The Authentic Gospel

Eugene Kim (0:00)

2 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 1 through 6 And when you found it, please rise in reverence for the reading of God's holy and inerrant word.

Hear now the word of the Lord. Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 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. And 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 the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For 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 shown in our hearts to give the light of knowledge of glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Again, I want to start off by thanking the preachers for Pastor Paul, Sam, and Brian.

It's not easy. It wasn't easy for them. And I believe even some of them got sick because all the stress on top of the things they had to do to prepare. But I am grateful for the last month and a half. But as we come back to 2 Corinthians, I do want us to remember the things that we have learned. I'm not going to give you a full review, but let me just kind of push forward and perhaps I can weave in the review as we go in. And for this morning, I have five simple points. The five points are under our larger umbrella point that I wanted to go over with you. And in fact, this umbrella points, this umbrella point acts as a cover for not just this passage but kind of the entire chapter. And this is the part. It's, we do not lose heart. We do not lose heart. It's actually repeated in verse 16 as well. But this is the umbrella point over the entire passage. We do not lose heart. How could he say something like this? How can we even respond and recite something similar to this? We do not lose heart. You see, Paul has been given the Authentic Gospel. It's the real thing. So Paul says he does not lose heart. Perhaps this, this statement, this message is especially important in our day and age. And it's especially important that we start off with this major point because perhaps people are losing heart. We are losing heart, perhaps.

There's something called blackpilling. Blackpilling, it's internet slang. It's from redpilling and bluepilling. If you know the movie Matrix, if you don't, that's totally fine. But it's internet slang. Blackpilling is internet slang, generally referring to adopting this deeply pessimistic, nihilistic, fatalistic outlook on life. So if you say that on blackpilling, that's what you're actually saying. It's more prominent on the internet. I don't think people usually use it in everyday vernacular when talking to someone. But blackpilling denotes the belief, like perhaps genetics or physical appearance, solely determine one's fate or success, not just in social settings or dating or romantic settings, but just in life in general. So if you don't have these things, like the genetic traits, so that you could go around mogging people, you feel this despair. And the state of the world just brings you despair. When you think about the economy, you feel despair. When you think about, oh, my house, I don't even know if I could afford a house. I don't even know if I could pay for my house. You feel despair. And this is a growing trend among people, especially on the Internet. But it is a growing trend. But I want to go back and look at the Apostle Paul. He had such heavy opposition in Corinth at the time of his writing this letter. False teachers were not only slandering him, but they were also forming factions against him. And these teachers were not only saying that his ministry was based on deceit, but they had also claimed that he didn't have any converts at all. He had no fruit here. They were trying to convince him of that. The opposition party seemed to be growing. What was his response? When it looks like the world is against you, when the world is trying to convince you, you don't have what it takes. You weren't born with this stuff. In fact, everything is against you.