Sermon Tone Analysis

Who knows what Jesus’ last words, before He ascended to heaven, were?

Think about this, if you were speaking your last words on earth; the last thing you would ever say to your friends, family, and loved ones before you exited this world; you would assuredly use your words to deliver to them the most important message you would ever give them.....

This is why none of Paul’s letters in the New Testament are more personal and intimate in nature than 2 Corinthians.

In it he pours all his love for the Corinthians in an effort to rescue them from a fickleness for the gospel.

What primarily concerned Paul was the presence of false teachers, who had entered the church.

They promoted their own ideas and sought to discredit the message of Paul.

Second Corinthians was written to defend the authenticity of both Paul’s call to apostleship and his message.

He did not do this out of a self-protecting desire but because Paul knew that acceptance of his ministry and message were essential to the Corinthian church’s spiritual well-being.

Paul understood the magnitude of Jesus’ final command: Jesus had drawn a line between believers and unbelievers.

Paul realized that the difference between a true witness and a false witness meant the very real difference between eternity in heaven and eternity in hell.

Like the early church in Corinth, today’s church suffers from a fickleness with the gospel.

Many pick and choose what they wish to believe from Scripture as if the Bible is a spiritual buffet set out to please their desires.

The church is plagued by false teachers and witnesses who change the message of the gospel to fit the world’s ideas and prop up a false christ as a tool for their popularity.

In the midst of this condition, followers of Christ are to bear witness to the true gospel, critical to the salvation of lost souls.

However, we face many stumbling blocks to our mission and uncertainty on how to handle them.

With this in mind, in 2 Corinthians 4:1-18, Paul gives us the prescription for being a true witness for Christ.

Our study today spans an entire chapter, so we are going to break it up into bite size pieces and attempt to understand it in the context of Paul’s main points; beginning with verses 1 and 2:

Witness God’s Truth

2 Corinthians 4:1–2 (ESV)

4 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways.

We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

Have courage and confidence in the mercy of God you have received.

(v. 1)

Speak out against false witnesses and refuse to follow their teachings.

(v.

2a)

1 Thessalonians 5:21-22

Speak the truth and live by it.

(v.

2b)

The opening line of this passage is the most critical; everything Paul says after this ties back to his central command: “do not lose heart”.

People will reject you.

You will experience hostility.

When you speak light to the darkness, you will inevitably face hatred.

We can not become fainthearted and crumble under this treatment.

Understand that our call to this ministry, that is to witness, is a direct result of our salvation; gifted to us “by the mercy of God”.

Therefore we are to have courage and confidence in the mercy we have received.

In verse 2, Paul alludes to the false witnesses that have infiltrated the church.

Tying this together with verse 1, Paul is implying that many false teachers arise not out of a desire to intentionally mislead people but out of discouragement that they are being met with hostility and that is why they change the gospel to something more sensational, something more palatable to the world, they package their witness with all the things people want to hear and very little of the truth.

Paul’s message about false witness is twofold.

First, we must renounce false witnesses.

The definitional sense of the Greek “apeipon” for “renounce” is “to express strong disapproval of; especially to distance oneself from the thing denounced.”

In short, we should speak out against them and we should not regurgitate their words.

The challenge we face is the slick teachers who teach their own ideas and occasionally throw out a random verse that seems to back them up.

This is a deliberate method to gain the confidence of listeners.

This is why Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 :

When someone quotes a Bible verse, don’t just assume it gives them authority, remember Satan knows Scripture well (A Match Against Temptation).

Read the verse, in context, for yourself.

Take the time to understand for yourself.

Don’t just listen to them because they are popular.

In fact, extreme popularity should be a red flag.

You should take the time to question “If they are this popular, are they really speaking the truth?

Because God’s truth is not popular.”

Test what they are saying, this is how you “hold fast to what is good.”

and if you find they are not properly using Scripture, “Abstain from every form of evil.”

Second, Paul says we ourselves must refuse to to fall into this practice.

We must always hold to “the open statement of truth”.

It is tough, it is hard, it is painful; but we will not become cowards, we will not tamper with the truth, adulterating the word of God to make it less offensive, in order for men to commend us.

Instead we seek to be commended “to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.”

Furthermore, we should not only speak the truth but live by it ourselves.

Author of The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning wrote:

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle.

That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

Paul continues, in verses 3 - 6, to explain to us that we do not have the authority to change the gospel message because it is not our message, it is God’s:

Witness God’s Gift

2 Corinthians 4:3–6 (ESV)

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Participate in God’s work by speaking God’s message.

(v.

3-4)

Every time you participate in your Father’s work, your bond with him strengthens.

Witnessing is not about WHAT you know, it’s about WHO you know.

(v.

5-6)

In verses 3-4 we learn further explanation of a truth we touched on last week (The Spirit-Filled Church); it is God who does the saving, not us.

In this we experience a relief of burden in our witness.

Paul tells us that if we witness to someone and they don’t convert, it is not because there is something wrong with our message; how could there be if we a speaking God’s truth?

Rather it is because “the god of this world (Satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” and it is not God’s will for them to see “the light of the gospel”.

It is a tough pill to swallow that it is God’s will not to bring salvation to everyone we witness to, but once we come to terms with it; we realize how freeing it is to know we just need to speak the truth and let God do all the work.

This always begs the question: Well, if God is doing all the work then why do I need to witness at all?

In thinking of how I would respond to this I remembered a special moment I had with one of my sons, Gavin:

One day, when Gavin was around 5-6 years old, I was outside mowing the front yard with a push mower.

Gavin came outside and desperately wanted to help me.

He could barely reach the handle, much less actually push the mower.

But I told him he could help, so he grabbed a hold of the handle and gave it everything he had.

I gripped the handle next to his hands, straddled my legs wide and we mowed the yard together.

In reality, I was still doing all the work, but this was an opportunity for bonding with my son that I was not going to miss.

You see, it is the same with our witness.

God is the one doing all the work, but He loves us so much that He wants us to participate in His work, because every time we witness is a special moment of bonding with our Father in heaven.

This is why "what we proclaim is not ourselves”.

Our goal is not to gain followers of ourselves.

Witnessing is not about putting the spotlight on how much you know, or how successful your ministry of witness is, or how many people think you are a great Christian.

Witnessing is about proclaiming WHO you know: “Jesus Christ as Lord”.

It is about adding to the followers of Christ, we serve “for Jesus’ sake”, not our own.

We don’t serve to gain blessings or notoriety, we serve because it was God’s will to shine His light into the darkness of our hearts and give us the mercy of knowing His glory.

This goes hand-in-hand with God doing all the work, because you do not truly grasp how precious the merciful gift of salvation is until your grasp that not everyone will receive it.

In our next section, verses 8 - 13, Paul proceeds to breakdown the biggest barrier to the accomplishment of our mission, FEAR:

Witness God’s Victory

2 Corinthians 4:8–13 (ESV)

8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.