WWUTT 1662 We Have Renounced Underhanded Ways (2 Corinthians 4:1-3)

In 2 Corinthians 4 -2 we read that we do not walk in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God, when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary that we may be equipped for every good work in Jesus Christ our

Lord. Please tell others about our ministry at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of 2 Corinthians, and we're up to chapter 4 today.

If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there, I'm going to begin by reading the first six verses out of the

Legacy Standard Bible. This is the word of the Lord, through the Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Corinth.

Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart.

But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the

God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel, of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for the sake of Jesus.

For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And there, the glory of God in the face of Christ, we're going back to what we had read yesterday, and last week even, in 2

Corinthians 3, about the glory that was shining from the face of Moses when he came down from Mount Sinai.

But the glory that we have received in the face of Christ is even greater. The glory that was in the face of Moses faded away, and the law itself had no power to save us.

In fact, it was through the law came sin, as we rebelled against that law, and death, the wages of sin.

But it is only through the gospel of Jesus Christ come righteousness and eternal life.

And it's with this ministry, Paul says, back to verse 1, therefore, since we have this ministry, as we received mercy, we do not lose heart.

So we've not been given a ministry to go out to preach to people that can't actually save them.

If all we were doing was law, if we were just going out there and telling people, do better, right?

Just shape up. We would be encouraging behavior modification.

Be a better person than you are. Stop doing bad things and start doing right things. If that was the message that we were going out with, that would just be law.

That's all that is. It's just law. Love one another is law. Love God and love others is not the gospel.

That's the law. These are effects of the gospel. It's evidence that the gospel is transform your heart when you therefore love

God and love one another and loving others the way God says to love others, not the way that the world says to love others.

But we don't go out with a ministry of law. We're not going out telling people, hey, just do better. We would use the law to convict a person's heart, to make them aware of their sin, that they have sinned against God.

And here's how, like, are you even aware that you have sinned against God until you know what God's law says and that you have broken it?

And then it's through hearing the law that you become aware of your sin. But that's not the gospel. Then convicted of heart, now that the heart has been tilled to realize that you've rebelled against God and what you deserve is judgment, now the heart is ready to hear the good news that there is one who has taken that judgment for us, and that's the

Lord Jesus Christ. for all who will believe in him. He has died on the cross for our sins and risen for our justification,

Romans 4, 25, so that all who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life,

John 3, 16. So this is the ministry that we have, the message of the gospel. It is by grace you are saved through faith.

And this is not of ourselves. It is the gift of God, not a result of our work so that no one may boast.

If we were just going out telling people to do better, well, that's a message with no hope in it. But when we go out telling people that Christ has done it and he has risen from the dead, then that is a ministry that is accomplishing something.

That is the message that saves. And this is the ministry that we've been given, the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we would proclaim this to a lost and dying world.

As we have received mercy, we've been shown mercy in Christ. We do not lose heart because it's not dependent upon us.

It's dependent upon Christ. Verse 2, but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. Remember what we read yesterday in chapter 3.

To this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart. But whenever a person turns to the

Lord, the veil is taken away. If a person doesn't believe in the gospel, it's because a veil remains over their heart.

If the gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing. It's not because we didn't preach this in the right way and that's why a person didn't come to faith.

If we had just been a little more gimmicky, if we had come up with better words, with a better sermon series, if we had just a few more laser lights, a little bit more fog coming out of our fog machine, if we had more mood and atmosphere in the sanctuary here, then maybe we could have won more people to the

Lord. No. No. What we are committed to is the truth. As Paul says, it's by the manifestation of truth we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

Preach Christ and him crucified. Paul said this in the previous letter that we have, 1 Corinthians, that we preach

Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

So we're not preaching gimmicks. It's not the gimmicks. It's not convincing speech that gets people to come to faith.

Now I believe that we should preach skillfully. I mean, Paul told Timothy to do that, that he needs to show himself as a workman approved, that he needs to preach the word in season and out of season.

This is Timothy always being ready to do this work that he has been called to in the ministry.

He labors hard. Paul labored hard. We're going to read about that as we go through 2 Corinthians.

So we should do that skillfully, but it's not our ability to do it. That saves the person.

It is the truth. It's the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a person that transforms them from death to life.

We cannot devote ourselves to craftiness, adulterating the word of God.

We commit ourselves to the truth. And if a person doesn't believe it is because it's veiled, a veil remains over their hearts.

It's because 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.

First Corinthians 1 .18. Now here we are coming up on Easter at the time that I'm recording this episode.

This is Holy Week, right? So we've got Easter coming up this weekend. And this is certainly a time when you hear all kinds of gimmicks used to try to woo people to church.

It's more likely a person's got to go to church around Easter and Christmas than any other time of the year. So a lot of these pragmatic churches that are devoted to this craftiness and adulterating the word of God, they will use all these manipulative tactics to try to draw people in.

Now they might say that they're doing that because they're just trying to get people in the doors. If we can get people in, we'll give them the gospel.

We just want people here so as many people are here as possible that we can give them the life -saving message of the gospel.

That's what they tell them. But if you win people into the church, if you draw people into the church by carnal means, fleshly means, appealing to their flesh, to their worldliness, then it will take worldly things in order to keep them there.

I talked about this a little bit last week when we wrapped up chapter two for it's there.

Paul says 2 Corinthians 2 17 for we are not like many peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.

We preach Christ. Remember through this letter, Paul is contending with the

Corinthians over some false teachers that they've been listening to. Guys that he's going to refer to later on as super apostles, and they believe these men are more genuine apostles than even the apostle

Paul is. Paul is going to call them agents of Satan. They are not of God at all.

They have these crafty ways of appealing to your flesh. They adulterate the word of God, but they're not actually speaking the truth or commending themselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God, the way that Paul and the other genuine apostles are doing.

And beware of those many people here around this season, especially around Easter that are going to use these gimmicks to try to win people into their congregations.

Now there probably are not many people listening to this program who would be won by that kind of teaching or rather would be attending that kind of a church.

But you might know friends who do, or you might see churches in your community that are throwing out gimmicks like this, things like Easter egg drops, even, even something as simple as that.

But it's something to try to appeal to people. Hey, we're going to have a big Easter pageant.

There's going to be bouncy houses. We're going to have candy for the kids. There will be an

Easter bunny here to take pictures with, you know, whatever it might happen to be. I was part of a church a number of years ago that gave away free copies of the

Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren on Easter Sunday. It was something like 500 free copies of this book.

Yes, the church paid for every single copy. And we gave away copies of that book on Easter Sunday, which does not have the gospel in it.

Look up the what video that I did on that. WWUTT, the Purpose Driven Life, or you could look up Rick Warren, and I'm sure the video will pop up that way as well.

No, it's, there is no gospel in it. And even though Rick Warren begins the book by saying it's not about you, if you took that sentence out and read the

Purpose Driven Life, you would come to the conclusion that it's all about me. And yeah, this was the book my church was giving away.

Not even the gospel. I was just really stupid back then. It wasn't, now this wasn't my call, like it wasn't my decision to hand out this book.

And I at least had enough sense at that time not to teach it. I shrewdly took a sabbatical from teaching in that season so I wouldn't have to teach the

Purpose Driven Life, which the pastor of our church had implemented in all of our Sunday school classes and Bible classes we were supposed to teach through this book.

But anyway, it wasn't like I expressed opposition to doing it. It wasn't like I stood up and said, um, let's not waste the church's money on a book that has no gospel in it and handing out 500 copies of this stupid book.

I just kind of went along with it, but took a more passive approach, a passive aggressive approach to it.

The church that I became pastor of in Kansas, the previous pastor had bought thousands of plastic

Easter eggs and he stored them so that we would have enough on hand every Easter and the church wouldn't have to go hunt down a ready supply of Easter eggs.

After that pastor left, there were some ladies cleaning out the church's storage rooms and they came across these huge plastic bins full of empty

Easter eggs. I didn't even know they were there. They asked me what to do with them. I said, throw them away.

They said there are probably 10 ,000 eggs, 10 ,000 empty eggshells in these big bins.

And I said, well, then we'll have a dumpster full of empty Easter eggs. And that's exactly what we did with them.

We threw them away. Back in 2014, there was a church in Winnipeg, Canada.

It was called Church of the Rock. I don't know if you remember this, but they did an Easter sermon called

A New Hope, and it was Star Wars themed like this was all over the place in social media eight years ago.

Well, I was curious to see if that church was even still standing and what they were doing now. So I looked them up.

And this Easter, they're doing the Lion King of Judah. And on the poster, everyone from the church is dressed like characters from the

Lion King. There will be parodies of Lion King songs during their quote unquote worship service.

Yeah, they're worshiping not God, but they're worshiping something. The pastor will be preaching a

Lion King themed sermon, not exegeted from the Bible, but exegeted from the

Lion King. Now you're probably aware of the perverse sexual ethics that Disney has been public about in recent weeks, going as far as saying that they intend on making half of their characters

LGBTQ plus, like sexually depraved characters in all of the kids shows that Disney is cranking out.

Well, in the midst of that admission of sexual idolatry, this church is going with a

Disney theme for their Easter gimmick. That's like that's adulterating the word of God and cranking it up to 11.

A lot of Easter sermons can be really cringy. And I asked this question on Twitter.

I said, what are some examples of bad Easter sermons that you have heard? And here are some of the responses that I received.

Nathaniel from Alaska said, I've heard many sermons on how we can have the same power Jesus had.

So go raise the dead, heal the sick, et cetera. Eric from Washington State said a sermon on how great and amazing the grace of God is and how everyone should want it.

And you would be crazy for not accepting it with no mention of sin whatsoever. Not even alluded to.

Ren from Omaha said the hunting for Easter eggs symbolizes Mary looking into the tomb for Jesus.

Yeah, I think I've heard something similar to that before. Tyler, who is a youth pastor, said, I heard an

Easter sermon where the pastor joked about dirty underwear in the airport for longer than he talked about God.

I'm not sure he even talked about the resurrection once. That is so puzzling. I almost want to almost want to listen to that.

What in the world is he talking about? Dirty underwear for Mandy said, comparing the

Easter bunny to Jesus. Yeah, I've heard that before. Josh from Michigan said that he heard an

Easter sermon on Peter and John running to the empty tomb and God has a breakthrough for you.

So run toward it and step into it. It's stepping into something. That's for sure.

Josh from South Dakota said, I've heard a sermon. I've heard someone preach. It wasn't really a big deal or bad or anything that Thomas doubted.

Doubts are good. That's a common sort of a teaching that I hear in a lot of churches right now.

That doubting is a good thing. Garrett from Texas said he heard a sermon on the gospel of Peter and how the resurrection is not physical, but the love of Christ rising up in the disciples hearts.

Yeah, that's heresy. Nat from Phoenix said every year the pastor of our old church, which was a huge mega church here in Phoenix, would preach the three chairs sermon for Easter.

God used our dissatisfaction with that to remove the scales from our eyes and give us a hunger for true expository preaching.

Amen for that. Nat, I don't know if you're familiar with what the three chairs sermon is. It's, it's where a pastor will have like three chairs up there on stage and each chair represents a different person.

Like a third of your church should be believers. A third of your church should be like newcomers, brand new to the church.

And a third of your church should actually even be unbelievers. If I remember that right, if that's, that's kind of how the three chairs are set up.

And then there's a high chair, which is where a person is sitting, whining and crying because they're not being fed.

The purpose of the three chairs sermon is to illustrate that a church is for unbelievers, not for believers.

That's the ridiculousness of the three chairs sermon. Apparently somebody did that at Easter at a mega church in Phoenix, but it's adulterating the word of God.

It's appealing to the world. It's appealing to worldliness because the church is the body of Christ.

It is made up of only people who believe in Jesus Christ. If an unbeliever comes in, well, we hope that they hear the gospel and turn from their sin and put faith in Jesus Christ, but they're not part of the church.

The church are those who are in Christ only. Now there's a very common

Easter sermon that I hear every Easter. I hear of this kind of sermon preached somewhere.

It's the idea that you have stones you need rolled away in your life and Jesus will roll away your stones.

I hear this somewhere all the time. In fact,

I wanted to even play an example of this for you on the podcast. I went to look up and see if I could find somebody preaching this.

It was literally the first pastor I looked up and the sermon he preached at Easter last year.

That's how common this is, how easy it was for me to find it. The first guy

I looked up and the sermon that he preached last year and he was preaching on Jesus will roll away the stone in your life.

Here is that pastor. I'm not going to mention his name because the point is this is just a very common sermon, but here he is preaching from Mark 16, one through four about Jesus rolling away stones.

The women going to the tomb first day after the Sabbath that they were headed that way. But the problem was we have the history to know that it was a great day on the way there.

They had none of that. All they had was a question, who will roll away the stone?

They were going to pay honor and respects, but they had one question, who will roll away the stone?

As a matter of fact, as we look at what we're going to talk about today, that is the only question

I want you to keep in mind. I want you also to think that probably you and I have some stones that we could have rolled away in our own lives as well.

There are probably some obstacles, some heavy things, some very difficult moments in our life and you've probably asked the question, maybe not in these terms, but who's going to roll away that stone?

How's that going to get dealt with? And then the way that gets applied is

Jesus will roll away the stone of your financial problems. He'll roll away the stone of your marriage problems, whatever it might happen to be, or they'll go for bigger things than that.

Nonetheless, it's allegorizing the story of the resurrection of Christ instead of pointing to what it really means that we have an answer to our sin problem.

We have a solution to death and it is Jesus Christ who died for our sins and rose again from the grave so that all who believe in him, we have our sins forgiven, we have our relationship with God, we have fellowship with God now through Jesus Christ and we have the promise of life after death.

We will be raised from the dead and even our very bodies will be raised to life again as he has the power and authority to transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

The resurrection shows us that Jesus Christ is God who conquers death for us and that in him we would have life in his name.

We went through all of this as we read through 1 Corinthians 15 earlier this year where Paul lays out that apologetic for the resurrection of the dead and the resurrection of Christ.

But there are so many out there will lose the plain meaning of the text and instead they walk in craftiness and adulterate the word of God.

Paul says we don't give ourselves over to those schemes but by the manifestation of truth we commend ourselves to every man's conscience of the sight of God.

We preach Christ in him crucified and even if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing and we'll pick up there tomorrow.

Heavenly Father we thank you for showing us the good news of your word and convict our hearts that we not be led astray by any of these folks that through their craftiness and through adulterating the word of God are trying to lead us into things that is not what the

Bible teaches. We need to know the truth. We need to be able to see Christ and if somebody is throwing in all these worldly gimmicks well then there's a veil over the clear teaching of the gospel.

Lift that veil for us. May we see Christ through the scriptures. May we see the Father and be filled with your

Holy Spirit that we may know that in Christ Jesus our sins are forgiven, we have fellowship with God and the promise of life everlasting.

It is in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

You can find a link to the blog through our website www .utt .com Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's word when we understand the text.