Welcome to Turning Point. Do you ever get discouraged? If so, you're not alone. Even the strongest Christians can lose heart. It happened to the Apostle Paul.
Today, Dr. David Jeremiah shares how Paul overcame discouragement. and offers tools to help you become stronger in your faith.
so that God can use you powerfully. Listen as David introduces his special message, finding life through death. And you don't have to look very far to discover the big example of that principle. How do we have spiritual life? Through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He died. For us, so that we might live with him. And throughout the Bible the principle of life through death is taught, both by illustration and by exhortation. Today, we're going to look at a passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. That underscores that principle for the way you and I live.
It will help you get perspective, which is one of the reasons we're doing this series of messages. And we have a study guide called Making Sense of It All. Has all of the lessons that we have taught so far, and you can. Catch up with those lessons as well as listen to the ones we're doing right now, which are a little bit extra from the series. We want you to have these principles while we're talking about it.
We're going to talk about finding life through death, finding freedom through slavery, and getting through giving this week on Turning Point. And now here's part one of finding life through death. Open your Bibles to the book of 2 Corinthians. Today we're going to talk about the principle of living through dying. And I want you to look at your Bibles, first of all, and notice with me two verses in the fourth chapter.
And there's just one phrase in these two verses that I want to single out. And it's this little phrase: we do not lose heart. Verse one. Go down to the 16th verse and it says, Therefore, we do not lose heart.
So let me ask you this question. Do you ever. Lose heart. Do you ever get discouraged? Do you ever feel like giving up?
Do you ever struggle?
Well, so do I. And so do all Christians. And so did Paul. But in this passage of Scripture, he's going to tell us how we can keep. From getting discouraged, how we can keep from losing heart in such a way that it takes us out of the game.
I've been asked often, what is the number one thing you deal with in your own personal life that can take you out of circulation for a while? And it's discouragement. I can be discouraged. I don't get discouraged very often, in fact, very seldom, but I can get discouraged. And it's interesting how it sneaks up on you, isn't that true?
And all of a sudden, discouragement just comes over like a cloud, and you wonder: what in the world is going on here?
Well, Paul is going to help us understand that as Christians, we're candidates for discouragement if we don't understand the Christian experience. And in this passage of Scripture, he's going to unfold that for us. under the metaphor of living through dying. I have been reading a book by Gary Thomas that has the interesting title of The Beautiful Fight.
Now, that in itself sounds like a paradox, doesn't it? Whoever heard of a beautiful fight? A fight at home, a fight in church? It doesn't ever sound like any kind of fight could be beautiful. But he outlines in this book how the inward struggle that we have for godliness is a beautiful fight.
And in this book, he tells us that the Christian life is a fight, but it is a worthwhile one. It is a beautiful fight. It is a fight between what we know ourselves to be and what we desire to be. It is a fight between what we know we ought to do. And what we end up doing is a fight between wanting to live for Jesus Christ and then.
Sometimes finding how selfish we are living for our own selves. It's kind of like what Paul wrote about in Romans chapter 7 when he says, What I will to do, that I do not practice. But what I hate, that I do. Have you ever been there? You want to do the right thing.
You have the desire in your heart to do the right thing.
Sometimes you don't. This is the beautiful fight according to Gary Thomas. Later on in the book, he says, Can I be honest with you? You may have been lied to and you may have believed the lie. You've been taught a Christianity that has no cross.
You've been sold a faith that turns God into the spiritual embodiment of absolutely unconditional approval, which never says should, never says ought, and never says must. You've been told that God loves you just the way you are, which is true. And that it's therefore okay to stay the way you are, which is not true. But the changing From the way you are to the way you want to be, that can be painful. That can be excruciating.
That's the beautiful fight. It hurts to die to dreams that you had in your own flesh. It sometimes feels as though we're being ripped apart when we let something go. But the pain is a good pain. And the difficult journey is a good journey.
and the beautiful fight. It's still a beautiful fight. And I have good news for you, and for me too. We're not alone in this. We're not isolated from all the Christians of every generation or from our own generation.
We're not the only ones that struggle. Everyone struggles. In fact, I've come to the place where I'm comfortable with the struggle. I worry about people who don't know there is a struggle. Have you met folks like that?
They got saved inside the gate, went to sleep, and haven't awakened in 20 years. They don't know there's a struggle.
Somebody wake them up and tell them you're in a fight. They don't know they're in a fight.
So if you struggle, that's good. That means you care about what's going on in your life. The fight This struggle is understood when we study the scripture. It's an intrinsic part of God's plan for you and for me. It is a creature.
Like you and like me, living in two worlds that are diametrically opposed to one another. I want to tell you today that you are living in a dying world. and you are dying in a living world. That sounds contradictory, doesn't it? That sounds like a paradox.
That sounds like it doesn't make any sense. But this is how Paul expresses it here in the fourth chapter, in the tenth verse. Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
Now In the fourth chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul is going to explain to us, and I believe the most. Incredible passage about this in all the word of God. Why we have This Intensity of Struggle within us as believers. I think some of us got saved and we thought. Whew.
Now the struggle's over.
Now I can just move. Be for Jesus and everything will be okay. Then, all of a sudden, about the second week, We thought, what is this? I still have some of those desires to do the things I used to do, but I still have this desire to do what Jesus wants me to do, and now you're torn inside.
Well, Paul is going to help us understand that, first of all, by giving us a picture of living through dying. Notice in verse 7. He says, but we have this treasure. in earthen vessels. That the excellency may be of God and not of us.
Let me unpack this for us. He's going to talk first of all about the precious content That is available, that is the gospel. Notice the seventh verse says: We have this truth. Preasure. What is the treasure he's talking about?
Well, the answer to that question is up in the first words of this chapter. Therefore, since we have this ministry, This treasure is the same as this ministry, and this ministry is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul is saying, we have this wonderful treasure. The treasure of the gospel. How many of you know the gospel is a treasure?
The gospel is the greatest treasure you have. I know you love your wife and your kids, but even more than that is the treasure of the gospel because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And it's the gospel which can change your life. And for many of you, has changed your life. But Paul says this gospel Which is the most profound truth in the world.
This gospel, which produces the most powerful eternal effects, this gospel which frees people from the power of sin and death, this gospel which releases us from condemnation and gives us eternal joy and peace and satisfaction. Paul says, this gospel, this treasure, has been placed in earthen vessels. The priceless treasure. in earthen vessels. Now what is he talking about, this perishable container?
We have this treasure in earthen vessels.
Well, let me just tell you straight out: the earthen vessel. is Your body. Your body is Clay, it's made out of dust. Paul uses the earthen vessel as a Synonym for the body, for the human body, and we'll see that a little more clearly in a few moments. But he says we have this treasure of the gospel.
And Almighty God has decided to place it. in the human resource we call a body. and he calls it an earthen vessel. He uses a term out of the ancient world. In the days of the Bible, clay jars were the utilitarian objects of households and commerce.
They were used to store and transport olive oil. and wine and grain. These clay pots were used for cooking and for eating and for drinking and for storing leftovers. They even were used to store treasures. In fact, the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the most valuable manuscripts in history, was found in a clay pot, in an earthen vessel.
The Greek word here for this is the word ostraka. And if you are an archaeologist, even a neophyte archaeologist, you know that's a very common term. Ostraka are the pieces of pottery that are found in archaeological digs. And Clay pots in Bible days were as common as fast food containers are to us today. The life expectancy of these clay pots was short, and if you broke one, no big deal.
There were 150 to take its place. They were not considered valuable. They were useful but not valuable. And when Paul uses the term earthen vessels, he's talking about clay pots.
Now, here's the picture. Almighty God has taken the most precious commodity in history in the universe, which is the gospel. And he's put it M. Clay pots. He's entrusted it.
to you and to me. If you're a Christian today, You have the gospel in you. God Almighty has entrusted you with the gospel. And let me ask you a question: Would you entrust you with the gospel? Hmm.
So, first of all, in Paul's metaphor, the treasure is the gospel of the glory of God, and the earthen vessels are the followers of Christ. Mostly apostles back then, certainly Paul, but all of us in our weak and insignificant bodies, the powerful message of the gospel has been contained. In our dying bodies. The living gospel.
Now, one of the incongruities of the Christian faith Is the fact that God has chosen us to do that. Not only that, he hasn't chosen the ones we would choose. When God chose the men through whom he would convey the gospel message, he didn't choose the learned scholars of Alexandria. Or the distinguished philosophers of Athens, or the eloquent orators of Rome, or the self-righteous religious leaders of Israel. He passed over all of them in favor of simple Galilean fishermen like Peter and James and John and Andrew.
and despise tax collectors like Matthew. And obscure men like Philip and Mark and Nathaniel, and even the educated people that he chose, like Luke, who was a doctor, and like Paul, who was a rabbinic scholar, they were. Pretty sophisticated people, but very humble. Very, very not into themselves at all. To these common earthen vessels, Almighty God entrusted the priceless treasure of the gospel.
And this striking paradox makes it very clear, men and women, that the gospel is no product of human ingenuity. It's no clever discovery of the human intellect. It is no bright idea of some outstanding genius, but it is a revelation of the power of the sovereign God. Go back and look at it again and notice that he has done this that the power might be of God and not of us. When you see somebody who's a Christian, who's come to Christ, especially if they've lived a rather sordid life in the past.
God has changed them. The only power there is that can change a person from the inside out and make them totally new is the power of the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ. You and I all know that. The gospel does what nothing else can do.
So The picture of living through dying is this. Here you have this precious commodity. The Gospel of Jesus Christ. And God has put it in people like you and me. We're the containers of the gospel.
We're the conveyors. We're the communicators of the gospel. Can you understand why there's going to be a bit of a struggle here? You've got this eternal commodity of the gospel on the inside, and you've got the failing. struggling humanity on the outside.
No wonder. We have Tendencies to get discouraged sometimes. We don't get discouraged so much with others, we get discouraged with ourselves. Isn't that true? I'm not discouraged about you so much as I am about me.
Because I know what I have, and I know what I am. And sometimes those two things just, oh, they just rip at you, don't they?
Well, Paul says These pressures that we have. are both Challenging and encouraging. In the next verses, he goes from the picture of living through dying to the pressures of living through dying. And in verses 8 and 9, he gives us four little couplets. And I'm going to read these verses and then we'll just take a moment and talk about them.
Verses eight and nine: We are hard pressed on every side, but we're not crushed. We are perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. In Paul's message, If it had ended at the end of verse 7, With the acknowledgement that the eternal gospel has been placed in weak, frail human beings, we'd have reason to be discouraged. But in verses 8 and 9 from his own life, I believe. Paul gives us four parallel statements that illustrate what it is like to experience the dichotomy of weakness and strength.
In our lives, strength in the gospel, weakness in our humanity. And these paradoxes are certainly autobiographical of Paul. If you read the book of Acts, you see Paul experienced all these things in his life. He's talking not only about us, but he's talking primarily about himself. He begins by saying, we are hard pressed on every side.
but not crushed. The word here for hard-pressed is another way to say that he was under great stress. He was under great pressure. Anyone here under pressure, anybody here under stress? Paul knew something about stress and pressure.
He lived his entire life in that kind of environment. Flip back in your Bibles to the first chapter of 2 Corinthians, and let me show you a description of Paul's life that he gives to us in verses 8 and 9. For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in God. Who raises the dead?
Paul said, I want you to know what my life was like. I lived every day under the sentence of death, and the pressure was incredible. But he said That pressure. was great. But it wasn't fatal.
Paul said he was pressured, but he was not crushed. The word crushed means to be confined to a very narrow place. I'm going to give you the best paraphrase of this I've read since I've been studying this passage over the years. Here it is. Meryl Tenney said it this way.
We are squeezed, but we're not squashed. Amen? That's the creative difference of being a Christian, isn't it? Everybody has pressure. Everybody has stress.
Everybody has problems. Everybody has a tendency to get discouraged. But if you know Christ, you can be squeezed, but you'll never be squashed. Because Jesus Christ is the creative difference. He is the one within you who keeps what is.
You from being destroyed.
Some people are always surprised.
Well, you know, I thought when I became a Christian, I wouldn't have any problems like this. Hello? Welcome to the real world. You may go to some churches or watch some television ministries that would give you the impression that being a Christian is sailing right into heaven on a smooth sea. But the Bible does not teach that.
The Bible does not teach that the Christian life is supposed to be easy. It says it's going to be hard, but it's not going to be so hard that you can't deal with it in the power of Christ. who keeps you from being squashed when you feel squeezed. Amen. If you don't have Christ, you're just squashed.
You're just squashed. You are victimized by your problems. Notice the second one. Perplexed but not driven to despair. Paul is saying that he was at his wit's end, but not quite.
Here are some of the other translations of that phrase: in despondency, but not in despair. Confused, but not confounded. Once again, here's Meryl Tenney's paraphrase: bewildered but not befuddled. Oh, I love that. Have you ever been bewildered?
Oh, yes. But if you're a Christian, you may be bewildered, but you won't be befuddled because Jesus Christ steps in to help you in the midst of it. If you want to read a couple of lists of what Paul had to deal with. difficult experiences. You'll find them in 2 Corinthians chapter 6.
And 2 Corinthians chapter 11. In those two chapters, you will see Paul will just list for you all the challenges that he had. And then the third one is: persecuted but not forsaken. And the word persecuted here is the word from which we get the word pursue. Paul was a fugitive.
The Jewish leaders hated him because through his conversion, many were coming to Christ and he was coming into their establishments and wreaking havoc with their control. And they chased him everywhere they could. If you go through the book of Acts, It's really like the fugitive. Let me just give you a few verses and I'll go through them quickly. Acts 9:23.
Now, after many days were passed, the Jews plotted to kill him. Acts 9:29, as he spoke boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus and disputed against the Hellenists, they attempted to kill him. Acts 23, 12, and when it was day, some of the Jews banded together and bound themselves under an oath, saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Paul. And Paul acknowledges that he was living like this, but in his letter to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3, he says, You have carefully followed my doctrine, Timothy, the manner of my life, the purpose and faith, and the long-suffering, and the love, and the perseverance, and the persecutions, and the afflictions that happened to me in Antioch, at Oconium, at Lystra. What persecutions I endured?
Here's the creative difference. And out of them all, the Lord delivered me. That's because we have this gospel within us, this salvation within us. Yes, we live our lives in the world of humanity. But the difference is We are sometimes squeezed, but we're never squashed.
We're sometimes bewildered, but we're never befuddled. We are sometimes persecuted, but we're never forsaken. And here's the last one. Struck down, but not destroyed. And the word struck down means to be thrown down to the ground in a wrestling match.
What Paul is saying, I've been knocked down a lot, but I've never been knocked out. And this was the experience that he felt. Did you remember that one time they came after Paul?
Well, let me read it to you from Acts 14. And the Jews from Antioch and Iconium came there. And having persuaded the multitudes, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, knocked down.
However, when the disciples gathered around him, he got up and went into the city, and the next day departed with Barnabas to Derby. This guy's got nine lives. No, no, no. He's got the life of Jesus within him. That doesn't mean we can go out and do foolish things and he'll protect us.
It does mean that the man of God in the center of the will of God is immortal until God is finished with him. And that's true for you and for me. The creative difference that Christ brings to our struggle. is His own presence. In the midst of the storm.
Amen. Amen. Amen. And we thank God that He's with us. You know, uh One of the things I have found to be so encouraging in these latter years of my life is the fact that.
God wants to be with us. but he also wants us to be with him. He said, I go to prepare a place for you, and I'm going to do that, so that where I am, there you might be also. And I don't think we talk about that enough. We talk about God being with us, but God wants us to be with Him.
That's what Christianity is all about. the gospel is all about, and that's what Turning Point's all about as well. Today we are Looking at Second Corinthians chapter four, we'll have another lesson from that passage tomorrow. Then from Romans we'll be talking about finding freedom from slavery. And from 2 Corinthians 9, Getting through giving.
That's this week's schedule. I hope you'll be with us every day as we finish out the month of July together. Thank you for listening. I'm David Jeremiah. For more information on today's special message from Dr.
Jeremiah, please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected, our monthly magazine Turning Points and our daily email devotional. Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of Robert J. Morgan's inspiring book, 100 Bible Verses That Made America.
It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard New International and New King James Version, available in your choice of handsome and durable cover options. Get all the details when you visit our website davidjeremiah.org/slash radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow for more of our special message from Dr.
David Jeremiah here on Turning Point.
