2/19/23 2 Cor. 4:1-6 “Leave Your Lights On!”

17 Feb 2/19/23 2 Cor. 4:1-6 “Leave Your Lights On!”

2/19/23    2 Cor. 4:1-6          “Leave Your Lights On!”

This past week we were able to celebrate one of those holidays that are seemingly not that important.  Valentine’s Day has been around for a long time and it gets the press of being a rather light hearted holiday.  In many ways this is probably very justified.  I remember in grade school when we used to pass out our cards and candy to classmates.  You had to be sure that you didn’t give a girl a card that was in any way, shape or form, mushy.  And if you got a mushy card from a girl, then it was so very embarrassing.  I suppose that was kind of a guy thing.  I remember that we always made a Valentine’s box to put the cards.  We also had special treats on that day.  It was a good kid holiday in the winter.  But it is also a nice day for grownups as it is a time to remember and show our love to each other.  After all, it is pretty Biblical to love others.  If you think about it, for Christian’s everyday should be Valentine’s Day.  This should be so, even on the days when there doesn’t seem to be a lot of love.  In today’s reading we find that Paul is telling us once again about the love of Jesus.  Being a Christian is easy to do.  It is the most rewarding thing you can do.  And it can also be terrifying and hard.  Let’s see what Paul has to say about this.

Marilyn Murphree tells the story of an engineer who had heard the gospel many times and showed absolutely no openness to it at all.  The man was a brilliant engineer but he became depressed and finally his wife took the children and left.  Everything he had was gone.  He couldn’t even help himself anymore.  He said he didn’t believe in anything.  He didn’t believe in God or Jesus.  He didn’t believe in the Bible or that Jesus ever lived.  A pastor who had been talking to him finally told him that there was nothing he could do for the man but he didn’t want to abandon him.  He told him that if he came back to him every week, he would do 2 things for him.  He would read the Bible to him and he would pray for him.  Much to his surprise the man agreed.  So every week he would read the Scripture and ask, “Does this mean anything to you?”  “No,” was the reply.  This same thing went on for weeks and ‘no’ was always the reply.

Eight months went by and the pastor asked again if the reading meant anything to him.  “Well, there is one thing. This morning I was thinking about it. You said Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will but Thine be done.” That suddenly meant something to me.”  The preacher didn’t want to ask what it meant. He just said, “Doug, if that meant something to you, pray that over and over again.”  Then a couple of weeks later something else caught the man’s attention.  Things were changing for Doug.  Psalm 119:130 describes what happened to this man.  It says, “The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.”

This flows right into the first thing that Paul is trying to tell us.  Do not lose heart!  Don’t give up but be like this pastor in our story.  You see the Corinthians had been under attack by false prophets and leaders who didn’t believe in Jesus.  They were being told that Paul was a heretic.  This is why Paul writes the second letter to these people.  He is trying to give them hope through their faith in Jesus Christ.

This is one of the things that we really have to be aware of in our lives.  There is persecution against Christians and it is everywhere.  It is pretty easy to see in other countries where they just take fellow Christians out someplace and the kill them.  There is horrendous persecution against us in other countries.

But there is also a lot of persecution right here in our own country.  It is not so much physical persecution but it is psychological persecution.  When we are told that there is no persecution in this country, look out!  We are also told that we have freedom of religion in this country.  If this is true, why can’t I wear my faith and talk about my faith where ever I happen to be.  Other religions can do this.  Also, non-believers have a tendency look down upon us.  They don’t like us.  The powers of this country would just as soon that we would just cease to exist.  Paul is telling us not to lose heart over these things.

Don’t lose heart because we have the truth.  There is only one truth and that is Jesus Christ.  We have Him and we know Him.  We don’t have to lie and cheat and steal and kill.  Let the other side do these things because they have learned to do them so very well.  And when they do them to us, don’t lose heart because we have Jesus.  And when you have Jesus, then you don’t need anything else.

Paul is telling us to stick to the truth through Jesus.  Don’t lower yourself to the people around you.  When you get bullied by others, return this with kindness.  Love your enemies.  They don’t know what to do with you when you love them back.  I have to admire Tim Tebow a few years ago.  He had been put through the wringer by the media.  When I hear about him, I hear things that are put in such a way that one would think that Tim Tebow is the stupidest person in the whole world just because he believes in Jesus.  And how does he respond to all these put downs?  He pretty much ignores them and goes about his business of serving Jesus.  He has done very well for himself and his ministry since then.  Now I know he is not perfect but he is a brother in Christ.

So we don’t have to worry because Jesus Christ is ahead of us all the way.  We live in a world of spiritual darkness.  We live in a world where non-believers have been blinded from the truth.  This is the basic reason why they are so adamant against us.

And the person who causes all of this blindness is old Satan himself, the god of this age as Paul tells us in verse 4.  We have to keep this firmly in our minds.  Now I realize that I’m talking to the choir here but you need to be reminded of these types of things also because you don’t have to go very far out our front doors to find them.  You will hear, if you listen closely, things like ‘Why did God do this?’ or ‘Why did God do that?’  We have to remember that if they are talking about bad things, then God didn’t do it.  God doesn’t do bad things.  This is the blindness of Satan that is trying to creep into your lives.  This is the blindness that is already rampant in many minds of people you know who would rather die than attend church in any form.  This is real blindness, my friends.  This is fatal blindness.

Many of you know that I send out inspiring messages daily on Facebook and other social media outlets.  Every day I send a message of hope and over a thousand people see or read these.    I also send out the message periodically that if they don’t want this, let me know and please take themselves off my list.  I have gotten some rejections.  And each time I have received one, I have noticed the tone of the message.  It is a tone of blindness.  They don’t want to hear the truth and there is no way I can reach them with this medium.

These people have been blinded by Satan.  The last thing in the world that Satan wants is for people to hear what I have to say about this love that Jesus has for all of us.  He hides this from people so they can go on having miserable lives and the worst part is that he deceives them into thinking that their lives are wonderful.  This is why I tell you that he is the most powerful being you will ever run up against.  The only way to beat him is to call on Jesus for help.

These people cannot see the light.  John wrote much of his gospel talking about the light.  Paul tells us again about the light of the gospel.  I have used this image before when I asked, ‘what happens if you go into an unlit closet and close the door?’  It becomes dark.  If you have ever been in a cave, then you know what real darkness is all about.  But what happens if you turn on the light.  The darkness flees.  The light will always conquer the dark.  Now go out into a sunlit room and try to turn on the darkness.  You can’t do it.  There hasn’t been an invention, to my knowledge, that can manufacture darkness.  Darkness will always be overcome with light.  Jesus Christ will always defeat Satan and darkness no matter what atheist say, no matter what false religions try to tell us.  Jesus always wins and we can praise the Lord for that.

Paul is also telling his audience that he isn’t preaching.  It is Jesus Christ preaching through him.  There were people of the time that were preaching that Jesus was great but He wasn’t God.  There were people telling them that they would do far better for themselves if they would follow the ways of the world.  There were people telling them that if they combined Jesus with these other religions, then they would really have something.  This sounds like the world today.  But God doesn’t allow for this type of thing.  God is a jealous god and we are to put no other gods before Him.

You all might know that I came to the ministry later in life.  I also came to know Jesus later in life so I have really had 2 life experiences.  I left my home town many years ago and now I only get back there for a visit once in a while.  I don’t have a lot of contact with my friends of my youth as we have all grown up and moved on.  But every once in a while, I do run across one of these people and it is always a good visit.  I did run across someone a few years ago who told me that they were very proud of me for what I am doing.  This is ok and I like a pat on the back as much as the next person.  However, it isn’t me doing any of the things I do.  It is not me preaching to you but it is Jesus Christ through me.  I humble myself before the Lord and it is His message that I give.  It is a message that has been given over and over.  It is a message that we not only need to hear but everyone in the world needs to take it into their hearts.  It is the message of love.

Anyway getting back on topic, Satan blinds people and here is how he does it.  He tells you that the Bible was written by men and not God inspired.  This onslaught is in our publishing houses as they try to change the Bible more and more.  I would advise you not to buy many of these new Bibles because of this.  He also tells you that there are mistakes in the Bible.  He says that certain things are not possible.  They are not scientifically possible.  I have done a little studying on this and I have not found one mistake in the Bible, not one!

He tells you that it isn’t God inspired and there are errors in our Bible, therefore you should not trust what it says.  I can show you places to go to prove to you that it is God inspired and it is true.  With all the studying I have done, and it isn’t really that much, I have found that the Bible is really the only book you can trust for anything and everything.  Our lives depend on the Bible and our following the word of God.

The end result of all of this blindness is the world that we live in today.  It is very bleak out there and I could spend the next hour telling you about just a few of the things that the god of this world controls and remember that Satan is the god of this world.  But remember that we are not part of this world.  We are part of the world of Jesus and He will be with us no matter what happens to us.

You see, God has placed His light in your heart.  This light is the Holy Spirit.  John tells us that every person in the world is made with a special place for the Holy Spirit in their heart.  This is the light that shines out of us to make us different from the world.  Be proud of this difference.  Embrace this difference.  This is a good difference, a great difference.  Then when you are full of this great light, you are to let it shine on everything, everyone, and everywhere.  This is why I say that there is not a place where Jesus Christ doesn’t belong.  He belongs in our homes, at our work, in our schools and in our government.  He belongs everywhere.  You know I could talk about this all day but I will try to slow down a bit and tell you a brilliant example given by Jeff Strite.

How many of you still have your Christmas lights up?  Most of us have taken down our lights but this wasn’t so for a family in Baltimore a few years back.  It seems that one year they didn’t have their lights down by New Year’s so someone complained to a radio station.  Well this started to snowball and soon there were many people calling up complaining about this one family leaving their lights up too long after Christmas.

The family, the Morgans, decided that if they are going to complain they would leave their lights up all year round.  Now if someone would have come up and asked them it might have been a different story.  The rest of the story is that the Morgan’s were in their sixties and had health problems so it was hard for them to put up and take down the decorations.  With all their health problems, they didn’t know if they would be there for another Christmas to enjoy the lights.  Besides that, they loved Christmas.  So now the leave their lights up all year and they go on every night at dusk.  They figure that Christmas lights have a special meaning.  They symbolize brightness and love.  And that is what Christmas is all about.

We are also called to leave our lights on all year round.  The lights I mean are the lights of your heart.  Let His light shine so that when you go into a dark room, it will chase all the darkness away.  Jesus wants to use you to spread this great message to all you know.  Don’t be afraid because with Jesus there is no fear.  Praise the Lord that we have a God who loves us so much.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.