Sermon Tone Analysis

II Corinthians 4:1-16

 

! Introduction

                It is our privilege to be with you this morning.

I remember when we heard that there was going to be a church planted in La Salle.

I had never been here, but knew it was near Winnipeg.

I have followed with interest the development of this church and so I am thankful to be able to find out more, to meet you and to share with you this morning.

We completed our ministry in Manitou in July and have been waiting for God’s leading to another place of ministry.

In the meantime, we have moved to Winnipeg and have found temporary labor jobs.

These jobs provide us with a unique opportunity to live our faith in a context that is quite different from the one we were living in before.

Probably a context which is familiar to many of you.

For example, a few weeks ago, I was working at a place that was moving stock and shelving from one warehouse to another.

I worked together with a number of other people all week long and I heard words and listened to stories that I am not used to hearing.

As I was working with them, I was struggling to know how to share my faith with them.

I did not want to speak ineffectively, I knew that if I spoke to them as a group, they would not listen and I did not want to be ridiculed,.

How was I to share my faith?

Sometimes it almost seems like Mission Impossible.

Remember the movie?

In the first scene of Mission Impossible, one of the main characters was listening to a tape and was being given instructions.

The voice on the tape said, “your mission, should you choose to accept it …” and then the voice would go on to describe a mission that was nearly impossible to accomplish.

Before Jesus left this earth, he said to us in Matthew 28:19,20, that we were to “go and make disciples of all nations…” Our experience tells us that that is a difficult task, in fact, to us it seems like “Mission Impossible.”

When it comes to our mission, many of us have become discouraged and have responded to the statement, “your mission, should you choose to accept it…” with a decision not to accept it.

We have seen it as “mission impossible” and although we know we should be more active ourselves, we have chosen to participate in the mission by donating our money and becoming involved in programs in the church, all of which is good, but can also be a way of avoiding personal involvement.

Please turn with me to II Corinthians 4:1-16.

In this passage, Paul describes his mission, his struggles with it, how he handles those struggles and the results of fulfilling his mission.

I hope his experience and his words will be an encouragement to us in our mission.

! I.

We Have This Ministry

                The concept of a mission is a common one in the business world today.

It did not take me very long in searching the Internet to find the mission statement of different companies.

For example, McDonald’s Restaurant has this vision, “McDonald's vision is to be the world's best quick service restaurant experience.

Being the best means consistently satisfying customers better than anyone else through outstanding quality, service, cleanliness and value.”

“At IBM, we strive to lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry's most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics.

We translate these advanced technologies into value for our customers through our professional solutions and services businesses worldwide.”

John Deere has an extensive mission statement including these words, “John Deere is committed to providing Genuine Value to the company's stakeholders, including our customers, dealers, shareholders, employees and communities.”

And it goes on.

Businesses are not the only ones with mission statements.

For example, I know that LaSalle church also has a mission statement.

Darren told me that it was, “To establish a community of believers who are committed to God and to sharing the gospel and their lives with the people around them.”

All of these organizations have a mission statement, but what about you and me?

What is our mission statement personally as Christians?

Let us look at Paul’s mission statement to try to understand a little more of what our mission might be.

Paul begins by talking about this very thing when he says in verse 1, “since through God’s mercy we have *this ministry*…” Paul had a mission, a ministry and he knew what it was.

In fact, as we study Paul’s writings in the Bible, we can very easily find out what his mission was.

This morning, I would like to focus on several thoughts out of this and the previous chapter which may help us define our mission.

When U.S. adults where asked in a survey what they most felt guilty about, fully 34% said that they felt guilty about nothing in particular.

One writer asks, “Ever feel that no matter what you do, or don't do, somehow, you did the wrong thing?”

People are caught in their sin and devastated by their guilt.

They desperately need a message which tells them how they can be made right.

In 2 Corinthians 3:9/ /Paul speaks about/ /his ministry as a “ministry that brings righteousness!”

It is our mission to proclaim the message of forgiveness and acceptance with God through Jesus.

Remember in the old Star Wars movie when Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are trapped in a garbage pit and all of a sudden the walls start closing in?

What a horrible experience that would be.

No way out, doomed.

The sad thing is that many people in this world feel like that about their life.

They are trapped in sin, in bondage to death and to many other fears.

Our mission is to proclaim a message of freedom from bondage.

Paul speaks about this freedom in II Corinthians 3:16, 17, “But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

Several weeks ago, there was an article in the religion section of the Free Press.

A writer dismissed God because his entire experience had been one in which he saw God as responsible for all the evil in the world.

He pointed to all sorts of tragedies - the holocaust, the earthquake in Turkey and so on  and concluded that it was not worth following God.

It is sad that even through Christians, people have gotten this message although it is not really what our message is about.

Paul tells us that our mission is a mission which comes to us by God’s mercy in 4:1, “Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry…”.

God has given us life, forgiveness, a relationship with Him, freedom from sin and death, not because of the good things which we have done, but by His mercy.

He has demonstrated his love in Christ’s death on the cross.

It is our privilege to extend to people a message of God’s grace.

What is our mission?

It is to proclaim the message of the way of righteousness that gives freedom and comes to us through the mercy of God.

Some form of these ideas is the mission statement of every believer.

The question is, how do we express that mission in life?

Do you and I live to make known the righteousness available in Christ?

Do you and I live to proclaim freedom in Christ?

Do you and I live to declare the mercy of God to those we meet?

               

!

II.

We Do Not Lose Heart Doing the Mission

If you are like me, you find this to be a difficult task, almost mission impossible.

What encourages me, however, is that Paul had the same struggle.

The great apostle Paul who proclaimed the message of God’s mercy throughout the Gentile world also struggled as I struggle.

Otherwise, why would he have said twice, once at the beginning of today’s text and once in verse 16, “we do not lose heart.”

He must have experienced times when he did lose heart or at least struggled with losing heart.

However, what encourages us is that he did not lose heart and in this text we find first of all some of the reasons why he sometimes became discouraged but also the reasons why he did not lose heart.

What Paul writes about here is something that can encourage us not to lose heart and so to fulfill what sometimes seems like mission impossible.

!! A. We lose heart because no one responds.

!!! 1.We Lose Heart

One of the reasons we lose heart is because it is so hard to convince people of the truth of the gospel message.

By experience, we discover that many people today do not know the gospel and have no interest in knowing it.

Worse is the many people who may know all the facts and yet do not accept God.

We find that we experience a cool reception and sometimes even open opposition to our sincere and loving efforts to make Christ  known.

To us the gospel is so obviously a wonderful thing, but many people don’t see it and so we become discouraged because of the constant battle to make the gospel clear and known.

Paul explains the reason for this discouragement when he says in, 2 Corinthians 4:3,4, “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

You see, the problem is that Satan is doing all he can to prevent people from understanding God’s truth and that is why it is so hard to convince people of it.

How do we overcome that?

Well, sometimes we are tempted to sugar coat the gospel to make it more palatable to people.

Paul speaks about this temptation when he says, “we renounce secret and shameful ways.”

There are some people, and sometimes we are among them, who are tempted to use tricks to get people to believe.

Paul mentions two specific types of shameful and secret ways.

The first is deception.

Deception is the stock in trade of some businesses.

We get their advertising in the mail.