Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
Let me begin this message with a confession.
Unbeknownst to most of you, I’m part of a growing group of PCA pastors who, over the last several years, have begun to network together around a certain concern.
We communicate online throughout the year.
And at General Assembly we always connect face-to-face around our common concern.
This concern keeps us highly motivated and always seeking to expand our network.
The title of our network is the PCA Pastors CrossFit Group.
To be a part of our group you have to be committed to the Word of God, the Westminster Standards, and to CrossFit.
And if you don’t know what CrossFit is, any one of our network members would be glad to tell you.
Our common concern is our physical health and well-being.
We communicate online with each other about the workouts we do at our various CF gyms.
We give each other high fives and thumbs up every time one of us reaches a personal best or a workout milestone.
And our face-to-face time at GA is at least one group workout at a local CF gym in the GA city.
CF workouts can be excruciating.
So, we network together to help each other keep on grinding on for our physical health.
We want to be good stewards of our bodies, but it’s a grind!
And here’s the deal.
Even with our very best efforts towards physical health and nutrition, we’re only delaying the decay.
The decay is inevitable.
It’s unavoidable.
No amount of exercise or healthy eating is actually going to change that.
So, what’s necessary, in light of this truth is to have a longer term perspective.
Our efforts to delay the inevitable are good, but if the decay can only be delayed and not stopped, it makes sense for us to have an eternal perspective as we live this life.
Down in v. 16 of this chapter Paul says, “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”
Then, in the first verse of ch. 5 he says, “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.”
Why is it that Paul is reminding the Corinthians that our physical bodies waste away?
How is it that he’s come to have our physical limitations at the forefront of his mind?
It’s not because he can’t get his eating under control, and is putting on too much weight.
What has brought home the reality of our bodies decaying for the apostle Paul is the affliction he’s having to endure because he’s following Jesus.
He talks to them about his afflictions in ch. 1.
He brings up his afflictions in ch. 2.
He talks about his afflictions again down in v. 17 of this chapter when he says,
2CO4.17
If you read ch.
6, what do you find out?
He’s endured afflictions.
For good measure, what does he bring up in ch.
7? You got it.
He’s been afflicted at every turn he says.
It’s not his diet that’s got the body on his mind.
It’s that, for Jesus’ sake, he’s had to endure hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger ().
If you read ch.
6, what do you find out?
He’s endured afflictions.
For good measure, what does he bring up in ch.
7? You got it.
He’s been afflicted at every turn he says.
It’s not his diet that’s got the body on his mind.
It’s that, for Jesus’ sake, he’s had to endure hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger ().
And chapter 4 of this letter is in fact bracketed by Paul’s declaration that he’s going to stay on his grind in spite of his afflictions because he has an eternal perspective.
Here’s what I mean.
In v. 1 he says, “For this reason…we don’t lose heart.”
Then he repeats himself with the same words down in v. 16. “Therefore, we don’t lose heart.”
What he’s saying, in these two statements that help us understand what he says in the middle is, “We don’t lose our motivation.
We don’t lose our enthusiasm.”
In other words, to put it positively, “we stay on our grind.”
No matter how bleak and bad it is, we stay on our grind.
Why Paul?
Because, these things are light and momentary afflictions, and what they are doing is preparing an eternal weight of glory for us that is far beyond any comparison.
We stay on grind for glory.
He explains what this grind for glory looks like.
I want to encourage us toward three things from the first six verses of this chapter: Grinding by Grace (vv.
1-2), Grinding Against the Darkness (vv.
3-4), Grinding in Hope (vv.
5-6).
Grinding by Grace
Paul says in v. 1, “Therefore, having this ministry as recipients of mercy we stay on our grind.”
Usually when we find a “therefore” in the text we look at the verses before it to find out what it’s there for.
But in this case, the answer is right here in this verse.
Therefore, Paul is saying, we don’t lose heart, we stay on our grind because we have something.
It’s because we possess this ministry as recipients of mercy.
That makes us ask a question.
The question is, “What is this ministry you have Paul?”
For the answer to that we look back in the text to find out what this ministry is.
He describes this ministry in three ways in ch. 3. He’s been dealing with are opponents who’ve come into the church and tried to invalidate Paul’s message.
So he says, at the beginning of ch. 3, “Are we beginning to commend ourselves to you again?
Do we need letters of recommendation to you, or from you?” Then he says in vv.
4-6, “The confidence we have through Christ toward God is that even though we’re not sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, our sufficiency is from God.
He has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant.”
The ministry he possesses is new covenant ministry.
He’s not a minister of the old covenant, that he says is written on tablets of stone.
He’s not a minister of the law because a change has come.
Christ has come, and he has brought about the reality of a new covenant that gets written on people’s hearts (on the inside) not on tablets of stone.
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