2 Corinthians 2:12-17 – Prayerful Expectation
Paul says that he didn’t peddle the word. Calvin uses the word huckster. You may have heard that word before to describe somebody who is a sneaky salesman and who dresses up his product to disguise what he really has to sell. He deceives his customers so that they don’t know exactly what they’re getting. Paul says that because it’s God who’s doing this work, convincing and converting, it leads the church then to not be a sneaky salesman. We take what God has given and say this is the treasure of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the triumph that Jesus Christ has, that there is forgiveness of sins. If you, a sinner, will call upon the name of the Lord, you will be saved. Paul can speak bluntly about the sin in which all men fall in. He can speak about the fact that there is no other way of salvation. He can speak about those things that are really unlovely, or we don’t like to think about. Paul is confident that God does the work of evangelism, particularly through the preaching of the Word.
The first practical application is to get people involved with God’s Word and very specifically with the gospel preaching of the Word. It means that we give ourselves to the preaching, the teaching, the worship of God as a means that the Lord has ordained. Foolish as it may seem to the watching world, we give ourselves to this means as the way God has ordained.
The second application is that this means that you approach the worship service, you approach the preaching of the Word, with an attitude of expectation. You can approach it praying that God will use that word in your life to be leading you in triumph in Jesus Christ, leading you in the path of holiness, that that gospel message, which includes the growth in grace, will be effective in your lives. You can approach it with prayerful expectation that the Lord would use it in the lives of non-believers, asking that God would use this church to convince and to convert sinners, and that we’d see the first fruits of the gospel through the ministry of the Reformed Presbyterian Church.
The third application is to pray for open doors. Pray that God would give us an open door that we might tell others about Jesus Christ and invite them to church. Because that victorious King who rides in triumph has given you the responsibility and the gifts so that the spread of the Gospel would go to the very corners of the earth.
Question
- How can we apply this chapter?
Prayer Points
- Pray for the preaching and hearing of God’s Word tomorrow.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.