2 Corinthians 2v14-17 – Evangelism

The passage is Second Corinthians two, fourteen to seventeen.

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal, 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, and the other a fragrance from life to life.

Who is sufficient for these things?

For 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.

And so reads God's word.

Welcome to you if you join us while we're singing.

My name is Mark.

I'm uh one of the leaders here at uh City Church.

You're very welcome if you're new or uh or visiting.

You can turn up uh that short passage that Colin uh read uh for us.

52 verses last week.

Uh feel sorry for Lena having to read all of those.

Colin got three.

Uh, but we are in a little bit of uh uh a kind of a one-off space.

Let me just kind of map out where we're going over the next little while.

From the 14th of September, because I'm traveling next week, uh, but from the 14th of September, we'll be starting a new series uh in uh the book of Ephesians, looking at what the Ephesians, uh the book of Ephesians has to say about the church, what it means to be the church, what even is the church, and what is the purpose uh of the church and why is it part of God's plans?

That's what we're gonna be doing for six weeks.

So it's gonna be a bit of a hop, skip, and jump actually, through the book of Ephesians, and then after Halloween, we're gonna do a uh a slightly more uh topical teaching series, which is unusual for us if you're new, uh, on uh on the Holy Spirit, who he is and what he does.

And uh that will take us up to uh to Christmas time.

So that by way of being in the cinema and offering you a trailer uh you know this autumn, uh coming soon to City Church Dublin, two series, Ephesians uh on what is the church being built together and then in the Holy Spirit.

But we uh had this interlude today where we're looking at what it means, uh what evangelism is, and uh what it means to be sharing Christ with uh with those around us.

And so I begin, and you've hopefully you've got that text open, with the kind of governing image that Paul's using in the text.

I want to ask you, you what what what is the smell that takes you to your happy place?

Maybe it's the uh the smell of uh of bread baking, and you suddenly remember that you're you're back in your grandmother's house.

Or maybe it's coming home from school and smelling the jollof rice that your mother has prepared, and that smell filling your nostrils, you think, I am I'm home.

I'll tell you what mine is.

Uh my grandfather uh wore uh the same flat cap for as long as I knew him.

So he died when I was uh when I was 21.

Uh but for all his life that I knew, he wore the same flat cap.

And uh because he was utterly bald.

He was bald by the time he was 21.

I don't get his don't get his genes.

I'm not as follically challenged as he was.

He wore the flat cap every day and he smoked a lot.

And after he died, I went to his room and I took his cap and I still wear it.

And to me, it still smells of him, it smells of a mixture of sweat and Benson and hedges.

But that's my granddaughter.

You might think that's not the most attractive smell, but when I smell it, I think I'm nine years old again, I'm holding his hand, walking down into Black Rock Village in County Louth to buy ice cream.

What smell arouses that sort of memory in you?

Because smells can be so evocative, can't they?

They can just stir those memories, those emotions.

And Paul here in this short passage that we're looking at says that Christians are the smell of Jesus.

We're the aroma of Christ.

That is, that our speech, our lives, how we act, that they all diffuse a fragrance to those around us.

The governing image here is of a great victory procession.

So Paul writing to the Roman city of Corinth is drawing on something that the Corinthians would have known.

It is of a great Roman victory parade.

And here's how I would have gone down.

Say a great Roman general like Julius Caesar or uh or Pompey or somebody like that had won a great victory on a field of battle out in uh out in Germany or out in France in Gaul, and uh and they were coming back victorious.

There would have been a great victory parade, like an open-top bus here in Dublin where the Sam Maguire is paraded around.

Not at the minute, but anyway, uh a great open top bus parade.

And there would have been lots of people involved.

There would have been the general himself, he'd have been there on the great white horse as a sign of his moral purity and victory.

There would have been people holding placards with signs uh with his name, you know, Julius Victor, he is the victor, and of the uh the peoples that he had conquered.

There would have been the uh his his mighty men, his soldiers riding just behind him, uh taking waves from the crowds as they threw flowers at them.

And then behind them again, there would have been the captives, those who had been defeated, and they would be led behind as a sign that this general was victorious.

Now, before any of those people arrived, there was one other group.

Before the placards, before the general, before his men, and before the slaves, there was a bunch of people who would walk ahead carrying great incense burners.

They would carry these big bowls of incense, and they were to alert the crowd that the victor was coming, that the victory had been won, and that he was on his way.

And Paul identifies himself with those people.

He says that he and his ministry, and we as Christians, are like those incense bearers bearing the fragrance of the Lord Jesus, saying that the victory has been won.

Amen.

And that the victor is coming, that we must prepare ourselves for his victory parade.

That is who Paul says he is in his ministry.

He's not the impressive guy sitting on the horse right beside Jesus, riding on another great stallion.

He says, I'm I'm walking out in front, telling people that the victory's been won and that the victor is coming.

And that that's what we are to be like as disciples of Jesus, as followers of him.

We carry the aroma of Christ.

And so evangelism is carrying the fragrance of Christ to every sphere of life that God has placed us in.

Now, what does that look like?

Four things from three verses.

You're welcome.

Uh this morning.

First is that our our lives point to his victory, that our lives point away from ourselves and point to him.

Each one of us in this room is tempted to look and sound more impressive than you might actually be.

Maybe it is because we think that we are great, or maybe it's because actually what we want to do is we cover over our insecurities, but we want to present an image to people that people respond positively to.

The Corinthians were all about image.

They were all about how things appeared.

They would have loved Instagram if they had still been alive.

Everything would have been filtered, everything would have been perfectly curated.

They were the content creators of the ancient world.

All of their thumbnails would have been shocked reactions.

Seven reasons why Paul's an idiot.

You'll not believe the seventh one.

You would have been like that.

Everything was all about image.

And Paul didn't fit it.

Paul didn't have the right look, he didn't say the right things, he wasn't impressive, he wasn't big, he wasn't mighty, he had weak eyes like myself.

He couldn't hear so well.

And the Corinthians looked at Paul and went, We're to be like you.

Paul says, Yes, because it's not about you, it's not about pointing to yourself, it's about pointing to his victory.

Again, Paul isn't saying that he's one of the chief lieutenants.

All of the Corinthians would have been like, oh yeah, like I'm sure we're all on the horses with Jesus, all waving to the crowd and picking up the flowers from the small child and looking off into the middle distance.

And Paul said, No, you've you've got it wrong.

We're the incense bearers heralding the victory, saying that the victor is coming, and it's not you, and it's not me.

His job was not to look impressive, to receive the cheers and congratulations of the worship, worship and adulation of people.

He was to tell people that the king was coming.

This is who we are as disciples.

When the world says, look at me, disciples of Jesus say, look past me.

Don't look at me.

Look at who I'm pointing to, look at who I'm seeking to follow, look at who I'm seeking to emulate.

Look at Jesus.

Christ is the victor, he is the conquering hero.

The battle has been won, and the battleground was not some uh great field of valor.

No, it's a hill outside of Jerusalem called the place of the skull.

Jesus' own victory does not come by strength of arms, but by weakness.

That's the great paradox and beautiful irony of Christianity that Christ the victor dies in shame.

That's how he secures his victory, bearing sin.

And the proof that he is victorious, the great proof that he has defeated those great enemies of sin and death, that he has triumphed over those spiritual powers of darkness that would seek to accuse and tear us down.

How do we know that he has been victorious?

The empty grave.

The empty grave is the great victory parade as Christ emerges from the tomb on that first Easter day.

The spread of the gospel is the continuing of the victory parade of King Jesus.

And who does he use?

Weak incense-bearing people like you and me.

Don't let your current view of yourself, your current follies, or your past failures stop you from pointing to Jesus, from pointing past yourself.

Because the victory was not dependent on you, the victory depended on him.

And so it's not based, therefore, on our impressiveness.

As a church, as we prepare for a new academic year, let's think about how it is we can point beyond ourselves in everything that we do, from Sunday mornings to community to community groups to all of those little gatherings that happen, whether it's frisbee or a prayer triplet or a park run.

How can we point beyond ourselves?

How can we be the aroma of Christ and invite people who don't know that Jesus has won the victory and that he is coming?

How can we be the aroma of Christ in their nostrils?

How can we invite them to join that great victory parade and to know him and to find life in the victorious King Jesus who conquered death?

Who are you inviting to savor the aroma of Christ in your life?

Secondly, we spread the aroma of Christ everywhere.

Everywhere.

Paul in the passage just immediately before this talks about some of the sufferings that he's been through.

Second Corinthians is a is a great, has a great litany of all of the things that Paul has endured for the sake of the gospel.

And in verses 12 and 13, he tells of his anxiety, how worried he was, that he couldn't find his friend and co-worker Titus.

And it's in the context of that worry, anxiety, heartbreak, longing that he says, verse 14, but thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, as through us, 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.

The triumphal procession of the Lord Jesus is not always or even usually an easy road.

In the Old Testament, the people of Israel, the people of God in the Old Testament, were described by the prophets as a myrtle tree.

You might not know what myrtle is, and that's fine.

I knew some dinner ladies at school called myrtle, but it's a tree that used to grow in the Middle East.

And one of the things about the myrtle tree is the myrtle tree smells amazing when the flowers have been crushed.

When the flowers are crushed, the fragrance of the myrtle tree bursts forth.

That it's only when the leaves, when the petals are crushed, that the fragrance bursts forth and fills the room.

God has crushed you by exile in Babylon.

But actually, through that crushing, you're gonna spread the aroma of Yahweh to the world.

And how often is it that when we observe in a believer's life it's those seasons of suffering, it's those seasons of trial that actually make the Lord Jesus really beautiful in somebody's life?

It's those moments when you're observing somebody going through grief, when you're observing somebody going through sickness, when you're observing somebody going through difficulty, and they do so with such a resilient dependence on the Lord Jesus that actually you look at their life and go, wow.

Jesus is altogether beautiful to them.

How is it that you can live a life like that?

And as you observe, you it's like your own nostrils are filled with the beautiful aroma of the Lord Jesus.

Not because they're living a victorious life, not because everything's going well, not because they have a great job and ever and promotion after promotion and financial success.

No, because they are being crushed and Christ is still enough.

In the same way.

When we endure suffering with such resilient hope in the victory of Jesus, we often don't need our words to express what is going on inside us.

But of course, everywhere also means not just every circumstance, but into every location, every sphere of life that God has placed you in.

During COVID, uh I got given a uh a smoker.

Not like my not like my granddaughter, just not like kind of just standing in the corner of the room.

No, an actual uh like pit smoke, like a uh a smoker for meat.

So it was a barrel with another little fire barrel there.

And one of the things you need to know about where I live is we don't live in the middle of nowhere.

We live uh in kind of suburbia with lots of houses connected right by one another.

The gardens are not big, they're pretty kind of postage stamp.

And so when I fired up the smoker during those COVID lockdowns, you would suddenly hear all the back doors open because everybody was going in to bring in their washing.

Imagine how popular I was.

I got more popular when I wheeled it out and gave everybody pulled pork.

They loved me then.

But what happened for those six hours when the smoker was just going constantly?

The smoke infused everything.

People can smell it in their houses, people smelled it on their clothes.

My clothes smelled so bad that I took them off and put them in the laundry basket.

And the laundry basket in our bed in our bedroom is directly below the fire extended the smoke alarm.

And the clothes set off the smoke alarm.

That's how sensitive the aroma was to the smoke alarm.

The smell lingered.

You know, you get in the shower after you've been sitting uh the next morning after you've been around a fire pit and you can smell it again.

Or when you've had a really garlicky meal the night before, you know, lots of kind of garlic sauce on that kebab.

You get in the shower the next day and you're like, why is there a kebab in here?

Aha, no, it's in your pores, right?

You can it lingers on you.

The aroma of Christ should permeate and filter and marinate through every aspect of our lives.

It's so easy, isn't it, to want to try and compartmentalize our life.

Maybe what we do here from what we do during the week, what we say about ourselves in church and community group, and then what we say about ourselves to um to our colleagues or online to others.

Paul's encouragement is to let the aroma of Christ diffuse through every circumstance, every sphere of your life, every compartment of your own heart.

Perhaps especially those bits where you're like, oh, I don't really want Jesus to have that part of me.

That's exactly where you need to let the smoke get under the door and have Jesus transform it.

Yankee candles distill the essence of a smell.

Don't they?

You get clean cotton and you you're there in the you smell them in the shop because ain't nobody rich enough to buy a Yankee candle, right?

But you smell them in the shop and you lift up that that plastic.

Plastic lid, you smell the clean cotton, and suddenly fresh, you're in fresh bedsheets.

Distills the essence.

It's supposed to evoke the feeling.

We'll be getting out the cinnamon spice tomorrow because it's the first of September.

And they will remind us of evenings around the fire with friends and with family.

The aroma of Christ is to live and to speak in a way that distills his essence, that is unmistakably Jesus.

What does that mean?

Well, it is to embody his humility, his compassion.

How does the Lord Jesus the only place in the Gospels where the Lord Jesus describes his own internal character, what his heart is like?

What does he say?

Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Isn't that interesting?

What is the heart of the victorious King Jesus like?

If you were to distill the aroma of Christ down into a Yankee candle, what would it be?

Gentleness.

Humility.

That does not mean that there is no courage there.

Indeed there is.

Endurance, resilience, glad obedience to his heavenly father.

Prayerful dependence upon the Spirit of God to be the aroma of Christ is to by his help embody those characteristics.

But make no mistake, Paul isn't just saying we'll just preach the gospel by your actions.

And people will kind of go, is that is that Jesus?

Are you wearing like the new Jesus?

He's not saying that.

He says, no, we spread the fragrance of Jesus as we share the knowledge of him.

Verse 14.

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.

People need to be told of what it is they're smelling.

Why do you live that way?

Why have you approached suffering and trial in that way?

What what hope drives you?

Well, it's him.

Here's who he is.

Here's what he did.

Here's why his death for my sin is my victory.

And why it is so good.

So it's the aroma of Christ in the nostrils of those around us.

In what they see, in what they hear from us.

This aroma is the life that God delights in.

Not in our impressive achievement, not in our extensive resume, not in our victorious successes, or indeed in our spectacular failures.

But what is done in Christ.

We spread the aroma everywhere, to all people, to all nations.

Third, the aroma of Christ will divide people.

There are smells that divide the crowd.

Okay, so let's play a game.

Got three smells.

Hands up if you love the smell of petrol, gasoline.

Hands up if you hate it.

Yeah, you guys are wrong.

Who loves the smell of garlic?

Who hates the smell of garlic?

Okay.

Cultural insight there, perhaps.

Fair enough.

What about uh okay?

What about the smell of cigar smoke?

Yeah, who's admitting that?

Yeah.

My wife hates the smell of cigar smoke.

I don't know where she'd smell it, but she hates it, right?

Smells divide the crime.

Some people love the smell, other people hate the smell.

I love the smell of petrol.

It's so good.

Because people are just utterly repulsed by it.

I don't think you can get a Yankee candle of petrol.

I think that might be a little bit dangerous.

When people smell Christ, that is, when they hear the news of who Christ is and what he has done, there will be two different reactions.

There will be some for whom the smell is odious and repulsive.

What is that?

And there are those who will be intrigued.

Say, I want to know more about where that smell is coming from.

What is that sweet aroma?

It will be intriguing and beautiful.

Go back to the uh to the Roman victory parade.

You have the incense burners, you have Paul and others carrying those great sensors of incense.

You imagine just in your mind's eye, the smoke wafting backward and diffusing out through the crowd.

Now imagine if you're one of the people that uh is part of that great Roman city, and that victor is one of your guys.

And it's like the it's like the local boy done good, and you smell the aroma of his victory.

What's going on in your head?

You're thinking, brilliant! That smell is the smell of victory.

There is no greater smell than what I'm smelling right now.

My pan back.

Remember who I said was at the very back of the crowd, at the very back of the crowd, you have defeated enemies.

You have slaves brought back in bondage, being brought back for judgment and for execution.

As the smoke wafts back, what sort of emotion is evoked in their hearts?

It's not delight.

It's not, yes, local boy done good.

It's my goodness, our judgment is coming.

My goodness, what a what a terrible smell that is.

Because we are defeated enemies.

But two very, very different reactions.

And Paul is saying that that's going to be like that when we share Jesus with people.

There are going to be those who celebrate and those who remain hardened to God's king who refuse to acknowledge him.

What's our job?

Our job is to carry the aroma, to carry the fragrance of the gospel, and leave the responses up to God.

Paul understands the weight of this when he asks this question.

He says, Who is who's sufficient for these things?

For we are not.

How could we possibly cope with the pressure of that?

But Paul's implicit answer is that it is God who is ultimately responsible, not us.

We operate under his commissioning and entrust the results of him.

The Christian understands that we are not the victor.

Jesus is.

And so we take heart as we spread the aroma of Christ, knowing that it will divide people, but that some will find life.

Finally, we spread the aroma of Christ not for our gain, but for his glory.

They sell knockoff perfume brands.

So instead of Chanel number five, it's Chanel number six.

Instead of Cool Water by Davido, it's chilled liquid by David.

Cool water by Davidoff, I was I don't wear Cologne.

I was saying this when we were praying upstairs, I don't wear aftershave.

Um but cool water by Davidov when I was 14 years old, that was the thing that uh would would kind of just ensure that a girl kissed you at the school disco.

So I was I was nostalgic thinking about uh cool water by Davidov.

But maybe there's the knockoff brand, the chilled liquid.

If you still wear cool water by Davidoff, I'm really sorry.

But maybe you've uh find that special someone uh as a result.

These knockoff brands, well, they seem similar, don't they?

But there's something when you smell them, it's like, yeah, yeah, but there's something not quite right either.

There's a faint whiff of something a little bit putrid, a little bit rotten down at the base of it, or it evaporates away very quickly.

It's not quite the real thing, it's it's made cheaply with a huge markup.

Why?

Because it's for somebody's gain.

They're not trying to make you smell nice, they're trying to make a quick buck.

It's an insincere attempt at creating an authentic product.

And Paul says that there are gospel peddlers like that, people who make gospel adjacent messages for their own gain to try and garner a following or financial success themselves.

Whereas you smell it and at a distance it smells just enough similar to bring you close, but as you engage with them, you find out that there's something rotten underneath.

What does a peddler of God's word look like?

What would a peddler of God's word look like today?

Somebody who is insincerely creating a kind of a knockoff brand.

Let me give you two to watch out for.

As you're walking through the market, perhaps of different churches, different religious leaders, even online.

So you're scrolling, you think, okay, is this guy, is this guy a peddler?

Or am I smelling the real thing?

Let me give you two.

The first, I would say, are the the broken wolves.

Let me tell you what a broken wolf is like.

These are people who have often genuinely suffered in their life, but their primary um product is quote-unquote authenticity.

You look at them and go, oh, they're so, so authentic.

It's just always talking about all of their failings and all of the things that they have been through.

And because they've suffered so much, nobody wants to be mean or to challenge them.

And so when they start just kind of just reinterpreting scripture from how it has historically been understood, when they just start just twisting it ever so slightly or begin to deny things like God's sovereignty, we don't want to challenge them because we don't want to be seen as mean.

Be careful, the broken wolf, that uh that prioritizes authenticity over holiness.

It's a knockoff brand.

Second knockoff brands are crossless comforters.

These are people who might not deny the gospel to your face, but they never really talk about it.

How do you know what is shaping a pastor or a church's ministry?

It's what they're excited about, it's what they talk about all the time.

And you might get lots of churches and lots of people online who say who don't outright deny the gospel, but it's kind of assumed and kind of over to the side.

I'm much more excited about this thing.

They don't deny it to your face, but they'll never quite talk about sin or the need for repentance, the uncomfortable things of the gospel.

They'll smooth out and round out the rough edges, they'll want to offer comfort, but without the repentance of the cross.

It's all about affirming the person without any sort of call to discipleship.

These are insincere peddlers.

Not so the aroma of Christ.

No, to be the aroma of Christ is to speak before God with sincerity.

As those who have been sent by him.

Now, what does that mean?

What does it mean to be sincere?

Do we just make sure that we furrow our brow and talk in kind of lo-fi tones?

No, I think it's probably more than that.

It means that we're the aroma of Christ when we live not for the praise, adulation, or opinion of others, or the so authentic, but for him.

Sincerity means speaking straightforwardly, telling the truth and leaving the results up to Jesus.

Not fudging or deceiving.

We're not selling the perfume, we're diffusing the aroma of Christ.

And so we live and speak, not using people for what they can give us, making us feel better about ourselves, but out of love for them.

We do this all with dependence on God.

That's what Paul says: for we are not like many peddlers of God's words, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, and in the sight of God we speak.

Commissioned by Him.

Our authority is dependent upon him.

It doesn't come from ourselves.

Paul acknowledges his own insufficiency.

And then that pushes him to a prayerful humility that casts himself on the mercy of God, leaning not on his own strength, but on God's power, not on his own cleverness or our own cleverness, but on the Spirit of God to move.

You see, success in ministry, success in gospel diffusion, success as a follower of Jesus does not depend on how persuasive or slick or strategic you are.

But on the working of God through his word, as we share the knowledge of Jesus, as we live for him, that is what changes lives.

It means that we are to choose prayerful dependence over self-reliance, obedience to him over our own independence.

And we do so in the sight of God.

It is to him ultimately that we will give an account as followers of him.

That is why we speak.

And so, as we begin a new year, as we look to our life together as a church, as we start community groups in a couple of weeks' time, how will we be the aroma of Christ in the city?

How will we be the aroma of Christ as we gather on a Sunday?

What will that mean for us?

How will that shape our gathering to be the uh the sweet scent of life to life?

As we worship together, as we talk and welcome the newcomer and outsider over coffee in just a few minutes?

What about in our community groups?

In just a couple of weeks' time, we've got nine scattered all over the city, north, south, and central.

What will it mean for your group to be the aroma of Christ in the neighborhood that you are in?

Is it going to be a holy huddle where we shut all the doors and windows that nobody can smell anything?

Or will we seek to diffuse that aroma to those whom we love that they might come to know the sweet smell of life in Jesus?

Let us think prayerfully, let us think carefully by what it means for us to carry the aroma of the victorious and coming Lord Jesus, and to do so not for our gain, but for his glory.

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