Jack Jurgens's Ministry Library

Ministry from Matthew Cain Saturday morning.

[0:01] Good morning. It’s great to be with you. It is a blessing for me to be at the Midland Park Conference for the first time. And so I thank the assembly here for giving me this opportunity and for the brothers who have spoken good words already today, I’m very thankful. I would like you to open your Bible with me to the book of 2 Corinthians and chapter.

[0:26] 4. My reading with you is going to be from the Christian Standard Bible this weekend.
You may wish to pull that up on a device, or you will have no problem following along, and I will speak with a familiarity with the King James text as well.
I’m reading from the CSB, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 1.
Therefore, since we have this ministry, because we were shown mercy, we do not give up. We faint not.
We do not give up.
Let me just pause and re-ask a question similar to what Johnny was just asking you.
Is there anyone here that has thought recently about giving up?
Maybe you feel like you’re fainting in your walk with God, or the ministry, the sphere of service in which you are engaged in, you feel it’s too much for you, and you feel maybe Maybe it’s time now to throw in the towel.
You feel like giving up.

[1:39] I want to speak with you this morning about when serving the Lord is hard.
When serving the Lord is hard.
Let’s pick up again at verse 5.
For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
Now, verse 7, we have this treasure in clay jars, earthen vessels, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair.

[2:30] We are persecuted, but not abandoned. We are struck down, but not destroyed.
10, we always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that Jesus’ life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh. So then death is at work in us, but life in you. Verse 13, And since we have the same spirit of faith in keeping with what is written, Psalm 116, I believed, therefore I spoke, we also believe, and therefore, speak.
For we know, we know, that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you.
Indeed, everything is for your benefit, so that His grace extends through more and more people it may cause thanksgiving to increase to the glory of God.
16. Therefore, we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day, for our momentary light, affliction.

[3:47] Is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
There’s a song in our hymn book with which I have a bit of a love-hate relationship.
I love it because it directs me to the cross and it expresses gospel truth with crystal clarity.
So I love it for that reason. My negative feelings toward the song are because of one line in the chorus and because it’s in the chorus, of course, it gets repeated. So I hear it all through the song. Maybe you know it. I’m gonna, I’ll start the first line, and if you know this song, you join in.

[4:39] With me, okay? At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away. It was there by faith I received my sight and now I am happy all the day. I gotta delete that from the recording. It’s the happy all the day line that makes me a little bit grumpy. Because, maybe I’m just a little bit jealous of Mr. Ralph Hudson who wrote it, but while I do rejoice in my Savior and my salvation, I don’t sense happiness all the time. Do you? And I wonder if you were to take that song, I mean, imagine some of the experiences that Paul writes about later in 2 Corinthians 4, I wonder if you could meet him with the words of that song when he’s going through some of of those experience, maybe you interject just after lash number 37 of 39 has come down for for the fifth time.

[5:53] Or when he’s in his third shipwreck and your head is bobbing with his, and he’s reaching for a piece of driftwood, and you say, sing it with me, Paul. Now I am happy all the day. I don’t know. Maybe, he would have. He was a remarkable servant. He did sing in the prison cell in Philippi. He did carry on for Christ, even when ministry was hard. But why does serving the Lord have to be so hard sometimes. You probably haven’t been stoned like Paul but you could say with him in verse 8 that you have you have been perplexed. You probably haven’t been without food and clothing but you know what it is to sense a little bit of increasing antagonism and persecution from the culture and if we serve the, the enthroned Christ, the Apostle and High Priest of our Confession, seated at the right hand of God.
If God is with this assembly, why is it so hard sometimes?

[6:57] Why is it hard to serve the Lord? Verses 7-12, the challenge of Christian ministry.
Why serving the Lord is hard.
And if you’re a young believer, and you say, well, I haven’t actually yet found serving the Lord to be a difficult thing, that’s okay, I don’t think any lesser of you, but you will one day.

[7:25] And serving the Lord in an evil age, which is what we are in, was never supposed to be easy.
The Lord Jesus said that when we enter that narrow gate, we are stepping onto a narrow, hemmed-in, difficult road that leads to life. So don’t be surprised when you face some adversity, and serving the Lord. And don’t think you should give up just because it gets, hard. And when you press on and it gets a little bit harder, don’t think that you should give up then. It’s the way it was supposed to be. I just read recently the words of one preacher, and this isn’t just the experience of preachers, it’ll be in whatever sphere of ministry you are in, but after, he says, after 21 years of ministry, I’ve sensed a theme. Ministry is hard. Every year is different, but one thing is certain, it’s not going to be easy. And at times you may question, did God really call me to this? You may feel alone, and you may feel overwhelmed, and you may feel absolutely spent, and at times you might even resent the ministry role that God has given you.

[8:51] But he says the Lord never said it would be easy.

[8:55] Well I would agree with all that. I would add one thing to it.
Serving the Lord is also wonderful.
It’s well worth it. It’s a good thing. Verse 11, it ultimately leads to the glory of God, but the pathway to glory, not just for preachers. The pathway to glory for anyone who wants to serve the Lord is going to be paid with some perplexities and some difficulties. Maybe, maybe you just offered to teach a Sunday school class and just not long after you get engaged in teaching that class, you discover that the parents of one of the children in your class are very difficult to work with.

[9:35] Well, that doesn’t mean you give up and leave the challenge to somebody else.
Somebody has to deal with them.
Maybe you just step forward in fear and trembling, with confidence in God, and you’re helping out in a role of oversight in the local church, and just after you step into that role, it seems like crisis after crisis after crisis hits the assembly.

[10:00] Or maybe, maybe you try to preach the gospel a little bit, and some of the older sisters at the back throw rotten tomatoes at you.
Well, be aware in advance that 2 Corinthians 4 is teaching us that the Lord has told us it would be hard at times.
But why has God let it be so? Well, I see two reasons here in the immediate setting of 2 Corinthians 4.
Number seven, to display the power of God. To display the power of God. And here’s this brave, mighty, spirit-filled Apostle Paul. He understood this. I am just a clay jar.
And there is an impressive treasure and knowledge of God’s glory. There’s an impressive treasure within the vessel, but I am a vulnerable, fragile vessel of clay.”.

[11:07] Mr. McShane, in his commentary, What the Bible Teaches on 2 Corinthians, he says, “…likely in no other part of the New Testament do we have such an emphasis put upon the frailty, of the human vessel as in 2 Corinthians 4-5.”, And this treasure has been placed in fragile men and women, such as you and I, so that, – there’s a purpose clause, did you notice that?
Verse 7, now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that we can more clearly perceive, the extraordinary power of God.

[11:47] So one of the reasons that serving the Lord is hard sometimes is for you and I to remember that we are just clay vessels, and all the glory belongs to God, and the power for ministry success—whatever that may be, that’s an interesting phrase—but the power for ministry success belongs to God.
I would like you, as a young Christian.
To learn this really well and to remember it. I need to get reminded of it from time to time, probably just about 52 times a year. And Paul’s been on this theme since he began this section.
Back at the end of chapter 2, he mentions Titus. He’s going to come back to Titus in chapter 7, but all in between that, from the end of chapter 2 into the beginning of chapter 7, he’s on this theme of the ministry of the gospel, the ministry that he’s been given. And this is what he says, It’s not that we are competent in ourselves. It is not that. But our adequacy is from God.
We are just clay jars. And whatever aspect of Christian ministry you engage in, true, God-glorifying ministry success hinges upon not how strong you are and how great you are, but upon the power of God.

[13:12] And that’s a humbling thing, and that is a thrilling, encouraging thing.
And it is a humbling thing when we come face to face with our own weakness and frailty.
But it’s encouraging to see what God can do in the face of human weakness.
And I’ll be honest, I don’t like the fact that I am just a clay jar, it bothers me.
I don’t like the fact that teaching the Bible doesn’t come easier to me.
I don’t like the fact that I am mentally, physiologically far weaker than I ever thought I would be.
I don’t like the fact that there’s people that I care for and they’re in situations and I don’t know how to help them or I can’t help them.
But every one of those afflictions and perplexities, What does it cause me to do?
It causes me to kneel in dependence upon God.
It causes me to stand back and see the mercy and the power of God. That’s good for me.
That’s good for God.
So Paul is emphasizing this contrast between how the Corinthians thought, Christian ministry should work and how it really worked.
They thought Christian ministry depended upon lofty human credentials in the world standards and the strength of men and an impressive exterior presence.

[14:42] And Paul says, it’s a priceless treasure in clay jars. The Corinthians had this mistaken thinking that the power of the apostle lay in the power of the apostle.
Paul says, no, you’re mistaken.
The power of the apostle lay in the weakness of the apostle.
So that what is displayed is the power of God. Look at the language here in verse 7.
We have this surpassing power, this excellency of power, this extraordinary power.
That’s where we get our English word hyperbole, you know, like exaggeration.
We have a… Well, we hear a word sometimes now, over-exaggerate.
That irks me a little bit. That’s not a word, but it’ll probably end up in our dictionary nonetheless.
That’s hyperbole when we go beyond the truth a little bit.
Well, this original word in the New Testament, it meant to be beyond measure.
More importantly, this is the word that you find back in chapter 1, verse number 8.
Listen to how the CSB renders 2 Corinthians 1.8.

[16:00] We are completely overwhelmed, beyond our strength, so that we even despaired of life itself.
Now, some of you here know that feeling, and that’s a very frightening feeling.
You’ve been given a work from God, and you feel you can’t fulfill it.
You’ve put your heart and soul into something and your body can’t keep up.

[16:35] You know you’re supposed to go stand before the flock and you don’t even feel like going to meeting. You’ve got children to care for and you can’t get out of bed.
Well, Paul was there and he says in chapter 1 verse 9, he says, I learned something when I was there. When I was completely overwhelmed and I despaired of life, this is what I learned, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God.
Now, I perceive this has been a bit of a recurring lesson in the few messages we have heard.
And so maybe this is a lesson that some of us need to learn and hear carefully.
Because God uses these trials and these valleys to remind us that the power isn’t of us, but it’s of God.
The power isn’t in your female intuition. The power isn’t in your leadership style.
You.

[17:32] No, we are vulnerable jars of clay, all of us. But the answer for vulnerable jars of clay who sense the exceeding pressure and stresses of life is the exceeding power of God.
So there is reason to be encouraged.
Your weakness, your anxieties, your health issues, your insufficiencies for ministry, those are all things that teach us the sufficiency and the power of God.
Wasn’t that what Moses learned in Exodus chapter three? Human frailty and human weakness are not the hindrances to the work of God.
There are hindrances to the work of God.
Christian weakness is not one of them.
That just gives us a window into God’s power. Christian ministry is hard so that we might see displayed the power of God.

[18:30] A second reason ministry is hard, verses 10 and 11, so that our experience parallels the pathway of Jesus.
That it displays the power of God, that it parallels the pathway of Jesus.
Now I know the language in verse 10 and 11 is a little bit awkward, but I think what he is saying is this.
Just as Jesus actually died, so the sufferings that I’m enduring are killing me.

[19:03] And just as Jesus actually rose from the dead, the life of Jesus in verse 10 and 11 is his resurrection life.
Just as he actually rose from the dead, so my escapes from near-death experiences, they’re like many resurrections.

[19:21] Suffering, death, weakness, the power of the life of Jesus. See, the Corinthians had this problem of over-realized eschatology, right?
They were talking like they should be reigning with King Jesus now, and Paul is teaching them the theology of the cross, the way of the cross.
The cross is what shapes Paul’s ministry. Look at Philippians 2.3.
That is cruciform, that is cross-shaped Christian ministry.
And here in chapter 13 of this book, he says, he says, Christ was crucified in weakness, and we also are weak in him.
So a life that is molded by the cross, shaped by the cross, is going to involve some weakness and some suffering.
Now our culture goes to great extent to eliminate suffering, to erase it.
We worship the idols of ease and comfort and convenience.
Ryan Lister gives us this warning. He says, when our hearts fall in love with convenience, the call of Jesus to shoulder a cross will seem strangely foreign.

[20:46] When our hearts fall in love with convenience, the call of Jesus to shoulder a cross, will feel strangely foreign.
I don’t want to sound extreme or hypocritical here. I like conveniences too.
I like a vehicle with Apple CarPlay.
That is really helpful.
And a heated seat. That’s also nice. And when David Hamilton called me the other day on Labor Day to chat with me about the conference, I answered the phone from my hammock.
And I didn’t hide that from him.
I was enjoying the hammock right then.
But what the flesh does is it takes good gifts from God, like rest and hammocks, and it turns them into idols. And I need to hear that too, because I sense within me, I like my creature comforts a little bit too much at times too, but I’m trying to remind us today that it’s okay to have to do some hard, inconvenient things. And it’s only reasonable that Christian and ministry will sometimes be hard because it takes its shape from the cross and the, pathway of the Lord Jesus.

[21:52] Now remember, the cross, the weakness of the cross, that’s followed by resurrection power and along with his service, excuse me, along with his sufferings, this noble servant experienced the resurrection power of life in his ministry.
But I’m going to stop talking about that because I don’t know a whole lot about either of those things. But let’s notice the two reasons that serving the Lord is sometimes hard here.
So that the power of God will be displayed and so that we learn to parallel the pathway of Christ and His cross. It’s okay if it’s hard sometimes.

[22:32] However, I would like to shift gears a little bit now and give you a few more encouraging, words. Verses 7 to 12, the challenge of Christian ministry. Verses 13 to 18, conviction and courage for ministry, why we don’t give up.

[22:53] Now, verse 13 gives us this brief, simple, yet fascinating quotation from Psalm 116, by the way, younger believers, as you’re studying your Bible and you’re reading in the New Testament and you see there’s a quotation from the Old Testament, you go back and look into the context of that Old Testament passage and why is he using that now and how is he using that?
And there is often a treasure trove of glory in seeing how the Old Testament is used in the New.
Psalm 116 for example, this little quotation come from Psalm 116 and Psalm 116 has plenty to say about sufferings and victory. The sorrows of death wrapped, around me. You Lord delivered me from death. Then the psalmist says, I believed.

[23:45] Even when I suffered.” And as Paul is meditating on Psalm 116, he sees a shared experience between himself and the people of God in Scripture. And he concludes, my faith is built upon the same Scriptures as the people of God in the past, so in my sufferings too, I also will choose to believe what God has said.
So he takes encouragement from the scriptures. Verse 16, verse 10, excuse me, we also believe and therefore we speak. I mean, what gives you the courage to speak up for Christ at times in a culture that is antagonistic towards God and hates the Christian ethic? What could give you the courage to do that? Well, you’ve, You’ve got to believe the Scripture.

[24:44] You don’t need more authority than the scripture. There is no greater authority.
Maybe at times you think, boy, the Bible is being mocked so much and what I stand for is being attacked. I didn’t anticipate it being quite like this. Well, this is when you remember that attacks against the Bible are actually nothing new. That that’s been happening for centuries and it doesn’t bother the Bible in the least little bit. I know you and I don’t always have instant answers for the critic and the skeptic, but we don’t need to be ashamed to engage in Christian ministry with the authority of the scriptures sustaining us. And the scriptures do sustain us. They embolden our faith. They give us courage to keep going, just as Paul takes courage from Psalm 116.
You know what, Psalms, I saw this in the life of my father. He was always a man of the Bible. I’d.

[25:44] Come out of my bedroom in the morning and he’s there at his desk with his Bible in front of him and shelves of commentaries behind him. He was always the man of the Bible. But when life started to crumble around him a little bit, he just drowned himself in the Scriptures and especially the Psalms. And some of the words that he gave, some of the messages that he gave from the Psalms at times after the Lord’s Supper there in Halifax was amazing, honestly. Powerful words. The Word of God sustained him. How could he speak in the midst of the chaos in his life when business crumbled and other things attacking him? He believed, he was in the Scriptures, and he spoke. So in your weakness and in your affliction and in your perplexity, when you don’t know how to carry on, Make sure you get into the Bible.
Get into the Bible before then.

[26:40] I’m currently reading with our younger children a book. We read it with our older children a few years ago.
The book is called In Search of the Source. It’s a story of Wycliffe Bible translators in Papua New Guinea.
And early on in that story, Neil Anderson writes about an experience that’s very similar to what I’m speaking of here.
That paralyzing sense of weakness matched by encouragement from the scriptures to press on.
He knew plenty of challenges. He didn’t have the threat of persecution.
They were welcomed by the Fallopa people, Neil and Carol Anderson.
There was the peculiar hardship of a foreign diet.
They were on a journey through the jungle and he needed a little quick boost of energy.
So he took out his Cadbury Chocolipper and there’s 40 eyes on him wondering what this is and would he share.
Well, he has to share. So he lets them have a bite of the Cadbury Chocolipper.
They never tasted chocolate in their life.

[27:39] The others are watching. What’s it taste like?
He said, he said, brothers, I am dying from the deliciousness of whatever this is.
And he’s licking his lips and they said, well, what does it taste like?
What could he compare it to? He said, this is like, this is as good as pig’s liver.
Well, they all, they all thought that was pretty good.
He shares the Cadbury Chocolat Pie with him. So that means that they would, they would share their sage beetle larvae with him, roasted over the fire, a big mouthful of it, and he got it down. That was a challenge. And the challenge of health, his wife had an allergic reaction, fell into a coma for days, near death. And then just the challenge of ministry itself. He’s there to translate the scriptures into a language that he’s struggling to grasp, and he’s given a deadline, such and such a day you’re to have 10 chapters done for the first meeting. And he was overwhelmed. He I wasn’t ready, and I didn’t think I’d ever be ready.
This is what he prayed. Lord, I can’t do this. And the man who willingly came here with excitement must have been someone else because I am weak and I can’t do this by myself.

[28:54] Is there somewhere in your word where you will tell me that you will help me?
That’s an interesting request.
And over the next little while he read through he read through several New Testament books and he comes to Hebrews And he gets to the end of Hebrews chapter 13 and he reads, now may the God of peace who raised from the dead our Lord Jesus equip you with everything good, to do his will.
He said, I got what I needed.
God said he will equip me and I gripped those verses like the oars of a lifeboat.
Those scriptures kept him afloat so that he did not give up.

[29:32] And when serving the Lord as hard as it will be, We need to be sustained and encouraged from the Scriptures.
And the experience of Old Testament saints has emboldened my faith on many times.
We were reminded last night of Joseph.
You face temptation.
Did anybody in the Bible deal with what you’re dealing with?
Joseph was there before you.
Or you go away to another city for university. Nobody in the Bible went through something like that, did they?
In Bible times and there’s Daniel in a foreign city being educated in that city, maintaining his purity. Maybe there’s something and you wish that your assembly could really get in this and give it your all and then you think, no, we’re probably too small to try this work for God.
Well, Gideon’s been there before you.

[30:24] Maybe you feel a little discouraged because you’ve heard the call of God to do something in the past and you know that you’ve disobeyed the will of God. You haven’t followed His leading and you feel defeated and you wonder if God would have anything for you still.
And you read the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. God still works with you.
Maybe you’ve reached the end of your rope, and you feel like quitting on God’s people.

[30:54] And you read about Elijah in the cave, or you read about Moses in the wilderness.
Maybe you feel the challenge of speaking up to a pagan culture, and you think of how Esther has been there before you, and you take courage.
Maybe you feel you’re a young sister, and you don’t have a real role to play, you’re insignificant, and you read about Naaman’s maid, and the role she played in serving that man, she tells him of a prophet of God.
Maybe you feel completely overwhelmed with stress and anxiety, it’s too much, it’s too hard, and you come to the Psalms, that’s where the Apostle Paul was.
And he comes into Psalm 116, and he believes the word, and he takes courage to continue.
Now listen to his conviction in verse 14. knowing, we know that the one who raised the Lord, how do you know, Paul?
How do you know? Because I believed.
That’s how it works, by the way. Faith will lead to certainty.
Believing the scriptures will lead to confidence.
And he’s got Psalm 116 ringing in his ears. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
We know the one who raised the Lord Jesus will also raise us.
Verse 16, therefore we faint not.
We do not give up.

[32:22] That conviction has bookended this chapter. Verse 1, we don’t give up.
Verse 16, we do not give up. He’s just a fragile, vulnerable clay jar.
That’s who the mighty apostle is.
But as long as God keeps supplying divine power, then he’s going to continue to engage in ministry.
As long as God will keep supplying power, then he’s going to keep keeping on, because his willingness to do hard things despite his personal weakness displays the power of God. It’s for God’s glory and it allows him to experience a parallel pathway to the Lord Jesus. And now in verse 17 it produces an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. Now you see that language there in verse 17, the King James far more exceeding. There’s our word again, right?
Beyond measure. So the extraordinary pressures of chapter 1 that overwhelmed.

[33:32] Him, that led him to see displayed the extraordinary power of God in chapter 4 that enabled him, and that has led to this extraordinary weight of glory that awaits him. Extraordinary pressures pave the way for the extraordinary power of God which lead to this extraordinary weight of glory. Two things I would like you to remember today. Serving the Lord is going to be hard sometimes. Two, serving the Lord is wonderful. It’s good. It’s worth it. Don’t give up. Don’t give, up, lean heavily upon God, remember the pathway of the Lord Jesus, and take courage from God’s, infallible word.

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