Glorify Him

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone and happy Sunday, it’s good to see you all here for a little bit of rest after another long and busy week.

If you’re visiting us for the first time this morning, there should be a visitor card tucked into the pocket of the chair right in front of you. We’d appreciate it if you filled that out and used it as your offering today by putting it into the plate as it passes you by.

There are a few announcements I’d like to cover this morning before we get started. The men’s ministry won’t be meeting tonight but will meet next Sunday evening at 6:30 down at the pavilion. All men are invited to attend.

During the month of September we’ll also be taking up our Alma Hunt offering for Virginia missions. Our goal for this years is $2,500, so please give to that very worthy cause.

We’re still taking donations as well for Stump’s WRE program. You’ll see a list of what’s needed there in your bulletins.

We’ll be having a church council meeting this coming Tuesday at 7, and just a reminder that our business meeting is scheduled for this Wednesday at 6:30.

We’re also at work finalizing our ministry teams for the coming year, and we’d like to give everyone the chance to serve the church who would like to do so. I think we have a team for just about everything, so if you want to take part, please see Joanne, Betty, Christy, or Sandy.

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Father, you are great, and all of creation speaks of your glory. You do wonders in heaven and we see the signs on earth. We, as the work of your hands, worship you today and ask that you accept our worship in Jesus name. We come to fellowship with each other in your presence, so let us feel your presence. As we continue in today’s service, we ask that your great power moves among us. Let every one of us encounter you in a different way. Bless us in every part of our lives and give us everlasting joy in you. For it’s in Jesus’s name we ask it, amen.

Sermon

In 1892, a beetle called the boll weevil migrated north from Mexico to the American South. There it began feasting on it’s very favorite food: the cotton plant. Nothing could stop them.

Didn’t matter what farmers or scientists did, the boll weevil destroyed everything. Cotton production dropped 50% within five years. Land values bottomed out. Local economies crashed.

Unable to find work, six million people left the South all together and moved northward in what came to be called the great migration. They moved to cities like Detroit, St. Louis, and Chicago. The South was economically devastated. Losses were estimated at $23 billion.

Lives were ruined. Futures were lost. Families crumbled.

But the town of Enterprise, Alabama, actually honored the boll weevil with a monument. Can you imagine that, honoring the thing that caused so much hurt and ruined so many lives? But they did.

You see, for generations cotton was king in the south. But since the boll weevil was killing the cotton industry, the farmers around Enterprise, Alabama, switched to other crops that the weevils wouldn’t eat. Crops, as it turned out, that were easier to grow than cotton and a lot more profitable.

That’s why they ended up building a monument to the weevil’s honor. Because that little beetle and all that hurt and destruction forced them to look at their circumstances in a different way, and try new things that ultimately made their lives better.

Amazing, isn’t it, that something so terrible could turn out to be good in so many ways.

In moments of pain, we naturally focus on the pain itself, don’t we? Our first thoughts don’t go to ways that we can honor God while in our suffering, we just want to stop the hurt any way we can.

But if we could step away from our suffering and look at what we’re going through in a way that’s not about our feelings and opinions, we can see how our reaction to pain, our attitudes and our words, can still reflect a trust in God.

We live in a world that’s focused on the self — it’s all about me — which is all the more reason why in our difficult times, we as believers should have an attitude that points beyond ourselves to the God we love and trust.

We’re in 2 Corinthians today, chapter 4, verses 7-18, where Paul talks about how to honor God at all times, and in our tough times especially. Follow along with me there:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.

For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

And this is God’s word.

Paul isn’t often thought of as a poet, but here’s one of the great metaphors in all the Bible—“we have this treasure in jars of clay.” And this phrase is just perfect because it explains so well what it means to be human.

It’s how we can at once be so honored but also so despised. How we can have such power but also such ignorance. It’s a mixing of worthiness and worthlessness, priceless value and no value. It’s being filled with both heaven and hell at the same time. It’s treasure, but stored in jars of clay.

In Paul’s time, everyone had these simple clay jars that they kept their goods stored inside. They were plain, worthless. Cheap. So cheap, in fact, that if one became cracked or damaged in some way, nobody bothered trying to repair them, they just threw the jars away and got another.

And Paul says those clay jars, cheap and worthless, are us. They’re our frail and perishing bodies that were formed out of the dust of the earth, and, because of sin, will return to that earth. Mean, vile, given to sickness, easily broken.

But it’s within these frail bodies of ours that the God of the universe makes his home. We have a treasure inside us, the truth of the Gospel and the grace of God, and that treasure takes root inside of us, changes us, and brings us closer to the people that we were always supposed to be. We can never be more than a jar of clay, frail and humble, but when we take the word of life from that jar and wave it in the air, it shines a light on the world.

And it’s this combination of earthly and heavenly, holy and plain, that gives us hope in every struggle we’re called to endure. Alone, we’re subject to everything the world can throw at us. But with God, we have the power to overcome the world.

And this power has a purpose that Paul includes at the end of verse 7: it’s “to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” The contrast between God’s extraordinary power and our human weakness is remarkable. God’s power overcomes and transcends every one of our weaknesses. It doesn’t just balance our weaknesses, but exceeds it.

There’s an old story of a rabbi who was very wise but also very plain in appearance, and one day the emperor’s daughter taunted him because he was so ugly. But the rabbi said that God’s grace lives best in humble hearts and fragile bodies, and he gave as an example the clay jars in which her father the king kept his most prized wines.

The daughter told the king this and asked him to take the wines out of these clay jars and put them into vessels made of silver. The king did as she asked, only to find in the end that the silver vessels made the wine turn sour. The expensive wine was kept good only because it was put into plain jars.

It’s the same with us and the Holy Spirit. There’s a light within us, and that light is meant to shine out to the world. That’s where suffering comes in, because the best way to shine that light is through the cracks this world makes in our own lives.

Now Paul switches his metaphors in verses 8 and 9, moving to language in the Greek that is actually associated with the military:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”

Now notice this—there are four sets of pairs in these two verses, and each describe the way that God’s power works in our lives in spite of our weaknesses. The first four of every set represent kinds of inner sufferings, the second four outer sufferings. And in each set, the first shows our earthen vessels, while the second shows the power of God’s grace and goodness.

We are afflicted, Paul begins. This has a reference to wrestling. It means to press hard together, or be burdened by a great weight.

But even though we’re pressed by the great weight of our sufferings, Paul says we’re not crushed. The Greek word is troubled. It’s a picture of being crowded into a narrow place to the point where you’re not able to turn around.

Even though we’re pressed close by our trials, backed into a corner, God always makes a way for escape. We still have resources. We go through all manner of hurts in our lives, but because of that treasure inside us, we’re also given the power to not be discouraged.

Perplexed is next, and that’s all about not knowing what to do, or to be in doubt because of some great worry. In this case, Paul’s saying that he was often brought into circumstances where he didn’t know what to do or what course to take. He was surrounded by enemies; he was hungry and tired. He was in places where he was a stranger.

But even in these times, Paul was never driven to despair because he knew God was still with him. No matter what Paul had to go through, his needs were always provided for. God always took care of him. His perplexity was removed. A way was laid clear before him.

Paul isn’t just talking about his own life here, he’s talking about all of our lives, because the same treasure that was inside his body, his jar of clay, is inside ours.

Persecuted, in verse nine, and that’s another military term for a soldier being pursued on a field of battle. Paul and the early Christians were all persecuted, but they were never cast down because they knew that God would never abandon them.

No matter what, Paul says, God will not forsake us. The apostles were great sufferers, and part of the reason they were was because they knew a God who would never leave them. Our friends might do that. We may be persecuted by our enemies. But God will never abandon us. We can draw on his strength continually, and because of that there may be fears inside of us and suffering outside, but we’ll never be destroyed.

This long battle, this war that’s going on both inside and outside, is summed up in verse 10: “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

The word for death in this verse is a medical term that Paul probably borrowed from Luke. It’s literally deadness, or the state of a corpse. The word describes the condition of someone whose life was one long conflict with disease. It’s the process of dying.

And we all know that at the moment we are born into this world, we begin to die. Our bodies, those jars of clay, aren’t meant to last.

The early church father Philo once wrote about the natural frailty and weakness of the human body. He said, “What, then, is our life but the daily carrying about of a corpse?” It seems a little dark, doesn’t it? But it’s true.

It’s not that Paul’s just looking forward to the resurrection life when he will gain his new body. He feels like the purpose of his sufferings is so he might enjoy that higher life right now. And he feels like that because he knows this one great truth — the more our bodies suffer, the stronger our souls become.

If the word death refers to the process of dying in verse 10, it refers to the result of death in verse 11: “For we who live are always been given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”

Paul’s talking about a paradox here: what we call life is just a series of little deaths, a kind of chipping away. We grow older, stop doing things, lose people. Lose ourselves. Parts of our lives go away so that other parts can come.

But it’s also more. We’re always under the constant threat of death for Jesus’s sake, because the world will always be set against him. When we’re saved, it’s a choice, and that choice has consequences that are both good and bad. Good in the sense of the ultimate good — we’re spared from death and given eternal life. The war is won at that point. Nothing can sink us. But bad in the sense that the battles in that war continue. We’ll still suffer, and sometimes even more.

When we’re unsaved, God uses the sufferings in our life to draw us to him. When we’re saved, he uses suffering to help us perfect and strengthen our souls.

In either case, our trials serve a purpose, even if that purpose is often hidden from us. But it’s there, and that’s so important, because we can endure any trial if we know there’s a why to it.

That’s what Paul is getting at here. Suffering was as hard for him to endure as it is for us, but he could see the results that suffering brought to his life — the glorification of Jesus. Sometimes we don’t see the positive results our suffering can bring. Life gets so hard that all we can do is fall on their knees in prayer, which is exactly what God wants from us. Because praying can teach us to let Jesus shine through all the cracks in our lives, especially when we suffer.

That clay jar we have is different from the treasure inside it, but because of that treasure of Christ, we can be afflicted but not crushed. We can be perplexed but not in despair. We can be persecuted but not abandoned. We can be struck down but not destroyed. Whatever might happen to us physically has no bearing at all on the life we have in Christ.

And now everything that Paul has talked about for five verses is summed up in verse 12: “So death is at work in us, but life in you.” Some translations start out that verse with, Paul’s writing a conclusion here. Everything that he’s written leads to this.

The death of Christ brings life to the world, and that same life is at work in you.

He continues in verse 13 by saying that we believe in the truths of the gospel. We believe in God, in the Savior, in the atonement and the resurrection. We have a firm confidence in these things, and as a result of that confidence we can boldly face whatever life throws at us. We can stand up. We can speak.

Jesus said that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. No one would attempt to preach or share the gospel who doesn’t have a firm belief of its truth. And that’s Paul. He has the confidence to speak boldly and openly because he has reason to believe what he says.

Paul’s boldness and endurance has its roots in his relationship with God, and God has defeated death. God offers a hope for the future that overcomes whatever sufferings we have. Because remember, death to us is a beginning. It’s closing our eyes here and opening them a moment later in paradise.

So no matter how bad things look, how scary things seem, there is nothing, nothing, that this world can do to us because we have Christ. He’s won the war, and because he’s in our hearts, we’ve won that war too. Let those battles come. It doesn’t matter, because he won the war.

In verse 14, Paul moves from triumphing over his sufferings now to the future victory triumphing over death itself because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. And he’s fully confident in that fact of eternal life. Paul KNOWS it, and that’s what sustains him in all of his sufferings. It’s full and unwavering belief in the minds of all the apostles that the words they preached were true. They knew they were revealed from heaven, and that everything that God promises will be fulfilled.

And all of these things, he says in verse 15, are for us. “For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.” All these glorious hopes, all these truths, all these provisions from God, are all for us. They’re given for our salvation.

Everything, the whole of Paul’s ministry. His preaching the good news, his suffering to the point of death, his writing, his visits, and the way he had lived out his life ever since meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul saw all of these things as a benefit for the Corinthians. After all, he had introduced them to the gospel.

Paul show his purpose in preaching in the next few words: “so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”

That’s what he’s after, to develop a group of believers who would share God’s gifts and grace with more and more people. It’s not enough that we’re saved. We’re to help others on their own roads to Damascus. We’re to shine the light that’s inside us and not to keep it hidden. And how do we best shine that light? Through our own hurts. Through our own brokenness.

Paul saw his faith as his greatest gift, and he was able to draw on that faith to overcome any trial, any hurt. He knew that when his physical body died, his life didn’t end. He endured because he had the knowledge of his own eternal life in Christ, as laid out in verse 14.

He could endure any hardship because he knew this short life wasn’t all there is. He could endure any and all things because it benefitted the Corinthians and all those he sought to reach. And what was the result of all this? It increased thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

In the next verses, Paul teaches that believers are to stand strong because a far greater glory awaits us. “So we do not lose heart,” he says in verse 16, “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” The word “so” there at the beginning of the verse — your translation might have it as — “therefore”, is another conclusion to what Paul has been saying, and focuses things down to their final meaning.

We do not lose heart, he’s saying, not just because we have the knowledge of God in verse 6, not just because we see blessings in our sufferings, but because our sorrows and our sufferings, the decay of our mortal body, are just external things. They can’t touch the part of us that truly matters, the eternal part. There’s a spring of life within us that can never fail, a new life that comes to us from God through Christ.

Our outer selves are decaying. Remember, the moment we’re born, we begin to die. Everything in this world is designed to break down. Nothing lasts, not even the mightiest things.

If we look around this area where we live, the mightiest things we can think of are our mountains. Our mountains don’t move. Our mountains are strong and solid. But our mountains are also decaying. At a much more gradual rate than ourselves, of course, but they’re still decaying.

The Appalachians are the second oldest oldest mountain range in the world, did you know that? 1.2 billion years old. The average elevation is 2-4,000 feet. But about a billion years ago, the average height of our was the same as the Himalayas. Even our mountains are slowly wasting away.

But not our inner selves. Not our spirits, not our souls, because Paul says they’re being renewed day by day. It passes through one stage of renewal after another, gaining fresh energy. And how does that most often happen? Through of our trials. Through of our sufferings. Every part of life, including our difficulties, is an opportunity to glorify God.

That phrase “we do not lose heart” is an essential part of Paul’s approach to life. Paul’s refusal to give up no matter what defined how he lived. His letters repeatedly use contrasts to drive home his message. The outer person is dying, but the inner person is living greater and deeper and more fully day after day. “Being renewed” is a Greek term for a new kind of life. No other New Testament writer used this term, and it focuses on the day-to-day action of salvation of being made more like Christ.

And all of Paul’s thinking and preaching and writing about suffering, of what our struggles mean and what God’s plan for them are, is laid out right here in verse 17: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”

That’s what Paul wants us to understand. That’s what he wants us to know. Our problems can seem huge to us. Our fears can be so big that they block out any other light. Our trials might feel so hard, so overwhelming, that we think we’ll never survive them. They can overwhelm our emotions, steal our peace. But from God’s perspective, those trials and fears are light and momentary when compared to all that God is doing for us now and all that He will do for us in the future.

It’s all a matter of perspective. It’s not just how we go through our trials, it’s how we think of our trials while we’re going through them. Remember what we learned about our hurts: they’re like a prison cell, and they lock us inside. They shrink our world down to a point where it’s almost as if there’s nothing but our hurt, nothing but that trial. That’s the last thing that we need to allow ourselves to do. When we go through hard times, we don’t need to shrink down our vision. We need to expand it. We need to see it from God’s wide perspective and not our narrow perspective.

And to God, who sees all of time as one thing instead of breaking it down into past, present, and future, what pains we go through now are light compared to the glory that is waiting for us.

The Greek translation for that phrase is “exceedingly, exceedingly,” and it takes after the way that the Hebrew writers expressed the intensity of something by repeating the same word.

An example of this is the phrase Holy of Holies to describe the part of the temple where only the high priest could go, where God’s presence dwelt. It’s the holiest that holy can be. In the same way, what’s waiting for us is the glory of glory — the most glorious glory, which is a way of saying that what God is doing inside us, what he is preparing us for even and especially in our trials, is something so wonderful that our words can’t even begin to describe it.

Paul’s not saying that our troubles themselves are light. He certainly wouldn’t consider the things he went through himself that way, and he wouldn’t think of anyone else’s trials in that way either. What we go through is serious. It’s hurtful. Many times it changes us fundamentally when we reach the other side of them. But what he is saying is that they’re light compared to the glory that’s waiting on us.

Our troubles are light. Glory will be like a weight, like a heavy blanket to keep us feeling safe and secure. Our troubles are only for a moment in eternity. Glory will be eternal. The glory will not only be a consequence of our afflictions, but our afflictions will be a cause of our glory.

This is the reason why Paul never gave up. Remember, he’d suffered almost to the point of death. He doesn’t deny the struggles he went through but encourages us to see them using the right perspective of time.

He continues this line of thought into verse 18, saying that our problems are temporary. God’s promises are eternal. His promises will outlive our problems and carry us to heaven, where there are no problems, no pain, no death, no tears.

Again, Paul’s talking about perspective here. He uses the word “look” — that word means what we dwell on, what our thoughts center on. The things that are seen are all the circumstances of our present life, while the things that are not seen — like faith and eternal life — are things that aren’t bound by time. They endure all through the ages of God’s purposes. The others are only for a brief season, and then they become as if they’d never happened.

Money. Pleasure. Comfort. These are the things of the earth. Looking at them, dwelling on them, will only bring us disappointment. They won’t do anything to help us through our trials. But the things which aren’t seen — God, Christ, grace, glory, the things of heaven. When we think on these things, when all of our struggles are looked at through that lens, we find the faith that makes us more holy.

Pain and suffering strikes us all. None of us are immune. It can last for a brief time, or it can be something that we have to endure for years. Many of us are walking through suffering right now. And if for some reason our lives are trucking along just fine at the moment, just wait. Trials will come. Pain will come. That’s life, after all, isn’t it? But no matter what happens, no matter the source of our difficulties, God call us to endure.

And why is that? Because the rewards of not giving up are eternal. The rewards of our eternity with Christ far outweigh the pain of our lives on earth. When we allow God to work in us, we find strength. We grow in Christ. Remember what Paul says here. “Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day.” This is the truth that changes our focus from what we can see in the here, which is passing by the day, to what we can’t see right now, but which lasts forever.

If you’re ready to make that choice today, if you’re ready to be renewed, then I invite you up here as we sing our closing hymn.

Let’s pray:

Father it’s no wonder why we struggle so much, what with having your spirit alive inside these frail and worn bodies. We long for heaven but for now are doing your work here on earth. Help us remember, Father, that it is your work. Not ours and not for ourselves, but yours and for you. In our sufferings, grant us rest. In our sin, grant us forgiveness. In our doubts, grant us hope. And in all things, father, give us the sight that settles upon eternity rather than the moment. Give us eyes to see your work even in our darkest moments, for we know that in our darkest moments, you are present with us more than ever. For it’s in Jesus’s name we ask it, Amen.