"Eternal Weight of Glory" (2 Cor. 4:7-18)

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Read with me the scripture reading for tonight from Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 7 through 18. If you're using a Pew Bible tonight, this is on page 1147. 1147. Hear now the word of the Lord from Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 7 through 18. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair, Persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you, since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what has been written. I believed and so I spoke.

We also believed, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with death. Jesus. And bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart.

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated. And as you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts together tonight in prayer. Gracious Father, we pray this is such a profound text of Scripture. In this word you have spoken about deep realities that we cannot see, invisible things that you are working out in our midst, but that are incapable of our detection, at least by sight. And so we pray that you would give us sense superior to sight, that you would give us faith, faith that can see the work that you are doing in the lives of your people, and particularly in the lives of our own heart.

And we pray that we would not look to the transient passing away things that are seen, but that we would seek our hope in the things that are unseen. And so we pray, Father, again, that you would pour out your spirit from heaven, that we would gain hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news. The gospel of your son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Well, tonight, as we continue our study of the Heidelberg Catechism and think about the role of death, particularly the death of Jesus, and the role that the death of Jesus plays in redeeming and making use of our deaths, we come to a passage that is profound. It tells us about things that we cannot see, but from these things that we cannot see, it's supposed to transform the way that we live our lives. Whenever I read this story, I will forever remember a sermon illustration that was given by a ruling elder when he was preaching at my former church. A man that had served in the Air Force. He had been a linguist, a Vietnamese linguist.

He had spent a lot of times going over and trying to find remains of soldiers who had been lost POWs, and trying to bring those back to be buried in the United States. And so he spent a lot of time in Vietnam. And in the process of spending so much time in Vietnam, he came to love Vietnamese culture and Vietnamese food. And when he was preaching on this passage, he told the story about this dish in Vietnam that is cooked in clay pots like the ones that Paul talks about here, although I don't think there was a culture overlap. But in these jars of clay, and you can read about them, just do a little bit of searching.

I wouldn't be able to pronounce them, but there are these clay pots that inside the Vietnamese culture, has this savory, sweet stew. And the clay actually is essential to cooking the stew properly, because the way the clay works, the clay pot works, it focuses and concentrates the savory and sweet mixtures of these stews. The outside is not at all attractive. If you watch the Cooking Network and they're judging the presentation, they would say this is not well plated because they'd be looking on the surface. They'd be trying to judge the book by its cover, so to speak.

But looking on this, all you see is an ugly clay pot. And yet inside, this was one of his favorite things to eat when he was in Vietnam. But you couldn't get rid of the ugliness to just serve the dish by itself. The sweetness, the savoriness of it, it's essentially wed to the ugliness of that clay pot. And what Paul is saying is this is a bit of what the ugliness of death does in our lives.

Death is not good. Death is horrifying. However much the undertakers work to try to present someone to look as though they did when they are alive. Death has a hideous disfigurement if you've ever been to an open casket funeral. And yet it is through death.

The Scriptures say that God does some of his most extraordinary work in our lives. Tonight I'm focusing a little bit on 43, question 43, but especially on question 42 of the Catechism. Since Christ has died for us, why do we still have to die? The catechism teaches our death is not a payment for our sins. We're not earning something by our death.

But it is only a dying to sins and an entering into eternal life. In other words, God uses our dying through all of the course of the entirety of the suffering in our lives. God uses that suffering and ultimately our dying to bring us into eternal life life. And so our theme tonight is that Christ prepares us for true eternal life through dying. Christ prepares us for true eternal life through dying.

So, first two parts to the sermon. First, carrying death and life. Those two go together, carrying death and life. And then second, prepared for life through death. Prepared for life through death through death.

Well, we'll start with this first part, carrying death and life. In verses 7 through 15 again, Paul talks about these jars of clay, that there is a treasure. There is something sweet and savory and far grander than that in the treasure that we have in these jars of clay by which he is referring to our bodies. Now remember, how was the first man made? Well, it was from God molding the dust of the ground and forming and shaping that and breathing breath into the life of the mannion formed in the dust of the ground.

We are from the dust. We are people who have bodies that were originally formed miraculously in the transformation of God's creative act from clay. These are jars of clay. But there's a treasure in here. And what this treasure does is it shows us that we cannot judge people and we cannot judge our lives by the covers.

You can't look at someone and by the external beauty of their bodies determine their value and their worth. God is doing something tremendous in us. But all of this is in these jars of clay. Now, the jars of clay Paul is also using to talk about the frailty and the fragility of our lives. Jars of clay are pretty weak.

You drop them and they shatter like that. They do what they are designed to do, but they are very cheap, they are very easy to make. And what's easy come is also something that's easy to go. Clay jars do not last very long. Inevitably they are broken.

And so Paul then focuses on the ways in which we are broken in the course of life, but yet not entirely. We are afflicted in every way. There's chipping and scratching in these jars, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but we are not driven to despair. We are persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed.

And we ask this to Paul, well, how can this be again, these fragile jars of clay, how can these retain? How can these survive under such pressure? And the answer is in verse 10, that we are always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, hence the dark clays. We're always deteriorating. We're dying from about the point that we're born.

We're just going through a slow process toward that that creeps up on us faster than we think it will. But we are always carrying in the body the death of Jesus in the sufferings we face in the putting the death of our sin and our shame. And we do so so that as we are dying to ourselves, the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. Now, this truth is what makes Christianity so profoundly different from everything else. Because the hope we have is built upon the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

And that extends into what God does to raise us from the dead. One day, someday, we will be raised up with Jesus. But for now, the resurrection has begun, just not in the parts of our bodies that we can see. Our bodies continue to deteriorate, our bodies continue to carry death. And yet in the midst of this, through dying, the life of Jesus is made manifest in our lives.

Death for us is not a hopeless end. It is the necessary but difficult path to glory. We mourn, but not like those who have no hope, because we know that death is not the end of our existence. It is simply the end of our mortality. Our dying puts the death that we carry in our bodies to death as we await the resurrection life which will flood all the death out of our body and soul for all of eternity.

And so in verse 12, Paul continues, Sorry. In verse 11, he says, for we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. And then verse 12, Paul says, so death is at work in us, but life in you. Christian ministry is all about. And this is Paul writing to this church he's pastoring is all about dying to yourself in order to find life in other people.

Whether you're a pastor or whether you're just a friend trying to lead someone to know the Lord who does not know Jesus. That means dying to yourself, dying to the things that you'd rather be talking about, dying to the places you'd rather be, and dying to yourself so that the life of Jesus might be manifested as you share the gospel of Christ with other people.

In verse 13, Paul continues saying, since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what has been written, I believed and so I spoke. We also believe and so we also speak. He's talking about the great confession of what Christians make, that we not only believe in our hearts that God raised up Jesus from the dead, but we confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord. We believe. We also speak.

We also confess. And particularly we confess verse 14, that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. This is the core unshakable promise of Christianity. This is what it means that the hope of Christianity rests on the resurrection of Jesus, that we will be raised up with Jesus just as Jesus was raised from the dead. Now, death was not a part of God's original good design for his creation, but what God has done with death, which death is a byproduct, it entered the world only because of our sin.

But what God has done is he has taken the poison of death. And like a skillful pharmacist, he has worked this out in such a way where he has turned this into a medicine, immortality. God uses our death to put to death the death that is in us, so that all will remain will be the life of Jesus. And the way he uses death particularly is to put pride and a sense of self to death in our heart. Again, the reason there is death in the world is because of sin.

And the reason there is sin originally is stemming from a root of trusting in self rather than trusting in God. Well, as we die, death releases our death grip on pride and self reliance. You know, we die because of the. We die sorry we die. And through death, God is confronting and correcting our prideful sin.

Well, in verse 15, Paul continues, For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. There's nothing that glorifies God so much as raising the dead and the dying to life in Christ. There's nothing that gives God glory than to take a dying sinner, someone who is dead in their sins and trespasses, and raising that sinner up to new life through faith in Christ. Tonight I was just texting with a man I met in the hospital. I met in the hospital because he had overdosed on methamphetamine and he was very near to death.

The first time I met him, he was just coming out of being intubated from this. And in this drugs had wreaked terrible havoc on him where he really felt like he was in hell. He was in the stupor of his drugs, seeing darkness and shadows and all kinds of things that made him feel like he was already in hell. And to sit with him at his bedside and to read with him the words of scripture. The Lord got a hold of his life and the Lord transformed him.

And that despair that he formerly suffered is no longer a part of his life because he knows and loves Jesus. That kind of death to life. Through death, he was made open to the gospel of Jesus. And as he brushed with death, he knew the hell that awaited him if he didn't repent. And so the good news of the gospel was nothing short of salvation and life.

It was utterly sweet to the taste, even though that gospel came to him in the middle of the ugliness of a hospital room when he was barely alive. As Christ's life manifests itself in you, God is most glorified now. Tonight you might be here in very deep suffering. We prayed for those who suffering tonight in mental ways might be deep in such a way that maybe no one around you knows about it, or maybe you're suffering in such a way where you're longing. The only thing you can think about is how can I get out of this suffering in order to regain the life and the freedom and the flexibility and the pain free living that I once experienced.

But the gospel declares that God has not left you in this season of suffering without a purpose, without a cause. God is working in you through suffering and dying in order to bring you into eternal life. You see, sometimes we try to reduce what God is doing to learning a lesson that if I could just learn the lesson, then maybe I'd be able to move on from this. But it's not like learning a lesson. You can't sort of wrap up what suffering does in a neat little moral bull.

The moral of the story was this is what I learned from this. Suffering is much more like the training of an athlete. You know, what does an athlete learn the thousandth time? They squat. I wouldn't know.

I've not done that a thousand times. I get injured too quickly because I'm not strong enough for it and I do it poorly. But for those athletes, every time they are doing it, they're not learning Something new. It takes a lot of discipline to continue to do the same things, order and order again, to suffer in the same ways. And yet it's only by that ongoing suffering again and again, putting yourself under the bar that crushes you, that you were able to stand up tall under it.

Repetition after repetition after repetition. You can't roll out of your bed and go compete in the Olympics, but over time, you prepare your body to do so. And over time, the Lord, through suffering, is preparing you for eternity. And he does so in the ways that we may or may not expect it. It's when the child wakes you up in the middle of the night again so that you don't have the sleep that you want.

It's when you are humiliated, disrespected and betrayed by friends, family, neighbors or co workers. It happens when others hate you because you love Christ and obey his laws. It happens when you watch a loved one suffer and die. And when you watch that loved one lowered into the ground. It happens when you personally experience the deterioration of your own strength and your own health, or when you get the diagnosis, or when you personally approach death, you experience dying.

But as the personal strength that you lived by your whole life is evacuated from your body and soul, the only thing that is left is Christ's resurrection power, which is made perfect in your weakness and your dying. And as others see the life of Christ in you, as you suffer in this life and ultimately as you go to your death, God is most glorified in that.

When we come now to the second section, where Paul really gets to the heart of his message, that we are prepared for life through death, prepared for life through death. Starting in verse 16, Paul says, so we do not lose heart as much as we should lose heart, as much as you would think that we would lose heart. By the difficulties that Christians face all the time, we don't. We don't lose heart. You see, if this life were all that there is, we should lose heart.

If we had hope in this life only, we would be, of all people, most to be pitied. Because there's no hope if there's nothing beyond this world. No matter how successful of a life you lead, ultimately you must die and give it all away. What's the point of it all if we ultimately all must die? Death is this horrifying enemy.

It's the last enemy that Christ will trod under his feet. Jesus himself. I cannot read John 11 without wondering every time, marveling every time that Jesus, even though he knows he has come to raise Lazarus from the dead. Every time I read when Jesus wept at the graveside of Lazarus, he knew he was about to raise him from the dead. And yet death is so horrifying, so disfiguring, so jarring, so ugly, that Jesus our Lord, was wept at the tomb of Lazarus.

It is the last enemy that Christ will conquer. But. But we do not lose hope. We do not lose heart. Because though our outer self, that jar of clay in which we live, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

You see, if you were in Christ, you were already a new creation, not in your outer body again that continues to deteriorate. But inside you have resurrection life in Christ, living and active in you. The outer man is wasting away. But that soul where Christ is now giving you new life and reshaping you, is already leading you into a new existence that will never fail, spoil or perish. Before, you had been dead in your sins and trespasses, but now you're raised to new and living life.

You have a new love for Christ and his gospel, a new love for your brethren, fellow believers in the church. It's not just a presence of new life somewhere in there. You have growing vitality in that new life.

And so Paul then in verse 17, tells us what this is all about. Why do we have to go through this? Why must we still die? Again, that's the catechism question. Not to pay for our sins, but to die to our sins and to enter into eternal life.

In verse 17, Paul says, For this light, momentary affliction, all the suffering we experience in this life, comparatively to the horrors of hell is light. All the suffering we face in this temporary life is momentary. And he says, for this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are trended, they pass away. But the things that are unseen are eternal.

But what are we to take from this as we think about that eternal weight of glory that God is preparing for us through this suffering? The application of this text is that we must die to the old man, die to the old man of Adam and all of his sin, and all of the habits and all the pursuits of that he sought after died to that in order to enter into Christ's eternal life again, why do we have to die? Our death is not a payment for our sins, but only a dying to sins and an entering into eternal life. But also question 43. Beyond the forgiveness of sins, what further benefit do we receive from Christ's sacrifice and death?

And the answer is that by his power our old man is crucified, put to death, and buried with him, so that the evil desires of the flesh of the old man may no longer rule us, but that instead we may offer ourselves as a sacrifice of thanksgiving to him. We must die to the sinfulness of the old man so that we may experience the new life of new desires. What God is doing is he is using our pain and our suffering and dying as this as an antidote that helps us to release a death grip that we have on the death that is held out to us as though it were life in this world. When I was a boy, one of my favorite books was the story where the Red Fern Grows. Any of you read that one story about two hunting dogs, Old Dan and little Ann and Billy, who's training them to be hunting dogs, to hunt raccoons and to train them.

Initially, he has to get them the smell. They have to be able to smell what a raccoon smells like. So he has to get a raccoon, but it's a chicken with the egg problem. How do you help them to learn how to hunt raccoons if you don't have a raccoon pelt to train them on the scent? And so his father teaches him a little trick.

He says it's not very sporting, but it's important for this time, just this once. He says raccoons love shiny things. Take a little tin and cut out a little shiny circle, and what you're going to do is you're going to put it in a hole that you bore into a log. And at the bottom there, they're going to be able to see this shiny little glinting piece of tin, and they're going to reach in for it and they're going to be able to get their little paw in, but you're going to drive some nails into there that prevents them from getting their paw out with the shiny thing. Now, if they just let it go, as Billy points out, won't they just let it go and be free?

And he says, no, they won't let it go. They will not let those shiny things go. And sure enough, when Billy went to check his traps after a couple of days, there was a raccoon who would not let the shiny tin go. It had a death grip on it. Ultimately, that raccoon died.

Train old Dan and little Ann to hunt raccoons. But I wonder how much that characterizes our own lives? What shiny thing that is, death, are you unwilling to let go of, to be free and to have life? Is it the beauty and the vigor and the strength of your youth? Is it a sense of pride in your reputation?

Is it a sense of entitlement to some privilege because you think you deserve something? Is it the comfort and security that money brings? Is it an ego boost that you get from relationships and popularity? Or is it the pursuit of some pleasure, as C.S. lewis wrote, in the wrong degree or at the wrong time or in the wrong way, none of these things are necessarily wrong in themselves.

But the sinfulness of the old man is constantly twisting us in these evil desires to crave them too much or to crave them in the wrong way. And yet it's so instructive to talk with someone who has come very close to death, to talk about the ways that coming near to physical death put the desires for the things of this world to death in their hearts. Humiliation, suffering, and a near brush with death cured sinful issues that had plagued them for many years and decades. And the reason for this is that our great physician wields suffering and death has a very precise scalpel, an antidote, if you want to think about him as a pharmacist, a scalpel, if you want to think of him as a surgeon, to cut out the cancer of sin in ways that no amount of trying harder or being more disciplined ever could. And this is where we gain hope.

If you were afflicted tonight, you don't need to be crushed. If you're perplexed, you do not need to be driven to despair. If you are persecuted, you don't have to feel forsaken. If you're struck down, you do not have to be destroyed. You can take heart knowing that Christ is working, knowing that Christ is taking what is dying and leaving the presence of your life and filling that void with his own resurrection.

Life, where what is right now only internal and invisible in the inner man will one day be brought to its ultimate fruition. When you were raised up with Jesus Christ on the last day, do not lose heart. Look to Christ and trust him even as you follow him through the valley of the shadow of death. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that we would indeed trust Christ, Father, for all that we have.

All of it is entrusted to us for our temporary stewardship, for all that we pursue. None of it belongs to us. And whatever you take, you are the one who gives, and you are the one who takes. And blessed be your name. And so we pray, Father, that if you are unprying our fingers from a death grip on the shiny things of this world tonight to the preaching of your word, we pray that you would lead hearts tonight to repentance and to trust in Jesus Christ even as we walk through whatever valley of the shadow of death may be appointed for us.

And so we pray this in Christ's name, Amen.