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Gospel Persuasion

2Corinthians: Paul's Most Underappreciated Epistle

Feb 3, 2019


by: Jack Lash Series: 2Corinthians: Paul's Most Underappreciated Epistle | Category: NT books | Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:11

I. Introduction
 A. 2 Corinthians 5:11a Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.
 B. The therefore ties this to what he has been saying before.
 C. He’s just said that he is eager to please the Lord since one day he’s going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ and receive what he is due for the things he has done. And then he says, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.”
 D. So Paul and his associates work to persuade others of the gospel because of their fear of the Lord. 
II. Lets talk about the fear of the Lord and it’s role in the communication of the gospel.
 A. Usually we think of sharing the gospel as an outworking of love.
 B. But love is not the only reason we try to convince others of the truth of Christ. It’s also because of the fear of the Lord.
 C. The world talks today as if it’s bad to do anything because of fear, partly because they don’t want to believe that anything truly fearsome exists.
  1. But the Bible speaks of the fear of the Lord as a healthy and a holy thing.
  2. The fear of the Lord motivates Paul to persuade people about Christ.
  3. He’s just talked about how all men will appear before Christ on the last day and answer for what they’ve done. And he is determined not to fail in his duty to communicate the gospel to others.
  4. In a few minutes I’ll tell you a story which helps this make more sense. But first, let’s talk about...
III. Persuasion
 A. Persuasion is a big part of Christian ministry in the NT.
  1. Acts 18:4 [Paul] reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.
  2. Acts 19:8 And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.
  3. Acts 26:28 Agrippa said to Paul, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?”
 B. The reason for this is that Christian faith is based on good reason.
  1. The gospel makes sense. It is rational. It is logical. There is a great desire on the part of many to make it look ridiculous and laughable and absurd. And so, many of he best intellects on earth work to come up with the best arguments against Christianity. And if enough of them conclude that it is preposterous, then everybody else starts feeling like it’s safe to say it’s preposterous.
   a. When we communicate the gospel to others, we’re appealing to people’s reason.
  2. This is because God, who knows our minds better than we know them, for He made us able to think, communicated it to us.
  3. This is not the way many people in the world think about faith. 
   a. They think that even though all the evidence is against it, we believe it by faith.
   b. No, all the evidence is for it, so even though we can’t see it, we believe it because of the evidence.
   c. How can two people look at the same evidence and come to such opposing conclusions?
   d. This evening, the Super Bowl is being played. There will be seven people wearing zebra stripes running up and down the field among players from both teams. Why? Because we all know that human nature is such that you cannot trust the judgment of someone who has a vested interest in a decision. The players can’t be trusted to decide whether or not they were fouled. The coaches can’t be trusted to decide whether or not their team jumped offsides. The fans of one team cannot be trusted to make a judgment about whether one player targeted another. That’s why the league hires people who supposedly don’t care about who wins to make these judgments.
   e. This explains why people – many of them extremely smart – can’t be trusted to judge whether the claims of Christianity are true or not.
 C. And therefore we know how ineffective persuasion is.
  1. We know ignorance is not ultimately what keeps people from the truth.
  2. We know it is not because they haven’t heard it presented in just the right way.
  3. We know that human nature is such that people are closed to God. And presentation of the truth in loving and convincing fashion does not make them open to God.
 D. So, what is the use of presenting the gospel? What is the use of gospel persuasion?
  1. We believe that God opens the hearts of some people when they hear the truth of Christ.
  2. We know that the hardest of human hearts is no match for the power of God at work through the good news of Jesus Christ.
  3. It is not our job to figure out who will be persuaded by the gospel and who will reject the gospel. It is simply our job to present the gospel, as lovingly and persuasively as we are able, to anyone who is willing to listen, and then to pray for God’s life-giving power to work.
IV. Compelled by love
 A. Attempts to persuade are considered insensitive today.
  1. Many argue that to try to persuade others of the Christian faith is intolerant and narrow-minded.
 B. Why then all this persuasion? Why all this trying to change people?
  1. It’s not because we thing we’re better and we want everyone else to be like us.
  2. It’s not because we’re so convinced that we’re right and we want everyone to be right.
  3. It’s not because we’re trying to get everyone to follow God’s laws.
  4. It’s because the gospel of Christ is man’s only hope. It’s because it’s the only answer to man’s greatest problem: death.
   a. What is the atheist answer? It doesn’t have one. It just claims that there is no answer.
   b. Atheism’s message is: Stop fooling yourself. There is no hope. There is no good news.
  5. The reason people think it’s bad to try to convince other people of the Christian gospel is that they don’t believe it is true. And I understand this. Once I felt absolutely certain that no god existed. And now I feel absolutely certain God does exist.
  6. If they believed it was the message of life, they’d think differently.
  7. I don’t hear them criticizing people for trying to convince us that Christianity isn’t true.
 C. We are absolutely committed to respect and love. We believe in religious freedom. We repudiate violence and coercion as methods of winning converts. But we believe that for us to be silent would be disobedient to God and unloving to men.
  1. That doesn’t mean we don’t give everyone the right to believe whatever they want, but it means that if we have the opportunity, we are going to try to persuade you of the truth of Christ.
  2. It doesn’t mean we’re going to hound you and pursue you when you don’t want to hear.
  3. But it does mean we’re going to try to convince when we have the opportunity.
  4. We don’t believe the gospel of God’s grace in Christ is just a help through this life. We believe it is the only means by which people can obtain eternal salvation.
  5. So, for us to keep it to ourselves would be unloving, and the Bible obligates us to love everyone – Romans 13:8-10.
 D. So far, I have made two main points:
  1. That the fear of the Lord moves Christians to persuade others about Christ.
  2. That the love of the Lord moves Christians to persuade others about Christ.
V. Both of these points are well-illustrated in the OT story of the four lepers outside of Samaria.(2Kg.7)
 A. Story
  1. Syria besieges the city of Samaria, the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel.
  2. Siege warfare: how else do you attack a fortified city?
  3. People are literally starving to death inside the city, even resorting to cannibalism.
  4. Now there were four men who were lepers at the entrance to the gate. And they were starving. So they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die? If we stay here, we’ll die of starvation. If we go into the city, we’ll die of starvation. Let’s go over to the Syrian camp. If they feed us we’ll live, and if they kill us, so what? We’re going to die anyway.” 2Kings 7:3-4
  5. And so they go out to the Syrian camp, & amazingly, there’s no one there! The Syrians had heard the sound of the Lord & had fled, leaving all their supplies & food & stuff behind. 2Kg.7:5-7
  6. So they dive in. They stuff themselves, they take treasures, they fill their pockets, they hide stuff for later.
  7. But after a while they stop and say to one another, “This isn’t right. This day is a day of good news. If we don’t go back and tell the people of the city, God will punish us.”  So they went back to the city and told the others, so all the people could come out and feast. – 2Kings7:9–11
  8. However, it wasn’t easy to persuade folks. They thought it was a trick. They thought it was too good to be true. But eventually they went to the camp and found it just as the four lepers had said.
 B. This scene of the four lepers feasting in the Syrian camp is a wonderful picture of God’s people.
  1. We are lepers who have found more than we could have ever dreamed of or hoped for. It hasn’t come as a result of our cleverness or our righteousness or our zeal. We just stumbled upon it!
  2. The feast and treasure we have found, of course, is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of sinners.
  3. But many are left still starving in sin. It is not the job of us lepers to share the news with everyone else? How can we not tell them?
 C. God’s gifts are not just designed to be received and appreciated, but also to be passed on to others,
  1. He imposes a certain obligation upon a person who is the recipient of His gifts to spread them to those who are in need.
  2. God calls His people not only to be objects of His grace, but also channels of His grace.
  3. The rich must help the poor. The strong must help the weak. Those who have hope must help those who are without hope. Good news is made for sharing.
  4. These four lepers realized this. “This is a day of good news. It is not right for us to keep silent!”
   a. EUANGELIAS in v.9 in Septuagint = good news
  5. Likewise, we live in a day of good news. It is not right for us to keep silent!
  6. This sin of silence flies in the face of what Jesus is all about. God so loved the world – though it was corrupt and rebellious – that He sent His only begotten Son. He gave, He extended Himself.
  7. If we are silent, we are even more guilty than the four lepers would have been, since the treasure we have found is greater than they found, and those outside of Christ are even more in need of Him today than the starving Israelites were in need of the Syrian food and supplies then.
 D. Every person here has people who will listen to you. Every person here has some who respect them, appreciate them, hold them in high regard, such that they will listen to the things you say to them.
  1. There are doors open before each of us.
  2. Some people may hate us for telling them. It doesn’t matter.
  3. This is a day of good news. It is not right for us to keep silent!
 E. This story also helps us to understand the how the fear of the Lord drives us to share the good news.
  1. The four lepers knew God would not be pleased if they just kept the treasure to themselves.
  2. And it’s the same if we once we find the treasure of Christ, we just keep Him to ourselves.
  3. “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.”