Victors, Never Victims in Jesus :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: July 6, 2021 by RR7

2 Corinthians 2:12-17

“Furthermore, when I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened to me by the Lord, 13 I had no rest in my spirit, because I did not find Titus my brother; but taking my leave of them, I departed for Macedonia. 14 Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. 15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ.”

This ‘pandemic’ has sparked a lot of issues in our lives in general. But in the lives of many Christians – the command not to assemble and when we could assemble – the limited capacities have been a burden. Here in Canada, we have had 2 pastors arrested for holding service; one was just released from jail yesterday after having been in jail since June 14th. His crime was holding church. We have had countless other churches fined, and one was confiscated by the Alberta Health Services. Yes, they came up and put a fence around the church building to try to stop people from assembling.

In the past few weeks, I have heard of splits in aged churches, some that have been around for 40+ years. The deacons and the pastor(s) have had disagreements as to how to behave in this time, and there have been resignations and division. No one in their right mind denies that COVID is real, but it is clear that it has become a tool for politicians to try and see how far they can go with taking away our freedoms before we will say ‘no more.’

It is easy for many of us who have had the privilege of worshipping without much persecution in the past to feel like we are victims, even if somewhat collateral damage in this pandemic. Paul knew what it was like to be a real victim; he was beaten, thrown to lions, shipwrecked, spent a day and night in the deep of the Mediterranean Sea, and had a host of other encounters with danger.

Over the course of almost 55 years in the church, I have heard people complain about the members of the churches they quit going to – they were cold, or too much, or too whatever they needed as an excuse to leave. We learned in Seminary that people rarely leave the church over principles like doctrines. They most often leave over personality conflicts. People get hurt and quit going to church; they blame God and think that will stand in the judgment day. Man, are they wrong!

Too many have been led to believe that the Christian life is a way out of the problems of life as opposed to a way through the problems of life, and they are disillusioned when the trouble comes, and it will.

Here in 2 Corinthians 2, we will explore a promise that God has for us, and over the next few weeks, we will look at some Bible characters that could have turned out to be victims, but in Jesus, they were victorious. Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at men and women who could have claimed victimhood by the way they were treated, and yet they were victors and saw Triumph in Jesus. We will explore those that were victimized by the families, by religious leaders, and even the devil himself. They will hopefully empower us all to trust Jesus even when the way is dark, completely obscured, or fraught with danger.

To understand the passage, we need to know the context; Paul was referring in verse 12-13 to an incident that is recorded for us in Acts 16: 1-10, where he and his traveling missionary companions sought to go to Asia and then Bithynia, and they were strictly forbidden from doing so by the Holy Spirit. In verses 9-10, Paul sees a man in a dream asking him to come to Macedonia. He arises from his sleep the next morning and immediately heads for Greece. In 2 Corinthian 2:12, we learn that he wanted to take Titus with him but could not find him, and he left without him so as to be in obedience to the Lord’s clear instructions.

Your Obedience verses 12-13

One of the hardest things to learn in life is to be obedient. As children, we are told in the Bible to obey our parents. In an encounter with Saul, king of Israel, in 1 Samuel 15:22-23, Samuel tells King Saul that obedience is better than sacrifice. Obedience is simply defined as doing what you are told when you are told and with the right attitude.

Paul was the embodiment of this definition. He heard the call of God and immediately sought a way to get to Macedonia. He did not let anything get in his way, even that he missed Titus. God’s way was more important than Titus’s presence. If we are going to be victorious in Jesus, we must be obedient. To be obedient, we must know what God says in His Holy Word. We need to study, read, apply and repeat. King David put it this way, “Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee.”

Are you and I going to sin even after we are saved? Yes!! But we can mitigate the amount and maybe even the severity of the sin that we engage in by knowing, reading, and memorizing God’s word.

If we are going to be victorious in Jesus, we must know what victory means and what it is. A runner needs to know where they are running to; if not, they can run in the wrong direction and not be victors, no matter the amount of effort they put out. One other thing about obedience in the Kingdom of Heaven: there is no competition. We are not trying to beat each other; we are not trying to knock each other out and get to the top in a ‘king of the hill’ type of competition. Rather, we are to honestly cheer for each other, pray for each other and help each other to succeed. We are there to serve each other in the path of obedience, not being hindrances to each other but being each other’s biggest fans and helpers.

Can you imagine how different some of our churches would be if we all had this attitude and mentality?

Your Triumph, verse 14

In verse 14, Paul tells us that God ALWAYS LEADS US IN TRIUMPH, in Jesus. Always!! Not sometimes, not on occasion, not just when the chips fall your way, but always. This idea of triumph is based on the Roman ritual that the city would perform for a returning general who had won a decisive victory.

In David Guzik’s Blue Letter Commentary, he quotes Meyer and Barclay, and this is what we learn about the Triumph that Paul was envisioning in his mind as he wrote these words,

“The idea is borrowed from an ancient Roman triumph, which to the eyes of the world of that day was the most glorious spectacle which the imagination could conceive.” (Meyer)
“In a Triumph, the procession of the victorious general marched through the streets of Rome to the Capitol … First came the state officials and the senate. Then came the trumpeters. Then were carried the spoils taken from the conquered land … Then came the pictures of the conquered land and models of conquered citadels and ships. There followed the white bull for sacrifice which would be made.

Then there walked the captive princes, leaders, and generals in chains, shortly to be flung into prison and in all probability almost immediately to be executed. Then came the lictors bearing their rods, followed by the musicians with their lyres; then the priests swinging their censers with the sweet-smelling incense burning in them. After that came the general himself … finally came to the army wearing all their decorations and shouting Io triumph! Their cry of triumph. As the procession moved through the streets, all decorated and garlanded, amid the cheering crowds, it made a tremendous day which might happen only once in a lifetime.” (Barclay)

III. “That is the picture that is in Paul’s mind. He sees Christ marching in triumph throughout the world, and himself in that conquering train. It is a triumph which, Paul is certain, nothing can stop” (Barclay). And, Paul sees himself as sharing in the triumph of Jesus, the Captain of the Lord’s Army, and Paul is one of the Lord’s chief officers!”

Paul never saw himself as a victim, not once, no matter the circumstances, the prisons cells, the beatings, the arrests, and whatever else was thrown at him. Paul saw himself as triumphing in Jesus.

What about you and me? How do we see ourselves in trying circumstances? How do we see ourselves in Jesus? Do we play the victim card or are do we see ourselves in the triumph that Jesus has gotten? Are we in the processional enjoying the victory of our great General, King Jesus?

Notice that the Triumph was done for people who had been to war. People who had been involved in the fighting gave up freedoms and maybe even family for the advancement of the Kingdom. In this case, Rome.

What have we given up for the Kingdom of Heaven? Have you and I been to war? Have we been in the fight? Too many Christians are simply spectators; they live on the sidelines, careful not to offend and careful not to appear to be on ‘the side.’ They straddle the fence, so to speak, so as not to cause conflicts. ‘Live and let live,’ they say. We are going to heaven, but we do not want to offend anyone on the way, and many never take any with them.

No, the Triumph was for people of war, people of action, people of doing and achieving, and people of accomplishment, even if that accomplishment means nothing in the eyes of the world. Are you in the Triumph? Or are you a spectator?

Your Scent verses 15-17

When we are obedient, when we are in the Triumph that we have in Jesus, we will never see ourselves as victims. Thus, we will have our eyes and hearts open for opportunities. We will be witnesses of God’s love and power, His peace, and His salvation to all we meet. Even to the ones who hate us and reject the Gospel we bring. When people receive the Gospel, we are the sweet aroma to them of God’s grace and love. When people reject the Gospel we bring, we are still a sweet aroma of God’s grace and love. You cannot make people be saved; they have to want it for themselves. We are responsible to make them aware that there is a heaven to gain and a hell to shun.

We are not to peddle or sell the Gospel. This does not mean you can’t buy a Bible or get a religious book in the local Christian bookstore or Walmart. No, it means that we should never charge anyone to hear the Gospel. It is not designed to make us money; it is designed to be freely offered to all men everywhere. Jesus paid the price so that the Gospel can be freely had by all men. When I was a boy, I was saved at a Billy Graham-type crusade. They took an offering, but all could come freely to hear the Gospel. This is the way it should be.

We here at Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church invite you to hear us on FB. I will be teaching through this series over the next few Sundays at about 11 am eastern time (or thereabouts). We have lesson one already posted.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding

Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)

Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Malachi Lesson 8: That Day is Coming :: By Sean Gooding

Published on: June 30, 2021 by RR7

Chapter 4:1-6

“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up,’ Says the Lord of hosts, ‘That will leave them neither root nor branch. 2 But to you who fear My name The Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings; and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves. 3 You shall trample the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I do this,’ says the Lord of hosts.

4 ‘Remember the Law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. 5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. 6 And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.“

I hope that many of you began a book of remembrance, and if not, maybe you just took a few minutes to truly thank God for His many blessings. We here in North America and most of the Western world are blessed beyond all we could ask. We have fridges and freezers full of food; we have closets full of new clothes; many of us have more than a dozen pairs of shoes; we have heat for the winter, air conditioning for the summer, and a gas station on every corner, it seems. In my lifetime, other than the gas shortages in the early 1970s, which did not really affect me, I have not seen real shortages of just about anything in my lifetime.

We live in a wonderful time. We live in a blessed and privileged time. We live in a time of abundance and overflow. However, we are about to explore God’s last statement to the people of Israel from Malachi. This message would not really apply to them; all of them died before it was fulfilled. But they, the Jews in Israel, were warned that a day would come – a day that the world would never forget, a day when the wrath of God was going to be in full display, a day when men will have no doubts as to who God is and His power.

Once again, we see that there are two very distinct people in the world—those under God’s wrath and those under God’s protection. There are only two kinds of persons ever at any time on the earth. Those under God’s wrath and those under God’s protection. Which category do you fall into?

The Day of the Lord, verse 1

That day is promised—a day when God will pour out His wrath on the world. For the better part of 4,000+ years, we have lived under grace. In Genesis 6-9, the then world experienced the global wrath of God. The death of every breathing creature except the 8 persons and animals alive and preserved in the Ark that Noah built. That day, the day of the flood, had been promised in the birth of Methuselah. His name means ‘when he dies it shall come.” And wow, the grace of God is shown in that He allowed Methuselah to live the longest of the pre-flood people, some 969 years.

We were promised another day in Genesis 22:8. We are promised a day when the Lord will provide Himself as a sacrifice for man. That day did come. Jesus was born, lived, and died some 2,000 years ago. And He, God in the flesh, became the Saviour of the whole world to those who would receive the salvation He offers. The next day that is promised here in Malachi is no less sure. That day will come. I do not know if it will happen in my lifetime, but it will happen. Like the example we saw with Methuselah, the Lord is gracious and longs for all mankind to be saved. See 2 Peter 3:9.

One of the subjects that many seem to avoid in modern churches is the wrath of God. Yes, the Lord is gracious; yes, He is merciful and kind. But He is also the God who calms the storms and sends the storms. He is the God who has storehouses of hail (Job 38:22-23) and storehouses of snow. God is able to kill people just by blowing on them (2 Thessalonians 2:8). God used Babylon to judge Israel, and when He was done, He sent another army to judge Babylon (Isaiah 51:1-4). God invented earthquakes in Numbers 16:28-32 to vindicate and secure Moses as the leader of Israel in the wilderness. Yes, God invented earthquakes. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.

Too many see God as a wimpy Being pining for us. He is God; He is self-sufficient; He does not need us. He is Holy, Perfect, Righteous, and Spotless. As such, He cannot stand by and see evil and do nothing. His loving nature tends Him to grace, mercy, and kindness; but sooner or later, He has to confront evil. He is the God who can tame the dragons mentioned in Job 27 and 41? In 2 Kings 19:35, the Lord sends an angel to kill 185,000 soldiers in the Assyrian army in one night. He did not need an army, just one angel. God is powerful, and the same God who is the one who gives life is the one who takes life.

Too many today, even in the Lord’s churches, cannot imagine the God that is full of wrath. They don’t teach about Hell; they say a loving God would never send anyone to Hell. But they are wrong. People choose to go to Hell. Salvation has been provided for all. Hell is real, God’s wrath is real, and The Day of the Lord is coming.

The Promise of Protection, verse 2

In Genesis 18:23, Abraham asks God a rhetorical question, “Will you destroy the righteous with the wicked?” The answer is no; God would not do that. He preserved Noah. He went ahead and preserved Lot and his daughters, and He will preserve us as well. While the world is being dished out the wrath of God, those of us that fear God, that love Him and have humbled ourselves to trust in His sacrifice for our sins, will be blessed and cared for by Jesus, the Sun (Son) of Righteousness. He will bless us when the others are being destroyed. He will protect us when the earth is being punished, and He will help us when the rest of the world will be feeling the full force of God’s wrath.

There are many, some dear friends of mine, who teach that we will be here for the first part of the Tribulation. A cursory reading of the book of Revelation beginning in chapter 4 tells a harrowing story of what will be happening here on earth at the time of the Day of the Lord. When we see the accounts of the flood and the account of Lot’s rescue, we can clearly see that the righteous were removed to safety before the events of God’s wrath were executed.

God promised to provide safety for those that ‘fear Him,’ have reverence and love for Him. We are promised healing and that we will all grow fat. Wow, a lot of people are not going to like that they spent their whole lives on a diet just to grow fat in God’s care. But what that really means is that we will have the best of all God has to offer. While He is destroying the wicked, He will be blessing those that fear Him.

The Holiness of the Law, verses 3-4

There are many today who pass on even teaching from the Old Testament. They say it is irrelevant, we are in the new covenant, and it is a waste of time to study these old stories. During His earthly ministry, Jesus quotes from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Amos, Jonah, Micah, and Malachi. In total, in just the Gospel accounts, He references the Old Testament 78 times and the Pentateuch (Gen to Deut.) 26 times. The apostles quoted the Old Testament 209 times in their writings. It would seem that the Old Testament is still pretty important to God.

The world will be judged because they broke the law of Moses. They knew right and wrong; they chose wrong, and there are consequences that follow choices. Choose to fear God and live; all of your sins will be covered in the blood of Jesus, and you will be saved. Choose to defy God, and your uncovered, unforgiven sin will call for the wrath of God.

Everyone knows the law of God; it is engrained in us. Every culture, for the most part, teaches at least commandments 5-10, the moral code of human behavior. These laws are passed on from one generation to the next. But our modern world is seeking to outlaw good and call evil good. We encourage rebellion to parents, we encourage and even reward lying about your neighbor, we encourage envy and greed, we encourage murder, and we encourage adultery. We defy God. God’s grace is great, His mercy is long-suffering, but soon He will stand for righteousness.

Now, in the text, God is specifically speaking to Israel, but as we read through the book of Revelation, we see that the whole world will suffer under the Day of the Lord. Millions will die, disease and death will be commonplace, people will still defy God and hate Him even more rather than repent. Money will be gone, the food supply diminished, the oceans and sea harmed, and the seasons will change. At one point, ALL of the islands disappear (I am from Barbados); that is not a good thing to happen. The thing that God will do will make the imagination of Hollywood and Disney pale in comparison. For the first time, mankind will understand what real horror is.

God’s standards of holiness have not changed one bit, not even a hair. His perfection is still perfect, and no human law will negate or make God’s law obsolete. His laws will be the final standard for all judgment. Just maybe we need to be teaching the Old Testament so that we truly understand God.

The Prophet Elijah, verses 5-6

We know that Elijah was one of the two men who did not see death in the Bible. Enoch, we are told in Genesis 5:24, was taken alive by God to Heaven. In 2 Kings 2:11, Elijah was taken up in a chariot into Heaven. We do not see Enoch after this, but we hear of Elijah a lot in the Bible, especially in the New Testament.

John the Baptist is called Elijah; he came to prepare the way for Jesus. He introduced Jesus to the world in John 1:29 and 36: “Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” In Luke 1, Zechariah, John’s father, is promised that John would have the power of Elijah; and in Luke 1:17, that ‘he would turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people for the Lord.” This was a precursor to the Second coming, that Day of the Lord.

In Jesus’s first coming, He did not strike the earth with a curse; rather, He took the curse of death and killed it (1 Corinthians 15: 55-57). We then meet the real Elijah just before Jesus is crucified in Luke 9:30. There as Jesus is transformed into His glory – for a little bit – Peter, James, and John get to see Moses and Elijah in the flesh. Real people, talking and walking with Jesus. This was shortly before the crucifixion. But in the book of Revelation, we are told that two witnesses will stand in Israel in the Temple Mount and cry out against the evils of the world, and they will be indestructible for a time, even calling fire down to kill their enemies. We see them in Revelation 11; they have awesome power. Eventually, they are killed, then resurrect, and then the full wrath of God is poured out on the earth.

You can read the Revelation for yourself; you should. As I understand and have studied, one of those witnesses is Elijah; the other may be Enoch.

These men never see death on this side of the Tribulation, but they both see death in the Tribulation. Thus, like all men, they die. John the Baptist, called Elijah by the angel, came to announce Jesus; Elijah, the actual prophet, was there just before Jesus’ death, and it would appear that He will be here to call down the wrath of God on earth.

God keeps His promises. He never falters. He never fails, and He never has to issue an apology for not coming through. Are you ready for Jesus’ Second Coming? You are either a child of wrath that is about to see the awesome and scary power of the Living God or, in Jesus, you and I are protected by God. We will never see His wrath. We are not appointed unto wrath (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10); we have obtained salvation in Jesus.

Have you obtained salvation in Jesus? Today is the day of salvation.