Preach-A-Thon 2017 - Corey Lagunowich

In 1892, D .L. Moody and his son, Will, boarded an ocean liner in England to travel back to the United States. On the third morning of their trip, the passengers were startled by a loud crash and a shock going through the ship.

The ship's drive shaft had been broken. And so this disabled ship, carrying probably hundreds of passengers, drifts helplessly through the waves. The vessel was taking on so much water that the pumps were useless, and the crew, they were preparing the lifeboats, but they realized that the lifeboats aren't going to work in the rough seas.

And so they gather everyone together into this common room of the ship, and they basically are just there to wait it out and hope for a miracle. Moody in that room led a prayer service. He led it to calm many of the passengers.

He led it to calm himself. Although he was sure of heaven, the thought of his work ending and of never seeing his family again, it had really unsettled him. It had shaken him. Even confident evangelists have crises of confidence.

So if you've ever found yourself wondering or waffling or doubting, you're in good company. What do we do when such thoughts creep in? Well, Martin Lloyd-Jones prescribed having a sermon ready, always ready to preach to yourself.

Confidence in the Resurrection Body and Life to Come

So let us look and see about our confidence by turning to 2 Corinthians 5, and we'll look in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 6 through 11, where God, through the apostle Paul, assures us of our life to come and what we ought to do now to prepare for it.

Verse 6, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 6. So we are always of good courage. Our text starts right into it. So we are always of good courage. We can be courageous. How? How can we be courageous in the face of danger?

How can we be courageous in the face of sin that continues to beset us? Well, look at the very next words. The very next words are, we know. We know. This text, these truths, we know. They're not just some possibility.

They're not some just out there outlandish hope. Faith, it engages our minds. Faith is what we know. Paul here in 2 Corinthians, he's writing this letter to remind them of what they already know. And in fact, we'll see that there are several echoes here.

Back to 1 Corinthians. They needed reminders. It was good for them. They had false teachers who were coming in. They had the world who was pressuring them to compromise. It was good for them to be reminded.

And it's good for us to be reminded. We need the reminders. We always need the reminders. Sometimes we don't feel very good. Sometimes we don't feel happy. Sometimes we don't feel content. Sometimes we don't feel saved.

Alistair Begg says that when our experience ebbs and flows, it is to the facts that we must go. And as Tomek said last night in our home group gathering, he said that what we believe is our root. What we do is our fruit.

So let's look here at three reminders that Paul gives here of what we already know, but we need to hear again to nourish those roots. We should know that you have a heavenly dwelling, that you should know to prepare yourself to stand before Christ, and that you should convince others of the sincerity of your faith.

Verse 6, so we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

We know here in verse 6, it's echoing what he's been talking about, Paul, in these preceding verses of verses 1 through 5. Knowing that as a child of God, though we're in a temporary, decaying body now, we have a permanent resurrection body waiting for us.

Have you ever let that sink in, that God knew you personally, intimately, completely in eternity past, and that he knew not just the good stuff about you, but he knew your sinfulness too. He knew everything, every sin that you'd ever committed or ever will commit.

And even though he knew that, he saved you anyway. He looked down through the mists of time, and he said, I will send my son, Jesus Christ, to die for that person's sins, and that person and every person I choose.

And he said, I will raise my son up again, so that there can be no doubt that those sins that he paid for are forgiven. And then he said, I will send my spirit to dwell in their hearts, so that they can know.

They can know that they are mine. And in verse 5, just looking back briefly, it says, he who has prepared us for this very thing, prepared us in eternity past, is God, who has given us the spirit as a guarantee.

Like, as a pledge. When I bought a house this past summer, I had to pay a down payment. It was my pledge that I was promising to pay the rest of it. The rest of what I owed in order to own that house.

If I failed to continue to pay the rest, I was going to lose that down payment and lose the house as well. Now, nowadays, the standards for lending, they usually say something like, you need to give at least 10 or 20 for a down payment.

And if you can give more, that's even great, and you'll have a better chance of being approved for the loan. But God, God gave a lot more than 20 to you. He gave you himself. He gave you the Holy Spirit.

That's a lot more. That's 100%. That's more than 100%. That's infinite percent that God gave you. That is a guarantee. No wonder we can be of good courage. Be of good courage. No wonder we can say, so we are always of good courage, for we know, verse 6, that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith and not by sight.

Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. Death is not a natural thing. People naturally fear death. And yet the Christian can say, I'd rather die than live.

I'd rather be away from here and at home with the Lord. So fully persuaded then that there is this blessed life for us after death, and that the Holy Spirit inside of us is that guarantee, a down payment on that future life, we ought to be preparing for that future life.

Because realize, if you're going to live forever, your life here on earth, it's just a blip. It's just a blink. I have trouble, I don't know about you, but I have trouble remembering what happened in my life six months ago, let alone after being in heaven for 10 ,000 years, what happened back here on earth.

Just a blip. So let's look at verse 9 and verse 10. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one of us may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

Verse 9, this should be the story of our earthly pilgrimage to please him, right? That ought to be ultimately what we want to do. Do you remember in Ecclesiastes, how the preacher Solomon, how he concludes his whole treatise?

He says, in chapter 12, he says, Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. And then he says, for God will bring every deed into judgment, every secret thing, whether good or evil.

And here's the echo of that here in verses 9 and 10. In verse 10, it's saying, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Now, I'm sure many of you already know and have heard preached about this before, that this judgment seat here, it's the word bima in the Greek.

And the bima seat is the place that had two meanings. It could either mean it was the place where, like, say, during a sporting contest like the Olympics, where the Greeks, the judges for the Olympic event, would be up on that seat to judge what was happening and going on, and then score the contestants and award the laurel wreath to the winner.

It was also the seat that the judges, the pro consuls and whatnot, the rulers of the different city states would sit on when they were passing judgment, like as in a court of law type of thing, although not quite as formal as a law court.

And Paul, in fact, had stood before the bima seat of Corinth at one point while he was there, when the Jews attempted to have him arrested for breaking the Jewish law. And the consul of Corinth dismissed them.

And so that is the judgment seat that Paul has in mind. That's the judgment seat that Paul wants the Corinthians to remember. I'm sure that they probably, that brought to mind that very incident of their time when they were with Paul.

But what I want to say here, point out here, as you get to this last section, so that we may receive what is due for what we have done in the body, whether good or evil, whether good or bad, some translations say.

And this is not a very good translation. Because you might see this, and you might think to yourself that it's talking about some kind of moral good and moral evil or a sin. But the Greek words here, they're not that at all.

They mean, instead, something that is useful and something that is useless. It just means worthless, useless, not evil. Because sin, right, we know, sin is judged on the cross. The believer does not have to fear being judged by God someday.

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And so this here is a reminder, actually, of what Paul told the Corinthians back in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. If you turn there, 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 12 through 15.

This is the same judgment seat picture. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire.

And the fire will test what sort of work everyone has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. So it's the same thing going on here. Our eternally useful works are the gold, the useless ones are the straw.

The beam of judgment, it burns up the straw, leaving behind only the useful. And so Paul says, let's make it our highest goal back in 2 Corinthians 5. Let's make it our aim, our ambition, even to please him, whether alive or a dead in this body or out of the body.

Let it be the song of your soul to want to be able throughout all of eternity to serve the Lord, your God, and glorify him and honor him. And so that brings us to the last of our reminders, that to serve God, means to persuade others, verse 11.

Persuading Others by a Sincere Christian Life

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. We know that this life is only temporary. We know that we can rest in the spirit as our down payment, and we need to prepare ourselves to stand before Christ.

And so you must also now convince others, persuade others of the sincerity of your faith. Persuade others, persuade men. But you might say to yourself, wait a minute, persuade? I wasn't even able to convince myself once upon a time that the Bible is true.

I needed God to do that. How can I convince others if I couldn't even convince myself? And the truth is that you can't, but God can. And the reason he's commanding you here to do it is because he's going to do it through you.

If I'm going to prove anything, if I'm going to persuade anything, really all I can do is back what I already said, to fear God and keep his commandments, all I can do is be biblical, be biblical. You know, most of 2 Corinthians, it was written with Paul's integrity on the line.

These false teachers had come in, in Corinth, and they were attacking Paul. They were attacking his apostleship. They were attacking his credentials. They were saying that he was a fraud and a liar, and he was just in it for himself.

And the Corinthians, they were starting to fall for this kind of thing. And so Paul wrote this letter just to, really, most of it is about defending himself, and by extension, defending the gospel, because it was the gospel that he brought to them.

And that's what he has in mind here when he says that, I'm going to persuade others of my integrity because I want them, I don't want the gospel to be discredited by myself being discredited. Persuade here, it's the same as in Galatians 1 .10, where it says, seeking favor.

So what does that mean? It means to have a favorable assessment, right? That you have a favorable assessment of Paul. He wanted the Corinthians to look at everything he had done, every act he had taken, every word he had preached, and be able to say that, yes, he's living out what he preaches.

Are you living out what you preach? Are you content, or do you find yourself discontent all the time? Are you a living sacrifice, or do you hold back all the time? When you see someone in need, are you giving them that cup of cool water, whether physical or spiritual refreshment, or are you saying, well, someone else will do that?

Are you blessing those who curse you, or are you complaining about those who curse you? Are you setting them up as enemies in your mind? Are you forgiving, and forgiving without condition? Are you forgetting what you've forgiven, or do you hold the grudge?

Do you bring it back up over and over again? Do people look at you and say, if that's the way a Christian behaves, then I don't want anything to do with Christ, or with his gospel? Back in chapter four of 2 Corinthians, Paul had said, verse two, but we have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways, again, defending himself.

We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God, open statement of truth, being sincere.

Even if that sincerity cost him something, he went on farther down in chapter four to say how he was afflicted in every way, verse eight, crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, suffering.

He was willing to suffer. He was willing to put up with even what these false teachers were saying about him, so long as the people were still persuaded of Christ. When we stand before Christ someday, we can do so knowing that we have done all that we could to please him.

D. L. Moody’s Resolve to Press On in Evangelism

So let me tell you the rest of Moody's story. Prior to that trip, a doctor had found irregularities in Moody's heart, and they had urged him to ease his schedule, said that he was going to kill himself preaching, literally.

Moody determined, as he was on that voyage in those first three days, he had determined, you know, I really should slow down. And so he decided to scale back the plans that he had. He was actually, when he was traveling back to America, he was going to Chicago, the World's Fair was happening, and he was going to, at the World's Fair, planned this giant evangelistic campaign, and he was changing his plans now and scaling everything back and saying, well, maybe I can just take it a little easy.

But during that crisis at sea, when they were adrift, and during that prayer meeting, Moody perceived that God was confronting him with a decision. Is he going to press on with all of his might to deliver the gospel, or is he going to be cautious?

Is he going to allow fear to diminish his fervor? And you know, facing death, he decided that if God's going to spare his life here on this ship, then he's going to work, as he said, with all the power that he would give me.

And if I should die this year or the next, that was in God's hands. Well, it probably goes without saying that God did providentially send a passing ship to pick up those, to rescue that, those passengers on that disabled one.

And Moody and his son, and they pressed on, they went on to Chicago, and they went on with that campaign as originally scheduled. Six months of campaigning, six months of preaching, unceasing labor, and by his own estimate, probably millions at that World's Fair heard the gospel.

And Moody did, in fact, die in the midst of his work, but seven years later, absent from the body, present with the Lord. You today are one day closer to your body wearing out. Should you panic? Should you despair?

God says you should know. You should know that as God's child, you have a resurrection body already prepared for you, guaranteed to you by the Holy Spirit inside of you, that you should know and prepare yourself for your appointment with Christ.

Be biblical. Be Christ-like, so that when you stand at that Bema seat someday, and all those useless things are forgotten, you still look at that gold and silver that's left, and you can, with tears streaming down your face, you can say, may Jesus Christ be praised.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I first of all want to thank you. Thank you that there is no condemnation in those who love you, and those whom you have called predestined. Lord, we are so thankful that by faith, when we trust in your son as our Savior, that our sins are forgiven, that you have forgotten them, that you have separated us from them as far as the east is from the west, and that we do not need to fear standing before you in judgment someday of our sins.

But rather, Lord, I pray for the believers here, that we would all have in mind eternity, that we would remember as we go about our days, about our lives, to seek out those things that have eternal value.

I pray, Lord, that you would protect us from the attacks of the world, guard us for the temptation to compromise, and that, Lord, we would stand strong and be of good courage, knowing that the worst that man can do to us is kill us, and that will only bring us to you.

And we look forward to that great and glorious day where we stand before you and our faith becomes sight. In Jesus' name, amen.