The Radiance of the Gospel | Nathan Cook

What if the greatest threat to your faith isn’t outright evil, but the good things quietly pulling your attention away from Jesus? This sermon presses into spiritual distraction, the power of the gospel, and why only Christ can truly transform a heart.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the podcast of Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Join us as we dive into this week's sermon that challenges our hearts and minds to grow closer to Christ. We pray that your heart is inspired and transformed by God's Word.

Inside a Pastor's Mind

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I'm going to tell you this brief story real quick. One of just to see what's on the inside, what do pastors actually think about right before they preach? I had a friend, Billy Kenny, in seminary who his first wedding, he he forgot to seat everybody. And we're sheep. If we're not told to sit, we'll stay. We stood through the whole wedding. And so it literally, and it was really uncomfortable. And so, like, just by the fact that you all are seated right now, there's already a great sense of accomplishment in my heart. And so I don't know how this sermon is going to go, but already I feel really good. Because the whole time we were sitting there, I was thinking, don't forget to get them seated. Don't forget to get them seated. It's done. All right. We're going to look at first Corinthians, not first Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. My name's Nathan Cook. I'm the missions pastor here at Christ Methodist. I'm standing in for Paul Lawler, who is traveling. I can't even tell you where he is. He he Paul is on three different committees with the Global Methodist Church, and they're all meeting in different cities over the course of these next two weeks. So he's somewhere. Grant and I are going to see him in Orlando in a couple of days for another meeting, another conference, missions conference down there. But keep Paul in your prayers as he's traveling. Okay, so 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6 says this. 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 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 and the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord, with 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 the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Right now, as I'm preaching, there's a group of a few people who gather every week in the northex of the sanctuary to pray. And it also at 8 30, there's a small group of people that prays during the service. And I've never had a chance, I haven't had a chance yet to go at 11 o'clock, but regularly I pray with folks at 8:30. And during that time of prayer, one of the things that we often pray for is that God would just have his way with the sermon. And regardless of what message that Paul prepares beforehand, that he would just let go of that and let God have guidance and let the words of God come forth from his mouth. And so that happened this morning when I was preaching. And so, like, I preached God's message. And now I am worried to death. I'm like trying to remember what did I say? Because it was really good. And I want to say that again. So as again, as I was praying, God said, just let that go. Just let let me be and let me let me speak, Nathan. So I'm gonna try to do that. I'm gonna try to get out of God's way this morning and just preach God's word, the message that He's given me. And so as I was preparing for this message today, there is this story that was just kind of rolling through my mind. And I didn't have any idea of what it really meant or how it related to this passage, but this morning it kind of started to come clear to me. And in that pad, the passage of scripture that was rolling through my mind was the story of Moses. And so it was particularly like when when Moses is leading the Israelites out of Egypt and they come to the Red Sea, and God tells Moses to take his staff and to strike the sea and it parts. Okay, and then they're wandering through the wilderness, and the Israelites begin to grumble and complain that they don't have any food and they don't have any water. And so again, God tells Moses to strike the rock with your staff and it brings forth living water. And then again in Numbers chapter 20, the people are wandering through the wilderness for a while, and they they come back again to the same city of Meribah, and again they're grumbling and complaining, and they're thirsty. And so God tells Moses, Speak to the rock, and it will bring forth water. But instead of speaking to the rock, Moses takes his staff and strikes it twice. And again, it does bring forth water and quenches the thirst of the people. But this is what God says to Moses. He says, And the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron, because you did not believe in me to hold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them. It seems like a pretty harsh consequence to me, right? Like this seems like a little thing. The people got the water, right? What why is this such a big deal that God would say, Moses and Aaron, you cannot lead my people into the promised land because of this act of disobedience? And what he says is that the importance is like when we listen to the word of God, when we when we put our faith in God, like that our role, that their role as priests, as the leaders, as the prophet of Israel and the priest of Israel, as the leaders of Israel, that their role is to uphold God, to uphold God before the people, that that is what is of greatest and highest importance, that it's important to meet their needs with the water, but the most important thing is to hold up God. And there's a real danger for us as Christians to get caught into religious traditions, right? So I imagine in Moses' mind what he's thinking is like, I struck the right the water once, I struck the water twice. I remember you strike the water if you want water, right? I mean, you strike the rock, you strike it with your staff, right? That's religion. It's doing the same things, expecting results, but it's it's not religion doesn't produce life. Religion doesn't produce living water. It's God Himself. That when we listen to His voice and when we obey His voice and when we lift Him up and exalt Him before all people, that that's where change and transformation comes from. And so this is a little bit convicting to me as missions pastor for this church, that we do a lot of really good, great things to help people to meet their needs. This church for years has done great things, right? Started SOS to help people repair their houses, provide living water, to provide a need, to provide a physical need, working at starting Cornerstone Elementary to provide education, arise to read, going and teaching kids how to read, again, meeting people's needs. The Binghamton Development Corporation, I was on the board for 10 years, one of my favorite ministries in the city, of and now helping lots of people who are unemployable to get employment. All of these are great ministries that meet people's needs. But if in each and every one of them, if we are not exalting Christ as King, as Lord, then all the work that we're doing, it's not gonna lead people into the promised land. It may meet an immediate need, but it's not gonna bring transformation and change into their hearts, because there's only one thing that can do that, and that's Jesus Christ. And so this is what Paul was teaching about last week about the message, this ministry that Paul was talking about is that the ministry of Moses blind that was good. It was a ministry of the law, of teaching the law, of preaching the law, of proclaiming what is right and what is wrong. But the purpose of the law is that it exposes the sin in our heart. It doesn't change our hearts. It just shows us, it demonstrates that we have a problem that we cannot solve on our own. That the more glorious ministry is the ministry of Jesus Christ. It's the ministry that Jesus, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, that Jesus came and died in our place. He took our sin, our punishment, our shame upon himself, and he gave us his righteousness. And so now because we have the righteousness of Christ, we can be holy, we can be changed, we can learn, we can be educated, we can work hard, we can do all of these things because Christ is Lord, because Christ is the one who comes and takes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh and pours God's Spirit in upon us and helps us to live a godly, holy life. And not only in this life, but in the life to come. Jesus is our only way of salvation, and he must be lifted up and exalted so that we might see his beauty, his majesty, his glory, his holiness. Paul's saying here that, and he said this, he's said this many times, we've said it over and over again, that the Corinthian church and that the culture in Corinth was one that honored and revered great speakers, great orators, great rhetoricians, people who could speak and persuade. And what Paul is saying here again, he's saying, guys, I'm it's not about me. I'm not trying to gain a following for myself. I am a servant of the gospel. And Paul over and over again focuses on the simple gospel message, believing that this simple gospel message is what can bring train change and transformation into people's lives. Some of us in this room had an opportunity last November to go to Southeast Asia on a mission trip. And before going on that trip, we were trained in how to tell the story of the gospel from creation to Christ, the kind of the whole story of the Bible in about five minutes, but really focusing on the gospel, on the change and transformation that can come from just simply sharing the gospel with someone. And so each of us, we got into groups of three. We had it as an American with one of the indigenous pastors that we were working with and a translator. And the three of us would go into homes and speak with groups from about some had three people, 10, 15 people in a room, in a home, and we would simply share our testimony, share the gospel of Jesus Christ, and call people to repentance and to faith in Christ. And so that some of some of these are the things that I saw, like in just doing that. Not flowery speech. In fact, all of us were trained to share the exact same message, right? The simple gospel. And so in in one home, like first of all, 450 people came to Christ that week out of about 500 that we shared with, people who had never heard of Christ before. The power of the gospel to transform lives. One of one of the women that we shared with the first day, that she she put her faith in Christ, and immediately that night she went home and shared the gospel with her her husband. Another young man that we that we met with, he too put his faith in Christ. And we began to teach him the first lesson that we teach after the gospel is we we teach about repentance from the story of Zacchaeus and how, like, what does repentance look like? What does it mean to make ourselves right with God and with other people now that this love and forgiveness has come into our life? Now that God has reconciled us to himself, he wants us to be reconciled to other people. And so he he shared with us, he's this 21-year-old young man, and he said, about six months ago, I got in a fight with my parents. They made me really angry. And I left. I left home and I haven't been home since. And he said, I want to be, I want my parents to know that I forgive them, just as Jesus has forgiven me. And I I want to spend time with my family again. There is another young woman who, as we were teaching in this house, as we were sharing the gospel, I mean, it was just like something out of the Bible. Like we're in there sharing scripture, and this woman brings her daughter into the house, and she is possessed by a demon. And the pastor that I'm with prayed over her, proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the demon was cast out. I know that's not something that we see very often. It's not something that I've seen a lot, but it was very real. That woman was set free by the gospel of Jesus Christ because Jesus was lifted high. Jesus is the one who delivers. He's the one who sets us free. God has entrusted us as the priesthood of all believers to share that good news with others. It's not just for us to have a preacher that comes and preaches the message and for for the audience to come and bring their friends. No, God is preparing and equipping us as a church, as a congregation, not just this congregation, but every congregation, to be a priesthood of all believers, to take the good news, the news that transforms people's lives, and to share it with our friends and our neighbors and our children and our coworkers and strangers that we meet on the street is what brings change and transformation into our lives. This text says that not everyone who hears the good news of the gospel believes because Satan blinds the mind of unbelievers. And so I want to talk about a couple of different ways that Satan does that. How does Satan do that? Well, first he lies. Okay. Jesus says that Satan is a liar. In fact, he's the father of lies. And Satan likes to plant falsehoods in our mind, things like God is not good, sin is not serious, obedience is unnecessary, judgment is not real. Christ is not enough. When we begin to believe these lies, our minds become distorted, and we're unable to see the beauty of Christ. I was sharing with our Sunday school class just a few minutes ago that Kim and I have had a couple of friends in our lives who are ministers who believed in the gospel, but by one degree to another, to another, most of them beginning with this idea of there is no judgment, that God is a God of love, and so everyone is going to be saved, no matter who you are. And it just begins to take one step and then another and then another away from the truth of Scripture, and they're no longer following Christ. And it it breaks our heart. And it for us, like, I'm telling you, this would be as if like you found out in five years that Kim and I were no longer following Christ. It's like that. They are close friends that were laboring in the gospel. But Satan lied to them and they began to believe their lies instead of believing the truth of Scripture. The other thing, another thing that Satan does is he blinds us by making rival glories feel more compelling. Approval of others, success in business, comfort, sex, money, power, politics, status. He blinds us by making Jesus seem dull and the world seem alive and vivid. He blinds us through distractions, through our phones and through staying on Facebook and Instagram and constantly checking the news and figuring out what's going on in the world. Distracted by our own anxiety, by our own ambition, distracting us with our children and having them go to volleyball and then soccer and then baseball and then basketball and then scouts and then track and all of these things.

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Not bad things. They're good things.

The Distraction of Sports

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But that's what Satan does over and over and over again. He uses good things, even the very best of things, scripture itself. He quotes scripture, but twists it and turns it to distract us, to lie to us, to get us to slowly begin to put our attention on the world instead of focusing our attention on Christ. He blinds our minds. There really is someone out to get us. Satan does not want us to focus our attention on Christ. He's trying to hold on to this kingdom that he's claimed for himself, and he doesn't want to let go. And he's fighting. And when we pay attention to the things of the world, more than paying attention to Christ, by one degree at a time, we slowly get off track. And so this next story that I'm going to share with you, I'm not picking on anybody, okay? Some of you may feel like, Nathan, you're picking on me. I'm not. What I'm about to share with you is something that I struggle with myself, okay? But just as churches have liturgies, Satan uses liturgies. And so, what is a liturgy? A liturgy is a repeated set of practices intentionally designed to train the affections of the heart and the imagination to shape our allegiances and our desires. Okay? So here it is. That's my statement. Now here's my evidence. An SEC game has sacred time. Saturday afternoons. There's a pilgrimage to a stadium. There's a sacrifice of time and money. We adorn ourselves with investments of different colors. We have chants and songs that we sing. There's a shared community, fellowship together. There's a shared story and a shared enemy and a promise of glory. These rituals can stimulate the feeling of transcendence and belonging while leaving the soul untouched and unchanged. It can also just be a good time with friends, all right? So how do we know? How do we know if SEC football in our life has become a vainglory, if it's distracting us from God? Well, here are some ways, here's some things to ask yourself. SEC football can become vainglory when winning gives me a deeper emotional high than Christ does. When losing disturbs me more than my sin does. When I meditate more on my team's ranking than I do on Scripture, when I feel a greater sense of fellowship in the stadium than I do among God's people, when I know the team's story better than the gospel story, when I excuse pride, contempt, rage, or drunkenness because it's game day, when I use The teen to feel a sense of self-importance, or when I need the ritual to feel alive, significant, and connected.

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If those things are true, it stopped being a game. It's a distraction.

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And I can tell you, from being on staff at this church, we plan around game day. We plan around the fall. Right? These games take place on Saturday, guys. But we do. We plan around it. Because so many, and this isn't just true of us, this is American culture. We are consumed with sports. We are consumed with activities. We are consumed with all kinds of things that are distracting us from the ultimate good of God's glory. And so what Paul says that we're to do, like how do we, how do we change the affections of our heart? How do we transform? How does God transform us? Well, it says that we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And so we need to take time to meditate on Jesus. Our heart is changed by the things that we pay attention to. And if we pay more attention to even the good things in this world, more so than the things of God, of the gospel, of the things that bring real change and transformation in the world, our heart is going to be affected by that. I mean, it takes it takes time. It takes time for the heart to change. And so, like, coming to a sermon once a Sunday is not enough. Reading your Bible for five minutes in the morning may not be enough. Saying a simple prayer around the dinner table may not be enough. Think about how much time Satan is using to distract you and all of these other things, these things of the world. It takes time. Takes two hours to watch a movie and to be entertained by a movie. Two hours. It may take that long in prayer and reading scripture for your heart to come alive with the gospel, to shake off the things of this world. It may take two hours. Are we willing to give our time to it? Do we really believe that Jesus has the power to transform people's lives? In fact, he's the only thing in this world that has power to change people's lives? Do we believe that? It's what Scripture tells us, it's what these passages last week and this week are telling us, it's that Jesus is the one who can change us. Jesus is the one who can change our world. Jesus is the one who can end the war in Iraq or in Iran. Jesus is the one who can bring peace to the streets in Memphis. Do we believe that? When we see crime in our city, do we think we need to share Jesus? We need to get Jesus out there, or do we say we need more police officers on our street? Because that's turning to the ministry of Moses. That's turning to the law. That's saying that the law can protect us. No. The law is not going to change anybody's heart on the streets of Memphis. Only Jesus is. Where did Jesus go? When we read the scriptures in the gospel, where did Jesus go? He went into the world with the light, he went into places of spiritual darkness with the light of the gospel. Jesus said that I am the light of the world. When he talked to his disciples in Matthew chapter 5, he said, You are the light of the world. Do not hide your lantern under a bushel, but raise it up for all to see. Guys, this is Jesus' plan is for us to be light in places of darkness, for us to take the gospel into the places that are hard and difficult, where people are suffering, where we may be afraid to go. I haven't heard this much lately, but that first year that I was on staff here, I was hearing it regularly. And I think that we were kind of having an outbreak of people breaking into trucks and stealing things out of people's cars. And there was just a sense of fear. And I was trying to get people to go with me into Binghampton, to go, to go meet with some of the men at the BDC and to share with them or going into Cornerstone. And I would hear regularly, Nathan, stop. That's not safe. I'm not going there. Think of this. If people who believe that Jesus is the only way of salvation, if God's light that he put here on earth won't go into places of spiritual darkness, Satan's one.

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Nothing will ever change.

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God wants us to be courageous, to take the good news that he has deposited in us and to share it with others. Two nights ago on Friday night, Kim and I spent time with some friends of ours, Damon and Heidi Rimigallo. Some of you may know Damon and Heidi. Heidi for many years was a nurse practitioner at Christ Community Health Services. Damon worked with Soup Campbell at Icon Ministries and helped the disciple people in Binghamton, young young men in Binghamton. And for the last 20 years or so, they've been serving as missionaries in Ethiopia, working amongst Somalis and Ethiopian people, sharing the gospel, planting churches, right? And so we went to be with them and to kind of hear an update about their ministry. And while we were talking, Heidi shared with me this. She said that in her missions organization, in other missions organizations throughout America, that we are sending fewer and fewer missionaries. And I asked Heidi, I said, What why do you think that is? And she said, because we as Americans don't want to give up our comfort, that we do not understand a theology of suffering, that we do not know what it means to be a disciple, we do not know how to take up our cross and to follow Christ, that we have given ourselves over to our prosperity gospel, whether we preach it from the pulpit or not, believing that God is here simply to save ourselves and to enrich us in this world so that we might one day have a place to live with Him in heaven, but that our lives are completely cut off from the world and the problems of the world. That we're we're moving into gated communities, we're isolating ourselves from the problems of the world, we want politics to bring change, government to bring change, that we've ceded our responsibility as Christians over to systems of the world to bring change and transformation. She didn't say all those words, I added some, but that's basically what she was saying.

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That's basically what she was saying. We've gotten comfortable.

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Guys, when we look at the beauty of Christ, when we behold his glory, when we look upon him, he'll change our hearts. And so, how do we do that? How do we look upon the face of Jesus? It's by primary way reading scripture, reading the gospels. This passage of scripture we're reading today, Paul's saying that Jesus is the one who reveals God's character. Jesus is the one who reveals God's glory. So if we want to know who God is, God's given us Jesus, the incarnation of himself on earth, and we can look in the scriptures and we can we can see who God is. And as we read about him, we can also begin to commune with him and have fellowship with him, because now we understand him. And he begins to speak not only about who he is, but how he changes our hearts. And so this is kind of what it looks like. We need to make a subtle shift. When we come together in Sunday school or in church or even reading our own Bibles, we need to shift from just reading about information about God to looking for places of obedience, change, transformation. So this is what it might look like. Okay, so we're reading the story of Jesus and his crucifixion, and on the cross, Jesus cries out and says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So we can we can read that and we can enter into that passage with Jesus and we can say, God, I too feel forsaken. My mom hurt me bad when I was a kid, and I've been carrying resentment towards her ever since.

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I'm hurting. Can you meet me in my pain?

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Jesus, same cross, also said, Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Jesus, can you help me to have that kind of forgiveness in my heart towards my mom who hurt me so bad? Jesus, if you were able to forgive those who crucified you, who killed you, can you help me to forgive someone who said something mean to me? As we enter into the story and commune with Christ, our heart begins to change. It begins to be transformed. And that's what God uses. He uses a transformed heart and multiplies it out in the world. So when we take our transformed heart and then we go to someone else who's experiencing grief or problems or hurting or pain, God uses the redemption in our lives through our testimony to help other people see Jesus. We're the first picture of Jesus that many people will see. We're not perfect. We're not asking people to look, oh, look how holy I am. No, that's not it.

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Guys, look, Jesus changed my heart, and he can change yours.

A Call to Focus on Jesus

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God wants us to move out into places of spiritual darkness with the good news of Jesus Christ. He wants us to engage our world so that others might be redeemed, so that other people might come into the family of God to worship him. God wants to adopt people into his family, but it we only come one way. That's through faith in Jesus. There's no other way to be reconciled. There's no other way for us to receive the deep healing that we need. There's no other way for us to experience eternal joy, peace. And some of you may be out there saying, Nathan, like I come to church most Sundays and I'm not experiencing the things that you're experiencing. I'm saying, hold on, persevere, push in, press in, pray, read the scriptures, ask Jesus to open your eyes, ask Jesus to open your hearts. If what I'm saying is not true, then the Bible's not true. Because Paul is saying that it is God who illuminates the human heart with the picture of Jesus. That's all we've got. If what I'm saying is not true, this religion is dead and useless. But I believe it is true. I believe that it is real. I believe that this book, this word, this promise in Jesus Christ is what brings change and transformation into our city, which is so desperate for it. But we can't sit on the sidelines and expect others to do it. He's moving us, he's moving this church. Somebody, this church is 71 years old, I think. I remember Chris Carter sharing this story in a new member's class. He said that in the charter of our church, that this this church was chartered for the purpose of wrapping its arms around the city of Memphis. For it to be a cathedral-like church in the middle of the city, where we're located is not an accident. We are where we are because God spoke to people 71 years ago and said, plant a church in the middle of the city to reach the city for Christ. That's what this church was commissioned for. And to do that, we have to look at the beauty of Christ, behold his beauty, to elevate him in our lives, in our families, so that others can experience the transformation that God desires. One last thing I think maybe the last time I was up here, I don't know. I shared the story about the Moravians. I've told this story once before. I'm not going to share the whole thing. But the Moravians were a group of people who had this amazing missionary movement, sending hundreds of peoples to the nations. How many years were they in prayer? Was it a hundred years? A hundred years of 24-hour prayer? Is that I don't know. I may be exaggerating. A hundred years of prayer, of beholding the glory of God, their hearts being penetrated and released and sending out. And this is the passage of scripture that held everything together, that informed the way that they ran their businesses and gave money to support missionaries, the way that it governed their education of their children, the way that it governed their religious community, everything hinged on this verse, Revelation chapter five, verse twelve. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. Everything that we have, everything that we are, everything that we do as followers of Jesus belongs to him. We are to cast not only all of our worries, but all of our accolades upon Jesus. Look into his glorious face and see the face of God and experience the transformation that he has for you. Let us pray together. Heavenly Father. I don't know if there are 350 people in this room, there are probably 350 ways that we're being distracted right now to think about other things, things of this world, things that affect our appetites, sometimes even good things, great things, Lord, but Satan's using them as a distraction in our life. So that we're not focused on the greatest thing, your son, Jesus. And God, I I confess, like, Lord, this is a hard message to preach, but it's an easy message to preach, but it's hard because, Lord, I'm guilty. There are so many things that are distracting me right now, Lord. God, and there are things that are important to me. There are things that I don't want to give up. But Lord, I pray that you would do surgery in my heart and that you would just remove those things. Help me to turn from them. Lord, I I don't I love grizzlies. I love the grizzlies. I love going to Grizzlies games. Lord, if there may be someone in this room who you're asking to give up their grizzly tickets, their season passes because they're spending more time thinking about the grizzlies than they're thinking about you. Lord, you you may be calling us just to lay down our phones, lay down our computers. I don't know, Lord. But whatever it takes, Lord, help us to not be distracted. Help our minds to be clear. Help us to see Jesus. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen.

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Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the podcast for Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. We pray that today's message has inspired and encouraged you in your walk with Christ. To stay connected with our church community, visit us online at ChristchurchMemphis.org. We hope to see you this upcoming Sunday for worship as we seek to glorify God and make disciples of Jesus Christ among all peoples.