Text: 2 Corinthians 1:12-2:17

Date: 16.10.16

Place: Swansea/Charlestown AM

Title: The man is the message

File: 2 Corinthians 2

Preacher: Stephen Taylor

Slide 1

In the book of 2 Samuel there is a great story about King David. David is by now an old man and his son and heir to the throne, Absalom decided he couldn't wait any longer, it was time that he took the crown that was rightfully his, even if it meant getting rid of his father by force. So David's forces were out fighting Absalom's forces. Brother against brother. Son versus father. Mate against mate but because David was very old at this time, his generals urged him not to go out and fight. They persuaded him to wait inside a walled city and they would send him word as soon as they had any news, good or bad.

Slide 2

Well David waited and waited. Why was the news taking so long to come? Had his army been defeated? Was his son still alive? Was he still the King of Israel? These questions were running through his mind, when suddenly on the horizon he saw a man running, a lonely figure far in the distance. As the man came closer and closer, King David became very anxious. Until he saw who the messenger was... Ahimaaz, son of Zadok, the priest.

And at the sight of Ahimaaz, David was greatly relieved. As he said to the watchman, "He is a good man, he must be coming with good news." And David was right, Ahimaaz had the news that his troops had won the decisive battle. But how did David know that before a word was even muttered? Because the message was the man.

You see in those days of professional message carriers, certain people were only sent if there was good news. If there was bad news, they would send a slave, just in case the king got really angry and did something rash. But if there was good news, just one sight of the messenger would allow the king to know the answers to his questions. And of course that person may be richly rewarded for giving the King his good news!

Slide 3

Now I mention this story this morning, because this idea I believe has relevance as we approach the next part of the book of 2 Corinthians. For as we read out our passage, I hope you noticed that Paul's argument kept on switching from his conduct to his message. And that puzzled me for a while until I realised something. The man is the message. The way Paul conducts himself helps to illustrate what he is trying to say.

Now that is something we all have to work at isn’t it? As someone once said I can’t hear what you are saying because you actions are shouting so loud at me. So if we believe in such concepts as God’s love, his grace, forgiveness, judgement and service then people need to see those things in our lives not just hear them in our speech. And this is what our passage is all about, this morning. Paul reminds the Corinthian Church of not just his message but his manner. For there is no discrepancy between the two - no they dovetail perfectly together.

But I wonder is our world hearing God’s message when they look at the Church, when they look at us? Over the last couple of months we have had the Royal Commission shedding a light to corrupt practises of the wider Church. How has that properly represented our God? Or we seen sections of the Church embrace the gay lifestyle or be anti immigration or corrupted by power or money. Is that really what God is like? On a regular basis we need to have a long hard look at ourselves and ask, Does my lifestyle back up God’s message?

Am I person who is always repentant of my sin? Am I person who lives by God’s grace? Am I a person where Jesus is obviously at work in me? Am I a person filled with the fruits of the Spirit? For to really communicate a truth you need to both say it and to live it. And it is only when the man is the message, the woman is the message, our whole life - faith and actions are working together, can people see how powerful a God we serve! Let’s see how this works by turning again to the first chapter of 2 Corinthians. For Paul

Slide 4

Has a self-conscious sincerity v.12 -14

“Now this is our boast. Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world and especially in our relationship with you, in the holiness and sincerity that comes from God. We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God’s grace.”

Paul points to his conduct, his relationship with the Corinthian Church, he has always tried to act graciously. You see the Corinthian Church has truly been his problem child right from the very beginning. But he wants God’s holiness and God’s sincerity to work through him into such a difficult situation. You see the message is the man, the message is the woman and so if we want the world to know about the gospel of grace we have to live in a gracious manner. If we want people to know that sin separates us from God, then they have to see what God’s holiness and God’s sincerity actually looks like in us.

Do you see the connection? If we believe in the forgiveness of sins, it should come out in the way that our lives, bit by bit, become holier. If we believe we can trust God’s words, then people should be able to trust what we say. They will see that we are sincere. We do not say yes and no in the same sentence. We do not speak around the truth. For the message is the man. And if we have a message for our world then we have to live it as well as say it!

But it is not just a message of holiness and sincerity. Verse 12 goes on "We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God's grace." Paul is at pains to point out that if he believes in the gospel of God then at times his thoughts will cut across worldly wisdom. At times he will swim against the tide, he will be called old fashioned, out of touch, out of step with community views, because his aim is not to agree with everyone but be gracious.

Paul is so serious about this that he is willing to continually check in with his conscious. He ponders whether he has been sincere in his dealings, whether his conscience ever condemns him or not. Now our conscience is not fool proof. Our conscience can become corrupted by our sin. But Paul tells the Church in Romans 12 that our mind can be renewed by offering it up to God. Our conscience can be cleansed as it is taken to Christ.

Slide 5

Friends it is incredible important that as Christians we do our thinking controlled by God’s grace. For our thinking will determine our actions and so if we don’t think graciously, if we don’t have our conscience cleansed by grace, it will never be totally clear. I like the story of the American businessman visiting Hong Kong who was walking through the downtown streets looking at all the different little shops, when he came across a tattoo parlour and as

he began looking at the different tattoos he noticed one that read "Born To Lose."

He asked the store owner "Does anyone really ever buy that tattoo?" The store owner replied, "Yes, sometimes, but before tattoo on skin, tattoo on mind." The point being that our minds do determine what we do. So how’s your thinking? How’s your attitude? What your sincerity like? It’s easy to question another person’s motives but how often do you evaluate your own motives? How often do give others the benefit of the doubt in the same way that you give yourself? If the message is the man, the message is the women it will affect our thinking so we have a self-conscious sincerity and a

Slide 6

Consistent Conduct (verses 15-22)

But in the next section, verses 15-22, you can hear the Corinthian Church say, ‘So Paul, why didn’t you keep your word? You promised to come to us on the way to Macedonia & to come to us after going to Macedonia. So we were expecting you! And now we don’t see you in person, we instead get this letter. Paul you are someone who speaks with a forked tongue. Who says yes when you mean no and no when you mean yes.’

Now we hate it when people do that to us don’t we? They ring you up on the phone and say “I’m not trying to sell you anything.” As if! You see on the TV the promise “Lose 10 kilos in 10 days for $10!” The doctor says, “This won’t hurt a bit.” The salesman says “There is no risk or obligation.” The politician promises “Read my lips, No New Taxes.”

Slide 7

Isn’t Paul just like all the others? Well Paul is aware of how important an issue this is. For he talks about God and how he isn’t Yes No, or No yes, he is just yes. God makes promises in his word and he fulfils them all, every single one. Herbert Lockyer once wrote a book entitled, All the Promises in the Bible, in which he says there are 7,457 promises of God found in the Bible! And our passage tells us that Jesus is the “yes” to every single promise of God. That’s 7,457 times the Bible says, “Yes through Jesus!”

God doesn’t say one thing and then do another. God is consistent in his relationship with his world. Which means that we can trust what he says. And if the man is the message, if the woman is the message then we need to be trustworthy as well. We need to be consistent in our conduct. So we don’t say “I’ll pray for you and never do it.” We don’t promise to do something and then fail to deliver.

Which means that if we promise our parents or our kids that we will do something we need to do it. They will not trust us if we continue to break our promises. And if we have become Church members we have made promises to God that we will support the work of the church, that we will attend regularly and that we will pray for it. Well that is what we will do & if we are married we have promised to love our wife, our husband until death do us part.

Slide 8

I had a salesman ring me up recently to try and get me to change phone providers. They would offer me a cheaper rate and they said they would get me out of my existing contract. I said no. Why? Because I didn’t want to break my word. That’s crazy they said, we can save you some money and besides everyone is doing it. Not if they are a Christian, I said, we keep our promises. We reflect a God who kept his promises to us and so we strive to have a consistent conduct in all that we do.

Slide 9

For God has kept all his promises, all of them. Each one of them Paul says is fulfilled in Jesus. That makes Jesus the most important part of the word of God. That means we need to keep coming back to Jesus no matter what the issue, no matter what the problem. Jesus is the source of God’s forgiveness. Jesus is the way we grow in holiness. Jesus is the one who gives us God’s presence. Jesus is the one who send us God’s Spirit. It’s all about Jesus.

He is God’s yes man. And so if the message is the man, we also need to be God’s yes men and women. Consistent Conduct like Jesus. Self-consciously sincere like Jesus. So has Paul broken this? Has he said one thing and then maliciously done another? Well the next aspect of his characters shows that

Slide 10

He is a man of deep devotion.

Now remember that it could take weeks to communicate over distances in the first century. There was no government mail service, no telephones, no email, no texting. The Corinthian church had one expectation & when Paul changed his plans, there was no way to quickly communicate the change to Corinth. So why did he change his plans?

V23 says, “I call God as my witness that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth. Not that we lord it over your faith but we work with you for your joy b/c it is by faith you stand firm. So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you.

Slide 11

Then he says in Verse 4 .. So I wrote to you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.”

Here we see a pastor’s heart for his people and doesn’t his heart now reflect his heavenly Fathers? Isn’t the man and the message yet again coming together at this point? For within the heart of God is a great anguish for the people of the world. Doesn’t he paint himself as the husband whose wife has jilted him in the book of Hosea? Isn’t he like the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep and goes over hill and over dale to find the one who is lost? Isn’t he like the father who loses all sense of dignity and runs, tears flowing from his eyes toward the prodigal son as he sees him far, far from home?

Paul here is weeping for this church. He says he changed his plans because he didn’t want to hurt them again. He wants them to share his joys not his sorrows. To be glad with him not grieve with him. In fact in the book of Romans he actually says that he would actually prefer to be cast into hell if it meant that his fellow countrymen, if the Jewish nation itself would only come back to God and be saved. That’s how much he cares for his people.

Slide 12

Friends is that the sort of passion you have for the rest of the people in this Church? Are there tears in your eyes when you see your brother in Christ, your sister in Christ hurt or pained. Would do you anything, anything to stop fighting and division and dissension among God’s people? Are you calling out to God for the people of our region that they might come back to the one who made them? That they might see the heart of God in sending Jesus to die on the cross for their sins?

Friends where is our passion? Where is that deep devotion that God has for us? If the message is the man, if the message is the woman then we should be men and women of tears at what is going on in our world. What about the election in America, the violence in Syria and Egypt, the war in Afghanistan, the poverty in Africa. Have you been moved by that or has TV desensitised you? And have you done something about it or just flicked the channel? In Paul we see deep devotion, consistent conduct, self-conscience sincerity and

Slide 13

There is difficult discipline.

For the trouble that has been brewing within the Corinthian church has called for some hard decisions to be made. And once again Paul has modelled how to do these things. There has been sin in the church and it has caused everyone much grief and it has caused Paul much grief as well. Now we are not entirely sure what the problem was, but it was very serious. In his first letter Paul talks in chapter 5 about a man sleeping with his father’s wife. This is most likely the issue that he is talking about here. And so in 1 Corinthians 5 Paul says the deed is so serious that this Christian brother needs to be expelled from the Church.

Slide 14

He goes on to say “you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy or idolator or a slander a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man you must not even eat.” Wow they are tough words. And you might say Paul where’s the love there? Where’s all this talk about grace and forgiveness? Isn’t that the gospel you preach? If the message is the man then surely you shouldn’t be talking so tough?

Slide 15

Yet Paul will go on to say in this second chapter that difficult discipline is tough love. For the punishment has been give to this man with the aim of producing godly sorrow, repentance, restoration. Discipline is for the person’s good. Discipline is to get rid of godlessness from the people of God. It is to ensure that Satan does not outwit us. It might hurt but it is not intended to harm. And so now we see in 2 Corinthians 2 that it actually has achieved its purpose. This man has come back and repented so he needs to be restored and forgiven.

Slide 16

Just like the gospel of Jesus shows us that repentance brings forgiveness and restoration so in the Church difficult discipline is not to get rid of people but to restore people. The problem here is not simply between a sinning brother and a grieving apostle, it is ultimately about a sinning brother and a grieving Saviour. And so once this brother is restored to their Saviour, he can be restored to the Saviour’s sons and daughters, the Church.

Slide 17