I invite you to turn in the Scriptures to 2 Corinthians 1, starting at verse 12. 2 Corinthians 1, verse 12, we'll read through chapter 2, verse 4. For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. For we are not writing anything to you other than what you read and understand. And I hope you will fully understand, just as you did partially understand us, that on the day of our Lord Jesus, you will boast of us as we will boast of you. Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first so that you might have a second experience of grace. I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not yes and no, but in Him it is always yes. For all the promises of God find their yes in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us and who has also put a seal on us and given us His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. But I call God to witness against me. It was to spare you that I refrain from coming again to Corinth. Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy. For you stand firm in your faith. For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? And I wrote as I did, so that when I came, I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice. For I felt sure of all of you that my joy would be the joy of you all. For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, Not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you. May God bless the reading of his word. When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. Certainly we think of fellowship with God. What a joy to be with him. And also we think of fellowship with all those we love, we long to see, we will be together forever. All those whom God has called will assuredly enter the blessedness of this fellowship with God and with one another on that day. As we think about that joy, we might think of the famous Westminster Shorter Catechism, question and answer number one. What's the chief end of man? That he might enjoy God and glorify Him forever. But you know, the Heidelberg Catechism says something similar. It says we'll have eternal happiness. It's a question in answer six. It says that God made us that we might live with Him in eternal happiness to glorify and praise Him. Eternal happiness. and our joy is entirely consistent with God's glory. Yet when we compare these thoughts of heaven to the situations in our life right now, there seems to be a gap. Too often our relationships are marked with conflict, disagreement, division, even within the church. This gap between the joy we will certainly have in unity with God and one another and what we experience now calls for us then to work for joy. Work towards the goal of joy. And it's not a working to earn it. It's a working to live within the realities which Christ has earned for us. This working towards joy is the language which Paul uses here in verse 24. We work with you for your joy. You see, there are different actors in this work for joy, which are the two headings I've organized it under. First, God is working for your joy. And second, ministers are working for your joy. I know there's something holy about three points. I only have two. I guess in the Trinity, it's one God and three persons, so there should be one sermon and three points. But in my defense, Christ is two natures, divine and human, so two points is good as well. The structure of the passage before us is like a sandwich. It starts out with Paul talking about these interpersonal issues he has with the Corinthian church. Then in the center, he goes on a theological tangent. Makes some beautiful statements. Rich theology. And then he goes back to these interpersonal issues that he has with the Corinthians. So at the center of this sandwich is the rich theology, which is found in verses 20 to 22. And that's where I'll begin. God is working for your joy. He's made promises to you. Promises of blessing. For your good, yes, even for your joy. Paul has this wonderful, memorable line here. That all the promises of God are yes, in Jesus Christ. And the natural question we might have is, which promises exactly? What has God promised? What is it that's yes in Jesus for us? Well, the answer is the promises God has made by way of covenant throughout the history of redemption. Paul will later in this letter of 2 Corinthians use the word promises again. Chapter 7, verse 1, Since God has made us these promises, and it refers to what he just mentioned at the end of chapter 6. And what we find there is that he invokes what's commonly called the covenant formula. I will be your God, and you will be my people. He even puts it in rich terms of family. God says to us, I will be your father, and you will be sons and daughters to me. And so we know when Paul references God's promises, He has in mind the covenants which God has made throughout the Old Testament, which He has pledged Himself to His people to be their God. God is working for your joy. We see that unfolding throughout the history of redemption. And we know that because the Father made you promises for joy, Christ, the Son of God, has accomplished securing those blessings for you in his death and resurrection. And the Holy Spirit has sealed those blessings to you as a down payment until the final day. There's rich Trinitarian theology here in verses 20 to 22. So let's explore these covenants of promise and see how God has been working for your joy all along. Well, we can start at the beginning of the Scriptures. A creation. God worked and created all that there is. And then He rested. And in the same way, He called Adam to work. Work for a week or so. And he held out that promise of rest to him as well. That promise of entering his Sabbath rest. To enter his joy. If only Adam should obey perfectly. Subdue the earth to the glory of God. He too could enjoy the blessing of rest forever with the Lord. Of course, Adam didn't do this. He failed in his vocation. He rebelled against the Lord. He sinned. He did not obey perfectly. And he plunged himself and all his posterity into condemnation. Yet even with God's pronouncement of curse, he made a promise. Genesis 3.15, he would promise. A son would be born who would crush the serpent's head. This son would not succumb to temptation. he would obey perfectly. God made a promise to bring his people into the blessing of rest and joy by way of this Son to come. Even though God entered his rest in the sense of creation, we know even as Jesus told us that God all along has been working for redemption. God's working for your joy. Well, next we can consider Abraham. God made promises to him by way of covenant. He promised a land for Abraham to call home. He promised him offspring, a multitude as numerous as the stars. And God promised that all nations of the earth would be blessed through him. As Paul describes it in Romans chapter 4, he says that Abraham was promised to be heir of the entire world. Well, in a certain sense, God kept these promises when he delivered the nation of Israel. Here we have the multitude of Abraham's descendants giving them a promised land. And God made further promises through his covenant with Israel to give them prosperity in the land. If only they should obey. It turns out that was a big if. because the Israelites were miserable sinners like the rest of us. They could not keep God's covenant. The promises God made to Israel were good, but they were only a shadow of true blessing. Long life in the land is indeed a great thing, but it's no eternal life. And as people continued to feel the sting of death, They knew themselves to still be under Adam's curse. And this nagging sense that there must be more. Abraham himself lived as a pilgrim on the earth, longing not for an earthly home, but a heavenly one. A home where the builder and maker is God himself. Indeed, Hebrews 11 tells us that all those great people of faith throughout Israel's history never acquired what was promised because God had something better. Or we could look at God's covenant with David. How he promised him that he would never lack a son to rule Israel. We'll look at that a bit more tonight, but you can probably tell where this is going. God made promises. Promises of blessing to enter his rest. And yet, who will be obedient to earn this blessing? Adam failed. Israel failed. Where is the Son who was to come? Jesus Christ is that Son. Jesus lived the perfect life obedience, which Adam did not. And in that obedience, Jesus earned all the promised blessings. In His sacrificial death at the cross, Jesus bore the curse for sin that we all deserve. And in His resurrection, never to die again, He led the way before us into eternal Sabbath rest. So you see, in ourselves, all the promises of God are no. But in Jesus Christ, all His promises are yes. We who believe in Jesus Christ rest upon His merits for blessing. Not any supposed merit in ourselves. We are joined to Christ and we become heirs with Him of the blessing He earned. And so you see, this is how all nations of the world will be blessed through Abraham. Jesus Christ, the descendant of Abraham by blood, by his obedience, earned all blessing so that we, by faith, regardless of ancestry, regardless of whether you are male, female, slave or free, we become heirs to his blessing. If you are Christ's by faith, then you are Abraham's offspring, Heirs according to promise. And we have in Christ every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. We have justification, adoption, sanctification, and the certain hope of glorification. All the promises of God are indeed yes in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, Paul goes on to talk about the Holy Spirit in verse 22. The indwelling Holy Spirit is himself one of the promised blessings. In the midst of Israel's repeated disobedience, God promised to give his law, not written on stone tablets, but to write the law on our hearts. In Jeremiah 31, it says this, This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Ezekiel explains that God would do this by way of the indwelling Spirit. I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. And following Christ's work, beloved, This coming of the Holy Spirit has happened. And it works like a down payment, a guarantee, he calls it. You know how this works in business and financial transactions. You pay an initial lump sum as a pledge to pay the rest. The Holy Spirit is that pledge, that seal, that there is more blessing to come. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a wonderful blessing in itself. But at the same time, it's a pledge to us that we don't have all the blessing that there is. And this is where prosperity, gospel, these sorts of things fall short. When we're asking the question, what has God promised? He has not promised you the Rolls Royce. He has promised you eternal blessedness, happiness in heaven with Him. And we have the Holy Spirit now as that down payment of the blessing to come in heaven. So you see, through all of history, the history of redemption as it unfolds in Scripture, God has been working for your joy to bring us back to Himself through the work of Christ. and even consider in your own circumstances of life, God has brought you to himself. He brought you to hear the gospel. By his Holy Spirit changed your heart that you would believe God indeed has been working for your joy to bring you into his eternal Sabbath rest. Well, that's some of what can be said about verses 20 to 22 and the rich theology there. Some of it. And see how God's working for your joy. Secondly, let's consider how ministers work for your joy. And we'll do that by looking at these interpersonal issues that Paul's having with this church in Corinth. And Paul, as a model of the minister of the gospel, worked for the joy of God's people. Paul planted the church in Corinth he spent about a year and a half there establishing this church building them up in the faith before moving on in his church planning missions elsewhere but it seems there was growing discord between Paul and this church at least some people there it appears some rival preachers arose whom Paul later in the epistles sarcastically calls the super apostles. The heart of the matter, it seems, as Paul diagnoses it in this letter, is that the Corinthians were still living by worldly values, sizing people up according to the flesh. That's how they are evaluating their public speakers in the church. By the worldly standards. They said Paul actually wasn't all that good. Yeah, when he writes letters, he sounds really strong and bold, but when he shows up, he's weak. His physical appearance is nothing to write home about. His speaking skills are worthless. But Paul appealed to the Corinthians not to size people up by external appearances, but by the genuineness of the heart. And that's what Paul does is defends his own sincerity. He needs to show them that he's genuine. He does not labor with selfish motives according to the world's values like those super apostles. He instead works for their joy. Paul is like a parent who gets no respect. I considered titling this no respect, but then that comedian would get royalties. But Paul poured out his life for these people. He endured persecution in order to get the gospel to them. He insisted on not taking pay from them, as not to burden them. While he was with them, he was supported by other churches. He doesn't have selfish motives towards them. As he says in verse 24, he doesn't abuse his apostolic authority to lord it over their faith. He works for their joy. And yet, what does he get in return from these people but contempt? No respect. But the passage before us shows another sore spot between Paul and his church, and it involves his travel plans. It seems he flip-flopped on his travel plans. And it brings into question his sincerity. Having a fatherly affection for these people, a sense of responsibility for them, he would often visit the churches he planted to see how they're doing. And Paul continued to check up on them and he told them that he planned to visit them twice. As he describes in verse 16, I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. He was going to drop in twice. But it seems his plans changed. As he says later, at the beginning of chapter 2, I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. It seems he did drop in the first time, and it didn't go very well. We don't know the details of the problem, but it certainly reveals that there's a growing rift here. So he decided to change plans. He wasn't going to stop again. He doesn't want to cause more pain. He doesn't lord it over them. and yet the critics of Paul and Corinth would pick up on this. See, that guy's not reliable. He said he would come, and he flip-flopped on us. You can't rely on him. He only serves himself. He says yes and no at the same time. And that line of thinking explains why Paul goes into the theological tangent that he does about all God's promises being yes in Jesus Christ. I don't say yes and no at the same time. I always say yes because God always says yes. Paul proclaimed to them the gospel message of Jesus Christ. How that fulfills the Old Testament promises. And they believed. He expresses no doubt about their faith. but he's arguing that if they could believe the message he ministered to them, why is it so hard to believe that he's reliable? Why is it so hard to believe that he loves them? So Paul needs to explain his change of plans. He needs to defend his own truthfulness as well as confirm that he really loves these people. He does it with very strong language. He even swears on God's name that he's telling the truth. You can see it in verse 18. He says, This is a way of swearing on the faithfulness of God. It's very strong language. And he does it again in verse 23. I call God to witness against me. He's saying, I swear I'm telling the truth. May God curse me if I'm lying. And we should be very careful with using this kind of language, that we would not use God's name in vain. Our Heidelberg Catechism question and answer 101 talks about this, that there are times that are appropriate to swear, to make an oath. It says we may do it when necessity requires it in order to maintain and promote truth and trustworthiness for God's glory and our neighbor's good. In this case, it reveals how seriously Paul took this situation. And he says his goal for writing there in verse 14, that on the day of our Lord Jesus, you will boast of us as we will boast of you. He doesn't say this is in jeopardy. He doesn't say if we don't resolve this, we might not be happy together in heaven. No, he says this is a fact. We will be happy together in heaven on the day of the Lord Jesus. We will have that joy of being together. I'm certain of that for us. He's thinking of when we all get to heaven and what a day of rejoicing it will be. But Paul's pointing out their inconsistency. See, if you realize we will have joy together in heaven, why is there discord among us now? If you truly understand you will have unity and joy in heaven, then what should keep us as brothers and sisters in the Lord from living in that unity and joy right now? And so because he loves them so much, because he works for their joy. He wanted to visit them as much as possible. We love to see each other as brothers and sisters in the Lord. But he explains that because it was painful, he didn't want to cause more pain. So he changed his plans and didn't come the second time. But he insists he did this because he loves them. He has abundant joy for them. A minister works for the joy of God's people because it's so hard to believe. And Paul said an example for all ministers that they should labor with sincerity of heart, not with selfish motives, according to worldly standards, not to lord it over the flock, but to labor for your joy. And indeed, this serves as a reality check to ministers that if the Apostle couldn't secure an undivided congregation, we should at least have sober expectations. That's some application for ministers, but what about the rest of us? As we are on the receiving end of gospel ministry, may we not be like these divided Corinthians. We ought to respond with a love that anticipates the joy of being together in heaven. Hebrews 13 says this obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account let them do this how it says with joy not with groaning for that would be of no advantage to you so we're all called to be workers for the joy of the officers of the church we work for each other's joy God is working for your joy we have this message of God's work for your joy in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit and ministers are also working for your joy in the very act of declaring this message of Jesus Christ to you as we anticipate the day of the Lord the day when we enter blessed eternal Sabbath rest in fellowship with God and with one another in fullness of joy. May that thought cause us to live in such joy and harmony now. I close with the final sentence of the Belgic Confession. So we look forward to that great day with longing in order to enjoy fully the promises of God and Christ Jesus our Lord. Let's pray. Oh God, we thank you for all the promises you've made to us. The promise to be our God, that we could be your people, your sons and daughters. Help us as we anticipate the day of the Lord. With joy. So that we could live now in that joy. Lord, as we think about division and disagreement that might pop up in the church. May it always be tenured with this joy. Believing the best about one another. Speaking the truth in love. And God, may we believe your promises unto our joy. Give us this joy, we pray. Help us as we seek to utter our amen in the name of Jesus, on his merit and mediation alone, for he has earned all blessing. What joy it is to know you and to have these blessings amongst your church, your people. And so we utter our Amen in Jesus' name. Amen.