In 2 Corinthians 2, Paul is unsettled over Titus and the church at Corinth even while ministry is going well. When plans, health, work, or politics don’t go how we expected, we too find ourselves shaken. But, no matter how uncertain we feel, there is a source of certainty we can turn to: our God.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
Paul experienced anxiety about Titus and the Corinthians’ response to his letter, even though he knew God’s ultimate victory was secure. What does his example teach us about the difference between faithful concern and misplaced fear?
What uncertainties are currently leaving you feeling shaken, and how have you responded to them so far?
The sermon emphasizes that God—not politicians or earthly circumstances—determines ultimate victory. How might this perspective change the way you respond to current events and political outcomes, whether they align with your preferences or not?
The speaker describes Christians as “transmitters” of God’s fragrance or aroma in the world. What “aroma” does your response to political, vocational, relational, or health uncertainty communicate to those around you?
The crockpot meal illustration suggests that God’s victory is “simmering” even when we can’t yet taste it fully. When have you experienced God’s faithfulness during a waiting period, and how did that shape your trust in His promises?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
How are you feeling today? Over the last week, a lot of people have had, well, let’s just say a lot of feelings. If you follow the news at all, you almost certainly have been bombarded with the analysis of the election. It went, well, sort of like people thought, but also, in some ways, differently than people thought.
One unexpected local race, the 2nd Congressional District, that covers part of our area here in St. Charles and St. Louis, went unexpectedly to the Democratic challenger after decades of just three or so Republican incumbents constantly being re-elected. Huge shift, unexpected, until right before the election when I remember hearing on the news that the incumbent, Congresswoman Ann Wagner, had canceled her election night party. Kind of an unusual move, usually only happens if things are looking, well, kind of bad for the candidate, and sure enough, that’s exactly what the case was.
So there were a lot of feelings there, right? We don’t want to have a party where all the balloons are up, and yet, everyone feels down. It reminded me of some iconic pictures from the 2016 election where there was this massive convention hall rented for the Clinton campaign that was going to have this massive celebration for the election of the first female president, and it had a glass ceiling on the building, and they were going to make a big deal out of that. And the iconic pictures were all the people, all the deep, true believers in that campaign sitting there on the stage and so on, weeping because they’d lost.
Political campaigns bring up a lot of feelings because we invest in ourselves, our values into them, we invest ourselves into them, far more than we probably should, but for a good reason, right? Because they speak to the things of how our life functions, and we have the balloons up, ready to celebrate the victory that we were hoping for, and sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. And if you follow it for a while, you realize, well, there’s going to be those sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t, they’re going to happen over and over again. So it just creates a lot of uncertainty, and it’s hard when we have to deal with that uncertainty.
Uncertainty leaves us, well, it leaves us feeling shaken to our core oftentimes. Now, maybe this election you’re feeling really good because your folks won. Maybe you’re not feeling so good because your folks lost. It’s hard to say a time where you could say that everyone’s feeling good because, well, it just doesn’t happen. But the simple truth is, there are going to be times where you feel shake, and that speaks to the larger issues of life, right? Because politics, we’re trying to somehow control life, make it feel like we have control over it. And then when that control is elusive, we feel hopeless. We feel like, what in the world are we supposed to do?
Hi, welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad that you’re here tonight because we’re talking about our steadfast God. Politics, they’re not steadfast. Our favorite candidates, even the shoo-ins, even the ones that have been incumbents for decades, they’re not steadfast, but our God is. And that’s what we’re going to be thinking about as we turn to the next section of Second Corinthians.
So, as we prepare, if you’d hit a like button and a share button right there on your screen so that others can come and join us, because here’s the simple truth. Some people are celebrating this week, but they’re going to reach that point where they need to be reminded of what steadfast, because it’s not always going to be that. They need to hear about our God. And you also probably know people who are feeling really shook up this week because it did not go the way they wanted, and they feel very uncertain about the future of the country. They need to hear about our steadfast God. Everybody does. So, please, hit that button.
Let’s go ahead and come before our God as we begin. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word. Thank you for being steadfast, even when our plans go awry. We have the party balloons up, and the party doesn’t happen. Lord, would you help us to make sense of those times, but more importantly, to remember then every time that you are the true sense, you are the true hope, not all those other things. Even when we rightly worry about things because earthly matters are something of concern to us and that’s right and proper, would you help us to still remember that they aren’t the end. They aren’t the end of the sentence. They aren’t the end goal of our lives.
We pray this in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Let’s go ahead and turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 2, where Paul talks about a time that he felt like he was being shaken, that things felt uncertain. Verse 12, Paul says, “When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened to me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest, because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.”
Uncertainty, no matter what it is, no matter what year you lived in, leaves us feeling shaken. It doesn’t matter if your favorite candidate lost last week and you feel shaken. It doesn’t matter if you hear that there’s layoffs coming at your company and you feel shaken. It doesn’t matter if you got a weird health diagnosis and you feel shaken. It doesn’t matter if you’re a first-century apostle called directly by Jesus, knocked off your feet and placed on the ground and told that Jesus is sending you directly. There are still those times that you have the party balloon up and the party doesn’t seem to come. We feel shaken.
Paul here feels shaken because here he is. He’s in Troas. Things are going well. It seems reminiscent of the success in ministry that he had early on in Ephesus. And so every reason to be feeling good, right? Here’s the apostle called by God, sent by God, seeing God open doors. He says all that, but we’ve all had those times where some of the things we’ve even been praying about feel like they’re going really well, that God is with us. And yet there’s something that we’re worried about, something that leaves us occupied feeling because in that area, the balloon still is up. But just like this balloon is starting to lose its helium, all our plans feel like they’re slowly sinking. What do we do?
Doesn’t matter that Troas is going well, that everything feels so promising. What Paul finds himself occupied with are two big worries. One, how’s Titus doing? He sent Titus off to deliver a message to the Corinthians and he worries about Titus and his travels and his reception in Corinth. And then how did the Corinthians receive that letter? This is that difficult letter we’ve been talking about over the past few weeks. And so Paul finds himself, like maybe some of us have when we’ve had to write something very difficult or say something difficult, but we’re receiving the response in delay and you spend your time thinking, how is this being received? How is someone processing this? So he has two very important worries here.
A dear friend, how’s he doing? And a dear congregation that’s messed up, but he loves deeply and wants to be okay. How are they doing? And Paul’s worried. He doesn’t actually have peace.
He notes later in 2 Corinthians 7, verse 5, “For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn, fighting without and fear within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus.”
Titus returns. The answer is Titus okay. Yes. How did the Corinthians receive the letter? Well, they actually did receive it and they still love Paul. And so there’s a reception to that letter, even if it’s not fully received, there’s still problems even as Paul’s writing again. They received the letter and they took it to heart. And that’s when Paul feels relief.
And I think that’s good for us to hear because we think, well, if only I had faith like Paul, you know, things could be uncertain, but I’d see God was working and I’d actually believe that everything was okay. It must be something wrong with me, but there’s something wrong with all of us. Paul again, he’s had a commissioning like none of us where he has had Jesus himself tell him exactly what he’s supposed to be doing, where he’s supposed to be doing it. And then he sees the fruit of it and he still feels uncertain. Why? Because there are still things in this world that he cares about that he doesn’t have control over. And he worries.
The unknown is scary. Think back to the election exit polling from last week, and people are trying to discern why did people vote the way they did? What were the issues that were concerning them? And one of the things that concerned people, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, was the issue of data centers. It wasn’t maybe the biggest issue, but it was certainly an issue that agitates people right now. And overwhelmingly people dislike them.
I’ve mentioned this before. It kind of puzzles me as someone who has worked with a lot of technology over the years. I’m used to the idea of data centers. I’ve interacted with machines and data centers for decades now, going back to the nineties. It doesn’t seem weird to me to have a data center or to build a data center. And one thing I’ve hoped for for a long time is that there’d be a nice big data center built here in St. Louis, because we don’t have much in the way of data centers here in this city. And it’s kind of a pain when I need to do something to have to go to use facilities in a different city. You can’t do it here.
So for me, I’m familiar with what the computers, how they function inside a data center and how data centers work and having read about the cooling systems and the power supply systems. And I’m thankful when they have generators and I’m thankful when they have all kinds of additional lines running into them and all this sort of stuff. And I’ve thought about that for years.
So I hear about data centers. That’s not an unknown. It’s something I know. I’m not like a data center expert, but I’m familiar enough. It doesn’t feel like an unknown at all. It’s like, Oh, please build the data center. The fact that I’m with you tonight depends on data centers. So much of what we do in ministry depends on data centers.
I realized that many of you probably don’t feel that way. And a lot of it, a lot of it for a lot of the people that responded to it came down to what are these giant buildings doing and why do we need them? Why can’t we just use what we had? And it makes sense if you’re into technology, because you see how we’re progressing with technology and the things we’re doing and the extra demands on power and processing that they add. But if you don’t really understand all that and you don’t spend time thinking about it and you haven’t worked with it, it’s just a big unknown.
And for all of us, life is essentially a giant data center. There are a lot of unknowns, a lot of big, scary buildings and construction plants. And we ask questions about them and we get some answers that sort of answer our questions, but also leave us wondering.
Paul knew what he was supposed to be doing. He knew the big blueprint of what was going on, but what he didn’t know is, well, what’s going to happen to Titus right now? How are the Corinthians going to respond to my letter right now? He didn’t know those things. Just like when you hear a suburb of your own community is going to be getting a data center, you might wonder, well, but what’s going on inside that building? What’s going on inside my life? We can’t see everything. We are going to worry.
And I’m not really telling you anything because you know this. We all do this. We don’t know. We worry.
Here’s one of the problems with that. We don’t know and we worry, we can often react in unhelpful ways and go to great extremes to do it. It’s one of the things that’s been happening with those data centers where people are saying, well, let’s just not build any more. They want all the stuff. You want your Facebook to load quickly and hopefully the right videos, hopefully you consider this the right video, to show up and to show up exactly when you want it. We want all those things, but we don’t actually react in a way that will encourage that in a helpful direction.
That’s what we do in life in general. We want God to lead us, but when we get nervous and uncertain, we don’t necessarily pull closer to the Lord and ask him to guide us more and spend more time in his word. We start doing all kinds of worldly things that somehow we hope will help bring certainty to the uncertain buildings. Put that moratorium on because put that moratorium on and maybe then we’ll actually be able to know what’s going on and then the pages of our life won’t load and we think, well, why is that? Well, because we’ve let our worry derail us and redirect us.
It’s not that we don’t have a right to worry. Paul here doesn’t say, and I repented of the fact that I worried about Titus. No, because it was right that he worried about his friend. It’s right that you worry about your job and your health and your family and your community and what’s being built in it. And it’s right that you worry about politicians even, to a degree, as long as we keep in mind they’re not God. They can’t save us. They can’t fix everything. But do we want to see people that promote the things of God elected? People that value freedom and life and truth? Do we want those sorts of things? Yes. Of course, we should. And when we feel like it’s not going in that direction, should we worry? Well, it makes sense. But what are we going to do with that worry? That’s the thing.
If something is being built in your town and you don’t understand it, what’s the right way to address the worry? To go and get answers. If things aren’t going well in the country, is it good to speak up in a productive, constructive way? Sure. Of course it is. If you have fear about your job, is it okay to have that worry lead you into asking good questions about whether there’s a different job opening that you could take that would be more certain so that you don’t just stand around with balloons floating by and no party? Yeah, definitely.
It was right that Paul worried. It was right that he prayed for Titus. It was right that he was concerned how the Corinthians felt. How uncaring would it be as he pastored them and shepherded them over the years if Paul didn’t care? Oh, well, you know, if they don’t like the letter, well, I did my best. It’s not that.
The question is, where are we going to turn while we’re in the midst of the worry? Here Paul can reflect back. He’s already gotten some answers. But where do we look when the building’s going up and we don’t know what’s happening?
Verse 14. “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.”
We’re shaken, but God is not shaken. That’s the key thing we see here. And so Paul goes from we were worried about how I was worried about how you felt, what was going on in your life, whether you were going to receive the letter I sent and respond to it in a faithful manner and whether you’d still care about me after you received it. I was worried about those things. I was worried how Titus was doing in his travels and how you received him. I was worried about all those things. But here’s what I knew even before I had the answer to that. That God is always triumphant. He’s the one leading us.
And yes, I was shaken. He’s not pretending he wasn’t worried. He’s making sure to confirm he did know the ultimate path, even when he was worried about the in-between parts. Paul didn’t know the details and how they were going to play out. But he knows that the victory is in our God and no one else. And if Titus was received poorly, if Titus didn’t make the trip safely and return safely, was the victory in doubt? No. Doesn’t mean that Paul would have been happy about it. He shouldn’t have been. But the ultimate victory was still secure.
Because as we go about our uncertain lives and there’s all these massive structures being built around us that we don’t fully understand and we don’t know what they’re doing and we wonder if they’re using too much water or power or whatever. And sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t. What we know is that God has the victory. His victory is sure that he is actually leading us someplace, even in that uncertainty.
And so Paul invokes the image of a triumphal procession, which maybe we think that sounds kind of churchy. Oh, is that something we do on Palm Sunday? We come in with palm branches or something? Well, I guess you could say that. But that’s not what Paul has in mind here.
What he has in mind is what does the conquering Roman army do when it arrives at a city it’s conquered? It has a triumphal procession into the city. The Roman general leads the way. All the people come out that they want peace with the army and they hail their new leaders and things are good. And Paul says that’s what’s coming to this world because God is leading the ultimate triumphal procession. He’s coming in and we’re just there in the army following him and are there uncertainties along the way? Yes. But is that destination in doubt? No. Not at all. Not in the least.
The passage is often cited over in 1 Thessalonians 4 as referring to the rapture quite simply is pointing to this exact same thing. This idea of Jesus is going to come and have a triumphal victory into the world. We add all this mystery and hard to wrap our minds around elements to it, but it’s really just that simple. Paul’s repeated point is Jesus is going to return. Jesus is victorious in his return. And guess what? It’s his people. We follow him in the parade and it’s good. It’s not that we should be haughty because we’re not the general. We’re not the ones bringing about the strategy that gives the victory, but we’re the people that get to follow him in and see that it’s good.
Kind of unfortunate when we turn it into some kind of big argument about how the end times are going to play out, because that’s not the point. The point is Jesus in his glory. That’s the point.
So how do we actually factor into it? He makes us transmitters of his fragrance, of his aroma. You see, when they’d go in and they’d have this triumphal procession, they would often bring in incense that they would burn as part of the parade as they’re moving along. Incense offered to the gods that they thought had offered them victory. In our case, as God uses us, and our God is the one actually leading the parade himself. He’s the one doing it. We don’t offer incense to strange gods wondering if they exist or not. We follow the one true God, and our very lives as he works in them become the aroma, that fragrance that wafts through the cities as we’re led behind him. And people smell the sweet smell of a beautiful victory.
What’s that look like? Well, Paul says it’s the knowledge of Him. You see, even when we’re shaken, if we turn to our God, and that’s where clearly our hope is, in his faithfulness and his promises, what that says to everybody is, hey, I’m admitting I’m shaken. I don’t feel like I know where everything is going. But you know what I do know? I know that our God is good and faithful.
One of the challenges I think in the coming weeks for us as Christians is we think about the political upheaval. If you’re celebrating, are you communicating that you’re happy about this, but you really know that who’s ultimately in control is our God, or that somehow you think the politicians that won are going to be the ones that fix everything? And if you’re not happy with the result, are you communicating, yeah, you wish there had been a different result, and here’s the reasons that you believe what God teaches would have led things a different way. And yet you know that it doesn’t really matter in the end, ultimately, because God is the one who has the victory in the end, not our politicians.
See, whichever side we happen to be on, we as Christians have a profound commandment here to make sure that we’re not putting our hope in the politicians who have succeeded or fallen. The societal situations that have succeeded or fallen, our changing culture, whether it agrees with our God and His Word or not, those aren’t the things that determine victory. And are we actually communicating that? When we’re going through that city in that triumphal procession with Jesus, are we actually saying, I know the reason there’s victory is because Jesus is here? It doesn’t matter if everyone in the city gets that or not. It’d be nice if they did, but they’re not determining whether there’s victory. He’s determining whether there’s victory.
The knowledge of Him is the offering He wants most. I think a lot of times we think it’s somehow that we’ll fix the world for Him, we’ll make it a nice place for Him. Some Christians have actually fallen into that trap over the years where they think that their goal, that their job is to make the world good enough for Jesus to return. And that’s getting it completely backwards. Jesus makes us good enough for Him to return. We cannot make the world good enough for Him to return. We don’t have it in us. We will fail miserably.
That’s why we always put our hope into politicians and they fail us time and again. Point to the politician who hasn’t and you’re not looking hard at him. The only one who hasn’t is Jesus. He’s the one with the victory. And when we say that and we communicate that and we live that, and we live that right now, this is a time, friends, this is an amazing opportunity for us to actually do that.
Are we living that as we respond to people who are afraid and who are both and are also joyful that we’re not getting overly exuberant, oh yeah, everything’s gonna be good now. We’re not getting overly despairing. Are we living that? If we do, we’re going to communicate hope to people, genuine hope, by being an aroma of the victory that actually matters rather than staking all of our time and effort on a victory that doesn’t.
And aromas are so important. I saw a weather site last night extended its crockpot watch that the weather’s getting colder and that means there are going to be more crockpot meals cooking. You know, one of the things I love about crockpot meals, you smell them for hours before you smell the aroma. You make a nice big bowl of potato soup, maybe in your crockpot, it’ll be better smelling potatoes or, or maybe a nice roast and of course roasted potatoes to go with it. Whatever it is, it’s going to have some potatoes in it. That would make it really, really good.
And you smell that cooking and you smell that all day maybe. And what does it tell you? Yes, you might be hungry now. Your stomach feels uncertain now, but you can smell that aroma and know that victory is coming. Something good is coming because it’s just simmering right now.
What we want people to see in our lives is that we’re part of a crockpot meal. It isn’t all here yet. We may only at times smell it and not actually yet taste it. But Jesus’ victory is real. And when we smell that crockpot meal, it’s saying there’s really food here, right? We might overlook, but it’s really our nose telling us what’s going on, right? We know it’s working because we can, we can smell what’s cooking.
Do people smell what’s cooking in our lives? And do they smell the right thing? It’s not that we eliminate all fear. Paul here isn’t eliminating all fear in his life and saying, I’m perfectly comfortable all the time because I know Jesus is going to win. No, he actually still seems like a caring human being. I think we probably all know those people who claim they never are nervous at all, never feel uncertain at all. And a lot of times it feels kind of cold and impersonal because they don’t ever seem to get worked up even when people they love and care about are going through hard times. And we don’t find that comforting. We find that painful.
That’s not what we’re called to be. It’s okay if we actually have emotion, that we actually seem fearful at times. But even in that fear, if we say, I’m fearful, but I know that Jesus is in control and he’s my source of hope, even now when I’m fearful, that’s when we’re communicating the truth. When we say, yes, things are going really well right now, but you know, the reason I’m really hopeful, it’s not because things are going really well right now in my life or in my city or my country or the world, it’s because Jesus is there and Jesus is going to return. And Jesus is going to come as the most triumphant general ever, the most loving one too. Make everything right.
The real comfort and the one that we can put off in that aroma is that yes, the world’s uncertain. Yes, we feel uncertainty, but God is not uncertain. And because of that, our uncertainty exists now, but it will pass because he will return.
Would you pray with me, please? Father, please help us when we feel uncertain, when we feel like our lives are shaken. Maybe it’s the geopolitical situation. Maybe it’s just what happened to us even over this past week. We really don’t know where we personally are going. Whatever it might be, Lord, would you help us to understand that you’re not going to leave us in a room full of balloons and a bunch of people weeping, that for all who call on the name of the Lord, the victory parade is coming. We already can put off the aroma of it, that others would smell that aroma of the wonderful nourishment cooking up and better than even potatoes. There’s the grace that’s roasting, grace we so desperately need in the uncertainty of our lives.
Would you help us to communicate that to others? That would be what they smell, because that’s what they need, and that’s what we need. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name.
I hope this has been an encouragement to you, and once again, would you give this a like and a share? Hit that share button. People are feeling uncertainty right now. Look at your feed on Facebook or X or Mastodon or Threads or Instagram. People are feeling uncertain. It’s an uncertain world. Our God is uncertain. Hit that share button. Let someone hear about our very certain God that we’ve been studying tonight and how wonderful he is.
And we’re going to think more about that next week because he establishes us, so I do hope that you’ll join me then. But in the meantime, if there’s any way I can be praying for you, you can always use the number on screen, 833-356-4032. Just text to that number, 833-356-4032, and I’m texting a prayer request, a question, or you can also use the comments below the video. Jump in there and we can talk to each other as a church family. What a blessing it is either way.
In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful day. Goodbye. Thank you. Goodbye.
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