2 Corinthians 3

0:00 Well, thank you all for praying for my passport situation over the last couple of weeks. I am very thrilled to be able to tell you that it worked out. Thanks to some friends in Senator McConnell's office, including Madison Eccle, who I hear is here today. I managed to get an appointment in Dallas on the day Mariah and I were supposed to fly. So I had to fly in early that morning, get the passport. And then she and I jumped on a plane that afternoon, and we headed over to the United Arab Emirates to the church in Ras al-Khaimah's 10-year anniversary.

0:33 I'll tell you more about that tonight. That's not what I'm going to do right now. What I want to do right now instead is gloat. Because the flights to the United Arab Emirates, if you've ever done that, you know that they're incredibly long. It takes something like, depending on your flight path, 21 to 25 hours, something like that, to make it to the UAE, you know, and then 21, 25 hours to get back. And there's one particular flight in the middle of it that is just exceedingly and excruciatingly long.

1:04 It's not as long as a flight to, like, you know, China when I was able to go there a few times. But it is extremely long. It's like 10 hours long. Now, for the last few years, since I've been a pastor here and traveled to various places around the world, Mariah and I have been running basically our entire life through a United Airlines credit card. Like, we buy everything on this United Airlines credit card, basically so that once a year, when I have to take one of these huge flights, I can upgrade it to business class, international business class.

1:38 And I can, over the course of a year, you know, rack up just about enough miles to do that once. in a year. Well, it's been three years because of COVID since I've flown internationally. And so I had a huge amount of miles built up from like three and a half years or something of running our life through this credit card. So I thought, all right, I'm just going to use all of these miles to pay for upgrades for me and my wife and Mike and Lindsay Carnicella. So that's what I did.

2:11 Well, the way the airlines work is that if you pay for your upgrade in miles, they're not that excited about it because they don't get a whole lot of money from that. All they're doing is sucking out miles that they gave you as a reward anyway. What they want to do is sell those seats for thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to other schmucks who will pay for it. So they put you on a wait list if you buy it with miles. So when we bought these things, me, Mike, Mariah, Lindsay, we all went onto a wait list.

2:42 Well, it turns out that because I had to change the schedule and all the rest because of the passport thing, we got separated on the wait list. So me and Mariah were on one confirmation number. Mike and Lindsay were on the other confirmation number. And guess what happened? Mariah and I got confirmed for the upgrade, and Mike and Lindsay did not. So, Mariah and I boarded the plane first, sat down in our, you know, fully extendable things with gigantic big screen TVs, and we're playing with the various electronic things and looking at the menu where they're serving braised short rib and all this kind of thing.

3:24 And, of course, the way the airline works it is that they march all the cattle through business class so that they can see what they're missing. So at one point, Mariah and I see Mike and Lindsay trudging through business class on the way to steerage. Now, as the flight carried on, I don't know how far back Mike and Lindsay were. I didn't give them a second thought after that, to be perfectly honest. No, I'm kidding. I felt bad. I really did feel bad.

3:56 I thought for about half a second of saying, Mariah, let's give them half the flight up here. But then we fell asleep and it didn't happen. Slept well on that plane. Now, here's the thing. In business, it's like a whole different world when you're in international business class because they spend about two hours, once you get up in the air, giving you pretty darn good food for an airline. So I ordered, you know, the braised short rib, and they bring it out, and they've got these, you know, warm cashews and pecans that they bring you as a little appetizer, then you get a salad, blah, blah, blah.

4:31 And it all comes out. And when that food comes out, oh, my goodness, that braised short rib with that whatever, whatever, demiglas, or however you pronounce that, it fills up your nostrils, and it is the smell of deliciousness. Now, that's when you're sitting in business class. I have spent many a long flight, because I just couldn't afford it, sitting sort of just behind the bulkhead from business class in the steerage section. And I am here to tell you that when they bring out the braised short rib to the people in business class and it wafts through the bulkhead and you smell it while you're sitting in steerage, it does not smell like deliciousness.

5:13 It smells like bitterness. Things can be like that, right? I mean, to some people, the people sitting in the business class, that braised short rib and the dessert that comes after it smells like life. To the people right behind the bulkhead sitting in steerage, it smells like bitterness and death. Well, that's a little bit of what Paul is going to talk about today, only it's not braised short rib that he's talking about. It's the gospel of Jesus Christ. He's going to make the point, among other things that we're going to talk about today, that to some people, the message of the gospel smells like life.

5:47 It smells delicious. It smells wonderful. It smells like salvation. But to other people, when they hear the very same message, when they smell the very same thing, What they smell is death. They smell repulsiveness, and they want to get away from it as quickly as possible. We're actually continuing a study of the book of 2 Corinthians today that we've already been in for two weeks. It's been a couple weeks because of travel since we were in 2 Corinthians, so let me remind you of what's going on, why this book was written.

6:18 You probably have picked up by now that 2 Corinthians isn't really a book at all. It's a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christian church in a city called Corinth, which was a port city situated about 50 miles or so southwest of Athens in the province of Greece, or Achaia, as Paul is going to call it. Paul had planted this church in the city of Corinth sometime around the year A.D. 50, so 20 years or so after the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

6:49 He planted the church in about A.D. 50, and his relationship with them for the next four or five years until this letter gets written had been complicated, to say the least. In fact, by the time Paul wrote this letter that we're looking at today, he had been from more than a year in what can really only be described as a big old fight with the Corinthian church. Here's the quick and dirty story about how that happened. Apparently, in about the year A.D. 54, so four years after the church was planted, Paul was living across the Aegean Sea in a city called Ephesus.

7:24 And through some people that had traveled from Corinth to Ephesus, he got word that all was not well in Corinth. Some things were going wrong, some things were going badly. And so, Paul wrote the church that he had planted a letter which we don't have. It's not 1 Corinthians, it's prior to 1 Corinthians. That letter has been lost to history. We just do not have it. Well, that letter, when it arrived in Corinth, raised some questions to the Corinthian people. And so they wrote back a letter of their own, which Paul answered then in what we call 1 Corinthians. Well, apparently what happened is that 1 Corinthians didn't make anything better and, in fact, made things a lot worse.

8:01 So Paul got word from Timothy, his associate who carried the letter back and forth, got word that things were bad in Corinth, that Corinth didn't trust him, they didn't like him, they were mad at him. And so he decided to change his missionary plans. He was planning on taking a missionary trip up into Macedonia. These would be churches like Berea, Thessalonica, those sorts of places. He was going to go visit some of those churches, maybe plant some more. He decided to change that plan for a missionary trip. He jumped on a ship and made an emergency visit across the Aegean Sea to Corinth to try his best to set things right.

8:36 Well, that emergency visit did not work at all. It was a total disaster for several different reasons. And Paul even says here in 2 Corinthians that it was incredibly painful to him. So he kind of tucked his tail between his legs, sailed back to Ephesus, and instead of going to visit them again like he had promised he was going to, he decided it's not going to be a good idea for me to go visit them again. So I'm going to write them a letter in which he absolutely scorched the Corinthian church for the way that they were behaving.

9:09 Paul himself in 2 Corinthians will refer to that letter as the severe letter, and it too has sadly been lost to history. We just don't know what it said. It's in between 1 and 2 Corinthians in our Bibles, but we don't know what it said. It's just been lost to history. Well, at that point, after he sent this severe letter, he sent it with his associate Titus. Timothy was doing other things. Titus took the letter across the Aegean Sea. Paul left Ephesus and headed north to a city called Troas, where he was expecting Titus to bring word from Corinth about how this severe scorching letter worked or didn't work to sort of bring the Corinthians in line.

9:48 Well, that plan hit it. There was a little hit and miss with that plan. Titus turned out to be late. Paul missed him at first, but eventually we'll learn about this later. They connected, Titus and Paul, and Titus told Paul the news. Paul, I took your severe letter to the city of Corinth. They read it and it worked, sort of, kind of. The Corinthians have repented of their sin against you. They're eager to reconcile with you. At least some of them are. Even the majority are, but not all of them.

10:21 So you've got, Paul, a delicate situation on your hands where a bare majority of the church is ready to end this fight with you. They recognize their sin against you. They want to reconcile. But there's a minority of the church, we don't know how sizable, but Paul does refer to just a bare majority that are with him. A significant minority are not with him, and that's the delicate situation into which Paul writes 2 Corinthians. I mean, think about that. This letter was written in the midst of an incredibly realistic, real, human drama.

10:51 It's a letter to a church with which he'd been in a fight for a solid year, but which has come to this tentative place of reconciliation with him, But in which there's still a sizable group of people who don't trust him, don't like him, and are even questioning his fitness to be an apostle. That's the situation into which this letter was written. Well, we've come today to the end of chapter 2 on through the rest of chapter 3 where Paul is beginning a section of the letter that's going to run all the way through chapter 7. And if you've read the book in advance, then you probably can see in the way the letter is organized that this is the heart of the letter.

11:31 Chapter 3 through 7 is basically the heart of the letter. This is the main thing that Paul wants to say to these people. This is the reason that he's written the letter. And everything else that he says is just sort of supporting cast. Because if this portion of the letter doesn't do its job, if he doesn't convince them of what he's trying to tell them in this portion, nothing else he says is going to work. So what is Paul trying to say in this portion of the letter? What's he trying to get across to them? Well, he's defending his apostolic ministry against objections from the minority, from the people who don't like him, the people who don't trust him, the people who don't think he should be an apostle, who are questioning him.

12:12 He puts up a defense that says, here's what they're objecting to. They're saying this, this, and this about me. And here's what I have to say in response to that, that, and that. That's what he's doing in chapters 3 through 11. So what are the reasons they're giving for doubting Paul's apostleship? Well, there are a few, and they sort of come to light one at a time in the book of 2 Corinthians as you make your way through it. I'm not going to try to give them all to you right here at once. It would just be kind of bewildering, and you'd forget them anyway, and we're going to hit them as we make our way through the book.

12:44 But I do want to give you the ones, the objections, that Paul addresses right here in our text today, and there are three of them. He addresses three objections to his apostleship that are being made by the minority in Corinth. Here they are. First, Paul, and they're all pretty interesting, I think, if you look at it. They're not weird. They're very good points. First, Paul's opponents were making the charge that Paul couldn't be a true disciple because he was suffering too much.

13:20 Paul, you can't possibly be a true disciple because life is going too badly for you. Bad stuff keeps happening to you, Paul, and God would never let that much bad stuff happen to a true apostle. Now that strikes us as a little bit weird, right? It strikes us actually as 180 degrees wrong. But why do you think that strikes you as 180 degrees wrong? It strikes you, especially if you've been a Christian for a long time, as 180 degrees wrong only because you've learned otherwise from Paul.

13:56 That's it. The only reason you understand that that objection doesn't hold any water is because you've learned from reading Paul's letters that suffering is a part of being a Christian. Otherwise, you would think like it seems whole strands of so-called Christianity today think that have not learned that lesson from Paul, And still seem to teach that if God favors somebody, he'll make them healthy and wealthy. And that if you're suffering, it's because you're not right with God. There's an interesting point to make, isn't it?

14:27 The fact is that a whole lot of what feels to you like common sense, for example, the disobjection that you can't be an apostle because you're suffering too much, that what is silly, that what feels to you like common sense isn't common sense at all. You learned it from the Bible, and you should be grateful for that. So that's the first objection. You're suffering too much, therefore you can't be an apostle. If God were really on your side, if you really had the favor of God, you'd be healthy and wealthy and handsome and have a private jet. That's the first one.

14:58 Second thing they're objecting to is that Paul didn't have any letters of recommendation from other people. In other words, he didn't carry around in his satchel some letters from people who would vouch for his ministry. He didn't have endorsements from other famous people. He was just, they said, commending himself as an apostle, and nobody else was. That's the second objection. Third objection his opponents were making was that they were saying that Paul just, it's related to the first one, but he just didn't exude the kind of glory that you would expect a true apostle to exude.

15:38 An apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ should be impressive. He should speak impressively. He maybe should even exude a physical glory that's obvious to people's sight. I mean, and this was their argument. You'll see it as we go through this. And when Moses came down from the mountain, having met with God to receive the law, his face was literally shining so brightly that he had to put a veil over it so that it wouldn't, you know, scar the retinas of the people around him. So these people were saying to Paul, look, Paul, if you're proclaiming a greater message than Moses, if you're proclaiming a greater covenant, a more glorious covenant than Moses, Paul, then where's your shiny face?

16:24 Where's your glory? You're just this crotchety, ragged, no good looking old man. So thank you very much, but we'll stick with shiny face Moses. Now, at first glance, that seems like a silly objection, right? I mean, did they really expect Paul's face to be shining? I don't know if they actually expected that, but they wanted something impressive from Paul. They wanted him to be something more than he appeared to be. So, at any rate, those are the three things Paul addresses in our text today.

16:55 He addresses each one of those objections. He addresses why he suffers so much. He addresses why he has no letters of recommendation. And then he addresses why he doesn't look as glorious as Moses looked when he came down from the mountain. So see if you can pick up on that as we read. Look at chapter 2. We're going to back up. Chapter 2, beginning in verse 12. When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though the door was open for me and the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there.

17:27 So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia. 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 the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 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.

17:59 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again, or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You ourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our 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. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant.

18:35 Not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now, if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites couldn't gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there's glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it.

19:07 For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory. Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the Old Covenant, the same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, A veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

19:38 Now, the Lord is the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. Now, I don't think it's too hard here to recognize the main outlines of Paul's argument. I mean, at first, in 2.12, it looks like he's about to launch into the story of how he got to Troas. Miss Titus coming with news from Corinth. But apparently, that little phrase there, the mention of his own internal pain in 12 or 13, my spirit was not at rest, triggered something in his mind.

20:18 It made him remember this charge that his opponents were making, that he suffers too much. So he knew that they were going to say, yeah, see, even in Troas, Paul, your spirit was not at rest. You're never at rest. You're always suffering, and that means you're not an apostle. So he breaks off the story of what happened in Troas to deal with that objection. So he does that from 2.14 through 2.17. That's really what he's doing in that, dealing with this objection that you suffer too much, Paul. In chapter 3, he turns to the other objections.

20:50 3.1 to 6, he deals with this objection that you don't have any letters of recommendation. And in 7 through the end of chapter 3, he's dealing with this question of the glory of Moses' face. And he does some really interesting stuff with that. Here's the main idea, though. The main idea of what Paul wants us to take away from this is this. As you live your life and speak the gospel to others, you're going to suffer. And there's not often going to be a lot of flash in it. But do it anyway. Because this is how God is determined to save the world.

21:22 As you live your life and speak the gospel of Jesus Christ, you're going to suffer. And there's not often going to be a lot of flash in it. But do it anyway, because this is how God has determined to save the world. All right, looking at this text today in three parts, we're going to look at the last few verses of chapter 2, then verses 1 to 6 of chapter 3, then 7 to the end, three points to the sermon. Here they are. Number one, the meaning of suffering to the Christian. Number two, the meaning of confidence. And number three, the meaning of glory. So let's get to it. Point number one, the last part of chapter 2, the meaning of suffering, the meaning of Paul's suffering.

21:58 Last time we were in 2 Corinthians, we saw there in chapter 2 that Paul was addressing this sort of other objection that they were making about him, which was, Paul, you keep changing your travel plans on us. And therefore, because you keep changing your travel plans, you are a fickle, unreliable person, and no apostle can be a fickle or unreliable person. Paul deals with that and tells them, no, actually, I changed my travel plans out of apostolic and pastoral love for you. So he addresses that. I'm not going to go back into detail about that. You can listen to it in the sermon online if you want to.

22:31 But in verse 12 here of chapter 2, Paul just initially seems to be carrying on that train of thought, talking about his travel arrangements and where he went when, right? When I came to Troas to preach the gospel, even though a door was open for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I didn't find Titus there. He was supposed to meet me with news from you guys. So I took leave of them and went on up to, you know, the province where like Thessalonica was. So he keeps talking about this. But then that phrase, my spirit was not at rest, sends him on this long detour addressing lots of objections that his opponents were making against him.

23:14 One of which was, yeah, you know, bad stuff keeps happening to you, Paul. And that says you're not an apostle. God just wouldn't let a true apostle suffer as much as you were suffering. So Paul knows that little phrase is going to trigger him. He knows it's going to trigger this objection. So he cuts off his train of thought here. He'll come back to it in chapter 7, like middle of chapter 7. And he addresses this fact that, yeah, he suffers a lot. The answer he gives, though, is surprising. Because the answer is not just something like, yeah, I suffer a lot.

23:46 But that doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. Different things happen to different people. And yes, I just happen to be an unlucky, accident-prone guy, but it doesn't say anything about my apostleship. He doesn't say that. He says something more along the lines of, yes, I do suffer, and that suffering is exactly the proof of my apostleship. That suffering that I endure is precisely what marks me out as an apostle of Jesus.

24:19 That's what he says. So how does he make that argument? Well, look at verses 14 to 16 at the end of chapter 2. He uses in those verses the image of a Roman triumphal parade. 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. And he goes on and talks about that aroma. He uses the imagery of a Roman triumphal parade.

24:50 Now, to understand what he's talking about here, the imagery that he's using, you've got to know a little bit about Roman triumphs. You have to know about Roman triumphal processions, Roman triumphal parades. In the days of the Roman Empire, especially in the Republic, but also in Paul's own day under the Imperium, in the days of that empire, to be given a triumphal parade through the Forum in the capital city in Rome was the highest honor that the Roman Empire could bestow on any of its people. And it was always and only given to a general who had won some massive military campaign.

25:27 It had to be granted by vote of the Senate. And once it was granted, the entire city showed up at the forum to parade this general through the streets. And it was the biggest spectacle that Rome put on. Bigger than the gladiatorial combat. Bigger than the coronation of an emperor. The triumph was the biggest thing they did. Because thousands of people would throng into the Roman forum cheering. And there's confetti and flags. And they would take a general decked out in his best, shiniest military gear. They'd put him in a golden chariot and deck the horses out in golden chariots.

25:57 And they would ride him down the forum to the senate hall where the entire senate was waiting with laurel wreaths to place at the feet of this victorious general. It was massively glorious and spoke massively to the victory of this general. In fact, the glory of a Roman triumph was so great in those days that in the chariot behind the general, the Romans would put a soldier, just a common soldier, who would whisper in the general's ear, even as the crowds of thousands were shouting praises upon his head, the soldier would whisper into his ear, Remember thou art but a man.

26:36 Remember thou art but a man. Remember that thou art but a man and not a god. It was a huge, huge victory. so that's what Paul's describing there in verse 14 he's describing a Roman triumphal procession okay but here's the question and I don't know how carefully you've ever read this but here's the question I want to ask you where is Paul in this picture thanks be to God when Christ always leads us in triumphal process is he the general Is Paul the victorious general who's being driven through the forum and all the praises are being heaped upon him?

27:19 It kind of sounds like it, doesn't it? But look at that phrase there. God, who in Christ, leads us, or me, he means, in triumphal procession. Leads me in triumphal procession. The thing is, the victorious general would never have been said to have been led in procession. It's not the general. Who was said to be led in procession in a triumph?

27:57 The captives and the slaves that the general brought back from war. That's who was said to be led in procession. The general was receiving the procession. He was receiving the triumph. They were being led in procession because they had leather straps tied to their hands and then lashed to the general's chariot, and then they stumbled forward through the streets of the city to the senate house. It was the ultimate kind of humiliation for those who had been captured. Do you see the point? Paul, when he says God leads us in Christ in triumphal procession, he's not saying he's the victorious general.

28:31 He's putting himself in the place of the captive. He's the slave. He's the servant of the victorious one who is Jesus. When you think about it, you start pulling in other things that Paul says in the New Testament. That's not really all that surprising that Paul puts himself there. I mean, he often refers to himself as what? A slave or a servant of Christ. And he very much understood himself to have been dramatically captured by the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.

29:03 So you see the point he's making to his opponents who say, Paul, you're not suffering enough. The point he's making is, of course I suffer. They were saying, you're suffering too much. He's saying, of course I do. I suffer because I'm a slave and a captive of Jesus Christ. And that's what happens to slaves. They suffer. Why does that surprise you? Now, he doesn't trace it out any further here, the theology of it. But in other places, he'll trace this out even further. He'll say things like, look, if you're going to be a Christian, if you're going to be united to Jesus Christ, guess who he is?

29:39 If what happens to Jesus is going to happen to you, guess what happened to Jesus? He suffered. He died. He's the suffering servant. So to be united to him so that what is his becomes yours means that you as a Christian are going to suffer. Don't be surprised by that. He'll trace that out later everywhere. So what's he saying? And why does it matter? Well, listen to what he's saying. Christian, your sufferings in this life are not anomalous. They're not unexpected.

30:13 In fact, you know what's anomalous for Christians throughout history? It's to be gathered in a building like this with air conditioning and no cops at the door coming in to break us up. That's what's anomalous for Christians throughout history. Not your sufferings, not your difficulties. They're not anomalous, they're not unexpected, they're not unfair. If you're a Christian, then what that means is that you are united to Jesus, the suffering servant. And therefore what happens to him is going to happen to you. Now ultimately, right, that's a glorious thing.

30:46 Because ultimately what happens to Jesus is that he gets glorified and enthroned and we're headed there ourselves. What happened to him in the glorification and enthronement is going to happen to us. Paul says you are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. And you're going to be glorified. So ultimately it's glorious. But friends, before the crown always comes the cross. Always. It's how it was for your king and it's how it's going to be for you. As you speak the gospel to people, the world will reject you and pity you.

31:18 The world will make fun of you and mock you for believing silly things. hardships are going to come. The rejection of the world is going to come, but that does not mean in any way that God has abandoned you. A lack of success, a lack of glory, a lack of flash in your life does not mean that God is displeased with you. I mean, the fact is what Paul is saying here just puts like an atomic lie to the whole prosperity gospel that's getting preached all over the world today.

31:51 Paul knew that better than anyone. God is simply not interested. He is not interested in making his people outwardly prosperous or healthy or wealthy. That's not his purpose for us in Christ. And if you think for a second that that's what he's interested in, you haven't understood the Bible and you haven't understood the Christian life. What God is interested in doing with his people is making them like King Jesus. And that means suffering like he suffered.

32:24 Okay, look at 14 again. 14, through us. So thanks be to God. He leads us in triumphal procession as a slave. And through us, the slave, 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 the one, a fragrance from death to death. To the other, a fragrance from life to life. Like that braised short rib, right? Smells good to some and bad to others. But what's the thing about the fragrance? I mean, has Paul just like changed metaphors here? Has he like moved to gourmet food? Is that, you know, from Roman triumph?

32:55 No, no, no. No, we know from other historical sources that the captives behind the general who were strapped to the chariot and sort of stumbling forward, well, they stunk. I mean, that's just the long and short of it. They did not smell good. They had been in prison, and they didn't get to clean up before the parade. They didn't get to put on clean clothes. So the Romans, when they paraded them through the forum, would stuff their pockets with herbs and spices and aromatics so that they wouldn't smell up the forum.

33:26 that's what Paul is talking about. And he analogizes that fragrance to his preaching of the gospel. And you can look at what he does with it in 15. He basically divides human beings into two groups and says that that fragrance, the preaching and message of the gospel, is going to strike you in one of two ways. Either it will smell like life to you, like salvation and forgiveness and goodness and eternity, or it will smell like death when you hear the gospel preached. Okay, so which are you?

33:57 When you hear me stand up here and talk about a Savior who gave his life for sinners like you so that you could be forgiven of your sins, is that something that you lean forward in your chair and say, that sounds good? What are you talking about? Tell me more, tell me more. Or does it sound repulsive to you? Because what Paul is saying is that if that message sounds repulsive to you, if it just sounds like, I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here. That is not, Paul says, a good spiritual sign. If the message of Jesus sounds gross and boring and repulsive and you just can't wait to leave, Paul is saying your soul is in trouble.

34:40 But maybe for you it's not that. Maybe that message as you hear it is not repulsive at all. Maybe it's different. Maybe things have even changed from last Sunday for you. I mean, maybe last Sunday during the preaching, it did seem repulsive. You wanted to get away. You wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible. But something brought you back today, and now you're sitting here thinking, wow, I need to hear this. Something in the aroma of Jesus has changed to you. Maybe the gospel is starting to smell beautiful to you. And if so, Paul says that might be your soul coming to life.

35:17 And what would he call on you to do then? Repent of your sins and trust in Christ. See the beauty of Christ. Recognize the beauty in what you're smelling from the proclamation of the gospel and put your faith in Christ and be saved. That's the first thing Paul talks about here, the meaning of suffering. Here's point number two, the meaning of confidence. In the last verse of chapter 2, verse 17, Paul makes this contrast between himself and his opponents.

35:50 He says, look, I'm not a peddler of God's word like they are. So what does he mean by peddler? I'm not a peddler of the word. Well, probably what he means is that when these false teachers came and did their teaching in Corinth, they demanded some kind of payment where Paul very deliberately refused to take any money from them. But that raises this other objection that these guys were making about him, that he didn't seem to have any interest in getting letters of recommendation from anybody else to vouch for his ministry.

36:21 He didn't get credentials. He didn't get endorsements. In fact, what they said was, Paul, you're so uninterested in getting endorsements from anybody that matters that you're basically just commending yourself instead of getting commendations from others. So that's what Paul turns to take on next in the first six verses of chapter three. Look at it. He says, I mean, he goes right at it. So 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 a letter of recommendation written on our hearts to be known and read by all.

36:52 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. You see his argument there? I mean, we don't know exactly what this whole letters of recommendation system was referring to, But probably what it means is that these false teachers had showed up in Corinth with letters on paper from certain, you know, well-known people who commended them for their message. Listen to this guy because I'm commending him, I'm endorsing him, he's a good teacher.

37:23 And the people would read those letters and go, oh, that's so-and-so, we can listen to this guy. Now, we have no idea who might have written these kinds of endorsement letters. We have no idea if those letters that they showed up with were even real or if they were forgeries. But apparently they'd become a big deal. So they were saying, basically, Paul, here are all our letters of recommendation. Where are yours? Where are your endorsements by people who can vouch for your ministry and your apostleship as being legit? Well, Paul's counterpunch to that was just devastating.

37:58 Basically, what he does in those few verses is that he manages at the very same time both to pull on the Corinthians' heartstrings and to punch them in the nose. all at the same time see that in verse 2 verse 2 is very sweet i mean look at look what he says there you yourselves oh corinthians are our letter of recommendation written on our hearts to be known and read by you are in our hearts i don't need a letter of recommendation because you're my letter of recommendation it's very sweet when he does that he pulls on their heartstrings but then you've got three and you show that you are a letter from christ delivered by us now stop right there you are a letter of Christ it's not delivered it's not that's a bad translation the the word underneath it is just ministered by us or another way to translate it would be done by us so you are a letter from Christ written by Christ by the spirit of Christ right but you were done by us

39:02 me in other words so you see you see his argument there do you see you see what he's saying in in other words i planted you i created you in in christ of course and through the preaching of the gospel but but you you corinthians wouldn't even exist if i hadn't come here preached the gospel and planted this church so what do you mean by asking me for letters of recommendation that are going to commend my gospel to you and vouch for my ministry.

39:32 You are my letter of recommendation. That's his argument. In 4 through 6, he drives the whole thing home, such as the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. It's not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us. In other words, I'm not commending myself. What I'm saying is that I have been made sufficient for these things by God. You can see what he's doing. He said, I'm not going to play this letter of recommendation game with you. I'm not commending myself. God is commending and establishing my ministry.

40:06 And he's doing that by the fact that you here in Corinth and they over there in Ephesus and those people up in Thessalonica and those people over in Galatia all exist in the first place. Christ is writing my letters of recommendation and they are in the form of all you churches. So that's why you can say, look, my letter isn't written in ink, on paper. It's not written on stone tablets. It's written on human hearts by the Spirit of God because you exist. Now, that's an interesting point to consider, isn't it?

40:42 I mean, what is it that would give you, whatever your ministry, whatever your place in the church might be, whatever your place in broader Christendom might be, what is it that would give you confidence that you're doing well in whatever ministry it is that you're carrying out, that you're sort of making it? I mean, for the false teachers, it was the endorsement of other people. For Paul, it was looking at the Spirit's work through him. And what would you need?

41:15 Would you need the endorsement and recommendation of others to feel like you're making it, you're doing it? And it seems to me like we all do. I mean, we in general, maybe not in every particular or for every individual, but we in general spend far too much time trolling for likes and faves, endorsements, public recognition in the church or on social media for the work that we're doing. But Paul is saying it shouldn't be like that. He's saying, look, be content with the good work of the Spirit that you see happening in other people's lives around you.

41:52 They are your letter of recommendation written by Christ through you whether those letters ever get publicized or not. Now pray for yourself in that way. Pray that you would be content to see the Spirit's work around you even if it never becomes public. I mean, for that matter, pray for me. Pray for the other pastors and elders of our church to remember that and take it to heart. It's important. Pray for me in particular in that.

42:23 Look, you know, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to pretend that it's not the case. I get to do some neat stuff for being a senior pastor at Third Avenue Baptist Church. I just went, you know, halfway across the world to the United Arab Emirates to speak. And when I was there, you know, I saw copies of one of the books that I've written that were printed in half a dozen different languages around the world. And I'm not going to lie to you. That is very, very cool to see. I get invited every once in a while to speak at, you know, conferences of all kinds of sizes. You know, sometimes it's 100 people.

42:53 Sometimes it's 14,000. I get invited to those conferences, and they are sometimes cool. But I never, ever, I just want to say it up front. I never, ever, ever want to grasp for those things. As a pastor, I never want to think that my ministry is finally affirmed or established or endorsed or made real by an online presence or by a huge number of likes or faves or even by a bunch of books that get published. No, what I want, and frankly, what I want to want is to just faithfully labor, faithfully preach, faithfully pastor here at Third Avenue and at the end of it all to be able to say, by God's grace, here is my letter of recommendation.

43:38 Pray that that's the heart we all have and not a heart that grasps after worldly glory. Here's the third thing, and last, the meaning of glory. Point number three, the meaning of glory. Paul draws the argument about letters of recommendation to a close there in 14 to 16 of chapter 3. He says, you know, I'm not committing myself. It's God who's made me a minister of a new covenant. You see that? He's made me a minister of a new, sorry, not 16, 6, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, verse 6 of chapter 3.

44:12 Now, interestingly, that use of the words new covenant is one of only two times in his letters where Paul says those words. The other place is in 1 Corinthians 11 where he quotes Jesus at the Lord's Supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Well, at any rate, that little reference to the new covenant when he says it there, that reference leads him to deal with this third objection that his opponents were making. And that is that this new covenant that you're preaching, Paul, just doesn't have as much glory as the old covenant did.

44:46 Okay, now before we look at it in a little bit more detail, you've got to know that both Paul and his opponents are basing their arguments against each other on two different Old Testament texts. Right? Both of which we read in the service today. So the opponents are basing theirs on the scripture reading that we did today from Exodus 34, where Moses comes down from the mountain and his face is shining. You all know the story because we read it. If you don't remember it, look back at the scripture reading. Paul deals with that. He's going to deal with that glory and the veil on Moses' face and all of that.

45:18 But he's also bringing to bear our call to worship this morning, the passage from Jeremiah 31, where God says, Look, I'm going to make a new covenant with my people because now the old one has been shattered. It's broken. And all you've got to do is think back to 2 Kings, the series in 2 Kings, to see how that covenant was shattered and the people were taken off into exile. Okay, so with that in mind, you know, those two Old Testament passages, look what he writes there. Now, if the ministry of death, carved in letters of stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit, the new covenant, have even more glory?

46:03 For if there was some glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory, the old covenant, has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it from the new. For if what was being brought to an end came with some glory, much more will what is permanent and never ending have all the more glory right now that okay that's a tightly packed little theological argument but i don't think it's too hard to see what he's saying it kind of washes over you you can get lost in the weeds a little bit but essentially he's saying look it's true i'm not going to deny it it's true that there was glory in the in the old covenant there just was it came with thunder and fire and lightning on the mountain and moses with shining face but then he turns and says but look where that thing got us all it got us in the end was death and destruction and exile go read second kings he says all it got us was death and destruction it called and why did it get that well because it called on the israelites

47:06 to obey god its blessings had to be secured by the israelites doing what was right and they didn't do it, 2 Kings, and therefore God punished them for it. The result was exile and destruction and death. So he says, look, whatever glory that thing might have had has been completely outshined by the glory of the new covenant in Jesus. And why is that? Well, because the new covenant in Jesus is not one that leads to death ever. It never leads to death. It always leads to life. When you get into that covenant with Jesus, it leads to life and righteousness precisely because it doesn't depend on your obedience to secure it. The message of the new covenant is not obey and then you'll live. That was the message of the old covenant. The message of the new covenant is Jesus Christ has already obeyed and therefore you will live. It's a wholly different thing.

48:12 and far more glorious. I mean, just by the way, that's why he calls the new covenant there in verse 9 a ministry of righteousness. I mean, you can get confused by that because you can think, oh, well, he's calling the new covenant a ministry of righteousness, which must mean that it calls us to be righteous. It must call us to live righteously and then we'll live. But no, it doesn't mean that. What that means is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1. You are in Christ Jesus who became for you righteousness. the new covenant's a ministry of righteousness in the sense that christ is our righteousness when we get into that covenant his righteousness his perfect life is given to us and he secures the whole thing forever doesn't depend on us friends that that's very different that's the message of christianity that your salvation doesn't depend on your obedience to god doesn't depend on you winning god's favor you've already forfeited that by your sin the message of Christianity is that Jesus has won God's favor of his own, and he now offers it to you.

49:17 That is so very different from every other religion on the planet. Every other religion on the planet is do this, and you might live. Do enough of this, and you can squeak by. Not Christianity. Christianity is he has done this, and you therefore will live. That's the message of Christianity. So that's what he argues. Yes, the old covenant had some glory, but the new covenant has more because it's a covenant that secures life for those who are in it, never death. That's his basic argument. Okay, but there's still this very last thing, this super interesting thing about the veil that Moses had to wear over his face, the glory that shined from his face when he came down from the mountain and the question from the opponents is okay paul mr minister of the new covenant why isn't your face shining if your covenant that you're talking about has so

50:19 much more glory than moses did why was his face shining so that he had to have a veil and your face is not shining and paul gives a super surprising answer to that if it were me i would have just said what are you talking about this utterly irrelevant did you not hear a thing i just said. Paul doesn't do that, though. He gives a, I think, super surprising answer to it. He basically says, essentially, that veil was not a good thing. The veil wasn't a good thing. Look at verse 12.

50:51 He says here about this veil, since we have such a hope, this hope of the new covenant that's always secured by Jesus, since we have that, we are very bold. Not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. Now, tight language, a little bit hard to understand, but he's insulting the heck out of Moses right there. Do you catch that? Let me show you how. He's saying, we have this hope, and so we're bold. We speak to the people open-faced. Moses covered his up. He wasn't so bold. Why? Well, he didn't want the people, end of the verse, he didn't want the people to gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.

51:34 Okay, what was being brought to an end? If the people gazed at Moses' face and they would have seen what was coming to an end, the outcome of it, what's being brought to an end? Well, he says two things. He uses this phrase, coming to an end, in two other places. Let me show you where they are. He talks about two things that are coming to an end. Verse 7. It's the glory on Moses' face which is coming to an end. Do you see that? If the ministry of death, carving letters of stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze to Moses' face because of his face's glory, which was being brought to an end.

52:12 His glory was being brought to an end. Do you see what he's saying there? The glory on Moses' face over time was fading. It was getting less bright over time. That's one thing he says. Now look at verse 11. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, okay, what came with glory? Well, the old covenant. He's saying the old covenant was being brought to an end. Not just the glory on Moses' face, but the old covenant itself from the moment it was conceived is being brought to an end already. It's already fading. That's what he says. So do you see?

52:43 The glory of Moses' face was representative of the old covenant itself. And if the people had seen Moses' face and the lessening glory of it, they would have realized that their own covenant was also set to expire. And Paul says, that's why he put the veil on his face. He didn't put the veil on his face because the glory was so great that they would have been blinded by it. He put the veil on his face so they wouldn't see that it was fading.

53:15 They wouldn't notice it. it was to keep them from seeing too starkly that the glory of the old covenant was fading out from the moment it was conceived. So then Paul just, he just pushes it. 14 to 18, I'm not going to read it, but you can see what he says there. We read it before. The veil's not good. You don't want a veil. You don't want a veil between you and God. You don't want your vision of Jesus impeded. You want to see clearly the glory of Jesus Christ.

53:48 And that's the whole point. If you just come to God with this old idea that you're going to work your way into his favor, that you're going to earn his blessings, it's like living life with a veil over your face. You can't see anything clearly. But when you come to Christ, the veil comes off. And you see that the favor and the blessing and the eternity of God is won by Jesus Christ for you. Friends, I hope that for some of you, Jesus becomes glorious and attractive to you this morning.

54:22 If you're a Christian, somebody who's already a believer in Jesus, then I hope that even thinking about it in these terms will cause a growing desire in your heart to know and follow him. And if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, then I hope what's happening in your heart right now is that there is this dawning sunrise of a desire to say, you know what, I'm seeing for the first time that Jesus is beautiful. I'm seeing for the first time that I'm a sinner in need of a Savior, and I'm seeing that Jesus is that Savior. And I hope there's this dawning desire to trust him, to repent of your sins, and to become a Christian.

54:57 It's that simple. It's that simple. All you do is say, I know I'm a sinner. I know that Jesus has said he can save sinners, and I believe that he will with all my heart, so I'm trusting him to save me. And then you find the person who brought you here, or a total stranger, and say, look, I am now a Christian. I am trusting in Christ to save me. And off to the races you go for the rest of your life. This is a glorious gospel. I mean, the problem, as Paul well understood it, is that it doesn't always look like it.

55:29 As we live it, as we speak it, it doesn't always look like it. There's not always a lot of flash in it. But friend, you as a Christian have been swept up into something unspeakably glorious. And even if you don't see it now, you will see it in eternity. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the mediator of a new covenant that will never be broken. It doesn't depend on our fickle hearts to secure it, but that is established on you and in you.

56:01 In your righteousness, in your life lived for us, and in your death died in our place. Lord, we pray that you would help us to remember these things in every day of this week, every day of this year, in all the days of our lives. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.