We Do Not Lose Heart | 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 | The Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 6, 2021 | 10:45 a.m.
The Second Sunday after Pentecost
Communion will be celebrated during this service. If you plan to visit with us, please read our communion statement.
READINGS
Genesis 3:8–15
Psalm 130:1-8
2 Corinthians 4:13—5:1
Mark 3:20–35
Message presented by Rev. Frank C. Ruffatto
+Points to ponder
- What strengthens your faith. What saps it?
- Is Paul’s exhortation to look to the eternal instead of the temporary, helpful?
- How can we help each other to ‘not lose heart’?
+Sermon Transcript
Grace, mercy, and peace be unto each of you from God our Father and our Lord and King, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: O God, the strength of all those who put their trust in You, mercifully accept our prayers and, because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without You, grant us the help of your grace, that we may please You both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, Amen.
“Alexander had great confidence in his friend and physician. When the physician had mixed him a potion for his sickness, a letter was put into Alexander’s hand warning him not to drink the mixture, since it was poisoned. He held the letter in one hand and the cup in the other and in the presence of his friend and physician he drank up the draught. After he had drained the cup, he bade his friend look at the letter and judge of his confidence in him. Alexander had unstaggering faith in his friend that did not admit of doubt. ‘See now,’ said he, ‘how I have trusted you.’
This is the assurance that the believer should exercise toward his God. The cup is very bitter, and some tell us that it will prove to be deadly, that it is so nauseous that we should never survive the draught. Unbelief whispers in our ear, ‘Your coming tribulation will utterly crush you.’ Drink it, my brother, and say, ‘If He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.’ It cannot be that God should be unfaithful to his promise or unmindful of His covenant.”
This ‘unstaggering faith’ like Alexander had for his friend, is what Paul is talking about in our epistle lesson this morning. “Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, ‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we also believe and so we also speak.” “We have the same spirit, Paul says, that David had according to what he has written [as we see in Psalm 116]: ‘I believed, therefore I spoke.’ This is exactly our case. Paul says: “‘Also we on our part continue to believe, therefore also continue to speak.’ Nothing deters us. Even if we were tomorrow to be killed by the enemies who want to silence us, we would go on speaking (preaching Christ) today.” In other words, “Believers from every generation and time possess the same faith in God’s Word, which delivers a spirit of perseverance to speak of God’s grace no matter the cost.” Whether it be so-called cancel culture or persecution as our brothers and sisters in other lands currently face.
Thus, Paul continues asserting that he knows “that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us … into His presence.” “It is not [mere] bravado that animates Paul’s words. [There are those who ] often laugh at death and imagine that they are heroes when they plunge into it. In the case of Paul … the resurrection of the blessed [ones] removes all fear of temporal death: ‘having come to know that he who raised up the Lord Jesus will raise up also us with Jesus.’ The one fact is past, the other future, but they are connected at both ends: by the subject – by the object. It is the same God who did raise up, that will also raise up; and it is the same Lord Jesus who was raised up, with whom we shall be raised up.”
And more, this glorious news of the resurrection is at the heart of Paul’s message – it is at the heart of our faith. It encapsulates our calling as a congregation to be help, hope, home, in the body of Christ. The goal of Paul’s ministry, the goal of our ministry is to see grace extend to more people as we reach more people with the Good News – the Good News that Jesus, in His life, death, and resurrection has brought God’s salvation to mankind.
Bernard of Clairvaux once said, “Only by desertion can we be defeated. With Christ and for Christ victory is certain. We can lose the victory by flight but not by death. Happy are you if you die in [spiritual] battle, for after death you will be crowned. But woe to you if by forsaking the battle you forfeit at once both the victory and the crown.”
“So,” as Paul says, “we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” The outer is all that belongs to this sinful world, which despite its caviling and carping is passing away. The inner nature is the new Adam brought forth in our baptisms and who will live forever in God’s presence. And that day-by-day renewal comes through Word and Sacrament which gives strength for each day of our lives and prompts us to live in daily repentance.
Paul goes on, “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
“Lap dogs never get powerful; they are pampered too much. The wolf that must run fast to get a meal, that must fight hard to stay alive, gets really strong.
That is the way it is with people, too. History is full of the stories of people and of nations who failed because life became too easy. The great Roman Empire, which at one time dominated practically all the civilized world, fell when the people began to want nothing but bread and games. [Post-modern, Western Civilization call your office!] And then the barbarians swept down from the north and took over. Through trials and troubles God teaches [us] endurance, and we need endurance in our spiritual life.”
And this endurance, again, comes only amid adversity and amid daily challenges in life. But Paul encourages us: “we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
“Living and sharing the life of Christ with others often has a cost. Paul instructs us to look beyond the momentary affliction to the eternal glory of salvation in Jesus. He tells us to look to the treasure, not to the earthen vessel, for our confidence with God. God’s promises of life and salvation are the most real things in our lives.”
These promises of life and salvation loom large for us as we ponder the death that we all face – whether we die for the faith as the martyrs before us or whether our death is just another of the many in the course of human events.
“As Vice President, George Bush represented the U.S. at the funeral of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Bush was deeply moved by a silent protest carried out by Brezhnev's widow. She stood motionless by the coffin until seconds before it was closed. Then, just as the soldiers touched the lid, Brezhnev's wife performed an act of great courage and hope, a gesture that must surely rank as one of the most profound acts of civil disobedience ever committed: She reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband's chest. There in the citadel of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong. She hoped that there was another life, and that that life was best represented by Jesus who died on the cross, and that the same Jesus might yet have mercy on her husband.”
How blessed are we who call on the name of the Lord?! We know that for us, death is the door to the fulfilment of the resurrection promise of our baptism; and Paul describes the conditions we face as heirs of God’s promises: “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
As Alexander trusted his physician, we can trust the Great Physician, Jesus, who redeems our resurrected bodies for eternity, restored and transformed by God Himself. We join Paul then and say, “O death where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Amen. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”