Gunn, James: Houston Bible Conference 1976-05 ~ 2 Cor 3

Good evening, everyone. Hasn't this been a beautiful day? Just the kind of day we were hoping for, and, uh, some of us at least were praying for. Now, shall we open our New Testaments again at Second Corinthians? And we're going to read just a few verses from the third chapter. Second Corinthians chapter three. And verse one. Do we begin again to commend ourselves, or need we, as some others, letter epistles of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men. For as much ye also, for as much as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but the, but with the spirit of the living God. Not on tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart. And such trust have we through Christ to God work, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. We were looking this afternoon at the Christian as a victor, and thank God we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Many years ago now, at a little conference in a ca- place called Forest, between the sessions of the conference, some discussion arose as to what it meant to be more than a conqueror. And of course, there were many brethren there, and they all had their little idea, and they made their proposals. And I can recall Brother Peter Pell saying, well, let's think. What is it to be a conqueror? And somebody, of course, was ready with an answer, to win by fighting. Well, said Peter, to be more than a conqueror must to be, must be to be one who wins without fighting. And isn't that the Christian? We share his victory. As we saw this afternoon, he is victorious, and we definitely are victorious in him. And along with that, we had the idea of a sweet fragrance of the Christian's testimony. Now we have something altogether different tonight. A fragrance, a perfume is something you sense, but you cannot handle. You just don't pick up a perfume. That sweet Esther may be very delightful and appeal to you in a very aesthetic sense, but you can't handle it. Something sensed without being seen, and you're not able to handle it. But a letter is altogether different. A letter is something that you can handle, and it is something you can see. It's something you've got to read in order that you understand it. And you know, when you come to think of it, a letter is a very, very important thing because the recipient of that letter, in looking at it, he may come to certain conclusions relative to you, the writer. He will know whether you're crude or cult. He will know whether you're literate or illiterate. He will know whether you're careful or careless, just by looking at your handwriting, just by reading your letter. In, uh, Central Ontario for many years, we have had, during the winter sessions, large classes for men. Has been my privilege for years to teach in some of those classes. I taught for many years the one in the city of Toronto, but it all became too heavy, and I had to resign from some. And since I had been the longest teacher in Toronto, I withdrew from Toronto, but held on to Hamilton and Wallenstein. We had one hour of solid teaching at each session, one hard hour of solid teaching. Then we had thirty minutes of open discussion, open to this extent. All questions had to be submitted in writing, and the moderator took care of those questions. He sorted them out, he read them. I can still picture this particular evening. He had one of these questions in his hand, and he looked at it, and he looked at it, and he looked at it, then he turned it up the other way, and he still looked at it. And then he looked down at the assistant chief of the large orthopedic hospital in Toronto, and he said, Bill, did you write this thing? Well, said the learned doctor, I certainly wrote one. He said, I submitted a question tonight. I think this is yours, Bill. You better come up here and read it yourself. And when he sat down, the moderator said, you know, you can easily tell who has his MD around here. I don't know whether there are any doctors here or not, Bob, but I guess I'm in for it now. But, uh, you can discern a great deal about a person if you look carefully at the handwriting and at the letter. Now, I don't know whether you have noticed this, but there are two letters mentioned in this passage. Now, we have only read a very few verses, but there are two letters mentioned in this passage. First of all, I would say we have the letter of commendation of the servant, the loyal, true worker for God. We have his letter of commendation to begin with, but when we get down to verse three, there's a change, and we read there of the epistle of Christ. So these two letters that we have in this particular passage are the epistle of the servant and the epistle of the Savior, the epistle of the Apostle Paul and the epistle of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Paul speaks of the Corinthians as his own letter of commendation. I'm quite sure there is no one here adverse to a common- a letter of commendation. A letter of commendation for a servant of Christ, certainly in the beginning of his service, is essential. He may be later on able to do without it, but at the beginning of his service, when he is not too well known, a letter of commendation certainly is an asset. But the greater of the two letters is this, the letter that is written in deeds, in actions, in converts, rather than the letter that is written on paper. And that is what the Apostle Paul makes reference to here. He is looking upon the Corinthians, and he says very clearly here that they are his letter of commendation. Now, what did he mean? Well, that has been intimated at this conference, he went into the worst city in the ancient world, the most iniquitous center in the an- ancient world. I think maybe it was last night in South Houston, we made mention of the fact that while we speak of our young people as going to the dogs, or if we're a little rougher, going to the devil. The ancients used to say that they became Corinthianized, and that meant they had stooped to the very lowest. There was nothing lower. And yet Paul went into Corinth, and he preached Christ in him crucified, and many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and they were saved, and the church of God was formed. Now Paul said, what other letter of commendation do you want? What more? The very fact that you're saved, the very fact that you're following the Lord, the very fact that you're enjoying, to a certain extent, church fellowship, why these form my letter of commendation. And I repeat, it's grand when we're able to indicate such a letter of commendation. When our brother Green and myself went down into Latin America, we arrived back in Venezuela the first time I'd been back there in fifty years. I had gone there in nineteen twenty two, before most of us here, most of you here were born. But in nineteen twenty two, I went and labored some years for the Lord in Venezuela. And so we found ourselves back in the great capital of Venezuela, Caracas. Early Sunday morning, one of the brethren called and said, now look, eh, don't bother getting a car, don't bother hiring a taxi, we're going to send two young men for you. And two very fine young lads came along with a car, and they took us to the celebration of the Lord's Supper. And as we were driving through the city of Caracas, one of these, the older of the two, said, eh, you know, uh, I hate to ask you gentlemen this question. I just don't like asking this question, but you know, we have some elder brethren who are with us, and they are rather strict on certain things, and so, eh, have you men got letters of commendation? Well, I knew I didn't, and I didn't think my brother Sidney had one either. So I said to this young fellow, as I looked at the two of them sitting up in front of us, mere boys, and I said, listen, son, I said, would you go to the elder brethren and tell them that I had a letter of commendation when I arrived in Venezuela, uh, way back in nineteen twenty two, but I wore it out in saddlebags, stomping around Venezuela on horseback. Boy, he said, that's a good one. Now, uh, I don't know what he said to the elder brethren, but we were heartily received at any rate. I could point even to churches that we founded in Venezuela as my letter of commendation, and the church in Valencia where we spent the evening that, that weekend, was so delightful to me because I could recall the Sunday morning when, for the first time, we sat down to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and there were only nine of us. Sunday we were there, a hundred and eighty broke bread. And so we thank God for the increase. Every servant of Christ should have a commendation written on flesh and blood, the impressions that he has made upon the hearts and the lives of God's people. Charles Dickens, in his, uh, wonderful novel, I think I can say that, The Tale of Two Cities, as he speaks of the horrors of the guillotine and other horrors which were executed in Paris during the dreadful days of the revolution there, he makes reference to our Lord Jesus in John chapter eight. He says concerning our Lord Jesus there that he stooped down and he wrote with his finger upon the ground, says Charles Dickens. The symbol of the impressions that he was about to make on human dust. And it is grand when we have letters that are written in the impressions that have been made upon human dust. A letter in com- of commendation for the worker. But then I want really to focus my attention upon the second letter, and it is called here manifestly the Epistle of Christ. There are a number of things that I like to look at, and of course that is the first one. It is not the commendation of the worker, it's not the commendation of the servant, it's the commendation of Christ. It's the commendation of our Savior. And as we look at this commendation, I think this we shall see, that every Christian, brethren and sisters, every one of us here, each in himself is a letter of Christ. Each in himself is an epistle of Christ. Look at what we have here before us. Paul says in verse three, for as much as ye are manifestly declared, declared to be the epistles of Christ. Ye Corinthians, ye Christians, ye saints are manifestly, obviously the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written by us. Paul here is making reference undoubtedly to the apostles and their tremendous work. I don't know whether it arrested you when I was reading this afternoon from the epistle to the Colossians, speaking of Paul's twofold ministry, eh, I always thrill when I read this verse. If you continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven. A few years ago, we had a slogan, This Generation for Christ. This Generation for Christ. A good slogan. Do you know that the first generation of Christians were so warm, so enthusiastic, so busy, that they had divulged the gospel over the whole of the then known world. Now I'm, I'm aware of the fact the world, the ancient world was not as large as ours. I'm speaking now, of course, as you know, nationally and internationally. But as far as the then known world was concerned, everybody had heard the gospel. I think that's tremendous. The first generation was possessed for Christ. The early Christians spread the gospel over the whole then known world, and so Paul says, you are epistles of Christ, written, administered by us. Paul in Asia, Peter in Babylon, the others scattered here and there, Stephen down in Samaria. Wherever they went, they carried the story of the cross, and wherever they went, they were writing a letter. They were writing the commendation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, now they were the writers of the letter. Upon what did they write? What kind of, eh, stationery did they have? Well, look, for as much as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, or for simple, simplicity's sake, written by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart. When God gave to Israel the Ten Commandments, he wrote them on stone, a most befitting, shall we say, stationery, parchment, something that was unbendable, something that was inflexible. In no wise could it possibly be accommodated to anything more. Stone, cold, hard stone. And that's the law. That is the law that we have as the Ten Commandments, and the law is for the lawless. It is just cold, it is hard, it is unbending, it's inflexible. This do and thou shalt live, otherwise thou shalt die. Well, this letter, this epistle of Christ that was written by the apostles in their ministry in the past and today is written upon many hearts, by many lives. Then what was it written on? On the fleshly tables of the heart, something that was warm, something that pulsated with life. And isn't that the grace of God? Isn't that the love of the Lord Jesus? The law came by Moses, written on stone, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. An epistle, a commendation of Christ, written by a servant of the Lord, written on the war, pliable, flexible heart of a convert. Oh, that's grand. May God help us. May he fill our hearts with zeal and gladness as we carry the gospel here and there to the uttermost parts of the earth. There are men who are perishing all er- all around us. Some too have a little acquaintance with the gospel. They've heard it before, for though that we might have a holy zeal, a burning zeal to win their souls for the Savior, to write a letter of commendation for the Christ in those personalities and in those lives through the gospel of divine grace. Paul says it's not written with ink. I kind of wondered why he had interjected this statement here, the one negative statement in the text. He says here, for as much as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistles of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, not with that which is black and dark and unattractive, and after all, as to color, negative. Written with what? With the Spirit of the living God. If this means anything, beloved sense of God, it means this, that in our preaching and in our testimony, we must rely upon the divine spirit. It's not our own eloquence. It's not our own intellectual presentation of the truth. It's not our zeal. It is the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God alone, that can really write the commendation of Christ upon the fleshly table of some convert's heart. Are we really dependent upon him? As I was mulling over this, I, I couldn't help but deviate a little bit and go over some of the ministries of God the Holy Spirit. Here, obviously, it is the power of the Spirit of God in our presentation of the gospel. Whether we do it publicly or privately, we are wholly dependent upon the Spirit of God to take the words that are spoken or the words that are read and use them to the salvation of the hearer. And you know, thinking again of John chapter three, for there we read that except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The great experience of the new birth, and I think I have come to an appreciation of that statement through the reading of Charlie Colson's experience, both before and after his jail, jail term, I think I have come to a, a greater appreciation of that statement, born again. It certainly links up with Second Corinthians chapter five. If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away, and all things have become new. And who is it that produces this new creation? Who produced the old creation? Who produced the old creation? We think of that wonderful scene brought before us in Genesis one and one. Then we think of the scene that is presented to us in Genesis one and two. and what a contrast. From absolute infinite perfection, and then nothing but darkness, barrenness, confusion. And out of that barrenness and out of all that confusion, there comes a recreation, shall we say. And who produces it? The Spirit of God hovers over that dark, chaotic mass, and as he flutters over it like a bird over her nest, out of it all, there comes that order, and God fits the earth for the man he was about to create. And that is the picture that is used even here in chapter four. There's an allusion to it. We may look at it tomorrow very briefly. There's an allusion to it right here in chapter four. The spirit of God at work. Oh, that we might be more dependent upon him. We are just so liable to look to the man, to depend upon his powers of orla trinrectic. Well, Paul says, not written with ink. There's nothing black, there's nothing dark here. There's nothing unattractive here. There's nothing negative here. Written by the spirit of the living God. And he is the one upon whom we must depend and depend upon him exclusively. Now let us look and see who the readers are. Verse two says, ye are our epistles written in our hearts, known and read of all men. And I would assume that this implies that not only is the servant's letter written by, eh, read by men, but the epistle of Christ, the commendation of the Savior, is likewise read by men. You know, there used to be a little poem that expressed this. I just don't recall the poem now. I used to have a copy of it written out. I do not now have that copy. But it practically suggested that, uh, we were the only gospels that the world read. And really, what they knew of Christ, they knew through us. As they read our lives, they were reading the life of Christ. No matter where we went. And isn't that just exactly the truth? The unconverted all around us, one thing sure, they're not reading their Bibles, not as they should. Now, I am very thankful to God for the upsurge in Bible reading that there has been in the last few years. I just don't appreciate all the paraphrases and all the new translations that we have. Many of them, to me, are unnecessary, but at any rate, the people are reading the word of God, whether we like the translation, the paraphrasing, or not. In the penitentiary not far from my home, we conducted a Bible class for some years. In that Bible class, we had a, a man. He had been, uh, the bandmaster of one of the bands in the Canadian Air Force during the war. I don't know what the poor fellow had done to find himself imprisoned in such a place as that, but at any rate, he came to our Bible class, he listened to our teaching and preaching, and he came to me one day and he said, Mr. Gunn, you know, I try to read the Bible. I really try to read the Bible, but I don't understand it somehow or another. Would there be another Bible somehow or another that I could understand in language that, uh, I might know? Well, you know, it just happened the very next week I was at the conference in the Guelph conference grounds, and our brother Gordon Mitchell, he had on the table a lot of damaged books, just very slightly damaged, but they were there at a greatly reduced price, and there was half a dozen of Mr. Phillips's New Testament. So I bought the whole works. I took them home with me, and I took a copy over to this chap, and I said, hey, listen, Eric, I think maybe this is the kind of Bible you were thinking of the other day when you spoke to me. Would you try and read this one and let me know what your thoughts are? I didn't see him for a couple of weeks, but when I did, he said to me, oh, Mr. John, I can read this Bible. This is language I know. This is not nearly so hard to understand. Now, when I sit down in my study to look into some of the Word of God and try to dig a little below the surface, I just never take up Mr. Phillips' rendering. I would never think of using Mr. Phillips' translation for a deeper study than as usual. But here it was in the hands of this man, and he began to read the Word of God, he began to understand the Word of God, and we had the joy of knowing that that man accepted the Savior. And while we were still teaching that Bible class, they decided to rehabilitate him, and we had the joy of seeing him moving out of total security to an area of semi-security, and eventually returning, rehabilitated, taking his place again in society. Well, thank God for the reading of his precious word. But again, beloved saints of God, let us face the reality of things. Generally speaking, the world is not reading the Bible. But they sure are reading you. They sure read me. They can tell you when you're wrong. They can tell me when I'm wrong. What is really deeply exercising my soul is this, because I see Christ in me. I'm going to repeat a little story that I told last night down in South Houston. When we were first married, and eh, that wasn't yesterday, you know, we thought we would gather together a little library, and I think we had all told about twelve books in that little library. We have about three thousand five hundred in it now, but way back in those early days of our marriage, I think we had about twelve. And among them was a travelogue by a school teacher. She had gone on a visit to the Holy Land. Now, this is a secular book. There was nothing religious about this book, except the closing part, the very last page. She said, they, we visited Nazareth, but the Christ wasn't there. We visited Bethlehem, and there was no trace of him there. We had spent days in Jerusalem, and we certainly found not the Christ. But on our last day, we teachers, wishing to visit a school in Jerusalem, went down a side street and followed the murmurings of voices, and we ended up in a boys' school. And while we had visited all these interesting spots without seeing Christ, we saw him and the young missionary who was teaching that boy's class. Now, she didn't tell us in what way she saw the Christ there. She didn't go into any details, but there was something about his demeanor. There was something about his attitude and maybe about his language that really convinced her that he, that he knew the Lord Jesus and that Christ was really radiating from his personality. Christ was there. He was the epistle of Christ. Someone had written that epistle when that man or that boy was directed to the Savior. The letter that was written was written by the Holy Spirit of God, the divine spirit of the living God. It was written on the warm, pulsing heart that God the Holy Spirit had prepared, and now it was read of all men. And these school teachers, they had gone into that school disappointed that they hadn't found the Christ anywhere else, and they found him in that teacher. Now, beloved saints of God, I think that's really the message of the figure we've been looking at, some of these wonderful figures that Paul uses in this epistle. This morning, where we're victors through Christ. Don't let us forget that. When I was trying to rearrange these figures according to what I thought the order of experience, I put this last. I thought, well, the very last will be victory. So I put it first, and so I felt that I had to put it first. This is where to start. This is where to start. You'll never, never, never commend Christ if you live a defeated life, never. But oh, to realize that we are victors in him, and again that we are victors through him, and it is in that measure, it is only when we enter into his victory and make his victory our own victory, that there is that sweet fragrance, that holy perfume in the Christian personality. Or, so we change, as Paul does, the figure and say it's only in the measure that we are victorious, that we appreciate our victory in him, that we are epistles of Christ, read and known of all men. I don't know how you feel, beloved saints of God. These things have really stirred my soul this last few days, and they have been challenging me to such an extent. Am I really an epistle of Christ? Can Christ be read on the pages of my personality? Have I become a repugnant person? Person? Uh, un-Christ- Un-Christlike? Not savoring the presence of the divine spirit? Or am I rejoicing in his victory, and thus showing forth wherever I go that I am an epistle of Christ. Let me use one other illustration. A way, way back in the early days, used to leave Toronto, spend a whole night between Toronto, Chicago, and between Chicago and here, we spent a night and a day coming down on what was called the Texas Chief. I don't think we would think of it as a chief now. But at any rate, as we were coming down one time, I got quite hungry, and so I went into the dining car, felt kind of cold and, uh, lonely, far from home, as if everybody had forsaken me. Now, you don't get that way, do you? But I have been so homesick at times, I really wished I could go homesick, and I think that was one of the times. I think that was one of the times. And so I went into the dining car. It was only one vacant seat. At the table there were two gentlemen, very smart looking fellas in business suits, and then right against the window there was a young lady, a girl that in those days they called a flapper. She was sitting there and uh, so the host or the steward took me and seated me there, and I ordered my little meal, and when it came, I bowed my head to give thanks, feeling so alone, so far away. When I opened my eyes, the man, the businessman right across from me, see, he said, did you hear Billy Graham last night? Wasn't he tops last night? I had found a brother in Christ. In fact, they were both Christians. And we began to talk of the things of God, what the Lord meant to each one in salvation and in the experiences of life. And this poor girl who was sitting next to me, I felt very sorry for her. She had everything on that would either stick or hang on. And you know, she looked at me, and then she quietly got up and left her meal and went off to her seat. She just couldn't take this religion anymore. But the three of us, we read our testimonies of the Lord Jesus. There were three letters there in that dining car, and we certainly were read of those all around us. The steward knew, the poor girl knew, and others who heard our comments, they knew we were letters of Christ, written by the Holy Spirit on the fleshly tables of redeemed hearts. Oh, may this be truer of us as the days pass. We haven't much time now, brethren and sisters. I, I feel certain the coming of the Lord is very, very near. I really do. Somebody asked me just the other day up in Glen Head, Long Island, did I believe it possible for the Lord Jesus to come in our lifetime? And you know, sometimes you just answered too quickly, you kind of quipped it off, and I said, well, if he doesn't, I'm going to be very disappointed. And I kind of think maybe that's how I feel. I feel his coming is so near. So let us be up and live for Christ and witness for the Lord Jesus as we have never done before.