Sermon

June 29, 2003
3rd Sunday after Pentecost
2 Corinthians 4:13-18
Pastor Joel Zank

Look at Live through Eyes of Faith!

(2 Corinthians 4:13-18) It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, 14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence.15 All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

In Christ Jesus whose resurrection guarantees our own, dear fellow redeemed,

A young coed had two problems common to many students: low grades and no money. To make matters worse, she had to find a way to explain her troubles to her parents who, she knew, just wouldn't understand. After a lot of thought she decided upon a creative approach to soften the blows of reality. She sat down and wrote the following letter:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I just thought I'd drop you a note to fill you in on my plans. I've fallen in love with a guy named Jim. He quit high school after his junior year to get married. About a year ago he got a divorce. We've been going steady for the last two months and plan to get married in the fall. Until then, I've decided to move into his apartment. I think I might be pregnant. At any rate, I dropped out of school last week.

On the next page the she continued:

Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that everything I've written so far in this letter is fiction. NONE of it is true. But Mom and Dad, it is true that I flunked math and got a D in French. And it is true that I'm going to need some more money. Could you send it right away?

Love, Susan.

Now you may not think much of the young lady's letter, but can you imagine how good the news of page two must have sounded to her parents after they had read page one? I guess that even bad news can seem pretty good if viewed from the right perspective. What looks bad one moment may not seem so bad at all just a short time later. It all depends upon where you're coming from; or should I say, it all depends upon where your going to. That's what the Apostle Paul says in the words of our text as he encourages us to LOOK AT LIFE THROUGH EYES OF FAITH! Because in doing so we will forget what is seen; and focus on what is unseen.

Paul says in the last verse of our text: "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen." So that you might better understand Paul's words, let me tell you about some of the things he was seeing with his eyes. Paul was witness to a great deal of suffering both in own life and in the lives of his fellow Christians. This suffering came as a direct result of the Christians' relationship with Jesus. Paul alludes to this in the opening words of our text: "It is written: 'I believed; therefore I have spoken.' With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak," (2 Corinthians 4:13). Paul is quoting the writer of Psalm 116, a fellow believer whose enemies tried to silence him because he spoke God's truth about sin and grace to an unbelieving world. A thousand years later the same thing was happening to Paul and his coworkers in the ministry. In the verses just before our text, Paul says, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed" (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

To the untrained eye, it looked as if Paul's troubles were getting the better of him, to the point where Paul admits, "...outwardly we are wasting away" (2 Corinthians 4:16). I suppose you might say that Paul's faith in Jesus was killing him. That may sound strange, but it shouldn't surprise us. Jesus once said, "No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also" (John 15:20).

Jesus is speaking to all who follow him including all of us. Jesus has enemies who want to silence us in any and every way they can. The hardships they inflict vary from the cold silence of a family member who's tired of our preaching, to the attacks of Satan himself who's not beyond filling our lives with miseries of every kind.

So how goes the battle? Can you say with Paul, "We also believe and therefore speak"? Are you proclaiming Christ to the members of your family who do not know him or who have drifted from the faith? Do you speak of Jesus to your neighbors and coworkers? Do the people on your softball team know that you worship Jesus as God's Son and the world's Savior? Or is your faith in Christ a well kept secret? And if so, why?

See if your excuses are anything like mine. Often I say nothing of Jesus because I don't want people to think I'm strange. I don't want to be treated like some kind of religious nut. I often avoid pointing out people's sin and their need for the Savior because I'm afraid they may become upset with me. That has happened. One time I told a couple who were living together outside of marriage that they were sinning against God and the fellow got so angry with me that he actually came to our house to "punch my lights out" as he put it. Who needs that kind of trouble in his life? I have enough other problems. I would guess that you do too. In fact there's another reason we often fail to share the Bible's good news. We're too busy feeling sorry for ourselves. Who's got the time and energy to make disciples when there's so much to fret and worry about in life? Satan sure is clever isn't he? He can use anything from fear to self-pity to keep us from doing the one thing that God has put us on earth to do-tell the world about Jesus. Now we may have all kinds of excuses, but you see the sins that damn us don't you? They are disobedience and unbelief. We're not doing what God tells us. We're failing to look at life through eyes of faith. Rather than trusting in God's promised blessings, we see trouble so we bury our heads in the sand and ignore God's will. That's why Paul tells us, "Forget what is seen." Why? Because "...what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18).

What a gracious God we have! Instead of punishing us for our lack of faith in him, instead of banishing us to hell for our failure to carry out his will, he takes the time to come and nourish our faith today with the very promises by which he first created this life-saving gift in our hearts. He comes to clear up our vision, to correct our nearsightedness so that we are actually able to see all the way to heaven from right here on earth. Just look my friends, look at life through eyes of faith, and by the power of God's Word, you can focus on what is unseen to the naked eye.

For example, the very first thing that Paul helps us to see through eyes of faith is our future. He says in verse 14 of our text: "...we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence." What a beautiful way of reminding us that Jesus is the substitute of sinners. Jesus lived God's will perfectly his whole life through. By boldly proclaiming sin and grace everywhere he went, Jesus not only brought salvation to those who heard and believed him, he was actually earning salvation for all us sinners by becoming our righteousness before God. His obedient testimony to the truth of God's love counts as ours. For the sake of Christ, we are perfect disciples and perfect disciple makers in the sight of our God. Our record is clean because the fear and selfishness that so often keep us from sharing Christ with others, are crimes that were charged to Jesus and together with all our other sins were paid for when God sent Jesus to hell in our place. How can we be so sure of all this? Because he who lived and died as our substitute was also raised to life as our substitute. Had the Savior's sacrifice not been sufficient, death would still be holding on to Jesus, demanding full payment of sin's wages. But as it is, our debt is settled. We know it because death released our Substitute, so it will have to release us too. So since only time separates our resurrection from that of the Jesus, Paul is able to say that God, who is not governed by time, will raise us with Jesus and present us to him as a bride is presented to her bridegroom.

Someone has said "knowledge is power." That's certainly true in our case. Here we are-a whole room full of people who live with the knowledge that we are going to live happily ever after. Doesn't such knowledge change everything? We already know where we stand with God. What do we care what people think of us? We have powerful news to share, news that will make the future of our relatives, neighbors and friends as bright as our own. What's a little embarrassment, what's a little discomfort compared to their eternal happiness? Paul has the answer. Concerning his own suffering he says to the Christians in Corinth, "All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God" (2 Corinthians 4:15). Knowing how his story ends, or should I say, knowing that it will never end, Paul is more than willing to put up with a little suffering for the sake of the gospel because he's in a win/win situation. For whenever he shares the gospel, by its power, more and more people believe and when that happens, there are more and more voices to join Paul's in giving thanks to God for his amazing grace. That's what sharing the gospel is all about. There's no better way to glorify God's name than to use that name to save sinners.

And here's an added bonus: whenever we share the good news about Jesus with others, the gospel we speak strengthens our own faith. Paul says, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all" (2 Corinthians 4:16-17). The gospel we believe, the gospel we share is packed with God's power. That gospel gives us the strength we need to lean on God and God alone. There is nothing you and I can do to earn a place in heaven. The gospel teaches us that there is nothing we need to do, because Jesus has done everything to earn God's forgiveness for us. In a way then, the troubles we experience in life, whatever they may be, help us to achieve the eternal glory that Christ has secured for us. Troubles do this not in the sense that they earn us anything from God, but in the sense that they give us the opportunity to see that we can and do live by faith in God alone.

So often we're tempted to think that it is our strength and our intelligence that keep us going in life. But then some "thorn in the flesh" comes our way, like the one of which Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 12. We pray that God take it away from us, but instead God says to us as he said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). God knows how to use the troubles of our lives to turn us away from the pride that would damn us by showing us just how powerless we are to help ourselves. In times of trouble there is nothing for us to do except look at life through eyes of faith and focus on what is otherwise unseen-the invisible grace of our God. It's in the face of trouble that we learn to say with the hymn writer: "Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come; 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home."

So you see my friends, the troubles that often seem so bad to us are not so bad at all, not when you know that you're going to heaven and that God uses even our troubles to bring us there for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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