Working For and With God (Part 1)

Satan is a liar. Jesus calls him the father of lies and the Bible teaches us again and again to be alert for the devil’s lies, schemes, and outright attacks on the truth. Sadly, and even tragically, the church in general and we as individuals have failed to heed the biblical mandates with the exactness and seriousness than is warranted.

Satan is not only the father of lies he is a master at deception – besides being proficient in this dark sin of lying he has been honing his craft for over 6,000 years. Yet, we often are not only casual in our approach to following Satan’s lead in participating in this unholy practice we are far too easily caught up in his lies – accepting falsehood as truth. This leads to all manner of faulty expectations, which then leads to disappointment in the people that love us and disappointment in God.

Aside from the fact that we are conceived with sin residing within us and are born with the desire to lie, we are fed an unending stream of lies from the time that we can begin to comprehend. Our minds are filled with fairy tales, creating unreasonable if not completely false expectations of what our lives should be like. We watch television shows where no matter how much one makes a mess out of their lives with poor choices and sinful behavior, everything is beautiful and perfect in the end. More lies.

We are bombarded with lies in virtually all forms of media. Truth and fiction have been so intermingled that one has very little capability to distinguish between the two anymore. Discernment, especially biblical discernment, is almost an extinct concept or characteristic, and it is definitely no longer an honored and worthy pursuit. We have been duped into expecting everything in our lives to be perfectly as we see fit and as we determine and have abandoned the biblical mandate to be content in Christ and in how He is shaping and molding us through the struggle of life.

Add to all of this the lie that there are no consequences or at least only minor consequences for the sinful choices that we have made through the years, and we have the perfect storm converging in our individual lives, in the church, in our nation, and in our world – which is really Satan’s world at the present time.

But beloved, we do not live in a fairy tale world, we have never been promised an easy and happily-ever-after existence on earth, Satan is real, our own sinfulness is real, sin has consequences in this lifetime even if your sins have been eternally forgiven by God’s grace through faith, those who wish to live godly in Christ Jesus will experience persecution and tribulation, and life is hard.

Yet, God is good, our struggle is only temporary, the rewards of living the Christ-centered life are immense, the persecution and tribulation that we experience are fleeting, minor, and even inconsequential in comparison to what awaits us, and we are never abandoned or forsaken by God no matter how intense our temporary suffering is.

Turn with me in your Bible to the Book of 2 Corinthians.

2 Corinthians 6:1-10

Let’s pray.

In case you were not aware, the Bible was not written with chapter and verse divisions, these were not added until the 15th and 16th centuries. We are obviously used to these divisions, and they provide an easier way for us to find certain passages, but we must always be careful to not allow these divisions to influence our studies or obscure the proper context.

So, even though in our modern-day Bibles we are starting a new chapter in our study of Paul’s second Letter to the Corinthians, the flow of thought remains from what we have been studying.

2 Corinthians 6:1a

Paul continues his thoughts by adding to what he has already written. We are ministers of reconciliation and ambassadors of our Lord Jesus Christ, and thus we are working together with Him. And that is a phenomenal thought to consider that Jesus is your co-worker in the ministry, a side-by-side companion pulling more than His weight in every ministry venture you engage in. Jesus Christ is not only our Advocate, and the Holy Spirit is not only our Counselor, Comforter, and Helper, but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are ready and willing to guide us and lead us and provide everything that we need to live our lives for Him and equip us for any ministry pursuit.

We have never been alone, never are alone, and never will be alone. The struggle for most of us is that we like being alone in our problems. We may complain about our problems, and we may even seek advice and counsel, but the bottom line is that we want things our own way and whether consciously or subconsciously, we reject all counsel and advice except such that agrees with what we want to do, 100%.

It is important to recognize this within ourselves, otherwise we will never be able to be the ministers of reconciliation that we have been called to be, nor be the ambassadors for Christ that we have been called to be, nor be able to receive the help that is ours as co-workers with our Lord. Instead, we will be miserable and frustrated as we steadfastly demand that everything and everyone bow to our way of thinking and our way of doing things. Our stubbornness and selfishness will keep us locked in a cage of our own making.

It is only as we surrender control, as we cease and desist from selfish pursuits, as we stop seeking our own personal comfort, as we quit trying to manipulate the circumstances of our lives to what we perceive as perfection, that we will finally learn contentment as the Apostle Paul did as he recorded in Philippians 4:11. Paul writes there that he “learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.” Biblical contentment is not a gift that you are given, it is not some kind of magic endowment that comes into your life at some given moment, but it is instead something that you must learn and apply. And learning contentment means that your life will never be perfect, never fully come together as you desire, and never play itself out as you have planned.

Despite all of the trials, tribulations, persecution, hardship, and horrible treatment that Paul received while serving Christ, he never lost sight of the reality that God was working alongside of him as he engaged in the ministry of reconciliation and that of being an ambassador for Jesus Christ.

And please note, Paul was never promised success in ministry, nor was he promised comfort and ease in his physical life. Never. Paul’s efforts in following the calling of God on his life were to receive the eternal rewards in the life to come. Paul forsook earthly comforts, earthly satisfaction, earthly goals, earthly fortune, and earthly achievement to gain all of that and more in heaven, in infinitely greater abundance and perfection. This is the exact opposite of what most believers set their affections on and set their minds on. We are all too often seeking and pursuing the pleasures and comforts that this life can afford us, trading away the magnificent rewards that God has in store.

And beloved, this is not meaning that we cannot enjoy certain pleasures and comforts in this life, only that we should not be pursuing them at the expense of pursuing God and the ministry and life that He has ordained and designed for us, which may or may not include the perfect earthly existence filling our minds and hearts. Wait upon the Lord, the Bible teaches us. He provides and supplies in His timing and as He sees fit, and it is always without exception what is best for us individually and what is best for those that he gives us opportunity to minister to.

The comforts that we seek are insanely temporary, while the comforts that He longs to give us are lasting and fulfilling and satisfying beyond our ability to comprehend. And we tend to get so focused on our personal ideas of a perfect existence, that we fail to recognize all of the things that He is supplying, and thus also fail to be grateful to Him for incredible blessings that we unconsciously are turning our noses at.

If you recall what Paul has written and what we have studied at the beginning of chapter 5 about the contrast between the temporal and the eternal, that teaching is still the context of where Paul is going with this teaching. Paul wrote about how we groan and long for perfection, but also how we are of good courage as we focus our ambition on the things to come as engage in what He has called us to in the present.

So, we are working together with Jesus Christ as we grow in the discipline of surrendering every aspect of our lives to Him and as we grow in His grace, which Paul addresses next.

2 Corinthians 6:1b-2

The grace of God is a gift. The very definition of grace demands that it is a gift. Grace cannot truly be grace if it must be earned, deserved, or paid for. Grace is not grace if you must return the favor in at any time in the future. And, as Paul is reminding us in this next phrase, God’s grace can be rejected and refused and thus be offered and even falsely or ingenuously received in vain.

Paul returns to what he mentioned in a different manner in 5:20 – “we beg of you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” Although Paul is addressing the church at Corinth, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, he is either not assuming that everyone in the church are genuine believers and/or he is admonishing the church to be fully reconciled to God, or as he is emphasizing now, fully receive and apply the grace of God in their lives.

We are commanded to fully give away that which we have fully received, which includes the grace of God. Without fail, God resupplies in abundant measure everything that we give away as we follow and pursue Jesus Christ – the grace of God is the most precious of those things that we have been given and must in turn freely give away.

We first and foremost do this as reconcilers and ambassadors for Jesus Christ as we freely share and give away the Gospel of reconciliation, but we also do this by applying and giving away the grace of God to everyone who crosses our path but who does not always agree with us or even offends us. And we must freely give away this grace to the undeserving with no thought of it ever being earned or paid back.

So too, Paul is first and foremost proclaiming God’s grace in salvation – “Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation.” Paul is passionately begging those who were in the Corinthian church yet not yet believers in Jesus by confessing as Lord of their life and believing by faith that God the Father has raised Christ from the dead, to come to faith in Christ at this very moment, which I beg of you here today or listening or watching this sermon from afar, as well. Do not wait another moment for no one knows when our time on earth is done or when the trumpet of our Lord will sound – the offer of God’s grace is not forever.

To receive the grace of God in vain in this sense is to falsely assume that you are saved because you attend church, or your parents were believers, or you remember walking down an aisle at church as a child or have based your salvation on some rote prayer that you repeated at some point in your life. To receive the grace of God in vain in salvation is to base your conversion on anything other than confessing and trusting in Jesus as Lord, by grace alone, through faith alone and in Christ alone. Eternal salvation is in none other than the name of Jesus and His sacrificial death on your behalf. Salvation by works is a lie of Satan – you cannot earn the grace of God!

The people in the Galatian churches were under a false sense of security due to their acceptance of a false Gospel, a false means of salvation. Paul wrote harshly and unsparingly in his Letter to them in Galatians 1:6-9.

“I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!”

MacArthur writes, “The Corinthians were also in danger of receiving God’s grace in vain with regard to sanctification. The legalists sought to turn them away from living in the power of the Spirit to living in the strength of the flesh. Paul chided the Galatians, also under assault by legalism, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3). Sanctification, like justification, is a work of God. It does not come from legalistically conforming to an external set of rules but from a Spirit-generated, heartfelt love for and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Some of the unsaved Corinthians were being led astray by a false gospel of salvation by works. Others were saved, but legalistic false teaching was stunting their spiritual growth. In either case, the grace of God to them that sent Paul with the gospel was in danger of being (in vain).”

Beloved, I know as believers we can have a mindset of fully nodding in agreement the necessity of unbelievers not waiting another moment before turning to Jesus in repentance and trusting in the Gospel message. We are quick to say, “Amen” and quick to wholeheartedly agree with this. Yet, at the same time, we can be excruciatingly slow in accepting the necessity of our clear calling, responsibility, duty, mandate, and command to fully appropriate the ministry of reconciliation and that of being an ambassador for Jesus Christ.

It is in this sense that Paul is also pleading with and begging the true believers in the Corinthian church not to receive the grace of God in vain. “…you are not your own – For you have been bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). “…you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Peter 2:18-19).

We must not continue to take lightly the calling on our lives. We must recognize the urgency of the time that we have in this life. We must “be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16). You would have to be blind and deaf to not recognize that we are living in the midst of evil days, or that virtually every possible sign of the times, point to End Times as declared by Scripture.

And, as we will study next week, it doesn’t matter how tough things are for you at the moment. If we can possibly allow selfish thinking to be put aside even briefly, we will admit that our struggles are nothing compared to what Paul endured, yet he persevered, and served God and people, and fulfilled his calling, and fixed his eyes on Jesus instead of fixing his eyes on the temporal pleasures and comforts of this world.

Beloved, be reconciled to God in salvation first, and then in following Christ more intensely. Do not receive the grace of God in vain.

Let’s pray.