"Smelling Like The Savior" 2 Corinthians 2:12-17 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Let me read our passage for tonight, 2 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 12 down through 17.

2 Corinthians 2:12

Paul says, When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me and the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there.

So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession.

And through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere, for we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved, and among those who are perishing.

To one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

Who is sufficient for these things?

If we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.

I don't know how one acquires that title, but maybe it's self-proclaimed.

Peter Drucker, he wrote what's really known as a landmark study in the um in the schools of leadership.

It's mandatory reading in most degrees in leadership.

And so if you have a degree in leadership, perhaps you read this study.

But it's a study designed to show what the most, well, he uses the phrase hardest jobs are in the United States.

This is a secular study.

And the factors he took into it were measuring expectations, perceived stress, and I guess perceived by the by the person doing the work, leadership demands, and emotional health over the long haul.

And he ranks the four, and he gives he ranks the 20 hardest jobs in the country.

But let me read you the first four in his list.

The first, the hardest job in the country according to this study, is the president of the United States.

Although Drucker does grant in his study that he uh did no personal interview with the president, it was President Obama at the time, did no personal interview with him, but this data is just from a distance and from reading biographies of other presidents and such.

So it's a little asterisk.

I think it's there for the shock value of it, but just embrace it and move on.

Uh number two, a university president.

Number three, because of the constant demands for things you can't control, you know, you need 10,000 college 18-year-olds.

You can't get two 18-year-olds to do anything, much less 10,000 to apply to your school every year.

Uh a hospital CEO is number three on his list.

And uh again, there's all kinds of things that are outside of your control in how you measure your career and everything.

And the number four on his list was a pastor.

And he describes why, again, this is a secular study.

He describes why the job of a pastor is uh where it is on his list.

He says basically the hours, low self-esteem in pastors more than any other profession he looked at.

Pastors have lower self-esteem.

And uh kind of the Calvinist in me wants to say, no, that's right self-esteem.

Okay?

Self-esteem, schmelf-esteem.

Anyway, uh increased demands on your life that grow over time.

He points out that in many other occupations the demands lessen over time.

In pastoral ministry, it's usually the reverse where success is kind of your own um curse.

Uh in other words, church grows, more demands.

Um, and if church doesn't grow, then you know they look for another pastor.

Loneliness, and then the most common thing he said that marks pastors is betrayal, a deep sense of betrayal.

That more than any other occupation, pastors said that they feel betrayed by close friends.

Um, through uh he doesn't say this, but I'm thinking through my own life when I felt betrayed is by moral disqualification by friends, friends that I used to do ministry with, that, you know, don't abandon the faith, but enter into a life of sin that just kind of shreds the friendship that had been built up over so long.

Again, it's something out of the person's control.

He points out that on a typical month in the United States, 1,700 pastors leave the ministry.

Now, Fuller University, which is a Christian school, uh teamed with Barna uh to do the country's largest survey of pastors, and they found that 50% of pastors in the United States would leave the ministry if they could, but they don't because they don't have a degree in any other occupation.

In other words, they can't think of another way to make a living.

An incredible stat later down on that study says that 45% of pastors have had 45% of current this study is two years old, of pastors have had to take an extended leave of absence for stress or burnout.

It's almost half of pastors in a country have taken an extended leave of absence for stress or burnout.

And I know it's strange to talk about the difficulty of being a pastor to a congregation with politicians and FBI agents that go undercover and special forces combat operators that, you know, it's it's a tough crowd here.

I know.

I remember in Los Angeles once reading a book on the difficulties of pastoral ministry in my nice air-conditioned office.

Out my window, you could see the palm trees and the the sun was getting ready to set in the west out there.

My window faced west.

And I was taken for ministry, a bunch of college students to go watch the Dodgers play, and walked out to the courtyard, and that's the church at a fountain there at this point.

And it was one of those beautiful California days where the sky is blue, and even in the valley, you could smell the ocean over the hills.

One of those days, it was incredible.

I think, Ryan and Joyce, you may have even gone to this very game, and we're getting ready to all carpool down there.

And then Mike White, one of our friends, shows up and he is covered in oil and sawdust, and he smells like fire.

And it was, he looked like a monster.

And he walks up and he was doing tree work for a living, and a tree fell on power lines and pulled them into the back of his truck.

It jostled the thing that was, you know, the shredder, whatever the thing, the chipper.

The engine in the chipper froze and covered him in oil, exploded, covering him in oil, and then his truck caught on fire, and the fire department had to come and put it out.

And that was his job.

And I was taking a group of college students to watch the Dodgers play.

And it's tough to take the difficulty of pastoral ministry seriously in that kind of environment.

I vowed I will never complain about work ever again.

If I don't have to catch on fire and get covered with oil, then it's a good day.

However, come across this passage, 2 Corinthians chapter 2, and it gives you a window into the unique nature of pastoral ministry.

2 Corinthians 2 · chapter mention

It lets you kind of understand more what is going on in the heart of a pastor as he's engaged in ministry.

As I mentioned, I understand that all every job is difficult.

Some jobs are harder than others, and I hope this doesn't come across as complaining in any way, shape, or form.

Emmanuel is an incredible church and has blessed my family tremendously.

I just want to be faithful to this passage tonight and cause you to think about pastoral ministry through the lens that Paul presents it in this passage.

I'm going to give you a little outline as we go through tonight.

First, talk about the preacher's problems.

The preacher's problems.

That's the first two verses here.

Paul says, When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I couldn't find my brother Titus there.

I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.

This is kind of a jarring exchange here, where Paul says that he went to a city that the Lord had directed him to, and ministry was profitable there.

It says open door.

Now we use the phrase open door that just means like you had an opportunity, somebody asked you.

That's not what it's an idiom in the Greek language.

It doesn't just mean that you were invited somewhere.

This idiom in the Greek language means it was successful.

That what you were having there was was successful, and you know, you've seen somebody walk into a glass door or walk into a screen, they bounce back.

That's a closed door kind of idea, in this is this idiom.

And when you walk through it, you've had success, and that's what this idiom means in the Greek.

It's less on the opportunity like it is in the English, and in the Greek it's more you've you've succeeded.

And so Paul is here in Troas and he's preaching the gospel, and it is working.

The gospel is going forth, and there's fruit that's happening, and he says, Nevertheless, I needed to walk away.

That's a jarring thing to see him say.

John Trysostom, the fourth century preacher, known as the golden mouthed preacher, he wrote this 1600 years ago, quote, at first reading, these words seem unworthy of any Christian, much less the Apostle Paul.

How could any Christian say that?

That God had given me an opportunity to preach the gospel, and people were responding.

There was faith, and I left it.

What would he leave it for?

How could you walk away from an open door on the gospel?

There's a couple of reasons.

Why?

First, under the heading The Preacher's Problem, the preacher's work is never done.

It's never done.

Paul's here in Troaz and he's ministering, and people are coming to faith, but he's got a project that remains unfinished.

In this instance, namely his project is the Corinthians.

Now, Paul did have a vision of the massive man in the Macedonia saying, Come help us, and he left for that, but that's not this exchange.

He'd gone back to Troas later, four chapters later in the book of Acts, and this is his departure of Troaz, it's in Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

And Luke doesn't tell you why he leaves in Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

He's just ministering and it's going, well, and then he leaves.

And here's the window into why he leaves in 2 Corinthians 2 here.

And what you get is this idea that the Corinthian project wasn't finished.

The Corinthians, of course, are never finished.

They're a perpetual work in progress.

Every mark of an immature Christian, you see it in the Corinthian church.

The Corinthians clung to their immaturity like we cling to oxygen.

It's almost like the Corinthians lived off of doing things the wrong way.

Nevertheless, Paul loved them.

And Paul had a sense of a burden for them.

He wanted to see them grow.

He wanted to see them come into maturity.

And so even though the Lord is blessing him here in one area, he couldn't stay and work there because he had this unfinished project.

There were these people who had his heart.

You see this over and over again in 2 Corinthians.

He reminds the Corinthians, you guys have my heart.

I love you.

And, you know, to bring you up to speed here with the Corinthians, Paul had done ministry there and the church had grown, and then Paul left, and the church tanked.

They begin practicing immorality, all kinds of things that you can't even describe in this kind of setting.

That was the Corinthian church.

They were doing everything wrong.

And so Paul writes them a letter pleading with them to repent from their sin and to be Christians again and to follow the Lord and do the basics of Christianity correctly.

And they reject him.

They reject him.

And so he sends this, there's another letter in between.

And then finally this letter, 2 Corinthians, he sends it to them and wants them to, this is his final appeal to them.

And meanwhile, between these two letters, they're spreading all kinds of lies about him.

They're telling him, they're, you know, accusing Paul of being in it for the money, saying that he's, you know, he's weak in person.

His word is mine.

Don't listen to his letter.

You know, he's got a strong pin, but he is his weak sauce in person.

You would never be impressed with this guy face to face.

And they're damaging him in the church.

And Paul knows this, and it's breaking his heart.

So even though he's in this other field here in Troas and the gospel is going forward there, his heart is still back with these people.

One commentator in this passage says that the distinguishing mark of pastoral ministry is that we're not making chairs.

What the commentator meant by that is that the pastor is never done with his work.

Because you understand the nature of progressive sanctification, that you will grow in godliness throughout your life.

You're always growing in godliness.

And it's the pastor's job, according to Ephesians chapter 4, to present you as a mature work in Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

To equip the saints for the work of the ministry and present you as a mature follower of Christ, which means your growth is over.

You've maxed out.

And that never happens in this world.

That never happens in this life.

So you'll never have a pastor come home, and his wife will ask him, how was your day at work?

And he'll never say, I finished everything I had to do.

In that sense, it's almost like being a mailman.

You know, you deliver the mail one day, but the truck is full again, you know.

The mailman never says, I delivered all the mail.

I don't have to come back tomorrow.

Mission accomplished.

There's always more work in someone's life and heart to do.

The Corinthians certainly were a work in progress.

They were yanked this way and that way by every wind and wave of doctrine.

They would believe anything they were sold.

I heard once a pastor say, speaking of philosophy of ministry, he said, you know, it's a bad idea to have a philosophy of ministry.

The world is filled with philosophies of ministries.

You should look around and see what kind of philosophies the Lord is blessing and just do that.

Like if you see something working, just do that.

If the Lord makes this church grow, do what that church is doing to grow.

And then if those churches stop growing, see what other new churches are growing and buy their products and buy their programs and do that.

And that's the ticket for perpetual immaturity.

That's the Corinthian philosophy of ministry, right there.

Hey, it grows the temple of Jupiter, let's do it in the church.

That was their attitude.

Because of that, Paul is constantly fighting to get them to try to grow when they seem like they want to run the wrong way.

They were begging Paul to be immature.

Paul tells them in chapter 7 that he feels like they ripped out his heart.

He says actually in the middle of chapter 6, he circles back to it in chapter 7 and says, despite what you've done, chapter 7, verses 1 and 2, I believe, he says, My heart stands open for you.

I want to keep room in my heart for you.

Will you please come back to me?

Not because Paul cares about his own reputation, but because he cares about Christ.

He begs them to grow up.

This is why he says, 2 Corinthians 11, verse 29, who is weak and I'm not weak?

2 Corinthians 11:29

Who is made to fall and I'm not indignant?

Paul says, the weakest, you know, the pastor's healthier, the pastor's spiritual health is as strong as the weakest person in the church.

2 Corinthians 11, 29.

Is there an immature believer in the church?

Then it weighs on the pastor's heart.

It doesn't weigh on his heart in a sense, like a family member struggling does.

It's a different kind of weighing on your heart.

You know, if you have a family member who's immature in the Lord or who's rejecting Christ, that weighs in your heart because you're concerned about their eternal destiny.

That weighs in the heart because you love them as a person.

From the pastoral perspective, that's all there as well.

What's added to that is that this is your calling.

This is what you've been called by Christ to do, is to present this person mature in Christ.

To fan the flame of affection for Christ in their heart.

And that's why if there's a weak person in the church, it it makes the pastor weak.

There's someone who falls into the sin of the church, it makes the pastor Paul's word as indignant.

You never get to move on to your next project.

There is no next project.

There's always people with their hearts that needed to grow more in love with Jesus Christ.

That's why I think secretly that Jesus was a carpenter.

The chair could be done.

He could say chair and it would be done.

Or if he was bored, he could work on it and make it.

But then it's done.

Not so in pastoral ministry, which is an amazing job, but it comes with a second difficulty.

His work is never done.

Secondly, his friends are far-flung.

His friends are scattered, and this is the way the Lord orchestrates the church.

There's a door open in one place for the preaching of the gospel, and Paul preaches, and the people responded.

And you think, what more could a pastor want in life?

He's preaching the gospel, there's a revival breaking forward.

What more could a pastor want in life than that?

This is the church growth experts.

We're flocking to Paul and Troas to say, oh, look at what he's doing.

Let's do that.

People were surrounding him to imitate his style.

It's that kind of success, and he says, I've got to go.

And you think, what is making him leave?

Now part of it is the Corinthians.

He needs to hear how they're doing.

He's his heart breaks for them.

He wants the response, you know, what happened to them.

Did they receive his angry letter that he had sent them?

Did they receive, uh, did they finally repent from what he wrote then in 1 Corinthians?

He wants to know.

And so he's on the hunt for them.

But that's only part of it.

There's a second part of this, is that he was missing Titus.

He uses this interesting phrase here.

My spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there.

Even though the gospel is going forward from him, he's missing his friend.

The phrase, find my brother Titus, this is the very strange Greek construct.

This might not mean anything to more than a few of you, but I'm going to say it anyway.

It's an articular infinitive in the dative case with no preposition.

Can you believe it?

It means it's a it's a causal connection here.

It's the only place in the whole New Testament this is used.

It's that kind of construct is used in secular Greek, but this is the only Christian use of it that we know of.

And it's Paul saying that he's looking for Titus.

Almost like the absence of Titus is pulling his heart out of Troas.

Titus is a magnet and he's being sucked away from it because of his particular friendship and fellowship with him.

He makes, I think, nine references to Titus in this letter.

He keeps going back because he's trying to tell the Corinthians how important their repentance is to him.

He keeps connecting it to Titus.

He's looking for his friend.

You think what would make a church planter walk away from an open door to the gospel?

Some of it is the Corinthians, but much of it is his love for Titus.

He cannot find his friend.

He says in chapter 8, verse 23, as for Titus, he's my partner and fellow worker for your benefit.

Notice the nature of his friendship with Titus was that they were both working in the same field.

They were both working in the Corinthian field.

That's why Paul and Titus got so long and got along so well together.

Paul did not have a lot of friends, if you know this from reading his biography, which I'm going to call the book of Acts.

He didn't have a lot of friends.

He had Luke.

But by this point in his life, by the point of 2 Corinthians, or Acts chapter 20, is where this fits in there.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

By this point in his life, Demas is gone.

Demas fell in love with this present world.

John Mark left a few years earlier.

Barnabas left over that.

There's not a lot of people left.

It's Paul, Luke, who's going to stick with him till the end, and Titus.

And now he can't find his friend.

Titus was a Greek convert through Paul's ministry.

Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles.

Titus was one.

Baptized under his ministry.

Paul likely baptized him.

Now Paul has to send his worker away, and they were supposed to reunite again.

This is a world without cell phones.

You understand the difficulty here?

You have a hard time finding your, you know, if you leave your phone in the car at home, you can't find your wife in the mall or the grocery store, you know.

Imagine looking through Macedonia for a friend.

And that's where he finds himself.

And so he comes to a place in his heart where he says, No Titus, no peace, no preaching.

You know, we understand that we're chess pieces.

Every Christian gets this, God moves us around the board as he sees fit.

In a sense, if you've been in the military, you understand this dynamic.

You know, the military will leave you in a couple places for a year and then move you somewhere else so that your skills are exposed and you don't develop roots too or an affiliation too deep in one particular area.

It's a little different though in the pastoral ministry because it's not exactly the same mission in the military, but in pastoral ministry, it's the same mission for the same group of people.

Where God gives people a work in a vineyard.

You understand this with Michael Easley leaving.

You understand his friendship and his fellowship and the love that he has for people in this church, even though he's in a different vineyard now.

It's that same dynamic.

You have shared relationships with people who labor with us, not just because we have a similar calling, but because we're laboring for the same people.

And so this is what drew my heart to this passage here that you see Paul saying, I can't keep going forward preaching the gospel if I cannot find my fellowship here, if I cannot find my friend here.

It's sweet in God's providence that he develops friendships with pastors, that he then moves around the world from each other, but their hearts stay united with the same people in the same place.

So that's the preacher's problem.

His work is never done, his friends are far flung.

Secondly, let's look at his position, the preacher's position.

He's a person who's being offered to the world.

So Paul is here in torment, can't find Titus.

Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession.

And what a contrast here.

He says, I'm distraught, I can't find my friends.

I can't keep doing ministry without my friend.

I'm distraught because I don't know what's happened to Corinthians.

But thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph.

It's like that's out of out of place.

It's out of place.

You've seen in the, you know, in the NFL, a receiver will catch a touchdown pass, but you know, he pushed off.

It was offensive pass interference.

He obviously pushed off.

You know, he knifed the defender, knifed the safety in the back.

The guy's lying there dead.

The yellow flag comes in, he catches the ball, he then spikes it and does the whole celebration.

He runs up and he's celebrating with the fans in the crowd, and and everybody knows it doesn't.

Count.

He knows it doesn't count.

He's going through the motions of celebrating anyway.

You almost feel sorry for him a little bit, I think.

I was goes through my mind is what Tom Joyce said this morning.

You know, you should act like you've been there a little bit before.

You think, is that what's happening here?

You know, Paul's at his low point here, but he says, God always leaves us in triumphal procession.

Doesn't that seem out of place?

Can you picture Paul with his back all cut up?

I mean, how many times was he lashed?

I can't even do the math.

Four, five times, 39 lashes?

How many times was he beaten and left to die?

He's got a viper scar on him.

He's been shipwrecked.

And yet he says, God always leads us in triumph.

It's an outrageous thing to say.

Now what's neat here is Paul takes his eyes off of his own problem.

And by the way, this right here is a little window in here if you're dealing with worry or anxiety or quote low self-esteem, to use the phrase I used earlier.

Notice how Paul combats it here.

And Paul is.

I mean, he's distraught enough, he's walking away from ministry to look for his friends.

Notice what he does to combat it here.

He takes his eyes, he wrestles his eyes off of himself and puts them on Christ.

He says, I'm not going to keep looking at myself because if this paragraph keeps going about where's Titus, who knows what this book will be like?

It'll be like the book of Lamentations.

But he wrestles his eyes off of himself, lifts them up, and he says, Let me talk about Jesus for a second.

He's always leading us in triumph.

And this is true for every Christian that you can fight despondency in your life by taking your eyes off of you and putting them on Christ.

But the crux of this, as I mentioned earlier, is particularly for those who make their living from the gospel.

Because look what he says about Christ.

He's always leading us in triumphal procession.

Should make it remind you of Matthew 16.

Your name is Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, the gates of hell won't triumph over it.

There's a triumph theme going on here.

This procession would be known to the Greeks and not so, well, known to us.

We would, you know, at the World Series or whatever, the team comes back and there's like a ticker-tape parade or something like that.

But the Romans had a very precise way of doing this kind of victory procession.

Let me read you the order of these victory processions.

It would be a big parade coming into town, returning from battle.

First would be the judges.

So the judge, the magistrates would be at the front of the parade.

Second would be the Senate.

Whatever senators were there for the battle, they would be following the judge.

Third would be the trumpeters, a whole battalion of trumpeters to announce the parade's entrance.

Next would be the spoils.

Whatever was captured, we put on the back of chariots and brought through on the, you know, like horse trailers, brought through all the gold and the riches they they captured.

Next would be the flutus.

Is that the right word?

Flautis?

Flutus?

Flautus, there you go, playing the flutes.

I picture them dancing around and such.

Next would be the oxen.

You know why there's oxen in this parade?

Because they're going to be sacrificed.

The parade's going to go to the temple, or whatever gods were conquered, the oxen would be sacrificed to Jupiter's who it was sacrificed to.

Then would be the captives, whatever soldiers laid down their arms and were taken captive in battle, they're next, following the oxen.

It's going to be a little bit uh disturbing to them.

Wondering, are we gonna be put to death too?

Then the captured dignitaries, the other generals and officers, they would be in chains.

Now the soldiers, they're not in chains.

They're just marching in the captured soldiers, they're marching in lines.

But the dignitaries, they're chained up, and they would often be killed.

Then the hero of the battle standing up on a platform.

The hero of the battle, it's like the whoever gets the ball after a you know the Super Bowl, you get the game ball kind of thing.

That's this, the person who was most valiant in the battle.

Often it would be the general, but the general could give it to somebody else.

And this guy, by the way, whoever the hero is, he would have a slave standing behind him holding a crown above his head.

Now he's not allowed to wear the crown because that would, you know, demonstrate insubordination, but he's got the crown being held over his head for this whole parade as if he were the king.

They would dress him like the god Jupiter.

And then behind him would be all the soldiers that participated in the victory.

There would be another slave next to the guy with the crown who would have incense, and he'd be swinging this ball of incense around.

And it's a great question to think: who are you in this parade?

Paul says God always leads us in the victory march.

And you know, you wonder, who are you, who are the Christians in this?

Are you the spoil?

Did you belong to the enemy and God captured you and rescued you and stole you from the devil, is now parading you through the world as somebody who'd been captured.

That's what one view is.

Are you one of the soldiers?

And Paul here is writing as a pastor, are you one of the soldiers that's going to war?

But I think the best way to understand this is Paul saying that we are the fragrance.

He spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere, but he does it through us, he says in verse 14.

So I think the way Paul sees himself fixing in this is that he's the incense being flung around.

Reminds me of Romans 8, verse 37.

Romans 8:37

In all these things we are more than conquerors.

There's a whole parade that's coming in.

And Paul says, Oh, we're the incense.

We're about to be in this very particular scent that was associated with Jupiter's temple.

And be swung around.

And Paul says, that's what we are.

In two ways.

First, we offer life to the world.

We're fragrance of the knowledge of God to him everywhere, verse 14 says.

We're the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, both of them.

Well, look at the look at the those who are being saved first.

He says in verse 16, we're the aroma of life to life.

Of life to life.

As Christ is on his victory parade, he's offering up his followers, his incense to the world.

And for some people, they cheer this proclamation.

Some people encounter Christians in Christian ministry and they rejoice.

They hear the gospel's going forward, they hear somebody getting saved, and they say, Amen.

That's great news that so-and-so is getting saved.

That's great news that the gospel being preached there and proclaimed there.

Praise be to God.

Now, only a Christian would have that response because it's good news to see other people becoming Christians.

That response indicates the love of Christ in somebody's heart.

They love Christ, they've been born again.

Jonathan Edwards said it this way: Christ is the rose, his ministers are its scent.

Jesus is the rose.

Those who proclaim him to the world are the scent of the rose.

Even this morning, I wasn't preaching this morning.

So Didra and I went on a walk this morning.

I guess that's what people who aren't preaching do in Sunday mornings.

It was fun.

It was spring out there.

Daffodils growing up in the ground.

When did that happen?

We saw a chipmunk.

Isn't he supposed to be hibernating, scurrying around in front of me?

It felt a little bit like spring.

Now it was still cold out there, granted.

But it was kind of cold.

You breathe in the air and it has life in it.

It has the smell of life to it.

You can see the green starting to come out.

We saw a mosquito at our house last week.

Can you believe it?

That has the smell of death to it.

But the point is, the point is that spring is coming.

And you breathe in that air, not that, not that cold winter air when there's fires going on, not that smell.

But you know the smell I'm talking about.

The smell on a cold day, but of life, of spring around the corner.

That's what Paul says he is to Christians.

Because if they love Christ, they can smell the life in him.

But not everybody smells Christians like that.

Some people smell Christians and they smell like death.

And they smell like death.

A while ago, a mouse died in our basement.

Never found him.

I went on a hunt.

I know the room it died in.

I absolutely know what room he was in.

But I don't know where he was.

I went through everything.

And of course, it's the room with the most stuff in it in the basement.

And I could not find that guy.

I looked for probably two weeks.

And now it's just, now I'm gonna find a mouse skeleton one day.

I'll keep you posted.

But you know that smell.

That's the smell of a Christian to the world.

Christ smells like how he wants to be smelled to the believers, and he smells like how he wants to be spelled to the rep the reprobate also, to the damned as well.

To the elect, they encounter Christ, and their nose fills with life.

To the reprobates, to the condemned, they encounter Christ and they smell like death.

Now, what changes here is not Christ.

Christ is the same scent, and the image of the victory parade is critical here.

You know, if you are a Roman, you smell the scent of Jupiter's temple and you rejoice.

But if you're a, you know, so if you lived in Greece and this is a parade that had conquered Alexander's empire, and you smell that same sense, and you're revolted.

You know, if you're in Alexandria as the parade comes through, you smell that European sense and it makes you feel nauseous.

It's not the sense of victory, it's a sense of humiliation.

What changes is not the sense.

You understand that.

What changes is your affection for Christ, your affection for Rome in the analogy.

And Paul says, that is the pastor.

That is the person who's in this, who's making his life off of the gospel.

He's presented to the world in one or two ways, either as life or as death.

He has no other job to fall back on.

He's not known as being the lawyer, and he excels in being a lawyer, and so he has his reputation.

Is there yes, he shares the gospel with people, of course he does.

But at the end of the day, he's going to be known as a good lawyer with some wacky views about Christianity.

Paul has none of that to fall back on.

He's only known as the sent of Christ.

The word of God is precious and it's not sown in vain.

For some people it hardens, for some it softens, some smell life and some smell death.

Either way, his work is accomplished.

And let that hit you.

I mean, I want you guys tonight, I want you to see Paul's heart here.

That he has this knowledge that as people smell him and they think of death, he's doing what Christ has called him to do.

That's his life.

People smell him and they want to put him to death.

And all he can say is that God always gives me the victory as they're beating him.

Well, why would anybody do this?

This leads to the preacher's privilege.

The preacher's privilege.

There's two that Paul points out here.

There's many.

He has a whole list of them in 1 Corinthians 9, but now he's going to call out two here.

Preacher's privilege.

First, he says, We speak the truth.

First, we speak the truth.

He says, Who's sufficient for these things?

That's the question.

Why would anybody do this?

Who is sufficient for these?

Who could be the sent of Christ to the world?

Nobody would sign up for this.

But we are not, he says, like so many peddlers of God's word, but men of sincerity as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.

And so I want to focus here on this mouthpiece of it.

He says, we're speaking.

What the pastor is doing is he is speaking.

That's his ministry.

You've heard the phrase, preach the gospel at all times.

If necessary, use words attributed to St.

Francis of Assisi.

It's unkind to attribute to him something that dumb, I think.

You always use your words.

That's the preaching of the gospel, and that's how the pastor is called.

He's using his mouth.

Notice what it says: we speak in Christ.

And he says we speak the truth.

We're not peddlers.

The word peddler in the Roman Empire, there was huckster is the way it's often translated.

Huckster.

It's somebody who buys the fabric or buys the trinkets, go to like some third world market, and there's all like the candle holders or the breadbaskets or whatever.

The huckster bought those from the person who made them and is now hawking them on the street.

There's no set price.

These guys don't sign a contract.

It's not like in the United States you have a contract with the price is often printed on it.

No, that's not the way it goes.

Whatever guy that guy can get above what he bought it for is profit to him.

And so he's always going to be jacking up the price.

He's hucking it, that's what the Greek word really is.

He's hucking it to the world.

A huckster is how it's put in some translation.

Here it's peddler.

It's somebody who's on the street who's trying to get you to buy this.

And Paul says that's not what the pastor is doing.

The pastor's not trying to get people to get saved so they give more tithe and so he can get a better car.

He's not hawking this.

He's not peddling this.

He's acting as he's speaking, we hear he and Titus, as men of sincerity.

They're speaking the truth.

In other words, he's not gaining profit from others' conversion.

All glory be is to Christ.

Most religious leaders in other religions, they sell their religion like cheap wine.

Diluted, watered down, doctored.

And Paul says, may it never be for a Christian minister.

We would never dilute what we're selling.

We're not peddling anything fraudulent.

We are men of sincerity, he says.

In other words, what he's saying is the truth.

And finally, the preacher's privilege, they speak the truth and finally ordained by Christ.

The main question of this passage: who could possibly be qualified for such a role as this in presenting the gospel to the world?

Who could possibly do this?

Who is sufficient for this?

If Paul is having an open door for the gospel and it's not being and it's being received, and he cannot endure the absence of his friend, he cannot endure the burden he has for the Corinthians, then who could do this anywhere?

He says we're ordained.

Commissioned is the word here, but it's the word for ordained by God to speak in Christ.

You remember Jeremiah who tried to quit, right?

God says, Jeremiah, are you gonna go preach my preach my word to the nations?

And Jeremiah says, No.

No, thank you.

You can put that in a job fair because we're out.

And God says, You're missing the point, Jeremiah.

I called you.

I called you.

You don't say no to God.

And so to Jeremiah's rest of his ministry, as you're reading the book of Jeremiah, you see his heartache, you see that he wants to quit again.

He says, I'm making, I'm gonna make a vow right now, God.

I'm not gonna speak anything about you ever again.

I'm vowing I will be quiet there.

You'll see.

But he goes on to say, I couldn't keep it in.

His word made me grow weary.

It burned like fire in my bones.

I could not keep from speaking because he had been called by God.

And so ultimately that's the privilege.

The question: who is sufficient for these things?

The answer is nobody.

Nobody's sufficient for these things.

Nobody sufficient to be the incense of Christ of the world.

Zero people are sufficient.

Nevertheless, God commissions some to do so.

Do you want to know why the church ordains people?

So that there's this confidence in that person's mind.

So when the days come when the person says, people aren't responding to my ministry.

I'm preaching and nobody is listening.

I'm preaching and people aren't growing in Christ.

I've been preaching in the same place for five years, and I've seen two baptisms, and I haven't seen people growing in Christ.

What gives the power?

And you know, you know, the pastor knows that it's not in his control.

It's the sovereignty of God over salvation.

So the pastor says, I'm doing things right, I'm preaching the word of God, people aren't getting saved, people aren't responding.

What gives him the courage to keep preaching?

What gives him the discipline to keep showing up?

It's the knowledge that he was commissioned by God to use the language that Paul uses at Timothy.

The godly men came around and laid hands on him and set him aside for pastoral ministry.

And the Corinthians are gonna lie about Paul's ordination.

They're gonna say, oh, he did it for the money.

And Paul is able to say right here at the start of his letter to them, No.

I was commissioned by remember who commissioned Paul?

Peter, James, the apostles.

Apostles, I was commissioned by Christ to do this work.

When I was installed here as Pastor Mike Leasley to give me a card, I have it hanging on my wall right now.

It's got this quote by Bruce Delaman on it.

Quote, preaching is the most public of ministries, and therefore the most conspicuous in its failure, and the most subjective to the temptation of hypocrisy.

Think about that.

The most public of all the ministries, the most obvious in its failure, and the most tempting to be a hypocrite.

Because you just have to, you know, put on a show is the what goes in the person's mind.

There's no special honor in being so gifted.

There's only special pain.

The pulpit calls to the preacher as the sea calls to its sailors, and like the sea, it batters and bruises and does not rest.

But always there's the there is the lure of its better and incomparable society.

In other words, and I've I've meditated on this a lot.

In other words, the preacher preaches and doesn't see a response, doesn't see a response.

Why does he go back?

Because there's the lure of the better and incomparable society.

There's the lure that the preaching is doing work in people's hearts.

It is going to make a difference.

Because the word of God never returns void.

And he says this to preach, to really preach, is to die naked a little at a time.

And to know each time you do it that you must do it again.

Only one certainty sustains the preacher, that God never denies a man peace except to give him glory.

This minute of sincerity is commissioned by God, and the sight of God we speak in Christ.

Lord, we're grateful that you have chosen weak instruments to proclaim your word.

We pray that you would use us as believers to take the gospel into the world.

I pray for every person here, every brother and sister in the Lord, they would be active in sharing their faith.

They would be bold in proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.

They would work quietly with their hands.

They would have a reputation for good works, as a hard workers above reproach in their in their vocation.

And they would seize every opportunity to be an example to others and to preach the good news to those that would listen.

At the same time, Lord, I pray for those who work for the church.

Thinking of these words from Pastor Easley, I pray that she would guard our hearts from hypocrisy.

She would guard our hearts from falling back on doing programs on thinking if we can only get these programs done and seeing our identity and getting programs done, keep us focused not on programs, but on the people.

On the affections of Christ.

Use our ministry to grow people's affections more and more in love with you.

You know it's a difficult calling to make a living by the gospel.

We know that every vocation because of the curse has difficulty.

Think of people that go off to war and to protect our country, being willing to lay down their lives and think of wives that say goodbye to so many people who go to fight with uncertainty about if they'll return.

We know that every vocation has its difficulty.

At the same time here, Lord, we pray that Paul's words would resonate in our hearts.

Often there seems to be an open door, but the desire to see spiritual growth keeps us from pursuing it.

The desire to find our friends scattered around the world keeps us from pursuing it.

But no matter where we are, we know we're the aroma of Christ.

Life to life, death to death.

We may not be sufficient for this, but you have called us and commissioned us.

We give you the grace for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You have been listening to Emmanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson.

You can find more resources like this at IBCBA.com.

Here is the parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you've heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow crisis, please visit our church website, IBCBA.com.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here.

We'd love to have more information about where you know where we worship.

No matter where you work, everyone.