Pressing On in Ministry

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If you have your copy of God's Word, I invite you to open it to 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and we're going to be reading verses 1 -6 when it comes time for the reading.
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Want to thank Brother Andy last week for his message as I was out and had the opportunity to listen in the truck as I was driving back from Tennessee.
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It's a wonderful thing, technology, that we're able to, even if we can't be here in person, still have the opportunity to hear the message and in one sense be able to still be a part.
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And it's amazing how the Lord brings things together because as Andy spoke last week on taking courage and striving forward from Joshua chapter 1, well today
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I'm going to be in one sense continuing the theme as we go back into our study of 2
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Corinthians and we begin now in chapter 4 looking at the theme of pressing on.
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Because if we notice as we read, and we will see this when we read verse 1, that there is a phrase in verse 1 that is repeated again in verse 16.
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And it is the phrase, do not lose heart. And so that phrase is the bookends, if you will, of this chapter.
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Paul is dealing with the fact that he himself has come under great difficulty in ministry and certainly there were times where it would have been easy to simply pack up and go home.
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It would have been easy to simply wash his hands of the difficult people and quit or move somewhere else where it wasn't so hard.
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But instead he did not lose heart, but by the grace of God he continued to press on in ministry.
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And so with that as the theme of our message today, I invite you to stand as we read together.
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Paul writes, therefore having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways.
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We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word.
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But by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.
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And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
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In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
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For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.
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For God's who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
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May we pray. Our father and our God, we come to you now in Jesus' name and I pray and ask by your mercy that you would keep me from error,
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Lord, as I pray every time I preach, not simply to be repetitive or because I have nothing else to say, but Lord, because to my heart, this is a genuine plea,
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Lord, keep me from error. Your word is true, but it has been manipulated, maligned and mistreated by many men.
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And Lord. It would break my heart. To know that I have done that to your word and Lord, it would be a serious offense.
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Your word says not let many be teachers for teachers are held to a higher standard.
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And so, Lord, I pray that the words that I preach will be in accordance with your word and I pray that the ones who hear it.
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Lord, would be. By the spirit taught. And Lord, that as my brother has already preached, that I would decrease and that Christ would increase.
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And Lord, that we would see Jesus. Today in this message.
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We pray this, Lord, for the believer. And for the unbeliever among us, that you would edify correct rebuke believers and that you would terrify unbelievers if that is what is necessary,
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Lord, we know that you draw either by fear or by love, but Lord, we know that it is you who has the power to do either.
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And Lord, whatever you see fit to use to draw them into yourself, we pray that you would do it today. In Christ's name.
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Amen. It's been a few weeks since I've been in second
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Corinthians, as you all know, was out last week. And so this past week, as I was beginning again to just set my mind upon the things that I wanted to preach and began to remind myself of some of the things that we have learned so far,
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I wanted to just remind everyone of where we are in the text, because it's very easy for us to get caught in the weeds and miss the forest for the trees.
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And we need to understand the context of second Corinthians as a whole, if we are to understand its parts.
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Second Corinthians is Paul's most autobiographical. It is his most personal and someone some might say his most emotional epistle.
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He is defending his ministry. He's defending it against those who would call his integrity into question.
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That's not an easy thing to deal with. It is difficult when you have people who will rail against you, who will call your integrity into question, who will say that your motivations are incorrect or even that your methods are ungodly.
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And it can be a very difficult thing to be gracious when you are being, as it were, punched in the face.
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And yet Paul is defending himself in the midst of this, he is already addressed the purpose of his suffering.
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They said his suffering was one of the reasons why he shouldn't be trusted. Look at this man. He's always going through it.
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Look at this man. He's always suffering. And Paul says, yes, but I'm suffering for Christ. He's defending himself in chapter one, verse nine.
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He tells of the purpose of his suffering. And then he responded to accusations.
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He was accused of being a vacillator, one who couldn't be trusted. If he said yes, he didn't always mean yes.
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Or if he said no, he didn't always mean no. And Paul says, no, my yes is my yes. My no is my no. And for someone to call that into question is.
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An unfair accusation, we see that in chapter two and then in chapter three, we saw that Paul referenced these letters of recommendation, these letters of commendation, and he says, do
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I need a letter among you? Do I need something from some higher authority that shows that I am really an apostle who planted the church?
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It was me. You are my letter of commendation. The very fact that the church exists shows that my ministry is valid.
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So knowing that this is the context of this portion of the book particularly helps us to arrive at proper at a proper understanding of what we are reading.
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By the way, I just want to note something, and this is completely off the subject, but I have to say it anytime there's thunder and lightning, there's always the potential that the lights go out.
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I will continue preaching if so. So church doesn't stop just because we lose power.
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Just so. But it has happened. I just heard it and they made me think, well, might as well say it now.
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Get out your phones and use it as a flashlight. But chapter three, we spent,
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I think, seven weeks in chapter three. And the reason why is because chapter three,
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Paul gives us a masterful exposition of the distinction between the Old Covenant and the
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New Covenant. He talks about the promises of the New Covenant. And we dug in a little deeper.
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We went to the inauguration of the New Covenant. We found out who are the members of the New Covenant. We even gave an exposition of what
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Paul was talking about when he distinguished between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. We talked about the work of the spirit and how the spirit's work in the
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New Covenant is distinct from the work in the Old Covenant. We saw the nature of the spirit when Paul says the
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Lord is the spirit. We saw the freedom from the spirit when he says I'm where the spirit of the Lord is.
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There is freedom. And we saw the transforming work of the spirit when he says that it is the spirit who is conforming us to the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another.
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Beloved, I could talk for a year on the New Covenant and never exhaust in any way the depths of that teaching.
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But understand, that's where we're coming out of when we get here, and we know that the first word of chapter four is therefore, which means whatever he just said has something to do with what he's about to say.
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So in today's passage, Paul continues to defend his ministry, what he's been doing in chapter one, what he's been doing in chapter two, and even in chapter three, as he was expressing what the
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New Covenant is, he was defending himself as a minister of that New Covenant. So he's continuing this.
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Defense of his ministry, and he's comparing himself.
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To those whose ministry is unscrupulous. He's comparing himself to those whose ministry is ungodly.
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In fact, it's interesting that when we read the phrase, do not lose heart, which in the
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King James says we faint not always look at Mike when I say that, because I know he has one.
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The ESV says we faint, not the King James says we I'm sorry, the King James says we faint, not the ESV says we do not lose heart.
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But actually, the root of that Greek word is the word Kakos, which is the word for badness or evil.
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And so there is a sense in which he's not only saying we press on, we don't give up, but he's also saying we don't go into the evil ways of the world.
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We don't give in to the unscrupulous methods of my opponents. You see, this is the key.
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Paul will not alter his message or manipulate his hearers. That is what the enemies of Paul have been doing.
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They have manipulated the hearers and they have altered the message of the gospel.
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And Paul says we are not going to do that. We are going to remain faithful.
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We are going to press on, even if the world and all around us do not, even if everyone else who claims to be a
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Christian falls away, we will press on with the truth. We will not give in to evil.
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So our outline today is simple. We're going to look at verse one, we press on in ministry, and then we're going to look at verses two,
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I'm sorry, verse two, which says we renounce unscrupulous ministry tactics. Number versus three and four, we recognize that not everyone will receive the truth.
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And then verses five and six, we preach of, for and through Christ.
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So this is the outline. Will I get through it today? I hope so. And I say
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I hope so, because one thing Brother Andy mentioned earlier about the conference next week, I have a special Sunday message to go along with the conference.
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Since we're going to be on the subject of eschatology next week, Sunday morning, I'm going to preach on why we don't believe in the pre -tribulation rapture as a follow up to all of the rest of the eschatology that we're going to be studying.
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So we will take a step away from 2 Corinthians next week. So my hope is to get through these six verses. But if we don't, hold your place for two weeks.
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So let's look at the first one, we press on in ministry, we press on in ministry.
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Verse one, it says, therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.
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The word, therefore, as I said, regards the context of what Paul has already said. Paul had been talking about the new covenant.
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He'd been talking about the work of the spirit of the in the new covenant and how it is the spirit who causes us to move from one degree of glory to another.
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It's the spirit who conforms us to Christ. It's the spirit who empowers our ministry.
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It's not us. The ministry that you do without the power of the spirit is ministry that's doomed to fail, even if it's successful.
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What does that mean? You don't think there's giant churches out there that are leading people to hell?
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You don't think that you do you think that numbers alone equal success? It can't possibly.
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It can't possibly. And Paul is saying here, therefore, therefore, because of the spirit, therefore, because of the new covenant, therefore, because of this power that is within us and therefore having this ministry, what ministry, the ministry of the new covenant.
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Verse six of chapter three, he says he is a minister of the new covenant now, he says, therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God.
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And by the way, that's the reason any of us have anything. The only reason why we are not all burning in hell right now is because of the mercy of God.
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If that offends you, then you don't understand anthropology, you don't understand the nature of man and you don't understand soteriology, the nature of salvation, and you don't understand homology, which is the doctrine of sin, because all of those things would tell you that if you think you deserve anything from God, then you don't know who
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God is. In fact, in Romans chapter nine, it says that God shows mercy to whom he shows mercy and he has compassion on whom he has compassion.
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Why is it that God has the freedom to do that? Because we don't deserve anything. We don't deserve
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God's love, but he still loves us. We don't deserve God's mercy. And yet he's still mercy.
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What would he sing this morning? Praise the Lord. His mercy is more stronger than darkness.
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Right. It's that. And if you think for a moment that you deserve mercy, you don't know what mercy is, because things that you deserve are what you are owed.
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And the Bible says the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life.
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It's not something you have earned. It is not something you have that you are owed. What you are owed is his punishment.
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What you are given is grace and mercy. And there is a distinction. I don't really have the time to go into it right now, but understand this.
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Mercy means not getting what you do deserve. You deserve God's punishment. He holds it back. That's mercy.
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Grace is getting what you don't deserve. You deserve punishment. He doesn't give you that, but he gives you eternal life.
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That's the gift. Grace. The word charis means a gift. And so he says, therefore, having this ministry as a gift, having this ministry as a mercy.
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We do not lose heart, we faint not. We do not give into evil.
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Let me tell you something. There are a million things.
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That can cause a man to walk away from the ministry, the
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Francis Schaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development, it's a mouthful. Reports that 35 to 40 percent of ministers do not last more than four or five years in ministry.
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That within five years of ministry, almost half will no longer be in ministry.
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And other statistics show that 60 to 80 percent of those who enter the ministry will no longer be laboring in ministry in 10 years.
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Just for a moment, I want you to think about the people that, you know, that entered ministry and are no longer there. It's not just statistical, it's anecdotal.
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I know men I went to seminary with who are no longer believers. There are a million things that cause men to give up, conflict is chief among them, and Paul's life has been filled with it.
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Paul's life has been one battle after the other. And yet he says.
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We do not lose heart. His life has been one of turmoil and punishment and persecution, and yet he says we faint not.
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And by the way, he's not speaking only of himself, is he? Because he's using a plural pronoun and therefore he's not saying
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I'm the only one who's able to do this. He's saying by the mercy of God, God has his men and his men stay the course.
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As is often said, we don't judge a man by how his ministry begins, but how it ends. Paul and his companions are pressing on.
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And then he says this and we move quickly to the second point. He says, but we have renounced un or excuse me, we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways.
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We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word. Now, why is he saying this?
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Why is he moving to that after he says we do not lose heart, we faint not, but the adversity.
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But we have renounced. This is why I think the fainting not isn't in not only is the
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Greek word to speak of something that's evil, but the very next thing he talks about is the opposite of his ministry and the opposite of his ministry are those who are unscrupulous, those who are ministering in ways that are ungodly.
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So he's now making a comparison to those who faint not, who stick with the truth, who hold fast, who move forward and those whose ministry is marked by unscrupulous tactics.
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By pressing on, Paul is saying that he does not give in to the temptation of pragmatism.
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Well, there's a big word. What is pragmatism, church? Pragmatism is doing something because it works, whether or not it's right.
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Pragmatism is doing something because it works regardless of whether it's right.
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And I want to tell you something. I have sat in many seminars. I've sat in many classes. I've watched many
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YouTube videos. And the way the world says to do ministry is rarely in line with the way
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God's word calls us to do ministry, because the concern is for success from a worldly perspective.
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And there are thousands of ways to build a ministry. You realize that there are thousands of ways that you can make a church grow.
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But understand this ministry can be big and still be bad.
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That may be simple, but I wanted it on a screen. I wanted you to think about that for a minute. Ministry can be big and still be bad.
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A few weeks ago, I made a video. About a church.
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Who won Super Bowl Sunday. Decided it was a good idea. To have the entire church staff dress and football outfits and jerseys, they brought the pastor and his wife up and put the
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Bible on the floor and she kicked it into the audience. If I'm lying,
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I'm dying, you can go watch the video and everybody applauded.
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And I said, boy, there is no better analogy to what's happening in that church.
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We're willing to kick the Bible off the stage if that's what it takes to get applause.
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Summer's coming. Eventually, it's already here for us. I mean, Florida, we don't get we get we get summer one, summer two, summer three, and then a little bit of fall.
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When summer comes, you know what's going to come? Movie sermon series.
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Come enjoy as we exegete Top Gun and our pastor,
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Sister Barb, is going to be dressed in a Top Gun jacket and tell you all about how this movie tells you about Jesus.
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Again, I am not exaggerating. Nothing I'm saying is things that haven't happened. Paul says we renounce disgraceful, underhanded ways and we refuse to practice cunning or tamper with God's word.
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Now, is Paul talking about people kicking Bibles off the stages? No, because even the crazy people in his world wouldn't have thought of that.
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I'm just saying it's gotten worse. When Paul uses the word practice coming here in the
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King James Version, it says craftiness. It literally comes from the Greek word, which means to trick people.
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It means trickery, it's the same word that Paul used to describe Satan when
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Satan was in the garden with Eve. If you go back to First Corinthians chapter 11, verse three, he refers to Satan.
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Manipulating Eve in the garden, and it's the same word here, we don't practice Satan's ways, we don't practice trickery.
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Let me tell you something, and this is it, this is it. Ministry should never be advanced through deceit.
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Ministry should never be advanced through deceit. Now, I want to clarify something, because as soon as I say this, somebody's going to say, well, wait a minute now,
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Scott Phillips, when he goes into Indonesia, he has to hide them Bibles. Are you saying that's wrong? No, I'm not. I'm not.
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Because I do believe that God tells us to be wise, a serpent, innocent as doves, and he's being wise because he wouldn't be able to get those
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Bibles into that country if he didn't hide them. You say, well, are you contradicting yourself?
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No, because he is doing what God has called him to do in that place. But if I stand up before you and I promise you that if you if you believe in Jesus, all your problems are going to go away.
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If I tell you that if you have enough faith, you're never going to get sick again. And if I tell you that believing in Jesus is going to bring health and wealth without any form of chance that that couldn't happen, as long as you believe hard enough, guess what?
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That is a lie from the pit of hell. And that's what I'm talking about when I say ministry should not be advanced through deceit.
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And when you see churches that fill stadiums. There's usually deceitful promises attached to that pulpit,
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I said, usually I'm not saying there's no men who have big ministries that don't that don't preach the truth, but it is comparatively rare.
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To those who are willing. To do, as Paul said, they would do to tickle the ears of those they preach to, and what do the people do, they have the itching ears, they have the ears that want to hear it and they come ready for their hungry for they want that this is the thing you have to understand,
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Joel Osteen's congregation is not a victim of Joel Osteen, they are the problem because he wouldn't have an audience if people weren't going to him and begging for his false teaching.
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I can't believe you mentioned somebody's name, Paul mentioned a lot of dudes names. I'm not going to sit up here with a
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Rolodex, but I'm telling you something, if you spend your devotional time and Joel Osteen sermons, we need to have a talk.
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God's word is better than that, is stronger than that. And the truth is worth being discerning about.
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Paul says we do not practice craftiness, we do not practice trickery, ministry is not advanced through deceit, and we do not tamper.
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With God's word, we do not tamper with God's word, the word tamper there literally means to handle deceitfully, to cause to be false, to distort or to adulterate.
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Now, I want to say this right out the gate. Nobody, no matter how spiritual, interprets every passage of the
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Bible perfectly. And I'll be the first to say I don't. I know Brother Mike would say he doesn't.
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I know Brother Andy doesn't. And we can prove it because there's times when we disagree. And if we had perfect interpretation, then we would never have a disagreement between us.
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Well, y 'all ought to listen to us talk sometimes. Because we have to dig in because we got to do this.
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So we got to dig down, figure out what does this mean? What do we believe it mean?
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That is not the same as some and again, and I admit there are times we can get it wrong. And oftentimes you'll hear me say this passage may be this way, maybe this way.
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We got to come to this passage with some humility because it's difficult. And if you don't think there are some parts of the Bible that are hard, you ain't read the whole thing.
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We believe in the perspicuity of scripture. Mike had a hard time with that word last week. Perspicuity means clarity.
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We believe in the clarity of scripture, but that doesn't mean that every passage is equally clear.
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Go to Ezekiel. Go to Revelation. You'll find some passages that ain't as clear.
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But it's different to say that we have passages that we still struggle with than to say we're going to manipulate that word.
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And that's what Paul's saying here. Paul is saying that there are those who tamper, they handle deceitfully, they adulterate the word of God, they refuse correction and they teach without fear.
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I tell you something, you handle the word of God for the people of God, you better do so with quaking boots.
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When Spurgeon would walk towards the pulpit, he would he would pray, I need the Holy Spirit, I need the Holy Spirit, I need the
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Holy Spirit. Why? Because he knew he couldn't do it on his own. And I am convinced that both of these describe
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Paul's opponents. When he says we don't practice cunning and we don't tamper with God's word,
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I think what he's saying is they do. They're the ones who are seeking to deceive you.
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They are the ones who are willing to manipulate the word to deceive you. And if you want to compare it to something, compare it to us whose ministry is manifested to be true and commendable.
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Notice what he says. He says, but by the open statement of the truth, we commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.
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Now, is Paul being prideful there? No, he's not. But he is saying there's a distinction between us and them, there is a distinction between those who are preaching the truth and those who are preaching error, and we would commend you to listen to the truth.
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The King James Bible says, but by the manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience.
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Manifestation means to be put on display, and Paul says the truth is put on display when we preach and we would commend it to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.
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And then he says this, we have the. The word and begins the next sentence, so it's tying to this.
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He says in verse three, he says, and even if our gospel is veiled.
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It's veiled to those who are perishing right away, our minds, if you've been in this study with us and again, if you're new today, maybe you haven't been studying this passage, that's
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OK. In chapter three, he's he's hearkening back to something here in chapter three, where in chapter three, he said that the people of Israel.
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Had a veil over their hearts that they could read the
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Old Testament, they could read the Old Covenant scriptures, and they couldn't see Jesus because a veil was over their hearts.
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And Paul says that veil was still there in his time, and I believe it's still there in our time. I mentioned that when I preached, because if you take a
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Jewish person to their Bible and try to show them Jesus, they will say absolutely not. And Jesus to me and to many of you is so obvious, it's like, how do you miss this?
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How do you miss Jesus and Isaiah 53? How do you miss Jesus and all of these types and shadows?
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But they will say absolutely not. So Paul is here saying we press on in ministry, we renounce unscrupulous ministry tactics, but we also recognize that not everyone's going to believe.
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I'm telling you something, if you preach the gospel and everybody believes you probably ain't preaching the gospel.
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If everybody you've ever shared Jesus with automatically fell on their knees, either you're the greatest evangelist in history, better than Jesus himself, or you've manipulated the message.
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I heard a guy one time say that in seminary, a guy said, you give me two minutes with anybody, I'll get him to believe in Jesus.
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This guy was the most used car salesman, slick, it's not just the worst thing. I'm sorry.
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He was a salesman. And I'm telling you, Jesus is not a commodity to be sold.
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The gospel is a command to be obeyed, repent of your sins and believe and Paul tells us here.
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But not everybody's going to believe. First of all, because there's a natural hostility to God that all men have.
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And that's true, doesn't the Bible says that no one seeketh after God, then the Bible says that we're all by nature, children of wrath, doesn't say that we don't come unless he draws us by doesn't the
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Bible tells us there's a we in Calvinistic terms, we say the word total depravity. I prefer the term moral inability.
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It's not that they can't, it's they don't want to. It's the natural lack of desire to conform to Christ and to the things of God.
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People don't want to do that until God changes their hearts. The Bible says we have a heart of stone. He gives us a heart of flesh. The Bible says we're like the
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Ethiopian who can't change his skin. We're like the leopard who can't change his spots because we who are accustomed to doing evil don't want to do good.
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As I said a few weeks ago, we got a broken one up. And God gives us a new one. But there is a sense in which even the unbeliever can still acquiesce to certain truths.
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You would agree. I think you'd have to. Romans one says that the unbeliever can look at the world around him and say, what?
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God had to have made this. I can't imagine this came about on accident. Only the fool says in his heart, there's no
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God. Right. So anyone who looks at the creation around them and says there's no
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God, that's just foolishness. And you'll be surprised, even as atheism is on the rise around the world, it still does not find a foothold in the hearts of many men.
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Romans one tells us that people don't turn to atheism, they turn to idolatry, they worship something. So the reality is that people by nature don't want the gospel, but they still have the ability to see certain truths.
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In fact, I'll say this, there's a there's a phrase. There's there's different types of recognition that people can have before getting saved.
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There's three of them. You don't have to write these down. If you want my notes, just email me. I'll send you the whole PDF. There's pedagogical recognition.
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There's legal recognition. There's evangelical recognition, which means this. A person can simply, even as an unbeliever, recognize certain truths, especially.
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That's just why we do apologetics. We do apologetics to overcome those mental barriers that people have.
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You don't believe God exists. Let me point you to creation. Oh, OK, you see in creation now, you know, you know, God's there, right?
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Legal recognition is when people hear the law and realize they're sinners. We also call this forensic recognition.
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They recognize, hey, I'm a sinner. You know, unbelievers can realize that, right? Evangelical recognition is recognizing that Jesus is the only savior.
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You realize unbelievers can do that. If you don't believe that what I just said is correct, if you're that hard of a
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Calvinist, although no, no, no, unbelievers can't do those things, then how do you get a false convert? Because a false convert has affirmed those three things.
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I know God exists. I know I'm a sinner and I know Jesus is a savior. But you see, that's not enough to save you.
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Simply recognizing that God exists, that you're a sinner and Jesus is a savior is not saving faith.
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That is facts, but unless you place your faith in those facts, you are not saved.
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Unless you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you give your life to him, you're not saved.
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No matter how many facts you assent to. And so Paul says here, for some people, the gospel is veiled.
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And that means and what I believe, that means they can't even recognize the facts.
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You understand, even an unbeliever can recognize the facts that God exists, they're sinners and Jesus is a savior.
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The veil is what we call judicial hardening. That means they don't even understand the facts.
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You go to the Jew, you point to Jesus, that's not the Bible, that's not in my Bible. Well, of course it is.
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But there's a veil over your heart. And we call this judicial hardening.
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It's what Romans 1 is all about, by the way, and God gave them over to a debased mind. What is that?
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It's hardening the heart. What do we see in our world around us? We talked about this in Sunday school this morning with Brother Mike and Brother Ward mentioned people that are calling themselves
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Zee, Zim, Zier, Zier, whatever. They're all under a delusion. That somehow that's right, that somehow that's the way the world works.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the smartest men I've ever listened to when it comes to science, will tell you that, yes, gender is on a spectrum.
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And I'm like, dude, you got a doctorate. You are way smarter than me when it comes to.
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Astrophysics, but when it comes to this, you are so given to the world that you're willing to be blinded to the truth of something so obvious.
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What is a woman? I ain't trying to get too political up in here, but you understand that should not be a hard question.
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And it weren't until like six years ago. And now there's an entire documentary of a guy walking around asking people what a woman is.
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Nobody wants to give an answer. Where have we come to?
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Paul says. And again, he's speaking about the Jews, I'm widening the application here, but he's speaking about he said, even if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing, if we can, if we go back to chapter three, he's specifically referring to the
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Jews whose avail is over their heart. But notice what he says in verse four. In their case, the
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God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
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Satan. Is a tool. In God's hand.
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You may not like that, and yet that may not fit with your personal understanding of how things work, but you've got to know
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Satan is not God. Satan is not on the same level as God, Satan isn't even the same type of being as God.
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God is creator, everything else is creation, and that fits right in with Satan. But he is called the
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God of this age, and by the way, the world the word world here in the Greek is Aion, which is that we also translate age.
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So it's a God of this world, God of this age can be translated that way. And Satan does have an ability.
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To affect the minds of people, think about the parable of the soils, Jesus said the seed falls among different types of soils, the first one is the pathway seed falls on the pathway and the birds come and eat it up, and he says that Satan word hits it bounces off and Satan makes it where they don't even hear it.
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They don't even understand it. So is Satan at work? Absolutely, but guess what?
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He ain't free. I'm going to preach on this Saturday. Because I believe we're in the millennium right now, and the
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Bible says in the millennium, Satan is bound to say, how is Satan bound? By the preaching of the gospel,
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I don't give away too much of my sermon to get you guys to come, but listen, the reality is. The Bible teaches that when
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Jesus sent out the disciples to preach the gospel, and they came back talking about all the success that they had in preaching the gospel,
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Jesus said, I saw Satan fall like fall like lightning from heaven when you were preaching the gospel.
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What is the binding of Satan's preaching of the gospel, but there are those whom
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God has in his sovereign will chosen to harden.
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For his own purpose and eternal glory, and again, we may not like that.
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But read Romans nine and come tell me I'm wrong for whom he wills, he.
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Mercies and whom he wills, he hardens, both of those are verbs we don't have, we don't use mercy as a verb in English.
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We say have mercy, but in Greek it literally says whom he mercies, he mercies and whom he hardens, he hardens.
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Beloved, if you are a believer, you have to thank God and not yourself.
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You have to really consider the fact that you're a believer, not because of what you did, but because of what
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God did in you. So we get to verse five.
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And Paul goes back to his ministry, he's been talking about he's talking about the fact that he renounces unscrupulous ministry tactics, he recognizes that not everyone's going to receive the truth and they're not.
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But then he says this, we preach of, for and through Christ.
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Look at verse five. He says, for what we proclaim is not ourselves. Again, I can't help but think he's pointing at his opponents.
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Those guys, they got their letters of commendation. They're all about themselves. They're all about self -promotion.
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And Paul says, we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servant for Jesus' sake.
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We preach Jesus and we are his servants. For God, who said, let the light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
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Basically, Paul is saying this, regardless of the response, we preach Christ. Are some going to not believe?
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Absolutely. Are some going to reject us? Absolutely. Are some going to persecute us?
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Absolutely. Regardless, we preach Christ. And understand this, whether people hear us or not, whether our ministry grows or shrinks, whether we have influence or obscurity, we must not fail to proclaim
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Christ and not ourselves. We preach of Christ.
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That means he's the subject of our preaching. We preach for Christ. That means he is the king who gives us the command to go and preach.
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And we preach through Christ because he, by the spirit of God within us, is our power to preach.
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Paul says, I decided to know nothing among you except what? Jesus Christ and him crucified.
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Does that mean Paul didn't teach theology? Absolutely not. His books are filled with it.
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But everything points back to whom? Points back to Christ. We knew nothing among you except Christ.
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We preach Christ and not ourselves. And if we do that, we can't help but be successful.
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Whether we have 50 or 50 ,000. Regardless. Success. Is in the going, success is in the preaching and we will plant and we will water, but God will bring the increase.
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So as we draw to a close, how do we apply this passage to ourselves, especially if you are not in ministry?
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You say, boy, this this is this be great for a preacher. How do I apply this if I'm not a preacher or if I'm not a minister?
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So I have four thoughts for you as I close. Number one. We are all in ministry, not all of us are in vocational ministry, but if you're a father, you have a huge ministry.
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To lead your home, to protect. To provide.
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To pastor your home, you're in ministry. And moms. Boy, are you in ministry?
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The first the first real
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Bible teacher most little kids have is mom. And you have ministry.
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Oh, my kids are gone. I got grandkids. Well, guess what? Batter up. You had it again,
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I don't have any kids, we got a church full of them, I'd be happy to give you mine for an afternoon, but you're in ministry.
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In your job, you are an ambassador of Christ. In your life, you are to be his.
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And everything that you do. You're in ministry. Don't lose heart.
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And that's the second thing. We're all apt to lose heart, amen. I mean, go back, listen, brother,
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Andy's sermon last week is what it's all about. We're all apt to fail. We're all apt to fall. We're all apt to give up.
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We're all apt to be pragmatists, to do what works, even if it ain't right.
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And that's the third thing. We're all susceptible to pragmatism. We're all susceptible to doing what works, even if it's not right.
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But we're called to be people of integrity. And love the word. And number four, we all need to recognize that our lives are to be lived for Christ and not for ourselves.
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The day we got saved, it stopped being about us.
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The Bible says you were bought with a price. And you are not your own.
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So, beloved, what do we say to these things? Have we failed?
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Amen. Do we need to repent? Likely in many areas.
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And this is the blessing of the gospel. The gospel is we can look at a passage like this and we can say, yes, we have failed.
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Yes, we have erred. Yes, we have allowed ourselves to fall into things like pragmatism and going the wrong way and doing the wrong thing for what we think might be the right reason.
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We've we've done all that. What do we do and who do we come to? We come to Christ and we throw ourselves at the feet of the
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Savior. And we understand that we're not saved by what we do, but we're saved by what he did.
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And therefore, we look to him and we say, Lord, sanctify us. Lord, give us the gift of repentance.
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Give us faith. Give us mercy, help us to understand that we're not saved because we are able to keep the law perfectly, but we're saved because you kept the law perfectly.
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And we learn to trust in him even better than before. That's why we come around this table.
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And just a moment, we're going to have the guys come forward, they're going to pray over the table, we're going to have the table. But remember this, this table isn't just something that we do every week just because we have to or because we want to, but we do it every week because it's a picture of the gospel.
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The Bible says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
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This table is a picture of that giving of the father of the son to us.
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And we receive him by faith. And as we participate in this bread in this cup, we are reminded of the gospel, what we didn't deserve.
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God provided. And so let us think about those areas that we need to repent, think about the areas that we need to change and pray that God, by his spirit, would empower us and recognize that when we come to the table, it's not because we're perfect.
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But it's because he has and he provides himself to us. So let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word. Thank you for your truth. And I thank you that in your word,
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Lord, we have the promise. That the one who trusts on the sun will have eternal life.
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And we understand, Lord, there is a distinction. In. Between what we have done and what
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Christ has done, what we have done is not enough, but what Christ has done is more than enough. So today, help us to trust in him, help us to trust in what he has done.
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And Lord, help us. And this time, as we participate in this table.