EPISODE 130 2 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 4 "Adjusting our focus"

Welcome to Share the Word, where the good news of the New Testament is shared chapter by chapter. As we continue in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, I'm sure Paul is shaking his head because, against criticism and questioning, Paul still has to continue to defend his legitimacy as an apostle of Jesus. Let's get right to it, shall we? 2 Corinthians chapter 4: Adjusting Our Focus. This optical illusion kind of thing came across my Facebook feed the other day. First, it looked like a regular photograph of three young girls talking on a street corner, and my thought was, Do I know these people?

Assuming it was probably something a friend posted of their kids, but none of them looked familiar to me. Then I noticed at the bottom of the photo it said, Squint your eyes and look again. So of course I did. I always do what the internet tells you to do. And when I did, the photo somehow turned into a familiar portrait of Jesus' face. Don't ask me how.

It's optical illusion, like I said, but it did. A little strange, but if you can't imagine what I'm describing, maybe you can find that on a Google search. It's been making the rounds later after the podcast, I mean. 2 Corinthians 4 is a pretty short chapter. I can probably work my way through it all in our time today and still get to the big idea and focus on it for a few minutes. Let's remember the setting.

Paul's integrity has been attacked by false teachers who trailed him to Corinth. They did their best to discredit him in the young believers' hearts and minds there so they could contradict his message, what he had taught them about the gospel and foundational truths of Christianity. Paul considered those men the tools of the enemy. They were lying to and confusing young Christians, and I know that made the Apostle Paul, you know, very angry. The deceivers, I mean. He was angry at them when he learned about what they were doing, what they were saying.

This was just one of many frustrating difficulties he faced in his ministry years. But this is what he's writing about at the opening verses of this chapter. Listen. Therefore, since we have this ministry, because we were shown mercy, we don't give up. Instead, we've renounced shameful things, not walking in deceit or distorting God's word, but commending ourselves to every person's conscience in God's sight by an open display of the truth. There was a time in Paul's life where he had opposed the gospel viciously, remember?

If you journeyed through Acts with us, you'll remember that. But now he was a servant of God rather than someone like those false apostles disrupting the Corinthian church only because, as he put it, he was shown mercy. Remembering that helped him not lose heart and give up. Remembering, too, that it was God himself who had entrusted him this crucial ministry to spread the gospel and plant churches in the Gentile world. He was engaged in God's very work, and it was too important to lose heart, to allow physical hardships or emotional frustrations, to allow anything to get the best of him. I think we can get some clues about the kinds of charges the false apostles brought against Paul from his words here when he says, We have renounced the secret shameful things.

We do not walk in deceit. We do not distort the word of God. Even mind, we're hearing only one half of the conversation. We're like when you're sitting in a car overhearing your friend on the phone with someone else. We can hear your friend's answers, but not what the other person is saying. But hearing Paul's answers here, we can get the gist of the charges they were using to try and discredit him, that they were spreading in Corinth.

Sounds like they charged him with being a hypocrite who hid secret things in his life, secret sins, and they created doubt about his real motive for collecting the offering he said was for Christians back in Judea who were in the midst of a famine. And they claimed his teaching was actually a distortion of God's Word. Paul vigorously is refuting that. He was among them for 18 months. The charge is an innuendo of these false apostles that was made-up garbage. His conscience, he said, is clear.

Later, when he delivered that offering to Judea, for example, he took with him representatives from these Gentile churches. And I'm sure for one reason he did that, so they could confirm that he did not misuse the funds that were collected. He was careful to be above board in his personal life and in his ministry life. So he's essentially saying here, I've been an open book before you people. If the false apostles didn't accept his gospel he preached, and they didn't, it wasn't because of his faulty presentation, that he was distorting something or his poor character undermining it. It was because they didn't want to believe it.

The god of this world, Paul says in verse 4, actually Satan he's referring to here. Remember, once we talked about the various ways world is used in the New Testament? Again here, Paul is using it as a summary word for everything around us that Satan uses to distract, to mislead, to blind people to God's reality, to what God says is true. So he's saying here, the god of this world, Satan, has blinded the eyes of some people to the glorious gospel of Christ. The false apostles, remember, taught some kind of message of Jesus plus, Jesus plus keeping the Old Testament law or Jesus plus something. False religions are always telling people, You need Jesus, sure, but also something more that we have to offer.

And the more depends on, usually, our performance. Paul knew that by doing that, adding to the finished work of Christ for us, they, not he, were distorting the Word of God. We don't preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, Paul says in verse 5. I'm just a servant of Christ. That, I'm sure, is another shot at those he sarcastically calls later in this epistle the super apostles. I think they tried to convince the Corinthians they themselves were some special oracles of God.

Humbleness was not part of their style, but it should be for every authentic minister of Christ. When you see someone purporting to be representing God, a Christian ministry, a leader of a church, a pastor, but what's really going on seems to revolve more around them, a man or woman who acts like they, something special, and ought to be revered by their followers in some kind of almost worshipful way, man, you need to run the other way. Authentic ministers of Christ don't walk around carrying those kinds of airs. They realize, as Paul did, that they are just servants of Christ, regular people doing God's work. At verse 5 he then says, For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. What do you think he means by that?

I can't help but believe he is thinking back to his own miraculous conversion on the Damascus Road. Remember when the blinding light of Jesus' glory struck him down that day. He's saying the same God who created light at creation on day one shone His glorious light on me. The knowledge of God's glory I saw that day in the face of Jesus. That day on the road, the persecutor of Christians, Saul of Tarsus, saw that blinding light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus when he was confronted with, Saul, why are you persecuting me? That's the day Saul was transformed, the day he was spiritually enlightened, we would say.

The day everything began to change in his thinking. Can you remember the time the light went on for you spiritually, when you suddenly realized that the God who made you knows you and loves you? When you suddenly realized who Jesus was, why He was here, and what that means for you. That's the kind of spiritual illumination Paul is talking about. Once you have accepted Him and all He is, you begin to see everything differently, in a new light, we would say. I hope you have.

The gospel is such a valuable message, priceless really. Paul sounds astounded at verse seven that God entrusted its spread to someone, a mere human like him. That's what he means by, Now we have this treasure in clay jars. Today we have all kinds of storage containers, at least most people do. I never seem to be able to find one at my house when I need one, but they're very available at Walmart. Most are made of plastic, some are glass, occasionally metal, and some still earthenware.

In the first century world, it was almost exclusively earthenware, vessels made from baked clay. They were inexpensive, they were available everywhere, and they were used for pretty much everything, purposes high and low. For holding valuable commodities like storing food, storing water, storing oil, and so on, to literally use for toilets. They were common, just earthenware, and that's Paul's point. God amazingly entrusted to him and others like him the most valuable thing in the world, the life-changing, eternity-changing message of the gospel. In this word picture, he and Silas and Timothy and the others, the other Christian missionaries, were the clay jars.

It's a good analogy because, after all, God did make us from the earth, according to Genesis, right? In analysis of the elements making up our human bodies bears that out. Interestingly, one pretty common usage of clay jars back in Paul's day was to hide treasures, hide money. Hundreds of discoveries of ancient jars holding treasures, usually coins, have been uncovered dating to ancient times. I read recently about one large clay jar found that held over 50,000 Roman coins, valued in today's money at several million dollars. My grandparents' generation didn't trust banks because of the bank collapse and the Depression, and they hid their money here and there in their house, we found out after they died.

I guess people have been doing that forever, and that's Paul's picture here: a great treasure, the gospel message, God had deposited in common clay jars, people like us, people like Paul, human vessels, Tony, Margie, me, and many, many others, clay jars. Those who share the word are just common, fragile jars of clay, nothing special. But what God has entrusted to us, very, very special, priceless. When we share the good news he's entrusted to us and people receive it and their lives are changed, Paul says, it's obviously God's power at work through us, not ours, because we're nothing special. In verses 8 and following, Paul describes, in almost poetic language, just how fragile he really felt sometimes. He says there, We are pressured in every way, but not crushed.

We are perplexed, but not in despair. We are persecuted, but not abandoned. We are struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed through us. For we who live are always given over to death because of Jesus, so that Jesus' life may also be revealed through our mortal flesh. In contrast to how the men he sarcastically called the super apostles came off, the image they tried to project, Paul obviously believed his own weaknesses were not a sign God was not with him or working through him, but the best sign that he was God's vessel and that God was using him and working through him.

Remember, they demeaned Paul as weak and unimpressive in person and not that eloquent in his teaching. Paul wasn't a fancy, decorated glass decanter in a rich man's palace. He was a jar of clay, and he was okay with that. God's power was evident through his weaknesses, just as it had been through shy and fearful Gideon or stuttering, reluctant Moses. Paul realized the weakness and humiliation experienced during his life of serving God was really not very different from that of Jesus' own life. Wasn't it Jesus' humiliation, his suffering and death, that produced life for all of us who will believe into him?

I think Paul saw in his own sufferings and humiliation a faint reflection of that. They were certainly not evidence that he was a fraud, as opponents of his were charging. Someone once said, and this is hard to get out of my mind, actually, the more we are willing to lay down our lives for others, the more effective our ministry will be. Think about that. I'm not just talking about professional ministers. Ministry is any service to God.

That's all it means, service to God. What has God called you to do and be? Has He called you to be a husband or a wife, or what kind of service has God called you to as a parent? Are you an employee somewhere? Are you a neighbor of some people? Are you a church member?

How we carry out these responsibilities are really ministries. These are callings of service to God. The more we are willing to lay down our lives for others, the more effective our ministry will be. Paul writes here, So death works in us so that life can work in you. That's what he's saying. Everything then is for your benefit.

The man probably grew old before his time because of all the physical difficulties and emotional stresses he went through. But he was willing to keep pouring himself out for the benefit of other people, people like those in Corinth he's now writing to, doing his best to fulfill his ministry. Was it worth it? What do you think? Really, was it worth it? So far as we know, when Paul was led out of the city of Rome early one winter morning in 67 A.D. or so, and the commander had him kneel along the side of the road and then beheaded him, Paul had nothing left, humanly speaking, nothing really to leave behind.

He had been imprisoned by then for several years. He had no family, no wife, no children that we know of, or grandchildren, no homes, no riches amassed. So was the way he spent his life worth it? You know what? It depends entirely on how you look at that picture. Many would look at it and say, Of course not.

He lived a life of pain and constant difficulties, and he died for nothing. But squint and look at it again through the lens of faith. He lived the life of faith, and these closing verses in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 are one of the strongest statements of that, of personal faith I can imagine. For he writes, And since we have the same spirit of faith in keeping with what is written, I believe, therefore I speak, we also believe, and therefore we have spoken. We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us with Jesus. Therefore, we do not give up, even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day.

For our momentary light afflictions are producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we don't focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. How do you focus on what is unseen? Only by faith, only by fully believing in what God has promised. Paul doesn't say, I hope the one who raised Jesus up from the dead will also raise me up, or even, I expect that's going to happen.

He says, I know. I know he will. And more than that, he also had faith that what he termed his momentary light afflictions, suffered during his lifetime, had produced for him in heaven eternal rewards and glory, wonderful things, incomparable things to the difficult things he endured here. Wait a minute, you might be thinking, momentary, light? The things Paul went through pursuing his ministry were anything but momentary and light. No normal person would describe them that way.

The difficulties were almost continual over 30 years or so of ministry, and many times very, very extreme. All true. But as we've come to understand, I hope appreciate by now, Paul was not normal or even a normal Christian. He had extraordinary eyes of faith, able to focus on things yet unseen, things promised him by God if he was faithful. And that is how he was able to keep enduring whatever came his way without giving up. In the year I was born, a missionary team from New Tribes Mission Agency determined to make friendly contact with an unreached Stone Age tribe that lived in the Ecuadorian rainforest.

They were referred to then as the Alca Indians. Five American Christians with experience working with other primitive tribes in South America spent a year preparing for this special mission. They knew that the Alcas had reacted violently to anyone coming into their area, warring on neighboring tribes, and had killed people from oil companies and Ecuadorian government in the past. The five men on this mission team obviously took the Great Commission very seriously. They learned phrases from the Alca language and planned a way they hoped to make friendly contact. The plan was to drop gifts, things the Indians might like, from a small plane they had, drop these things near their villages.

And they did that for weeks once they were in Ecuador. They also had an amplifier and called out that they were coming in peace as friends over and over from the small plane. When they felt enough time had elapsed, the pilot, Nate Saint was the man's name, landed them along the river not far away from the Auca villages, and the five men built something like a tree house for safety. The next day, Nate flew near the closest village using the speaker system, invited the Aucas to come to the river. They waited with gifts in hopes they would. A day later, a man and two women approached them where they camped, and they were able to make friendly contact with them.

They shared food with them, and best they could explain that they were there as friends. The missionaries excitedly reported this back to their families via shortwave radio, which they used to touch base later that day. They waited to see what would happen next. Five days passed. Then on the sixth day, they saw what appeared to be the same trio of Indians come out of the jungle. They went out gladly to greet them, but when they did, they were surprise attacked from behind by a large group of Auca warriors, and all five missionaries on that team were killed with spears and arrows.

There was no radio call received that day, nor the next, and their families knew something had gone wrong. Another pilot from their mission was sent to fly over the area, and he saw the plane, but nothing more. News quickly spread around the world about the five missing missionaries. A United States search team went to that beach and located their bodies nearby and buried them in the sand. I remember hearing when I was young that Elizabeth Elliot, one of the missionaries' wives, found her husband Jim's journal, and inside he'd written these lines: He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Talk about elite-level Christian thinking.

He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. I thought of their account this week as I considered Paul's similar lines here. Our momentary light afflictions are producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. My daughter-in-law, who along with my son were recently in Greece and in Corinth just yesterday, posted a photo they took in the ruins of Corinth Forum, the spot believed to be the judgment seat where Paul stood trial before the Roman proconsul Gallio in that city. Her photo showed that there is now an engraving of this verse in stone at that spot. Our momentary light afflictions are producing for us an absolutely incomparable weight of glory.

I know that Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, and their team, just as the Apostle Paul himself long before them, had the same kind of faith. They risked all they had because they understood it was temporary in pursuing the eternal and have now entered into the joys of their rewards in glory. These were Christians of extraordinary faith. By the way, it came out later that a couple of the missionaries, when found by that riverbank, had sidearms on them that remained snapped in their holsters. They were only there for protection from wild animals. They had agreed together not to fire on any of the people they had come to share the gospel with, no matter what happened.

Amazing. And there's even more to this story, a fitting ending. In years ahead, Elizabeth Elliot and another team member, including some of the original missionaries' children, returned to the Aucas and succeeded in establishing a relationship with them. Completing the work their husbands and fathers had started before. Can you imagine the Indians' response when they realized these were family members of the men they had killed years before? Eventually, a Christian church was founded among the Alca tribe, and many of them became Christians.

I have actually seen pictures of Elizabeth Elliot with at least one man who was in that war party that killed her husband, and now they were embracing as brother and sister in Christ. Nate Saint's son and his family actually live and work as Christian missionaries among the Alcas to this day. These Christians, just like the Apostle Paul and other elite Christians before them, determined to focus on things unseen, the thing God tells us are ultimately the most true and the most real and the most important, and that is living in faith for real.

It's doubtful that many of us, if any, will have to deal with the extremes of these examples I've told you about today, but in our daily lives, in our values, in our decisions, are you more focused on the temporary, the passing, the ultimately unimportant things that worldlings are obsessed with, or on what God tells us are the things which are eternally meaningful? That's the big idea for me, coming out of 2 Corinthians chapter 4. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thank you, Paul. For so many, the focus of their lives, like the Sadducees, is, What's in it for me? What can I do to further me?

Is that your focus? The Apostle Paul understood that what he did was not for his gain, but for the glory of God, and his focus was not of this world, but the next. So I ask you again, what's your focus? How strong is your faith? Do you combine faith and action like Paul? From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.