What about Heaven?

At the end of 2 Corinthians 4 Paul says, " For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."  2 Corinthians 4:17, 18.
Heaven was very real to Paul but is it real to us today?  Affluence has brought us in this life what former generations could only anticipate in heaven.  The writer of Hebrews says, "These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect."  Hebrews 11:39, 40.  These saints were promised something better than they had received in this life.  We have an over-realized eschatology in which God's promises for the future are transported into the present.  It is easy for us to point fingers at the health and wealth preachers but in reality most of us have little anticipation of heaven because we life in a world of affluence and comfort.  The older, biblical images of heaven have lost their appeal.  
Paul referred to what was happening to him as a light and momentary trouble which helped him focus on the eternal glory.  Now it is not our desire to suffer persecution, troubles and pain but we need to ask the question, How can we build an anticipation of heaven in a world of affluence and comfort?

Jars of Clay

This coming Sunday we will be studying 2 Corinthians 4.  That chapter contains the famous jars of clay illustration.  A few years ago I got a clay vase and I put it on my dresser to remind me of the truth of this passage.  In the jar I have a number of items that you can see in the picture.  Let me explain some of the items.
You will see 2 nickels and 5 pennies.  If you could read the dates on these coins you would know that the nickels represent myself and my wife while the five pennies represent my five children.
You will also see a fish symbol that represents my commitment to Jesus Christ and you will also see six pins that are from my many days of attending Sunday School.  My home and the Sunday School were very important parts of my life growing up and it was there I learned much of God's Word and developed a love for His Word.
The watch is the one my wife gave me when we got married.  The larger metal is from Mathematics contests which also represent my career as a mathematics instructor.  The two swimming badges I earned as a 40 year old who had never learned to swim.  They remind me that we are never too old to learn.
Those are treasures but the greatest treasure we have in our jars of clay is the presence of the living God who came to live in us when we accepted Him as our Saviour and Lord.
Yes, we have treasures in these jars of clay.

Alone yet not alone

This song by Joni Eareckson Tada speaks about how God uses our weaknesses and she is a testimony of this fact.  Enjoy,

The Nature of Christian Ministry

Today, "rather than viewing the pastor as a mediator of the Spirit in conjunction with the proclamation of the Word, the minister becomes a 'professional' whose job it is to manage the corporate life of the congregation and oversee the creation of meaningful worship 'events'."  Scott Hafeman

He goes on to say, "a pastor's heart is a broken heart."

There are a few things that have concerned me regarding how we view Christian ministry especially in the church.  We call the sanctuary the auditorium as if it is a place where we will be entertained rather than meet the living God.  We call the platform a stage as if we should watch the performers rather than be led by our leaders.  We call the pastor a CEO as if he was in charge of a business rather than a family of God.  We call his study an office which reinforces the idea of a CEO rather than a pastor.

Scott Hafeman goes on to say, "Those who minister the gospel are not technicians trained to provide services (not even worship services).  They are mediators of the Spirit, who preach Christ in accordance with the Scriptures and embody his character in their own faithful endurance and love for others."

All the Grace You Need

Thanks to a friend who sent this to me. All the Grace You Need

James MacDonald - Senior Pastor - Harvest Bible Chapel

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. —2 Corinthians 12:9 When we study Scripture, there are times when a nuance provided by the meaning learned from the Bible’s original languages can rock us to the core. The Greek word order of 2 Corinthians 12:9 provides us with meaning we don’t want to miss: “Sufficient for you is the grace of me.” That is an incredible promise! Essentially the Lord told the apostle Paul, I am the grace. I’m all the grace you need. God does not dispense strength and encouragement like a pharmacist fills a prescription. God never says, Here, take two of these and call Me in the morning. He is the grace. He is the strength. His presence is the power. All we need comes through intimacy with Him. No matter what we face, Jesus is the complete answer. “Sufficient for you is the grace of me.” He doesn’t give what we need and then go somewhere else. He comes to stay. “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). Notice that the Lord explains how I’m all the grace you need actually works in our lives: “For my power is made perfect in weakness.” “Perfect” means fulfilled, accomplished, completed, finished. It’s the same term Jesus spoke as His final word on the cross, tetelestai, which means, “It is finished” (John 19:30). God brings His sufficient and powerful grace to the relationship; all we bring is weakness. All of this is grace because we can’t do anything to deserve what He does for us. And He makes sure the results are perfect and complete. God wants His grace to be completed in your weakness. You never really experience the grace unless you see the need for it—and even that realization comes by grace. The power of Jesus' grace is not fully seen until weakness is fully acknowledged. The moment you are overwhelmed with your absolute helplessness is the moment you are ready to hear Jesus say, I’m all the grace you need. Think about the place where you regularly meet with God. Is it a chair in your bedroom? At the kitchen table? Or as one father of five small children confessed, is it in the garage in the backseat of your car? In light of today’s verse ask yourself, How many times have I gotten up from that place and left God’s sufficient grace there? The Lord was there with you—holding out to you the grace for the trial you were going to face that day, as your mind was drifting off to your own plan. How many days did you run out to a busy day and leave Him there with His sufficient grace? If you want to live by God’s sufficient grace, you’re not going to catch it falling from the sky as you hurry to your next appointment. You must go to the fountain and drink deeply. He is the One who quenches your thirst. When you read His Word and are thinking about it, His grace is flowing into you. He is also the One who wants to go with you every step of the way. And when a trial threatens to overwhelm you, remember His promise: “Sufficient for you is the grace of me.” The Lord is a faithful friend, sustaining you. He is all the grace you need.

Forgiveness and the church

This coming Sunday I was planing on going into the second half of 2 Corinthians 2 but as I studied this chapter I knew we have to look at the first part regarding discipline, forgiveness and the church.  This incident from the life of Corey Ten Boom says it well.

Self-esteem

This coming Sunday we will be looking at a surprising secret.  What is that surprising secret?  Well it certainly isn't self-esteem.  David Wells writing about our culture says that we have a bloated sense of human capacity.
As I have said before I taught Mathematics in high school, college and university.  Amazingly many of our students have an exalted view of their ability to do mathematics but in reality they do poorly.  In contrast the Japanese students have a very low opinion of their ability to do mathematics but are much better than North American students.
Thirty years of the self-esteem movement has told young people that they were perfect in every way but we have an entire generation with no sense of inadequacy.
In 1980 in a study of over 300 UK newspapers there was not one single reference to self-esteem.  By 1986 this number had risen to three.  In 1990 there was over 103 and a decade later in 2000 there was a staggering 3328 references.  How many do you think there would be in 2014?
So what is the surprising secret?  I will tell you this much, it is not self-esteem.

Challenges to our world view

One thing that you find in 2 Corinthians is that our world view is challenged.  I believe that we see three ways that it is challenged.

First, it challenges our view of God.  God's character is not in flux nor is it in process.  God's character is always the same.  God is not a celestial grandfather nor is He an escape mechanism when we get in trouble.

It also challenges our view on the purpose of history.  History reveals the majestic character of God.  We may look at history as the history of man, what he has discovered, what he has learned but that is really not what history shows us.  History shows us God acting as He always acts with mankind.

Second, it challenges our view of suffering.  It is not that we glorify suffering or pray that suffering will come but we know that we will all suffer.  It is like a page in God's textbook of living by faith.  We can view suffering differently because we know that God is always in control.

Third, it challenges our view of ministry.  It is not our ministry but it is God's.  David Bosch said, "It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world; it is the God of mission who has a Church in the world."  This is a theme that Paul will develop through this letter.

The Cycle of Comfort

Kent Hughes in his commentary on 2 Corinthians tells this story.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of a handful of German theologians to stand up to the Nazification of the German church. He was prominent in writing the famous Barmen Declaration, which rejected the infamous Aryan clauses imposed by Nazi ideology. Bonhoeffer’s courage thrust him into the leadership of the Confessing Church along with other stalwarts like Martin Niemöller. Bonhoeffer went so far as to found an underground seminary in Finkenwald, Bavaria, which was closed by Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler. This led to Bonhoeffer’s joining the resistance movement and his being imprisoned by the Gestapo in April 1943. Bonhoeffer’s Letters from Prison became a best seller after the war.
Among the letters is a beautiful poem written to his fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer entitled “New Year 1945.” Stanza 3 is famous:

Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
Even to the dregs of pain,
At thy command, we will not falter,
Thankfully receiving all that is given
By thy loving hand.¹

Poignant words that became more so when, three months later, just as the war was ending, Bonhoeffer was hung in Flossenbürg prison.
Fast-forward to some eighteen years later, across the Atlantic in America, when another bride-to-be was grieving the death of her fiancé and found much comfort in Bonhoeffer’s poem. Her fiancé, who died from injuries in a sledding accident, was the son of author Joseph Bayly and his wife Mary Lou. When she mailed Bonhoeffer’s poem to them, Joe and Mary Lou also found comfort in “New Year 1945.”

Twelve years after this (thirty years after Bonhoeffer’s death), Joe Bayly received a letter from a pastor-friend in Massachusetts relating that he had visited a terminally ill woman in a Boston hospital for some period of time and had given her Joe’s book of poems, Heaven, as comfort for her soul. The pastor said that the dying woman had stayed awake late the previous night to read it and told him of the comfort and help she had received from it. A few hours later she died. The woman, the pastor revealed, was Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller, Bonhoeffer’s fiancée three decades earlier!

God’s comfort circulates among his children — and sometimes it comes full circle, as it did from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Maria von Wedemeyer in her grief to Joseph Bayly, Jr.’s grieving fiancée to Joe and Mary Lou Bayly in their grief and then back to Bonhoeffer’s one-time fiancée as comfort in her dying hours. Our text alludes to this astonishing cyclical nature of comfort — its mutuality — its overflowing nature.

Just a teacher

I was a high school teacher.  When people heard that they would ask me what I taught.  I usually gave them the short answer which was "Mathematics".  However this was only partly true.  I taught students, young men and women, mathematics.  I taught people and as a high school mathematics teacher my desire was to teach them not just how to do mathematics but to love mathematics.

As we begin a new year and a new series in our Bible class I don't just want to teach the Bible, I want to teach people the Bible.  I want people not just to know the Bible but to love the Bible and love the God of the Bible.  If all I have done is teach Bible then I have failed.  I know that Isaiah said that the Word of God as it goes out will accomplish its purpose so it is important that I teach the Bible but more so to teach people to love the Word of God.

Comfort

Paul begins the second letter to Corinth by talking about comfort.  He is not talking about being comfortable but knowing the comfort of God because we know that He is in control of all things.   Many of us are not comforters because we have become to comfortable with out "stuff".  Paul tells us that our comfort does not come from our "stuff" but from the God that comforts us in all our troubles.
About 8 years ago I was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer.  Following my operation and recovery I was amazed at the number of men who needed to be comforted.  They were frightened when they heard that they had cancer but I was able to come along side and say that I had been there and this is what God did for me.  Could I have been a comforter if I never had the cancer?  I am sure that I could have but there was something about the fact that I had cancer that made it easier for people to accept my comfort.

A New Series

A week from this Sunday I will begin a new series in our Adult Bible Class.  We will take time to look at one of Paul's most personal letters, 2 Corinthians. Today we hear a great deal about how to be successful in the Christian life.  We hear people say that you need to be strong, claim what is yours in Christ, go for it.  However, Paul says something quite different.  He says that if we are to be successful we need to be a broken people, we need to know that we are inadequate to live the Christian life in our own strength.  He tells us that if we are to be successful we must know that it is not our strength but Christ's.
Some people may wonder how a letter written almost two thousand years ago has any relevance to our culture today.  Let me suggest three things from the Corinthian culture which could also be true of our culture.
First, their culture was dominated by a science driven technology.
Second, there was extreme Biblical illiteracy.
Third, it was a culture of "self".
Over the next few weeks we will be expanding on these ideas.