I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of Genesis chapter 1 for our Old Testament reading. It's a short reading, but regardless, whatever Bible you're using, pretty sure it can be found on page 1. Here we speak of and hear of the work of God as our great creator. Think of the gravity of what is being proclaimed here in these opening chapters, or these opening verses of scripture, that before God created the world, there was nothing else. There was only God. And God, by an almighty work of his bare power, simply speaks, and the world is brought into existence. Here we focus, in particular, on the very first act of creation. the creation of light. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the waters and God said, let there be light. And there was light. Now turn with me, if you would, to the Gospel of John, chapter one, as we hear some repeated themes, even in the opening verses of one of the most beloved books of the Bible. Here we are told of the work of Christ, not simply as our Redeemer, but also as our Creator, as the one by whom all things were made. as Him who shines the light in the darkness, and now the work of creation is compared to the work of redemption, that He who spoke light into darkness now has come through His earthly ministry to bring light and salvation to all men. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness is not overcoming." Now turning with me one last time now, this morning at least, to the book of 2 Corinthians chapter 4 So we begin looking at a new portion of Paul's argument, an argument that he's making in this letter that he addresses to this particular congregation on the rocks, the church of Corinth. 2 Corinthians chapter 4, we'll read verses 1 to 6. Paul says, therefore, in other words, therefore in light of all that he's spoken about in chapter 3, therefore having this ministry, a ministry that's greater than Moses. This ministry, by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced disgraceful and 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 of 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 God's holy, inspired, and inerrant word. Would you pray with me? Our gracious God and Father, we do ask that you'd bless this reading of your word, but we also ask that by your spirit's power, you would bless the preaching of it, that you would open our eyes to see what your word so clearly says, that we might believe and respond in faith. We ask these things in Christ's name, amen. We have a question for everyone. What do you think is the hallmark of the ministry of the new covenant? What is its primary feature? You know, as I grew up as a kid, I was in some ways jealous that I didn't live in Old Testament times. You read of the great stories of all the magnificent work of redemption that you read in the book of Exodus, where the people of God are delivered from Pharaoh's tyranny through 10 distinct acts of judgment that befalls the nation of Egypt, 10 plagues. Think of the visible confirmation that this gives, that the God of heaven and earth is with you is here to care for people who have been enslaved to 400 years of tyranny. You think of the pillar of fire that you would see as a member of the Israelite nation would make your way for 40 years through the wilderness, and as you would sleep in the cold and the dark, you would look up and you'd see that fiery pillar providing warmth and light and safety every night. You think of what it'd be like to march around Jericho's walls after 40 years of being in the wilderness. You make it into the land of promise. You march around those walls and the walls come crumbling down simply because you have walked in obedience to the Lord, your God. Continue to read the Old Testament and hear these even more magnificent stories. The stories of midget kings fighting against giants with slingshots. stories of flying fiery chariots of prophets who would summon fire to fall from heaven by the very command and power of the speech that they had as spokesmen of the living God. You think of Elisha and the invisible army that protected him and one of his friends against an entire pagan army. You think of what great outward glory, what glorious works, I mean, even the movies I watched as a kid, you know, grew up watching The Ten Commandments every Thanksgiving on ABC. I mean, really a movie that puts a lot of even Spielberg's works to shame. You think, man, how glorious it is to see all these outward sights. And what we see in Paul's point that he's been making to the Church of Corinth so far, at least in chapter three, is that the new coven is even more glorious than these. more glorious than the bells and the whistles, the incense and the smoke, and the descent of the Lord himself, and cloud, and fire, and pillar, the tales of sound and fury, that we now are part of a covenant that is more glorious than that. But when you read the New Testament, there certainly seems to be a certain incongruity, doesn't there? You read the Gospels, and the kingdom of Israel lies in ruins. No king sits on the throne. It's occupied by Roman forces. There's no ark. There's no fiery pillar. Truly the words of the prophet Ezekiel have been fulfilled. The glory has departed. There's a corrupt religious national leadership. Even after Christ is raised from the dead and ascends on high, the apostles themselves are, from the beginning of Acts to the very end, men on the lamb. Men on the run, constantly being imprisoned in podunk towns. The nation of Israel has rejected the gospel. And if we were to summarize the book of Acts, it could really be summarized in two things from one perspective. Bunch of guys doing street preaching and getting thrown in jail for it. It's even how Acts 28 ends with Paul in prison. And as we know from the annals of church history, Paul will die in prison. Paul has begun and planted a handful of churches, each congregation small enough to meet in somebody's home. He's not the best public speaker. He's mocked for having a weak stage presence. So I think it lends a legitimate question. How can the new covenant be more glorious than what we saw under the old covenant of Moses? Paul gives us this answer throughout the course of this particular chapter, that yes, under the new covenant, a greater glory has come, but it comes in a weaker form. Paul described it later on in this chapter as a great treasure given in clay pots. Whereas the old covenant was administered by glitz and glamor, it was but a shadow. Now a greater covenant has come, but we also see that those bells and whistles have vanished. And so if Paul's point in chapter three is that the new covenant is greater than the old covenant, then the point he begins to make here in this chapter is a focus on the particular way in which the Lord has delighted to demonstrate his power in the new covenant. And that is that it is manifested in weakness. Even its presentation is flimsy. There's no visuals, there's no PowerPoint, we don't assemble and see a fiery pillar descend in the midst of a Sunday morning worship service. There's no fanfare, there's no fireworks, no bells or whistles, there's just the spoken word. And as we will see this morning, Paul says that that word is the very power of God unto salvation. So Paul's point here is simple, that the form in which the new covenant comes is something that comes much, on the surface looks much weaker. It's just a guy preaching. But this is how God exercises his saving power. And here Paul will compare the act of preaching to the act of the first day of creation itself, the calling forth and speaking of light into darkness, that the proclamation of Christ is as powerful as the act of creation itself. But here we see it as an act of new creation. preaching being the benchmark of the ministry of the New Covenant. We'll consider this in three particular ways. First, we'll consider the purity of Paul's preaching in verses one and two. Secondly, we'll consider the perspicuity of Paul's preaching. It's a very unclear word that means clarity. And finally, we'll consider the power of Paul's preaching in verses five and six. I had to say perspicuity because it's alliterative now, so you know it's easier to remember purity, perspicuity, and power. with respect to preaching. I want you to consider all the troubles that Paul has faced up to this point in his ministry with the church in Corinth. This is really a relationship that is on the rocks. Israel has rejected the gospel, and so Paul has now moved on to the Gentiles. This is the first congregation of the Gentile mission, and yet we find a number of characteristics that have befallen the church of Corinth. This is, first of all, a very fickle congregation. There's a congregation, as we saw in chapter 1, has believed the very worst in their pastor. Whispers abound that Pastor Paul is both duplicitous and manipulative. Not only is this a fickle congregation, it is also a thin-skinned congregation. As you see in the opening verses of chapter 2, Paul tells us, he says, I can't visit you right now because everything I do sets your teeth on edge. Finally, we see that this is also a very immature congregation. On the one hand, this is a congregation that has slandered their pastor. And yet, on the other hand, the person who was charged with the prime offense has repented, and this same congregation is refusing to bring that repentant offender back in and to welcome membership of that congregation, right? Logic does not seem to be this particular congregation's strong suit. And yet, this is still a church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is not to mention all of Paul's other woes that he will describe in chapter 11, the constant imprisonment, the torture, the stoning, the shipwrecks. And yet despite all of this, Paul says here in the opening verses of chapter four, despite all of this, we do not lose heart. We do not grow discouraged. How can Paul say that? Verse one, because we have such a ministry, a ministry that outshines Moses. It is a ministry of mercy. It is the glory of the new covenant. It is this reality that sets the tone and the pace for Paul's attitude in the midst of suffering. Because we have such a ministry, Paul says, we have repudiated disgraceful and underhanded ways. This is a transparent ministry. Paul here casts shade at his opponents, those men who preach about themselves, men riding one another, those letters of recommendation that we saw a few weeks ago, men trying to give off their own aura of authority and self-importance. Paul says, I'm not gonna do any of those things. You are my letter of recommendation. I don't need to play these same silly games these other guys are doing. I don't need to act underhandedly. He says, I'm not a charlatan, so I do not need to act deceitfully. I'm not here to siphon money off of a gullible church. I will not distort God's word to suit my own ends, and so eclipse God's glory. And so Paul says, because we do not deal underhandedly or deceptively, we can commend ourselves in three particular ways. One, it's a commendation of ourselves and an open manifestation of the truth. As Paul has already gone to great lengths at the end of chapter one to say, this is a ministry of simplicity, not duplicity. I'm not speaking one thing out of one side of my mouth and yet the exact opposite out of the other side. This is a ministry of sincerity. It is not a ministry of deception. We could commend ourselves to your conscience is another way in which he speaks of commending himself. In other words, he's committing himself to your own conscience, not to your billfold. He's not trying to preach to rake in the dough. I remember a number of years ago, I have a friend of mine who was a member of a different denomination, different church, and they had a guest preacher come in, and he spent his entire time as this guest preacher building up the sermon for the collection of the special offering that was to be given to him at the end of the service. So much so that when the musician came forward and he gave this quasi altar call, which was more kind of, again, building up to receive the money, the musician started playing in the background, the church pianist, the little clown music. The guy was totally oblivious. Church pianist knew what was up. Here's a man who is not commending There's a preacher who's not commending himself to the consciences of the people, but to their wallets. He's being manipulative and deceptive. And finally here, Paul says he commends himself before God, knowing that everything that Paul does, both in secret and in public, he'll have to account for on the day of judgment. And so there's a purity to Paul's preaching. Try, as his opponents may call the purity or motives of his preaching into question, Paul says this is in fact an unveiled ministry. Fully transparent. Notice the way in which he brings up the metaphor of the veil yet again. Paul says if our gospel is unveiled, In other words, if the preaching of the gospel really is the power of God unto salvation, we're doing so in such a transparent manner, then why are there so few unbelievers that come to saving faith? Again, Corinth, if you read 1 Corinthians, it's small enough to be meeting in somebody's home. If this really is such a powerful ministry, why are there so few believers, be it Jew or Gentile? This is what Paul's beginning to get at. It's almost a parenthetical statement in verses three and four. The problem isn't the gospel. There isn't a central clarity to the gospel. This is one of the things that Paul's been saying. It is an unveiled ministry. That when one turns to the Lord in faith, when one turns to Christ, that veil is removed. It's as if the light shines on, the light turns on, and you could see finally clearly everything. But here Paul says that even if our gospel is veiled among the perishing, he says that that veiling is something that comes through the work of Satan himself, the god of this age. he who labors to keep Christ obscure, to keep unbelievers from seeing Christ and being delivered from their sin. Paul's point here is that this lack of clarity is not to be found in the gospel itself. The gospel is clear. The problem is with the one who hears the gospel message. It's not that the message is not clear, it's that the man is blind. You know, if you were to take a blind man outside and he tells you that he cannot see the noonday sun, the problem is not that the sun has fallen out of the sky or that the sun has ceased to exist. The problem is that the man is blind. It is not the sun's problem. It's a giant ball of fire. The problem is the man's blindness. Such is here the case of the human condition regarding the gospel. Sin has obscured man's sight of Christ. It's not simply a Jewish problem, as we saw in chapter three. Here in chapter four, it is a human problem that extends to Jew and Gentile alike. Chapter three, Moses' veiled ministry was a ministry of judgment against Israel, but here in chapter four, we see the description of Satan himself seeking to obscure that gospel from the whole world. What good is the sun to a blind man? He continues to walk in darkness. Something is needed to light his way. Something is needed to let the scales fall from his eyes. And so it is within this context that Paul now describes what is in fact so great about the gospel. because the gospel not only is a light in the midst of darkness, the gospel is something that brings sight to the blind itself. Paul here in verses five and six speaks not only of the clarity of his preaching, but it's very power, a power that opens the eyes of the blind. If you notice in verse two, Paul uses this language of commending. Now we commend ourselves. Paul will say elsewhere, particularly in his letter to the church of Philippi, imitate me. Paul's point is not to talk about how great and awesome he is as a person, but Paul's point is, however, that because he has set his focus on Christ and because he is seeking to follow Christ, he is doing so to model what it means to follow Christ. So he can commend himself as a model to those around him. But notice the distinction here. In verse two he talks about commending himself, but in verse five he says, but I'm not preaching myself. I'm not coming here to give you a message to talk about how great and awesome I am. There's a big difference here. We do not preach ourselves. We have set ourselves as models for your maturity, models for you to imitate, but we are not here to proclaim ourselves. There is no gospel of Charles Williams that could deliver you from hell and from the wrath of God. There is only one gospel, and it's the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We preach Christ and no other, because God saves sinners through the preaching of Christ. As Paul writes in his opening letter unto the Romans, that the preaching of the gospel is indeed the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. We commend ourselves, but we are not pointing you to ourselves. Rather, we are pointing you to Christ. We are your servants. We are not charlatans. Paul's point throughout this letter, we are not here to line our pockets. Preaching is powerful, weak as it might look to the outsider. Paul describes the ministry of the gospel, the preaching ministry, as an act of new creation. As we read the first chapter of Genesis, even in the opening sentences, we are led to contemplate God's creative power. There was nothing that existed apart from God, and yet God calls all things into being by simply speaking. Let there be light. That's it, boom. There is light, light shines into deep darkness. Isaiah, when you read Isaiah chapter nine and chapter 35 and 42 and 61 repeatedly through the book of Isaiah, he likens the work as he prophesies and foretells the coming of the Messiah. He likens the work of Christ to the dawning of such a light in the midst of deep darkness. The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who have dwelt in a land of deep darkness, upon them a light has shone. In other words, what Isaiah himself prophesies and foretells is that the work of Christ and when Christ would come would bring salvation as powerful as the act of the first creation itself. Isaiah chapter 61, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. So says Christ as he reads those verses in his very first message once he is baptized and empowered by the Spirit in his earthly ministry. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim liberty and to do what? To bring sight to the blind and to turn darkness before them to light. Notice these repeated elements that we see throughout Scripture. The reality of darkness, the fact of God's speech. In other words, God's word. And then after God's speech, the presence of light. Paul, in reiterating the whole scope of the Old Testament, is saying this here in these few verses. Just as God said at the first creation, let there be light, so now he speaks again. Now through the ministry of the preaching of the gospel, through the preaching of Christ, There's an analogy to be made now. So that whenever a minister proclaims Christ, the light of the new creation dawns in the heart of the redeemed. When man is told of his state of sin and misery in the Spirit, works and operates in accordance with that word according to his good pleasure. When he translates a sinner from darkness to light. It is a miracle. It is as powerful as the very first act of creation itself. And it's something that the church witnesses week in and week out throughout the world as the Lord still continues to bring people from darkness to light. We think of preaching as weak and frail. Today we hear of churches replacing preaching for skits and PowerPoint presentations. I think because we have failed to believe in the power of preaching. because we think something else needs to be added to make it stick. Paul's point, as we'll see here in this chapter, is there's a reason the Lord has chosen to save sinners through preaching, because preaching looks really weak and silly. Sometimes it's not even that exciting to come week in and week out, to hear a guy talk for a half an hour, 35 minutes, And yet there's something that distinguishes this from a TED Talk. As weak and frail as this might be, we don't have the glitz and the glamour. We don't have a fireworks display. But what we have here through the unadulterated preaching of the word is a ministry that scripture which cannot air compares to the act of creation itself. We as a church, I'm not speaking necessarily of Westminster, but it's the church universal, In an attempt to be relevant, I think we have divested the gospel of its power. We think preaching to be foolish, so we pursue other means. Or at the very least, I think many of us might think preaching is insufficient, so we need to tack on these other items to make it work, to draw in the crowds, be it lights or banners, fog machines, incense, bells, whistles. Maybe if we do that, people will come. I remember I did college ministry in Grand Rapids a few years ago at Calvin College. It was interesting, the first week of every semester, They would allow the local churches in the area and local ministries to set up shop on the green, the open area, so that college freshmen could walk by and see what churches were available, what ministries there were at their disposal, so that they could know where to find a place to worship for the next four years while they were away. I think it was really interesting to see the various attempts that other ministries used to try to draw these people in. drawings for stereos, Xboxes, bikes. One ministry gave away, I'm not kidding you, rolls of toilet paper with the church's logo imprinted on the ply. Probably spoke a lot about the nature of that ministry. Very little regard for the centrality of preaching. I was able to count two tables out of all the tables, and this is at a Christian college. Two ministries that were concerned about making sure the kids were able to find a place to worship, that they'd be reminded that they are sinners in need of a savior, and provide literature and material that would help them grow in the Christian faith. The preaching of the gospel is the power of God to salvation. Not drawings, not giveaways, not prizes. Paul likens preaching. to the dawning of creation. It's how Christ saves sinners. It's how he governs his church. That's why the Second Helvetic Confession, say in chapter one, one of our Reformed confessions, that the preaching of the word is the word. For it is by the preaching of the word that God calls light to shine forth from darkness. It is by the preaching of Christ that the spirit removes the veil, causes the scales to fall from men's eyes, and causes the blind to see. We don't need to add anything else. The new covenant is sufficient. The new covenant is in fact more glorious than all that we saw under Moses. We don't need to add bells and whistles to prove it. Its supremacy is evidenced in the simplicity of preaching. The great J.C. Ryle has a really great little piece on what he calls the simplicity of preaching to this end. Christ has come to save sinners. It's going to look like folly to the outside world. Why would you wake up early on a Sunday morning to come hear a guy speak for half hour? To hear everyone around you sing old songs out of tune that you won't hear on the radio anywhere else. What's the value to this? Paul says this is even more glorious than you could ever imagine because it constitutes the very power of God. What is the hallmark of a faithful new covenant ministry? And it's this, it's the preaching of Christ. Simply and fully. There is no church without the proclamation of Christ. There is no salvation apart from preaching Christ. There is no faith without preaching. Paul himself says this. How will they hear unless there is one who is sent? Because faith comes through the hearing of the preached word. You've not come to hear me preach about myself because I cannot save you. I'm not your priest. But the good news is you do have a priest. You have a great high priest, one who lives above in heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is willing and who is able to save to the uttermost. And if Christ is the glory of the new covenant, then Christ is who we need to hear. that we might see him with the eyes of faith, that we might be delivered from our sin and our misery and find liberty and transformation. Let us pray. Gracious God and Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the clarity of your word, and we ask that through its preaching and your spirits power you would open our eyes. To value your word above all things. To know that it is your word and your word alone that saves that you would buy your word and by your spirit grant us the faith. And the repentance. That we might believe and turn from our sin. And walk in all that you've commanded. We ask these things in Christ name.