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By Pastor Brian Bestian
We’re living in turbulent times. Think of all the unsettling events of the past decade. There was the shocking terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Two of the world’s most impressive buildings collapsed into a heap of rubble in Manhattan, and 3,000 innocent lives were lost. Ever since then, Americans have been deeply troubled. Who knows where suicide bombers may strike next?
September 11 was followed by an unpredictable economy. The stock market, which had proved such a sound investment, took a nosedive and people lost confidence in the economy. Then there was the collapse of savings and loans, banks, and some of America’s strongest corporations due to financial greed and mismanagement.
Undoubtedly, the most volatile situation is the ongoing crises in the Middle East. Many people fear that little postage stamp of an area could be the flash point for an international calamity. The world’s most powerful leaders have been unable to bring stability to the area where Jesus was born.
In the past decade, the nation has been stunned by the moral crises in the Roman Catholic Church—priests by the score have been accused and even admitted to sexual abuse. And the world’s largest religious body is still reeling from the scandal.
In the old play, “Green Pastures,” the angel of the Lord returns to heaven after surveying the conditions on earth, and he reports, “Lord, everything nailed down is comin’ loose.” That’s our world! The foundations are shaken.
That’s why we’re beginning a new series of messages today titled, “Being Confident in Uncertain Times.” We’re going to study 2 Corinthians chapters 3-5 for the next few weeks. It’s one of my favorite sections of the Bible because it underscores the confidence that we Christians can have in the midst of uncertainty. The words “confident,” “competent,” and “bold” are used repeatedly throughout these three chapters.
They remind us that when the world’s foundations are crumbling we have a Solid Rock upon which to build our lives—the Lord Jesus Christ. So let’s take a look at our text where the apostle Paul teaches us to be humble and put our trust in God. Verse 12 is our theme verse, “Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.” Now this is not an entirely easy section to understand, but sit up and pay attention because the truths in it can help keep us calm in uncertain times.
I. Our Confidence Comes From Trusting Christ, Not Ourselves.
Paul writes in the first three verses, “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”
In the first century, travelers carried letters of recommendation from famous people to give them instant credibility. They didn’t have credit cards, or a Social Security number, or a driver’s license to establish trustworthiness. Paul was basically saying to them, “I don’t need a letter of endorsement from someone else to show you that I am a minister of Christ. Your changed lives are proof that the Lord has been at work in my ministry and in my preaching.”
There are both college and seminary diplomas hanging in my home office. I also have two plaques representing over 14 years of service as a Circuit Counselor in Texas. Those don’t mean anything to people who know me. Some of you have heard me preach for years—and amazingly you still come back! I either have credibility with you, or I don’t. You don’t judge me by a couple of plaques or pieces of paper.
Paul goes on to explain his competency in verses 4-5, “Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.” Paul’s confidence wasn’t in other people’s endorsement of his ministry, nor was it in himself—His confidence was in Christ Jesus and what He could do.
The world claims that you gain confidence by putting trust in self. We hear a lot today about the importance of building up your self-esteem. We hear phrases like: “believe in yourself,” “trust your instincts,” or “you can cope with anything.”
One of the most popular programs for preschoolers today is “Blues Clues.” (Mr. Rogers has been dethroned.) Steve, the host of Blues Clues, sings, “If we use our minds and take a step at a time, we can do anything we want to do.” You want your children to have reasonable, self-confidence. You want them to dream and believe in their potential. But to tell them they can do anything they want to do is false. If the mother of Shaquille O’Neal had told him that he could be a jockey and ride the winning horse in the Kentucky Derby some day, she wouldn’t have been truthful.
There’s a Christian song that says, “I can be anything God wants me to be.” That’s a big difference. There are some difficult challenges that we can’t resolve on our own regardless of how much we believe in ourselves. When your health breaks, your older children rebel, your mate has an affair, your stock folds, your company collapses, your infant dies, the building you’re in is bombed, all the self-confidence in the world isn’t sufficient. Your source of strength had better be something more than yourself.
As Christians we are confident in uncertain times because our trust for daily strength is in Jesus Christ, not ourselves. King David wrote, “The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then will I be confident.” (Ps. 27:1-5)
Imagine a ten-year-old boy who gets roughed up by a twelve-year-old bully at the bus stop every morning the first week of school. He’s terrified every day. One day the boy’s 200-pound father walks with him to the bus stop. Now he has no fear, because his father is at his side.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me . . . But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed . . . And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory for ever and ever.” (2 Timothy 4:16-18)
To trust in Christ, and not yourself, takes humility because you have to swallow your pride and admit your own inadequacy. The Christian life has many paradoxes. We die to live. We give to receive. We lose self to find self. We surrender to experience victory. Here’s another paradox: we humble ourselves to be exalted. We admit our inadequacy to be confident.
It takes humility to pray, “Lord I can’t cope with the stress of this day, I need your help.” When we humbly confess our inadequacy and put our trust in Him, He comes alongside to reinforce us and enable us by His Holy Spirit. Paul writes in Philippians 4:13, “Christ gives me the strength to face anything.” Sherron Watkins apparently had that kind of humble confidence. Watkins was the Enron? employee who blew the whistle about the company’s shady accounting prac¬tices. She is a non-confronta-tional person who doesn’t like the limelight. But she’s also a devout Christian. She mustered the courage to confront Enron’s? chairman after confiding with her pastor and Bible study group. They told her to do the right thing. And she did.
Before the scandal broke, she wrote a six page memo to Enron? CEO, Kenneth Lay, in which she expressed her concern that the company would “implode in a wave of accounting scandals.” She went further calling it a “crooked company” whose profits were “nothing but an elaborate hoax.” In the midst of the turmoil, she not only had the courage to risk her job, unlike other Enron? executives she refused to use her insider knowledge for personal gain. Despite seeing the company unraveling, Watkins never sold her Enron? stock. Sherron did what was right because her confidence was in God—not other people, not even herself.
II. Our Confidence Comes From Relying On Grace, Not Law.
There’s something else we need to see, beginning with verse six: “He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Corinthians 3:6)
Jerry Seinfeld said he saw a list of man’s greatest fears and the fear of death was listed third. Do you know what the number one fear was? The fear of speaking in public. Seinfeld says, “I don’t believe that. If that’s true that means that at the average funeral most people would rather be the corpse than the person giving the eulogy.” I don’t believe that’s true either. The fear of death deep down is the number one fear.
Billy Graham served as a pastoral counselor to many presidents. He once stated that he spent more time with President Lyndon Johnson than any other presi¬dent because Johnson was terrified of dying. Hebrews 2:15 says that people are held in slavery by their fear of death. What troubles us most about 911 is that we are vulnerable to being killed at any moment for no reason and without warning.
If you stop the average person on the street and ask them, “If you died tonight, do you believe you’d go to heaven?”—most would say, “I hope I’ll go to heaven, because I’ve been a pretty good person.” Most people reason that God is going to judge them by obedience to law. In other words, God is going to keep track of all the good deeds and all the bad deeds and the winning column will determine their destiny. Such a belief is false. It produces uncertainty, because you can never be sure that you’ve been good enough or where the cut line will be. So, many people in the world live in constant fear of death and judgment.
As Christians we are confident in death because we rely on God’s grace not the law. Forgiveness and righteousness comes through the shed blood of Christ. Leighton Ford tells a story about a man who died and stood before the gate¬keeper of heaven who said, “You need a 1,000 points to enter here. What good things did you do on earth?” The guy said, “Well, I was a Boy Scout and a good student. Every Sunday I went to worship and Sunday School.” The gatekeeper wrote that down and said, “Very good. That’s one point. What else?” The guy gulped and continued, “I was always faithful to my wife. I gave generously to charitable organizations. I was kind to animals. I tried to be honest in business. I taught my kids to be people of integrity.” The gatekeeper said, “Okay. That’s another point. You still need 998 more points. What else?” At that point, the guy started listing everything good he could think of: “I obeyed traffic laws. I never pulled the tags off mattresses . . .”—I mean everything. The gatekeeper said, “That’s one more point. You still need 997 more points to enter Heaven. What else have you done?” In desperation, he cried out, “I can’t think of one other good thing I’ve ever done—I guess I’ll just have to throw myself on the mercy of God.” “Ah, wonderful!” the gatekeeper said, “Now you’re starting to get it. That’s 997 more points! Come on in!”
The trouble with that illustration is we can’t even contribute one iota to our salvation. God saves us 100% (all 1,000 points)—by His grace! “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). We don’t deserve eternal life—we haven’t earned it. All we can do is humbly say, “Thank You, Lord Jesus!”
You can’t afford to pay for your sin—it’s exorbitant. But it was paid in full by the perfect suffering and death of your Savior, Jesus Christ, the only One qualified to bring healing. We are all spiritual moochers. All we can do is live lives of gratitude for what He has done for us. That’s why Paul wrote, “Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold” (2 Corinthians 3:12).
If people rely on obedience to the Old Testament moral code, there is still a veil that prevents them from seeing the love, forgiveness, and grace of God. “But whenever anyone turns to the Lord,” Paul writes, “the veil is taken away.”
When the Holy Spirit brings us to faith in Christ, we understand that the gospel is true and what’s inside matters more than what’s outside. That requires humility because we have to admit we’re not capable of discovering God’s truth on our own. In a million years, we’d never reason that the Creator would come to earth as a baby, live a perfect life, die an atoning death, and conquer the grave.
Only Jesus changes lives from within. Only His transformation results in an increasing glory. That change begins when you’re baptized into Christ and your nature is transformed. “If any person is in Christ, they’re a new creation,” and that change continues throughout our lives.
You will be tempted at times to put a veil over your face—to hide the fact that there is a spiritual glory in your life so you’ll not offend others. But a humble person is one who is more concerned with God’s evaluation than human opinion, more concerned about character than reputation. Someone suggested that humility isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s just thinking of yourself less.
Christian author John Ortberg writes, “We’d like to be humble, but what if no one notices?” Jesus summarizes it this way in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.”
The more you humble yourself, the more confident you become because your strength for the stress of every day is not in yourself but in Christ. He never fails. Your hope for life after death is not in your works but in God’s grace. He is dependable. Your self-satisfaction is found, not in your reputation that fades, but in your relationship with Christ which deepens with the passing of time. “Therefore,” Paul claims, “since we have such a hope, we are very bold” (2 Corinthians 3:12).
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