John Fischer The Catch

But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day. (Joshua 6:25)

King David’s great-great grandmother was Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho. She was a Canaanite, of the people-group that the children of Israel were forbidden to marry. Yet she is of the lineage of David and an ancestor of Jesus. Now that doesn’t sit too well with the laws of the Moses, which goes to show you that the law of the Old Covenant was and is not the last word. There is another covenant — the new covenant — that Christ ushered in, that was evident even then. That covenant is evidenced by the grace of God, and entered into by faith. And Rahab acted on that faith when she found out that the two men in town were from the new nation of Israel and they had come to spy out the city. Rahab, and indeed the whole town, had heard how the children of Israel had crossed the Red Sea and the Jordan River and were successful in all their conflicts so far. She was terrified. And so she, being a smart one, hid the spies when the authorities came looking, because she knew that God was with them and she was hoping to make a deal.

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Jesus once warned against trying to patch an old garment with new cloth or put new wine into old wineskins. In the case of the garment, the new unshrunk piece of cloth will tear away from the rest when the clothing is first washed. And in the case of the wineskins, the new wine will be too acidic for the old skins and they will burst. New wine and new skins need to grow old together.

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The New Covenant is the most important truth about living the real Christian life that too few know about. It runs counter to most of the teaching and assumptions Christians have about being a better person, doing the right thing, being holy, being religious, pleasing the Lord, living the victorious Christian life, and I’m sure a host of other good things we could mention in the same breath — all wonderful things — all totally beyond the reach of any one of us. The problem is, we don’t know they are beyond our reach, so everybody just keeps on trying, and the longer someone works at this, the more frustrated they get. The problem is, we all think there must be someone somewhere for whom this is working. We all even think we know someone like that even though we can’t quite recall the person’s name. Somebody, somewhere has got it all together. Just not anybody I know. But that’s enough to keep us all trying.

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Let’s go back to that morning that started off the church with a bang. It all happened in one remarkable day. Estimates say there were roughly 120 believers gathered in Jerusalem during the celebration of the Passover when suddenly there was the sound of a mighty rushing wind, and what appeared to be flames of fire coming to rest on each of the believer’s heads as they began to speak in other languages so that the people around them were saying, “‘Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs — we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!’” (Acts 2:8-11) Others were saying they must have been drunk.

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For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 2 Corinthians 2:15

You are the living temple of God

Walking around this earth. – John Fischer from the song, “Don’t Veil the Door”

The bulk of the ministry happening through your life today happens merely by you being in the world. It does not require any particular effort from you. It merely is because of what you are. And what are you? You are a pleasing aroma of Christ to God.

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The Old Testament stories of biblical heroes are full of fallible people with questionable behavior. With the exception of maybe one or two like Joseph, men and women of faith in the Old Testament struggle and sin and fight and fail and God somehow weaves their story of faith into their lives to where His will was done and lessons are learned. The New Testament, especially the writings of Paul, present more of a balanced view with fewer examples of human weaknesses. That’s why this passage in 2 Corinthians where Paul reveals an inner struggle with his ability to believe God amidst human limitations is a rare opportunity to discover faith amidst doubt.

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Before we begin to look more deeply into this New Covenant passage in 2 Corinthians, we need to get one very important thing clear. It isn’t actually stated until further on into the passage although it is implied all along. Until you hear it clearly, you may miss it, because, as we said earlier, this perspective is contrary to our normal way of thinking. What I am referring to is found in the first verse of Chapter 4: “Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.” The key phrase being “this ministry.”

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This week we will take a trip through a passage in 2 Corinthians that we have long held is the least known, most necessary passage in all of scripture for living the daily Christian life. And if it is the least known but most necessary, that would mean a lot of people are living a sort of truncated experience of the Christian life — ourselves included, when we forget, which is often.

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