maybe take some time this afternoon even, to slow down and to think what it means for God to clear you of all charges, something you were hopeless to accomplish on your own, all charges of sin that would rightly condemn you to eternal punishment in the lake of fire.

Think of all he did for you, and don’t come away until the soil of your heart is well tilled and broken up, and you are overcome with gratitude and wonder. “What wonder of wonders, what love is this, that Christ would die for me, clear me of all my guilty burden.” “It will be my joy,” we sang, “through the ages to sing of his love for me.”

We sing that, but is it your joy today? Make him your joy today. Take time, pray, plead, ask God to make your heart soft and grateful. We can all drift into getting used to these truths, but this is one reason why we come together every week, to stir one another up to worship and to encourage one another to “a closer walk with Thee,” and to “stir one another up to love and good deeds.”

Psalm 32, verses 1 to 2, “How blessed is he,” it says, “how blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!” And there’s an exclamation mark, there. He’s happy. “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account, and in whose Spirit there is no deceit.” May this be our status, blessed and happy, light and free, because our sins are forgiven.

And the important question, here, is, therefore, whose sin is not counted against them? And we’ve just studied in Colossians 3 recently that on account of sins committed, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience. “In them you once walked when you were living in them.”

If you have not come to God through Christ to find forgiveness, sins like immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, greed are being counted up against you, and the wrath of God is coming upon you. For he must deal with sin. He must deal with your sin and my sin. One way or another, sin is dealt with, either in Christ’s body on the tree at Calvary or in your eternal body in Hell.

That’s a terrifying thought, and I can tell you, being aware of that reality and yet resisting God and heaping up sin for the wrath of God to be poured on, that’s an inescapable thought, meaning that you might try to escape it, but it is always there to weigh on your conscience. And it will crush you and might cause you to come to him, or it will sear your conscience so severely that you risk never being able to come. And this is nothing to play around with.

Come to Christ and have your burden of sin removed, let it roll off your back because you’ve embraced the Lord Jesus Christ, and your account will be cleared once and for all.

So Colossians 3 clearly states there were those whose sins will not be covered. Wrath is coming upon them, those whose sin is charged against their account.

By nature of the call to be reconciled, there must be those whose sins are not covered, who are not forgiven. The world that God is reconciling in 2 Corinthians 5:19, “the world,” there, is a distinct group of people in the world, namely those whose sins are not counted against them.

The Bible numbers these people for us. It says “they are few and the road is narrow, and few are there who find it.” It also says that there are many; Christ brings many sons to glory. In any given age, there are few who come to God on his terms compared to the many who reject.

Though when all are accounted for in glory, and you can read this in Revelation 7, it will be “a great multitude from every nation and every tribe and every people and every tongue” standing before the throne, before the Lamb, and you’re going to want to be there to worship him.

Who can treasure the gift of exoneration? Individuals from all over the world, but not all individuals, for these are not all in Christ. Not all are actually reconciled. Many die indifferent to God, which is enmity. Not all receive forgiveness of sin.

And the context helps; in verse 17, the forgiven are those who are in Christ, those who have been made new, new creations, the elect of God, Colossians says, chosen before the foundation of the world, who respond to the Spirit’s regenerating work by putting faith and trust in Christ alone. These are the forgiven.

And so we need to treasure and ponder our forgiveness in Christ, that he does not count these sins against you, but counted them against his son for your sake, and that he that says of the forgiven, “they are elect from every nation, yet won over all the earth.” And so it’s a glorious privilege, then, to send the call out to the world to reconcile sinners to God.

And so this is our next gift to treasure: participation. The third gift to treasure in your heart is participation; number three, treasure the gift of participation. This is the gift of being included in God’s reconciling work toward others, and personal participation in receiving God’s reconciling work.

So how do we enjoy the gift of participation? Verse 19, it says, “He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” Verse 20, “So then we are ambassadors for Christ. As God is pleading through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” All who are in Christ get to participate in the work of bringing sinners to come to know forgiveness from God through Christ by work of the Spirit.

But before you can participate in the work of reconciliation, take heed the call of Paul that you must have been a work of reconciliation. As God is pleading through the pen of Paul on the pages of Holy Scripture, “Be reconciled to God,” call out to him for mercy while there is still time. Give up living for self. Embrace Christ, submit to him and live for him. “Be reconciled,” it says. This is a prerequisite to participation in the work of reconciliation. “Be reconciled.”

The reconciliation we enjoy, this is a massive gift we have received. We want others to share in what we have received, and we get to see others be saved and to bring glory to our Lord and our savior. And in that sense, we treasure the gift of participation, participation in gospel ministry.

That being said, Paul’s ambassadorship is official and unique to him and his direct associates, delegates. Apostles and their delegates were authorized, authenticated, commissioned for their work. And Paul spoke with authority on behalf of Christ in a way we believers don’t, 2,000 years later.

So while we’re not apostolic ambassadors like Paul, his example does show us what a reconciled person does with what they’ve received. That is, they do not live for themselves; they live for him who died and rose for them. And they love to tell the story of Christ and his cross. They know they didn’t deserve it. They didn’t earn it. And so the free gift to them they want to freely share with others.

I can imagine God marked out Paul for his mission to bring the gospel to the world as an example to us all. If Paul, someone who viciously opposed Christ and his church, could be redeemed and made useful to God, and not just useful in a small way, but in a massive way, multinational, multi-millennial way, then, yes, God can cause me and you to be useful to him as well.

We’re not called to write apostolic letters to churches. That’s impossible. We’re not called to take the gospel to the Gentile world in a pioneering way, not the same way Paul was.

Are we called to suffer like Paul suffered for the gospel? No, not in the sense that we have his apostolic calling and therefore receive suffering under that same pressure and proximity to Christ’s ministry. And so we are different to Paul. We are different to Timothy and Titus and the Apostle John.

But what is certainly ours to apply is this: that as a reconciled, chosen child of God, you do represent him, and you represent him to all you know. You belong to a kingdom not of this world, to a King not of this world.

And so we are citizens of another kingdom, living in a foreign land, and our actions and speech should match the kingdom we belong to. And you should have this heartbeat as well, “to make known the riches of his grace, the Word of the gospel,” so that those in your sphere of influence might be reconciled to God as you are. That would express gratitude.

But we do not have the apostolic authority to say that “God through me is making an appeal to you” with the unique official status that Paul had. We can, we must, and we get to participate in the gospel call by leaning on the authority of God’s Word and calling sinners to repentance.

Your sphere of influence might be limited. This could be limited to even just your own home or extended family, or your workplace or your clients. Your sphere of influence might be large, like a city or even in a country. You could be a well-known personality, have a political influence, or a large online influence.

Whatever sphere of influence we have, we ought to be hungry and eager and diligent to call sinners to be reconciled to God, to make more true worshippers through the gospel. This is the most loving thing to do, and this is our privilege to participate in this work.

And if fruitful, it will be God working through his people, pleading for sinners to turn to him in repentance and faith. Facing a Task Unfinished is a great hymn. It reads, “O, Father, who sustained them; O Spirit, who inspired; Savior, whose love constrained them to toil and zeal, untired from cowardice, defend us from lethargy awake! Forth on Thine errands send us to labor for Thy sake.”

Some are called to go; many are called to stay and live godly lives right here, to lead a quiet life as Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 4, attending to our own business, faithfully working with our hands, eagerly waiting a savior, working hard to put off sin and apply righteousness to represent our King well.

Scriptures say, Our attempts at righteousness can be likened to a filthy rag, foul and unclean. They’re unacceptable in the sight of a holy God. Reuben Pickering

This is an open door to perhaps an even greater work, to pray for all and for all kinds of needs as that song begins, “facing a task unfinished that drives us to our knees, a need that, undiminished, rebukes our slothful ease.”

No matter what stage in life, what capacity, what strength, what giftedness, how small or how large your influence may be, everyone is equipped by the Spirit of God to participate in the ministry of reconciling sinners to a holy God.

And don’t merely acknowledge this. Treasure this gift of participation, even if it’s just worked out in your own home, that you might have great joy in seeing the work of God among us. Anticipate the work. Look for the fruit.

And rejoice in it, rejoicing, rejoicing. That’s what happens when the lost are found. Luke 15, the lost sheep, when it was found, the man lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. He calls everyone in, friends, neighbors. “‘Rejoice with me,’” he says, “‘for I’ve found my sheep which was lost.’” And the joy in heaven is indescribable over sinners who repent. And maybe that’s your gift to the body. Be one that rejoices and delights in sinners being reconciled to God. And so treasure the gift of participation, and rejoice when you see the fruit.

We’re to treasure the gift of reconciliation, exoneration, participation, all because, finally, of the gift of substitution. The fourth gift to treasure in your heart is substitution. Treasure the gift of substitution.

Verse 21, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” He who did not know sin, on our behalf, sin he was made to be so that we would come to be the righteousness of God in Christ. This is, as many know it, the verse of the great exchange, where Christ stood in the place of the elect of God and received the just punishment due them for their sin against a holy God.

And don’t understate this trading of places. It’s not as if you and I could take his place on the cross. Some people say things like, It should have been me nailed upon that tree, and I know what they’re meaning by that. But just to be clear, if you were nailed to the tree, and that was your attempt to appease God’s wrath, you would utterly fail.

Why? Because we would be a failed sacrifice for sin, for we are sinners. David said because of the fall of our head, Adam, “in sin, my mother conceived me.” And there was no one in existence worthy to be a satisfactory sacrifice for sin, for in Christ, God finally made a way and provided a sinless, spotless, without-blemish, blameless Lamb of God.

In the words “he made him,” we see that God provided a sacrifice, like when Abraham and Isaac were walking up the hill. Isaac says, “‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’” And Abraham replies, “‘God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,’” Genesis 22:8, “and God provided a ram ready for the sacrifice.”

And when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, and he was rightly announced by John, “‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,’” John 1:29.

How could he take away sin? Because he was the only worthy sacrifice, unblemished, spotless, 1 Peter 1:19; “sinless,” Hebrews 7:26. Hebrews 7 is a great passage because it highlights that Christ was not a high priest like the days of old. The Levitical priest would first make a sacrifice for their own sin and then for the sin of the people.

Instead, Jesus did not need a sacrifice for himself, so only one sacrifice was needed. Being the only sinless priest, “Christ offered up himself, a once-for-all sacrifice for sin,” Hebrews 7:27.

Jesus knew no sin. He never experienced sin. He experienced the effects of sin in a fallen world. He got tired, he was weak, he was surrounded by sickness, he experienced pain and suffering, but he never knew it in a personal way.

1 John 3:5, “In him there is no sin.” And God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin, not to be a sinner, but to be treated as a sinner, “the righteous for the unrighteous,” 1 Peter 3:18. “And he became a curse for us,” Galatians 3 says. “He gave his life as a ransom payment for us,” Mark 10:45. He stood in the place of sinners, therefore as a once-for-all substitute for sinners. And he could not be one of those for whom he substituted himself. He must be different.

As the sins of the people of Israel were laid upon the scapegoat to be carried away, so the sins of all believers were laid upon him, and he paid the iniquity for us all. He didn’t become a sinner. He was treated as one for our sake. Isaiah 53, “But he was pierced through for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our peace fell upon him.”

Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. Our sin was imputed to his account, counted to him so that his righteousness would be imputed to our accounts. God treated him as if he were me, a sinner, so that now God treats me as if I were him: righteous, double imputation, the great exchange.

The law required not only sins to be atoned for, but also a positive, righteous record in our account. Matthew 5:20, “‘Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.’” Matthew 5:48, “‘You ought to be perfect,’” not neutral, “‘perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’”

And so taking care of the payment for sin is half of what we need. We are so desperately in need of God, absolutely hopeless without him, that to just have our sins forgiven would not be enough to stand righteous before him. And John Murray explains this very well in Redemption Accomplished and Applied, that book, as do the writers and the editors of Biblical Doctrine.

But instead of quoting long quotes, there, perhaps to suffice for our time today, what we need to know is that you need a penalty to be paid and the provision of righteousness. In Christ, by grace through faith, your sins are not counted against you; they are counted against Christ on the cross, in Christ “by grace through faith.”

Your righteousness is not what you stand in, for that is not perfect righteousness. You stand in what is reckoned to you by faith in the Son of God. His righteous fulfillment of the law is yours in Christ.

Philippians 3:9, “that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ,” the righteousness which is from God upon faith, righteousness gifted from God to you in Christ.

Isaiah 61:10, “I will greatly rejoice in Yahweh. My soul will rejoice in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation. He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness.” Romans 5:19 says that “the many,” those in Christ, “will be appointed righteous.”

The many being appointed righteous is the point of the purpose clause in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “so that we might become the righteousness of God.” You can understand the purpose clause with the subjunctive mood as this: “He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf for the purpose of making us the righteousness of God in him.”

Well, for an everyday example, you could say I turned the keys in the ignition so that I might start the car. And to say that differently, I turned the keys in the ignition for the purpose of starting the car. It’s not expressing any uncertainty or potentiality; it’s expressing purposed outcome. The purposed outcome of Christ being charged with my sin on the cross is that then I would be credited with his righteousness.

Romans 5:18-19 are so good. We need to read that together. I’ll read it for you. “So then as through one transgression,” Adam, “there resulted condemnation to all men. Even so, through one act of righteousness,” Christ, “there resulted justification of life to all men.” Verse 19, “For as through the one man’s disobedience,” Adam, “the many were appointed sinners, and so through the obedience of the one,” Christ, “the many will be appointed righteous.”

And Piper says, “It’s important that Paul said in Adam we’re appointed as sinners and not merely guilty. The imputation of Adam’s sin is more than the imputation of a status. We are counted as having sinned in Adam, so when Paul says, “In Christ we’re appointed righteous,” Piper says he does not only mean that Christ’s status was imputed to us. Rather, in Christ we are counted as having done all the righteousness that God requires.

Imputation is not the conferring of a status without the ground of real, imputed moral righteousness. It is the counting of an alien, real, moral, perfect righteousness, namely Christ’s, as ours.

And so it’s not merely a calculation or a transaction. It’s, if you’re in Christ today, “you’re a new creation. The old things have passed away, and behold, new things have come” and will come. Past action of new creation brings ongoing results of new life in Christ.

But as you’re fumbling along in the paths of righteousness, and this is where I think the rubber meets the road for us, growing in an over-the-long-haul positive direction, but nevertheless failing miserably at times, in Christ you can put your head on the pillow at night knowing that God looks at you clothed in robes of righteousness.

But it’s not just an external, calculated status you have of righteousness. If we peek into your righteousness account, what do we see? Christ’s perfect record as if it were yours. We sinned in Adam. We are righteous in Christ. And the Father looked to Christ as if he was us, and he looks to us as if we are him. Thanks be to God. Amen?

Some of you, many of you, all of us need to meditate on this profound reality. What a gift our substitute is. He not only paid a debt we could never pay, but he gives and he gives and he gives.

He gives us a righteousness we could never reach or attain to. And it’s in your account. As sure as you were dead in sin, separated from God, it’s certain that you have been made alive to God, able to stand before him, clothed in a righteousness not your own. But Christ’s perfect keeping of the law of God is now yours.

And so cease striving in the sense of trying to earn God’s favor. Sometimes we can drift into that, thinking, as believers even, because that’s how the world works; it’s merit-based. But in Christ your merit was achieved for you and gifted to you.

Why? Not so that we would “sin all the more so that grace may abound” and take the foot off the gas, but so that we would live for him, not for ourselves. Strive with your goal to please him, but rest in his finished gift of righteousness credited to your account.

What a glorious substitute, what a Savior! You could never pay for your sin; it had to be done for you. You could never fulfill the law to be righteous; that righteousness had to be given to you.

When God stopped me in my tracks, when I called out for mercy, when God saved me, it was, let’s just say, a messy time. But when the dust settled, and I was able to comprehend things, I came across this verse and my heart was aligned with it immediately. And it’s in Psalm 116. It says, “What could I return to you, O Yahweh, for all your bountiful dealings with me?” And I find myself today asking the same question.

In light of what he is gifted to sinners like you and me, Grace Church, we could ask this as a body: “What can we return to you, our God, for all your bountiful dealings with us,” as Christ laid himself down for us for pardon, for sin, and for imputation of righteousness.

May we be a little bit more eager to love one another and to serve one another and to pray for one another, think the best about one another, forgive one another as we treasure Christ, the gift of all gifts. Suddenly there’s fuel for all that ministry toward one another.

The church in Corinth is like any other church. There were no doubt unbelievers in their midst. And so the call goes out in chapter 6 verses 1 and 2, “Do not receive the grace of God in vain. Be reconciled to God and receive the gift of his Son.”

Do not hear the message and do nothing. Do not receive the grace of God in the gospel call and not respond today. Do not harden your heart and then heap up cause for the wrath of God to be poured on you.

Come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Call out to God to be merciful to you. And when you do that, you are asking the judge of the universe to look on himself, who charged your guilt to himself and paid your penalty of sin.

And in that, he is just. He doesn’t sweep sin under the rug. He paid for it himself, and he is justifier. He will pardon you and declare you righteous. And so believe on Christ by faith, by the faith that he gives us. Call out to him for mercy.

Treasuring the gift of our glorious substitute breathes a little more understanding into the verses, which I’ll close with here: “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory, blameless with great joy; to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen.” Let’s pray together.

Our Father in heaven, thank you for taking the initiative and for incurring the cost to reconcile us to yourself. We are in awe of what you have done for us: once your enemies, now given the right to be your children.

We ask, O God, that you would strengthen us to walk in your ways more faithfully because of our great salvation. It’s all our heart wants to do. Help us to treasure these gifts we’ve looked at today and to love you, the giver of these gifts. May we live not for ourselves, but to please and honor Christ, who died and rose again on our behalf. Empower us to that end, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

1 Samuel 17:31-54

2 Corinthians 5:11-17

We now come to the preaching of the Word of God, and so take your copy of God’s Word and turn to 2 Corinthians 5. 2 Corinthians 5, and last week we were encouraged as we gazed toward glory and all the marvelous future realities with present implications.

And this week we’re going to be equipped and motivated to please our great God. And so we’re going to be in verses 11 through 17 today. 2 Corinthians 5:11-17, let’s begin by reading the Scriptures together, verse 11.

“So then knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we have been made manifest to God, and I hope that we’ve been made manifest also in your consciences. We are not again commending ourselves to you, but are giving you an opportunity to boast of us, so that you will have an answer for those who boast in appearance and not in heart.

“For if we are out of our mind, it is for God. For if we are of right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, and therefore all died, and he died for all, so that they who live would no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

“Therefore, from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”

I was reading about some of the most extreme races in the world. Consider with me for a moment some of these, and hold in your mind the question that came to my mind: Why? Why would you do that?

The first is the Volvo Ocean Race. This race is the longest professional sporting event in the world, so tough that it has claimed the lives of more than a few talented sailors. The route sees teams race non-stop for 45,000 nautical miles, crossing four oceans and touching six continents.

Sailors set off from Spain, they skirt around the coast of Africa, sail to China, New Zealand, Brazil, Miami, and finish in Ireland; and it takes around nine months to complete the entire route.

The race takes place every three years, with the next one in 2027 if you’re interested. It is now called the Ocean Race, and it’s a shorter circuit, just taking approximately five months to complete. “See here for more information about signing up.”

Or consider this one: the Death Race, which you should be able to make your decision based on that title. The toughest obstacle race. No one knows what to expect when they sign up for this. It’s voluntary, by the way. They sign up for this Death Race, and each year the challenge is different. In the past, participants had to translate instructions from Greek and crawl for twelve hours under barbed wire. This year, which was in 2019, racers faced 3,000 burpees and a 30,000-foot rope pull.

Tasks are designed to push challengers to the edge of their physical and mental capacity, and the organizers write, “We provide no support. We don’t tell you when it starts; we don’t tell you when it ends. We don’t tell you what it will entail. We want you to fail, and we encourage you to quit at any time.” And the paragraph ends, “Sign up here.” Hard pass on that one.

Or finally, how about the toughest ultra-marathon, the 6633 Arctic Ultra. “The Arctic Circle regularly hits,” and they lost me the word Arctic, “the Arctic Circle regularly hits temperatures of -50°C, which is about -60 Fahrenheit. Racers trudge through this frozen landscape for 350 miles, dragging a sledge behind them with all their gear.

“White-outs are common, hallucinations are expected, and the racers only have eight days to finish, averaging two full marathons a day, which means most survive on about 40 minutes of sleep every 24 hours.” So if you’re feeling a little weary this morning, maybe put that in perspective. “Only eleven people have ever successfully completed the challenge,” and again, it ends, “Sign up here.”

I had to know what motivated these people to do such things as this. There are a few things on the list, and some virtuous goals like self-mastery or discipline, confronting weakness, which would be found out pretty quickly.

But the top motivation people have is this. On the top of their list, to do something like this, these two things: life meaning and existential significance. Life meaning and existential significance is why they would do such strange and crazy, wild things.

They want to look for meaning, and as you know, the Christian life is a race and is far more meaningful. It has eternal significance. It’s far more serious, and it brings far greater joy, far greater reward.

It’s a spiritual race with spiritual warfare fought with spiritual weaponry. And as we saw, for much lesser causes, people are motivated to put themselves through rigorous physical and mental discipline and training. Men and women somehow find motivation that few on earth can match to compete in these races.

So what motivations do you remind yourself of on a daily basis? What motivations do you think about? Are they related to your physical progress or progress of financial prosperity? Many people are strongly motivated for progress in the here-and-now. Few people are rightly motivated for the pursuit of everyone in Christ, which is to please God.

What motivation do we harness to pursue our privilege of pleasing God? How would you answer someone if they asked you, What motivates you to walk with Christ, to please him? In seeking to please the King of kings and the Lord of lords, we seem to give up easily at times. We seem to give in and to succumb to defeat and hang our heads in discouragement. We lose sight of the prize and the reward, and we forget or undervalue the satisfaction and delight and privilege and the joy of pleasing our great God.

And so that’s what we’re going to look at today: two motivations to equip you in your pursuit of pleasing our great God. We covered a lot of ground in verses 1 through 10 last week, and we’re going to cover a lot of ground today in verses 11 through 17. And we won’t be able to address every word, every depth of truth, every implication, even. But what I want to try and do is simplify this section and I want to give you two motivations that are must-haves in your life as a believer.

We learned in verse 9 that Paul had an ambition, a goal to be pleasing to God. And today we’ll see that he had two clear motivations that kept his life focused and his ministry free from accusation; and so therefore he was pleasing to the Lord.

These two motivations must be present in our own hearts if we’re going to be pleasing to God. And we will understand these motivations in the context of the Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthian church to defend his testimony and his ministry among them. This is the reason, defending his credibility, that he wrote this letter. And in our passage today, we’re going to see that this section really zeroes in on his defense.

And so while we’re looking to Paul’s unique life, not only is he a shepherd of the sheep, he’s a pastor to pastors, he’s a missionary pioneer, he’s an Apostle. And we can quickly turn our minds off and say, Well, we can’t relate to this man. This man is unrelatable.

But like Paul said of the Old Testament Israelites, “These things were written down for our instruction.” And so we can look to Paul and glean from his life, and draw confidence from his example as he followed Christ, and be rightly motivated. These motivations were his, and by the power of the Spirit working through his Word, they must become increasingly ours. So don’t think because it’s Paul, it’s unrelatable.

Embracing and taking hold of these motivations will help you in every sphere of life. They will keep you from discouragement. They will keep your conscience clear. They will keep you from pride and keep you from failing.

Fully embracing these motivations will keep you on the alert and keep you sober-minded. They will keep your heart from hardening. They’ll keep it soft and tender and worshipful, “steadfast, immovable, and always abounding in the work of the Lord.”

If your deepest desire is to please the Lord, you need to be motivated because we are in a spiritual war, and the world system is against us, our flesh is against us, and the evil one is against us.

Maybe you’re sitting here this morning, and you have just absolutely blown it. You feel like you can’t come back from where you are. You just want to give up. You’re defeated, deflated, depressed even. What’s going to pull you out? You need these motivations. You need to be motivated to please the Lord.

Maybe you’re not sure you even want to please him. Maybe you’re up one day and down the next. You’re hot and cold. Well, you need these motivations to turn up the temperature of your affections for Christ, so that you would walk pleasingly unto the One who is worthy of our worshipful and devoted lives, truly to live as living sacrifices, as Paul said to the Roman believers.

He said in Romans 12:1, “Therefore, I exhort you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy, and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”

The goal is to drive them deep into our hearts so that they become not just Paul’s controlling influences for life, but also motivation for you and for me to be pleasing to the Lord. And this in the end will cause us not to shrink back at his coming, but to stand before him at the end with confidence. If at the end you hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful slave,” it will be because of these two motivations that have fueled you and guided you along the way.

So here they are, these two. Verses 11 to 13, we’re going to see the fear of the Lord; and the second motivation, verses 14 through 17, we’ll see the love of the Lord. The fear of the Lord, and the love of the Lord.

The first motivation to nurture in your heart is the fear of the Lord. This is in verses 11 through 13. With each motivation there are three sub-points or signposts along the way to break up these verses. So we have A, B, C’s.

The first signpost for the motivation of the fear of the Lord is in verse 11. The fear of the Lord gives you, here it is, A, nothing to hide. The fear of the Lord gives you nothing to hide. You’re the same before God and others. A clean conscience is priceless.

So verse 11, let’s read it again. “So then, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men that we have been made manifest to God. And I hope that we have been made manifest also in your consciences.”

So Paul had nothing to hide. And all three signposts, verses 11 through 13, can be traced back to this grasp of the fear of the Lord. It’s because of the fear of the Lord that Paul endeavors to persuade men. The fear of the Lord looks back to, in a sense, all of verses 1 through 10, but particularly verse 10, where the scene in our mind’s eyes of every believer giving an account for his or her redeemed life. And there’s a lot about the fear of the Lord that’s in between the lines, here.

Think about the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, the authority he has to raise the dead. Think about the awesome power of Christ to resurrect this body and cause it to stand before him. Think about the righteousness and the justice of Christ to exact perfect judgment on that day without partiality.

What about the awesome holiness of Christ: pure, bright, without blemish, without flaw in any way? How about the worthiness of the Lord? Worthy of worship, worthy to receive glory, worthy to judge?

The scene also protects the omniscience of Christ, not just in that moment, but required for that moment, knowledge of your every day on earth, every moment of your life here on earth. And as the old song goes, “He sees all I do, he knows all I say. My God is watching all the time.”

This is where Christ will weigh every thought, motive, word and deed. And Christ will test it all and give us rewards or burn up anything that is revealed as worthless or poor quality. And so this all informs his fear of the Lord, his holiness, his justice, his impartial judgment. Paul endeavors to live his life pleasing to the Lord.

Now Paul is going to do something, here, that is really the goal of his whole letter, and he’s defending his apostleship and his ministry among the Corinthians. And this phrase, “we persuade men,” is not an attempt to convince them of the Gospel and its call. That comes later, and it’s in other passages.

Rather, the context, here, is to persuade or to convince them to view him in a favorable light. So he appeals to the fear of the Lord as the motivation behind the defense of his credibility. And so to clear a path for the ministry of the Word, he had to establish the credibility of the instrument of the Word.

Paul wants to clear his testimony and reputation so that there is no hindrance of his ministry of reconciliation. And so he says, “We have been made manifest to God.” Paul says, “I don’t fear my opponents, I don’t fear what they think of me. I fear God, the one before whom my life is laid bare. God will examine my deeds and my motives.”

So he appeals to them, the Corinthians, as God as his witness, and as they have witnessed his ministry among them, “Be persuaded of our truthfulness, our sincerity, our honesty.” And he hopes that his argumentation regarding true apostleship and pure motives would be received as legitimate before them as it is before God.

And so he calls upon a higher test, a higher court, than the superficial opinions of his enemies. He calls on a higher and more thorough critique of his life, the piercing holy eyes of the Lord, who weighs all things on his holy scales.

And he says, I don’t claim to be perfect, but before God my motives and conduct are pure and above reproach. He says, I hope you can see that, too. He says, My life is clean before God and man because I’m motivated by the fear of the Lord.

And so that’s our first signpost. A second signpost for the motivation of the fear of the Lord is that it gives you something to regard. So, A, nothing to hide, B, something to regard, and this is in verse 12, something to regard.

You regard inward character, not outward appearances because of the fear of the Lord. Verse 12, let’s read it. “We are not again commending ourselves to you, but are giving you an opportunity to boast of us so that you will have an answer for those who boast in appearance and not in heart.”

Paul’s opponents were tearing him and his associates down because of how things looked on the outside. For example, 2 Corinthians 10:10, “They say of Paul, ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is weak and his words contemptible.’”

Well, 2 Corinthians 10 verse 1, “I, Paul myself, plead with you by the gentleness and forbearance of Christ, I,” and this is kind of the accusation, “I who am humble and face to face with you, but courageous toward you when absent.” And so his humility in person and boldness away from them seemed a kind of cowardice to his accusers. Paul didn’t look like a success story to them.

But he says, “We are not commending ourselves. We are conveying our uprightness of conduct and our purity of motive in ministry to equip you with an opportunity to boast about us, so that you yourselves can expose those who only regard appearances.”

Paul is well-familiar with those who regard appearances only. Writing to the Philippians, he says in chapter 3, verse 3 and following, he puts “no confidence in the flesh. Although I myself might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more, circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee.”

Paul wants to clear his testimony and reputation so that there is no hindrance of his ministry of reconciliation.” Reuben Pickering

But he knows externals count for nothing. Post-conversion, Paul primarily regards inward character, and that is what he wants the Corinthians to boast in, to regard. They’re not commending themselves, but commending God’s transformative work in them. And once he regarded all things external; now he regards the hidden uprightness of the heart.

And so immediately you can ask yourself the question, what does your heart regard? And you know the right answer. So think about what your time and your money and your effort and your thought life are spent on. That will indicate more what you regard than the answer you know you should say.

Jesus condemns the outward glory-guzzlers when he says, “‘Woe to the Pharisees and hypocrites. You clean the outside, and you think you’re clean on the inside, but if your inside is dirty, then no matter how much you dress up the outside, it is dirty as well. Clean the inside and the outside takes care of itself,’” in verse 28 of Matthew chapter 23. “‘In this way you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but in really you’re full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.’”

So Paul knows what it’s like to be false on the inside while portraying put-togetherness on the outside. Paul is saying, You know my life, my testimony. He’s saying to the Corinthians that his afflicted life of suffering while ministering to them was all from a pure motive in the fear of the Lord.

And so, here, Paul was equipping the Corinthians with what to boast about. And it’s this, that our shepherd, he walks in the fear of the Lord. Paul’s opponents were concerned with man’s interests, not God’s. “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart,” 1 Samuel 16:7.

Paul is content to take his stand on what was in heart, which is the end of verse 12. In heart, which is to be laid before God and before people, and he has a testimony of a clean conscience.

So for the Christian, superficial appearances count for nothing. The condition of the heart is everything. Paul didn’t want them to be run over by those who were seeking to undermine him. He wanted to equip them with an answer: Boast of this, that my heart is sincere and will be laid before God today and in that final day, and Christ sees all and knows all.

And so he says, My goal is the hidden purity of the heart because I’m motivated by the fear of the Lord. And the heart is where God looks. The fear of the Lord teaches you and motivates you to value what’s in the heart more than anything. That’s what we need to do, be motivated to value what’s in the heart more than anything.

So maybe you’re outside things, and external matters aren’t what you expected them to be today as you sit here. I’m not talking about how you look, although that could be part of it. But maybe housing hasn’t worked out for you, or a certain level of education hasn’t been attained, or a career path wasn’t what you expected.

Your financial position isn’t what you hoped for. Your health is failing, and there’s no way back. A spouse hasn’t been provided or a marriage isn’t thriving. Children haven’t worked out, or parenting is not going well. Friends have failed you or disappointed you. Maybe it’s all just not working out as you thought it would.

But valuing what’s on the inside more than the outside, the fear of the Lord needs to be your motivation, and it focuses on inward character, not an outward, apparent put-togetherness. Why? Because every part of life is an opportunity for you to please God in your heart. So if you win there, you win completely.

And sometimes his provision is withheld, or his purposeful trials are applied, so that we would learn to concern ourselves more with the heart of worship than the outward appearances of success.

So while externally, things might not seem successfully, internally, where it all matters, you have an opportunity to please your master no matter what’s going on in the outside, no matter how life looks. And so to that end, be motivated by the fear of the Lord.

A third and final signpost in this motivation of the fear of the Lord is found in verse 13. So because of the fear of the Lord, A, you have nothing to hide; B, you have something to regard, inward character, not outward appearance; and C, you have one thing to prize, one thing to prize, and that’s being steadfast in the truth.

Verse 13, “For if we are out of our mind, it is for God, or if we are of right mind, it is for you.” On the one hand, it says, some say we sound insane, out of our mind, crazy, mad.

This is not unusual. Some of you here might have family members that think you’re radical for following Christ. We know what that’s like. We feel that. And sometimes even those in churches think full devotion to Christ is too narrow, too fanatical.

And Paul says, If my life comes across like I’m a madman because I love to follow Christ and I love to preach his good news, then that’s between me and God. I live and serve in the fear of the Lord, and how that appears the Lord will sort out. On the other hand, if I appear to be of right mind, of sound mind, sensible, that is for your sake, you who by faith have been given eyes to see and hearts to believe.

And one commentator helps us with this verse. He says this, “It is the same phrase that Jesus’ family once used to describe him as he appointed the Twelve to go out with authority to preach and cast out demons. ‘And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “‘“He is out of his mind,”’” Mark 3:21.

And continuing with the quote, he says this, “Of course, they were wrong, but total devotion to God and living a life of faith often appears crazy to reasonable people. Even to those close to you, you can seem crazy.” And he concludes, “The life of faith will never look sensible to people who live by sight.”

Another commentator describes Paul’s perspective, “Even if, as some say, we are mad, that is but the result of our faithfulness to God in preaching a pure gospel. But if we are in our right mind, as we are, then that is for your sake, who benefit from the sober truth we speak.”

These men are saying if you live by faith and walk in step with the Spirit, you will perceive things rightly and benefit from faithful ministry and faithful preaching. But if you live by sight and walk by the flesh, you will perceive things wrongly and will spurn and undermine faithful ministry and faithful preaching.

By the way, both the phrases, “it is for God” and “it is for you,” are datives of interest in Greek, so it could read like this: So if we appear out of our mind, it is in the interest of God and his purposes. If we appear in our right mind, it is in the interest of you and your needs.

Paul’s zeal in ministry and passion to preach Christ is motivated by the fear of the Lord. Of course, we want to be winsome. We don’t want to drive people away in careless proclamation or an off-putting rigidity. But we do want to live in such a way that the judgment seat of Christ is ever before us.

And so in the fear of the Lord, we have one goal, and that is to please God. And so if you live in this way, some will join you, and others will question you and even consider you to be crazy.

Paul’s fear of the Lord was displayed throughout his ministry. He wrote this in his first letter to the Corinthians,“And when I came to you, brothers, I did not come with superiority of word or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the witness of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

“And I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling. And my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

Then motivated by a fear of the Lord, Paul preached Christ. He was not superior in stature or speech. He was not crafty, but straightforward. He was weak and trembling. He went through so much pain and suffering and loss just to be with them and to minister to them. And it was all worth it to him because it pleased God, and it meant spiritual progress for his people. That’s the heart of a true shepherd: self-sacrifice for the progress of others.

How do you apply this motivation in your life? It should be evident that if you’re in Christ today, you, too, will stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and your life will be weighed by the holy judge, the Lord Jesus Christ, to test every thought, motive, word and deed, everything done in public, everything done in private.

The questions will be asked, Did you live in the fear of the Lord to please God? Did you fear the Lord and have that dictate your decisions? Did you rest in the fear of the Lord as you received whatever providence God gave you in your life?

So we’re to hold on to the fear of the Lord like a dear friend. And it will help you be the same before God and before man. It will help you value inward character over outward appearances. It will help you to be steadfast in the truth no matter what people say, as you walk to live and please God.

Here’s another application, here, that may not be so readily apparent. The heart of Paul is the heart of a true shepherd. In each of the three verses, here, he is expressly defending his ministry, his credibility, his credentials, his reputation and character.

But in that, while he’s doing all that, he is caring for the flock of God. So working backward in verse 13, “If you receive our ministry as that of a sound mind, it is for the interest of you. It’s a gift for you.”

Verse 12, he wants to equip them how to answer, so they’re not run down by those who oppose Paul and who oppose Christ. In verse 11, he hopes that his in the fear of the Lord pure motive ministry has been made apparent in their consciences, and all these things are in his heart, being poured out for them and for their good, while, by the way, he’s under attack.

So why does Paul want his credibility intact? It’s not so much for his benefit except that it allows for greater joy, but rather it’s for the benefit of the Corinthians. And so he doesn’t want them cut off from the means of the grace of God in their life.

If they continue to undermine him, give a sympathetic air to his opponents, that won’t hurt him, primarily; that will hurt themselves. And so in loving, shepherding, self-sacrificing care for them, he has to seek their favorable view of his life.

If you undermine a true shepherd who fears God and who loves to see fruit produced in you, delights to see your progress in sanctification, your progress in joy and in true worship; if you discredit that elder, that shepherd, that pastor, you cut yourself off from God’s instrument for spiritual good in your life. That is why it is so important to love our elders and to pray for them, and to be grateful for them. If for nothing else, we should do that for our own benefit.

You may have heard of this command, Hebrews 13, verse 17, “Obey your leaders and submit to them–for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account–so that they will do this with joy and not with groaning, for” this will hurt their feelings. No. “This will be unprofitable for you.”

It’s not about protecting their image, their well-being, their whatever. This non-burdensome command to obey and submit to your elders is for your spiritual profit, your eternal benefit. This is why Paul defends his ministry, so that the men God has placed in their lives as shepherds would not be cut off from ministering to them.

In the next verse that passage in Hebrews says in chapter 13, there, he says, “So please pray for us.” Verse 18, “Pray for us, for we are convinced that we have a good conscience, desiring to conduct ourselves well in all things.”

Elders are the path of blessing in your life, the blessing of the Lord shepherding his people through them. If there is church discipline to do, know that the elders fear the Lord. It’s not more work that they seek. They don’t want you cut off from the shepherding care and ministry of Christ, who is head and Lord of the church. Rather, they desire that you have a soft, tender, worshipful heart that’s for your good and for his glory and perhaps your reward. There’s no self-interest there.

So don’t be like the Corinthians. Don’t have a sympathetic ear to those who undermine your elders. Also, don’t harbor resentment for disappointments or misunderstandings or grievances or unmet expectations. Don’t foster suspicions or cherish bitterness. The most damage you cause is to your own heart.

How good are these commands, then, right? They’re actually a blessing to us. Maybe I’m preaching to the choir, but the warning is there: Love your elders. Don’t tear them down. Pray for them, cherish them, honor them, and the benefit will be yours. Keep the path of ministry to your heart clear from any festering grumbling or murmuring, because it only hurts you, and it only puts you in a position to suffer spiritually. And by the way, you can’t sit here and worship with that in your heart.

So this is serious. I’ve heard of that. Some think they can compartmentalize their contempt for an elder on one side of their heart and worship God with the other side. But God receives worship from us wholeheartedly with sincerity. So be careful, be careful not to harbor any suspicions that can pull your heart away from receiving the ministry of the Word.

The bottom line, here, Paul is defending his ministry not for his own benefit, but primarily for theirs, so they would maintain an open highway to receive the ministry of the Spirit through the minister of the Word.

And so this is a most uncomfortable thing sometimes for pastors to talk about, and it doesn’t often come up in the text. So I thought I’d address it. Remember though, it’s for your own profit, your benefit to do this well.

And that’s the heart of Paul, here, serving them while he’s being discredited by them and his opponents. In the face of immense opposition, character assassination, tremendous trials, facing death, and even left for dead, Paul needed strong motivation to achieve his ambition to please God. His first motivation in the text is this: the fear of the Lord.

And the second is most intimate, most personal. It is the love of the Lord, the love of the Lord. He was motivated to please God by the love of his Lord. This is in verses 14 through 17. I’ll just read 14 and 15 first.

“For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died, and he died for all, so that they who live would no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.”

Paul is motivated to please God so devotedly because the Lord loved him so personally. “The love of Christ,” this phrase, here, is not our love for Christ. That responsive love ought to be present, for sure, but it’s not what Paul’s getting at, here. This is much deeper.

This is a subjective genitive, which means it is Christ’s love for Paul that compels him and controls him. And Christ’s love for Paul constrains him in his pleasing walk with Christ.

So if you’re writing down sub-points, the love of the Lord is our motivation. And the first point under that is, A, it changes our compulsion. The love of the Lord compels us to live for him. His love changes our compulsion.

It was the love Christ showed him in salvation that drove him to please God in all that he did. And you have to know that embedded in this motivation is a mountain of gratitude. But it’s more than gratitude. It’s Christ’s love toward the sinner, here. This is such a rich motivation for pleasing God, because this new compulsion is not just strong, it’s absolute.

And before I can explain why, I need to deal with the elephant in the room, which is this little word, all, which is throughout these two verses, verses 14 and 15. And this is important, not to check off a box in theology, but to get the power of Paul’s point, here.

So it says, “One died for all.” And by the way, that word, for, is best understood as, in the place of. So one died in the place of all, as is affirmed in verse 21 of the same chapter.

For the Christian, superficial appearances count for nothing. The condition of the heart is everything.” Reuben Pickering

So for the word all, here, there are two main views. The, all, could mean everyone, as in universal or potential atonement. But this can’t be because then it would require a work of faith to make the potential atonement actual. In that sense, faith is not a gift of salvation, as in Ephesians 2:8-9, but a work that appropriates it, and the decisive factor is what the person does. So in that sense, faith functions as a work, even if proponents of that view deny that.

The other main view is this: The, all, is defined by the death itself, as in particular or actual atonement. This must be, because the all, who died are the same all, for whom he died. His death was for them, actually, and they actually died in him. All whom he died for weren’t possibly included. They were really included.

And in John Murray’s book Redemption Accomplished and Applied, he has a chapter on the extent of the atonement, and he says about our text, here, “There could be no doubt respecting the proposition that all for whom Christ died also died in Christ. For Paul says explicitly, ‘One died for all, therefore all died, 2 Corinthians 5:14.’ There is denotative equation.

“The analogy of Paul’s teaching in Romans 6:4-8 must be applied to 2 Corinthians 5:14-15. Hence, those referred to as ‘they who live’ must have the same extent as those who embraced in the preceding clause, ‘he died for all.’

“And since those who live do not embrace the whole human race, neither can the ‘all’ referred to in the clause, ‘he died for all’ embrace the entire human family. So far from lending support to the doctrine of universal atonement, this text does the opposite. The inference is inevitable, that those for whom Christ died are those and those only who die to sin and live to righteousness.

“So the Father sent his only Son to suffer crucifixion and received the strike of wrath from his Father on the cross, not for all, potentially or possibly, but particularly, in the place of all who would ever believe on him. When people go to Hell, they go because of unbelief, rejection of Christ.

“And so if Christ died for all the sins of all people, and unbelief sends people to Hell, then either Christ did not actually atone for the sin of unbelief, or God is unjustly punishing people for the sin of unbelief for which Jesus died and sends an unbeliever to Hell.”

We could spend all day looking at different texts to prove or disprove their views on the extent of the atonement, but we need to stay close to Paul’s point, here. That is, that the effective love of Christ showed him in redemption because it was personal and actual, because he died in Christ and now lives in him.

This now enables and compels and constrains him to live not for self, but for Christ, who died and rose on his behalf. Positionally, he died and lives, and practically he walks in newness of life, Romans 6:4.

By the way, the LSB translators have helped us with the subjunctive mood of “those in Christ.” It’s not that they might no longer live for themselves, which sounds kind of more potential, but that they would no longer live for themselves, which is a more certain outcome. The father chose for his son a bride, and Christ laid his life down for her.

Think about Ephesians 5. A husband is not called to love every woman the way he loves his bride. He loves his bride particularly, sacrificially, exclusively, specifically, and purposefully.

Christ died for his sheep, and sheep which the father marked out for him before the foundations of the earth to be recipients of his love. Even when they were enemies of God, Christ died for a people for his own possession. In the moment when Christ came on the cross, he paid a ransom. He paid a price to purchase the people for his own possession, and they were his bride, and they died in him.

And so if you’re in Christ today, you were with him in his death, and you were raised with him in his resurrection. Christ did not die simply to make our salvation possible. He accomplished it.

And this is good news because to be united with him in his death means that your old self has been crucified. So for the Christian to live in sin is to try and pull that man back up again. But that can’t be done. You can’t continue in that. That man died and his death is final.

The love of Christ did not forgive your sin to leave you to live as your old self. It changed you and gave you newness of life, newness of life to walk in. Living for self would be living as if the cross never happened.

Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.”

And so we live not for ourselves, but for Christ, who made us new and crucified the old man. Romans 8:37, “In all things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us.” United with Christ in his death and being united with him in his resurrection is not abstract. It’s real transformation and change of ownership and a transfer from the dominion of sin to the kingdom of Christ.

And so you cannot live for the old self. It is impossible for the Christian to drift into sinful indulgence and stay there without serious consequences and loving discipline, because that self is not his new nature.

This is so freeing. This is so freeing because the commands of Scripture become to the believer not as burdens but as bountiful delights to walk in. They are in unison with our new nature, and so they are joyful to walk in.

Some of you might have been in Christ twenty years, and you can be approaching your walk as a Christian in a moralistic sense. But when you come to understand your union with Christ and dying to the old man and living to the life in him, you can be freed from a do-this, don’t-do-that approach and see the command as a relief and heartfelt agreement and satisfaction because your spirit says, That’s what I want to do and I can do, and I get to do that, and it is life to me.

So when Paul says the love of Christ controls him, hems him in, constrains him to live for Christ, that’s because he died with him and rose with him and therefore can do nothing else but to live for him. He says, I’m not in it for me. I’m not in it for selfish purposes. My sole purpose is only to bring him glory who loved me, died for me, and rose to give me life.

Paul marveled at his salvation, and in part, I think, because he so zealously opposed Christ once. He was the last person he would expect to be the object of the father’s mercy and the recipient of the son’s love.

And so he spent his whole new life in Christ, telling everyone about him so that they, too, would believe, drink and never thirst again, eat and never be hungry, utterly secured and satisfied and provisioned for in Christ. Far from closing up shop and keeping Christ all to himself, he lives for Christ and loves to tell others about him.

You might have sung that song that is the heartbeat of every redeemed sinner. “I love to tell the story, ‘twill be my theme in glory to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.” Another song, “‘Twill be my joy through the ages to sing of his love for me. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior’s love for me.’”

And the love of the Lord is not merely strong motivation; it is compelling. It is definitive. And a second point under this motivation is that the love of the Lord, B, changes your perception. A, it changes your compulsion, B, it changes your perception.

Verse 16, “Therefore, from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him in this way no longer.”

And so because of the love of the Lord shown in salvation, Paul is transformed in his perception of people. He doesn’t assess people with the externals like his opponents do. It’s all about what’s inside. And we are far more interested in the hidden attributes of the heart than with the way the world might perceive you, is what he’s saying.

He uses Jesus as an example. To unbelieving eyes, Christ was despised and rejected of men. He was unimpressive, from an unimportant town, Nazareth. He had no permanent home, no real estate. He was just a carpenter’s son, working class. His company were tax collectors and sinners, the riffraff.

He was accused of being out of his mind by his own family, not a conquering king, but was crucified as a cursed criminal who hung on a tree. And so Paul saw Christ as a failed messianic pretender who blasphemed until Christ opened his eyes.

And with his eyes of faith now opened, he perceived Christ clearly and accurately. Once spiritually blind, now with full vision, he saw Christ as the risen Lord and savior, truly God, the one who came and sought him, the one who loved him, the one in whom he died, and he rose again to life.

Because of the love of Christ showed in reconciling Paul to God, Paul has new eyes and he says, Don’t discard my testimony or my ministry, my life, because I’m unimpressive. See me as God sees me. See me as God sees you, clothed in the righteousness of Christ because of that new perception.

See God’s delight in you, positionally. You are the beloved brother or sister of God’s son. And he was pleased with him. And so see God smile on you, and discipline yourself to see others in Christ this way. They are his “chosen family, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God,” beautiful, clothed in righteousness, forgiven of all past, present, and persistent sin. And you can be pleasing to God because of the love of the Lord shown in Christ’s redemption of you.

So perceive people either as God’s beloved children or as those who are lost like you were and who desperately need to know the love of Christ and embrace him to become another true worshipper, a true worshipper of the living God. Motivated by the love of the Lord, you can please God, because it changes your compulsion, it changes your perception, and it changes your direction.

C, the love of the Lord changes your direction. Verse 17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things passed away. Behold, new things have come.” And this really ties a bow on verses 14 and 15, the love of Christ shown in the gospel, that when you believed by faith, you died with Christ and were raised to newness of life.

Therefore, because of your union with him, you are a new creation. The old things have passed away. Old fleshly ways are invalid. They’re not pleasing to you. They’re undesirable and unfulfilling. And you’ve been made clean.

So swimming in a swamp is detestable and is against your new nature, which desires to please God and to please God alone. If you’re in Christ, you are not asked to make yourself clean or to make yourself new. You are new. You’re new on the inside, and this change is going to slowly be more visible on the outside as we mature.

But because you’re a new creation, why not live like that and strive that way? Why not flee from the ways that resulted in death and instead run toward the fruitful ways of life?

If you’re in Christ, this won’t potentially happen. This will happen. This is such a beautiful and glorious tiny phrase that it should encourage you and motivate you toward holy living because of the immeasurable confidence it will bring you to live and to love to please God.

Here it is, this phrase, “Behold, new things have come.” And you might say, I’ve heard that before. What’s the big deal? The Greek word for “have come” is in the perfect tense, which tells us that he is a new creation once and for all, and that being a new creation comes with continuing results: new desires, new affections, new values, new ambition, all to please God.

That act in the past has a continuing result, all to grow in and increasingly see the fruit of your new creation in Christ. Your new life in Christ has come, and it will produce ongoing and increasing conformity on the outside of what is true on the inside.

My old condemned, wretched man is gone. If anyone is in Christ, they are new, and so don’t go back to the old ways. Relish the new life in Christ. Galatians 6 says that Paul, he glories only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, because there the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. In the cross with Christ, I died and now I live with him.

And so he doesn’t sit back and settle on the knowledge of certain glorification. He hungers and thirsts for righteousness. He gets after it. He is motivated to put off the old deeds of the flesh and to walk in unison with his new life in Christ, for that would only be joy for him; but it would also please the father of whom he is now a son.

And so you can pray, Father, would you conform me more today into the image of your Son, for that would be joy for me and pleasure for you.

Paul clawed back his credibility so that they would not be cut off from being shepherded. And in doing so, he equipped them with two motivations that he lived by and endeavor to please God with.

We need to take these two motivations, carry them into your kitchen, carry them into the living room, carry them into the office, into the hallways, into the public square and into the private sphere online.

We need to be a people with the fear of the Lord, on one hand, and the love of the Lord, on the other hand. The fear of the Lord and the love of the Lord. And with high expectation of Christ’s return, that we would be found growing in conformity to Christ, eager to honor him with every hour and to please him in all respects.

So in any difficulty, in any setback, any discouragement, any pressure in your life, grab on to these two motivations and by the grace and power of the Spirit, walk pleasing to God until he says it’s time for your tent to be torn down.

And as we pour over the glories and the mysteries of our dying in Christ and rising to new life that we would gratefully exclaim, “Amazing love! How can it be that thou my God should die for me?” Let’s pray together.

Our father in heaven. What a privilege is ours that we can be pleasing in your sight. It’s all because of Christ and our being hidden in him, spiritually dying and being raised with him. Thank you for giving us this blessed position, determined before the foundation of the world.

Would you take these truths that we’ve gleaned today and strengthen us to walk with great joy in newness of life? And would you be glorified in our lives and pleased with us? It’s in Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

1 Samuel 17:1-30

2 Corinthians 5:1-10

We’ve come to the preaching of God’s Word. And so take your copy of the Word of God and turn to 2 Corinthians and we’re going to be in chapter 5, 2 Corinthians, and chapter 5. And while you’re turning there, you could think of chapter 5 as a giant Sequoia tree. And our privilege over the next three weeks is to see if we can digest this chapter in manageable portions so that by the end of it, we will hopefully have wrapped our arms around this giant Sequoia tree of a chapter. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and today will be in verses 1-10, 1-10.

It is considered an effective oratory tool in the arsenal of public speakers to kind of save a a big reveal at the end, but I want to set aside any theatrics and tell you at the beginning what some might save for the end. I need to tell you this. I need to tell you now, because for some of you, all of the glorious truths in Chapter 5 are sadly not about you. At least they’re not yet about you. And lest something dreadful happen to you in the next few weeks so that you’re unable to hear the end, I want to and I need to tell you now, what is a concluding call from the apostle Paul.

 If you look at the end of chapter 5 and you just read over that to chapter 6, you see the Holy Spirit says, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” And if you have not embraced Jesus Christ, who is the only way to God and the only way to obtain and secure eternal life, then today you must be reconciled to God through him.

Test not God’s patience. You must believe on Jesus Christ that he was born of a virgin to fulfill Scripture, that he lived and was tempted in all ways, as we are, and yet did not sin. And he was crucified, unjustly accused, but he laid down his life for his sheep, and he rose again, thereby appeasing his father’s wrath on behalf of sinners and declaring victory over sin and death. And for all who hang their hope on him, their sin debt is removed, because he is the spotless, sinless Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world.

 And if you would put your trust in him, he would deal with your insurmountable sin problem against God, and he will then give you a righteousness that is not your own. And then you will not only have eternal life, but equally significant, you will have an eternal friend and eternal savior. You will have an eternal brother in the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

And so more than a ticket to heaven, you can say I am his and he is mine. And you will be a co-heir with Christ and so all that he has will be yours also. And so call out to God for mercy today that he would be gracious and to grant you faith and repentance to you and give you a new heart that would be pleasing to him and you. You would then experience the joy of walking in his ways and have the certain hope of eternity.

Not only is all that blessing and privilege for whoever would believe on Jesus Christ, but also what we see in our passage today will be yours. But I could not wait until the end of three weeks to share that with you. Who knows how long we have.

This chapter 6:1 and 2, there’s a call for your soul that’s, so beg for mercy, called out to him in prayer today. Some of you are teenagers or you’re in your twenties and you’re wondering what life was all about. And let me tell you that this is it. It’s to embrace Christ who is a savior and who is the Lord of all, and then to be conformed into his likeness and then to one day be transformed in glory and everything else that concerns you, that has your mind and heart, they’re details. They’re just details.

So belong to Christ today and then the realities of 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 will be yours, but if you sit here indifferent to the Lord Jesus, cold and hard hearted, you will be like one who is here, but is kind of peering over a fence wondering what’s the big deal.

 A hard heart refuses to hear the heart of God who says, “Come now and let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow. And though they are like crimson, they will be like wool.” That’s the heart of God for sinners like you and me.

So why wouldn’t you come? Why wouldn’t you come and taste and see that he is good? That’s my heart to you. And you who don’t know Christ, I desperately want you to have what I and what we all were undeserving to have; undeserving, undeserving to receive unworthy. Today is the day of salvation.

Only in Christ can you live with meaningful purpose, and only in Christ can you competently face death and anything that life throws at you. And that is what the Holy Spirit, through the pain of the apostle Paul is going to equip us with today; understanding eternal reality so that you can face today and whatever comes tomorrow.

Many of you who sit here are in Christ today, and you trust him and you love him, and you long to see him and be with him, but because of some bumps and sideswipes and fender benders and T-bones along the road, you have found yourself in this seat, a little discouraged, a little disheartened and in personal trial, your tank may be empty, weakened and strengthened, waning in confidence. And if that’s you, you need to take heart, because this letter, 2 Corinthians, is the one where God reminds us that his grace is sufficient for you. So we need to trust him.

Trust him and in my office prayers this week for you have been that this text today would be an immense refreshment for you and a resetting of your course, should you be strained. I pray that you would walk away from today standing firm and steadfast in faith. So without continuing, let’s read the scriptures together, verses 1 through 10 of chapter 5.

Verse 1, “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, it’s eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.

“Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord- for we walk by faith, not by sight- we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

 Paul was writing this letter, as an afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down apostle. But he was not crushed, he was not despairing, he was not forsaken, he was not destroyed, and he did not lose heart. And we see all that in chapter 4, and we find out why in chapter 5, why he did not lose heart. He was an apostle to the Gentiles, pioneering the spirit of the gospel and the establishment of churches.

 He received his ministry marching orders from the Lord Jesus Christ and shared therefore in his sufferings. And so with these burdens, we know that his suffering was unique to him and his apostolic associates. There was a severity and a depth to them that is unknown to us. But like Paul said of the Old Testament Israelites, these things were written down for our instruction. And so we can look to Paul then and glean from his life and draw confidence from his example and be instructed as he followed Christ, we can follow him too.

 But as extreme as Paul’s suffering and burdens were in chapter 4, he he even calls these light and momentary, in view of what’s to come. So, beloved, how much and how often do you ponder what is to come? Has it crossed your mind this morning? Because it really should have. These things are so marvelous, so glorious, that even what is perceivably impossible suffering to endure on this earth could be viewed as light and momentary; light and momentary in view of what is to come.

The Apostle Paul, this man, if you survey his story, he was wrung out. I’m not going to list off every trial. We don’t even know all of them, but you can read them in Chapter 11, for example, of this book. But recall to mind this one time in Acts 14, Paul is declaring the goodness of God and calling the people to turn to the living God. And they stone him, which by the way, is one of the worst things I can imagine.

They stone him and drag him out of the city and leave him there, supposing him to be dead. This man does not look as good as you and I this morning. Clean, well dressed, he is wrung out hanging by a thread, and he is the one to be leading the charge to establish the church and teach and equip the church, so that it can thrive after he dies.

So there’s a little bit of a contrast between our suffering and his, between our burdens and his burdens. How is Paul encouraged to walk by faith and not lose heart? How is Paul encouraged to do this? We can certainly, having suffered to a lesser degree under less pressures, we can certainly glean great hope and encouragement from his example.

And so in the first ten verses of chapter 5, we’re going to look at six realities of a disciple of Christ that will carry you to the end and give you tremendous purpose in the present. These realities are focused on what is firmly fixed in the future so that we are equipped for practical day-to-day living in the present.

Six realities of those in Christ that will refresh your heart and encourage you to walk by faith in this world, firmly and steadfastly to the end. I’ll give you them all up front so you can know what to listen out for, but of course, I’ll be repeating these.

Number one: The reality of the Christian’s glory. Verse 1, the Christian’s glory, verse 2 through 4, the Christians groaning, verse 5, the Christians guarantee, verses 6 through 8, the Christians good courage, verse 9, the Christians goal, and verse 10, the Christians gain.

 So Number one: the Christian’s glory. The reality of the Christian’s glory and this is in verse 1, is what the Christian receives in glory, that is a glorified body to renovate what is his current body and make it fit for eternity. So look at verse 1, “For we know that if the earthly tent, which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.”

 In this verse, where your eyes need to keep bouncing back to, as to what everything else modifies and and is subordinate to, is this “we have a building.” The Christian is ultimately untouchable, because should our earthly tent, which is our temporary body or housing, when it’s torn down, we have a building that awaits us.

This is a from God building, it’s a not made with hands building, and it’s an eternal in the heavens building. It’s comparing the the frailty, fragility, and the flimsiness of a tent with the strength and the safety and the stability of a building. Comparing the here and now weakness of our earthly bodies with the forever strength of our glorified bodies.

That tent is not meant to be eternal; it’s meant to be temporary. A building is meant to be long term. And my family and I were on a vacation once and staying in a cabin and we went for a walk one evening in in the National Park and we were walking past some campsites and people were tenting there. And as they, as we were slowly walking past, our eyes were kind of widening a little bit. And without looking at each other, my wife and I said in unison, I’m so glad we are not staying in a tent. Rather we’re in a cabin with, it’s a building with real walls and real mattresses and running water.

If you would put your trust in him, he would deal with your insurmountable sin problem against God. ” Reuben Pickering

 Paul knows that tents don’t last. He supplemented his income, mending them, making new ones. So he compares his life to a tent. His life, by the way, which is regularly hanging by a thread and at one point left for dead. But this tent is not what he hopes in, he says, this is not all that there is. Notice Paul says, “If our tent is torn down,” and he’s not expressing doubt whether the earthy body will be taken down, the inevitability of that is not lost on him.

 The tent is coming down either by death or by rapture. And the third-class conditional, if, leaves the timing of the tearing down open, but the outcome of the receiving of a building, absolutely beyond a doubt, certain fact. And so while rapture would be a preferred and far more pleasant experience, this would be the exception. Our tent is going to be torn down and it’s being torn down in death. That’s the more likely and more predominant scenario.

To be torn down is to be demolished, dismantled, disassembled, to bring something to ruin. And one reason I was drawn to dig into this passage, to dwell and meditate on its glorious truths, is that certain events tend to leave a mark on your life, and sometimes you never really move on from those. They remain an imprint on your life and they teach you something. They continue to teach you and remind you of things. And for me that was watching my mum’s tent be torn down when I was young.

It happened over the span of a year or so and and by the end, her tent was wrecked. She looked over 100 and yet was not even half that age. And watching on, you feel the inability to reverse decay. You feel powerless to change the outcome, incapable of stopping the unraveling of the situation. Death is relentless, it is crushing and it is final. And her heartbeat, until the end, was precious as of a saint saved by Grace.

What was on the tip of her tongue with her life hanging by a thread? What came from her lips was this, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing and in everything give thanks for. This is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17. What will your heartbeat be at the end? What will be your convictions you carry to the end? I tell you it’ll be whatever you cherished now, whatever you’ve cherished in this life.

And how do you have that certain hope when the death rattle is present in your throat? I spoke to someone recently who expressed uncertainty, afraid that for some reason they might not remain steadfast to the end. What gave Paul confidence? He was just a man like you and me. Look at verse 1, the first three words. Here’s the confidence. “For we know.”

 We know we have a building from God. Paul, how confident were you that affliction was working out an eternal weight of glory? How did you not lose heart? How were you confident that though your outer man was decaying, your inner man was being renewed? 2 Corinthians 4, he says, “For we know this is to have knowledge of a fact and be absolutely certain of its veracity and its reliability. We know that we will be clothed with a glorified body, and the certainty of that truth will carry me through every storm, through every way I witness this tent falling apart.”

 Now we have to talk about this new body, and God doesn’t leave us in the dark about this. Paul described the glorified body, as “one made without hands.” And this should highlight to us that this building is not an actual building, but indeed a body. And you might recall Jesus describing his bodily resurrection. I will destroy, he says, this sanctuary made with hands, referring to the temple. And in three days I will build another made without hands. Mark, 14:58.

They thought he met the temple, but he really meant his own body and it is a body resurrected and made fit for eternal use. It’s not a replacement, it’s a renovation. And there will be some continuity, not an entirely new entity. And so follow me on this thought. Philippians 3:20 and 21 says this, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory. By His working, which through which He is able to even subject all things to Himself.”

 Jesus Christ will transform the body of our humble state, that’s the tent that we’re in right now. And you transform it into conformity with the body of his glory, and that’s the building. So you have to ask then, what is the glorified body like? If our glorified body will be transformed to be like his glorified body, what will it be like? And so we look to the testimony of Thomas that Jesus resurrected body was not a brand new product, but again a renovated version.

 In John 20, Jesus showed the disciples his hands and his side and they rejoiced when they saw the Lord. “Jesus said, to Thomas, ‘Bring your finger here, and see My hands; and bring your hand here and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.” And so we know that when they had eyes to see and a heart to believe, they recognized him and they knew it was him. This is encouraging.

So while there is continuity and connection between the perishable and the imperishable body, there are differences. For example, what we see in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 42, “It is sown a corruptible body and it is raised an incorruptible body; it is sown in weakness, but it is raised in power; and it is sown a natural body, and it is raised a spiritual body.” Which by the way, does not mean an immaterial body.

Jesus was raised bodily and ate with the disciples, but it is a spiritual body, in that, it is in total harmony with the Holy Spirit. You’re able to live in unhindered harmony with the Spirit in that body. Is that not your heart’s desire? If it is, you must be so encouraged by that, that the Holy Spirit dwells within you. You long to be an unhindered fellowship with him. And as we’ll see in the next verses, you’ll see that you can relate to Paul’s groaning.

But before we get there, just think for a moment. What you see here and now is not going to be completely done away with. The resurrection is not about replacing your body; it’s about renewing it and renovating it. And this should cause you to appreciate God’s intimate and personal design of you, that our bodies are something to care for, not because we’re going to preserve it forever, there’s no chance of that, but out of appreciation and wonder that omnipotent God is going to resurrect and renovate and make you ready for eternal use.

So we should care for our bodies. You are fearfully and wonderfully made Psalm 139, and God is going to redeem what he designed and formed in you, admittedly with some alterations. But don’t have a spurn God for the body he wisely and lovingly and delightedly designed for you. He’s going to transform it and conform it to be glorified like his son. That he loves what he made and he’s going to give you a body fit for glory, and this will testify to his power and his personal love for you.

When will this happen? As Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection, it is clear then, that we will be transformed at the time of resurrection. So that’s at the rapture, where the dead in Christ rise first, 1 Thessalonians 4. And we ache for this building, this glorified body, the Christians future glory. This ache brings us to a second point.

The first reality we covered there was the Christian’s glory. The second reality is the Christians groaning verses 2 through 4. Let me just read that to refresh you. “For indeed in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed, while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.”

This groaning is what Paul presently longs for. It’s to reach for something. It’s to yearn or to ache for something. It’s a groaning which is something deep inside. It’s kind of always there. It’s a, it’s always a reality. It’s not something that you hear occasionally, like when you’re getting out of your armchair, you hear an audible groan. This is not what we’re talking about.

Rather, this deep ache is a longing for our heavenly dwelling and it’s something that’s always there, “for indeed,” verse 2, “indeed in this,” in this what? “In this tent we groan,” and we groan for the dwelling from God, because in that we are freed from the presence of sin and all of its effects. And it’s not Paul trying to escape suffering. It’s not escapism. He’s not trying to avoid difficulty and pain. He loves to be useful to the Lord in serving others to spur them on in sanctification.

But underneath it all, he longs to be clothed with immortality. For that will mean far more free and unhindered fellowship with the Triune God. That’s his heartbeat, to be unclothed, as these verses state, unclothed, naked, is to be without a body, to be disembodied or spirit only. And this is not what Paul longs for. He longs for his transformed, eternal, heavenly and permanent body, to swallow up his temporary body, which is burdened with pressures of affliction and suffering and fleshly weaknesses and limitations and sins.

Groaning for what is future has powerful present impact. It pulls you along through the burdens of life. It nullifies your ultimate despair, and it purifies us. This longing for what is future purifies us. As 1 John 3:2 to 3 says, “We will be like him because we will see Him just as He is.” And then here it is verse 3, “Everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as He is pure,” and so it has a purifying and sanctifying effect.

 So you want to be sanctified; long for what is coming, long for his coming. We want to be just as he is. We long for our redeemed soul not to be disembodied, but to be clothed with a glorified body. And Paul said in his first letter to Corinth, “when this mortal puts on immortality, death will be swallowed up in victory.” So death does not win. It only paves the way for what we groan for, to be clothed with a body that ever lives, to serve and glorify God without limitations and one that never decays.

How do we know for sure that this will happen, that we will be clothed? The answer is in our third reality, and this is such a good one. It’s found in verse 5, it’s called the Christians Guarantee. Reality number three, it’s the Christians guarantee. And this is what he is assured of receiving. Verse 5, “Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.”

 And so the Christians guarantee is what he is assured of receiving. He is assured of receiving his building, a glorified resurrection body. And because God has prepared us for this, and it really, that word, prepares to work this out for us, and because he has given us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee; this is, this is how he has confidence.

Paul’s confidence is to face the future while in dire circumstances and all his confidence is heaped on God. It’s all on him. He has no confidence in his own strength. What makes Paul confident about the future, as he endures many near death scenarios and as he watches his earthly tent fall apart? It’s the fact that God has prepared us for this purpose and God is working all of it out.

You who have been chosen before the foundation of the world, God himself has prepared you for the purpose of glorification. And can God do this? Yes, yes, yes. This purpose is so sure, so certain, so rock solid that it is written in the eternal, everlasting, and enduring word of God. And that’s as good as done.

Turn with me for a moment to Romans 8. Romans 8, a fellow giant Sequoia of a chapter, Romans 8, Romans 8:28. Actually, let’s back up a little bit to verse 18, verse 18 of chapter 8 in Romans, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Sound familiar, 2 Corinthians 4.

Then he talks about creation groaning, and then in verse 23 he says this, “And not only this, but also we ourselves having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” Verse 24. “For in hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we eagerly wait for it.”

in verse 28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers; and those whom he predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified.”

Paul’s confidence is to face the future while in dire circumstances and all his confidence is heaped on God.” Reuben Pickering

 And so his purpose in verse 28 is that you would be conformed to the image of Christ, in verse 29 and that you would ultimately be glorified in verse 30. That is to receive and to be clothed with your, known from God, made without hands, eternal in the heavens building: your glorified body. So no matter what happens in this life, in Christ, your purpose, you know, people want to figure out what their purpose in life is.

And well, I can understand why the world has trouble with that question. But if you’re in Christ, no matter what happens to you in this life, the purpose for which you were created will be realized. That is because God will do it. And that is to clothe you with a resurrection body made for eternity. And in a sense, he’s already done it.

It’s so set in stone that the eternal word of God says it’s as good as done. As a past event is fact, it’s more certain than you and I here, face to face. This is the irrevocable, immutable, irreversible will of God. And in fact, Ephesians 1:5 and 6 says, “It’s according to his good pleasure,” the good pleasure of his will. He’s pleased to do it, to the praise of his glory, to the praise of the glory of his grace.

What a God, what a savior, what a Holy Spirit. And so back to 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 5. I’d be convinced of the guarantee of future glory because God has said so and purposed so. But he does more than that, he puts his Spirit in you as a pledge, as a guarantee of glorification. And this word, pledge, can be understood as a down payment or a deposit. But the risk here is that you interpret this word with your own experiences.

This down payment of the indwelling Holy Spirit is not a percentage payment, where the buyer can kind of back out at any moment. This is a payment that guarantees future payment. It’s a commercial legal term that talks about instalment that binds the contract and secures the purchase. It’s not loose or vague. It’s locked in and it’s binding. Ephesians 1:13 and 14 help us a little bit with this.

Ephesians 1:14 explains our glorification as the redemption of something that God already owns. He already owns it. He already purchased it. It’s not an installment and we’re waiting around to see if God will complete the purchase. The verse 13 of chapter 1 in Ephesians, “In him you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.” In verse 14, “Who is given as a pledge of our inheritance unto the redemption of God’s own possession.”

 So he already owns you and he puts his own spirit in you as a guarantee of future completed glorification. It’s the reality of the Christians guarantee is past tense, secured, future glorification; the purpose which God has prepared you for, and the pledge of the indwelling Holy Spirit. So encouraging.

Now the final three realities really flow from the first three and they’re kind of consequential realities. They’re, they’re responsive realities in light of verses 1 through 5 and we’re going to kind of move through these. So the reality, number four, the reality through verses 6 through 8, we see the Christians good courage, the Christians good courage.

The Christians good courage is what he always possesses. He always possesses it, but sometimes we need reminders. And so verse 6, “Therefore, being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith and not by sight, we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”

 And so why is Paul always continuously confident and certain and courageous? It’s because the worst that could happen to him here, would only usher him into the presence of the Lord; not yet clothed with his eternal body, that happens at the resurrection, at the rapture. So not yet clothed with his eternal body, and yet he’s yet still at home with the Lord. And that’s even better than where he is right at that point.

 When Paul says in Philippians 1:23, that “he desires to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better.” That word depart comes from the first verb that we learn in Greek, which is lyo, which means to loosen. And it has a word picture of either loosening ropes on a ship so that it can set sail from port, or loosening tent ropes and pulling up tent pegs so that you can journey on. And so when we depart, our soul is loosened from this temporary tent to be at home with the Lord. Confident of this, we are of good courage in spite of our circumstances, amidst our sometimes unchanging, difficult circumstances.

He’s also confident because he lives by faith and he’s not swayed by what he sees down here and faith will then turn to sight, but for now Christ is not visible to our eyes. And so in that sense we are away from the Lord. But by faith we are indeed with him, and we trust his word, and we hope in him, and we believe on him. And Jesus said in John 20, “Blessed are those who do not see me and yet believe.”

And so we are of good courage, because “we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen. But the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal,” 2 Corinthians 4:18. So even in the midst of chaos and turmoil, anguish and gut-wrenching news, that just kind of tears you apart, the Christian does not lose heart. Confident and courageous we are, still and sure in the storm, because we walk by faith, trusting, believing, looking to what has come. And so we are of good courage. Good courage, courageous.

Reality number five is in verse 9, and it’s the Christians goal. Reality number five: The Christian’s goal. “Therefore,” verse 9, “we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be” this is the goal, “pleasing to Him.” In light of all of this, what the Christian always aims for is to be pleasing to God.

Paul’s longing for a glorified body didn’t make him despise this temporary body, and it made him all the more eager and ambitious to please God with it. He was hungry and determined to please the Lord. One of the verses I made, my meditation and my hobby when I first got saved was Colossians 1:10 and my newfound delight and privilege that I now get to please God.

It was a delight for me and a wonder for me, for before, I was a Romans 8:8 man, which is “those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.” What a privilege we have, and Paul’s contemplation here in chapter 5 is our eternal glory. And so out of immense joy and gratitude, we want to do nothing else, but to be pleasing to God. What you can do in this tent, you can’t do in that building is please God in service to receive rewards in glory.

And so now we’re moving quickly. The sixth reality for the Christian is the Christian’s gain, Christian’s gain, which is in verse 10, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

 So why is this the Christian’s gain? The reality of a judgment reserved just for believers is not to judge sins. Those were paid in full on the cross where Christ received the wrath of God. And we’ll look more at that in two weeks in verse 21. But this coming Bema seat judgment is not the Great White Throne judgment, which is a sentencing judgment for unbelievers.

The judgment seat of Christ is to reward believers for works that they have done and been doing to please God. It’s a delightful motivation to walk in the good works that God has prepared for us, Ephesians 2:10, to serve with pure and selfless motives. It’s a motivation to happily take the short end of the stick or to humbly prefer others to consider all that God has accomplished for you and to walk pleasingly in gratitude to him.

The Bema seat is not described a whole lot, but it is illustrated in 1 Corinthians 3. 1 Corinthians 3. I’ll read that for you. 1 Corinthians 3 is where it’s illustrated, verse 10, “According to the grace of God, which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no one can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

“Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident, for the day will indicate it because it is revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward.” In verse 15. “If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.”

We are free, yes, but free to live to please God, and he is delighted to reward us. Every motive will be tested, every deed will be weighed, but again, not punitive. 1 Corinthians 4:5 says, When the Lord comes, “He will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and make manifest the motives of hearts. And then each one’s praise will come to him from God.”

 Jesus said in Revelation, “Behold, I am coming quickly and my reward is with me.” An important distinction to make in this last word in our text of 2 Corinthians 5:10, it’s the word, bad, in the LSB. This is not a sinful thing as it’s not evil in nature. Rather it’s ordinary in quality. It’s inferior or worthless, low-grade quality, and so those deeds are burned up and not rewarded.

Rewards bring crowns and future responsibilities in the kingdom, but unlike here on earth, those who are honored with responsibilities, they’re going to be cherished and celebrated, not resented or envied, as our sinful hearts may be inclined in this life. In Christ, we are all equal, but rewards reflect God’s justice and his generosity.

So why does Paul insert this here? Clearly the brevity of life is a close reality for him. More than that, the glorious realities and gifts given by God on the forefront of his mind. In contemplating eternal matters, this does not cause him to sit back, it spurs him on. He’s hungry for the work of the Lord, and he’s eager to please him in all his ways, while he can, while his feet are on this ground.

So what about you and me? When you hear of the eternal reality that awaits you, the response is not to shrug and just, well, thanks for that. It’s not to be casual coasting into the kingdom. Appreciation, real appreciation for these things should turn to humble and eager service of the Lord.

Some of you need to hear this message today to encourage your heart and to lift your countenance to call back any wandering affection for worldly ways, to acknowledge that yes, this trial that I’m in, this unmet expectation, it’s hard, but you need to hear; you have a building from God and it’s strong, secured and everlasting.

And so you can say I’m going to run, I’m going to run so as to win the prize. Paul’s knowledge of glory, his longing for glory, his certainty of glory did not cause him to put his feet up. He’s like, we need to pick up the pace. We need to endeavor to do everything to be pleasing in his sight while there’s still time, for there will come a moment, verse Corinthians 1:5, there will come a moment at any moment, in the twinkling of an eye that God will call time on this life. He’ll do that with the sound of a trumpet.

Either that or your tent will wear out or it will be taken down without warning. And for the believer, you will be called into his presence to account for how you’ve stewarded every moment afforded to you, every resource in your care, every ministry gifted to you, every opportunity you’ve had to please him. How will you fear in that accounting?

And for the unbeliever, your indecision will be revealed for what it really is, rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And you can imagine saying, why did I not come to receive mercy? Why did I test the patience of God one more day? Why did I love fulfilment in this brief blip of a life instead of humbling myself to come to God, to embrace Christ and to be with him?

Trials are brutal, but it’s little compared to the anguish and the agony of regret. You got to take these six realities for the believer in Christ and let them sit in your soul until you are moved to change something. Change something. Oh, that you and I would be repulsed by our apathy and that we would be stimulated to love and good deeds as we prayed this morning, all because we are in awe of what almighty God has done for sinners.

After expounding on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul closes with this, and so are we, says in verse 58, far from lying down, verse 58, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”

Let’s pray together. Heavenly Father, help us to focus on our eternal home. What a gift you have given. Convict us of any apathetic way among us. Change us to be more like Christ, we pray. Give us high and lofty thoughts of you. Thank you that you’ve given us Christ and you’ve given us Paul as examples of enduring trials and suffering so that whatever we go through, we can be confident of your grace and your power to carry us to the end.

Thank you for securing full redemption for us, and let us do our part well by living lives zealous for good deeds that match our grateful hearts. If there be any struggling heart here, strengthen them, I pray, and cause us all to be steadfast lights for the truth and faithful followers of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it’s in his name we pray. Amen.