II Corinthians 6:3-13

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for being with us this morning.

For those of you who are tuning in, perhaps for the first time, my name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders at City Church Dublin.

You're very welcome to this live stream as we continue our series in the book of 2nd Corinthians.

I want to uh share some difficult news with you and then pray uh just before we get into it.

Obviously, the uh the prayers and readings are uh are pre-recorded uh on a uh on a Friday.

So this is news that just happened over the weekend.

Uh and that is to say that some of you were aware that uh that Ross had come back to South Africa uh because his sister-in-law was uh was gravely ill.

And uh I'm uh saddened to share with you that uh she passed away yesterday.

I know that many of you uh are close with Ross and uh he will be glad, I'm sure, of your prayers and encouragements, and he is um giving me permission to share this news with you.

Uh let's keep Ross and his brother and the family uh in prayer.

Uh let's hold them in our hearts and ask that God would comfort them uh in the midst of this uh tragedy and grief.

Psalm 34 verse 18 reminds us that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and that he helps the crushed in spirit.

Psalms 34:18

He is near to the brokenhearted and helps the crushed in spirit.

Let us pray that they would know his nearness now as we come to God's word together.

Our father, we do uh lift up to you our brother Ross and uh his family.

We pray for them as they grieve uh this uh this all too uh sudden loss.

We ask that they would know your nearness.

That you are not distant or removed from this suffering, but that you hear their cries and that you send your Holy Spirit as a comforter as one who would remind them of the hope that there is because Jesus lives, hope of restoration, hope of reunion, hope of resurrection.

Father be with them comfort and console them, help them to comfort and love one another well in this season.

May they know your strength in the midst of their weakness.

Help them to know that there are many people here who love them and who are praying for them.

Be with them, we pray.

And with us now as we open up your word.

Teach us, guide us, fill our hearts and our minds with more of Jesus as we seek to endure these days.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen, everyone.

Please keep the uh the passage uh that Karen read uh in front of you so that we can go go through it together.

Um this will come as no surprise uh to those of you who know me.

Uh, but in those uh moments when uh I procrastinate in the in the evenings or lunchtime, uh, one of the things that I like to watch uh are videos on Facebook or Instagram about food.

I like to watch food videos, any food videos, for videos about cooking, particularly things with uh with cheesy recipes, and you get that cheese pull or crispy fried things.

I like to live vicariously through them rather than having to eat them all the time.

But one of the videos that I find both fascinating and disturbing in equal measure is how food advertisers make food look nicer than it is.

So if you want, this is your top, if you want to take a picture of your burger, you want your burger to look nicer, well, one of the things that you want to do is you want to put cocktail sticks down through the middle and it kind of lifts everything up slightly so it makes your burger look fuller rather than the squished mess that arrives in your just eat uh carry-out box.

If you want a uh uh an a nice oozy chocolate fondant, you know, that kind of Marks and Spencer's esque, you you you cut it open and all of the chocolate sauce oozes out.

Did you know that that's not chocolate sauce?

Did you know that that was like uh colored PVA glue and glycerin that's kind of set in there and then it kind of it just kind of collapses?

Uh, but it is completely inedible.

Or uh you might have seen on television the an advertisement of a beautifully browned and golden roast turkey at Christmas time, and it's there, it's luscious and uncuous.

And you think, well, why have I never been able to replicate that?

Why have I never been able to replicate that kind of deep, almost kind of mahogany brown skin on your turkey?

These are the sort of questions that I ask myself.

Well, that is because it hasn't been browned in the oven, it has been painted with brown shoe polish in order to make it look more appetizing than it actually is.

Every one of these things, and I could go on, but I'll stop there.

Every one of these things looks delicious, but it's all for show.

Or maybe you've been on holiday and you've uh uh you know in in Europe or somewhere like that, and uh and you've been in a in a store, and you thought, I'm gonna pick up this discounted pair of uh Adidas trainers, uh, only to get home and uh to realize that they're not Adidas at all, they're Abidas or some other equivalent.

They actually look the same, but really they're a cheap knockoff.

Your friends and family might get sucked into imitation food ads or fake shoes.

But most people these days are pretty sensitive when it comes to knockoff Christianity.

That version of Christianity that dresses itself up nice, that it spiritually speaking paints on the shoe polish so it looks all uh all lusty and uh and appetizing, but actually, there's nothing nourishing or life-giving there.

They're sensitive to it because for decades our country and many other countries in the West have had a version of cheap imitation Christianity, a kind of religious veneer without any compassion or hope or humility or joy.

People claimed to speak for God, and yet their lives told a different story.

If you, as I'm sure many of you watching this are, are a Christian in Ireland today, then the people around you know what cheap knockoff Christianity looks like.

And they're looking at you.

They're looking at you to see, are you just another bronzed turkey?

Are you another cheap knockoff, another imitation that only goes skin deep?

Or are you the real deal?

The Corinthian Christians loved to salivate over the shoe polished turkeys.

So when the sophisticated speakers who came after Paul started talking a good game, a better game than Paul in many ways, they got suckered in, suckered into their knockoff version of Christianity.

A Christianity that demanded less of them, that degraded Paul and what he was teaching, that elevated the human speaker rather than the Jesus that they were supposed to be speaking about.

Paul here in this passage wants to show these Christians that he is not peddling cheap imitation Christianity, that there's nothing knockoff about him.

He wants to show them what real authentic discipleship, real authentic Christian ministry looks like.

The first thing that he points out is that real discipleship is marked ultimately by endurance.

Real discipleship, real Christian ministry is marked ultimately by endurance.

See that in verses four and five.

But as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way by great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.

Paul here in verses four and five lists nine negative things.

He goes on to list positive things.

We'll look at those in a second.

He lists nine negative things that he has endured, persisted through as a follower of Jesus for the sake of following Jesus.

He has endured physical things, attacks on his reputation, hunger, shipwreck.

How can we summarize this list?

Well, we can summarize this list like this.

Being an authentic follower of Jesus is hard.

It's hard.

Some of you know the hardness, the difficulty, the challenge, and we all will if we are to take up our cross and follow him.

Why is it hard?

Well, one of the reasons why it's hard, and one of the things that Paul demonstrates is here demonstrates here, is that the life of the authentic disciple, the authentic follower of Jesus, is not a life that is lived for personal gain.

It's not a life that is lived for earthly advancement.

Unlike the the sophisticated preachers, what he calls the super apostles later in the letter, who came after him.

They came charging uh charging exorbitant rates to have them speak at their at their gatherings.

They made great demands materially and sought the the power and reputation of their position, not so Paul.

Paul sets at all aside and he endures these things: beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors.

If somebody is rioting against you, or if a mob is rioting against you, you're not particularly seeking their reputation, are you?

They're not thinking all that well of you at that point.

His life, though, is not about personal or earthly gain.

And so when you examine the ministry of a church leader, it is right to ask yourself: is this someone who is pursuing earthly gain?

Is this someone who is climbing the hierarchy of the institutional structure for their own sake, for their own career advancement, or to build their own platform?

You must also ask it of yourself.

Am I a follower of Jesus?

Because of what I can gain, because someone told me that my life would be easier, because someone told me, or I have believed, that if I follow Jesus, nothing tragic would happen to me, and yet it has.

Or do you, do we, voluntarily acknowledge that real, authentic, Jesus following, Jesus loving discipleship is hard, and voluntarily take that hardship upon ourselves?

Paul endures all of these things because real deal Christianity is a faith that persists.

It is a faith that endures.

Some of you watching this might wrestle from time to time with the question of, am I really a Christian?

There are many things that we can say to this, but from this passage, one of the things that we can say is, are you persisting?

Are you persisting as a follower of Jesus?

Enduring the hardship, the spiritual dryness, keeping on putting one foot in front of the other spiritually speaking.

That is an indicator of an answer.

Real Christian faith is a faith that endures.

This desire to endure as a follower of Jesus, no, no matter what the cost, to present Christ to people will entail sacrifice.

It will necessarily have to reshape every area of your life.

It will mean early starts, late nights.

It will mean taking low blows and ridicule from family or loved ones, friends, colleagues.

It will shape what you do, as well as how you do it.

It will shape what you drive, what you wear, who you fall in love with, who you seek to build a life with.

Paul's desire above all is to make his Jesus known.

And his life is shaped by that.

Imitation Christianity bails when it gets hard because it fails to see Jesus as worth the sacrifice.

It fails to see Jesus as worthy of the cost.

But remember what Paul has just told us.

Paul has just told us of the Jesus who made himself sin and gave us freely and voluntarily by his grace his righteousness and made us the righteousness of God.

The surpassing beauty, glory, and worth of that wonderful exchange is what frames Paul's entire ministry.

He sees that as supremely valuable.

And so he's able to suffer the loss of anything else.

Do you see?

He sees pursuing that and knowing that and living out of that as the core driver of his life.

And everything else is just add-on.

For Paul, that is all that matters.

He is so captivated by the supreme value of who Jesus is and what he has done that he looks at all of the sacrifices listed here in verses four and five and says, worth it.

It's worth it.

And Paul is not alone.

Many Christians down the centuries, Christians alive today, have endured hardship and sacrifice for the sake of making Jesus known.

Let me read to you just a brief excerpt from uh Tim Mathis on the Nine Marks website, who's uh who was interviewing some missionaries recently.

He said, Recently I've had conversations with two veteran gospel risk takers.

One, a former Muslim who is planting a church in a 100% Hezbollah-controlled city in the Middle East.

His ministry is characterized by acts of compassion, clear gospel witness, and the accompanying death threats.

The other is a single woman who has labored as a missionary for 23 years, loving, serving, and winning the hard-to-teach women of the remote mountainous regions of Albania.

I asked them both about endurance.

But what keeps them, what keeps them there after demanding year following demanding year.

Muhammad said, It is because Jesus is real.

He is not a fairy tale or a Sunday school lesson.

He really is alive.

For Teresa, endurance is seasoned with joy, for she loves his appearing, quoting to Timothy 4.8.

Whether she's called up by death or by his return, she will forever be with the Lord.

The prospect of seeing Jesus adds eagerness and urgency to her daily service, quickening her pace as she climbs the steep switchbacks of Albania.

Cheap knockoff Christianity bails when life gets hard.

Real life transformed, life-transforming Christianity endures.

Secondly, real discipleship uses gospel methods.

Real discipleship uses gospel methods.

After these nine uh circumstances or nine things that he has endured, Paul now lists eight graces, eight methods given to him that show that he is an authentic minister of the gospel.

Look at verses six and seven.

He says, by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech and the power of God, with rapid with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left.

The food advertisers and marketers are adept at manipulating us by showing us something that isn't truly real.

In the same way, the super apostles were coming in saying what it was that the Christians wanted to hear, making it about them, making About the Christians and their own temporal happiness or success, your best life now.

But an authentic ministry is different.

It is fundamentally about other people.

This is the genuine love, verse six, that Paul is talking about.

When Paul says purity, when he says by purity at the start of verse six, he just means straightforwardness, actually.

He's a straight shooter.

He doesn't seek to deceive or uh to intimidate or to manipulate or to pull the wool over anybody's eyes.

That's what he's been saying for the last three chapters.

He seeks to speak straightforwardly and in love.

Truth.

In love.

When you read something online, when you listen to a podcast, or the advice of a friend, ask yourself, are they telling me what I want to hear?

Or are they telling me what I need to hear?

Because they love me.

Are they telling me what I want to hear?

Or are they telling me what God says?

What God's word to me is in this situation, in this relationship, about this issue.

It's very often the case, isn't it?

That we know in our heart of hearts that something is not in accordance to God's word.

It is not how we should live.

And yet what we do is we choose to listen to those who will tell us what we want to hear, who will pour honey in our ears, so that we can justify ourselves, deceive ourselves into thinking that something is okay, that it's right, that God would want it.

All the while we are deceiving ourselves and being deceived.

Taking the list as a whole, verses six and seven, I think we can all acknowledge that the overarching emphasis here is on character.

How I live, my actions, my disposition, my motives.

His character here is the character of a disciple, character of a minister of the gospel, somebody who's been shaped by the message of Jesus.

When he says that he has the weapons of righteousness in the right hand and the left, what he is saying there is that he is fully equipped for Christian service.

His hands are full of those character traits necessary in order to discharge his duty as a disciple.

And they come ultimately from the Holy Spirit.

That is why he is mentioned in this list.

He's the one who enables our life, who comes into our heart after we have been transformed by the love of Jesus for us, by receiving his righteousness, him taking our sin, and he brings about us, brings in us and to the surface these new character traits.

Our character matters.

That is why people have been so sensitive or are so sensitive to cheap knockoff Christianity.

Because actually the character of the person is revealed.

And while they say one thing, they do another.

It is our character flowing from deep gospel convictions that people are ultimately looking for, and that they will see.

How do we grow in Christian character?

Well, it begins by an acceptance of what Paul was talking about last week.

It begins with being reconciled to God.

Cheap imitation Christianity tries to staple good fruit onto a dead tree, it tries to tidy us up a little bit on the outside without dealing with the heart.

But Christianity is not like that.

Christianity is not an ethical religion in that sense.

Christianity is a religion of the heart.

It begins on the inside and works out.

It begins with an acknowledgement that Jesus was made sin for you, and that by faith you have received his righteousness, and that his spirit now is enlivening and enabling you.

This is the moral core out of which your character grows.

These things, these things that are listed here, they are practiced, cultivated.

Growth often is slow, isn't it?

You might look back over a span of time, say a month, few months, and think, gosh, have I made any progress in that area of holiness?

Have I really kind of grown as a disciple of Jesus?

Then you look back over a course of years and think, actually, I'm a different person.

I'm still not what I'd want to be, as John Newton said.

But oh, the change that has happened.

And let's be frank, and this is one of the reasons why we need to be back together as soon as possible, is because these Christian character traits are cultivated and grown and practiced in the context of community.

We need to be with one another again in order to grow as disciples of Jesus together.

They are cultivated in community.

We knock the rough edges off one another.

We point one another to Jesus.

We need to be with one another.

Real authentic Christianity uses gospel methods, straightforwardness, genuine love, kindness.

Kindness, friends, brothers, sisters.

Cultivate kindness towards one another.

Be kind.

We're all struggling.

I really find it hard these last seven to ten days.

Let us all be kind.

And cultivate and practice that to one another.

Third.

Real discipleship lives in the paradoxes of life.

Real discipleship lives in the paradoxes of life.

What's paradox?

Paradox.

Two things that seem contradictory and yet can occur simultaneously.

Have a look at verses eight to ten.

As unknown and yet are known as dying, and behold, we live as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

Excuse me, I'm just going to cough.

Paul concludes all of these lists from verse four through to verse 10, now by listing eight paradoxes, things that seem contradictory but are both true for the Christian.

Is observing Paul's ministry.

Some will look at him and write him off, others will honor him, some will slander his character or his motives.

At the same time, others will praise him.

This is true for us, isn't it, as disciples of Jesus?

This is similar to the analogy that we had back in chapter two about the aroma of Jesus.

We spread the fragrance of Christ wherever we go, and some people smell it and they smell life, whereas other people smell the same smell at the same time and they smell death.

That these things, it's not that sometimes I'm in a season of honor and then sometimes I'm in a season of dishonor.

Now, this is why they're a paradox, because they both happen at the same time.

As a Christian, perhaps you have taken a uh a stand as a Christian in the in the workplace, in your family, in college.

And what has happened is that some people have ridiculed you, called you names, thought badly of you, and yet others have grown in respect for you.

And it's hard as we consider the two halves of this paradox, kind of work out which one's harder to take.

Is it harder to take the ridicule of people or the praise of people?

You think about it, and it's not actually immediately obvious, because there's the temptation, isn't there, to grow big-headed?

To actually begin to pursue your own platform because of the praise of others, and you and so you fall into arrogance that can be just as dangerous as being shamed and slandered, but both of these things occur at once.

The way to navigate these varying opinions, these varying things that happen at the same time, is to not entrust ourselves to either of them, to not allow our ego to be stroked by the praise of men, or our ego to be unduly deflated by the ridicule of men.

We do not entrust ourselves to either person.

We don't actually entrust ourselves to the circumstance.

It's so easy to addict our hearts to the praise of others, or to allow ourselves to be crushed under the ridicule of someone that we, particularly someone who we have respected.

Paul's example for us here.

Paul's example is that he looks beyond the fickle opinions of people.

The smell is being spread, the aroma of Christ is going out, is that is that people react in these two different ways.

He's keeping his eyes fixed on the one who is supremely worthy, he's keeping his eyes fixed on the one who will say, Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master.

We know this, because of what he goes on to say.

This is how Paul can say that though he may be dying physically, that he really lives.

That is something that only the authentic Christian can say.

That though we waste away physically, we are truly alive in a way that can never be extinguished.

It is how he can look at sorrow and rejection and loss 10 and say that he is always rejoicing because the source of his joy is not the people around him, but his master, his lord, the Saviour who loved him and gave himself for him.

Galatians 220 It is only then that the Christian can claim to be rich while he or she suffers the loss of many things.

This is real Christianity.

Real deal Christianity places its security, its hope, and its joy outside of the circumstances and people that we interact with.

And places it squarely in the care of the one who died and yet behold is alive forevermore.

The imitators show their emptiness in the face of suffering and hardship because they cannot rejoice in loss.

They cannot say I live even though I grieve.

I live even though I'm wasting away.

I live even though my heart is breaking.

And just a final note that we'll maybe pick up more of next week.

Paul calls them to respond.

Verses 11 to 13.

He says, Look, we've laid it all bare.

That's what he's saying, verse 11.

We've spoken freely to you, our heart is wide open.

You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections.

In return, I speak as I speak as to children.

Widen your hearts also.

He says, I've left it all out on the field.

I have nothing left that I am hiding from you.

You have seen the interior of my emotional and spiritual life.

I have shown it all to you.

I've shown you what a real follower of Jesus looks like.

I'm not after your praise, I'm not after your congratulation.

I'm certainly not after your money.

I'm pouring myself out for you so that you will receive not me, but Jesus.

And if I've left, if I have so bared my soul, would you reciprocate?

Would you open your heart to Paul?

Paul laid himself bare.

He is emotionally vulnerable, showing them that there is no deceit or manipulation.

They had been fooled, they'd been fooled by cheap knockoff, imitation, Christianity, and they'd clammed up shut to Paul.

So he says, Open your hearts to us.

You know, you know deep down in your core that we are the real deal.

You know that you are just being manipulated by the by the show.

Don't get suckered in by these con men.

Don't get deceived by the empty show of empty religion.

Notice he doesn't just say, he doesn't just say, believe what I have told you to believe.

No, he says, Open your hearts.

Be captivated by Jesus.

So what will you open your heart wide to?

Will you open your heart wide to the empty show of this world with its delicious-looking shoe polished turkeys?

The flattery of people.

Or will you open your what your heart wide to the surpassing joy of knowing Jesus?

Of experiencing his forgiveness.

Of knowing the enlivening power of his spirit that helps you to endure through every season of this life.

Can I counsel you but open your heart wide to that to him?

Let's pray.

Father, give us the eyes of faith that help us not to be suckered in by empty religion and vain Christianity.

But open our hearts wide to the beautiful Jesus who loved us and gave himself for us.

May his surpassing worth be our motivating core.

Help us to endure.

Help us to live out of gospel integrity.

And help us to live in these paradoxes, always fixing our eyes on Him and the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Help us to better understand these things and to apply them to our lives by the power of your Holy Spirit, we ask.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen, everyone.

Have a good day.