2 Corinthians 1:1-2

In this sermon Haven City Church launches its 2 Corinthians series by slowing down over the opening greeting of the letter. In a strained relationship between a weary pastor and a complicated church, Paul introduces himself as an apostle “by the will of God” and dares to call the Corinthians “the church of God” and “saints.” From there we discover a surprising truth: before God gives explanations or verdicts, he speaks grace and peace over failed leaders and sinful saints. This message invites weary, wounded, and skeptical people in Baltimore to see how Jesus still pursues fragile churches with comfort, reconciliation, and a new identity in him.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We are in, we're starting the book of 2 Corinthians. Are you ready? Are you ready? Sonny sounds like he's ready. Have you ever been um to have you ever been in a setting where you know two people have an issue with each other, they're like beefing with each other, and you know, you know what there's tension, and then um you're watching to see, and they're like, oh, they meet up, and you're like not necessarily hearing the conversation, but you know already they both talk to you, they know they got issues, and you're kind of like, oh, what's gonna go on there? That's what Second Corinthians is like, right? We're we're the third party watching what's going on uh between Paul and hey, son, Sonny, Sonny, shh, you gotta be quiet, thank you. You gotta um we're watching what's going on with this relationship between the Corinthians and with Paul. So um there's some significant conflict, and there's a lot of pain in this relationship, and the way that Paul handles his relationship with this church is so instructive. This is one of my favorite books of the Bible. Um, just how Paul navigates um the relationship he has with this church is so beautiful. And we're gonna sit and we're gonna take this in over the next few months and just be able to watch what does it look like for a follower of Jesus to handle um tension, uh, real wrongdoing that's occurred. The church hadn't kept their word on some stuff. They they'd already been corrected, um, they'd responded to some of the correction that that Paul brought in, but there was um there was there was underlying, there's still like a minority of people that didn't like Paul. And um so as we go through 2 Corinthians, we get to to see how Paul navigated all that. And some of you are leaders, some of you are parents, grandparents. Um, we're all in in different relationships in different ways, and so there's so much here for us to glean from Paul. And one of the key things for us is gonna be this idea that Paul is doing relationships according to the new covenant. You know that that every week I put up in front of you this short little statement that you and I are blessable, image-bearing covenant partners following Jesus according to the new covenant. The new covenant is what Paul, it's the framing for Paul as he does relationships. And we're gonna see that there is a new covenant way to do relationships, and there's an old covenant way to do relationships. Once we get to chapter three, this is really gonna come to the surface for us. We're gonna see that that you may, you, and you might read through 2 Corinthians 3. We might study it, and you may realize, wow, I've been relating to people according to an old covenant method rather than a new covenant method. And so, man, there's gonna be so much there. We're gonna see what it looks like to repent. There's a story about a guy in 1 Corinthians, the first book, um, where he was sleeping with his dad's wife, his stepmom. And the whole church knew, and they were patting, the church was patting itself on the back for being so accommodating and letting this guy be in their midst. And Paul had to tell them in 1 Corinthians 5, listen, you need to take this guy, you need to, this is sin. This is this is this is a perversion of sexuality, and you need to stick this person outside of the church until he's really ready to repent. Well, we see that once we get into 2 Corinthians, a year after 1 Corinthians was written, it's clear that repentance has occurred in that man's life. And now Paul walks the church through what does it look like to forgive and welcome somebody back? And he articulates in chapter 7, here's exactly when that when that guy repented of the sin, here's what it meant. And some of you have been in the place where there are patterns of sin in your life, and you need to do what 2 Corinthians 7 says, where you need to repent like that. When we get into chapters 8 and 9, well, what one of the things that we're gonna see is that there was a need to support the Christians, the followers of Jesus that were back in Jerusalem. Corinth is way far away geographically from Jerusalem. And Paul has been talking to this church for over a year now about putting together, saving up some money that they can send as a financial gift back to Jerusalem. But guess what? They had said, oh yeah, Paul, that's a great idea, but they actually had not followed through on what they agreed to do in terms of this monetary gift. Have you ever known anybody, or maybe yourself, where you say, yeah, that's a good idea, but the follow-through kind of sucks, right? And how do you deal with that? How do you how does Paul navigate that according to the new covenant? How do you work with people and move them towards action? You can either beat them over the head in a legalistic way, or you can navigate it according to the new covenant. We're gonna see that in chapter 8 and 9. Man, as we go through this book, it's just gonna be um just so rich. But just to start off with this morning, I want to read to you just verses one and two. Um, and we're gonna look at this and I'm gonna introduce some of the themes together with you. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by God's will, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God at Corinth with all the saints who are throughout Achai. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray together. Lord, as we go through just these two verses this morning and as we begin our journey through 2 Corinthians, Lord, we ask that you would speak into our lives. And so, in order for you to do that, you need our permission. And we want to say collectively, God, that our hearts are open to you. We want to come before you with humility and a teachable spirit. We want to hear what you would say to us. Lord, would you instruct us, correct us where we need correction, guide us? Lord, we we pray for um just an encounter with you every time we we step into 2 Corinthians over the coming months. So be our teacher, Lord. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's talk a little bit about Corinth. If you were to walk into Corinth in Paul's day, you would have felt the energy of the city before anything else. There was just this frenetic energy about this city. Ships would pass through the Mediterranean into the Corinthian port, and then goods would be um hand carried or rolled over from the city over to the other body of water on the other side of Corinth, and it was just an easier path for goods to be transported. There were um crowded harbors, there was merchants, you would have had athletes training for the Olympic Games, there was philosophers, teachers were gathered in little circles. It was a robust city in the Roman Empire. It was a city that was out to make a name for itself. It was a place where there was opportunity, status, and self-promotion. But right under the surface of everything that you could see in Corinth, there was this deep moral rot. Um, it was a city that was known for sexual immorality. It was a city where people would use the term Corinthian like we would use the term Las Vegas. Like when you hear Las Vegas, we also call it Sin City, right? It's like, oh yeah, there's all kinds of things that go there. In fact, if you lived outside of Corinth, but you were just living it up wild without morale morals in your life, they would call you a Corinthian. Being a Corinthian was synonymous with being living a life without boundaries, and so it was just messy. People sleeping with each other, temple prostitutes, paganism, it was just a mess. Some of the complexity of the city flowed right into the church. The Corinthian believers were gifted by the Holy Spirit, but there had been a history of divisions in the church. There were clicks and riffs. They tolerated serious sin. They would sue each other. People in the church were suing each other. Some of them in the church began to question whether Paul was even a legitimate apostle. And then the relationship between Paul and the church went through what he will later call a painful visit, and he wrote them a letter of tears. We don't actually have that letter. The confrontations were so raw that Paul wondered if another visit to the church would make things even worse. So if you go back to Acts 18, you can see the planting of the church, the formation of the church, and then he leaves. And Paul the Apostle would travel around Asia Minor, around back over to Israel and to his home church, and he had all these places where churches had begun. And he would use letters, he would send letters back to correct and to encourage and to give them status updates of what's going on in his life. Most of his letters were correcting the things, the reports that he would hear. So this church seemed to start well. They were very much into the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But these issues arose. And as a church, a few years ago, probably about five years ago now, we studied through the book of 1 Corinthians. So if you want to go back and listen to those sermons, you can look on the church website. But when we open up 2 Corinthians, we're not stepping into a smooth, victorious ministry. We're stepping into a strange, a strained, fragile, complicated relationship between a pastor and a church that he loves. And he's been doing ministry there for a couple of years. He's been sending, he sent 1 Corinthians, he sent an envoy to represent him, and then it seems like he made a quick trip by boat across the Adriatic Sea over to Corinth, and that was the painful visit. He also wrote a letter that we don't have called A Letter of Tears. And um and so, meanwhile, back in Ephesus, things are going so good in terms of ministry, but then it just flips. And so the idol makers cause an uprising, and basically Paul and his companions have to flee north out of Ephesus. And so you've got the heartbreaking thing going on back in Corinth. Then he has this just crazy thing happen to him in Ephesus, and it's just it's upsetting. That's what we're going to see in the next couple of weeks, just the depths of despair that Paul goes through during this season of his life. The date for this is about uh 55, 56 AD, so 25 years after Jesus' death and resurrection. And um and so the church is forming and starting, but it's it's it's experiencing these types of um of conflicts or or of dilemmas, and it gives an opportunity for Paul to preach into that or write into that setting. So 2 Corinthians, it's not just distant ancient drama, it's a mirror. If you have ever loved a church or been hurt by it, then this is your book. Some of us, when we go through painful things in church, the response is to withdraw. This is probably one of the more surprising things to me as a pastor of Haven City Church is that you know, people will be here and they'll be around consistently every Sunday, and then all of a sudden they're not, and they're gone for like six, eight months, and then they pop back up and it'll be like, Oh, where were you at? Like, what was going on? I tried to call you and text you, no response. They're like, oh man, I just, you know, things were really hard. Sometimes that's people's response is to withdraw, to quietly step back, stop answering messages, sit closer to the back, tell ourselves, I'll just have Jesus and my Bible. I don't need them. Another response that people have sometimes when there's conflict in the church is that they'll get hard. Have you ever been in a relationship where someone's hurt you and you just get hard to them, calloused? We rehearse the ways we've been wronged, we assume the worst, we read every decision through a lens of suspicion. Leaders are always out for themselves, we may say. Our churches always are up, uh end up hurting people. Some of you have had that experience. And another response to conflict or pain in relationships or in church is to just cancel, to write people off with a sentence, some kind of general statement. Oh, that person's toxic. They're controlling, that church is dead. And it feels safe to burn the bridge rather than to risk walking over it again. And so Paul here is writing from a place of deep pain. And he doesn't pull back, he doesn't withdraw, he doesn't grow hard, and he doesn't cancel the Corinthians. In fact, he's gonna engage them from his place of pain, and he's gonna love them. And I think that this is gonna be instructive for us as we go through. We would expect a blast of apostolic rage given everything this church has done to him. You would think he would say, How dare you question me? Or maybe a cool professional uh resignation. I did my best, and now I'm done. Let me tell you a little bit more about just the setting there in the church, what was causing this pain. Because Paul's not there physically. While Paul is away, there's some other Christian leaders that come to Corinth. And whether they're Christians or not, we don't know. But what they were doing was they were telling the church, Paul, he's not really, he's not really an apostle. You know, he's he's second best. I mean, have you ever seen Paul? He's like, he's like shorter than Josh, which is pretty short. And he's kind of bow legged. That's what that's what history tells us about Paul. He had a big nose, a little crooked, and then he had like these eye problems where he had had probably gotten a disease, and in his eyes he couldn't see very well. And and and sometimes the one the way that Paul talks was was not very commanding, maybe not the most eloquent. So there was this group that had come to Corinth and they were saying all this. Now you would think that Paul, who worked, he worked as side jobs so that he could give Jesus to these people for free when he was in Corinth. In fact, it was a church up north, the Philippian church, that supported Paul so that he could do ministry for free in Corinth. He had this relationship with the church that was just giving to them and giving to them and trying to help them and trying to teach them. And now this other group comes to town, and what happens? The church in Corinth begins to listen to this new group that has very little skin in the game. They've done very little to help the church. They're willing to just listen and all of a sudden think less of Paul. I don't know if that's ever happened to you in your relationships where you're friends with somebody and then somehow your friendships just get undercut behind your back. That's painful. And it makes you look at at your your friend that's in question and be like, what did I do to you? Right? What did I do to you? Like, why would why would you let this person over here undercut our friendship? I have put so much time, I've loved you, I've cared for you, right? Man, when those kind of things happen, those are some of the deepest wounds that we can experience as a human. And yet Paul's response is not to put them on blast. The question that hangs over this letter is in a relationship this complicated, what will God do? Is God gonna withdraw, harden, and cancel like we do? Or will something else, something utterly unexpected, happen? That's the question. That's the question that we bring into the text. And so it opens up with this statement. Paul, apostle, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by God's will, and Timothy, our brother. We've just said that the relationship between Paul and this church is complicated. They've hurt one another. Some of these people in the church don't trust Paul. So when we read for the very first time, the first line, we are gonna ask, what's Paul about to say? And this is what we get. Now, let's walk through this. So he introduces himself as an apostle. That's not a word that you probably use this week. It's not a common used word in our lexicon. But but what apostle means in the Greek, and it means for Paul. Is somebody that is sent. So let's say that you're a Door Dasher. A DoorDasher is an apostle. You're sent with a package to deliver it, right? To the place. If you work for the government and you are an ambassador to another country, then you're an apostle that is sent. Somebody that is an apostle is somebody that's sent, but he's an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will. He's a representative of God. Paul is saying, I didn't appoint myself. I didn't appoint myself in this relationship with you, church. I didn't start this job because I thought I would be good at it, or because it would make me important. I am a sent person. Jesus Christ is the one who sent me, and this was by the will of God. God wanted this, God decided this. Doesn't this remind you of Amos, who we studied for the last few weeks? This was a commissioning of God. God made Paul an apostle. God sent Paul the apostle to them. And so Paul is having to wrestle with, okay, God, you've called me and sent me on your behalf, but the people you sent me to now don't trust me. They're not listening to me. That's a tough place to be in, right? God, what do you do? Like, how can how spiritually confusing must it have been for Paul? God, you commissioned me, sent me to start this church. It got a good kick start. Lots of people became followers of Jesus, but now there's this thing going on. For a church that is tempted to see him as just another spiritual salesman, this is surprising for him. Underneath all the misunderstandings, Paul is saying, whether you respect me now or not, I'm here because God chose to use me in your life. Think about the relationships you have. Who's the origin of those relationships? Are they relationships that God wants for you to have? If you're like Paul and you can look through this lens of God's put people in my life, then what you're able to do is have a confidence in God that God's in control. As those people hurt you, you're not just deciding, well, I'm canceling them, I'm withdrawing, I'm checking out. No, you're working with God in the context of community with people around you. Now, sometimes we have boundaries and we say, okay, this person here, he's sleeping with his mom, and he's taking advantage of the church community, right? He's in open rebellion against God's law. That person needs to be put outside the community. But it's it's in cooperation with what God says, and it's not this arbitrary, okay, well, that's my friend. And sometimes we do this, right? Sometimes we decide we're gonna play God and decide how our friends should be treated by God. You know, God says you shouldn't do this, but hey, I'll give you a pass. Sometimes that's not the best thing. If it's a relationship and you're a follower of Jesus, then every relationship that you're in is something that you do with God. Right? I've made that mistake. I've made the mistake where I think that I can be me and I can play God's role in that person's life. And that only leads to trouble, only makes it even more of a mess. So it's not showy authority, but there's Jesus in the middle of this relationship. So he says, I've been sent by God. I've been sent by God. You might picture a very impressive religious celebrity, strong, confident, never suffering, people-pleasing, always winning. That may be what you think a Christian leader looks like. But Paul, that's not how it works for Paul. It just doesn't happen. In 2 Corinthians, um, it's almost the opposite. In all of the letter in 2 Corinthians, throughout the whole letter, we see Paul is the apostle who is weak. He is the one who is not powerful, he is not the celebrity, he is struggling. He's letting God's power be front and center. He is working from a position of weakness. Later in this same letter, Paul is going to say, we are like clay vessels or clay pots, but we're carrying inside of us this treasure, which is God's power. He talks about being insulted, beaten down, carrying around in his body a thorn in the flesh. He talks about painful weakness that God would not take away even after he prayed for it to be taken away. And God did that so that he could learn, Paul could learn how to be weak and let God be strong. Look, that's not our paradigm of success typically. Yet it is for Paul. Paul is in pain. He's in physical pain because of this ailment, this thorn in the flesh. Like every bit of his weakness is being highlighted. And yet he is the apostle Paul who continues to march forward in what God has sent him to do. There's that tenacity that we've spoken of before. Think about the people that God has really used in your own life. God's placed people in your life, and the people that probably were used the most were people who were humble, probably not flashy, not celebrities, but people that loved you in the midst of their own pain. People that cared for you out of the midst of their own suffering. I just want you to grab a hold of this concept this morning that you probably wish your life looked different in some key areas. Right? Maybe your physical appearance, maybe your health, maybe your finances, maybe your education. There's things, maybe relationships, maybe you wish you were married or you wish you were single. I don't know what it is. Listen, Paul lived a messy life. It was not like he would have been on your list of like you would have looked at the mess in his life, and there would have been a sense of like, man, I don't know. Is this God cursed this guy or what? Seriously. You would have looked at his life, the conflict, the suffering, the ailments, you would have been like, is God with this guy or not? God saw the one thing that we can't see, it's hard and pure. Yeah. And the only God could see that. Yep. Yeah, if you guys didn't hear that, Mike said that God saw his heart. Yeah, Paul was willing to trust what God had said rather than looking at himself and evaluating his life through his understanding. How many of you love uh Proverbs 3, 5, and 6? Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths, right? Yeah. Paul's not leaning on his own understanding. He's saying, God has called me to do this ministry. I must persevere. So we go a little bit further. It's to the church of God at Corinth with all the saints who are throughout Achai. So you know how like we we live in Baltimore City, but this neighborhood is Fells Point. So Achae was the region, the larger region. If you look on a map, it's it's not an island, but it's a um it's the um tip of a peninsula that's kind of round, and and Achae is separated from mainland Macedonia. Um and Corinth is right at this um this connecting point. And so the um Paul's not writing this just to the house churches in Corinth, but to the whole region of Achae. You can pull it up on a map and see what's going on there. But here's the crazy thing. What does he call them? He calls them the church of God. That's the first thing he says. He says, you belong to God before you belong to any human leader. The church is God's idea. It's his project, his possession. Imagine if you're Pastor Paul and the church you love, that you've birthed them spiritually, and they decide to turn their back on you. Paul's framing it up in the right way. He's like, You're God's church. You're not my church, right? Haven City Church is Jesus' church. It's not Josh's church, it's none of our church. It's God's church, which is incredible and beautiful because man, Paul had put some time, he could have come down on, but nope, you're God's church. But not only that, he says, he says to them, to the church of God at Corinth with all the saints who are throughout Achai. The saints, many of us hear that word and think of the people that are, the word saints are like, oh, those are the those are the hall of fame for the church, right? Those are the people that got five stars in Sunday school. They never did anything wrong, right? In the Catholic tradition, saints have to go through this rigorous protocol to be considered a saint. They have to have a miracle that's confirmed. There's all this criteria. But the Bible teaches that a saint is anybody that follows Jesus. Because a saint is somebody who's been separated out for God's purpose. And if you're a follower of Jesus, then you're a saint. And Paul calls them that you are saints. Now, maybe you're not acting like saints. Maybe you're not acting like the ones who are holy, set apart for God, but you are God's saint. A saint is not first someone who has achieved a spiritual level. A saint is someone who belongs to Christ, set apart by him for his purposes. Every follower of Jesus is a saint. Even very ordinary, very immature believers. Do you hear that? When you get up in the morning and you look at yourself in the mirror, if you have talked to Jesus and told him that you are his and you've committed your life to him and you've received all the work that he's done on your account, then you're looking at a saint. You're a saint. It's not like Paul founded them and they were doing good as a church, but then they really mess it up, and now they're the former church of God. No, he says, you are the church of God. Or to you so-called saints, he looks at a messy, struggling, still changing group of people, and he says, You're God's church, you're his holy people. That's important. Some of you are in relationships with other people that claim to be Christians, but they're a mess. And it's important and it is helpful as you try to figure out how to work with that person to recognize: hey, you belong to God and you're a saint in his eyes. Now, maybe you don't act like it, but he loves you. I think it's important to know that God's naming comes before our behaving. God's naming of you comes before our behaving. You see, Jesus comes into our life once you accept him, and he calls you a saint, and then you're in this process of transformation. That's what's occurring in your life. One writer says it this way: in Corinth, the core problem was not just bad behavior, it was a distorted sense of identity. They were acting like people who belonged to the world instead of people who belonged to Jesus, to Christ. They weren't acting like saints. It was an identity issue that Paul has to address. If Paul were to write to us, it would be to the Church of God in Baltimore. With all the saints. Fragile. Anybody fragile? Yeah. Inconsistent. Anyone inconsistent? Still learning. Anybody still learning? But truly his. Truly his. God's naming comes before you're behaving. And if he has named you in Christ, he's not gonna unname you. And so we come to verse two, where he says, Grace to you and peace. Grace to you and peace. What are you, how are you? How did God make you? Blessable, image-bearing, covenant partner. Paul, Paul comes to this Corinthian church and he prays for them, greets them with grace, which is charis, that's the traditional Greek greeting. Grace, and then shalom, which is the Hebrew word for peace. May you have grace and peace over your life. From God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. What I need most, what I most need from Paul is this sense of verdict, right? When there's a conflict, there's this sense of like, just tell me, are you done with me? Or can we still are is it in the past? There's this, there's this, like, I need it, I needed the verdict. And instead, what Paul is gonna do is he's gonna come into this setting and he's gonna, he's gonna say, Grace and peace to you. He's not gonna drop the hammer on them. He he's not gonna be like, Well, you're out. I'm done with you. We're often in that similar place where we just we want to put people in these binary categories of that person's evil or that person is good. And people are people are capable of change, they're in in process. Well, God comes to us and says, Grace and peace to you. What we're gonna see as we read through this book together is that God brings comfort in affliction even when you've done the wrong thing. There's comfort in affliction, we're gonna see reconciliation, we're gonna see generosity, and we're gonna see the restoration of the relationship. And so in this little phrase, grace and peace, it's not just a throwaway phrase, it's like the the front porch of your house where you're about to enter. Grace and peace. Now I got a lot for you in the house, but let's just start with grace and peace. And so as we walk into 2 Corinthians, we're gonna walk around the house. We're gonna find new new rooms where God's pouring out his grace into the lives of sinners, and he's pouring out peace in the midst of conflict. Lord, we thank you for your word. Thank you for just your um victory over chaos, confusion, our sin. You had victory on the cross. And so as we take up the communion elements this morning, we're celebrating that Jesus, you are the victor, and you're the victor in relationships. So we pray, Lord, that you would take the things that we've begun to see here from 2 Corinthians, and that we would cement them into our hearts, that we would take them in and chew on them, and that we'd be open to your to your moving in us by your spirit these things into our week this week. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.