Thursday, 8 May 2025

2 Corinthians 4:1-6 ‘Don’t give up on doing God’s work God’s way’

In His great mercy Jesus has given you a wonderful ministry.  You are an ambassador of Christ.  You get to share the very words of God.  Around you are immortal souls who are heading to hell, but you can tell them of God’s one way to heaven.  The person of the Holy Spirit is within you to equip you for this task.  Angels watch on and see what you do.  Better still, your heavenly Father applauds your efforts to serve Him.  Through your actions and with your mouth you have many opportunities to show the world that God is great. 

However sometimes God’s kingdom grows so slowly.  People we have been seeking to share the gospel with can be totally uninterested.  Some people who were such vibrant followers of Christ years ago no longer have any passion for Him.  Most of all we struggle against our own tendency to apathy. 

Don’t give up!

1.      Don’t give up because God is merciful

The good news is a message of mercy.  In His love God sent His Son to die for people who have rejected Him.  He loved people who did not love them.  He took the punishment for our guilt.  He pursued us when we ran from Him.  He opened our eyes to His truth.  He persuaded us of His goodness.  He gives us works to do.  Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart (1).

In some denominations they call the pastor ‘the minister’.  That’s misleading.  Every follower of Jesus gets to share in this ministry.  Every Christian gets to embody and speak of the transforming love of Christ.  God doesn’t need any of us, but He delights to use each of us.

Peter Linkens is a great guy.  He’s really smart and has particular interests.  A couple of weeks ago we were in McDonalds after Crossway.  Peter was having a great conversation with another young man who attends.  They were talking about some obscure computer game.  On the way home Peter said that he finds it hard to see where he fits in to God’s mission.  I pointed out that I have been longing to see the guy he was talking with made feel more connected.  Peter connected with him more naturally than any of the rest of us could.  I told him to go to bed and thank God that He had used in a unique way that evening.

God has prepared works in advance for us to do.  You don’t have to be someone else to do His ministry.  He knew what he was doing when he wired you.  So, don’t lose heart.  Ask Him how He wants to use you and He will show you.  Ask Him for opportunities to speak about Him and you will find conversations opening up.  Ask Him for the strength to live in a way that shows people how merciful he is.

2.      Don’t give up doing God’s work God’s way

One of the most painful issues in Irish church history is ‘souperism’.  This was where Protestant Bible societies set up schools, around the time of the famine, where starving children were fed, on the condition of receiving Protestant religious instruction.  Souperism has left a lasting distrust towards evangelism in this country.

In our own day there is a thing called ‘bait and switch’.  Like the event that offered a draw for a new Play-station (the bait).  But when you can to the draw you had to first listen to a gospel presentation (the switch).  Similarly, we need to be careful not to manipulate emotions or take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities.

How we share the gospel matters!  Paul writes that, ‘we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with the God’s word, but by open statement of truth we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God’ (2).  If we have confidence in the power of the gospel we won’t feel the need to manipulate people.  

A retired couple went to a town where there was a small church that only opened for part of the year.  They were the right people for that place at the time.  They had a special love for migrants and many migrants were moving in to their area.  God chose to let that church grow.  People in their denomination tried to figure out what their technique was.  In truth it was simple.  They simple prayed, loved people and taught the Bible.  Don’t stop doing God’s work God’s way!  

The false-teachers who opposed the apostle Paul tried to attract people with how impressive they were as speakers, with talk of the money they could charge and how they had unique spiritual experiences.  Most seriously they weren’t faithful to God’s truth.  Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy that ‘there will come a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching.  They will collect teachers who say what they want to hear because they are self-centred’ (2 Timothy 4:3).  There will always be pressure to water-down the message.  There will always be people who say that they want to hear something more ‘relevant’.  That is the advantage of sermon series that simply work through the Bible.  We are letting the text set the agenda. 

Church growth teaching used to emphasise how those up-front needed to convey a certain image.  They had to be the sort of people those on the street aspired to be like.  Cool people were seen as more valuable.  However, ‘what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake (5).

While the false-teachers highlighted how great they were, Paul makes himself a servant for Christ’s sake—in a culture that knew nothing about servant leadership.  One commentator explains that ‘no person can think of themselves as great and at the same time declare that God is great.’  One of the reformers wrote, ‘he that would preach Christ alone must necessarily forget himself’ (Calvin).

A Christian is to live with humble confidence.  Humble in the fact that we know that we have done nothing to deserve God’s mercy, and we have given Him many reasons why He should give up on us.  We have nothing in ourselves to boast about.  But our boast is in the Lord (2 Cor. 10:11).  We are confident because the sacrifice of Jesus is of infinite worth and covers the worst of sins.  We are confident because the mercy of Christ accepts all who see their true need of Him.  We are confident because the love of God, our Father, is such that He will never drive us away.  Humble confidence is what commends the gospel to the world!

3.      Don’t think anyone is beyond his love  

Jesus warned us that there would be discouragements.  He taught that when the seed is sown—the good news about His kingdom is shared—some soil would fall on rocky ground.  Sometimes of the people we tell about Jesus remain totally uninterested.  If we measure success by numbers then we will be attempted to attract people with hype.  But what you attract people with will be all that you have to grow them with.  Our job is to faithfully share the gospel, only God can bring new life.

And even if the gospel is veiled, it is veiled from those who are perishing.  In their case the god of this world had blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel in the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (3-4).  Those are hard words.  Jesus is not going to save everyone.  God let’s many people live with the consequences of their rejection of Him.

But mercifully He brings new life to many.  A woman had repeatedly shared the gospel with her friend, but her friend simply did not get it, even though she said that she wanted to understand it.  So, finally, the woman said, ‘You have a veil over your heart.  And you need to pray that God will remove it.’  A few weeks later the woman’s friend called, elated, as she explained that she had gone to bed the night before perplexed, but when she awoke the meaning of everything was clear.  The veil had been removed forever.

For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made the light shine in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ (6).  What an interesting way to describe what it is to be a Christian!  We are people who know the glory of God that is displayed in the face—the person and work—of Christ.

‘There is no one beyond the creative and recreative power of God.  He who spoke the world into existence and with a word birthed light and plants and birds and sea-creatures and animals and us—this God can illume and transform us from glory to glory with a word.  No one is beyond his love.  No one is beyond his grace.  And no one is beyond his creational power’ (Hughes).

Conclusion

Let’s finish as we started!

In His great mercy Jesus has given you a wonderful ministry.  You are an ambassador of Christ.  You get to share the very words of God.  Around you are immortal souls who are heading to hell, but you can tell them of God’s one way to heaven.  The person of the Holy Spirit is within you to equip you for this task.  Angels watch on and see what you do.  Better still, God applauds your efforts to serve Him.  Through your actions and with your mouth you have many opportunities to show the world that God is great. 

Let’s seek to make disciples of Jesus by praying for people, loving them and speaking clearly of the person and work of Jesus Christ.  We won’t give up because God is merciful.  We won’t give up doing God’s work God’s way.  We won’t give up on believing that God can rescue the most unlikely of people.

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