Never Give Up! 14. We Believe - Therefore We Speak

2 Corinthians 4: 13 - 15 There is a great preacher and pastor in my family tree. It is a great comfort to know that I have roots that go back a few generations. It’s in my DNA to be a preacher. Rev. Frederick William King, my great-grandfather, was born 23/7/1865 – became pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, Alice in 1893, age 28, and served there for the next 35 years. He was a familiar figure in his horse buggy as he travelled throughout the district – visiting, holding services in 4 different churches in the area, as well as travelling over 100 kms to preach at Balfour, then to the Winterberg Mountains, followed by a trip to Queenstown where he started the work. He built 4 new church buildings in the area. He was loved and respected by people of all denominations – was affectionately known as “Bishop of Alice” and by his fellow Baptists as “King of Alice.” We serve a trans-generational God who works across the centuries to establish his purposes on the earth. I like the idea of being part of a heritage that started long before I arrived on the scene. I thought about that as I worked on this message. This passage sounds a clear call to those who would preach the Word. When you get discouraged and feel like quitting, think about your heritage and take the long view of your work. Don’t give up and quit when hard times come (as they always do). Stand in there. Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Fear not and keep on preaching. These verses probe at the level of motivation for those who would serve the Lord. So in honour of my great-grandfather who long before me preached the Word and blazed the trail of gospel faithfulness, here is God’s message to all of us today. What must we do if our ministry is to stand the test of time? Paul gives us 3 directives - 1. Preach Your Convictions v. 13 “It is written” - quoting from Psalm 116 - David recounts his brush with death. When his enemies surrounded him and he feared for his own life, David cried out to God and the Lord delivered him. Paul says, “David faced death and so do I. David spoke up, and I will too.” Same Lord, same faith, same deliverance. We see in this a beautiful picture of the communion of saints stretching across the centuries. Though David lived 3000 years ago and Paul 2000 years ago, when I bear witness to my faith, when I speak up for Christ and declare his name openly, then I can say, “I have the same faith as David and Paul. What God did for them, he does also for me." “Give them something to believe.” Pastor, when you stand to preach this Sunday, give them something to believe. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that a sermon is a lecture where you cover all possible points of view. If people want that, they can read a commentary. Don’t fancy yourself as a reporter on the latest news of the day. If they want your opinion on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, they can ask you after the service. If they want sports, you can talk about that over lunch. If they want your thoughts on the global economic crisis, you can have coffee together and talk it over. If you have strong opinions about politics, that’s well and good, but political commentators are a rand a dozen. If they want advice on how to invest, they can buy the Financial Mail. If they want recipes, they can watch the Food Channel. If they want funny stories, they can listen to a good comedian. If they want book reviews, they can read the newspaper and magazines. But dear pastor, when Sunday comes, you have one responsibility, a calling from God that no one can discharge on your behalf. When you stand to preach . . Give them something to believe. Give your people the undiluted Word of God. Give them a message from heaven. We can get all that other stuff – all the commentary, all the jokes, all the political insight – somewhere else, and frankly, we can get it from people who do it better than most pastors can do. If you are a pastor, give your people something they can’t get by watching ENews or CNN or Supersport or NatGeoWild or any of the other DSTV channels. On behalf of church members everywhere, I say to my fellow pastors . . . Give us something to believe. We’re dying out there. Literally, spiritually, metaphorically. We’re dying for lack of the Word of God. Please give us something to believe. Tell us the truth about what God has said. Share it with deep conviction from your heart. Tell what God’s Word says, tell us what it means, tell us why you believe it, and then challenge us to believe it too. “We . . . believe, and therefore speak." In order to speak with conviction, you must have some convictions. Please don’t preach your doubts to us. We have enough doubts of our own. If you don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God, do the right thing and get out of the pulpit. If down deep you doubt that Jesus is the Son of God, do the right thing and get another job. If you don’t believe that Jesus is the only way of salvation, maybe you’d better join a liberal denomination. If you’re not sure that heaven is real and hell is real, if you are embarrassed by the blood of Jesus, if you think it’s wrong to say, “You must be born again,” then step down and let someone who actually believes the Bible take your place. May God give us preachers with some backbone who won’t back down. God deliver us from politically correct sermons and preachers who preach everything but the Word of God. I think the Apostle Paul and Rev. Fred King would agree. 2. Remember Your Resurrection v. 14 Why is Paul so bold in his preaching? He preaches boldly because he knows (“we know”) with certainty that one day he will be raised from the dead to stand in the very presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that. He knows (“we know”) that in that glad day, he will stand side by side with the Corinthian believers (“with you”). For Paul, salvation was a communal experience he shared with all the redeemed people of God. “I’m not worried about anything because one day we will all be raised from the dead, and will stand together in the presence of the Lord forever.” Paul here is not speaking of “heaven” in the usual vague sense that we mean the term. Now to be sure, when we die, we go to be “with Christ” (Philippians 1:23). That’s a wonderful truth that no one can take from us. But Paul’s focus is not on heaven in that sense. He looks forward to a day when he will be raised from the dead as our Lord was raised from the dead. That gives him enormous encouragement. If this life is all there is, then we need to be cautious and careful in all that we do. But if there is another life beyond this life, and if we know that someday we will be raised from the dead, then we can risk it all for the sake of the Kingdom. Paul is saying, “Death is all they can do to me. And if they kill me, I won’t stay dead forever.” It’s hard to stop a man like that. If you think this is just wishful thinking, note that Paul ties his future resurrection to Jesus’ past resurrection. It all comes down to this. Did Jesus really rise from the dead on the third day? If so, then we know (with certainty!) that when we die, we will not stay dead forever. What the Father did for his Son, He will do for those who trust in His Son. So preach on, pray on, keep believing, never give up, and speak up for Jesus. The issue isn’t death. It’s resurrection! If you know Jesus, you won’t stay dead forever. That’s our faith, and nothing can shake us from that certainty. 3. Multiply Your Thanksgiving v. 15 This is another version of Romans 8:28. Paul’s suffering on behalf of the Corinthians results in the gospel being spread to more and more people who then give thanks to God, resulting in an “overflow” of praise that brings God great glory. It’s “more and more” all the way through. The gospel spreads to more and more people, So that more and more people experience God’s grace, Which leads to more and more thanksgiving to the Lord, and so God receives more and more glory. We can make it even simpler . .Gospel preached. Grace received. Gospel believed. Gratitude abounds. God glorified. Or simpler yet . . . Gospel. Grace. Gratitude. Glory. Paul had a huge view of God’s plan and his part in it. What starts on earth with Paul preaching the gospel amid much suffering ends up with multitudes praising God before the throne. The real end of the gospel, he says, is not the benefits it brings to men. The real end of the gospel is that it brings great glory to God. So we preach. Many believe. Thanksgiving erupts. God receives great glory. It all begins with preaching. The world judges the Christian enterprise to be an exercise in futility. From the standpoint of human wisdom, nothing seems more useless than the work of missionaries in some distant land. Here they are, far from home, just a tiny band of workers, perhaps in some remote mission station or perhaps they have been led of God to bring the Good News to one of the megacities of Asia where millions of people live packed together in massive high-rise apartment buildings. It seems simply astonishing to think that a handful of Christian workers in Mumbai or Kuala Lumpur can punch holes in the darkness. What are so few up against so many? The numbers alone make the task seem hopeless. Perhaps the missionaries should stay home and take a job in a church where they can be appreciated for their labours. This is how the human mind reason apart from God’s grace. But God does not count the way we count. Gideon with his 32,000 men was too many against the Midianites so God reduced his army to 10,000 and then to 300 lest anyone should think that the battle was won purely by human effort. God does not need vast numbers to do his work. We have heard it said that “God plus one is a majority.” It is nothing with him to win the victory by many or by a few. Often it seems that our Lord prefers to go into battle with a ragtag army of unqualified soldiers so that when the battle is over and the victory won, he alone gets the glory. The Message - Ephesians 1: 22 “The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church.” That’s a sentence that makes you want to stand up and shout, “Amen!" That’s the true state of affairs from God’s point of view. And this is why we send missionaries out into very difficult circumstances, knowing that they may easily feel overwhelmed. Well, yes, it’s easy to be overwhelmed when it’s just you and a handful of people up against the paganism of the world. But God doesn’t look at it that way. The world is dying already - passing away before our very eyes -rulers of this age will soon be gone. One day soon Jesus will reign over all the earth and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Now either we believe that or we don’t. If we don’t, we won’t go or if we do, we won’t stay. If we don’t believe it, we won’t speak with any conviction. But if we do believe that then we won’t be ashamed to send our best and brightest to the farthest corners of the earth, knowing that in the end a bright day is coming when our Lord will be clearly seen as King of Kings and Lord of Lords and every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. If we believe those things . . . big “if." Upon that little “if” depends the whole Christian enterprise. 2000 years have come and gone since our Lord walked on the earth. The bones of the Apostle Paul still lie in the dust of some Mediterranean grave. Perhaps some would say he was deluded to speak of his own resurrection from the dead when 20 centuries later, it still has not happened. But away with such human reasoning. Our Lord keeps time in his own way. A thousand years are like a day to him. If Christ be risen from the dead . . . Do we believe that? If we can say “Amen” to that, then we can say “Amen” to everything else we believe. We can know that all that is done in His name is not in vain. The ancient city of Corinth is long gone. You can walk today on the remains of the same streets Paul walked long centuries ago. How great and mighty Corinth must have seemed in the first century, but today it is an archaeological relic. The same will one day be true of Paris, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Johannesburg, Sydney, Beijing and all the mighty cities of the modern world. From dust they came, to dust they shall return. But Jesus shall reign. In due time he will take his place as rightful Sovereign and Lord of the universe. Between now and then, our task is clear: Preach our convictions. Remember our resurrection. Multiply our thanksgiving. We believe, therefore we speak. Amen.