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Sermon by Kenny Foster, Senior Pastor, from Psalm 50:1-6 & 2 Corinthians 4:3-6
When a job is difficult or the work is fraught through with challenges and hardships, what is it that makes going through the difficulties worth the struggle? It has to be that the object or the goal on the other side is compelling enough to draw you out of selfish living and move you to risk everything in pursuit of it. It moves you so much that it becomes the whole message of your life. Everybody preaches “themselves”, it is part of our culture’s imprint. There are books, seminars, YouTube videos and endless movies and commercials that encourage you to promote yourself and to pursue self interest above all else. But we find those to be dead ends. You need a transcendent beauty that draws you out of yourself to reach for something much higher. That is what the Apostle Paul sees in preaching Christ. He sees the cloaked hearts of the unbelieving, he hears the command of God, and he is compelled by Christ’s face gloriously beaming as the light at the dawn of creation dispelling the darkness. This compels him to not preach himself.
But how do you get to see the glory of Christ? It has to come at the summoning of God. (Psalm 50) and it has to be through God’s mercy. (2 Cor. 4:1) Both the summons and God’s mercy bring you to the Cross where life’s glory lies dead in the dust. Once your eyes are opened to see the beauty of the glory of God in the face of Christ, that is the end of self-heralding and preaching Christ begins. The glory of the gospel of Christ is that it brings you to your end without ending you.