Sunday Sermon: Triumph in Christ (2 Corinthians 2:5-17)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

The Apostle Paul writing to the church at Corinth, now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure, not to put it too severely, to all of you.

For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough.

So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything.

Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs.

When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was open for me in the

Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there.

So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia. But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.

Let us pray. Our Lord God, we thank you this morning for this text, these scriptures that continue to illuminate to us who

Christ is and what he has done and the treasure that we are given in your son.

I pray that on this great morning, as we celebrate the resurrection of our

Lord Christ, that this isn't something that we do simply because it is a special occasion, but for the believer, we know that we who were once dead in our sins and our trespasses have been brought back to life by Jesus Christ.

We've been given life in our souls, in our very being, in our spirit, which was previously in rebellion against God and now seeks after the

Lord. As Chris read this morning from Psalm 14, we who were dead in our sins, we're not seeking

God. No one seeks after God. For it is in our sinful flesh that we are in rebellion against God, chasing after the same sins and passions of our father,

Adam. But in Christ, we have been born again with new DNA to a new family, sealed by the spirit of God for the day of redemption, so that all who are in Christ Jesus do not walk in death, but we are alive with the life that has been given to us in Christ our

Lord. For I have been crucified with Christ. Paul wrote to the Galatians, it is no longer

I who live, but Christ who lives within me. And so let that be the triumphal proclamation of the believer, and not just on Easter Sunday, but every

Sunday, and in fact, every day, knowing that we who were dead have been made alive with Christ.

And we, as it says in Colossians chapter three, are seated with Christ in God.

Let us therefore look above to Christ, where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.

Thank you for your presence with us this morning and continue to show us your word as we desire to be enlivened all the more in Christ Jesus, in whose name we pray, and all

God's people said, amen. Thank you, you may be seated. Jaron Myers, who is a

Christian comedian based out of Kansas City, he said,

Preacher, if you make the joke, and then Jesus was like, April fools, please know that I love you with all the love of Jesus, but I do not like who you are choosing to be this morning.

In other words, it's a ridiculous joke. Don't use it. Another friend of mine pointed out,

I can already tell you that your Easter April fools joke is terrible, please avoid using it. So I have received encouragement this morning to not do any

April fools jokes related to Easter. I think as Julie had pointed out rightly with our kids this morning, this is not a joke that we gather together on Easter Sunday and celebrate the resurrection of our

Lord Christ. In fact, it is not just on Easter Sunday that we remember these things.

But as I pointed out to a group of high schoolers this past Tuesday, I shared the gospel with them at our

Bible lunch Tuesday. I told them that Sunday is a day that we celebrate

Christ's resurrection every day we gather as the saints. Why is it that we have church on Sunday?

Because Jesus rose from the grave on Sunday. So the

Lord's day became that day. And you see the Lord's day proclaimed all throughout the

New Testament. That day that the saints gathered together to celebrate went from Saturday, which was the

Jewish Sabbath to Sunday, which is the Lord's day. And this is that day that we commemorate.

This is that day that we remember the resurrection of our Lord Christ. Paul has preached the resurrection to the

Corinthians fervently already. We read this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

If you're ever going to present an apologetic case for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it should begin there with 1

Corinthians chapter 15. For the apostle Paul lays it out that according to the scriptures, Christ was crucified and rose again from the grave.

There is eyewitness testimony by the hundreds, some of whom are still alive. You can go and talk to Paul was saying to the

Corinthians, they saw it themselves. There is eyewitness testimony to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And then Paul makes an appeal according to theology and says in 1 Corinthians 15, 17, that if Christ has not been raised, you are still dead in your sins and your faith is futile.

But then in verse 20, Paul's saying, in fact, Christ has been raised.

The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. That in itself is a promise to us.

If Christ is the first fruits, then we who are in Christ will likewise receive this same resurrection from the grave.

My friends, Christ's death, his resurrection, and his ascension into heaven is so verified by the scriptures that proclaimed it.

And then he came and fulfilled it. And then the eyewitness testimony confirmed it.

It is so matter of fact, it is a historical fact, that you can be more certain of the resurrection of Christ from the grave than you can be certain that the sun will rise tomorrow.

You can be more certain in the resurrection of Christ than you can be that you will see the sun today as it still seems to be hiding behind clouds for us this morning.

God bless those who had a sunrise service. I don't know why you would want to do that in 25 degree weather, but they didn't even get to see the sun rise this morning since we had such cloud cover.

We were having this unseasonable cold here at the start of the month of April. But the

Lord gave us the seasons. Even in the seasons, even in nature, we see things die and come back to life.

And so we are given the promise of the resurrection of the grave through Jesus Christ, our

Lord. As we sang this morning, as Bill Gaither penned in his song, Because He Lives, I know that life is worth the living because he lives.

I have nothing to fear of anything else because he lives. And what we read about today in these scriptures is

Christ's triumph over the grave. That's what Paul points out in 2

Corinthians 2 .14. In fact, we're going to consider three things regarding Christ's death and resurrection from the grave this morning.

His triumph, the fragrance of Christ, and the sufficiency of Christ.

We saw all three of those words in the section that goes from verses 14 through 17.

But leading up to verse 14, we have a little bit more autobiography from the

Apostle Paul. Some things that were concerning him and also concern the church in Corinth, which we read about in verses 5 through 13.

And this leads to our first point, really, which is in verse 14. Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession.

We read about the triumph of Christ, and then the passages leading up to that begin in verse 5.

Paul says this, If anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure, not to put it too severely, to all of you.

For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough. So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

Now let me explain what was going on here in the church in Corinth, and this all leading up to the triumph over sin that we have in Jesus Christ.

There was a man in this church who was rebuked because of his sinfulness, and I've seen two different interpretations as to what this sin could possibly be.

One scholar that I read from said that this man was responsible for the uprising in the church in Corinth against the

Apostle Paul to follow instead after these super apostles who were actually false apostles. And as I said last week, we'll read about them when we get to chapters 10 and 11.

So it's possible that this man was guilty for this uprising in the church in Corinth, and he was rebuked, and this rebuke led to him being removed from the church.

We read about church discipline from the Apostle Paul in the first letter, in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, he says,

Purge the evil person from among you. Don't you know that you are to judge those who are within your midst?

If anyone is guilty of these sins, and then gives a list of sins, and yet calls himself a brother, you are to have nothing to do with him.

Do not even eat with such a one, but purge him from the church. The point of this was not so we can kick the sinful guy out so now we can be holy again.

Hey, yeah, now we're good because we got the bad guy out of here. But rather that the person who needed discipline would get a small taste of hell.

What it means to be separated from God and from his body because of the sins that we have committed against the

Lord. And so they would mourn over their sinfulness, a sinfulness that was so serious that it meant they had to be separated from the church.

My friends, we should long and desire to want to be in church with the saints, with Christ.

It's not just an Easter Sunday thing. It's whenever the doors of the church are open. We want to be in procession with the saints in Christ.

In the Psalms, when David said, As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee.

You know that Psalm, right? Probably have a coffee mug with it, with that verse on there. Maybe you got a sweatshirt with a deer by a brook, and it says,

As the deer panteth for the water. Now, all of a sudden, I'm panting for water. As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longs after you.

It's that cute little kitschy thing, and maybe you got a Thomas Kinkade painting of it somewhere or something like that.

David is talking about a deer that's wandering in a desert land and not able to find water.

And he ties this to wanting to go with the saints to the temple to worship

God. What does David want? He wants to be, in a sense, with the church.

He wants to go to church. He said, How I long to lead them in procession to the house of God.

I want to lead the songs. I want to get there, and I want to sing praises to God. I'm panting.

I'm longing here in a dry desert place for a thirst that cannot be quenched by this world.

It can only be quenched when I'm with the people of God singing the praises of God.

And so to have to be separated from the church because of a sin that we have done should cause us not to be filled with bitterness, not to be scarred.

Oh, who do those people think they are? Those self -righteous do -gooders think they're better than...

I know what Patty's been doing. I know what Jill's been doing. I know what John is guilty of.

And then you start going through your mind. All these... Those people are not any more perfect than I am. But rather, if someone should sin so seriously that they have to be rebuked, and if they deny that rebuke, then they are removed from the body.

Jesus gives us the order in which we should confront those things. In Matthew 18,

Paul talks about it again in Titus 3. If after that disciplinary process, the person refuses to repent and they're removed from the church, it should cause them in their heart to mourn over what it is that they have done so serious that they had to be removed from the body.

So that they would then come back to that body of believers again and say, I see what I have done, how seriously sinful and offensive it was, not just to you, but to the

Lord Christ. And I am sorry. And I have asked for his forgiveness.

I am asking that you forgive me also. And then in the process of this discipline, the grace of God is displayed as that church welcomes that member back into their midst and they are whole again.

That's the beauty of church discipline, but so few churches want to practice it. As a matter of fact, a survey was even done by the

Washington Times, a secular newspaper that concluded that less than 8 % of churches in the country even practice any kind of church disciplinary procedure.

And yet it's given to us in Scripture that a church is supposed to conduct themselves in this way so that we might all keep one another in check.

We encourage and admonish one another with good intentions, not because we think we're better than somebody else, but because the

Lord Christ desires that we would walk in righteousness. And so as we all desire to be like Christ, may we hold one another accountable in this way.

And may we all have hearts soft enough that when somebody comes to us and says, brother, sister,

I saw this. I have to rebuke you for it. I must call you to repentance.

May we have hearts that are soft enough to receive that correction. So it wouldn't have to go all the way in the direction of church discipline.

But what has happened here in Corinth is that a person has been disciplined so that they've been removed from the church.

And like I said, it could be either that he was leading this uprising against the Apostle Paul. The other possibility is that he's the guy that Paul's talking about in 1

Corinthians 5 that needed to be purged from the church. And so now here in this follow -up letter, he's saying, as you have followed my instruction, this man who was guilty of sexual immorality that you removed from your midst, now you must forgive him.

So that, and he says here, turn to forgive him and comfort him, or verse 7, he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

Now that's something that takes a little bit of discernment. It's kind of like how long is a person in sorrow before it's too much?

But may there be wisdom in that church to realize this man has mourned over his sin enough. It's time for us to forgive him and welcome him back.

So I beg you, and Paul says that verse 8, which I love that, I beg you, don't forget this man.

I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. When Paul talked to the

Thessalonians in 2 Thessalonians 3 about disciplining the members of their church, he said, do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.

And so Paul's saying that here to the Corinthians, reaffirm your love for him as a brother.

For this is why I wrote that I might test you to know whether you are obedient in everything.

So when he wrote that first letter and said, this man needs to be disciplined, the Corinthians have followed that, they have done it.

And now Paul is saying, you have been tested and you have shown me that you are obedient to that command, that you have disciplined this man.

And so now I tell you, welcome him back and forgive him of his sin. Anyone whom you forgive, excuse me,

I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ so that we would not be outwitted by Satan.

Thank you, for we are not ignorant of his designs.

Folks, when we fall into sinfulness, and even when we refuse to correct one another, who will stumble into sin or will leave the path of righteousness and walk in sin, we are being outwitted by Satan.

When we do not confront the sinful passions in our own flesh, or when we see a brother or sister go astray,

Satan is having his way with us. There is nothing that Satan would like more than to thwart the effects of the forgiveness that we have in Jesus Christ.

Whether that is the forgiveness that you know you have for your sins against God, or the forgiveness that you need to show to somebody else who has sinned against you.

If you do not show forgiveness to those who have sinned against you, Jesus is very matter of fact and clear about this in Matthew 6, neither do you have the forgiveness of God.

After he gives the Lord's prayer, he gives that blueprint for how to pray. In Matthew 6, our

Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. He says at the conclusion of that prayer, if you forgive others their sins,

God will forgive you your sins. But if you do not forgive others when they trespass against you, neither will your

Father forgive you when you trespass against him. This is an accomplishment by Satan.

When we doubt the forgiveness that we have in Christ, or when we do not show the forgiveness of Christ to one another.

And so Paul is saying, we must cling to a doctrine of forgiveness.

Knowing that we have been forgiven and we must forgive so that we may not be outwitted by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs.

And let me tell you, my friends, you can be outwitted by Satan.

Let there be no one who thinks so highly of themselves that that will never happen to me.

As a matter of fact, Jude says in his letter, and Peter also puts it in 2 Peter 2, that if you think that Satan has no power over you, you have actually blasphemed

Satan. Now that's a weird thing to say because we think of blasphemy as taking the

Lord's name in vain. What difference does it make if I say the same thing about Satan? Well, if you blaspheme who

Jude refers to as the glorious ones, and now you might give pause again. Wait a second. Now you're calling

Satan a glorious one? Satan's a fallen angel. How could he be referred to as a glorious one?

Look, as far as you are concerned in your sinful flesh, even Satan and the demons are still glorious.

Because as Paul will go on to say in 2 Corinthians 10, Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light.

He would look no different to you than any other angel or messenger of God. And you are weak in your flesh to be fooled by his appearance.

You would think he is as beautiful and as majestic as any other messenger from the

Lord. That is why you must realize that you are not so powerful as to resist

Satan by your own flesh, by your own ability. And to think that you are better than or greater than Satan is to blaspheme the glorious ones.

As Peter and Jude have both put it. There's a false teacher by the name of Jesse Duplantis.

And there's a number of reasons why this man is a false teacher, not the least of which is because one of the most famous sermons he ever preached is about how he hopped in a cable car and went up to heaven and was in the presence of Christ where he gave

Jesus advice. But Jesse Duplantis, also a very talented piano player and singer, and he sings this song in which he says, the devil and I had a tussle and I won.

He and the devil never had fisticuffs. And if you ever were to go toe to toe with Satan, you would not win that bout.

You will lose it. How does James tell us we are to resist

Satan? Cling to Christ, run to God, focus fully on him and the devil will flee from you.

You do not have it in your power or in your ability to say, I rebuke you,

Satan. That is not in your power to do that. As a matter of fact, as Jude points out, when the

Archangel Michael went up against Satan, he said, may the Lord rebuke you.

Even the Archangel Michael himself didn't rebuke Satan, but said, may the Lord rebuke you. So you do not have power in your words to thwart

Satan's designs. Rather, you must realize and understand the weakness in your flesh and how susceptible you are to the devil and his wiles so that you would turn and cling to Christ.

And once the devil sees you there, then he will flee from you. Not because of how powerful you are, but because you're clinging to the one who is far more powerful than the devil will ever be.

The devil knows he has received his power from Christ and his time is short as the scriptures tell us and will soon not only have his power taken away from him, but his very life by the one who is the judge of all,

Jesus Christ, our Lord. So do not be ignorant of the devil's schemes and do not be ignorant of the reality that you are still a person in flesh who cannot do battle in spiritual realms like that, but that you must proclaim the gospel and you must cling to Jesus Christ, whom the gospel proclaims.

Paul goes on in verses 12 and 13 to say, when I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was open for me in the

Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there, so I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.

Paul had sent Titus to come and speak to the Corinthians on his behalf since he wasn't able to make it to them.

We talked about that last week and when he did not find Titus there, he was troubled in his own spirit.

But he goes on to say in verse 14, but thanks be to God who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession.

So even though Paul was tormented in his own flesh and he was not at ease and he was struggling with his circumstances as I've talked about the previous three

Sundays, yet he clung to Christ and found a reason in Christ to rejoice for in Christ we have triumph.

We have triumph over anything, any circumstance in life. We have triumph over the grave.

We have triumph over sin and temptation. Christ leads us in triumphal procession.

In the book of Colossians, you don't have to go with me there, but I'll just read to you here from Colossians chapter two.

Paul says the following, Colossians 2 .13, you who were dead in your trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh,

God made alive together with him, having forgiven us of all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and the authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

Paul presents this picture to the Colossians in Colossians chapter two. Whenever the

Romans had vanquished an enemy, there would be a victory parade in the city.

The Romans would come in often led by their generals and the other soldiers would march through, and sometimes they would have the enemy with them.

They would either have the enemy in chains walking with the soldiers. Maybe there would be like a prison trailer of some kind and they would be bound in that trailer or even more gruesome still, those enemies would have had their heads and limbs chopped off.

And as the soldiers came into the cities, they were parading with their heads and limbs saying, see what happens to the enemies of Rome.

Well, this very same procession is in a spiritual sense what

Christ has done when he died on the cross and rose again from the grave.

He did with the devil and his demons what the Romans do with their enemies.

Colossians 2 .15, he disarmed the rulers and the authorities. He put them to open shame by parading through a city, look at my enemies and how

I've defeated them. This is what Christ did after his death on the cross and his resurrection. He put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

So in Christ, we have victory. We have victory over the schemes of Satan.

We have victory over the temptations of our flesh. We have victory over the effects of sin, the wages of sin, which is death.

And my friends, greatest news of all, we have victory over the grave itself for Christ has risen again.

This is our triumph. This is the very triumph that Paul is talking about here with the

Colossians, or I'm sorry, with the Corinthians, the other sea city. With the

Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 2 .14, thanks be to God who always leads us in triumphal procession.

Victory is ours. And we go behind the king, the king of kings and Lord of lords.

Just last week, Palm Sunday, that's the Sunday that we remember the triumphal entry of our

Lord Christ into Jerusalem. And when you read about Palm Sunday, well, first of all, if you look at the paintings, usually the paintings of Palm Sunday people lining the streets, right?

And they got their cloaks and their palm branches. And as Jesus is coming toward them on a donkey, and there's only one donkey there.

He's not riding on a donkey's colt like the scripture says that he is. There was actually two donkeys there and he's riding on the colt that had not yet been weaned from its mother.

But he's riding on a single donkey and the people are saying, Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. And they're laying down their palm branches and their coats. That's not quite how that went. Somehow our

Americanized idea of parades has filtered into our depiction of Palm Sunday.

This procession started way up on the Mount of Olives. And the people were not lining the streets waiting for Jesus to come by.

They were going with him. So that when they came into Jerusalem, they caused such a stir and such a commotion that the priests and some of the upper echelon higher ups there in Jerusalem are watching this thing happen.

They go, what is going on? Who is this man? And the people had to tell those who were asking these questions, this is

Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth. That's the way that scripture shows us the triumphal entry.

This was a triumphal procession. It was Jesus announcing himself as king.

And we have it in the scriptures that when Jesus comes back again, when Paul was talking to the

Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 4, when Jesus comes back again, the second coming of Christ, that is also a triumphal return.

For who is it that Jesus has with him when he comes back? The angels and the saints.

All legions of angels, tens, hundreds of thousands of angels.

And may I dare to speculate hundreds of millions of saints whom

Christ has saved for himself by his death on the cross. There will be a magnificent, incredible procession on that day.

And one of the reasons that Paul wrote to the Thessalonians to tell them about that was so that they would know we all get to participate on that day.

Not just those who have died, but even those who are still alive. We are all participants on that day of triumphal return of our king, the

Lord Christ. But woe be to those who do not know Christ. And Paul gets even more emphatic about it in 2

Thessalonians, his next letter, chapter one, where he says that Christ will return with his angels in fire and they will destroy those who did not know

God and did not obey his gospel. The gospel is not just something that we proclaim, but it's something that demands a response.

You must repent, you must turn from your sin, and you must follow

Jesus. And those who obey the gospel will be saved on that day of judgment.

But those who are not followers of Jesus, their fate will be destruction on that day.

So it is good news for us who are in Christ that he is our triumphant king, but it is terrible, horrid news for the person who does not know

Christ. As it says in the book of Zechariah, a day of wrath is that day. It will be a day of deliverance for all who are in Christ, but for those who do not know him, they will be destroyed under the wrath of God.

Thanks be to God, Paul says, who in Christ always leads in triumphal procession.

And then we have the next part of that in verse 14, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.

Now, this is not just fragrance that's like incense, or when you go to an

Orthodox church or a Catholic church, you have the whole smells and bells thing going on, right? So they have the, oh,

I can't even remember what you call that thing now. Chris, help me out. Okay, there. So the thing the priest is waving around that has the incense smoke coming out of it, okay?

And then you have the aroma that fills up the place. That of course comes from a temple practice, comes from a tabernacle in a temple practice that was instituted with the law of Moses, but that's not the kind of fragrance that we're talking about.

The kind of fragrance we're talking about is more like what we read in Genesis chapter eight.

So let me go on here in verse 15. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

So we know this is not just a fragrant spread of incense. This actually has to do with sacrifice.

Through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. Let's go to Genesis chapter eight, all the way to the first book of the

Bible, Genesis chapter eight. My voice is actually doing a lot better than I thought it was going to.

Genesis chapter eight, and we're gonna look at verse 20. Start in verse 20. Genesis eight, starting in verse 20.

So this is following Noah and the ark, following the worldwide flood that decimated, destroyed everyone and everything, save for Noah and his family, eight people on an ark and all the animals that they had with them.

The ark lands at Mount Ararat. Noah and his family have disembarked after the waters have receded.

And in Genesis eight 20, Noah built an altar to the

Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

In verse 21, when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the

Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man.

For the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Now notice here, even though the world has been destroyed of those who are in rebellion against God, the condition of man's heart hasn't changed.

Noah and his sons and their wives were saved from this judgment, but the condition of man's heart, since they are still descended from Adam, remains.

The intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will

I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

The point that I wanted to point out in particular was where it said that Noah had offered this offering to the

Lord in verse 21, when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart,

I will never again curse the ground because of man. So we know by the promise he then gives in chapter 9, the promise of his rainbow in the sky, he will never again destroy the earth by a flood.

But destruction upon the earth is coming again, and the next judgment will be by fire that we have been told about.

So what is this aroma of this sacrifice that reaches the

Lord in his heaven? Does God just like good, smelly, good stuff? In his heavenly nostrils, this sacrifice just filled, oh, that's better, that's what the world was lacking, and now

I'm not gonna destroy it again. This is rather taking something that we enjoy based on the senses that we have been given, and we love pleasing smells, pleasing aromas, right?

And attributing that to the Lord to show that God's wrath had ceased.

This is, in a sense, a propitiation for the sins of Noah and his family.

And God's wrath no longer came upon the earth, but he withdrew, and he made a covenant with Noah and with his family.

And he blessed them and told them to fill the earth and multiply. So this pleasing aroma is something metaphoric to say that God's wrath had been appeased.

And there are numerous places now throughout the rest of the Old Testament where we are told that sacrifices to the

Lord are a pleasing aroma to him, and this to symbolize the propitiation for sins.

Go now to Leviticus chapter one. The Lord called

Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, when any one of you brings an offering to the

Lord, you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or from the flock. If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish.

He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the Lord. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.

So you see the picture here that a sacrifice is being brought into the tabernacle and that the person who brings the sacrifice lays their hand on the head so that his sins are being transferred to the animal and the animal is being slaughtered and the blood spilled is the propitiation for the sins of this individual.

Verse five, then he shall kill the bull before the Lord and Aaron's sons, the priests shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance to the tent of meeting.

Then he shall flay the burnt offering and cut it into pieces and the sons of Aaron, the priest shall put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire.

And Aaron's sons, the priest shall arrange the pieces, the head and the fat on the wood that is on the fire on the altar, but its entrails and its legs shall wash with water and the priest shall burn all of it on the altar as a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the

Lord. This comes up a total of 16 times over the course of the book of Leviticus. These sacrifices that are made unto

God and when these sacrifices are burned, it is a pleasing aroma unto the

Lord. It is a propitiation for sins. God's wrath against that individual because of their sins against God has been satisfied.

We likewise have a sacrifice that has been paid for us who is the propitiation for our sins and is a pleasing aroma unto the

Lord and that is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Praise God we don't have to drag a bull to the tent of meeting and have it dismembered and its entrails splayed out all over the altar and you have to be there to watch this whole thing transpire and yuck.

But likewise, this is just how gross sin is in the eyes of God that it would have to result in something like this.

And all this that we read about in Leviticus, this is a type and shadow of what Christ is gonna come and fulfill.

And he by his perfect life and his death on the cross becomes the propitiation for our sins and that pleasing aroma unto the

Lord. So now back to 2 Corinthians chapter 2 as Paul talks about spreading the knowledge of him everywhere.

So this is talking about proclaiming the gospel. We are the fragrance of the knowledge of him.

We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved but also among those who are perishing.

But the aroma that's talked about here is a little bit different for those who are perishing. It doesn't smell so sweet.

It smells repugnant. One of the things I mentioned to you last week is you can mention any world leader's name and a person will share their opinions but they're not afraid of that world leader and they're not gonna go home and shutter up their house because of Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong -un or anybody like that.

However, you mentioned the name of Christ and they are immediately resistant. They're immediately hesitant.

I don't wanna talk about Christ. Keep that to yourself because in our heart of hearts, we know that he knows the human heart and he sees the things that everybody tries to keep concealed from everyone else.

He knows the sins that we try to tuck into those secret places. We cannot hide.

Cannot hide in any way, shape or form from God. Jonah tried that.

Look how that turned out for him. Three days and nights in the belly of a whale and getting vomited back up on a beach.

Didn't go so well for him. Won't go so well for you either. There is nothing that we can hide from God.

And so just as the name of Christ is good news to those who know him, bad news to those who do not love him.

So the fragrance of the knowledge of him, the testimony of the gospel of Christ is sweet to those who know

Christ but it is bitter to those who do not know Christ. And we see this idea of fragrance tied to the forgiveness of sins other places in scripture as well.

One of the places that I think of that most prominently is in Psalm 51, where David is praying to the

Lord and asking him to forgive the sins that he's committed against God. David says, purge me with hyssop and I will be made pure.

What is hyssop? Hyssop was kind of like a mint plant. It was kind of an herb and it was not only purifying but it also smelled good.

This was like pine saw in Israel before they had pine saw, okay? So pine saw just has that clean smell.

When you smell pine saw, you know the room is clean. That's what hyssop was. If somebody's home had been declared unclean because they had some sort of skin disease, when they were healed of that disease, the priest would come in with hyssop and they would cover the whole house with it to purify the house.

And so it was not only cleansed but it also smelled good. It didn't just clean the house but it made the house smell like it was clean.

And this is David saying before the Lord, my sin is a stench to you, God. I know that.

So purge me with hyssop that I may be cleansed and I may be a fragrant offering to the

Lord once again. In Romans 12, 1, Paul tells us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice unto the

Lord. And this is your spiritual act of worship, holy and acceptable to him. Peter says in 1

Peter 2 that you yourselves are being built up as a spiritual house to offer sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ, our

Lord. And those sacrifices are sweet and fragrant to the Lord for those who know

Jesus Christ. This is why when Paul says, when he goes on to verse 16, to one fragrance from death to death to the other a fragrance from life to life, he is saying that those who do not know

God, the message of the gospel will be their judgment in the end. But for those who know

Christ, the message of the gospel will be their salvation. As Paul said in his first letter, 1

Corinthians 1, 18, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

Christ is our triumph. Christ is our fragrance. We know we have the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, our

Lord. And finally, my friends, as we wrap this up, Christ is our sufficiency.

The rest of verse 16, who is sufficient for these things? Paul says in verse 17, for we are not like so many peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.

Paul's saying, we share the gospel to the glory of God and for your benefit, that you might know the good news that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave.

And for all those who believe in him, they will not perish, but they will have everlasting life.

And my friends, here's more of that good news. That's enough. You don't need to do anything to earn your salvation.

In fact, you can't. Christ paid it all.

And in Jesus Christ, we are rescued from death and we have been given life.

Yes, your body is still gonna die. Yes, it will go into a grave. But as we are promised in the scriptures to be absent from the body is to be present with the

Lord. Once your body dies for all who are in Christ Jesus, your spirit goes to be with Christ and there it will be with him forever.

On the day that Christ returns with all the saints and the angels in judgment, then he will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the one who has the power to subject all things to himself.

And your body will even be raised from the grave, no matter in what condition it's in, whether it's bones or still has some fleshly zombie matter attached to it, or it's completely been pulverized to dust and ashes.

Christ will raise it again to brand new glorious and we will be with him like that forever in a brand new glorious body with the

Lord. And what he has done is enough and you need nothing else. As I mentioned last night, as we brought our

Passion Week, weekly services to a weekday services to a close last night in the final evening sermon,

I mentioned here's the difference between a true teacher and a false teacher. A true teacher will tell you that the only way that you have salvation, the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection from the grave is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

That's it. The false teacher will tell you, oh, and you have to do this.

You also have to do this. You have to check these boxes. You have to make this right. You have to do this, this, and this.

And if you are as good as I am, then maybe, maybe you'll get in.

But God doesn't really want you to know for certain because he always wants you to be doubting. That way you're always pursuing him.

That's a false teaching too. For John wrote in 1 John 5, I written these things to you that you may know that you have salvation.

Not be in doubt, but know with certainty that Christ is sufficient.

As Jesus will tell Paul when we get to 2 Corinthians 12, my grace is sufficient for you.

As we sing in the old hymn, Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe.

Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.

Jesus paid it all. Sin had left a crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow. Lord, Jesus paid it all.

Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.

Lord, Jesus paid it all.

Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.

I stand in him complete. Jesus died my soul to save.

My lips shall still read. Jesus paid it all.

All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow.

Jesus paid it all. All to him

I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow. Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ...