Ordination Service of Mr. Jamie Peipon
Well as you’ve heard, tonight we set apart our brother and our friend, Jamie Peipon, for the work of the ministry. And as we approach that momentous event, the question I want us to try and answer together is, “How can Jamie, and for that matter, how can we, spend our lives in the service of the Gospel and not lose heart?” Isn’t that an important question to answer on an occasion like this? How do you fight discouragement and keep going when any serious minded person must certainly feel like the task is altogether beyond him and the cost requires more than any of us can pay? How do you stay the course and not lose heart?
As I hope you noticed when Mr. Peipon read the passage for us a moment ago, the apostle Paul actually answers that question in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Let’s look there together please, 2 Corinthians chapter 4. You’ll notice at verse 1 in the beginning of the chapter the apostle Paul says, “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.” And then look down at the other end of the chapter, verse 16. He repeats the same declaration, “So we do not lose heart.” What is this a chapter about? It is about a ministry that does not lose heart. It’s about ministry that does not lose heart.
And so with that in mind, before we pray and ask for God to help us, let me quickly outline for you the main things that I want you to see from this passage. First of all, verses 1 through 6, Paul tells us about ministry without losing heart. Then 7 through 12, suffering without losing heart. And finally 13 through 18, holding onto hope without losing heart. If Jamie is going to survive and thrive, if he is faithfully to discharge his calling, then if you and I are to follow Jesus and serve His purposes in the world without losing heart, then we really need to pay attention to these three big themes taught in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 – ministry, suffering, and holding onto hope without losing heart. Before we give attention to them, let’s pause once again as we pray. Let us pray.
O Lord, please now speak light into the darkness of our hearts that we may indeed once again behold the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ from this portion of Your Word. For we ask this in His name, amen.
Ministry without Losing Heart
Well some people, by virtue of their temperament, have to fight an instinct for pessimism. I’m sure you know a few people like this – glass half empty types. Of course Scottish people are not at all prone to this. As you know, I am a shining example of the kind of happy-go-lucky, carefree, sunshine and roses optimism, for which the Scots are known the world over! But there are, apparently, some people out there who struggle with this stuff. There are others, however, who are not particularly liable to that kind of negativity but who would nevertheless, sometimes at least, be forced to confess that hard, sad, strange circumstances have conspired to rob them of their native confidence and hope. And I have to say that that happens more than you might think in the life of Gospel ministers. For ministers, it is particularly easy to lose heart.
And if you’d look with me at the first seven verses of chapter 4 you’ll see how Paul fights discouragement in the work of the ministry first of all. So here is ministry without losing heart. “Therefore,” he says, “having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.” Let’s not skip over that too quickly. For Paul, the call to ministry is a gift of divine mercy. It was God’s mercy that put him into the ministry. Sometimes the demands of Christian service can feel like a great burden, but Paul is clear – whatever the load he carries, whatever cares for the welfare of his people, whatever weariness he endures – he is clear, isn’t he, being entrusted with the ministry of preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ is a great mercy. And not just to the people who get to listen to him; it’s a great mercy to Paul.
If you’ll permit me a moment of personal reflection, when I look at my own recalcitrant heart, the sinkhole of sin that still festers within me, I sometimes stop and praise God for putting me into the ministry. The routines and the demands of ministry push me every day back into the Scriptures. They demand that I pray. They call me to serve other people. They bind me to the rhythms of worship and life in the local church. I look at my heart and I wonder honestly whether, without the mercy of the ministry and all the influences for good that it has exerted in my life, would I still be following Jesus today? What a mercy ministry is for a minister.
There is wisdom for every follower of Jesus here, actually. Among the very best ways you know to fight the power of remaining sin in your heart is to do ministry. It’s to serve other people in Jesus’ name. Ministry is a mercy and we rob our hearts of a great blessing when we fail to engage in it. Keep a firm grasp of that truth. No matter what happens, it helps guard our hearts against discouragement. “Having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.” And so Paul fights discouragement by remembering the mercy that put him into the ministry in the first place.
But if you look at verse 2, you’ll see he also fights discouragement by the way he prosecutes that ministry, by the way he conducts his ministry. “We do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, 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.” Ministers, just like everyone else, want people to praise them. We want people to think well of us and speak well of us. But the praises of others is a heady and ultimately toxic drug. And like all drugs, the more we get of it, the more we want of it, and soon we’re cutting corners and pulling punches and distorting the message to make sure that we get praise rather than deliver God’s truth with humility and clarity and urgency and force. We can feel a certain pressure to make our ministries grow by whatever means necessary, to demonstrate to the church that has entrusted this position of leadership to us, that their investment is not misguided after all. And so we resort to techniques and tricks, manipulation and gimmicks. And when leaders like that get threatened, then their insecurities drive them to pastorally abusive methods; “disgraceful, underhanded ways,” Paul calls them. These guys practice cunning, he says.
And so for Paul, a settled principle is never to adopt such strategies. If he is to be commended to anyone as trustworthy and reliable, as a spiritual guide, it will only be because he has clearly, openly set forth the manifest teaching of the truth of God. “By the open statement of the truth,” he says, “we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” If you’re not to lose heart in the service of Jesus, you must, you must not have an eye for your own reputation. That’s the point. You cannot build your brand and build the kingdom at the same time. Ego will never be satisfied with the open statement of the truth. Ego will always want the glory that belongs only to Jesus. So die to yourself, Paul says. Nail ego to the cross. Giving up the service of ego in the service of Christ is the only lasting way to avoid losing heart.
There is one more crucial tool that Paul deploys to fight discouragement in ministry. He clings, notice this, to the sovereignty of God in salvation. Do you notice that in verses 3 and 4? In verses 3 and 4 he is very realistic, isn’t he, about the spiritual blindness of many of those who hear him preach the Gospel. “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 unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” He is under no illusion that all he ever needs to do is preach and the world will come running to Jesus. He knows better. He’s incredibly realistic about the resistance of the human heart to the good news, but he is not discouraged by that.
“We do not lose heart,” because, verses 5 and 6, “what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as 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 us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” God spoke. He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. He spoke, and all things came to be. And He can speak Gospel light into the darkest heart in the preaching of the weakest of His servants whenever He pleases. And so the hardhearted unbelief of the crowds around Him is no cause for discouragement for Paul, because he knows that our God reigns and He is mighty to save. He can pierce the darkness by His Word and cause the light of His glory, shining in the face of Jesus, to shine in new creation power into sinners’ sin-darkened hearts.
Ministry without losing heart. Ministry by the mercy of God. Ministry that dies to self and shuns deceitful and crafty ways. Ministry that clings to the sovereignty of God.
Suffering without Losing Heart
Secondly, look at verses 7 through 12. Here is suffering now without losing heart. Paul begins, notice, with a picture, probably drawn from the story of Gideon back in Judges chapter 7. You may remember the story of Gideon. God has whittled down Gideon’s army, reduced it to a tiny little force of about 300 men. He has purposely shrunk the army and reduced his chances of a military victory, humanly speaking, against the sprawling combined armies of Midian and the Amalekites. The chances of Gideon’s victory in a straight out battle is zero. And then, Gideon has his 300 put their swords away. So he wants them to face the enemy without a sword, without a weapon in hand. Instead, they have to carry clay pots with torches in one hand and a trumpet in the other. They were to surround the camp in the dead of night and at Gideon’s signal they were to smash the jars and hold up the flaming torches and blow the trumpet and shout, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” And when they did, remember, the enemy was thrown into a panic. They turn on one another and a great victory was won by Gideon’s little army with clay pots and torches and not a sword in sight so that all the glory would go not to Gideon or the might of his men, but “to the arm of the Lord that is not shortened that it cannot save.”
Paul says that faithful ministers are clay pots. It’s the treasure inside that counts. Jamie, I want you to get ready. If the light of Christ is to shine brightly in your ministry, God is going to have to shatter the clay pot. That’s what happened in Paul’s own ministry, isn’t it? He says it right here in our passage. He was “afflicted in every way,” verse 8, “perplexed, persecuted, struck down,” verse 9. In sum he is “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus,” verse 10. He is “always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake,” verse 11. God is going to smash the clay pot of our lives in His service that the light of Christ might shine and none of the glory might be ours; all of it might be His.
And yet notice somehow, even though he is afflicted in every way, he says he is “not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” He did not lose heart. Ministry, look, ministry really hurts. You’re going to serve others; it’s going to hurt. That’s what Paul is saying. So how is it that he does not despair? How is it? How come he doesn’t lose heart? His heart is gripped by a Gospel agenda. He’s willing for the clay pot of his life to be shattered if it will mean the salvation of sinners and the growth of the saints. That’s exactly his point in verses 10 and 11, isn’t it? Look at verses 10 and 11 please. Paul says, “I am always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.” “Life in you,” he’s saying, “is worth death in me.”
We all know, I think, that suffering has a way of filling our whole horizon, of blotting everything else out and turning us inward and making us focus only on ourselves. When our hurts are most acute, sometimes they are all we can see. But Paul is reminding us that one of the things God is doing when He smashes the clay pot of our lives is He is making us useful. He’s doing ministry through us. He is making our lives mirror the pattern of the cross where Jesus gave Himself that we might live. If you are to be a faithful minister, Jamie, if we are to be faithful in service to a Gospel cause, our ministries must be cruciform. They must be cross-shaped. We must die for the good of others, for the Gospel’s sake. When God smashes the clay pot in your life to use you to make Jesus known, look around you at the people of God in the church He has called you to serve, Jamie, and repeat the words of verse 15. “It is all for Your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.” That’s what it’s for. That’s why it’s happening. That’s what God is doing.
Holding onto Hope without Losing Heart
Ministry without losing heart. Suffering without losing heart. Finally, notice in 13 through 18, holding onto hope without losing heart. You’ll notice Paul quoting Psalm 116 verse 10. It’s a Messianic psalm, a psalm speaking about the Lord Jesus ultimately; actually about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. In verse 3 of the psalm, the psalmist says, “The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: ‘O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!’” And then in verse 8 he boldly declares, “For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” And then comes the verse Paul quotes, which in the Greek Septuagint version that Paul used reads, “I believed, therefore I spoke.”
So Paul is reflecting on the sufferings entailed in his own ministry. He’s always “being given over to death for Jesus’ sake,” but he is not discouraged; “we do not lose heart.” He preaches on. He speaks out the Word in faith because, just like Jesus in Psalm 116, Paul has indestructible hope. In verse 14 – look at verse 14 – he knows that “He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us into His presence.” So what is Paul doing? He is filling His eyes with the future hope of the resurrection that is to come, a hope he secures, a hope he knows is unshakeable because Jesus is already risen. The tomb is empty; the throne occupied. Death is defeated. He reigns in glory, and because He does, He who lives will cause me to live one day too. So he fills his eyes with future hope.
And then 16 to 18, he reminds us of two key truths to cling to in light of that glorious future hope. First, we need to understand God’s design for our present sufferings. Because Jesus is alive, Paul says, even though our outer self is wasting away, because Jesus is alive, our inner self, we who are believers, is being renewed day by day. The Lord is working in and through the sufferings that come our way by His Word and Spirit to make us holy, to renew us inwardly even though outwardly we are fading away. Resurrection life already penetrates to the very core of who we are, even though our bodies might let us down, break down and wear out. That’s a vital perspective we need to keep a hold of if we are not to lose heart, isn’t it? It’s not something you can always feel, but it is something God assures you is true, believer in Jesus. Outwardly you may be fading away, but by His grace you are being renewed day by day. Resurrection life is constantly flowing into you from the risen Lord Jesus. He’s not done with His work in you yet. Christian service is sanctifying. Praise the Lord that it is so. Paul says, “It is costing me everything. It’s hurting. It’s sore. And yet resurrection life is shining brightly in my heart.”
And finally, Paul says seeing the certainty of future hope helps us evaluate present suffering a little differently. Look at how Paul describes his sufferings in verse 17. Do you see what he calls them? “Afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, struck down, always carrying the death of Jesus, always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake” – what is all of that when viewed in light of our eternal hope? Verse 17, it is all a “light and momentary affliction” and it is productive in God’s design. Do you see that? “It is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
If you judge the trials and troubles of Christian service, if as Christians we judge our daily sorrows and sufferings only by how hard they are, how sore they are, they will certainly overwhelm us. Paul calls us to view them in light of eternity. Do ministry in light of eternity. Preach Christ in light of eternity. And when it hurts, when it gets hard, remember the sufferings that you see are a preparation for glory to come that you do not yet see. They are making you ready for your heavenly home. Don’t look only to what you can see. Don’t evaluate the usefulness of your labors in Jesus’ service only by what you can see. If you do, you will certainly lose heart. Look at the promise of glory. Look at the empty tomb. Look at the Lamb who lives and reigns on the throne. Look up and away from yourself to the day when all things will be made new. And then get up off the dirt, dry your eyes, grit your teeth, and serve sinners with good news. And then do it again tomorrow and again the day after that, because Jesus is worth it.
Here’s a ministry that does not lose heart. Do you see it? It comes by the mercy of God. It rests in the sovereignty of God, suffers for the people of God, and looks forward in hope to everlasting life in the presence of God. Let’s pray together.
Our Father, we praise You that You have given to each of us as Your children ministry, and You’ve called some of us to particular ministries of pastor and teacher, shepherd and elder. And with those callings come many wounds, many trials. And so we pray for our dear brother as he is set apart in just a moment for this mighty and weighty responsibility, that You would help him, by Your grace, to see that ministry is a mercy of God, and clinging to Your sovereignty and looking to the hope of glory, not to lose heart. For we ask it all in Jesus’ name, amen.