Good morning.
We are going to be reading from 2 Corinthians this morning, starting in the second chapter. It is good to be with you this morning. I recognize most of the faces in the audience here. I’ve been here before.
We are going to start with the fourteenth verse, 2 Corinthians 2:14.
But thanks be to God, Who always leads us in triumph in Christ,
and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.
For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved,
and among those who are perishing.
Chapter 3, verse 4.
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.
Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves,
but our adequacy is from God,
Who made us adequate as servants of a new covenant,
not of the letter, but of the Spirit;
for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
And lastly, 2 Corinthians 4:18.
While we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen;
for the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Let’s pray.
As we look at temporal things and see through to eternal things, Lord, help us. Lord, we call upon the Spirit that lives within us to see what it is that You are revealing to us personally today.
Lord, we want to be Your servants. We want to be in a right relationship with You so that we receive what You have to give us in fullness to share with the world, so we are fragrant. We are a fragrant aroma to those around us that You have ordained to be saved.
Lord, help us to be in Your presence, walk in Your presence, and act in Your mercy. Lord, just help us to be You in this world. It is in Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
Now, this morning, I have a little bit to share. I’m not sure how long it’s going to go, but I can truncate it pretty quickly.
I received an email from the brothers here, and they said, “We would like you to share.” And I went, “Me? Okay.” So I prayed about it, and I got the email pretty quick. They said, “We would like you to keep it short.” And I’m going, “Okay. I understand.”
There were two men’s names attached to this letter, and one of them wrote it. So sometimes you get dragged along. Is that what I’m hearing?
So I said yes, and then I’m sitting there going, “How do I tactfully ask them how long they want me to speak?” Pretty soon, about a day later, I got an email that said, “Twenty to forty minutes would be plenty.” And I said, “Okay, cool. That sounds good to me. That’s fine.”
But whoever wrote it followed it up. I know who wrote it, but we won’t mention his name right here. I don’t think he’s here to defend himself right now. You can’t tell him. I have no problem.
This morning, our brother was standing up here reading my notes, and I’m going to start out by talking about the Ark of the Covenant. We’ll come back to that. You’ll see how it fits.
The Ark of the Covenant was in the Holy of Holies, in the tabernacle first and then the temple later. It was a golden box, correct? I think it was acacia wood overlaid with gold. So you have the receptacle.
You have rings on the side of the box, because the box wasn’t to be carried, or even out in the open, unless it was traveling to the next destination. And who was it that was ordained by God to carry the box? The priests.
Yes, with a long stick on both sides, on their shoulders, and they walked with it. No other way.
What was inside of the box? A jar of manna, which represented, I believe, God’s provision. Don’t you agree? It was the manna. It’s what God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness to eat. He provided some other things, but the manna was the main thing.
The budded staff of Aaron, which was the blessing, which was the charge He gave to Aaron as the high priest. It was an almond staff that budded and produced fruit, and they stuffed it in the box to remember. So that kind of fits our leadership conference, I think, a little bit, that does ordain people or put people into leadership.
And the last thing that’s in the box, if I remember correctly, is the Ten Commandments. Is that right? Yes, the second edition. The first one didn’t make it.
What is on the cap of the box? The mercy seat, with the cherubim facing each other. What was on the box a lot of the time? The presence of the Lord.
Once a year, something was added to the box. The high priest went into the Holy of Holies, and he sprinkled blood on the box. What was the lid called? The mercy seat.
The Ten Commandments are our judgment, a magnifying glass on men’s hearts. But the final word—the lid on the box—was the mercy seat. And blood was applied.
The Ten Commandments were given to man so they could see where they stood. And often man took care of their sins by doing the right thing. You still see that today. They take care of their sins by trying to do the right thing.
I’ve got a story. It’s a little bit crass. For a farm boy, it doesn’t matter. For a fellow that grew up near the countryside or baled hay, it’s not a big deal. For anybody that’s prepared an animal to cook, it’s not a big deal.
But I lived here in Virginia for fourteen years, and for a portion of that time, I ran a church camp way down just about in North Carolina. It’s a little town of Yale. If you don’t know anything about Yale, you don’t know anything about Yale. There’s not much there—peanut and cotton fields, maybe a prison or two, and maybe a river running through it somewhere.
I ran a church camp, and on Sunday afternoons after church service, we had registration. During registration, it’s all hands on deck. One hundred and fifty kids come in, and some of them come with one parent or two, or an aunt or an uncle, so it just gets huge.
We’ve got to get the kids situated. We’ve got to make sure the air conditioning is running properly. In the summer, you’ve got to make sure the air conditioning is running properly. You just have to get everything together.
One hour before registration started, I got a call on the walkie-talkie. Charlie—the guy working for me—said, “You need to come to the front gate.” I said, “Charlie, I don’t have the time.” He said, “You need to come to the front gate.”
I said, “Just tell me what’s going on.” He said, “There’s a dog that died in the road at the front gate, a great big hunting dog.” You guys know about the hunting dogs that roam around—the deer dogs? Well, somebody shot a deer dog, and it died right in front of our entrance.
One hour before registration, we had this dead hunting dog. It was stiff, and it had long legs. It was about ninety degrees with about eighty percent humidity that day. Does anybody know about yellow clay around here?
So Charlie and I went out to dig in the yellow clay to get rid of this dog, because camp was coming. The sweat was rolling off of us, and it was filling our shoes. You ever been there, where your shoes were wet because sweat was rolling down your leg?
We were going to get a shower before registration, so we were digging to bury this dog. We were hitting hard clay, and we could not bury this dog.
We got down about this far, with enough dirt to heap over the dog. He was still stiff. Can you picture it? We put him on his back and covered him as best as we could to keep the stench down. But he was in the dirt with his legs in the air.
Folks, that is what your sin looks like when you try to take care of it yourself. And you see the world covering up their sin all the time.
It’s a funny story, but when you take the light of the Ten Commandments and shine it on your life without the lid, it’s a pretty bleak thing to look at.
The dog story did end. I went out the next day to take care of the problem, and I couldn’t find the dog. Some other animal had come along and said, “Oh, drumsticks,” and took care of the situation.
We never could find out where that dog was, because it rained after that and covered it over with more sand. So if you go into Camp Rudolph, somewhere up the trail, there’s a dog buried along there. Kind of interesting.
But that dead dog is sin in our lives. With the Christian, we still have this old man. You know about the old man, right? He kind of pops up every once in a while, even though he’s been crucified. We’ve been crucified with Christ. That old man is still there.
The title today is “Observations of a Servant.”
The first servant I want to talk about—actually, both of these servants—I don’t particularly think they were super willing at the beginning. But one was born into slavery, and then there was an edict of death put on his head. So his mother built an ark, covered it with pitch, and floated it in the Nile.
Slave. Death edict. Put in the Nile. I’m sure God was guiding the whole time.
The princess of the time found the baby in the ark and pulled him out. By God’s leading, I’m sure, she raised the child. But the child was weaned by the mother who gave up her child. God’s hand? Absolutely.
The child grew up in prominence as a prince—a Jewish prince in Egypt. Kind of interesting, huh, when all the rest of the Jews were slaves, as far as I know?
He felt like he was going to deliver. He was going to bury that dog, and he killed an Egyptian because the Egyptian was tormenting a Jew. Everyone accused him, and he had to leave.
So he was cut off from his family. He was cut off from his substitute family, which was Pharaoh and his household, and he went into the wilderness.
There’s another fellow that I want to talk about today. He grew up in a household where both his mom and his stepmom were at odds. There was deception through and through in the family.
Father was a deceiver. Mama was a deceiver. There was bitterness. There was anger. I know there was, because one wife was favored over the other. One wife couldn’t have children for the longest time. The other one was fruitful, and they were fighting against each other just to have time with Dad.
And Dad was deceitful too. He was a deceitful man in so many ways. Now, God changed him over time. But because his stepbrothers hated him, and he was favored by his father, they threw him in a pit. Then they drew him out and sold him into slavery.
Any similarities? Maybe. It seems to me that there were similarities there.
So, we have two men. The second man was sold into slavery, and he came into prominence in a rich man’s house. But guess what? The prominence didn’t last, because he was accused of something he didn’t do by a woman that wanted him. And he went into prison for three years.
Do you think that Moses or Joseph questioned the Lord at this period of time? Maybe they did. God was dealing with them.
We’re in a new covenant. They were in the old covenant. But when you kill an animal and skin an animal, and you want to make the skin usable, its grip on the flesh has to be removed. The flesh has to be removed from the skin for it to be usable.
And I believe that was what God was doing with these two men. He was working them into a place where the world was not important, where their number one priority was the Lord.
You can see that, because He eventually put them both in very useful places: one to save His people from famine and reconcile his family.
If you look at how Joseph reconciled with his brothers, there was no bitterness. He cried out—he bawled—when he actually revealed himself to them. And they still couldn’t understand his forgiveness.
Even when his father died, they just couldn’t understand the forgiveness. But you can see Joseph listening to the Lord and reacting to the Lord through all of those circumstances, up to the point where he brought his brothers and his father into Egypt to live in the land as free men. That did not change.
But the second man was sent back by God to free them from the land that Joseph brought them to. And they left with Joseph’s father’s bones.
Jacob knew. He knew what was going to happen. He knew God’s plan. God had given the vision to see through the circumstances of the day, and I believe He does you too.
Because when we get heaven’s eyes, we can see through to certain things that He’s drawing us to. Because He is. What is heaven but the Lord Jesus Christ?
These three remain: faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love. We see through a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. If that isn’t heaven, I don’t know what is.
We can experience it here. We can. I truly believe we can experience that here. It’s that relationship.
But you can see in Joseph and Moses’ lives how God got them to the place where they weren’t trying to be an Uzzah. Uzzah—am I pronouncing that right? He touched the ark.
The Ark came back—this is way later—the Ark came back to Israel, and somebody put it on wheels. He thought maybe he could reach out and do something for the Lord, and he grabbed hold of the ark when he knew he shouldn’t have. And what happened to him?
It’s good for luggage, but it’s not good for the ark. Isn’t it nice for luggage to be on wheels? But God didn’t intend that.
Often we want to bury the dog when it’s the Lord Jesus Who needs to help us bury the dog. We come to Him first.
That ark was to be held on the shoulders by the priests, correct? Not be on wheels, and not be touched by some guy who thinks he’s great and going to do something for the Lord.
Because what can we do for the Lord that will last for any period of time without Him? I think we read the Scripture already.
So God prepared Moses by knowing what Pharaoh’s ways were, so he could go back and do what needed to be done to release the Israelites from captivity by God’s hand. And Joseph knew how to bring his brothers back and his father back so they would not starve.
This last summer, I was dean for a week of camp in Indiana, but we went to Michigan for a whole week for an adventure camp—a mission adventure camp. We would do mission work, serve a facility, and in the meantime have teaching, go on canoe trips, and whatever else you might do out in the woods.
We dealt with the rain, made a campfire, cooked outside, and did without a shower a night or two.
I had one young man who had the habit of venturing off. This was a mixed group—boys and girls, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade. Anybody that’s worked with youth understands what’s going on there. And not all of them were Christians.
We traveled up in separate vans, and we were as separate as we possibly could be. But the last three years, this young man and this young lady kind of roamed off on their own, and that was a no-no with me.
We had a confrontation, and I said, “I think I’m going to send you home if I have any more problems. I’m not playing around.” There was some flailing around.
The next day we had a canoe trip, and I was talking to the other guy who was leading the camp with me. He said, “We need one person in a canoe to carry the first-aid kit, the snacks, the water, all that stuff, and the rest of us will be in the kayaks.”
I said, “Wow, I really need a second person in the canoe with me just to weigh the canoe out so it’s not doing this crazy stuff down the water. That’s not good for me.” So I said, “What about Joseph?” And he said, “Well, sure.”
This is the guy that got into trouble. So I asked him, and he said, “Okay, I’ll be in the canoe with you.”
I used to teach canoeing, so I know how it works. And I explained it to him very simply: the guy in the back does most of the steering, and the guy in the front kind of follows the lead.
After a while, once you get going, you don’t even have to talk to each other. You realize what the other one is doing, and you go where you need to go. But if you fight against the guy in the back who’s steering, it’s a tough road. That’s a tough road.
When we started out, I said, “You will tip us at least once, maybe two times.” He said, “I will not.” Within ten minutes, he tipped us.
It was him trying to manipulate something he thought needed to be fixed that did not need to be fixed. And for five hours of a six-hour canoe trip, this young man fought against me. He did not come under the authority of the fellow in the back.
But in the sixth hour, something clicked. And I said, “Here, let me show you what I can do. You sit still with a paddle across your canoe, and I’ll take you right between these two leaves, and we won’t touch these two leaves. I’ll guide you right up through.”
Nothing touched. And he said, “I see that rock right there.” I said, “I will take us right around that as you put your paddle in the water now. I’ll tell you when to stop.” And we steered around.
For the last hour, it was so pristine and so smooth, and he was so stunned. Why? Because he came under.
And that’s what Joseph and Moses, I believe, learned during this period of time: to come under the staves of the ark, because they were carrying His name. They were doing what He wanted them to do. He had prepared them.
Why do you think Moses took his shoes off his feet? It was holy ground, but what does that have to do with anything? God was just asking him to submit.
It probably was holy ground, but the thing is, there’s an element of the heart here. He is working on our hearts.
I’ve worked in various ministries, and I look back on those ministries and go, “Wow, was He working on the people around me, or was He working on me?” The answer is, “Uh-huh.” But I need to concentrate on this guy. What was the Lord doing with me?
How do I come under His authority? Because you can’t be in authority unless you’re under His authority. And there’s no one in here that is not in authority some way. God has given you something to do.
And if you don’t do it in His love, under the mercy seat, under Jesus Christ, it’s not worth anything. I always love saying, if you’re going to do something, do something that will last for eternity. And it’s something He does through you.
There is a place in California. It’s called Burney Falls. Has anybody heard of it? Have you been there? Okay, let me tell you what Burney Falls is.
I hiked through the area, and I came across a road crossing. There were three tiles coming out—these great big galvanized tiles, you know, the things that divert water. They were in the mountainside and rushed under the highway. Not a real pretty spot.
But the water was coming from nowhere but underground. These tiles were as high as I could reach, three of them gushing at least half full. They went through a really arid area that turned green as the water went down, and then it dumped over these waterfalls a couple miles down.
As I understand it, this water doesn’t get above forty-two degrees. Now, if I had a glass like this one right here, what could I do with that water? Absolutely.
Well, if I went down where the falls are coming down, let’s see, it says a day, one million gallons flows over this fall—one hundred and twenty-nine feet, forty-two degrees. How pure is that water? Drinkable. Yes.
God’s grace, provision, His place for us to be, is under all the blessings and the things He has to offer us. And when we get in the way and we don’t come underneath Him, it is like that little level.
Who has ever balanced a washing machine or a dryer? You know those little things with a bubble on the inside? It’s a round one. You’ve got to get that bubble right in the center.
See, we get in the center of that bubble, in the center of His will, and all of His blessings are there. I think we’ve sung a couple songs about that.
And on a hot day, we can go under that fall and lean back and drink everything that He has to offer through His Son, Jesus Christ. That’s a beautiful thing.
So, I’m going to read the Scriptures one more time. I’m not going to tell you what to think, and then we’re going to end in prayer. We are going to go back to 2 Corinthians 2 and read again.
This fragrance of Christ in verse 14: I went to the Holy Land in 1995, and I was walking through one of the traditional sites—the Garden Tomb. I was walking along, and my hand hit a plant.
Imagine the spot I was in anyway. It was pretty neat to be there. But I hit a plant that was fairly fleshy, and the skin broke on that plant. The air filled with a fragrance. It was oregano.
It just permeated. I could walk three feet away and still smell it, and I felt the moisture on the back of my hand. I just hit it by accident. They might have placed it there for that purpose. I don’t know.
But when we read this verse, remember the air filling with that fragrance. This is a wonderful fragrance.
But thanks be to God, Who always leads us in triumph in Christ,
and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.
He’s just preparing hearts, folks—ours. Just go along with it.
For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved,
and among those who are perishing.
Be His fragrance.
In 2 Corinthians 3:4, it says:
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.
Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves,
but our adequacy is from God,
Who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant,
not of the letter, but of the Spirit;
for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Yes, the letter kills. It’s a dead dog. You know the dead dogs in your life. Let the Lord take them. They have already been dealt with in the finished work. It’s a finished work.
And the last one is 2 Corinthians 4:18:
While we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen;
for the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
When He deals with our hearts, we can see further into what He’s doing. We really can. No encumbrances.
So when the second generation, the Levites, walked into the Promised Land, and they were holding the ark on their shoulders, the first guy’s foot hit what should have been the Jordan, and he stepped on dry ground. What happened in his mind and his heart?
Because the Jordan heaped up. He heard the stories. He fed under the provision of the manna. He was just in the right place at the right time, doing what the Lord asked him to do.
And these men walked across into the full promise of the Lord. Almost. They didn’t take the whole land, but pretty close. But they honored Him to that point, so the waters heaped up and they walked in.
And that’s my prayer for you today: that you’re able to walk in His freedom, under His light yoke, and see what He has for you on a day-to-day basis.
I have a brother that says, “Lord, what’s next? Lord, what’s next? Lord, what’s next?” But in the process, he’s also seeing eternity.
Let’s pray.
Lord God, whatever’s been said today, I know Your word does not come back void. Lord, we just ask You to seal whatever it is that You’ve done.
Lord, we thank You for the service. We praise Your name. We give honor and glory to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We just pray that we respond—the fellow in the back of the canoe. Lord, that we respond and we go forward and we’re part of the process.
And we recognize whose authority we’re under, whether we’re following someone else or we’re leading ourselves. Lord, help us to do it in the humility that we see in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, by the Spirit that lives within us.
And pray that He is able to live through us. It is in Jesus’ precious and holy name we pray. Amen.