Transcript

Investing In God's Investment

2 Corinthians 3:1-3
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Pastor Randy Smith

Often I feel as Christians we can get sidetracked by the things of this world and lose our primary focus as it pertains to the greatness of our salvation.

Puritan pastor, John Flavel, helps us when he recreated in his own imagination the conversation between the Father and the Son in eternity past that resulted in our redemption.

• Father: "My Son, here is a company of poor miserable souls that have utterly undone themselves and now lie open to My justice! Justice demands satisfaction for them or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them. What shall be done for these souls?"
• Son: "O my Father, such is My love to and pity for them that, rather than they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their Surety. Bring in all Your bills, that I may see what they owe You. Lord, bring them all in, that there may be no after-reckonings with them. At my hand shalt You require it. I will rather choose to suffer Your wrath than they should suffer it. Upon Me, my Father, upon Me be all their debt.
• Father: "But my Son, if You undertake for them, You must reckon to pay the last [cent]. Expect no [discounts]. If I spare them, I will not spare You."
• Son: "Content, Father. Let it be so. Charge it all upon me. I am able to discharge it. And though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all My riches, empty all My treasures, yet I am content to undertake it" (Works, I:61).

It is wise to frequently contemplate our deserved destiny in hell, but then immediately and joyfully recall the great promise that because our faith is in Christ, we are in complete union with the One that suffered and paid in full the debt that we owed. Rather than allowing His children to perish, the Father ordained, the Son died, and the Spirit applied the forgiveness and restoration we have in Christ. Frequently recalling this great gift, the greatest gift as a result of God's unmerited free grace bestowed upon us, is a great reminder for righteous living and joy and hope. It is also a reminder of the great investment God has made in all of His people at a tremendous personal cost to Himself.

We should love all people as all people are created in God's image, but there should be a greater love for those whom God loves, the ones He died for, the members of His spiritual family.

Just as the most unloving action to a parent is abusing his or her children, our Lord takes it very seriously when people, especially His children, have no regard for those whom He loves and has invested so much into their lives. Can we even logically assume that God can sacrifice for their redemption, adopt them into His family whereby He is their Father, give them the indwelling Holy Spirit, listen to their prayers, heal their broken hearts, transform them into Christlikeness and then be unmoved when His other children who have received and understand these blessings treat their fellow spiritual siblings as an insignificant and irrelevant object in the church?

Therefore, the investment God made and continues to make is the motivation we need to allow Him to use us to make investments in the lives of His children. All the metaphors of the church we see in Scripture - a body, a building, a plant, a family - give us this idea of community and dependence upon one another. In other words, this autonomous, don't-serve-anybody, come-when-I-feel-like-it, care-little-for-others, invest-only-in-myself is clearly unbiblical, contrary to everything we see in Scripture. It is a great offense to the Father, unbecoming of those who call themselves His children. As God has invested and continues to invest in us, we should allow Him to enable us to be used by Him to invest in others.

Paul spoke of this investment to the Thessalonians, "Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us."

And we see more of it here as we turn to chapter 3 in 2 Corinthians. Paul's love for the Lord gave him a great love for the very people the Lord loves. Or we could say, as God made an investment in the life of Paul, the natural response is Paul wanting God to use him to make an investment in the lives of others, others with feelings and purpose and needs and eternal souls cared for so deeply by God.

Let's dig into the first three verses and observe Paul's love for the people of God. As we do, let's ask ourselves, do we, though possibly displayed in different ways, have and give evidence of the same love as Paul for God's children?

So the purpose of the 2 Corinthians letter is Paul's defense of his apostleship. As we have learned, the false teachers sought to discredit Paul's character in an effort to invalidate his ministry and steal away his converts. We've already decoded several of their attacks based on Paul's responses. We see another example of this starting in verse 1. Based on Paul's response, their attack was this: "Where are Paul's letters of recommendation?"

Look at verse 1. Paul starts off with two rhetorical questions, both expecting "no" for an answer. "Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you?"

What the false teachers would do is pride themselves on the letters of recommendation they could collect. It's almost like someone who goes to memorabilia shows to pay for autographs and pictures with famous athletes. There's no relationship. The athletes could care less about the individual, but the individual prides himself when he lays out his numerous phony connections with influential people. Paul refused to play this game.

We use letters of recommendation. Paul is not against letters of recommendation either. As a matter of fact, he referred to them elsewhere in Scripture with a positive tone (Rom. 16:1; 1 Cor. 16:10). The whole epistle of Philemon is in a sense a letter of recommendation on behalf of Onesimus. What Paul is against are letters of recommendation in this particular situation.

You know how the game works. Someone asks you to write them a letter of recommendation. Rarely do you say "no." And rarely do you elaborate on someone's weaknesses, especially if the individual will be reading it him or herself. The letters are a disproportionate and at times exaggerated account of a person's strengths. And since all of them are almost good, there is a desire that the evaluator of the letter can see through the pleasantries and discern what you really think about the individual! The point is anybody can amass a collection of letters of recommendation.

So these false teachers would collect these letters and then ride into town and pull the dusty parchments out of an old satchel. To them, that's what validated their ministry. Paul says, not me. I don't have any letters nor will I stoop to that level. You want letters? Verse 2, "You are our letter."

Staying within our topic this morning, it's like you going to Pastor Jack and saying you want to be a leader for Discipletown. You offer to get him some letters of recommendation that vouch for your character and gifts and usefulness to the Lord. And he responds by saying, "I don't want any written letters. What I want are living letters right here within this church. Is God working through you to your own family members at home? Do your actions in this church vouch for your love and commitment to God's people?"

So what Paul is doing here is refusing to play their foolish games. Even at the risk of appearing prideful and egotistical, Paul refuses to produce written letters because of his own testimony that they experienced in his midst. Why in the world, after living with them for 18 months, would he need to go back to square one and prove himself with piece of paper composed by a total stranger? They witnessed his character. And, verse 2, they also witnessed in his love for the people and his service to the Lord the testimony of others who were saved and transformed and encouraged as a result of God working through his ministry. It was ironically the very people who were influenced by his ministry that were now questioning the legitimacy of his ministry!

Unlike some letter that is carried around in a pocket and unfolded and presented only to a few, Paul says the evidence of God working through him is, verse 2, "known and read by all men" because his love for the people and influence in their lives was evident to everyone who had the spiritual eyes to see.

You see, the false teachers only cared for what they could gain from the congregation. As Paul said in 2:17, they were "peddling the word of God," using the church for their own selfish advantages. Paul on the other hand was sincere (2:17), caring only for the Lord's glory and the spiritual health of God's people. As he says in 4:5, "For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus' sake." As we have been saying, there was genuine love for God's people. As he is saying in verse 2, his letter was them, and they were "written [on his] heart."

So let's pause for a moment to ask yourself, has God placed upon your heart this kind of love for His people? Obviously the degree of influence will differ from Paul's because of his calling as an apostle and full-time pastor, but there is no need for the degree of intensity to differ.

Is it seen in your prayers for the specific people in the church and for unity in the church and ministry needs to be filled and the budget met and the leaders to make wise decisions and the church to be safe physically and spiritually and the people to mature and the lost to be reached and Christ to be exalted? Is it seen in your personal involvement in other's lives? Helping with practical needs, encouraging believers in the Lord, setting a good example for others to follow and serving in a ministry? So has the Lord in His love for His people given you a heart that beats after His in a similar love for His people? And if so, is there tangible evidence that you can say with Paul that people in this church are your letters of recommendation because they are written on your hearts? There is so much in this area to be encouraged at in our church!

Christians truly loving Christians is an unquestionable expectation seen throughout Scripture. Our Lord said in John 13:35, "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." John himself wrote in 1 John 3:10, "By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother." Four verses later he says, "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death" (1 Jn. 3:14). Three more verses later we read, "But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth" (1 Jn. 3:17-18). Paul himself told the church in Thessalonica, "Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more" (1 Thes. 4:9-10).

So don't see Paul's heart and think it's only an apostle or pastor thing! Genuinely loving others in tangible ways is a Christian thing. It is such a Christian thing that according to the verses I cited, it offers the assurance of one's salvation which should be questioned if love for others in the church is not being experienced and demonstrated.

Let's go back to our text. To be sure no one thinks Paul is taking credit for the spiritual changes in those whom he influenced. Paul makes it clear in verse 3 when he says, "Being manifested that you are a letter of Christ." So Paul might have been the messenger God used and the scribe who transcribed this letter of recommendation, but the letter itself was dictated and signed by a third party, and that third party was none other than Jesus Christ. Paul could not have claimed a higher authority for his credentials and at the same time give all the glory to God for his service.

So what's the progression? Paul was saved and transformed to love Christ's people. Paul served Christ's people with the strength Christ supplied. Christ used Paul's ministry to transform His people. Therefore as a result of Paul's service there were many letters of Christ, not only written on Paul's heart, but visibly available for everyone to read that validated Paul's adequacy (2:16) as a minister of Christ much better than an old piece of paper composed by a total stranger pulled out of his backpack. Therefore when they speak against Paul, the false teachers are in effect speaking against Christ. And if the Corinthian church themselves deny Paul whom God used in their lives, it's the same as denying their own spiritual existence as Christians.

Now in classic fashion, Paul, the moment he mentions Jesus Christ in verse 3, goes off on a theological discussion (we have seen this before) making two very interesting contrasts that explain the richness of the New Covenant over the Old Covenant.

The first contrast. Paul says they are a letter of Christ cared for by him, verse 3, "Written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God." The first contrast is between the means of writing.

The false teachers were calling Paul to produce letters of ink. However, ink fades, it is silent and dead. Anybody can write a letter of ink. Yet Paul's recommendation was the letters Christ wrote on his behalf. And when Christ writes a letter, verse 3, it is written with "the Spirit of the living God." You see, as we've been saying with the "open door" discussions in past sermons (2:12) that we can accomplish a lot of impressive things in our own strength, but all that will matter spiritually, all that will honor God, all that will be eternal and worthy of reward is that which the living God does through us as a result of the Holy Spirit. And in order for the Spirit to use us, we must have humble and soft hearts motivated by the two greatest commandments to love God and love others. A loveless church is a Spiritless church.

This was our Lord's rebuke to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2. They had a whole lot of impressive things going on, even from a spiritual perspective, but it was all manufactured within their own human strength. What was their problem? They had "left [their] first love" (Rev. 2:4). Without a love for Christ and desire to further His glory seen through our service, we cannot expect a supernatural divine empowerment from the Spirit.

So in the New Covenant we are promised this rich outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and we are also promised His work internally within our hearts as we see in the second contrast. Sill in verse 3, "Not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." The second contrast is between the places of writing.

God wrote the New Covenant. God wrote the Old Covenant too (Ex. 32:15). Clearly here there is first an illusion to the Ten Commandments of the Old Covenant that God wrote with own His finger (Ex. 31:18). As we know, they were written, verse 3, on "tablets of stone." The law of God was there, but it was external, and the internal power to live it out was minimal. That is why the Old Covenant law given through Moses, though "holy and righteous and good" (Rom. 7:12), was a "ministry of condemnation" (as Paul says in 3:9). It couldn't save, because it couldn't be perfectly obeyed. It didn't lead to one's salvation; it led to one's damnation as a mean for justification. It only led one to acknowledge his or her guilt and the need to be justified by faith in the upcoming Messiah.

You see the great promise in the Old Testament, God's intentions all along, is that the day would come when God would write the New Covenant, verse 3, "on tablets of human hearts." The promise of the New Covenant is given in Ezekiel 36, that "He will give [His people] a new heart and put a new spirit within [them]; and [He] will remove the heart of stone from [their] flesh and give [them] a heart of flesh. [He] will put [His] Spirit within [them] and cause [them] to walk in [His] statutes, and [they] will be careful to observe [His] ordinances" (Eze. 36:26-27). Or as the Lord said through the prophet, Jeremiah, "'But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,' declares the LORD, 'I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people'" (Jer. 31:33).

In his defense Paul is taking the complaint that he didn't show paper letters of recommendation to the point where he claims his ministry, resulting in the Spirit of the living God transforming hearts, is actually evidence that the New Covenant has been fulfilled in their midst. The Corinthian believers themselves, the fact that they are now (5:17) "new creations" in Christ, show that Christ's letter of recommendation was already written. Does Paul need any higher reference than that?

So have you received Jesus Christ, the Messiah? And if so, is there evidence marked by your obedience, especially seen in your desire to love God and others? And if God's law is written on your heart, which is fulfilled in love (Rom. 13:10), and you have the indwelling "Spirit of the living God" (2 Cor. 3:3) in your heart marked by the fruit of love (Gal. 5:22), is there evidence that you love God and have His people in your love for Him written on your hearts?

When it is all said and done, how many lives will you have impacted for spiritual gain? In whom have you really made an investment? Have you ever poured yourself into somebody's life by giving them your life whereby they are better off spiritually as a result of your effort? Your spouse? Your kids? It needs to start there! People at the church?

I know many of you came out yesterday for Barbi Drexler's memorial service here at the church. It was beautiful. What made it so beautiful to me was the fact that people (other than the pastor) spoke of her love for the Lord and the spiritual influence she made in their lives. From family to friends to people who barely knew her, they all praised God for the spiritual investment she made in their lives.

I thought to myself and asked, what spiritual legacy will I leave behind? What will those who know me best say at my funeral? How will I have been gripped by the Lord's investment for me to make a spiritual investment in others? And I concluded in my own mind that when it's all said and done that that is all that really matters because my love for others will outlive me and will give the greatest evidence of my love for the Lord.