Transcript

The Rock And The Pastor's Role

2 Corinthians 4:7-15
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Pastor Randy Smith

We've learned that Paul wrote 2 Corinthians as a defense of his character and ministry. He was under severe attack from his opponents who were trying to undercut his life and sabotage this infant church in Corinth. Among other things, they accused Paul of being too weak. After all, if God is blessing a ministry, shouldn't we expect the minister to be prestigious and healthy and free from suffering? So as he has done before, Paul takes the complaint and turns it upside-down. He explains how his weaknesses and afflictions actually reveal the power of God and validate the fact that he is indeed God's man.

Like much of 2 Corinthians, the passage we have before us applies specifically to the life of an apostle. Since there are no longer any legitimate apostles on the scene, I have used the Scripture in 2 Corinthians to explain how the material in a general sense applies to all Christians.

This morning we're going to take it from another angle. The closest person to an apostle today would be the church pastor. And since today is the day we just installed two new pastors, I feel led to use this material (from the very place we find ourselves in 2 Corinthians) to hone in on their responsibilities, and how you as a congregation should be receiving them. Again, there will be application today to all Christians as Gospel ministers in this passage, but my primary focus is to examine the Gospel ministry of the church pastor and the proper response of the congregation to them.

First of all, it is important for the congregation to have a right understanding of God's expectation for their pastor. Get this one wrong and your pastors will be discouraged and you will be disappointed. Here it is: Pastors are called by God to be Gospel ministers. That means they are to prioritize leading unbelievers to receive the Gospel and assisting believers to live by the Gospel.

Apart from selfish motives, no pastor with half a brain would enter the ministry for any other reason than Gospel ministry. The men you have as your shepherds will go through tremendous hardship on a daily basis, and they endure it because of God's calling in using them to minister spiritually to His people. That's really the only thing that keeps us going!

So you end up in the hospital for a week. The pastor comes to visit you. You don't have your Bible with you. All you want to talk about is the Yankees. You claim to be a professing Christian, but have no interest to pray, no interest to understand God's role in your suffering, no interest to witness to the caregivers, no interest to learn about the sermon you missed and no interest to be comforted with Scripture.

Call him what you want, but when a pastor does not primarily minister the Gospel, he is not functioning as a pastor. He is letting down you and himself and the church and the Lord because the uniqueness of his calling is not being experienced.

Look in your Bibles at verse 7. "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves."

When Paul speaks of "earthen vessels" he was referring to the baked clay pots ordinarily used in his day. There were not the beautiful vessels put on a shelf to display, but rather the vessels that were common, cheap, breakable and virtually useless. Most of the time these were the vessels used to store and transport garbage and human waste. Paul compares himself to those vessels. Your pastors are to be those vessels. Why?

Because contained within your pastors is (as Paul says in verse 7) a "treasure," the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. And the humility and weakness of the pastor, just a common clay jar himself, then does not allow his life to distract from the greatness of the message. Or as Paul puts it in at the end of verse 7, "So that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves."

Pastors will experience a level of suffering uncommon, unfamiliar and not understandable to other believers. That is God's way of keeping them humble and reminding them that it's not them, but the Gospel that must be on display through them. And when they understand this, they realize that successful ministry is getting out of the way and allowing the power of Christ to shine through. By using "jars of clay," God wants to make it clear that divine power lies not in the human messenger, but in the divine message. It is true for all Christians. It is especially true for pastors.

Skip over to verse 10. Could Paul illustrate his own weaknesses in terms any more graphic? "Always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus."

The "dying of Jesus," physical suffering as a result of Gospel ministry. As far as I know, the only person that ever shed blood from our church for Christian ministry was Michelle Kostidakis when she needed a few stiches after cutting her hand while slicing bagels in the church kitchen. Yet for the apostle Paul, his physical life was forever on the line. That was a reality for him and even many in the early church. Things keep going as they are and it might be a reality for Christians in our country as it is already in many parts of the world.

Yet there is also an emotional dying of Jesus that takes place in the life of every pastor regardless of where he lives. And most of the suffering for Gospel ministry sadly comes not from unbelievers, but believers, the very people the pastor is seeking to serve. As a result of doing Gospel ministry, even within a church as great as ours, your pastors will experience tremendous pain from within simply because they are your pastors, and while a few are malicious, most people will be totally oblivious to the pain they are causing.

For example, there will be people who will find it easy to identify a weakness or something in which they disagree (doctrine, preference, conviction, philosophy, etc.) and relentlessly harass these men with books and sermon tapes, website links and personal propaganda (that exceeds the Taliban) in an effort to voice their displeasure and bring them over to their side on the matter. Some will have no comprehension that pastors are only human beings. Their comments will always be critical. Their baggage will be dumped with no desire for personal change. Their comparisons will be made to the top pastors in the world. They will take their pastors for granted. Their perceived role in the church is to be a constant fault-finder. And their expectations will be unreasonable.

They will drop major counseling bombs on these men when they are simply trying to enjoy a hot dog with their family at the church picnic. Some people will always expect their pastor's to be under them. You get a house, wow, we live in an apartment. I would like to make that kind of money. I don't get to take Mondays off. Why do you get three weeks when I am only allowed two weeks of vacation? It's the attitude that they are the shareholders of a pastor's stock and everything the pastor benefits from must be inferior to their benefits because after all they are paying the pastor's salary.

Some people will threaten to leave the church if they don't get what they want and intentionally create a wave of destruction in their departure that takes the pastors months to mop up. Some people will complain that the pastors never share their weaknesses, yet those very people when upset with the pastor will use his revealed weaknesses against him when given the opportunity. Some will complain that the pastors never reach out to them and then when the pastor reaches out, they will accuse him of badgering them. Some will want the all the details of leadership decisions and then accuse the pastors of gossiping when they share anything. Some will tell the pastors they need to delegate more, yet they feel slighted when their situation is delegated to another. And possibly most difficult of all, some people will show great zeal for the Lord, encourage the pastor's heart and monopolize much of his time, and then walk away, but not before stabbing him in the back and breaking his heart.

Now, you might be saying, many of these are true for all people and common to whatever profession you choose. I'd say there is the difference. The pastoral ministry is not a profession, it's a calling. It's not a job; it's a labor of love. Paul will make this clear in chapter 11 of this epistle when after he speaks of all the physical pain in his life, he expresses another area that brought him more significant suffering, the emotional pain of carrying souls deeply within your heart. "Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my being weak? Who is led into sin without my intense concern?" (2 Cor. 11:28-29). As he said, it is "always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus."

I am not making excuses for it. And it's tragic that almost all of a pastor's suffering comes from people who profess to be Christians, but it is a reality when you minister to God's sheep on the front lines. Paul experienced it. Moses experienced it. Jesus experienced it. It is, verse 10, "always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus." So why does God permit it? As the end of verse 10 states, "so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body."

It is true for all Christians though especially true for pastors. The suffering brings humility. Humility keeps us out of the way. Jesus is then on full display in our lives for the benefit of others. So in one sense it keeps us from boasting in ourselves because we are only boasting in Jesus. In another sense it shows those whom we are serving that the Christian faith is worth suffering for and even despite the suffering it brings, we still find it desirable and most attractive when Jesus Christ gets all the glory and His people are blessed despite our pain.

Let me ask you: why is our church growing? Why are so many people coming here? Is it to see a human person? Is it to hear something that they've heard all of their lives? Or is it that all people are hard-wired to find their ultimate satisfaction in God. And when they come to Grace Bible Church it is truly the "life of Jesus" that they are encountering? That's what Paul is getting at in verse 10.

Verse 10 that we just looked at summarizes and interprets the paradoxes found earlier in verses 8 and 9. Notice how there are four paradoxes and each of the four paradoxes begins with the "dying of Jesus" (the suffering) and concludes with the "life of Jesus" (the victory). It begins with what the minister experiences and concludes with what the minister believes by faith is being accomplished in his life to the blessings of others. Let's look at each of them noticing how the suffering is not relieved through miracles, but rather through patient the endurance in God's promises and power put on display.

Verse 8, "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed." Verse 8, "Perplexed, but not despairing." Verse 9, "Persecuted, but not forsaken." Verse 9, "Struck down, but not destroyed." Let's briefly break down each of these.

Your pastors will be consistently "afflicted," as verse 8 declares. Their personal life will be scrutinized. Their labor will be relentless. Their family will be tested. Their freedoms in Christ will be limited. Their decisions will be questioned. If it goes well all the glory to God. Yet if it doesn't, it is the pastor's fault. As Paul said, they will be afflicted in "every way." Changing churches or careers will seem like the greener pasture. Yet they must remember that God is sovereign and because He is in control, they are not, as the verse say, "crushed." One pastor said, "Squeezed, but not squashed."

Your pastors will be frequently, verse 8, "perplexed." But due to God's grace they need not let it consume them to the point of "despairing."

They will be "persecuted," verse 9. I'll never forget the man who rushed me into my office immediately after I preached my very first sermon at the old church. He said, "If you keep preaching like that, everybody will leave!" Ironically, he was one of the first to go! The word used in verse 9 is "persecuted." I've had people gossip behind my back. I've had people attack my children. I've had people leave nasty unsigned notes in my mailbox. I've had people write scathing e-mails. I've had people accuse me falsely. I've had people incorrectly judge my intentions. I've had people curse me out. I've had people threaten me. I've had people whom I considered friends walk out of my life. Oftentimes it's very lonely to be a pastor, but through it all we must remember we are not, verse 9, "forsaken." We'll never be abandoned by God.

And your pastors will go through periods when they will feel, verse 9, "struck down." It will at times appear that nobody cares. Minimal encouragement, little observable fruit from the labor and problems that far outweigh the blessings. And although there's some truth to all of this, much of it I learned is often exaggerated through our own pity-parties. But though it is a reality, our pastors (just like all servants in our church) must remember that they are not, verse 9, "destroyed." As one commentator said, they will frequently feel "knocked down," but they are never "knocked out." They must learn that our victory is not always by necessarily escaping adversity, but successfully enduring it through the grace of God.

Paul can't make the Christian servant's ministry any clearer. Look at verse 11: "For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh."

Through our suffering all Christians, yet pastors in particular, the power of God is unleashed and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is put on display. This allows Paul to conclude in verse 12, "So death works in us, but life in you." What an incredibly, distinctively Christian attitude of selflessness. That we are able to find hope in our suffering because through our suffering, other souls are brought closer to Jesus Christ.

Later in 2 Timothy 2:10 Paul will say, "For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory."

And what's the overall goal of this? Does it end with the blessings poured out on others? Verse 15, "So that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God." Answer: the glory of God. This is how God does it in His economy.

This attitude is so contrary to the teaching of this world and the desires of our flesh, but this is Christian because it is the attitude of Christ. He is the One who left His glory. He came to earth as a humble servant, was rejected by His family and denied and betrayed by His friends. He was misunderstood. He was underappreciated. He was persecuted. Having done nothing wrong, He went to the cross, He absorbed all our sins and He received the wrath of the Father in our place. The King received no fanfare. The Creator received no shortcuts. The Savior received no miracles to save Himself. He is now seated at the right hand of God, but before He received the crown He received the cross.

Perhaps a strange message for our new pastors to hear. But I believe it's the one our Lord wants them and the church to hear. It's not because this is where we happened to be in 2 Corinthians, but because we have bought so much of the world in the way we think we should conduct our lives as Christians.

So pastors, all Christians, realize the suffering will be there, but we have hope that God redeems the suffering, and God uses the suffering to reveal His surpassing greatness through resurrection power. And also realize that all of you as Christians should not be those who contribute to the pain a pastor frequently bears on his heart, but the very ones that bring great encouragement and joy in their ministry. And may all our pastors serve with the grace of God in a way that models the selflessness, compassion, humility and holiness of our Savior, Christ Jesus, so that through their suffering people will be spiritually blessed and found giving thanks abounding to the glory of God.