Following the Follower VI: How to Handle Losing Heart

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and with me again is Chuck Baggett and we are looking at the theme of following the follower, that is the Apostle Paul, and following him as he followed Christ.

And we've talked about that dynamic in the New Testament and how that carries over to our day, that Christianity is spread not only through Scripture and the work of the Spirit, not primarily through giving people great books to read, but at the heart of the spread of Christianity is one believer passing the truths on to another believer, not just by what we say, but by our lives.

And so we in some measure can say, as Paul did, follow me as I follow Christ, or this is what a Christian life looks like. Paul gives us so much help here, not just in what that looks like, but why. Why does Paul do what he does and how does Paul sustain that kind of a lifestyle in in light of so many contradictions, so much strain, heartbreak, and confusion that he would have encountered as he took the gospel across the Roman Empire.

And the passage we've been looking at is found in 2nd Corinthians, particularly in chapter 2 verse 12, and we're going to go down through chapter 6 verse 10. And today we want to pick back up with chapter 4, but before we get there, at the heart of Paul's great statements here is the tension between the realization that he is not sufficient for the task at hand, and yet he finds a sufficiency continually supplied, and we feel that.

So Chuck, can you help us just remind us in chapter 3, what is it that.

Paul finds at the heart of that supply? It is his God, and it is that he has made Paul a minister, a servant of the new covenant. And Paul spends most of chapter 3 contrasting the old covenant to the new covenant, or the new covenant to the old covenant, and describing how it is such a superior covenant, and the hope that he draws from that.

This new covenant is a life-giving covenant. Every person who's a member of this covenant has spirit-given life, and so it's transformative, and he has great hope knowing that God is at work to transform the life, both by giving you the Spirit, giving you a new heart, and as he describes the covenants and contrasts them, he describes the new covenant as being superior because it has an abounding glory.

He says if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. So it's not that the old covenant has no glory, it does, but the new covenant is so much better.

It abounds. Later he says that it has such a great glory that it's as if the old covenant had no glory at all. It's also described as a surpassing glory in verse 10, for indeed what had glory in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.

It so far exceeds it. And then in verse 11, it is an enduring glory. If that which fades away was with glory, the old covenant, much more that which remains is in glory. And so seeing, you know, comparatively how much better it is, seeing that it transforms lives, he has great hope.

And that hope, you know, in the Bible, hope is not a wishy kind of thing. It is a certainty that's just not been completely realized yet. So his hope is God will transform the lives of those that he's begun to work in, and if that's the case, then why would you adjust?

When we look at Paul and we look at the pattern of his life, I think we've talked about this in previous episodes, but I think it's really important for us to remind ourselves, you know, and to avoid the kind of the painting Paul with a halo over his head and reading the book of Acts and his later epistles with this rose, you know, these rose-colored glasses.

It's easy for me to read Paul and think, well, that was Paul. I know he's not Christ, but he's just right under, you know, he's like the he's the chief of the Apostles, you know, he's kind of so impressive, you know, as we consider him, that this isn't something that we could follow as a very practical pattern.

But it is, not just for the minister or a Sunday school teacher or a servant in the church, but for every Christian that is serving the Lord in everyday life. And I think especially of parents. We have children, and most of our children, you have a couple of new additions, but most of our children are adult age now.

And so the problems are not the kind of problems that we had when they were young, where you would say, so-and-so, give that toy back to so-and-so. I told him he could have it. So-and-so, you're supposed to share it.

No, it's his turn, you know. No, let go of that. And so the problems are now adult problems, and those can be quite heartbreaking. And it is easy to despair, and it's easy to lose confidence in the things that Paul had confidence in, and then we find ourselves adjusting.

And you don't even notice it, I suppose. You just feel that it's reasonable. It's part of, you know, growing up. Well, we don't have these kind of pie-in-the-sky, you know, pipe dreams that everything's going to be wonderful in my family because we're Christians and we're doing it right.

Well, it is good to lay aside unbiblical expectations, but what about biblical expectations? And so with Paul, we have such a careful guideline, and we want to keep that order and that connectivity. The order is we need to think the way Paul thought, and you just mentioned just, you know, Paul where he just gives us the tip of the iceberg, the superiority of the New Covenant, and that's at the heart of his optimism.

So do we think the way he thinks about the New Covenant? And then the connectivity. First think, then do, but the connectivity. Don't let thinking be divorced from doing. So we don't want to be armchair theologians that say, I read a great book on the superiority of the New Covenant.

I read a great book on the doctrine of redemption and, you know, on biblical theology, and I see how it's unfolding, and we have the privilege of living in this New Testament era. Yes, but then what about the doing?

Was it Ames? What was his definition of theology?

Yeah, the study of living unto God. Yeah, so if you study theology to kind of, you know, be impressed with a doctrine, it really leaves you wanting in hard times, but living unto God as each situation unfolds, that's different.

Yeah, and.

We'll talk about that toward the end of our episode, but it is a theological issue. When our life is not right, when we're stumbling or drifting, it is ultimately, it's not emotional, it's not really, you know, the circumstance that I'm in.

There's a theological problem, and so we'll talk about keeping those connected. Well, in chapter 4, Paul brings us to a second connection. We saw the first of these in chapter 3, verse 12, where in the midst of what Chuck was laying out there, the superiority of the new covenant, Paul says in verse 12 of chapter 3, therefore, all right, because of these realities, it is essential then that something occur.

And what is that? Having such a hope, which I've just described, we use great boldness in our speech, and we're not like Moses, who had to cover his face when the glory of God shone from his face, because it was a fading glory.

We don't do that, and we talked about it a few weeks ago. We don't cover our lives, we don't cover our boasts in Christ because it's fading or because it's terrifying, and Moses' face did terrify the people, because at that point in Israel's history, God had just dealt justly but severely with their idolatry, the golden calves.

So, when we come to people, whether it's our children, our sons, grown sons and daughters, our friends, church members, people that we go to school with or work with, because of the great realities of the new covenant, because of the sufficiency we find in Christ, like Paul, we refuse to become cowardly in our boasts of Christ, and we refuse to kind of hide these great truths, fearing that maybe they're not sufficient.

Chapter 4, Paul gives us another, therefore. Verse 1 says, therefore, since we have this ministry. So, particularly, he's not talking about just the great overarching eternal realities of God, but the overarching realities of God as they come to us in a superior covenant, since we have a new covenant kind of ministry, and secondly, since we have received mercy.

So, two great facts and then two areas where the application shows up. So, these two great facts. Chuck, when you think about these facts, what do you think is significant about those two statements? They're not just two things that Paul.

Mentions as hopes that he has, but they're really prerequisites that he meets. If you yourself have not become a participant of this ministry, so it's not just that he has a ministry and he's a minister, but he's become a participant in this new covenant ministry himself.

He has become born again, and so the transforming work that he has hopes of occurring in others is also occurring in him. God's transforming him and giving him spirit-enabled life, spirit-giving life.

But also, that is a mercy, and he's received that from the Lord, and he has experienced the outworkings of that in so many situations. You know, he talks later about some of the hardships that he's endured.

He doesn't speak from, you know, academia, kind of a writing from an office in which he's never endured any hardships, but he's endured terrible hardships, and God has been merciful to him repeatedly.

In chapter 1, he speaks about the comforts that he's received and how they keep pace with the sufferings that come. And so, from experience, he writes, and he doesn't lose heart in light of both of those.

Realities. Yeah, I think that, you know, it may be something that we assume that we have been partakers of this mercy, and we're deceived. It may be something that we assume that everybody understands, that you must be born again.

You must have gone from death to life, from this enslavement to self and its empty lies, to the wonderful enslavement to Christ, which Rutherford describes as having a prince's life of it. In the 18th century, with the preaching of the Great Awakening ministers here, and then, you know, Whitefield in the UK, and we saw an emphasis in that century that a man, it's not enough for a man to be moral and to have studied theology and to be hard-working.

Those are all good, but to be a representative of Christ, particularly as a minister, but really in any fashion, even if you're just sitting next to a person at lunch and talking to them, you know, at work about Christ.

If you're going to hold the course that Paul held, you're going to have to not just understand the superiority of the covenant of grace and all the way those wonderful truths fit together. You're going to have to be a person who's experienced them, or else you will, ultimately, it's inevitable, you will reduce your expectations, and in some fashion of despair, you will back off your statements.

I mean, how can you continue to make those statements? Recently, I was looking at the 18th century, guys, again, for the purpose of teaching some church planners in Canada, and, you know, I noticed how the Anglican, at that time, it was the Anglican Church in the UK, which was so anti-George Whitefield's kind of preaching, and they would say, you're too experiential.

These are just metaphors. So when God talks about tasting and seeing that he's good, that's just a metaphor. It's not something experiential, and Whitefield and those other men, that's just one example.

There are just too many to list. They would say, no, no, these are metaphors, but there's substance to these metaphors. There is an ability that comes in the new birth for a man or a woman to perceive spiritual realities and to experience them, and Paul's prayer at the end of Ephesians 1, or at the end of Ephesians 3, here's all this great doctrine, now I'm praying that God, by his Spirit, would let you know these things, that you would have a daily experiential grasp.

Without that ability to taste, to feel, to see, to hear, beyond just the unconverted unbeliever's ability to hear a sermon or read a page in the Bible, then we will not hold the course, because when hard times come, we will certainly be forced to doubt the facts that we're repeating, parrot fashion, because we have never tasted them.

Makes me think of a couple of.

Things. One, back to chapter 3, verse 18, where we're beholding Christ as in a mirror. That is a metaphor, but it's also experiential, and if you're not, if you just see it as a metaphor and you're not tasting Christ, then you're not being transformed into his image.

So, yeah, I just... The other thing, though, was in the necessity of experiencing these things, I was thinking about the person you're talking to. You know, it's easy to, if you have a low view of salvation, of the gospel, then you might assume that people are born again who are not.

Or, well, you Mr. Roberts gives the example of, as a pastor, of trying to hold up.

Anvils. Yeah, anvils being dropped into a.

Swimming pool. Yeah, like they're church members, and he's trying to.

Make anvils float. Yes. So how do you get all the Christians in the church to kind.

Of come up to where they're supposed to be? Right, and you can't, because they're anvils. And so we can talk to people with some hope, but then also the other side of that, I guess, is if you are reasonably sure that they're a believer, you talk to them with that hope that God is at work, and you expect him to change them.

Paul, talking to the Corinthians here with all of the problems that they have, he addresses them as brothers, and he assumes that God is at work in them and that they will repent. And it's only really once or twice, you know, you come to a place where he says, unless you fail the test.

But he's not expecting that.

They're going to fail the test. Yeah, so really, an intellectual understanding of the truths of the New Covenant, essential. But a heart experience of them, equally essential. It can't be an either-or.

You know, we don't want to just have the awareness that, you know, I am his and he is mine. And then you're talking to a person, and they're talking about their struggles, and the Scripture has the answer to those in how to apply Christ to that particular situation.

And because of your lack of study, you just, you know, you just keep saying, well, I don't know, I just, God just helps me, you know. And I've had a great quiet time this morning, and well, that doesn't really help the guy next to you.

You need truth to fuel his enduring growth in Christ, to guide his choices, and to sustain him when things are difficult. And that's what Paul had. So he had truths of the New Covenant, truths he understood, he studied, truths he was constantly experiencing.

Knowing them experientially, he had all that he needed to fuel and in a persevering ministry, to guide his choices, and to sustain him when under attack. And he mentions a couple of things here. One is, he says, because I have tasted these mercies, and I know them to be real and sufficient, and also because I understand biblically, theologically, how the New Covenant is so superior to anything that anyone had in the Old Covenant, as glorious as that was, therefore, I refuse to do certain things, and I do other things.

So he refuses to do, and he mentions three things. And I think we can see them under the umbrella of losing heart, which we've talked about a lot, so we won't deal with that right now. I don't lose heart.

I don't just go through the motions. And I don't, and here's what it would look like in his specific situation to lose heart. I refuse to employ shameful tactics. I refuse to be crafty. I refuse to adulterate the Word.

Three things. These are the negatives. Then we'll hit the positive. So Chuck, when you look at those things, in Paul's day, or in our day, can you think of specifics? How would we flesh this out? I mean, it's easy to say it, but what would that look like?

What would employing shameful tactics be? What would craftiness be? What would adulterating the Word be? One example I.

Think of for us is the temptation when things get hard in a relationship, so maybe it's, you know, in the church between people, or even in the home, at work, things get hard, and we had drawn lines previously, and we started adjusting those lines to accommodate people, and to try to, you know, keep the relationship on what we think is a sound footing, and to relieve tension, we just don't hold the same line that we did before.

We make excuses. Yeah, so we could think of how.

Paul would have been tempted by the enemy to adjust God's clear standards to keep the Corinthians happy with him. I mean, because when he's writing this, of course, there's a real problem in the Corinthian church, and he is waiting to hear whether they've repented or not, and that's the catalyst behind these chapters of autobiographical information.

This is how I was sustained. These are the truths that came to memory, and this is how I applied them. It would have been easy for him to say to the Corinthians, you know, I wrote to you previously, and I was pretty hard on you, but as I've prayed about it, I think, you know, I would like to maybe kind of, you know, adjust that a little.

Maybe I should, I have a clearer view, clearer head now that I'm not emotionally upset, and I didn't mean it that way. Don't take it that way, and like you said, we can do that with our children. We can say, this is what God says, and so this is important, and we want to obey God.

Whether you're a believer or not, this is what our Creator has said, and then the child, as they grow older, they throw a fit in a grown-up way, and we are tempted to adjust that. We take them to a church that holds certain standards, and then they say, I hate church, and we're tempted to find a new church that they won't hate, but to do that, we have to erase those lines and adjust them.

And Paul mentions those two things, craftiness and adulterating the word. Craftiness would really kind of be the description of what we're saying. We're being crafty. We're manipulating things behind the scene so as to manipulate the, you know, the responses of our kids, or of a person we're witnessing to, or of a church member that's mad and wants to leave, and no, no, no, don't do that, you know, and so we're crafty, and we adulterate the word, and the word adulterate there is to water down.

It's what they would do with wine. If a wine merchant was dishonest, he would have his wine, and he would add a little water to it so that it would go further, and he would sell it at full price, of course, and so he's made more money.

Another application could be evangelism, so not just how we keep peace within church or home, but how do we get people interested in Christ? And there's so many approaches that are offered to us today that promise effectiveness, but I think the promise is rooted in a lack of confidence in the truths of Christ in the hands of the Spirit, being able to supernaturally change a person, and so if we doubt that, if we've not been changed like that, then we automatically go to other methods which are not rooted in that belief, so they are rooted in a reduced expectation of the gospel and of the work of the Spirit.

Maybe that's what we've grown up with, maybe that's all we've known, and so we grab hold of methodologies which require us, in our lack of confidence in God, they require us to be crafty. They require us to adjust God's Word.

I remember going to a very large Sunday school class when we first came back from the UK, so my family and I were attending a class, and the Sunday school class was almost the size of the church that we're at now, and it was the young couples class, and so we're there, and the teacher meant well.

I don't doubt his motives, but I do doubt his grasp of these truths, and I think it's an example of what we shouldn't do. He was talking about the newest way to build a Sunday school class, and it included taking a phone book, and it had a cute, you know, acronym.

I can't remember what it was. So we're gonna do this system, you know, this is the newest thing. I got a book, it says it'll work, it worked over here in this church. So they, one of the things they did was, you were to call everybody on a page of the local phone book, which we don't have anymore, and so you just call all of them, and you talk to them as if, you know, you're concerned, really concerned about them, any prayer requests, you know, how can we be a help to you, and then those people, amazed that you cared enough to call them, might show up at church, and they had a statistic, maybe one out of ten, and then it went on further.

The man explained that only one out of such-and-such, let's say ten, only one out of ten people will come to church with that, or maybe it's one out of twenty, but if, when they come, you greet them at the door, and you shake their hand, and you make eye contact, then one out of four of those will return, but if you don't do that, you know, one out of twenty will return, and so it had all of these kind of human psychology things, and so I think that's craftiness, and it's, Paul talks about things that we put away because of shame, and that is, I think he's referring here to the way the false prophets did, the false teachers tried to grow church, and some of the things they used, the deceitful statements about Paul, for example, or the deceitful claims that they made about their own lives, and their power, and their knowledge, you know, if that was all brought out into the clear, where everybody could see how they were manipulating the situation, they should be ashamed, but go back to my example of how to grow a Sunday school class using, basically, psychology and psychological methods to manipulate people, so I'm going to grab them by the hand, I'm going to look them in the eye, because one out of four will return.

What if they attended Sunday school next month, some person who had been contacted this way, and had had somebody meet them at door, and look them in the eye, and shake their hand, and then they attend Sunday school, and they hear the teacher go back over and say, okay guys, is everybody doing what you're supposed to?

Remember, only one out of ten come because of this, but one out of four, we can get them if we look them in the eye. I would think I would be offended, and I would think you people should be ashamed. You put a front on, you did things that made me feel you cared about me, but it was a system to get me to join the club.

When I left that class that day, he was talking about our Sunday school classes increased so many percent, maybe it was 25 percent, in the last three months because of this, great job guys, keep it up, and my wife and I, we were one of those people that were new, now they hadn't contacted us, we just showed up.

I almost said to the man, except it would have been Smart Alec, as I left the class, glad to be a number man, you know, like we helped them reach their 25 quota, and I think those are ways that we are tempted to use methodology that is so attractive when we forget that the gospel, in the hands of the Spirit, coming through the life of a true believer who has tasted those things, that is all it takes really, you know, to grow the church, and if you don't have confidence in that, you will eventually have to use crafty methods that you should really be ashamed of, and you will have to keep shifting the line.

Paul mentions here, did you want to say more about that?

I was going to say, we have seen over the years, some parents adjust the definition of what a Christian is as their children move away from what they grew up with. There's a temptation there also, or back to a pastor perhaps, who maybe adjust certain doctrines when the church doesn't go in the direction that everyone wants it to go in, and so there's a temptation to make adjustments that way, and maybe save face or job security.

Yeah, you can do that without.

Becoming a flaming heretic, you know, you just knock the rough edges off. Yeah, you just adulterate the word by de-emphasizing things and over-emphasizing popular things, and so if someone says to you, so are you a such-and-such, do you believe in such-and-such, you can still say, oh no, yeah, we do, but when you have opportunity to legitimately apply those in the passage, they're right there, you're skimming over those.

Holiness, sovereignty of God, you know, sacrificial Christianity, the definition of a Christian, which I think is always the most offensive, because it's where all of that really comes where the rubber meets the road.

Well, one of the positive things he does, he refuses to do some negative things, but that's not enough, it's not just what we don't do, that's a very pharisaical approach to religion. We're good people because we would never do that.

Well, that doesn't mean you are a faithful servant of God, that doesn't mean you're a good parent, it doesn't mean you're a good witness at work, and it doesn't mean you're a good servant in the church, just because you refuse to do the things Paul refused to do.

There should be another element, the positive, but we do, very definitely, we do manifest truth. We make obvious what is true. So, instead of hiding it, ashamed, thinking it won't work, so to speak, we lay it out.

We unashamedly, humbly, but boldly, we lay the great truths of the gospel, the kingdom of Christ, we lay all those truths in front of people, to our children, to our friends, to the church member, not hiding any of it.

We make it manifest, but it's not just the doctrines, it's, he also manifests it through his life. You can see these truths being lived in me. I'm not being crafty behind closed doors, what you see is what you get.

I am, Paul could say, I am a man following these truths, living on these truths, and so his life becomes a billboard for them, and he does it in front of two audiences. The people, commending ourselves, not just our doctrine, but the way that doctrine changes a man.

Our lives and our doctrine taken together, we are commending it to the consciences of the people who see and hear us, and we are doing that in the sight of God. How do you think that works out in present day?

Why do you think that two audiences are necessary? Why not just say, well, I know that God is pleased with me? Well, God has sent you to people, and.

You have to communicate to people, and you want to do so in a way that reflects the character of the one that sent you. Also, you can say, you can communicate truth in a way that comes across as, you're a real jerk, arrogant, and that doesn't commend the truth at all.

It turns people off. Even if they agree with the same truth, they may be so put off by you that they won't hear you, but there are the two audiences. We're to communicate to these people in a way that commends the truths to them and commends God, and knowing that God is watching and hearing should then enforce that we do that well.

Yeah, it's not.

Enough to just say, well, God knows my heart. The people need to be able to see the truth, and like you said, God has sent us to people, and He has sent us on a path that includes that. That's one of the methods He's given us, to show them through our lives the impact of these truths.

I mean, you know, false teachers. Peter mentions false teachers. Look at their lives. They're their kind of teaching can't rescue. It's empty, so just check it out. And so, obviously, the life is part of the message, but it's not enough to say, the people are really benefiting from what I'm doing.

You know, the church is growing. The kids are happy. You know, the person I've witnessed who at work, they joined church last week. That's great. They got baptized, but what if everyone around us says, wow, you know, you're so good at explaining things, and you're such a great person, but what if God says, you are not following the pattern I gave you.

You built a massive church. You kept your family happy. You know, everybody at work admires you, but I am grieved. So, it has to be both. It's not enough that people think that we're great. God, who knows us through and through, must say, yeah, I mean, we are still sinners, and we are still relying on that mercy, but God must be able to say at the end of our life, well done, good and faithful servant.

Well, we mentioned earlier that losing heart happens when we, when something's wrong, and it's not primarily an emotional thing. It's not just, well, I tend to despair. We have those kind of propensities at times.

Some people despair more quickly than others, but the kind of practical choices that flow out of despair, the paralyzing, adjusting kind of religion, that is not primarily an emotional thing. It's primarily theological.

So, the cure has to be primarily theological truth, and not just studied, but lived on, tasted. So, I think as we close down our episode today, to think about this, that if you find yourself drifting, and adjusting, and being a bit manipulative behind the scenes in order to accomplish what you hope will be lasting good in the kingdom, I think that the place to begin would be repenting, but not of the external adjustments, the moving the line, or the watering down of God's Word, but of the roots that lead to that.

Small views of Christ, vague views of the superior provisions of the new covenant, and an unwillingness to pay the cost, to walk so near the Lord in this new covenant that you have an experiential knowledge of these things.

Start there, and then as you're giving the lion's share of your time there, then guard yourself against those little ways that Paul mentions here, the categories of craftiness, of losing heart, of doing things that you would be ashamed of if people saw them, of adulterating the Word, watering it down.

So, start there, and the Lord will teach you if you want to be taught like He's taught so many other servants who struggle to hold the course. Paul's a great help here, and we'll continue that next week as we look further in chapter 4 at some of the very specific things that Paul is willing to endure as a man who realizes he is weak, but his God is infinitely strong.