Sermons

Sufficient Ministers of a More Glorious Covenant

March 15, 2015 Speaker: Jason Andersen Series: The New Covenant

Topic: New Covenant Passage: 2 Corinthians 2:14–3:18

Do you ever feel insufficient? Do you feel insufficient when you think of yourself as a minister of God? Do you feel inadequate when you think about the work of the Gospel? Do you feel weak and unequipped to share your faith with others? Do you feel like you lack the strength to serve people? Do you feel that you lack the right things to say to people, or lack the right words to pray for people? Do you feel that you lack what it takes to be a blessing to others?

Or what about other ways of ministry – the things we regard as the normal, daily demands of life? Do you ever feel insufficient to simply perform the daily grind? Do you feel weak and insufficient to simply wake up and serve your family? To make breakfast? To change the baby's diaper? To teach your children? To go to work, and be a faithful employee? Do you feel that you lack the strength to simply love those closest to you in life?

If any of these items hit home with you this morning, I want you to take heart. You're right to feel this way. You're right, because in ourselves, we have no power to do any of these things. We are insufficient! We really are inadequate and weak and powerless to serve God, and to love one another. We have no strength in us. We aren't sufficient for the work of the Gospel, no matter how small the task may seem.

However, the truth I want to encourage you with this morning is that through the blood of Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit which has been made to dwell in you, you have been made sufficient for all of these things. There is a power working in you that makes you sufficient and fit for the work of the Gospel – to love others, to serve others, to read and understand God's word, and to share it, to pray with expectation and boldness, to call an unbelieving world to repentance and into the riches of Christ, to encourage your brothers and sisters, to do all the things that I believe are summed up here in what Paul refers to as “spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ everywhere you go.” It's a power that does not come from us. It can't be explained as any human ability or strength. It's a power that comes only from God.

One thing that I believe cripples the church in our day – and the reason I think this message is important – is that we seem to lack a real, basic, effective understanding of the fact that the Holy Spirit is really inside of us, and that really means something about our qualifications to be ministers of God. The reason I think this is a problem is simply because of my own experience. I experience this kind of crippled thinking very often. I think very often, in big, general terms, about the power of God to save. I delight in the truth that we have a God who is sovereign and powerful enough to perform all that he has planned since before the foundation of the world. We have an unshakeable confidence that God is in control of all things, and that the Gospel is on the move in the world. But when it comes down to considering my own, personal role in how God actually carries out his will in the world, I feel very inadequate. It's like I am content to be on the sidelines and cheer and clap as I watch the amazing work that God is accomplishing in the world through the church, but I would never consider myself strong enough to get in the game. When Paul asks the question in verse 16 of chapter 2, “Who is sufficient for these thing,” I am very quick to say, “Not me, God!”

And in a sense, we should say that! That's the answer Paul expects when he asks that question, as we're going to look at. But what God aims to show us here through the words of Paul is that all of us, no matter what our calling in the body of Christ is, have been made sufficient, by the blood of Jesus, to get off the sidelines and get in the game. Christianity is not a spectator sport. All of us have been reconciled to God through the blood of Christ, and in Him, we have received the Holy Spirit, and been made sufficient for ministry – not by our own power, but by the power of God at work in us and through us.

One of my favorite “big picture” promises in the Bible is Habakkuk 2:14, which reads, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” The promise here is that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. It's a done deal. It is going to happen. Period. Nothing can prevent it. Victory is certain.

But how is it going to happen? How has God ordained for it to actually come to pass? Paul tells us pretty clearly in the first verse of our text this morning – “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.” Do you hear the connection? It is through us, the church, that God accomplishes this spreading of the knowledge of Christ.

Last week Josh spoke about the ministry of reconciliation that we have received. Today, my goal is to reinforce that not only have you received this ministry, but you have been made sufficient for it. You have been equipped for it. In Christ, God does not give us the mandate, but withhold the means. He equips us for that which he has called us to. I want you to be empowered this morning by the knowledge that you are not a “sidelines Christian.” You are part of a royal priesthood, called and equipped for the service of God in the new covenant of the blood of Jesus.If you never come to the realization that Christ has made you sufficient through his blood, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be his hands and feet in this world, then you will not be his hands and feet in the world – or at least not to the extent that you will be bold and joyful in it. You will always be stuck in a place of timidness and fear.

A few months ago, in Reid and Cindy's life group, we were discussing the new heart we have in Christ, and Lonna or Sheri – I can't remember who shared it first – gave a great analogy that stuck with me. They brought up the caterpillar and the butterfly. I will summarize the analogy this way – a butterfly will never take flight as long as it still believes it's a caterpillar. In the same way, you will not live boldly for the Gospel as long as you believe you are unequipped for it. At one time, you really were unequipped for flight – but not anymore. I want us to be a church full of butterflies who are conscious of the wings we have in Christ Jesus – the Holy Spirit. These wings are from God, given that we might be led by God to fly throughout the world and spread the knowledge of Christ!

This morning, I'd like to examine three truths within the text before us. First, I want to look at chapter 2 verse 14 through 16, and consider Paul's question, “Who is sufficient for these things?” I want us to think about just how insufficient we really are for the work of the Gospel. Second, after we've considered how insufficient we really are in ourselves, I want to look at the arguments Paul begins to make to the Corinthians to explain how he, and all of us, have been made sufficient to be ministers of the New Covenant. Third, after we've thought about both our insufficiency and our sufficiency, I want to look at what Paul has to say about the proof of our sufficiency. Then to close, I want to discuss just three brief applications.

I will preface by saying that I had originally planned on preaching today specifically on chapter 3 verses 7-18, and focus on comparing the glory of the old covenant and the glory of the new. However, when I really began to meditate on this chapter, I saw that the reason Paul even brings up the comparison of the old and the new covenant here is to support the broader point he's making about our sufficiency as ministers of the new covenant, and God made it clear to me in the last couple weeks that this point is what we really need this morning. At least I know it's what I need. So rather than deal with chapter 3 verses 7-18 in an isolated way, I thought it was crucial that we see these verses in light of the overall point the Holy Spirit is making through Paul in these verses. And to do that, I think we have to back up to chapter 2 verse 14. If the Lord allows, I would love to preach a “part 2” of this message, where we can look more exhaustively with the latter half of chapter 3, but our focus today will be mostly in chapter 2 verse 14 to chapter 3 verse 6.

Brief Background

Before we dive in, I want to give you just a very brief background of the text, as I think a little context is important to follow the flow of Paul's thinking. This is Paul's 2nd letter to the Corinthian church. In this letter, he deals with certain opponents of his in Corinth who have begun persuading the people to question the legitimacy of Paul's ministry – they begin to question his credentials as an apostle. Among other things, Paul goes to great lengths in this book to explain his apostleship, how it was given to him by God, how he has suffered for the Gospel, and ultimately ends up warning his opponents that if he has to, he will exercise his authority as an apostle when he comes among them again (2 Cor 12:20, 13:2-3,10).

In this portion of Scripture we're looking at today, Paul explains how the power of the Spirit reveals that his power for ministry is not from him, but that it comes from God.

Who Is Sufficient?

So let's dive into the text. I invite you to read along with me in chapter 2, starting at verse 14. “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” – and then he interjects with a question, “Who is sufficient for these things?”

What are the “these things” Paul is referring to in his question? What is he asking exactly? Who is sufficient for what? He's referring to the list of items he just gave. Let's go back and read the previous statements, applying his question:

Who is sufficient – that is, who is worthy enough, or strong enough, or able enough – to spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ everywhere they go? Who is sufficient to be the aroma of Christ to the world? Is there some kind of perfume we can manufacture to do this? Can I wake up in the morning, by my own strength, and say, “Today I am going to spread the Gospel. I'm strong enough. I can do this! I'm going to make people Christians!” Does anyone have that kind of power? Do we have the power to get the Gospel into people? Do we have the power to produce disciples of Jesus on our own? The answer, of course, is No.

Have you ever thought about what transpires when someone comes to Christ? I mean, have you thought about what actually happens in a person when they come to Christ? The prophet Ezekiel foretold of God's saving act of the New Covenant this way in Ezekiel 36: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

Who has the power to do these things? You? Me? Can you melt the heart of stone, or put the Spirit of God into a person? No, of course not. Only God can. He's the one performing this work. Not us.

Paul describes conversion later in 2 Corinthians like this “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

I'm a Christian today because God made me one. He shined his light into my heart. I'm a Christian today because God did a decisive, new creation work in me. He transformed me into something new. Only God could have done this. No man has the power to do these things.

Paul describes in Ephesians 2, that “when we were dead in our transgressions, [God] made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up with Him.” I was dead in my sins. I wasn't alive, but just a sinner. When Christ saved me, he made a dead man come to life. Only God can do this.

So we return to the question. Who is sufficient for these things? The more we consider how amazing the work of the Gospel is, the more intense the question becomes. Who is sufficient for these things? Clearly, no one but God is sufficient. No one but God is sufficient to spread the knowledge of Christ. No one but God can perform the work of the Gospel.

So point number one, if you're keeping score, is this; we are insufficient for the work of the Gospel. Only God can perform the work that the Gospel demands, which is raising dead people to life, performing spiritual heart surgery, and giving people His Spirit. To think that we could ever be sufficient to spread the Gospel by ourselves is to think too lightly of our own salvation, to downplay how depraved and helpless and lost we really were in our sin. Nothing less than an a miracle of God is needed to produce a Christian.

Made Sufficient In Christ

The next question then is what does this mean for us? If only God is sufficient to do this work, then how in the world can we be made sufficient as ministers of the Gospel? If this work is ever going to get done, God is going to have to do it! So how could we possibly ever be a part of this ministry?

We've established that the work is all God's. Only God is able to spread the knowledge of the glory of Christ throughout the world. But how does God choose to do the work? I already alluded to this earlier, but let's look again. Paul gives this answer in the beginning of our text, if we read closely. Let's read verse 14 again, and look for God to tell us how he's going to do this work.

“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.” – So God is the one spreading the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ. Which is vital, because only he can do this. But he does it through us! We are the means by which God does his work! This is amazing, but how can this be?

The short answer is found in chapter 3, verse 5-6. “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant.” It's that simple, really. God makes us sufficient vessels for ministry. He takes insufficient vessels like us, and makes us sufficient.

Notice Paul doesn't say that we have to do something to become sufficient. God makes us that way. It's all from God, he says – “Our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient.”

I want you to see this morning that this sufficiency to minister is a part of your identity in Christ! It's not a negotiable part of being a Christian! Being sufficient for ministry is part of your identity! You have been made sufficient to be a minister of the New Covenant, whether you believe it or not. There is no such thing as an insufficient Christian.

In 1 Peter 2:9, God addresses us as a priests. He says, “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

He doesn't say “you have the opportunity to become a priesthood,” or, “some among you are priests,” rather, he says “you [collectively] are a priesthood.” It's part of who you are in Christ. You are a priest in the New Covenant order of things, empowered by the Holy Spirit to declare the excellencies of Christ.

Don't take that as a light truth. I want to emphasize this today. So point number two: God has made you sufficient to be a minister of the Gospel through the blood of Jesus, by the Holy Spirit!

God has made you adequate to be used as a vessel to spread the fragrance of Christ wherever you go! Whether in the home, or in the workplace, or in the grocery market, or in the church. God has given you the strength needed to spread the fragrance of Christ everywhere. Whether you're out for a jog, or whether you're a world traveler like Jim Jordahl and you find yourself in Abu Dhabi, or whether you are visiting strangers in the hospital all day like Karin, God has made you the aroma of Christ to spread the fragrance of him in these places.

One Clarification

Now, there is one important clarification I want to make here. While we are made sufficient vessels for the work of the Gospel, it needs to be understood that God is still the one doing the work. God did not turn the work of the Gospel over to us, and say, “Here's your marching orders, here's your sufficiency! Get'r done, guys! I'll be back to check on you in a few thousand years!” No. God did not turn the work of the Gospel over to us, rather he does the work through us. Paul helps clarify this several in several of his letters.

Phil. 2:13 - “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” Notice, God commands us to work, because it's him working in us! We are to labor obediently, but in the comfort that we are not the force behind our labor. God is accomplishing his work through our work, and that should encourage us to work hard!

Col. 1:29 - “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.” – Again, it is the power of Christ at work in Paul.

And finally, in 1 Cor. 15:9-10, Paul compares his apostleship to the other apostles, saying “I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” – Again, it was God's work in Paul.

I think this is an important thing to understand, because if we're not clear on this point, I think we can fall prey to err in another direction. On the one hand, we are sufficient as ministers of the New Covenant, and we need to know that in a vibrant way! But if we focus too hard on this, we could also begin to feel that the success of the Gospel ultimately depends on us, and in a subtle way, we can become deceived back into thinking that all the work rests on our ability – which will crush us, because we don't have the ability!

I want this to be a great encouragement to you. God made you sufficient, but he didn't make you God. If God was calling you to be the one to reach into dead men, pull out hearts of stone, and put in new hearts, you would still find yourself quite insufficient for that work.

Charles Spurgeon gave an analogy here that I found helpful. He used the metaphor of telegraph wires:

“You see those wires which pass along our roads—they are nothing but dead metal. Are they sufficient of themselves to spy out what is happening in the capital of France and to report it here? No, not of themselves. Yet that unconscious wire is quite sufficient to accomplish the transmission of news from Paris. Information is obtained and the wires flash the message under the sea to our door! The wire is quite sufficient, though not sufficient of itself. The Lord uses us as His telegraph wires to communicate between Himself and fallen men. And we, by His almighty power, are made to convey to them the Truth with power. It flashes from our heart and tongue to the ears and heart of the man whom the Lord intends to bless. The words which we speak are not ours, but the words of our Lord who said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life.”

I think that's helpful. Come to see yourself as a holy telegraph wire, made sufficient to carry out the work of God in the world; but the work itself belongs to God. You are sufficient to carry the message, but the message is from God, and God controls its outcome. We aren't the ones who perform the heart transplant of bringing people to new birth in Christ, but God delights to use us as scalpels – scalpels that have been sterilized through being washed by the blood of Christ, and sharpened by the Holy Spirit, so that we are made adequate tools for the surgeon.

I'll use another analogy. I want you to be comforted to remember that while we are all able-bodied sailors working aboard the ship of the Gospel, God never gives up control of the helm. God doesn't want us to be burdened to think that the success of the Gospel depends on us in an ultimate sense. Rather, we are simply empowered to be faithful workmen. God will bring the ship safely to its appointed destination. Our mission is to put the sails up, so God can take the ship where he wants it to go.

I want you to be free of two extreme views this morning. Be free from the view that you are powerless to be a minister of the Gospel, but also be free from the view that the success of the Gospel falls squarely upon your shoulders, as if it's success hinged on your ability. Both extremes, I believe, lead us to a place of crippled ineffectiveness. But if we get this right, I think we're led to a place of boldness and sweet rejoicing.

The Evidence Of Our Sufficiency

So we've looked at the fact that we are, in ourselves, insufficient for the work of the Gospel. We've seen how through Christ, we are given the Holy Spirit and made sufficient as ministers of the Gospel. But now I want to ask the question, what's the proof that we are sufficient for the Gospel? How can we know that we've been made sufficient? We still need to be able to show some credentials here, right? We need some letters of recommendation, don't we?

Have you ever been at a book store, or on Amazon, and you're considering whether or not a book is worth reading? What is one of the most natural ways to determine this? You read the reviews. Or you flip the book over to the back cover and find out who has given this book their recommendation. And chances are, there are a few names that pop out to you as credible sources, where if you see one of those people recommending a book, you're more likely to read it, and probably even accept it. But if you see a bunch of names you don't recognize, you're going to approach with a certain level of skepticism.

Letters of recommendation can be helpful in life, right? I don't buy hardly anything anymore without first researching reviews. They help us gauge the credibility of something. Well, this is what the Corinthians want from Paul. “Show us your credentials, Paul. We've got these super apostles coming to town, and they're on the New York Times Bestseller's list, with 5-star ratings on Amazon. What do you have, Paul?”

Let's look at the last verse of chapter 2, through verse 4 of chapter 3, “For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts (or your hearts), to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.”

Where are Paul's credentials? They are written on the hearts of the Corinthians! It's like Paul is saying, “Hey, if you want to see my credentials, go look in the mirror. I came to you not by my own power, but by the Spirit of God, and through me, the Spirit of God did a work on your hearts, and came to dwell in your hearts as well! So don't look at me. God did it. Not me. There's my proof.”

I love this. Because Paul's sufficiency came not from himself, but from God, he simply stood back and pointed the finger at God. He says, “I came to you, Corinthians, and spoke to you in the power of Christ. God saved you. God freed you from your sin, and placed his Spirit inside of you. God's work in you shows me sufficient as a minister of the Gospel. It wasn't my work, but God's!”

In the New Covenant, God doesn't write letters of recommendation. He doesn't make us fit for ministry through some external qualifications. We don't need a theology degree. We don't need a college education. We don't need to wait for someone to write us a good review. We don't need a thousand Likes on Facebook. God makes us sufficient from the inside out, by placing his Spirit in us. The work of God's Spirit in our hearts stands as our credentials to be ministers of Christ.

Notice Paul says in verse 2, that this letter of recommendation – the Spirit's work on the people's hearts – is a letter to be known and read by all. How does that happen? How do people “read” the work of the Spirit on our hearts?

It comes through in our actions! As we walk in the Spirit, we will bear the fruit of the Spirit. And this fruit is the evidence of God's work in us.

Jesus said this in Matthew 5: “You are the light of the world [again, identity]. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

As we walk in the Spirit, the light of Christ – or we might say the fragrance of Christ – will be impossible to hide. The Spirit's work in our hearts will be visible and read by all. There is no deodorant that can hide the scent of Christ on the believer.

So the third point for today is this: The Spirit's work in our hearts is the evidence that we have been made sufficient by God for ministry.

Applications

As we close this morning, I want to share three brief points of application to help us see these truths at the ground-level.

1. Recognize that you are equipped to bless the church.

God has empowered you by the Holy Spirit to bless the church. Paul said in chapter 2 verse 15, “we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved, and among those who are perishing, to one the fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” Your church family are among those who are being saved, so you need to understand that you are the aroma of life to them. You are a fragrance from life to life – you are God's vessel to be a minister of more and more life to your brothers and sisters.

This goes for all of us. And I can testify to it personally. Mike and Susan are the aroma of Christ to me. The way Susan loves on my children in the younger Sunday school class is rich with the fragrance of Christ. My children leave her class and I can smell it on them, that they have been loved with the love of Jesus! The way Mike goes low to serve all of us in servant-like ways fumes with the fragrance of Christ. As you leave the auditorium today, if you smell the rugs, I expect you will catch a whiff of the fragrance of Christ upon them from Mike's faithful vaccuuming. Jim and Cathy are the aroma of Christ to me, in a number of various ways they have blessed Erin and I. Barb and Gary are the aroma of Christ to me. Did you know Gary spent nearly three days helping me paint the whole interior of my house? The first day, I expected he'd help for a few hours, but then, to my surprise, he kept coming back again and again until the job was done. I was stunned by his commitment to help me through the task until it was finished. I couldn't have done it on my own, and as we painted, the air was permeated with the fragrance of Christ in Gary's ministry toward me. So much so, that if you asked me what the aroma of Christ smells like, I might tell you that it smells something like paint fumes!

I could go on and on with example after example of personal ways that so many of you have been and continue to be the fragrance of Christ to me. It is God's Spirit at work among us that is producing this aroma-spreading effect! This is what life in the church is! Each of us being the sweet aroma of Christ to one another. Don't give into the lie that you are unequipped to be a blessing to the church.

2. Remember that Christ alone is what makes you sufficient for ministry.

This point kind of goes without saying, as it has been the main thrust of the message. But I want to state it again. A really cool passage that I think highlights this is found in Acts chapter 4. “Now when they [the Jewish elders and scribes] saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”

Do you want to be bold in ministry? Let it be obvious to people that you have been with Jesus.

3. Don't think that because you are ill, or going through hardship, that God has stopped leading you in triumphal procession.

I draw this point from the first verse of our text, and I think it's important to bring up right now. We have several beloved brothers and sisters among us who are very ill. If this describes you, then I want to address you specifically. While we pray expectantly for your healing, be encouraged that you are still the aroma of Christ, and God is still leading you in triumph.

“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession.” Remember the man who was writing this. Paul was a man who has been through extreme hardship, but it was precisely in his hardship that God spread the fragrance of Christ through him. In fact, when we look around the world today, and see how the Gospel has continued to spread throughout the nations, we can see how the fragrance of Christ continues to spread as a result of Paul's sufferings as an apostle.

Paul even indicates in Galatians 4 that the reason he preached the Gospel to the Galatians was because he was detained there by a physical illness! Think about that. The Gospel was spread as a direct result of his sickness. So I encourage you to not view your illness as an unexpected detour from the work of the Gospel, but rather, know that even in sickness you are spreading the fragrance of Christ. Joyfully look forward to that moment when God shows you everything he was doing in the midst of your illness, when he makes it clear to you that he never once stopped leading you in triumphal procession. Hardships in life do not derail the work of the Gospel; they serve the work of the Gospel. The Gospel train never runs off the tracks, because it's being driven by a Master Engineer.

As were gathered for prayer last Wednesday, crying out to God to heal Luke, Josh made brief mention that the Spirit is writing new songs into Luke's heart, and it was a rich blessing to our hearts this morning that Luke shared one. I look forward to that Sunday morning when Luke is fully healed, and we stand in worship with him, singing the very songs that came out of God's work during his suffering. O, how I will worship on that day!

I encourage you to leave this place confident and emboldened – knowing that you have not only received the ministry of the New Covenant, but that you have been made sufficient in Christ to carry it out.

 

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