Struggle - The Path to God’s Blessings
Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Rev. Michael J. Moffitt June 16, 2024
SCRIPTURE: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10
As many of you know Teresa and I were on vacation last week. We began the week in Lancaster, Pa. at “Sight and Sound Theatre” to see their production of “Daniel”. As usual it was outstanding, at least the part I saw. I don’t remember how long I slept but I suspect it was quite a while. This old man thing is starting to getting on my nerves. Then we drove to Roanoke to visit with some friends. We ended up seeing a lot more of our old friends than we anticipated. We both thought that we were going to rest but as it ended up we received what the Lord knew we both needed the most.
Only a few of our friends were aware of our health concerns but they spread the word to others so when we saw them they had already been in prayer for us. Having friends who know how to intercede for you is such a blessing. I have certainly found that blessing here.
I believe that it would be helpful to know what kind of things some of our friends are dealing with. Brian, for whom our intercessors here have been praying for over three years, has stage four lung cancer and esophageal cancer. He has been in treatment for 3 ½ years which is far longer than the oncologist had originally predicted. Within that time period God has not only sustained him but allowed him to have a profound influence on those who have followed him and his wife Karen in the process of preparing to die. If you read “The Beacon”, our monthly newsletter you will have read a few of the blog articles that Brian has written throughout this process. You can read them at “dyingman.org”.
Bobby has Parkinsons disease that has dramatically changed how he lives his life. He was a realtor as well as a licensed home inspector. He often bought homes that needed a lot of work, which he would do himself. A few years ago he and his wife, Susan, built a house in another town to be closer to one of their daughters and her family which includes 4 granddaughters. They had planned on spending time with the grandkids and even taking them places. For the most that has been curtailed as Bobby lacks energy and can no longer drive.
Keith has a disease that causes him to be in chronic pain. It would take too long to share with you how it was that his health declined but suffice it to say that it was both horrible and miraculous. When he is taking large doses of painkillers his body is not fooled. He isn’t feeling the level of pain, but his body reacts to what is really going on. He can suddenly have a very violet seizure which is both terrible and frightening to watch. Sometimes he just passes out and sometimes he vomits. He had to retire early from a very good job because he literally can’t exert much energy or predict what will happen at any given time. Keith is a big, strong man, a former football player that has been reduced to sitting around in pain and needing a lot of rest.
There is one thing that each of these friends has in common, they seek to honor and praise the Lord for they have encountered his strength in the midst of suffering. They are not angry with God about their poor health. They are well aware that we live in a fallen world where sickness, pain, suffering, disappointment, sorrow and death are common and often unavoidable. No one is exempt, no matter how good or righteous they appear to be.
We had wonderful conversations that were uplifting and a real joy because we each understood that even though there was difficulty in our lives, God is and has always been faithful. We each agreed that it was through suffering that we more easily encounter God and his mercy. As we turn to him we find him willing to see us through whatever is happening. We each affirmed that though there have been some very painful times God has never abandoned us. What he has done is to invite us into a deeper walk of faith, while we seek to know the Lord more fully. For most this doesn’t happen when everything is going well.
One of the most important lessons that we have learned is that God is an awesome God who is worthy of our praise, worship, adoration, and our obedience to his holy word.
Whether our pain is physical, emotional, or spiritual God is our refuge and strength. No matter what kind of pain and suffering that we encounter God is still worthy of our complete surrender, devotion and love. Listen again to Jeremiah 10:6-7; 10,
“There is none like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is great in might. Who would not fear you, O King of the nations? For this is your due; for among all the wise ones of the nations and in all their kingdoms there is none like you.”
“But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation.”
No matter what is going on in our lives, God is worthy of our praise and worship. I have encountered many people over the years who were mad at God because of their circumstances. They felt that if God was doing his job, then whatever had happened shouldn’t have, not if God was being faithful. The truth is that if God was measuring their lives by the standard of his law they would not only not be blessed but be under the severe judgment of a holy God. God owes us nothing, and we have nothing that he needs, yet he offers us salvation and the restoration of our relationship with him through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. What an amazing love! Who can begin to comprehend it.
I have realized that one of the advantages to growing older in Christ is that I have a greater awareness of my absolute need of God and a much lower sense of my own importance. As each year goes by into another (the older you are faster time flies by) you have a more realistic view as to what is important and what isn’t.
Today we’ll be considering our epistle reading from 2 Corinthians 5:1-5. Let’s turn now to our epistle reading from 2 Corinthians 5:1-3,
“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. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked.”
Paul is addressing the topic of the Christian hope beyond the grave, and more specifically, what happens to the believer at the point of death. In our culture the subject of death holds a certain fascination as well as repulsion. On the one hand, we try to mask the fact of death with euphemisms such as "he passed on" and "she went to a better place" and with funeral rites such as viewing the body, remarking how well someone looks and placing flowers on the grave. On the other hand, our culture, especially in recent years, has displayed an attraction to the topic of death in the form of accounts of near-death experiences, a resurgence of spiritism, the growing popularity of the New Age movement.
In many cases it show men and women’s desire to be in control in an area where they have very little control. These I think are attempts to ignore the fact that death was not the original design of God for us in creation. Life with God was the goal, but death came as the result of turning away from God in disobedience. Jesus came to break the curse of sin and death and restore our relationship with God.
There was the same ambivalence towards death in Paul's time. Some viewed death positively as the release of the immortal soul from its mortal bodily tomb, while others looked on death as life's end as the popular maxim "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (1 Cor 15:32) attests.
Paul introduces the metaphor of our physical bodies as “tents” which give the idea of being temporary. It’s as if they were dwelling within temporary housing until the permanent dwelling was made ready to move in.
Even if Paul’s earthly sufferings would ultimately lead to his physical death, something far greater awaited him. In verse one he writes that even though our earthly home (tent) is destroyed, “we have” (present tense) a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” To those in Christ this promise was made sure, it was going to happen as soon as the tent was abandoned.
However, in this passage Paul refers to existence without a body as nakedness. I think it’s because we were not created to exist as mere spirit beings. For us this is as unnatural as nakedness was for our first parents in the Garden of Eden after their fall into sin. Dr. Richard Pratt in his Commentary on 1&2 Corinthians writes,
“Nakedness is a metaphor for being without a body. Literal nakedness brought shame to Adam and Eve, so God remedied their nakedness with clothing covering their shame (Gen. 3:21). Clothing remained a consistent requirement throughout the Scriptures. For this reason, Paul likened being without a body after death to the condition of nakedness. Ultimate salvation is not that disembodied souls enjoy eternal bliss in the heavenly realms, but they are bodily resurrected. (Rom. 8:3; Heb. 6:2) and inherit the new creation (Rev. 21:1-7).
Two weeks ago we considered 2 Corinthians 4:7 where the Apostle referred to our living bodies as “jars of clay.”
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”
At that time I pointed out that there are at least two important points to be gleaned from this metaphor. The first is that there is a treasure. The treasure represents the new covenant ministry empowered by the Holy Spirit whereas the gospel (good news) was stored within the minds and hearts of those who ministered the word of God.
The counterpart to the jars of clay in Paul’s metaphor is the ministers themselves. Paul simply compares the “value” of God’s light and glory and the “value” of what He chose to put His light and glory into. When you compare the two, it isn’t hard to be amazed that God has put such a great treasure into clay pots, or more specifically, frail human beings.
Paul chose this comparison, this metaphor because it symbolized the reality of his ministry. He had within him the life changing word of God as understood through the death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification of Jesus Christ. I can only imagine his joy of being filled with the Holy Spirit in place of the anger and hatred he had once felt towards the very ones who were now his brothers and sisters in Christ. When Paul was first confronted by Jesus Christ on the way to Damascus, (Acts 9) he was overwhelmed by the power of the encounter and certainly was reminded of his frailty. He had come face to face with the Living Word, the Creator of all things. All the anger and spiritual arrogance gave way before the power of the Almighty Son of God. But I wonder what happened to him that brought such a change so quickly.
In Acts 9:15-16 Jesus spoke in a vision to Ananias a Messianic Jew in Damascus. He told him to go and lay hands on Saul of Tarsus, later named Paul, that he might recover his sight after being blinded likely by the glory of Christ. Jesus told Ananias what to say,
“Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”
Have you ever wondered what Jesus showed Paul? Or what happened that changed him so completely? William Larkin Jr. in his IVP commentary on the Book of Acts suggests that what Paul heard from Jesus was revealed in what he exhorted the Philippian Christians to expect in Philippians 1:29-30,
“For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.”
Larkin wrote,
“This verse was used to charge inquirers in Russian churches in the days of active persecution under atheistic communism. New Christians must know that discipleship is purposeful and costly.”
Why would God choose to do it this way? God was sending his messages throughout the world by ordinary, weak human beings because just as we saw in chapter 4:7 he did it “to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” We can’t muster that kind of power on our own and it would be an overwhelming burden to even try.
The Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1:13-14 make a similar observation,
“I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me.”
Both the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter knew that their earthly “tents” or “jars of clay” would one day be replaced with their new and glorified body, a “building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
As long as they were in their earthly bodies there would be groaning, they would be burdened, they would suffer but that was to be expected while dwelling in the mortal body. The future promised a new body, immortal, and received in the heavenly kingdom. For now they lived in a world where sin was so deeply buried in the heart, in the nature of men and women. Because of that the issue of whether or not they felt abandoned by God while in their suffering didn’t come up. They knew this was war and in war there are casualties. But you know what, Jesus and his glory are worth living and dying for. Does this mean they were never discouraged? Absolutely not. Earlier in 2 Corinthians 1: 8-10 Paul shared with them the struggle that he had gone through. Listen to 2 Corinthians 1: 8-10,
“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”
Again, we see an example of what can be expected for those who choose to follow the Lord Jesus revealing the good news of the gospel to those who live in darkness and unbelief.
Let’s read 2 Corinthians 5:4-5,
“For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.”
I love how Eugene Peterson paraphrased in The Message the last two verses,
“Compared to what’s coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we’re tired of it! We’ve been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies! The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less.”
The apostle proclaimed that the very reason that God created us was for this very purpose. The Book of Genesis states that God did not create human beings to die, but to be clothed in immortal bodies. If Adam and Eve had passed the test at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would have realized this destiny immediately. Though many of the blessings and promises of God are in the future, not all of them are. Ephesians 1: 13-14,
“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
The promise of the Holy Spirit is not only a fulfillment of God’s promise to indwell his people, but the Spirit is also the guarantee that God will bring them to their inheritance.
There are the principles that I want you to take away with you this morning.
Our physical bodies are wasting away through the normal aging process.
Believers will receive a glorious resurrection body when our physical bodies die.
The Holy Spirit is a deposit on God’s promise of full salvation in the future.
There are three applications for us to take with us.
As believers, we can rest assured of God’s promise of eternal life.
We should be about the business of presenting God’s good news of eternal life to others.
Our motivation for Christian service should be the love of Christ and his sacrifice on behalf of others.
Let’s pray.
