Sacrifice Outlives Survival, Part 4

Welcome to Delight in Grace, Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Today's message from 2 Corinthians 4, 7-15 is titled, Sacrifice Outlives Survival. You're listening to the fourth part of this sermon, which was first preached at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem on March 16, 2014.

This is what we do with our mortal flesh. You see, Paul did this and he did this with such great confidence. He did it with abandon. He was not thinking of himself.

He was not thinking of what others might think or do to him. He just did it because he lived for the audience of one. Listen, this is the glory of the Gospel. When one is gripped by the regenerating Spirit of God through the illuminating Word of God, become the transformed, redeemed people of God. Remember a long time ago when I was in high school, and that was a long time ago.

Not as long as some of you, but it was still a long time ago. Maranatha was coming out. It came out of the Calvary Chapel movement and from their musicians, they developed a whole musical series called, Maranatha Praise. Well, this is a song that I have never forgotten. It's from Praise 3. Here's a song that I've never been able to get out of my mind. And the song said, let's forget about ourselves and magnify the Lord and worship Him. And it says it several times.

What is that song saying? Remember what Jesus said in John chapter 12, verses 24 to 26? What does it mean to forget about myself? That I don't actually feel pain? That I deny it? That I ignore it?

No, that's not what it's talking about. Let me borrow from Tim Keller in his little book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, and he borrows from C.S. Lewis.

So, you know, it goes way back. C.S. Lewis writes this in Mere Christianity. It's an observation about Gospel humility.

C.S. Lewis says, we would never come away from meeting a truly humble person, come away from meeting them thinking that they were humble. They would not be always telling us that they were a nobody because a person who keeps saying they're a nobody is actually a self-obsessed person.

So that's not what forgetting yourself is. The thing that we would remember from meeting a truly Gospel humble person is how much they seem to be totally interested in us. Because the essence of Gospel humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself. It is thinking of myself less because I'm thinking of something else much more than I'm thinking about myself. Gospel humility is not needing to think about myself. It is not needing to connect things with myself. If you haven't read this book, I strongly encourage you to read it.

It's challenging, very challenging. Let's forget about ourselves and magnify the Lord and worship Him. That's the point to our existence, by the way.

Remember that? Let's forget about ourselves and magnify the Lord and worship Him. And this is what Paul did, and he did so. He said he had the spirit of faith, the spirit of faith. Look at what he says in verse 12. Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what is written, I believe and therefore I spoke. That's from Psalm 116. The spirit of faith is like what he says in Galatians 2.20. What does he say in Galatians 2.20?

We read it often. We recite it often after the Lord's table. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. That's the spirit of faith. And this is what God has said and done in history.

I understand what God has said and what He has done in history, that Jesus died in history, that Jesus walked out of the grave in history. And because somebody has done that in history, I have the complete confidence that as I trust Him, I will experience the same thing. So I entrust myself to it. I entrust myself to Him and looking ahead, act accordingly. That's the spirit of faith. And thirdly, when I entrust myself to Him and then I act accordingly, I realize it becomes real in my life, the notion that sacrifice outlives survival and the life of Jesus is then manifested in my mortal flesh. That's the spirit of faith. Malcolm Muggeridge said this.

He was a famous British journalist. I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries, I am beholden to Jesus.

It sounds like something the Apostle Paul would say, but no, it was Malcolm Muggeridge who died maybe about a decade ago. God knows suffering. God knows that sacrifice outlives survival.

How do we know that? All we need to do is look at Jesus Christ. Let me close this morning with this illustration. The thing that we would remember from meeting a truly gospel humble person is how much they seem to be totally interested in us. Because the essence of gospel humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself. It is thinking of myself less.

Why? Because I'm thinking of something else much more than I'm thinking about myself. Gospel humility is not needing to think about myself. It is not needing to connect things with myself. If you haven't read this book, I strongly encourage you to read it.

It's challenging. Let's forget about ourselves and magnify the Lord and worship Him. That's the point to our existence, by the way.

Remember that? Let's forget about ourselves and magnify the Lord and worship Him. That's what Paul did, and he did so. He said he had the spirit of faith. The spirit of faith. Look at what he says in verse 12. Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what is written, I believe and therefore I spoke. That's from Psalm 116. The spirit of faith is like what he says in Galatians 2.20. What does he say in Galatians 2.20?

We read it often. We recite it often after the Lord's table. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And this is what God has said and done in history.

I understand what God has said and what He has done in history, that Jesus died in history, that Jesus walked out of the grave in history. And because somebody has done that in history, I have the complete confidence that as I trust Him, I will experience the same thing. And so I entrust myself to it. When I entrust myself to Him and then I act accordingly, I realize it becomes real in my life, the notion that sacrifice outlives survival. And the life of Jesus is then manifested in my mortal flesh. That's the spirit of faith. Malcolm Muggeridge said this.

He was a famous British journalist. I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries, I am beholden to Jesus. Doesn't that sound almost inspired? It almost sounds like scripture. It sounds like something the Apostle Paul would say.

But no, it was Malcolm Muggeridge who died maybe about a decade ago. God knows suffering. God knows that sacrifice outlives survival. How do we know that? All we need to do is look at Jesus Christ.

Let me close this morning with this illustration. John Lennox, who is an author and professor of mathematics at Oxford University, was touring Eastern Europe and met a Jewish woman researching how her relatives had perished in the Holocaust. They met as they were visiting a display, a mock-up of the main gate of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. And the display also had pictures of the horrific medical experiments carried out on children by the infamous Dr. Joseph Mengele. At that point of their tour, the Jewish woman turned to John Lennox and said, and what does your religion make of this?

Let me read from Lennox's book Gunning for God. What was I to say? I had lost her parents and many relatives in the Holocaust. I could scarcely bear to look at the Mengele photographs because of the sheer horror of imagining my children suffering such a fate. I had nothing in my life that remotely paralleled the horror her family had endured. But still she stood in the doorway waiting for an answer. I eventually said, I would not insult your memory of your parents by offering you simplistic answers to your question.

What is more, I have young children and I cannot even bear to think how I might react if anything were to happen to them, even if it were far short of the evil that Mengele did. I have no easy answers, but I do have what for me at least is a doorway into an answer. What is it, she said. I said, you know that I am a Christian. That means that I believe that Yeshua is the Messiah. I also believe that he was God incarnate, come into our world as Savior, which is what his name Yeshua means.

Now I know that this is an even more difficult for you to accept. Nevertheless, just think about this question. If Yeshua was really God, as I believe he was, what was God doing on the cross? Could it be that God begins just here to meet our heartbreaks by demonstrating that he did not remain distant from our human suffering, but became part of it himself? For me, this is the beginning of hope and it is a living hope that cannot be smashed by the enemy of death. The story does not end in the darkness of the cross. Yeshua conquered death. He rose from the dead and one day as the final judge, he will assess everything in absolute fairness, righteousness and mercy. There was silence.

She was still standing, arms stretched out, forming a motionless cross in the doorway. After a moment with tears in her eyes very quietly but audibly, she said, Why has no one ever told me that about my Messiah before? Behold the glory of the gospel. Sacrifice outlives survival. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.