Wasting Away & Losing Heart?

I ask you now to take your Bibles and turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. 2 Corinthians chapter 4, you follow as I read this chapter. Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word. But by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

For God, who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face. Of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay. So that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed. Perplexed but not driven to despair.

Persecuted but not forsaken. Struck down but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus. So that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. for we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh so death is at work in us but life in you. Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written I believed and so I spoke, we also believe and so we also speak knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.

For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God So we do not lose heart Though our outer self is wasting away our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Let's pray. Father, minister by Your Spirit this word to us. We are gathered here not merely to be a group of people who just are here to see one another. We are gathered here to hear the voice of our Lord, our God, as the Spirit works in us. Give us ears to hear now, I pray. Help us to consider these weighty things that are before us in a way that would change us and bring glory to You and honor to the name of Christ.

Do that now, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I fully intended to preach from Genesis today. Of course, this was the week I had an ablation done to my heart. And of course, I figured I'd go to the hospital, get the job done, and come home and go to work. I mean, that's just what I figured.

So Tuesday, you know, I went in for some tests, had some CAT scans done, had to swallow a glob of barium. And then they did what's called a TEE. It is a transesophageal electrocardiogram. What that is, is they kind of knock you out a little bit, then they take this thing and they put it down your throat, put it all the way down like that, take a picture of your heart, and then pull it out.

No big deal. However, at the end of the day, I was tired, I was fatigued, I hurt all over. Well, then the big day Wednesday came for the ablation. That's where they make an incision in your leg and then run a wire up your veins and into your heart They look around a little bit and then they burn some cells and some nodules here and there Right So Dr Agostini took that wire and went up and went into both my right atrium and my left atrium, did what he needed to do in there and pulled it out.

And I stayed overnight. No big deal. I'll stay overnight. I'll get home by about noon and I'll get to work. But I was still in no shape to go to work. And I thought, what in the world is wrong here?

What is wrong? Why couldn't I just get going? I mean, I used to be able to handle stuff and keep going. I used to stay up all night and keep going. I used to do all kinds of things. I used to be able to take abuse and keep going.

Well, of course, it's beginning to occur to me. It's beginning to occur to me that my body is getting old and it can't take what it could take when I was 25 or 30. It just won't do it anymore. Frankly speaking, it's wasting away. That reminded me of a text that I have loved now for a number of years, 2 Corinthians 4, verses 16 through 18, and that's where I want us to draw our attention to.

2 Corinthians 4, verses 16 through 18. Now, in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul is making an argument against the prosperity preachers of his day. They said, how can Paul be a preacher of Christ? How can he be a preacher of Christ? I mean, the guy is in jail. He is persecuted.

He's suffering. He's in trouble. He's even poor. I mean, come on. He's a loser. How can he be a minister of Christ?

And Paul replies this way. Well, let me see. Jesus was persecuted. Jesus had trouble. Jesus had heartache and hardship. Jesus was poor.

I guess my ministry looks like His. I'm the real deal, and you guys are not. which one looks like Jesus? You or me? He tells us we have this wonderful treasure of the Gospel in these fragile throwaway vessels Common disposable vessels Okay? We have this treasure of the gospel in these disposable vessels. That is to say, we're not very appealing.

We're not flashy. But that's so people will see that the power they experience comes not from us, these throwaway disposable vessels. It comes from Christ. It comes from the Gospel. And he goes on to say, we carry in our body the death of Jesus. And there he's saying, so that life may be in you.

That is to say, he says, we are being delivered over to the suffering and the death of Jesus over and over again. and that's what's happening we are experiencing what Jesus experienced we've suffered the loss of many blessings of this life, the honors, the friendship the resources and even our health as we serve Christ and as we live in this present age we find something at work our outer self wastes away. Now he's talking about all of that that's in, all of the the honors, the resources, the flashy things of life that's wasting away. But surely he includes in that our health and our body.

We give our bodies to ministry for Christ and it's wasting away. I had a great reminder this week but the fact that my outer self is clay and perishable and weakening. And every one of you weaken and falter and die just a little more every day. That's just the way it is in this broken world. And the truth should dawn on us. All of us are slipping away.

All of us are slipping away. some are going to be involved in intense battles with cancer or with AIDS or with progressive heart disease for most of us it will be long and slow As our bodies all succumb to aging, decay, and death. What does the Bible say to us then? As every day, a little bit more, wastes away. What does God say to us? I've learned over the years of ministry that the Bible is so detailed that it deals with every part of our lives.

Even this. We find that here in the verses. Here in this passage, God uses the life and the experience of the Apostle Paul to teach us these great truths about himself and about the gospel and about ourselves and hope as life ebbs away. So look with me then at 2 Corinthians 4, verses 16 through 18. So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away. our inner self is being renewed day by day.

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. God says this first of all. Recognize this truth about yourselves. though our outer self is wasting away.

You and I are wasting away. We are. We don't want to face up to that fact that our bodies are wasting away. We go through all kinds of contortions to hide the fact from ourselves and from other people. You spend tremendous amounts of time in the bathroom putting this stuff on all over in order to hide this and highlight that. And then before you start jabbing your wife about all that, remember this.

You're the ones who stand in the pharmacy at Walmart debating whether you should buy that Rogaine or not. Right? And you do all kinds of exercises, and you figure if you do all the right exercises, you'll get your 61-year-old knees to do what they could do when you were 25? And what do you do when you join the softball team and that hard line drive comes down the third baseline and you got to try to focus on it through your bifocals Right People spend millions of dollars on surgery to tuck this back and to pull that in and to supplement something else.

There's all kinds of stuff going on. We don't like to recognize the truth. We want to hide it from ourselves. We want to hide it from everyone else. But the fact is, we are all wasting away, and nothing that we do will ever stop the inevitable decay that overcomes us all. Right?

Nothing we do is ever... Work out all you want. Get in better shape. Which some of us probably need to do. But it will not stop the wasting, decaying effects of the curse. Our outer selves are wasting away.

How do you handle that truth? How do you handle that truth? Most people don't handle it well. They lose heart. They lose heart. They start to despair over this truth that God points out to us.

It's easy to lose heart when we face chronic disease, is it not? Some of you here have been in chronic pain for a while. It's easy to lose heart, isn't it? It's easy to lose heart when we have to face the fact of that downward trend. We start to realize that this life will not go on forever, even though we live like it. It won't go on forever.

I think of the times, I can remember in one particular instance, I was visiting someone from our church who was dying of cancer. And as I sat with him, I looked out the window and I saw a combine going by as it was picking the corn. And the thought occurred to me, this is the last time he will ever see that. this is the last time this brother will ever see a harvest because he's going to die soon our outer self is wasting away and in light of that we often lose heart you know what I noticed I noticed that the older we get and the more we wear out the grumpier we get The aches and pains, the attack on our vanity, the losing battle over our looks produces people who are angry. the wearing down of our bodies often leads to the wearing down of our spirits but it doesn't have to be that way it does not have to be that way the wearing down of our spirits is not an inevitable consequence of the wasting away of our outer self again notice what the apostle Paul says So we do not lose heart.

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

God says, embrace a hope that renews. Not only recognize this truth about yourselves, but embrace the hope that renews you. Paul, who writes this, says that he does not lose heart. So we do not lose heart. In the wake of this battle, he does not lose heart. In the wake of a battle that means poverty and trouble and heartache, as he remains faithful to Christ and it's fulfilled what Jesus says, if they hated me, they'll hate you.

And as all that's coming down, as he is slowly wasting away, he says, so we do not lose heart. He confesses that he's not getting angrier. He says he's not getting grumpier or depressed. He's not losing heart. How in the world is that possible? How is that possible?

Because in the face of the outward decay, he is being renewed every day. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. Now, it's not that he has a stiff upper lip and he says, well, there's nothing you can do about it. Let's make the most of it. That not being renewed That resignation not renewal You see something is happening to him Something is renewing him.

Outwardly, he's wasting away. Inwardly, he's being renewed. It happens inwardly. His spirit is being renewed. He's not giving up and he's not giving in. I don't want to be that way.

I don't want to be a grumpy old man. I don't want to come home from the hospital and make life miserable for other people because I hurt. I want this. I want to be renewed. I want to find that even though outside things are changing drastically, inside things are changing even more drastically as I'm being renewed. How is He renewed?

How is he being renewed? Look at that very important word in verse 17. For. Alright. How is this being renewed? Because hope is renewing him.

Hope renews him. He has hope in glory. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. He has hope in glory. And that's what renews him. This is the glory of eternity, the future glory that awaits him.

He looks to the future and he recognizes that the glory of eternity is far greater than all the hardships and the persecutions and the heartaches and the pain of this life. I've always looked at this verse in verse 17 and said, I can't believe what he's saying here. I can't believe what he's saying. For this light and momentary affliction, You want to see what his light and momentary affliction was?

Turn over to chapter 11. You'll get a picture of his light and momentary affliction. If you have an ESV, you'll see there's a paragraph break in the middle of verse 21. So let's look at the second half to verse 21 and read through verse 29. Here is his light and momentary afflictions. Whatever anyone else dares to boast of, I'm speaking as a fool.

I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. He's talking to these super apostles, the prosperity preachers of his day, that are saying, he's a loser. He says, are they Hebrews? So am I.

Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one.

I'm talking like a madman. With far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes, last one. He said his back ripped apart five times. once I was stoned you ever been hit by a stone imagine a whole group of people throwing rocks at you I would think that's kind of painful right talks about the fact that they stoned him and left him for dead and he got up and went away by the grace of Christ three times I was shipwrecked and not in a day I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst.

How many of us have ever experienced really hunger and thirst? In hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And apart from the other things, there's a daily pressure of my anxiety for all the churches. I love that statement. On top of all that, I'm a pastor. Who is weak and I am not weak?

Who is made to fall and I am not indignant? These are the light and momentary afflictions he's referring to. Light and momentary. If that was happening to me, I would think I'd resign and run away. These are light and momentary, he says. How can he make that kind of a statement?

How can he do that? Here's how. He looks at glory. Because these things are light and momentary when compared to what happens in glory. What will the tribulations and the aches and the pains of this decaying body look like a billion years from now? Now, again, that's how you need to be thinking, right?

If we going to live for eternity we talking billions doesn even come close right Billions of years from now and a billion years without any pain, hardship, or disintegration. How will this look then? You can see now why he calls it light and momentary troubles. this affects the way he looks at life this affects the way that he does things he's renewed because he has this hope that there's coming a day when there'll be no more decay or disintegration and when I look at that when God opens the window on eternity then this life looks different and I'm renewed.

I can go on. I can stay the course. I can serve Christ. I remember this as plain as it's yesterday. Sitting on a train in Romania. And we had some decisions to make.

Decisions that at that time looked like it would change our lives in a major way. and I wasn't too crazy about that decision. I wasn't too nuts about saying yes to this because it was going to change our lives. As I sat there on that train, I thought about this verse. It may be hard. And that time is like, it may be hard for 20 years. Okay?

It may be difficult for 20 years, but what does that look like in light of billions of years of no burdens at all? Tell you what, boy, that really helped me. That really helped. I can do it. We can do this. In light of eternity, we can do it.

That's what he's talking about here. He's renewed. And all of it is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory. That is not to say that it wins us glory as if the pain and the suffering merits eternal life That certainly isn what he saying He saying the life of pain and tribulation that we live in a broken world makes glory all that more enjoyable. It prepares for us the glory.

It prepares for us the enjoyment of what's going to come. John Calvin says, the endurance of the cross prepares us for enjoyment. I remember when I was in high school after football practice in August. There's two-a-days. I hated those. Two-a-days practice.

But there's one thing I did and I'm sure it established a bad habit. But I knew this. You know what? When I'm done with practice, I'm going over to the local A&W and I'm going to down a quart of ice cold root beer. Right? That's what I did.

I'd buy a quart of root beer and just chug it. Now, that practice, those hours of sweating and hurting and all that went with those prepared me to really enjoy that root beer. Best root beer I've ever had in my entire life. Right? Why? Because life in this broken world, alright, Life in this broken world is going to prepare us for the enjoyment of what glory will be.

You see? Yeah, it hurts now. Man, Pastor Tim, there are some things going on in my life. You talk about your body wasting away. I only have that. I not only have that, I've got other stuff too.

Guess what? It's preparing you to enjoy to the fullest what's going to happen in eternity. Looking to glory gives him hope. God opens the window to eternity so that we have hope. And that renews us. Not only that, look at what he does.

He has hope in the invisible. So we fix our eyes not in what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is transient, but what is unseen is eternal. Now he's not talking about the invisible here as if you can see through something. like it's invisible. What he's talking about is the things that we cannot see. He fixes his eyes not on what invisible He fixing his eyes on what God has promised Things that we do not see now but things that God has promised.

They're not a reality yet, but God has promised that they will be. And He's opened for us a window on that. We saw just a snatch of that this morning as Keaton read to us from Revelation 21 and Revelation 22. He fixes his eyes on the promised new city, that holy Jerusalem. He looks at an existence where God has promised no more tears, no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more death.

He believes the promise of the river of life and the tree of life and no more curse. Imagine that. Imagine living in a reality on an earth where there's no curse. None. I mean, I can't imagine that. I cannot imagine that.

But that's awaiting those who are in Christ and life in the presence of Jesus. You know, we say we love Jesus. And we say that Jesus loves us. And we approximate that. And some of us, some of you know that you just love Jesus with all your heart. Some of us are saying, I want to love Him more, but in that day we will love Him without hindrance.

And we will see what a marvelous Savior and friend He is. God has opened the windows for us to see that. The invisible now is visible. The promise is there. And what God has promised is permanent. while the corruption that we experience is temporary. There's coming a time when there will be no more corruption, and that is eternal.

But this corruption that we experience now is only temporary. And fixing his eyes on those promises, on that which is invisible, renews him inwardly day by day, every day a little bit more. do you have the same hope renewing you? Do you have the same hope? But you know what? that glory is yours only if you have the knowledge of the glory of God through Christ.

Look at verses 5 and 6 again. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ and ourselves as your servants. For Jesus' sake, for God who said, let light shine out of the darkness. He's looking back at Genesis. He says, for the same God who said, let the light shine out of the darkness, has shone in our hearts, in the darkness of our hearts, His light has penetrated to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

There in Jesus' face is all the glory of God. And as we embrace Him by faith, He becomes ours. and we are now captured and captivated by the knowledge of the glory of God and we are His forever. And those who have embraced the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ are those who have these promises. They are the ones who have the ability to be renewed day by day as they contemplate glory And they see what is yet to come Now let's get something straight.

Every one of you is wasting away today. Now I can think of my newest grandson, Harvey. You say, he's not wasting away. He's got a long way to go yet. He's going to grow and he's going to become probably a, no doubt, a fine young man someday. But you know what?

He's living in a broken world. And he too, even as a baby who's only one month old, is experiencing decay. So every one of you is wasting away today. You 20 or 30-somethings here today, let me tell you something right now. You may throw a football 50 yards right now, but 20 years from now, you may be thinking you will. I'll tell you right now, you won't.

You'll throw that. If you do throw it 50 yards, you won't be able to throw for the next two years. You guys you youngins here you wasting away too Your body wastes in the inevitable march of decay It does And unless you renewed in the inner man unless you start looking to eternity you young people, you start looking to eternity and you will also be renewed.

And do it now. Do it now. Don't wait for the inevitable decay that comes. Instead of dreaming of your ability, you need to start thinking about eternity. you old folks, you creaky old broken down people who are here today, those of you who know DK in a very personal way that these young folks don't, you need to start looking at eternity too. if you want to be an old person who does well as he wastes away you will look to that which is unseen you will dwell on the promises of God you'll believe them and you will look forward to that day.

Fix your eyes on eternity Be renewed day by day in the inward man as outwardly you most certainly waste away Father, thank you for your word which covers every phase of our lives. we thank you for the hope that we have in a savior who saves us completely not just saves us from our sin but will ultimately save us from all the corruption that we have faced so that someday we will live in a glorious world of no corruption and no decay. Help us here from young to old to fix our eyes not on what is seen, which is transient, but what is unseen, which is eternal. God, not just us old people, but the young people as well.

Help them to see eternity. Renew us, we pray, by the hope of glory.