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Cultivating Thankfulness - 2nd Corinthians 4:7-18
A key word in the second letter to the Corinthians is "ministry." I like to define ministry as "life with Jesus." In some sense that may seem to simplistic. In churches we often say ministry is about programs and plans! It's driven! It's about what we do... it often has a life of its own! But when we define ministry as life with Jesus, it implies that it is happening all the time, whether I like it or not. It's a definition that is filled with both tension and relief... I don't always know what He is doing, but I know He is doing something. As a pastor in a dysfunctional world, this does give me comfort, but only if I let it... it drives me crazy if I try to take control. None of this makes us comfortable, but it is life. In the previous section we have seen the glory of God in us… (4:6) For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. WOW!!! And there is no question that the first word in 4:7-18 is just the right one... Verse 7 starts with the word "but..." and so it's obvious that this passage will confront us with PARADOX. Paul takes images of life and death, seen and unseen, the now and the future and wraps them together. Paul wrote this letter as a human being under stress... have you ever met one of those? And these competing images have to appear if he is to describe real life. This life we live is filled with paradox... my palm pilot defines paradox as "a contradictory statement that is or appears to be false." We live in the tension of good vs. evil, love and hate, pleasure and perversion, life and death... it is more than we can get a handle on! But Paul uses more than just paradox in this passage... he uses some other literary devices: The passage starts (7-9) with a good description of who we are... and then the final "literary device" kicks in, you'll notice it in verses 10-14, five verses filled six times with the name of Jesus... though in the NIV they replace the name Jesus once (it's there in the Greek) with the pronoun his... Then verse 15, offers the key to thanksgiving in life with Jesus... And then 16-18 help us see real life and a how to have a true vision of it. And so on this Thanksgiving weekend I'll tell you, even in the midst of the worst life has to offer, that one of the most important facets of satisfying ministry and successful life with Jesus is Cultivating Thankfulness! And it's possible with Jesus! Let's read the passage:2nd Cor. (4:7-18) 1) Cultivating Thankfulness. 4:7-14 a) (My Vest pocket dictionary definition) Cultivate:1. To prepare the land for crops, 2. Grow (plants) 3. Develop, as the mind. i) Cultivating is violent work! A hard and fallow field looks so peaceful, but it isn't useful. ii) My brother in law owns some beautiful land in Bend Oregon... it's got about 6-12 inches of topsoil with solid rock below it. For him to grow anything he has to bust up that rock, add living material and stir it all together... he's built a special machine to do it... it's violent work... but he's making fruitful ground. Cultivating Thanksgiving might be just as hard for us… but it is possible with Jesus! b) Verses 7-9 really describe a Christian... hopefully not the first word…"but," but the rest of it. When we run through the gamut of human emotion...the ones that we feel when faced with difficulties, trials, we are confronted with the reality that we are human and just jars of clay, Paul confronts us with the problems of life… i) We start with fear… we are just jars of clay, easily broken. ii) Than disbelief… all surpassing power in us?!? iii) Than realization… it’s from God and not us! iv) Than we try to problem solve… we are hard pressed… perplexed… persecuted… struck down… (1) When this happens it is easy for us to instantly focus on us… We are going through hell here!!! (2) But Paul inserts some incredible but‘s here… (4:8) We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; (4:9) persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. None of those things sound good, but with Jesus we can struggle through them! v) In those times we recognize that the problem is bigger than us… our lives are filled with death… here are some really scary verses… (4:11) For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. (4:12) So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. Don’t you want to run? And so we react with fear or disbelief… (1) Do you feel the ground being torn up in your life? It’s scary! Life is scary! We see evil all around us, yeah, beauty is injected in it, but the darkness seems so overwhelming! (2) And yet we are called to Believe… in the very thing that turns death into life… JESUS! The only hope we have is from somewhere outside of us, as we live and breathe in the grace and live of Christ, Jesus is revealed, and we move from death to life! We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in (Jesus’) presence. (3) JESUS, CAN YOU SAY HIS NAME… LET IT STAY ON YOUR TONGUE A SECOND… He’s with us in the midst of this! We are raised with Jesus and presented with Jesus! c) But this is so hard... we don't want to admit that we are fragile and dependent despite all the evidence to the contrary. i) Way to often we try to get to a happy and thankful heart by our own power or ability to control. (1) We become task oriented instead of people oriented. We look for programs to fix people instead of allowing relationship to work through and in us. (2) The treasure is two-fold, that God deems us important enough to put Himself in us, and that treasure is God himself! What an overwhelming thought! It’s a REAL Human thought! (3) We are most Human when we living in relationship with God... He came to make us Real Humans! New Creations! ii) And that means that we have to live real live right here… not play religious games. It means living real life right here in church! "John Stott calls for the church to reclaim a tradition of tears. 'I long that we in some small way stand in the tearful tradition of Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul. I want to see more tears among us. I think we need to repent of our nonchalance, our hardheartedness.'"[i] (1) And so because of Jesus, tears have a place in church… (2) And because of Jesus, we have a reason for thankfulness, (a) Because just as he wept at the tomb of Lazarus, we can weep with one another. (b) But he also raised Him from the dead. SO WE CAN FIND HOPE THROUGH OUR PAIN! JESUS SHOWS US THAT! iii) And because of this we can be thankful in the midst of it all… not shiny happy people, but dirty thankful people raised from death to life! 2) A Real Reason for Thankfulness. 4:15 (4:15) All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. a) Paul looked at the pain of his life and saw something more! The pain was real, the discouragement is evident in his writings, but his vision was eternally focused! He lived to see the kingdom of God advance in this world! i) What he did, how he lived, the stuff he faced, all had new meaning… it wasn’t suffering for suffering’s sake, it was for someone bigger, who knew suffering more than He could ever know it. ii) Just like Jesus knew temptation better than anyone who walked on this earth (because He never gave in to it) so Jesus knew pain and suffering (because for the joy set before him he took it all upon himself at the cross, (Heb. 12:2) b) I remember having my life saved once… I got caught in a rip current at I.B. I was being swept out into huge waves and toward the pier… the lifeguard jumped off the pier into the waves… i) I didn’t like him much, he seemed to keep pushing me down under the waves, ii) And when my feet felt sand under them, just a few feet from the barnacle covered pilings of the pier, he quietly left and I went up on the beach, laid in the warm sand, and forgot that I had just been brought from death to life… c) We forget what Christ has done for us way to easily, the warm sand or the stuff of this world, both good and bad, distracts us. But we are SAVED!!! Jesus offers GRACE!!! i) GRACE!!! Lifting us beyond all the pain and sin of this world… ii) Can you say GRACE!!! Let it hang on your tongue… then breath it back into your body… take a deep breathe. At the cross Jesus created an eternal supply of grace, it’s just waiting for us to breathe it in… will you accept what He’s done? He is a real reason for Thankfulness! Breathe His grace in… even in the midst of this ugly world! Than breathe it out upon this broken, needy world. 3) Seeing thankfulness in a thankless world. 4:16-18 a) The junk of this world gives us reason to be discouraged… But we are called to see beyond the seen! Because of Jesus and the hope He has given us, hope that reaches past this life, we can allow our thankfulness in what Jesus has done for us give us new vision… i) I used to have vision that only worked for about two inches… then I had an amazing surgery… that gave me new sight. (1) I now see 20/20 at distance…but you know what… my skill at looking two inches from my face is gone. (2) Now that doesn’t mean that the present disappears when we look at the eternal ii) But as we practice looking at it, as we get beyond ourselves to find the real us in Him, the light and momentary actually began to feel a bit more light and momentary! It may not all disappear, but we can begin to take thanksgiving in the grace that reaches into us and share that, allowing it to overflow to the glory of God! b) Jesus has done and wants to do amazing surgery on our lives… to allow us to see the unseen, the eternal! c) And so our ministry is to work with Jesus to Develop Eternally Significant Relationships. i) He’s going to use YOU, all of you, not just the shiny happy parts. ii) He’s not just going to create a program of three, six, or twelve easy steps to wholeness. As we develop the ability to look to Jesus in Thankfulness, He will develop in us the ability to share this Gift with others, in ways that actually meet their needs… we get to Develop Eternally Significant Relationships! So cultivate Thanksgiving, look at the real reason for it, and begin to practice looking at eternity!
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