Good morning to the only fount of truth
and unerring guidance, namely to the Word of
God.
We have been, dare I say it, grazing
in 2 Corinthians for a number of Sunday
mornings during the summer months, and as I
was reading in 2 Corinthians 11 earlier this
week it coincided I think with the morning
of the royal wedding, and I was very
much gripped by some of these opening words
of the chapter and felt constrained to share
with you this morning some thoughts that are
based on the first four verses particularly of
2 Corinthians 11, Paul's letter to the current.
Let me therefore read verses 1 to 4
again.
I hope, says Paul, you will put up
with me a little of, with a little
of my foolishness, but you are already doing
that.
I am jealous for you with a godly
jealousy.
I promised you to one husband, to Christ,
so that I might present you as a
pure virgin to him, but I am afraid
that just as Eve was deceived by the
serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led
astray from your sincere and pure devotion to
Christ.
For if someone comes to you and preaches
a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached,
or if you receive a different spirit from
the one you received, or a different gospel
from the one you accepted, you put up
with it easily enough.
Betrothed to one husband.
Whether he was right or not, one of
the commentators present in London in St. Paul's
Cathedral for the marriage of the Prince of
Wales to his princess, this particular commentator felt
that the Archbishop of Canterbury had wanted to
stress, and did stress, the fact that marriage
is a lifelong union between two people, along
with the exclusive nature of the relationship that
must obtain between husband and wife.
Now whether that is a fair comment upon
the Archbishop's words, I do not know, but
it certainly is true to the general teaching
of Scripture, and as far as I'm concerned
this morning, it serves as a very good
background to the theme before us in this
chapter.
The least excursus into this second letter to
the Corinthians will serve to reveal that the
Apostles' authority was being questioned.
Paul was being challenged by certain pseudo-apostles,
whom he does not hesitate to call false
apostles, who really had no right whatsoever to
the title, and to the acceptance by the
churches that that title was a key, of
which it was a key.
They were impostors, ingratiating themselves upon the Corinthian
church in order to propagate certain devious ideas
and doctrines.
Now over against that pernicious influence, the Apostle
Paul was in a quandary, and if you
were a man of his spirit, or a
person of his spirit, you too would be
in a quandary.
One of the things that you never find
the Apostle doing is this.
You never find him bragging about himself.
You never find him boasting about his natural
gifts, or generally speaking about his spiritual gifts.
If he makes reference to them as he
does in this particular context, it is really
because he is forced to it.
You see, he was in a quandary, something
of this order.
Because he wasn't saying much about his own
authority, laying out the facts of his call,
and of the fact that the ministry of
an Apostle of Jesus Christ is wholly unique.
These other people were coming in, and they
could speak very well.
They had a lovely bearing.
People accepted them, and so they were received
even by the Corinthian church members.
And they began to listen to these more
than they listened to their Father in God,
the Apostle Paul, to whom each member of
the church owed his conversion.
And so you see what is happening, because
of the silence of Paul, concerning his own
authority, given him by his Lord, these folk
are coming in and they're stealing the hearts
and the minds of the church away from
the rightful teacher and authoritative exponent of the
gospel, whom God had used to bring them
to Christ and to establish them in the
faith.
Paul looks upon human boasting of any kind
as folly.
He tells us that.
And now he announces, because he doesn't like
to do this kind of thing, he announces,
look, he says, I'm going to don the
fool's mask.
I've got to answer these fellows.
The situation is too critical.
I can't be silent anymore.
So I want you to know beforehand, I'm
going to put on the mask of a
fool, and I'm going to do what they
do.
Well, what do they do?
Talk a little about themselves.
A little too much.
And Paul begins to open his heart and
to speak of his authority, and he does
so in these chapters, though not so much
in our text this morning, but this is
the context.
Now, it is against that background that we
come then to the main thrust of our
own text.
And the first thing I would like you
to notice in it is this.
It tells us that there is a pledge
that is implicit in Christian discipleship.
Listen to these words again.
The image is a marital one.
And Paul, writing to his converts in Corinth,
says, I promised you to one husband, to
Christ, so that I might present you as
a pure virgin to him.
Did you ever think of the evangelistic ministry
in those terms?
I think this is one of the forgotten
images, one of the forgotten metaphors, and perhaps
one of the forgotten truths of the New
Testament concerning evangelism of any and every kind.
The Christian convert is engaged to be the
Lord's.
I promised you, says Paul, that's how the
NIV puts it.
The King James says, I have espoused you.
And the Revised Standard Version makes it still
a little clearer, I think, when it says,
I betrothed you, probably implying that Paul is
speaking as the father of the bride, giving
her away, betrothing her to the one chosen
partner for her life, Jesus Christ.
Now, whereas a young person is free within
the limits imposed by Scripture to befriend more
persons than one in the process of seeking
a life partner, an engagement marks the end
of that liberty and the beginning of one's
commitment to one person only, exclusively.
From that time especially, there exists an unwritten
covenant of fidelity between the two who thus
freely choose each other.
Previously, there may have been a few young
ladies or young women that he or she
may have befriended, wondering, as Prince Charles did,
is it this one or is it that
one?
And there is a legitimacy about that.
But when once a person comes to the
point of engagement, there is a pledge involved,
and that pledge ought to be honored without
any equivocation, according to the teaching of the
Apostle Paul here.
But now, Paul's point here is not so
much to apply, though it does apply, as
we've indicated, to ordinary human experience, but Paul's
point here is to apply to the Christian
experience.
Just as a person becomes engaged or engages
someone to be his, so a Christian is
committed, becomes engaged to be the Lord's.
That is what it means to become a
Christian.
It's a love relationship.
Now, it's more than that.
Earlier on in this same epistle, the Apostle
Paul has been using other analogies.
He says, we are ambassadors for Christ.
As though God did beseech you by us,
be reconciled to God.
That's another image, a complementary one.
Bringing two estranged parties together, there's been enmity
that has separated them.
But now this is a different one.
The image here is that of bringing together
two parties to love one another, taking each
by the hand and introducing the one to
the other in the hope and in the
prayer that they will love one another till
death parts them.
And in the case of God and man,
beyond the ravages and the range of death.
The convert then is engaged to be the
Lord's.
Now, if you're a Christian this morning, you
should look upon yourself in this sense.
You should look in the mirror of God's
word and tell yourself, I belong to the
Lord.
Not only by what I believe, that I
believe he is the Son of God, the
only Savior of men.
That is basic.
But there should also be something in your
heart and mind which vibrates when we think
of his holy name and wants to say,
fine am I by all ties.
But chiefly, thine that in thy sacrifice thou,
Lord, art mine.
I am my beloved's and my beloved is
mine.
You know anything of that?
But now let's go one step further.
The convert is engaged with a view to
ultimate marriage.
I promised you to the one husband to
Christ so that I might present you as
a pure virgin to him.
Following upon the act of betrothal in New
Testament times, a Jewish man, the bridegroom, if
we may so speak of him now, he
returns from the home of the bride.
If he had engaged her personally, sometimes the
heads of the family would do it.
If he himself has been there to visit
the bride's father, possibly paid the dowry, and
the transaction has been confirmed, the father is
willing that the daughter should be his, he
goes back, he leaves that home of his
bride to be, and he goes back home.
Generally, before he did that, they would drink
wine together and that sealed the transaction.
He would go back home and he wouldn't
see his bride at least, or perhaps I
shouldn't use the word at least, but for
approximately a year.
He would remain at home in his father's
house.
If he had any messages to convey to
his bride, it would be taken through the
services of the friend of the bridegroom usually,
not necessarily, but generally that was the principle.
So if he wanted to correspond with the
young woman that he was going to marry
in due course, it would be through the
agency of the friend of the bridegroom, as
John the Baptist uses the word.
Well, what would the bridegroom do during this
whole year when he's apart from his bride?
Well, he would go on with his normal
pursuits in his father's house, in his father's
home, but one very special thing he would
do, he would prepare a home for his
bride.
It might be necessary to build an additional
room to the house, or rooms.
And this is exactly, by the way, this
is exactly the image that we have in
John 14, when he said to his disciples,
now he says, I'm going away to prepare
a place for you.
I've engaged you to be myself.
You're mine.
Through their experience may not have been fully
and properly Christian as yet, and it will
not be until the Spirit of God seals
whatever has taken place, and makes the future
more certain and guarantees that they will grow
up to Christian maturity.
They were not, perhaps, as maturely believing and
obeying as they might be.
But Jesus had made them his own.
He had engaged them, and they were his,
his bride.
Though, by the way, I must bring in
a qualification here.
Generally speaking, the term bride only applies to
the whole church.
But Jesus had engaged his disciples to be
his own.
Now he says, I'm leaving you.
I'm leaving you where you are.
I've made provision for someone to come and
act between us, the blessed Paraclete, the Holy
Spirit, and he will convey all my thoughts
and all my desires to you.
He will be the go-between.
But I'm going to my Father's house.
What are you going to do there?
Here's a blessed thought, isn't it?
I'm going to prepare a place for you.
I'm going to prepare a home for you.
I'm going there so that on the marriage
day, when the marriage is consummated, and I
present you to myself and present you to
my Father as a chaste virgin, I shall
be able to take you home with me,
and the home will be prepared.
You have this same image, of course, elsewhere
in Scripture.
May I remind you of that classical passage
in Ephesians 5, 25 and 27?
Paul says, Husbands, love your wives, just as
Christ loved the church and gave himself up
for her, to make her holy, cleansing her
by the washing with water through the word,
and this, and to present her to himself.
As a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle
or any other blemish, but holy and blameless
before him.
In Jewish life, an engagement then was considered
as binding as the ultimate marriage itself.
If you played around with another man or
another woman after the day of engagement, the
day of betrothal, then you were in for
trouble.
The man would suffer, but the woman, who
was unfaithful, would be stoned to death.
It was as serious as that.
An engagement in Jewish context, in biblical times,
an engagement was as effective and as binding
as marriage itself.
Now you will notice the contractual or covenantal
involvement in all this.
I want you to notice two things.
There were two parties involved in the decision
which Paul's evangelism demanded, each playing a covenantal
role.
First of all, the evangelist himself was acting
in covenant with a prospective bridegroom.
The evangelist was the friend of the bridegroom,
bringing the bride into a relationship with him
that was a genuine relationship of love and
a promise to keep herself pure until the
marriage was consummated at his return.
The point to stress now is that as
evangelist, Paul was concerned to win the hearts
of men for his master, and so to
engage them to be the Lord's, not just
for a period of time, but for all
time, until the consummation.
And when Paul, as an evangelist, engaged in
this matchmaking between Jesus Christ, the heavenly lover,
and men and women in sin, he did
it with a view to their leaving sin
and becoming perfected by the grace of the
Savior, so that at last he would have
done his part, that they might be presented
before him without spot, wrinkle, shame, or any
such thing, but pure, a pure virgin to
Jesus Christ.
Paul was under contract.
Paul was pledged to do that.
And I want to suggest to you that
insofar as you and I do the work
of an evangelist, we need to be under
this pledge too.
As I understand it, the interest of a
New Testament evangelist went beyond the place of
the initial commitment.
Paul was concerned that his children should grow
up in the knowledge of the Savior, in
the experience of the grace of God.
He writes to the Galatians, you remember, he
says, I'm in travail again.
He uses all the metaphors in the dictionary,
this man Paul.
I'm in travel, he says.
You may say that's terribly strange because he's
talking of himself of a woman bringing forth
a child.
That's the image, that's the language.
I'm in travel again, he says.
Paul, what are you talking about?
Well, he says, I will be in travel
until Christ is formed in you.
But Paul, you've introduced them to Jesus Christ,
isn't that enough?
You've got them to sign the dotted line,
isn't that enough?
No, says the apostle Paul, I can't leave
them there.
As an evangelist, I care for their souls.
I want them to be kept as a
chaste virgin to Jesus Christ.
That nobody smudges their lives or their imaginations
or steals their hearts away.
I'm concerned that they'd be presented at last
without spot.
Now, this is not always a very practical
thing, but surely it is a thing that
all of us need to remember.
And certainly those of us who are proclaiming
the word of God.
All this symbolizes the covenantal aspect in the
Christian's profession to which I will not return
again.
It was evident in Wesley's hymn, it is
here so clearly in the passage.
Let me come on something else, which is
very important here.
Stands out in the foreground of this passage,
the peril involved in complicity with false teachers.
In entering into complicity with false teachers.
Let me give you this in the picture
that would be germane to this context.
Now, you imagine yourself as a bride, a
young woman who has been approached by a
lover who has professed love for you.
We're back now in New Testament times or
Old Testament times.
And the bridegroom to be has won your
heart and you have said, yes, I will
marry you.
Your father agrees.
And then the prospective bridegroom goes back to
his father's house for a year or so.
And he does the communication that there is,
that goes on, by the use of the
friend of the bridegroom, by his ministry.
Now, assuming that someone came to the bride,
the engaged girl.
Assuming to be the friend of the bridegroom
when he was not.
And bringing false knowledge or false rumors, good
or bad.
And talking to the bride in her father's
house about her bridegroom, the one she's engaged
to.
And spinning yarns and spinning false stories.
You can imagine the great consternation that would
emerge.
The whole marriage might be upset.
Now, my friends, that is the picture that
we have here.
Paul had been commissioned by the Lord Jesus
Christ to go to Corinth.
And when he was afraid, halfway through his
ministry there, he was really afraid.
The Lord came to him in a special
way and said, Paul, don't be afraid.
I've got many souls in this city.
Hang on.
Preach the word.
Be faithful.
God sent him there.
God kept him there.
God blessed him there.
God used him there.
So that from the dunghill of that ancient
world, men and women were gathered to Christ.
And were washed in the blood of the
Lamb.
And were born again of the Holy Spirit.
And their names were written in heaven.
And they were the children of God in
a pagan Corinthian city.
I've asked grace for you.
Sovereign grace.
Paul was the man chosen to bring them
to life.
And he was chosen by his Lord to
bring them up.
To prepare them for the great marriage day.
Others came in there too, maybe.
But here in Corinth, there were some people
coming to the church, presuming that they had
the same authority as Paul did.
Presuming that they had messages from the Lord,
Jesus Christ, who had gone to glory.
And they spoke so eloquently.
And they were such, you know, their personalities
were such.
They ingratiated themselves upon you.
And they won you over.
And you haven't talked to them very long
when you feel, my, these guys are great
guys.
They must be very important people.
And you begin to listen to them.
You see what's happening?
The heart of the church is gradually being
stolen away from the rightful representative of the
ascended Lord in Corinth.
And the whole marital relationship is being threatened
by this.
False prophets are coming in.
Paul says that they came to you.
One of the commentators, or comments I read,
said that Paul is meaning there to stress
this, that they came, they were not sent.
You see, an apostle means one sent from.
Apostolos, sent from.
Chosen by God and sent by him.
But these were not chosen and sent, they
just came.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we need to
be very alert in the church of Jesus
Christ to be able to distinguish between men
and women that come and those that God
has sent.
There are many churches up and on our
land and other lands that are not sufficiently
versed in scripture or sensitive to the powers
and the workings of the Spirit to recognize
the true from the false.
This is a tragedy of our age.
God bring us back to his word and
back to himself that we may be able
to discern the true from the false.
Now the false representatives of Jesus Christ involve
the Corinthians in the peril of being deceived.
I'm afraid for you, says Paul, I have
a terrible fear lest you be deceived.
Just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's
cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray
from your sincere and pure devotion to Jesus
Christ.
Dear Christian people, men and women in Christ,
you and I are always in peril of
being deceived.
Now it's necessary to know this, not to
be constantly living in dread, but to be
alerted to the fact there is always the
possibility of Christian men and women being deceived.
Apart from the grace of God, this is
where most of us would be living, in
a territory of spiritual deception.
Now, we have a record of the incident
to which Paul refers as an illustration in
Genesis 3, 1-7.
I have no time to go into it
in detail this morning, but you remember what
happened.
God had said to Eve that she and
Adam could eat of the fruit of all
the trees in the garden except one solitary
tree, which was in the middle of the
garden, in the center.
And Satan came and said, did God really
say you must not eat from any tree
in the garden?
Fair play to her.
The woman replied to the serpent, we may
eat fruit from the trees of the garden,
but God did say, you must not eat
fruit from the tree that is in the
middle of the garden, and you must not
touch it, or you will die.
Now comes the main thrust, you see.
You will not surely die, the serpent said
to the woman, for God knows that when
you eat of it, your eyes will be
opened, and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil.
What he's saying is this.
God didn't mean what he said.
And what's more, he doesn't want you to
grow up into maturity so that you have
a kinship with himself.
He's a jealous God in the wrong sense.
And he doesn't want anybody to share in
his glory and share in his knowledge of
good and evil very particularly.
And he knows the moment you take the
fruit of that forbidden tree, you will know
good and evil just as he does.
You'll become as God.
Now you know the story, how it ended.
How she believed and swallowed Satan's lie.
She was deceived.
Doesn't the devil deceive you from time to
time?
Doesn't he whisper in your ear, despite the
clear teachings of the word of God, God
didn't mean that.
There's nothing wrong in it.
Look at what so-and-so is doing.
And he or she is a great Christian.
Look at what this particular church stands for.
And they're a Christian church.
They're Christian people.
They have a great history, a great heritage.
They're doing it or they believe it.
Surely there's nothing wrong in it.
Though God has said there is.
And we're deceived.
And we allow human tradition and human ideas
to swamp the word of God.
And my friends, what happens to us is
this, that we are living in a territory
of deception.
James Denny tersely puts it.
What Paul dreads is the spiritual seduction of
the church.
The winning away of her heart from absolute
loyalty to Jesus Christ.
The serpent's agents, the servants of Satan who
beguiled Eve, as Paul calls them in verse
15, are at work in Corinth.
And Paul fears that their craftiness may seduce
the church from its first simple loyalty to
Jesus Christ.
Now, the reason for Paul's fear is clear.
It isn't that Paul was always a suspicious
man.
I don't believe he was anything of the
kind.
Paul tells us in verse 4 why he
was afraid.
For if someone comes to you and preaches
a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached,
or if you receive a different spirit from
the one you received, or a different gospel
from the one you accepted, you put up
with it with ease.
Paul, why do you think that these people
will become deceived?
Well, for this reason.
Not only were they, were the pseudo-apostles
cunning and clever, but the Corinthians were gullible.
Now, we never like to think of ourselves
as being gullible, do we?
We always think that we'll be able to
sift truth from error, right from wrong.
This is, we arrogantly believe that.
My friend, were it not for the Word
of God and the continuing ministry of the
Spirit of God, we would not.
We cannot.
Let's get that clear.
And you, however clever you are, however many
degrees you have or hold, whatever your position,
academically or otherwise, you and I are liable
to be completely led astray by Satan if
we do not keep close to our Lord
and His Word and obedient to His Spirit.
Actually, the New Testament, though I have no
time to go after these things this morning,
the New Testament is very strong about this.
You read the first and second epistle of
John.
It says, John, if there is a person
coming to you and he doesn't hold to
the truth that we, the apostles, have taught,
don't bid him God's speed and don't let
him into your house.
That is for fellowship.
It's as serious as that.
Don't be deceived and don't lay yourselves open
to be deceived.
You know, you see, there is a biblical
doctrine of separation and sanctification still.
And I know it sounds terribly strange to
our infatuated ears.
We are living in a pagan world.
But the New Testament is clear.
You'll be deceived.
And anybody in the ministry knows what this
is.
There are a myriad of saints who are
deceived in one way or another.
And they are deceived from the simplicity which
should be toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, the Corinthians were equally in danger of
being, therefore, having been deceived, of being diverted
from what was involved in their engagement to
Jesus Christ.
There was the peril of being diverted from
an attitude of simplicity toward Jesus Christ.
Literally, it is simplicity, not in Christ, as
the King James puts it, but towards Jesus
Christ.
Let me quote, I am afraid your minds
may somehow be led astray from your sincere
and pure devotion to Christ.
That's the NIV.
The J.B. Phillips translation puts it like
this, from a single-hearted devotion to Christ.
Now, I must stay with this for a
moment.
Each of these slightly varying translations caps something
of the intended thrust of Paul's words.
Perhaps I could summarize it in this way.
Simplicity towards Christ involves a wholeheartedness in the
acceptance of his claims and in subsequent allegiance
to his person.
A wholeheartedness.
Here, simplicity is the opposite of insincerity or
hypocrisy.
There must be no question of professing something
with a tongue in the cheek.
And it's so easy to do it.
One set of circumstances or another will arise
when you and I are tempted to say
something with our tongues in our cheeks.
Friend, don't do it.
It's a departure.
It's a deviation from the simplicity toward Christ
which he requires of us, which was implicit
in our conversion, if we're really converted, and
which ought to characterize our sanctification as that
is proceeding.
Jesus challenged the kind of insincerity that is
evidently in mind here.
When on one occasion he turned to those
around him, he says, Why do you call
me Lord?
Lord.
And do not what I say.
You see, by calling him Lord, they were
conceding him a very high and lofty place
and position.
It may well be that the term lordship
had not by that stage, by that time,
come to stand for the fullness of his
deity and an understanding of his glory as
the risen, reigning, coming Lord of all.
But it was a very elevated epithet and
term.
Why do you call me that, says Jesus,
and you're not prepared to obey me?
Don't call me one thing and act contrary
to the words you use.
A moment later, by contrast, Simon Peter exhibits
a genuine simplicity toward his Lord.
This is what it means.
When though unable to understand why or any
reason for what Jesus asked him to do,
he did it because Jesus asked him.
Listen to these words, very familiar.
Luke 5.
When he had finished speaking, Jesus said to
Simon, Put out into deep water and let
down the nets for a catch.
Simon answered, Master, he says, And I guess
there must have been a look of bewilderment
on Peter's face.
Master, he says, we worked hard all night
and we haven't caught a thing.
Period?
No.
But, because you say so, I will let
down the net.
Have you got it?
A simplicity toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
I believe he is the Son of God.
I mean, Simon believed he was the Son
of God.
Simon had acknowledged him as that.
The founder of the Christian church.
God's only begotten Son.
Son of the living God.
Very well, says Peter, you're asking me to
do something that to me doesn't make sense,
but because it's you, I'll obey.
A simplicity, a sincerity, an absence of hypocrisy
or of acting.
Simplicity toward Christ involves also a single-hearted
devotion.
A devotion that is not shared with anyone
else but with Jesus alone.
I promised you to the one husband, your
one husband, your one husband.
Jesus Christ is not a member of a
pantheon.
I have met people in pastoral work within
the congregation who talk sometimes of Jesus Christ
as if he were but the president of
a pantheon of deities.
Oh, he's better than they, he's greater than
they, but these other guys have got a
lot to contribute too.
And you've always got to keep your eye
on the others in the pantheon.
Though Jesus gets that little place that's somewhat
higher, my friend, they don't come into the
category.
He stands alone, there is no other.
Paul's words means that we must allow no
rival to influence our minds or to occupy
our hearts.
Such a rivalry would be a denial of
our Christian confession.
His uniqueness demands a corresponding uniqueness in our
attitude towards him.
If we are to maintain a simplicity toward
Jesus Christ.
Now this kind of simplicity toward Christ required
by Paul is nothing less than plain honesty
and consistency.
Some of the manuscripts add the word pure
at this point and make the term simplicity
a matter of moral as well as of
intellectual honesty and volitional integrity.
If this is accepted as genuine, then the
ensuing portrait of Paul's fear concerning the Corinthians
relates to the entire range of their life.
I'm afraid of you.
You're too gullible.
Room for charity there must be in every
heart.
And we should not be easily coaxed or
coerced to find fault in other people.
But we must not become gullible.
We must assess truths taught in the light
of the word of God and influences exerted
in the light of the same word and
of the spirit.
I come to a conclusion.
I come to a conclusion by noting the
pain involved in Paul's care of these converts.
I must bring it out because I think
it is necessary for us to see the
kind of care that we as Christians and
as churches should be exercising for converts today.
First of all, though he says very little
about this, but it's there.
There was the pain of being himself dishonored
by his children in the faith.
Now anyone who has led men to Jesus
Christ or founded a Christian church will know
what this pain is.
It was you who brought the word of
life to that community.
They were pagan before you arrived.
They were dead in trespasses and sins, and
you preached the word, and God honored it
and brought them to birth.
And there they are.
They are under God, your children in the
faith.
And suddenly they have more confidence in some
character that has a little bit of charisma
of the wrong order.
And because he looks well and speaks well,
they go away from their father in God
to a stranger whom they think is a
little wiser.
You know, that's painful.
And Paul felt it.
Of course, in Paul's case there was this
added reality, this added dimension.
He was not only an evangelist, but he
was an apostle in the original sense of
being an apostle of Jesus Christ in the
fullest possible sense.
Not an apostle of the churches, but an
apostle of Jesus Christ with an authority given
and an illumination given and the capacity to
receive divine truth and to transmit it and
to inscripturate it and to lead the church
on.
There was the pain of being dishonored by
his own children in the faith.
But the most important thing here is this.
More pressing upon Paul's spirit was what he
calls his jealousy for Jesus Christ.
This brings out many things all at once.
I am jealous for you.
I am jealous for you with a godly
jealousy.
I want to dwell a little upon this
in closing because it's so often misunderstood.
Many people are a little bit ashamed of
these words because they don't understand what they
mean.
First time I came to understand them was
when Dr. John Stott was preaching in a
church where I previously ministered.
One of his regular visits, he was dealing
with this, God's jealousy.
I never understood it before that day.
Now, jealousy is love tormented by fear.
Paul's jealousy, however, was no human brand, but
a jealousy that was God-given and thus
consistent with a jealousy of God himself.
You see, between the engagement day and that
of the bride's eventual presentation to her chosen
husband, Paul was, as we've seen, determined to
guard her purity as best he could and
her loyalty with jealous care.
He was concerned to play the part in
presenting her to her rightful master as a
pure virgin.
I don't need to enlarge upon those words.
Now, why do we find these words strange,
this reference to jealousy?
Well, it's generally because we don't realize what
jealousy is.
To be jealous is to resent the intrusion
of rivals, said John Stott.
And whether jealousy is good or bad depends
on whether the rival has any right to
be there or not.
For instance, if you're a good athlete, and
you're carrying away all the prizes and all
the medals, and then somebody suddenly comes in
from nowhere, and you're put in the shade.
And he or she comes in and takes
all the prizes instead of you, and you
begin to get jealous.
Now, that is sinful jealousy.
There is no law of the universe which
says that you have a monopoly upon physical
prowess.
And if you're jealous of somebody who comes
in to compete alongside of you, and is
going to take the prize, you have no
right to do that.
That's sinful jealousy.
Or, change the metaphor, if you're in business,
and then somebody comes and sets up business
just a couple of hundred yards down the
road, and your business is not going very
well, but his begins to thrive.
And in your heart, you begin to get
a little bit angry and a little bit
hot under the collar and terribly jealous.
That's sinful jealousy.
It's really sinful jealousy.
There is nothing in the ordinances of the
universe which says that you have a monopoly
upon any kind of trade, or a thing.
Everybody else has as much right to it
as you have or I have.
But, supposing a man and wife have solemnly
before God and their friends and relatives in
church, vowed to be loyal and true in
love to one another, to the exclusion of
all else and until death parts them.
And supposing a third person begins to intrude
into that marriage, the husband and wife, or
wife, whoever it may be, is right to
be jealous, right to be jealous and to
resent the intrusion because that rival has no
right to be there.
I don't want to introduce funny statements at
this point, and yet I guess I can
tell you this.
I was reading somewhere the other day, someone
said that all triangles in marriage relationships are
rectangles.
They bring wrecks.
They leave nothing behind but wrecks.
Concerning this kind of situation, not only should
we be jealous, God is jealous.
And we should be jealous with the jealousy
of God.
It is in the light of that that
we must understand the jealousy of God.
In the Bible you see, Israel was God's
bride.
And he demanded the pure love, the exclusive
love of his people.
Sometimes Israel went after false gods and they
were charged with adultery, spiritual adultery.
God says you're giving your hearts to other
people, to other gods, and you must not
do that.
And he charged them through the prophets with
adultery and called them to repentance and to
come back to the simplicity that faith and
love toward him require.
But we find further that men and women
are meant to share in that divine jealousy.
And you have two great examples, one in
the Old Testament and one in the New.
Elijah in the Old Testament, when Israel had
gone after Baals through the influence of an
evil queen, Elijah says, I have been very
jealous for the Lord of hosts.
Elijah, were you wrong?
Not at all.
He was just exercising his duty and manifesting
the fact that he was seeing things from
the divine vantage point.
He was God's servant.
And we should be jealous of anybody that
intrudes to steal the hearts and minds of
men away from Jesus Christ.
Paul, of course, is the other illustration of
a person exercising this same kind of jealousy
in our text.
I betrothed you to Christ to present you
as a pure bride to her one husband.
And I'm jealous of you, or for you
rather, not of you.
I want you all, I want you in
a pure condition.
I want you in the best spiritual condition
possible to present you at last as the
friend of the bridegroom to him when he
comes, so that at the consummation there will
be no cloud.
What a ministry.
What a glorious ministry.
So there is a plea underlying.
There are many pleas underlying this passage.
I'll leave the theme this morning in saying
this.
There is the plea, first of all, to
recognize the true apostles from the false.
We need to do it in a spirit
of humility and of due charity, but we
need to do it in the light of
God's Word and by his Spirit, so that
we are not tempted to listen to false
voices coming into the church of the twentieth
century.
Not only that, there is a plea here
to renounce all alien lovers and rededicate ourselves,
and for the Corinthians to rededicate themselves to
the grace which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord, and to Jesus as the source of
all grace.
There is no one who can ever come
into your company, into your circle, that can
offer you anything valuable that is not already
found in Jesus Christ.
In him the whole pleroma of the Godhead
dwells bodily.
He is the Alpha.
He is the Omega.
And whatever else you may find in another
religion, in another school, you find in a
better form and a purer form in Christ,
if it is of God.
Therefore, keep the simplicity towards Jesus Christ, which
should be characteristic of your original turning to
him and trusting in him.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, a word such
as this has got something to say to
each one of us.
Maybe that not many of us will be
in the same category.
We differ from one another.
But of one thing I am certain.
This is a word for all of us
in one way or another.
Let us seek to examine it, to discover
its application and its implications for ourselves first,
and then for the Church.
And by the grace of God to manifest
before God and before people that there is
a simplicity of heart and mind that characterizes
our relationship with Jesus Christ.
There is nothing devious, nothing hidden.
We have no cupboards locked up from him,
no areas of our lives that we want
to hide from him, because we love him
and we trust him, Son of God, lover
of our souls and our Savior.
Let us pray.
Our Lord, our God and Father, coming into
your house on this, the Lord's Day morning,
we were acknowledging our sins.
Perhaps it was a very general acknowledgement.
But sitting under the light of your word,
your word brings specific areas before our minds
and into our memories.
And our consciences are not altogether still when
we consider your word and our condition in
the light of this passage.
Oh, God, grant to us a wholehearted submissiveness
to yourself, an obedience that knows no limit.
And bring us this morning afresh, we pray,
each one of us, on this lovely summer's
day, bring us this morning, bring us afresh,
so that whatever we may be conscious of
standing between us and our lover Lord, we
may tear away.
Hear our cry and bless us as we
shall go back into a workaday world.
Having pruned us, may there be fruit manifest
in our lives to your everlasting praise and
glory.