By Simon ManchesterSunday 1 Dec 2024Christian Growth with Simon ManchesterFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
If you would like to find again that passage: 2 Corinthians7:8. I think I’ve told you before. The story of the sea Captain. It’s a good reminder to tell you if I haven’t told you before, who’s in charge of a very large ocean liner and as he’s travelling, he sees a light in the distance and he radios to say, we’re coming towards you. It’d be a good idea if you change course and the message comes back, we see you as well, and it would be a good idea if you changed course.
And so the captain responds. Look, uh, we don’t want to crush you, so please change your direction and the reply comes back. Ditto. Change your direction. And the captain says, I’m not sure you understand. I’m commanding a 70,000 tonne ocean liner. It would be a good idea if you change course or we’ll destroy you. And the reply comes back. I run the lighthouse on the coast land and you are fast approaching.
There is a time, isn’t there where it just makes good sense to change direction. And we’re thinking for a few Sundays about this call of God, to change direction, to turn back and be safe. It’s part of his love for us to call us to change direction. It’s a message that goes to all the world. Now, why does God call the world to what we would say repent?
It seems like a very old-fashioned word. It just means turn around, change your mind, change your direction. Why does God call on the world, the whole world to repent? And the answer is because the Bible tells us the whole world has turned away and turned astray. And so God cares about people. And he calls on us to turn back not only for his honour but also for our good.
So this call of God to turn away from the wrong path and to the right path emerges from the love of God, the same love which has provided a Saviour. And last week we saw the famous John the Baptist, calling people to turn and be ready for Jesus. This week, we’re looking at how the Apostle Paul called a church to turn back from drifting from drifting away, and Paul did it by writing letters 1 and 2 Corinthians. Now I myself write letters. Occasionally I type them because otherwise they would be unreadable.
But I, uh, send letters every now and again urging people to turn back to Christ and have eternal life. And I sent one this past week, and I wasn’t really sure how it would be received. But I got an email this morning from this person saying that they were very grateful for the letter and I was relieved.
And the Apostle Paul has also sent letters to the Corinthian church urging them to turn back from their drift, and he is extremely relieved in this passage to discover that they have taken him up. Now my letters, of course, are absolutely nothing compared with the letters of the Apostle Paul, which are biblical and supernatural and powerful and eternal. So the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church – his first letter and dealt with a range of issues. But one of the issues was that there is a spiritual cancer that had come into the church.
There was a man in the church who was living in gross disobedience. The Apostle Paul is writing, because not only is the man disobedient, but the church doesn’t seem to care. The watching world, knowing about this man’s gross disobedience was shocked. But what shocked the Apostle Paul was that the church didn’t care. And so Paul wrote the Corinthian letter with a great deal of love and also, he says many tears. It was not a nasty letter. It was a very loving letter. But he didn’t just write to them and say, Listen, I don’t care what you do, it’s your business.
He didn’t write to them and say, you do what you like. He wrote to them in 1 Corinthians, and he said, you need to remove this man from the church so that he comes to his senses because I’m concerned about him and I’m concerned about you. So it was not an easy letter for the Apostle Paul to write. It wasn’t an easy letter to receive to receive either, but the effect, my friends, was wonderful because it turned the church from drifting to the coastline and crashing.
So the passage is 2 Corinthians 7:8-13. If you want to watch, it’s just six verses and I want to spend a minute now on the first three verses, which is verses 8, 9, 10.
And the title for these three verses is God’s Word – The sword.
God’s Word – The sword
So listen to Chapter seven, verse eight and nine. I’m just going to pull a few words from the verses, Paul says. Even if I wrote and caused you sorrow by my letter, I don’t regret it because it led you to repentance. Now how does Paul know that the church was repentant? And the answer is he’d sent his friend Titus to the Corinthians to find out how they’d responded to his letter, and Titus had come back to say they responded well.
And the Apostle Paul is absolutely delighted because his words, which were God’s sword, did the work of turning them around and you’ll see in verse eight. The first effect of the letter is that it caused them grief, and you can imagine if you get a letter telling you that you’re on the wrong path. The original initial reaction is grief. Somebody has corrected me. Your translation may say sorrow caused you grief.
But Paul says it was good grief. Now we have a phrase, don’t we? In the English language, which is good grief. And, uh, those of you who remember the Peanuts cartoon and Charlie Brown will remember that it was probably his favourite phrase. Good grief. And good grief brings people to their senses, and it helps them to make a break with the foolishness and to become a wise person. I have a friend called Tim. He must be turning 80 around this time. And he was not a believer. But he would go occasionally with his wife to the local church and probably sat there very unwillingly. And one day the young minister, who’s a friend of mine, said to him, Tim, when are you going to come down off the fence and become a Christian?
And Tim said, I will think about it and my young friend said to him, So that’s a no. And Tim said he was so angry with this comment that he went home and he stewed all day And then he realised the young guy was exactly right, that he had not ever come down off the fence and made a decision, and he came down off the fence and he made a decision, and I guess he’s now been a Christian for 30 or so years. And he has two sons who are in the ministry leading Anglican churches in this diocese. But that’s what we would call good grief, isn’t it?
Because although it’s painful in the initial moments, it actually has a wonderful effect, and it was brief, says Paul Verse eight. It was brief grief. It hurt you, he says, just for a little while, literally just for an hour. So like an injection. It was brief, but it did good. It was brief, but it did good or like a school detention, it was brief, but it did good. It was soon over, so that’s the first effect of Paul’s letter on the Corinthians. It brought them sorrow or grief.
The second effect, Verse nine, is that it led them to repentance. They began to change their mind about what they were doing, how they were behaving and that led them to a change of direction. Like the prodigal son. Remember in the pigsty, having run away from his father, he eventually came to his senses, and he didn’t just sit there in the pigsty and say, well, I’ve come to my senses. He came home and he received a very loving welcome. When he came home, of course, he didn’t walk up the path, saying, I’ve had a really hard time. He didn’t walk up the path saying, It’s all other people’s fault. He didn’t walk up the path, saying, I’d like to explain why I did the stupid things I did because I had a perfectly good reason for doing them. He came up the path, didn’t he? He was totally, totally repentant.
He said, Father, I don’t even deserve to be your son. And suddenly the fathers, you know, threw the arms around him and welcomed him home. So when God is at work with his sword, with the word the truth, he is able to turn our grief, our conviction into repentance. And that repentance, of course, is entirely healthy because it leads us to drop the danger and to take hold of the father, and that’s what we do. You must know some of you in the building this morning. You must know those times where God has led you to that lovely position of saying I just don’t want to lead a double life anymore.
I’m ready now to sort of drop my pride on this and I’m not gonna make any excuses. And I’m gonna drop the idol that was getting in the way of my fellowship with Christ. And I’m not gonna have any secret compartments in my life anymore. And I’m not gonna play conditions with God where I tell him how things will function and I’m not gonna compromise. And as you do this, you find yourself wonderfully liberated. It’s as if by saying goodbye to sin and hello to the father, you receive more than you ever got from the path of sin.
And now you can see my friends. Why? The lies of the world are so unhelpful to us because they don’t liberate us at all. They look as though they’re going to liberate us that so often they enslave us. Think of the ads that are on television. I’ve counted up three ads that tell me that I’m the centre of the universe. Uh, first of all, there is the boss deodorant that says this is their slogan. Be your own boss.
And then there’s the car commercial. That slogan is Go your own way. And then there is the Power bill ad which is make your own rules. Now if I were to live by being my own boss, go my own way and make my own rules, you can see there’ll be a collision with a whole lot of other people who want to be the boss and go their own way and live by their own rules. It’s just a recipe for chaos.
And add to that the pressure, the psychological pressure of the last 100 years to blame everybody else but ourselves, a game which really goes back to the Garden of Eden and you’ll see that we really are amidst aw, with stuff that is going to mess us up and dishonour God as well. A lady called Anna Russell wrote a song once which was called the Psychiatrist Folk Song, and I’ll read to you just a little bit of the words of the song. It says I went to my psychiatrist so he could tell me why I’d killed our little pussy cat and blacked my husband’s eye. He put me on his special couch to see what he could find, and this is what he found to be in my subconscious mind. When I was one, my mother hid my dolly in a trunk. So now it follows naturally that I am always drunk.
When I was two, I saw my father kiss the wife next door, and that is why I have to steal and do it more and more. At three, I had such trouble with my old and younger brother. It seems entirely reasonable to poison every lover. But I am happy now because this therapy has taught that everything I do that’s wrong is someone else’s fault.
Rings true. Yes, it does, doesn’t it? And you see, the Corinthians decided to put all that nonsense away under the influence of the word of God, because God had helped them to face the truth and find that the key to the problem was not somebody else, but was themselves. And so their grief was good and brief, and it led to repentance. Now look at Verse 10 in the text with me, and you’ll see that there are two kinds of sorrow. There’s what Paul calls worldly sorrow, and there is what he calls godly sorrow. Worldly sorrow, he says, leads to death. What is worldly sorrow? Worldly sorrow is a sorrow that stays in the world.
It never actually goes and traces itself to God. It just stays in the world. And it could be that worldly sorrow is something like this. I feel a bit sad about what I did. Kind of makes me feel a bit sad and silly. Or it could be that, uh, there’s some remorse. You know? I’m sorry that you got hurt, I am sorry that you’re upset. Worldly sorrow, you see, stays in the world. It never goes upwards. It could go sideways. It could even go inwards. But it never goes upwards. And Paul says it ends in death.
Godly sorrow Verse 10 goes home to God. It goes upwards. It goes to him in honest prayer and it shows itself in a desire to change and walk a better path. It leaves sin behind, and it takes hold of salvation. That’s what Paul says. And that’s the sorrow that God produced in the Corinthians. This wonderful, godly sorrow. And no wonder The Apostle Paul is delighted because the word of God’s sword had brought the grief that brought the repentance that leads to salvation.
A couple of years ago, you know, we had a young doctor coming to this church, a lady, lovely lady, and, uh, she and her family now go to a church closer to their home, which we entirely support. But, um, she had come out of the New Age movement, and she was now a keen Christian girl. But the reason she went into the New Age movement is because a lady in the UK who had been in the New Age movement had led her and many other people into the New Age movement.
But the lady in the UK, who’d been leading other people into the New Age movement became a Christian. So what did she do when she became a Christian? She contacted all the people that she had infected with New Age rubbish and said to them, the new age movement is a dead end. I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’ve misled you, and what you need to do is you need to get a New Testament, and you need to find out about Jesus Christ because he’s the only person who will really liberate you. And so the grief of being on the wrong track showed itself in this new path, which wasn’t just her nodding but actually getting into action and helping other people to get out of danger and get into the safety of Christ.
And that’s what the word of God does. The sword, the good word of God Now second and more briefly this morning, the second three verses 1112, 13. I’ve called the work God’s work, producing signs, the work of God producing signs. How did Paul know the Corinthians were repentant? How did he know that they’d become free and joyful? Well, as I said, it’s because Titus came back. But what did Titus say? And, uh, would you know if I was repentant?
And would I know if you were repentant? I think repentance is quite observable. You can normally tell if a person is really free of sin and free for Christ. There’s a certain spiritual temperature and animation about a person who is free from sin for Christ. Uh, you remember John the Baptist looked for fruit among the people who were professing to be repentant. And here you see the Apostle Paul in Chapter 7, Verse 11 sees AAA range of proofs or evidences why the Corinthians were repentant and he lists seven of them, and I’m not gonna go through the seven. But I would just simply say this that if you look at the list of seven, it’s marked by a passion for Christ, a passion to remove sin and evil and a passion for Christ like the Apostle Paul in Acts 28 when he was sitting around a fire with some other friends and a snake attached itself to his hand. And we’re told that he flung it off.
And there’s a sense in which the repentant person throws away the scene that’s dangerous and runs with joy with Christ. Well, think of Zachaeus in Luke 19. You remember Jesus asked him to come and follow him, and suddenly Zachaeus was disinterested in the mastery of money. Money was no longer the great joy in his life. It was Christ Or think of the crowd on the day of Pentecost. They’ve just been told of their dreadful treatment of Jesus, the way they cried for his death and contributed to his crucifixion. And they say on the day of Pentecost, what will we do?
You just tell us. What will we do? We’re ready to do anything. Or think of the old-fashioned confession, which we pray sometimes in this church from the Book of Common Prayer. We don’t use it very often, but it is very rich. And, uh, it’s a wonderful expression of very humble repentance and very great confidence in the mercy of Christ. I remind you of what it says. It says almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred.
In other words, we’ve been wrong and we’ve strayed. That is, we’ve been foolish from your ways. Like lost sheep, we follow too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We’ve offended against thy holy laws. We’ve left undone those things which we ought to have done. And we’ve done those things which you ought not to have done and there is no health in us.
But thou O Lord, have mercy upon us. Miserable offenders, unhappy sinners, we might have said, spare thou them O God which confess their faults restore them that are penitent according to thy promises declared to mankind in Christ Jesus, our Lord and grand Merciful Father for his sake that we may hereafter deliver godly, righteous and sober life to the glory of thy holy name. So the prayer actually lists seven humble faults, and then it expresses five confident joys.
And I presume that the deeper our honesty in confession, the more joyful will be our rising from it. Now you may feel friends. I’m hammering this a little bit this morning, but I’m simply trying to say to you that it’s the great love of God for us that wants us to be free of danger and free for Christ. And he works that work in us, and we should perhaps ask him to do it more often. Now, I want to finish this morning by asking you to look at verse 12 in a very surprising detail because Paul tells us what he was really hoping for when? When? When he wrote his letter. What was he really hoping for? You might say, oh, well, he was hoping that that guy in gross disobedience would, uh, repent. And yes, that’s part of it.
You might say. Well, he was hoping that the church would not get infected by the sin and would come to its senses. And that’s also part of it. You you’ll see what he says in verse 12. He says that he wanted the Corinthian church to be committed to him. What an unusual thing we might say to Paul. Why? Why are you talking about yourself, Paul?
Why do you want this church to be devoted to you? The NIV translation puts it like this so you could see you were devoted to us. And the ESV. Puts it like this. So your earnestness for us might be revealed. And, uh, JB Phillips says to let you see how deeply you care for us. So why is Paul talking like this? Does he just want the Corinthians to like him? And the answer is that Paul is not just a private individual. He knows that if the Corinthian church drift away from him and what he says.
They’re drifting away from Christ and what he says and they’re drifting away from Christ. The church that is devoted to the writings of the Apostle Paul is devoted to the author. Christ, The church that is resistant to the writings of Paul is resistant to the author. Christ. And so the Apostle Paul is delighted to hear that this church has come back to the very words of God.
I close by saying to you this morning that it’s possible that you’ll be in some sort of grief at the moment for various reasons. And it may well be that God, in his love is working on you to help you to loosen your grip on something and strengthen your grip on him. His love is at work in the lives of his people. If you’re in a good place spiritually at the moment and perhaps you are, you’re walking in the light. You’re not going down some dark detour. Be thankful that he has worked in you to help you to be in that joyful path. If you’re feeling much temptation at the moment, uh, as if you’re surrounded by temptation or as if it’s very close to you and very constant. Ask his help because he will be pleased to give you that sense of sorrow or grief that enables you to turn and trust.
And if you’re concerned for other people, do keep it prayer for them. Because God has many, many ways of bringing people to lose the power of danger and to take hold of the safety and the greatness of Christ. God’s sword is good. He knows how to use it, and he creates the signs of life in people who hear him. And he him.
Let’s bow our heads in prayer
Thank you, our gracious God for your concern for people seen most clearly in the giving of your Son, but also in the giving of your word to warn and to woo. And we pray that you would give to us and to your people a greater grasp of your will, a greater willingness to walk your path and great joy in fellowship with you, we ask it in Jesus name, Amen.