A sermon based upon 2 Corinthians 4: 1-18
By
Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
Sunday
August, 23rd, 2020 (Growing In Grace)
Turn
special attention to 2 Corinthians chapter four, verse 6:
“For
it is the God who said, “Let the light shine out of darkness” who has shone in
our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ.” The late W.A. Criswell,
the pastor who was Billy Graham’s pastor, once said: “...Outside of John 3:16, (he) had rather been able to write this
sentence than any other sentence in the all language and literature. John
3:16 is the greatest sentence, but “this is the most beautiful”, he
said.
In
a sermon on this very verse, Criswell continued in his commanding, masterful ‘Greek’
rhetorical preaching style: “What is the spiritual way of God’s love? Jesus is it!
What
is the grace of God that forgives sin?
Jesus is it!
What
is the power of God that makes the weak strong and raises the dead? Jesus is it!
What is the glory of God? Is it
the stars; is it the beautiful flowers in the garden? It’s the universe? Is it the sky or Is it the earth? No!
The
glory of God is found in the light that shines in the face of Jesus Christ!*
How
did Paul, a rabbinic Jew who believed in
the the invisible, unimaginable, un-Name able God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob
come to write a statement like this? How
does an average human being like you or me come to believe and live our lives
based on a sentence like this? How do we
come to understand the spiritual truth that ‘the glory of God (shines) in
the face of Jesus Christ?” You don’t
write such beautiful language or live a beautiful life based on such an
incredible truth without undergoing a lot of spiritual growth and maturity. But what is spiritual maturity based on God’s
glory shinning through Jesus Christ? This
is subject we are studying this summer.
WE
DO NOT LOSE HEART (1)
One
time William James, the great Harvard psychologist of the last century, had
mentioned spirituality in a lecture. Hearing him use this word somebody asked him,,
“Dr. James, what do you mean by spirituality?” The great American teacher thought and
studied and said, “We’ll, spirituality is very difficult to define. He thought for a moment, then his eyes
lighted up, and he said, “Spirituality..., it’s hard to put in words, but I can
point you to a person who is being spiritual.
Then he named the incomparable Boston preacher of his day, Phillips
Brooks.
I
think it’s important for us to understand that it’s still hard for us, who live
earthly, fleshly, physical lives to know, understand, or grasp the meaning of the
‘spiritual’ unless we see it being expressed or realized in someone. Just like the Jews lost the ability to
understand God’s glory until it was revealed in the graceful humanity of Jesus
Christ, we too can lose the ability to see the spiritual until it shines in
someone’s life.
When
Paul came to see God’s glory radiantly shining through the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, his own life of darkness and despair was both
challenged and changed. Even as a Jewish antagonist to the Christian
Faith, Paul came to find the true glory of God in the grace, the goodness, and
in the unmistakable compassion of the Messiah Jesus Christ.
But
seeing the fullness of God’s glory in the face of Jesus could not
come without spiritual growth and maturity.
For this is a knowledge that is was only gained by looking straight into
the face of human weakness, difficulty, suffering, hurt or pain. This
spiritual growth came only by learning that nothing else mattered but Christ
and him crucified. This means that
we shouldn’t think of the ‘glory of God’ shining in the ‘face of Jesus’ only like
some radiant, delightful, or pleasant ‘halo’ experience. Looking straight into ‘grace and truth’ can also
be deadly, difficult and dark. Remember, at the center of our Christian Faith
is a cross. And I’m not speaking of the
shiny one hanging around your neck or on a wall at church. Most true spiritual growth comes in the dark. Interestingly, it’s the same in your garden
too.
What
does this mean that we also might find God’s ‘glory’ through the face of Christ
dying on a cross? Have you thought how
strange this is that you would put your trust in something or someone like
this? Now, looking at Jesus dying has
been so glamorized today, in both literature, film and church too, so it is
still challenging to to understand what Paul means. But if we will, if we want to, we can still see Jesus’ own suffering, pain
and hurt in people still suffering, living, or dying today, and some of them
are like Jesus, suffering very unfairly and unjustly. We can still see untold pain in people and
sometimes this kind of unanswered hurt is your own. What Paul means is that you and I will never
grow into the mature person we can become without looking straight into the
face of what can be hard, difficult and dark.
Sometimes
I hear people say, ‘I can’t visit that person in the hospital, in the
nursing home, or at hospice... I
just can’t bear to look...to see someone hurt like that?” When I hear some say that, it reminds me of being
a little boy and telling my mother, “ No, no, I don’t want that ‘red stuff’, that medicine... It hurts.” Or it reminds me of someone saying to the
coach, ‘I can run’ or ‘I don’t want to work out’. It reminds me of the person who says, I
don’t want to go the doctor, I don’t
want to go to work, to church, or to school.
‘I don’t want to eat that, do that, learn that! We’ve all been there. We’ve all said or thought this way at times,
and we all had to ‘face the music’ and through something difficult we had to ‘grow up’.
We all had to learn to look straight into the ‘face’ of the most
difficult and distasteful thing but surprisingly also found there the grace
that enabled us to mature and grow into the person we could and should be.
It’s
certainly not easy to grow. Just look at
all the hardships Paul was going through, as described in this text: He says he was ‘afflicted, perplexed,
persecuted, struck down’, to name a few.
But still, in all these vet negatives experiences he was ‘carrying in
his body the death of Jesus’ (10). In his difficulties he was looking at the
glory of God in the face of Jesus. Does that
surprise you? Isn’t that counter to and
going against most everything this world says is glorious? What Paul’s implying is ‘strange’, but also
true. Sometimes in life, we have to look
straight into the deepest, darkest, and most depressing thing to change and grow. Sometimes what is happening can seem like a
dark, black hole working like a magnet, pulling everything around it into unthinkable
nothingness.
This
‘dark night of the soul’ can be devastating. When we struggle in life, and know defeat life
goes dark. When we sorrow at the loss of
loved ones, or when we face our own diseases and mortality, it feels very
dark. In James Thomson’s poem, “The
City of Dreadful Night,” he has a line that expresses the struggle against
the dark:
“...And
none can pierce the great, dark veil uncertain
Because
there is no light beyond the curtain; But
all is vanity and nothingness.”
It had to feel this way to Jesus too, when he
cried out ‘My God, why” from his cross., It was dark, but it was also then, in
that horror, that the glory of God was being revealed. For it
was precisely in that dark place of sin,
betrayal and loneliness that the glory of God shone bright in the face of
Jesus. And this is is exactly how God’s
glory can shine into our own difficulty, despair, and darkness. As Paul writes here, it is there, in the ‘dark
uncertain veil’ where there is ‘no
light’ that God’s light shines in the darkness of our hearts, giving us ‘the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ This is how spiritual growth and maturity of
spirit often happens: Where no other light can shine, God’s light will shine
and knowledge of God’s glory comes. And
when no other face can be seen, the face of Jesus is seen most clearly visible
to our hearts.
Dr.
W. R. White was for many years, president of Baylor University. He once relayed this story: “An old friend lay dying, and I went to see
him. And when I walked into the room, he
said to me, ‘Billy, would you walk from that side of the room to this side?’”
And
Dr. White said, “I walked from that side to this side, and his eyes followed
me. When I got to the other side of the
room he said, ‘Billy, would you turn around and walk from that side of the room
to that side?’” And Dr. White said, “I
turned around and walked from there to there.
Then he said, ‘Would you draw up this chair and sit down by my bed?’”
And
seated, his old friend said to Dr. White, “I know you must think that I’m
crazy. But, that’s why I asked you to
walk there and there and be seated here: because I thought maybe I was
crazy. But I just wanted to be sure that
I had my senses, and that I could see sanely.”
Then he added, “Billy, I just saw the face of Jesus Christ welcoming me
home.” (As told by WA Criswell
in a Sermon, The Face of Christ).
Maybe,
if you are mature enough, spiritually aware enough, you will see his face too. As the verse of one of our old beloved hymns
goes:
No
need of the sun in Heaven I’m told; The
Lamb is the Light in the city of gold,
O
come to the light, ‘tis shining for thee;
Sweetly the light has shined upon me;
Once
I was blind, but now I can see: The light of the world is Jesus!
THE
LIFE OF JESUS...IN US (10, 12)
But
it’s not only to see Jesus’ face with us in the most difficult times that
brings us to spiritual growth and maturity, but it’s to see Jesus’ face reflected
in us as we live for him, as we are like him, and as we live through him. Our
human struggle with pain and hopelessness can be redeemed not only in how Jesus
died for us, but also in how we live like Jesus. But what does this mean to live like Jesus in
the world? Can we name it? How can we grow into living a spiritually
mature life by following him?
Recently,
I recorded the popular Harvard trained Japanese American Physicist, Michio Kaku,
who was speaking at High Point University.
He was discussing his plans to write a book on how Physics helps us
‘read the mind of God’. A very Interesting
topic for a physicist, don’t you think?
His book plans to answer questions about physical life and existence where
Einstein left off. But this isn’t based
on theology or God, like we might understand from the Bible. This is based on Science, and on something
called ‘string theory’. This theory says
that at the subatomic level there are all many particles that make reality
happen such as quarks, lepton, muons, and about 197 others. (They only had protons, electrons, and
neutrons when I studied). In his theoretical
thinking, Dr. Kaku plans to show how stringing these particles together differently
makes up the different forms of reality we know. Stung in one way these particles are chemistry;
like notes on the music staff. Strung another
way they are like the universe, making a melody of reality that contains
life. Finally, he says, all these ‘notes’
working together enables us not only to experience reality as if we are hearing
the very ‘music of God’.
The
great physicist’s descriptions of hidden realities strung together to create the
‘music’ of life is a wonderful analogy of reality, but what does this mean for
actually making positive music with our lives? You can indeed explain the way everything
really is and it mean nothing at all until something melodious is ‘played’
through you. There is, of course, so
much to contemplate; so much glory and to amaze, astound, and to occupy minds
forever, but there is no ‘glory’ until we can see what really matters about
matter. What mattered most to Jesus was
that his life meant something. And what
meant something, Jesus said is that ‘he came to serve and give his life as a
ransom for others’ (Mark 10:45). And do
you know why and when Jesus told his disciples this? He was not only telling them about his dying,
but he was also telling his disciples how they should and must live. He was explaining to them that if they wanted
to be great in life, find true meaning, purpose, and hope in life they had to
find a way to serve and to give their lives doing good for others, not living
only for themselves.
This
is still another way God’s glory, seen in Jesus, is still revealed. For when live like Jesus, serve like Jesus,
care like Jesus, and even when we suffer for good as Jesus did, as Paul says, we
‘carry’ and ‘bear in our bodies the
death of Jesus so the life of Jesus May be made visible’ in us. What will this lost, helpless, dying, and
dark world be unless the life of Jesus isn’t seen in us today? Where will the world go without our witness,
without our salt, our light, and without the work that can only be done through
Christ who enlightens and who strengthens us?
I
have already spoken of the late pastor WA Criswell, whose preaching greatly inspired
and influenced me early in my ministry. Although
I see some things differently today, which we all do if we keep growing, his sermons
still remind me of the hidden, but ever-present realities of life, death, and
eternity. Like in Science and physics,
we don’t see these realities without the microscopic lens of Christ empowering us
to see into the deep of human and spiritual truth.
Criswell’s
own preaching was sometimes like a super-microscope
when he once told of traveling to Kentucky to preach and also being able to visit
the well-known Mammoth caves. He told
how they had found the mummy of a girl in that Mammoth Cave. The child in the days passed, looked to be
about thirteen or fourteen years old.
The child had been lost, somehow had been lost in that terrible,
terrible cavern. And there she was. And this is finally how they found her: she
was kind of curled up burying her face
in her hands. She had died in tears and
in agony and in darkness and in terror.
No one wants to die like this.
No, no wants it to end like this!
No one wants to be lost in a darkness like this! But this is how the Bible describes the
‘outer darkness ‘, the darkness of the spiritual life and the spiritual
lostness of eternity without hope in Jesus Christ.
And
how does a human keep from getting lost, unless they have someone they can see
and understand who can show and point the way.
I wasn’t exactly lost in Germany, but I still could read signs, maps, or
even speak the language very well. I
stopped a German man on the street and asked directions to the post office. Although I asked in my broken German, he
quickly heard my American accent and answered in slow, broken English. But his English had a British accent and it just
as broken up and hard to decipher as my own.
I thanked him for his kindness anyway, but I was still just as
lost. If he had only spoken German as
slowly as he did English, I probably would have gotten more out of his attempt
to help.
People
get ‘lost’ in life, but we have to explain the way so that they can
understand. And we have to learn to speak
a language they can grasp. And Jesus
says that the universal language is when you ‘give yourself’ to serve
them. The
‘treasure’ that Paul had ‘in clay jars’ was the earthly, fleshly, ministry of
sacrifice and service given for another person.
The way out of lost ness was best seen when the other person can see the
‘treasure’ of God’s glory as our own lives reflect the serving, sacrificial
face of Jesus Christ. We aren’t Christ,
but lost people can only see Christ in us.
They can’t see him on an empty cross.
They can only see him when we care, love, serve and live like him. And then, they still can’t know him, until we
tell them that it is his life and his love that is in us and we pray will also
be known by them. For you see, we can’t
share the good news of Jesus by only doing good, but we must also tell them
that it is Jesus that is lives us and who wants to live in them.
THE
ETERNAL WEIGHT OF GLORY (17)
When
we come to see the glory of Christ’s face, not only to see his light as hope
for ourselves in our darkness, but to reflect this light of hope to others, how
is it that we can convey this or convince anyone? When we grow up spiritually, how do we help
others grow up in this same kind of spiritual truth?
Of
course, the first, most obvious answer is that we can’t make anyone see what we
see, know what we know, or understand what we understand. Our experience is our own and we can’t fully explain
it to anyone, at least not completely. We
all experience life differently and we develop different lenses to see and
interpret even the same realities we face.
The
common ground we all have, however, is in having to face our own mortality. This is what Paul was doing. This is the ultimatum that calls for
spiritual growth. This is why we all
need to see the ‘glory of God’ shining in ‘the face of Jesus Christ’.
We are all moving toward the eternal truth of Jesus Christ. We may not be able to prove our spiritual
truth, but we can point to Christ as God’s promise of eternal hope beyond our temporary,
mortal life.
This,
I believe, is the meaning of Paul’s ‘treasure in clay jars’ which points
to the ‘eternal weight of glory’.
Paul’s words of faith in Jesus Christ point us to the truth we can’t prove,
but we depend upon because comes from beyond the world we know.
I
spoke earlier of the darkness that can come into our lives as kind of a ‘black
hole’ that draws us end. Interestingly, when
astronomers watch objects being pulled to that black dark hole, they somehow
come through to the other side, as if there is some kind of other dimension out
there in that mysterious darkness. That’s
exactly how we should see the darkness of this world too. Yes, theirs is a darkness that comes to us in
life, but we don’t have be ‘born losers’ or ‘dying losers’, but we can ‘overcome’
and ‘move through’ even the greatest darkness with hope. As Paul concludes in our text:
“So we do not lose heart. Even
though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day
by day. 17 For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an
eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, 18 because we look not at what
can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but
what cannot be seen is eternal” (2 COR. 4:16-18).
What
Christ gives us now is growth in the wisdom of ‘perspective’. We all need to grow and gain perspective to help
us keep the faith, to have hope, and to keep growing in grace and love. Just
like when we were children, things troubled us then that don’t trouble us
anymore. We were troubled with our toy broke. We were troubled when we didn’t get our
way. We were troubled when we had to do
something we didn’t want to do. But as
Paul wrote elsewhere, we became an
adult, we gained perspective, and we grow up and put way those ‘childish’ ways
of seeing things.
And
that’s exactly what Paul means here, when he says: We look not at what can be
seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what
cannot be seen is eternal. (2 Cor. 4:18 NRS)
Against
the background of an eternity are we to see our lives, both good and the bad, in
view of the light of eternity and eternal things. He
says: “For this slight momentary affliction
is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, (2 Cor.
4:17 NRS)
I
know it might be easy to read or hear what Paul says and say, ‘but a moment?’ Well, the pain of life doesn’t feel like a ‘moment’
when you go through it? Did Paul really
understand what it was like to go through pain, agony, grief, loss and the dark
night of the soul? Well, just move on
in this letter to 2 Corinthians 11: 23027 and listen to Paul describe some of
the difficulties he’s already be through, even before he died having his head
chopped off.
23 ... with far greater labors,
far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death.
24 Five times I have received from the Jews
the forty lashes minus one.
25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I
received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was
adrift at sea;
26 on frequent journeys, in danger from
rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles,
danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false
brothers and sisters;
27 in toil and hardship, through many a
sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked (2
Cor. 11:23-27 NRS)
This
is the man who called these kinds of ‘troubles his ‘slight momentary
affliction’. Paul could say this not
because these weren’t dark, difficult, and hard days and nights, but he could
say this because he kept everything in perspective. Compared to ‘eternity’ and ‘eternal things’
and ‘the eternal weight of glory’ these afflictions were short, ‘slight’
and ‘momentary’.
A
long time ago there lived a wonderful musician, a glorious violinist. His name is spelled: O-L-E — B-U-L-L. You can remember that because it looks like ‘Old
Bull’. It’s a real name because his name
is Norweigen, Olee Bull. He was one of
the greatest violinist who lived in the late 19th century. Ole was a master who grew up in Norway, loved
Norway and master the music of Norway, and when he died in 1880, his death was
taken to be the loss of a national treasure.
In
that little place in Norway, there grew up with Ole Bull, another boy by the
name of Jan Ericsson. Now, Jan Ericsson
and Ole Bull were friends, and they grew up together, but they were so
different. Ole Bull loved music, and he
loved his violin, and he loved the things of the soul. And Jan Ericsson was a mathematic and a
mechanical genius, and he looked upon Ole Bull as being a dreamer and an artist
who would never come to any good end.
After
they grew up together, Jan Ericsson immigrated to the United States. And being a mathematical wizard and a mechanical
genius, he built a factory here in the United States. And he greatly prospered. He became a rich man with a great industrial
empire. And from time to time, Jan
Ericsson would read about his old friend Ole Bull in the newspapers and in the
headlines. But he never paid any great attention
to it. And he never thought much about
it. That was just something in his past. He just didn’t need to dwell on anything like
that.
Until
one day, when his old friend, Ole Bull, came to the United States, and he put
on a concert here. He even played in Jan
Ericsson’s new hometown. Jan Ericsson
was too busy, and he didn’t have time for such things. He was running his factory, and he was
building an industrial empire. And who
had time to go down there to hear his old friend Ole Bull play the violin?
Well,
Ole Bull went down to the factory, and went to the office of his old friend Jan
Ericsson and called on him. He began to
talk to Jan about life, and then finally about what John was doing, and finally
his business. Jan was amazed at what Ole
Bull knew about the world, about fabrics and the kinds of things that Jan was producing there in that plant. In
that conversation, Ole Bull also began
to talk to Jan about some of those things beyond Jan’s work, about the science
of music and vibration and resonance. Then
Ole Bull took out his violin, and he began to talk to Jan about the mechanics
of making beautiful music. He put the
violin up to his chin and his shoulder, and he swept the bow across it, and played
with such beauty it caught Jan’s attention.
The,
with the sweep of his bow, Ole Bull began to play one of those old Norwegian
songs that he and Jan used to love when they were back in Norway. Then he played one of those beautiful old
Norwegian melodies that Jan had known from his childhood days. It made Jan Ericsson weep. And when Ole Bull stopped, Jan told his old
friend, “Oh, Ole, keep on playing. Play
again. Play again.” He said, “That’s been out of my heart, that’s
been lacking in my life all through these years. Ole, play again. Play again.”
As
the great violinist played, the workers in the plant overheard and began to
come and to listen outside the office. Jan
opened the door and stepped out and made an announcement to the whole plant
that everything was to shut down for an hour and all his employees were to
gather to hear his old friend Ole Bull play the music of the soul and of the
heart.
Isn’t
what happened there, what happens right here, in this text. Music can lift our soul, not just to where we’ve
been, to also to where we’re going. You
and I aren’t not just made for this world, we’re not just made for the temporalities! You’re aren’t made only for the materiality. You’re not only made for the things you can
see. You are made for eternity. You are made for God. You’re made for the world that is still to
come! God has put this yearning inside
of you. God has put ‘eternity in your
heart’. This is the ‘treasure’ in clay
jars. And your heart is lost and
restless until you find yourself living in him—for him, for God. And this is ‘the eternal weight of glory’ that
your life is ‘out of tune’ until you ‘tune’ your heart to the music of God’s eternity. Only by
God’s power can this ‘hope’ be realized in you.
Will you come and put your hope in him?
Amen.
(*This sermon idea and stories
are from several different sermon based on this Passage from WA Criswell at the
website: wacriswell.com.)
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