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2 Corinthians - Chapter 13 (C. Trimble 7-14-24)
Good morning everybody doing okay, it goes good, good. All right, it's your first week here or if you've come in the last month, you probably have no idea who I am. Got to take a couple of weeks off, I was only all, I was truly only off for two weeks, but three weekends, we missed, which if I'm going to be honest, which is kind of nice. So, and the three speakers when I was gone all did a great job, correct? Anybody who's good? Yeah, good. I hate to give Josh Brooker credit, but I went back and watched this sermon, he's a very, very excellent speaker, did a great job with Chapter 12. A couple of things before we get started. One is if you have looked down, you've noticed that our carpet is not cheat-a-print from Coffee Stains anymore, it's because it's different carpet. And I was adamantly against replacing that carpet because it's so expensive, but I remember when we had our prayer night and we moved a bunch of chairs out and I saw how bad it was and the people were going to have to pray on that. And then when we shifted the chairs around in here, I made the call and we saved up some money and got some new carpet because it looked pretty rough. That was the first thing. Second thing is, and I rarely do this, but I want to do it because we've been working pretty hard, getting ready for it. We will start the book of Revelation next weekend. And yeah, so we'll be friends at least for one more week, and I will start that next week. I'm looking forward to that. We've taught that a couple of times before. It's been about six years though. I think it was 2018, 2019, the last time I taught that. But we'll start that next weekend and work our way through that. Last thing, and sorry to end before we get into the message on such a serious thing, I know everyone knows that there was an assassination attempt on our former president. And if you are new here, I do not get into politics. It's just not a place I want to go or think I should go as a pastor. But after watching that last night and I watched it, I was of course teaching when it actually happened and then got home and my wife and I and my two kids watched the footage of that. It was, it really showed just how aggressive and out of control our culture has become. Regardless of where your political leanings are, I mean, it was pretty disturbing to watch. Pretty hard to watch. And I'm only bringing that up because if you are not praying for your government, it's a hard thing to say sometimes, isn't it? If we're just being honest and we're in a shirt, it says authentic on it, doesn't it? It's hard to pray for something that maybe you don't see eye to eye with, but we are called to honor the governing authorities to pray for whomever may be over us in leadership, whether we agree with them or not. And that's a tough thing to do at times, but we are called to do that. And I was just out of the country for a couple of weeks. And when you leave the country and come back into the country, I'm not trying to be. I'm not trying to be anything. Sometimes the brokenness of our of our homeland is is even magnified more. We're broken. So I say all that to say you need to be praying, praying for whomever is in leadership, praying for our nation, praying for each other and praying that there's some kind of peace and unity that we can find. So anyways, all that being said, we are wrapping up a book of the Bible called Second Corinthians. We've been in this for a while. We're in chapter 13. Today's is the last chapter of it. Again, Josh did a pretty fantastic job last weekend. If you haven't been here, what this book of the Bible is about is about a church in southern Greece. And this is probably the church. I'll say this also in the in the PowerPoint. This is the church that Paul, it seems like, gave more attention to than any other church that we find in the Bible. And the reason is not a good one. It's because they were they were way out of line. They weren't living the way they're supposed to be living. They knew the truth, but they were not living by the truth. And that was a problem. So in chapter 12, that Josh taught last week and there's a lot of great stuff in chapter 12, the thing when I went back and watched his sermon and it was actually towards the beginning of his sermon, he said it. And it's such a gripping statement. And it's one that as I get older, I believe more and more and more. Josh said, apart from God's grace, we're nothing. Any of you in this room who's who've been a Christian for any length of time, the more we grow in our faith, the more we realize that we are an absolute mess without God, right? It is only by God's grace that we can amount to anything. As we get into chapter 13, as we wrap up this book of the Bible, it's a short chapter, but there's some very important points that we're going to pull out and talk about a little bit. Here's what we're going to talk about. It's going to be very, very, very simple. And what it's going to be kind of the linchpin of this last chapter is this, is that if we have the desire to be different, if we genuinely want to change and grow closer to God and be free from sins, claims, Romans, chapter 6, if we want to live that kind of way, God will empower us to do that. God will empower us to live a life that is different, but we have to want that. That has to be basically our chief desire in life has got to be the pursuit of God. That's what we're going to talk about today. Very, very simple. You should have got a notes handout when you walked in. Everything is in there. Everything will be on the screen. Everything is in the notes and everything is on the app. Okay. And if you have a Bible, we're in the New Testament. Right after Romans and 1 Corinthians, we have 2 Corinthians, we'll be wrapping it up and then we'll get into Revelation next weekend. And we won't sleep for about 6 months. Okay. So, all right. So let's pray. And we'll dive into this. Okay. Father, God, we love you. Lord, we thank you so much, God. We thank you for our time together. I genuinely thank you, Lord, for everyone who's in this room this morning. God, it's good to see a full room. That's good, Lord, because the church is good and we need this, God. We thank you for that. Lord, I just pray that you keep your hand on everyone in this room, God, who made it a priority to come into worship and to learn together. And we pray that you bless your church, God. We pray not just for this church. We pray for every single church in our city, Lord. We pray for our other campuses and the churches in those cities. We just pray that everything we do this morning, God, that it honors you and blesses you, Lord. And just to tag on to that, God, we pray for the United States. We pray for our government. We pray, God, for the people that you have put in authority above us. And Father, we may not always agree, and we might even get angry about it all sometimes. God, but we have to trust that you're in control and that you know it's best, Lord. We love you. We thank you. We pray all these things in your name, God, in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Let's read a little bit. This is an interesting ending to this book of the Bible. Let's read a little bit and we'll go back and talk about it, okay? This is the third time I am coming to you. Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. I gave a warning when I was present the second time, and now I give a warning while I am absent to those who sinned before and to all the rest. If I come again, I will not be lenient since you seek proof of Christ speaking in me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but powerful among you, for he was crucified in weakness, but he lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you, we will live with him by God's power. So, like I said a little bit earlier, this group of people, this church in Corinth is probably the church that Paul gave the most amount of his energy to. He lived in this area for about a year and a half. He visited them multiple times, wrote them at least two letters that we know of that are pretty lengthy and a little harsh at times. So, he put a lot of time and energy into these people. And so, if you read 2 Corinthians, if you haven't been with us and if you go back and read it, you can pick up on the fact that sometimes Paul's patience got a little thin. And so, here's the thing though, even though his patience got a little thin, Paul understood, and I think he's trying to help us understand, that if we are to see lasting change, whether that be in ourselves or whether that be in people that we care about, if we want to see lasting, permanent change, that's going to take some time. It's going to take some effort, it's going to take some desire, okay? Now, look, when we give our lives to Jesus, I believe there is an instantaneous change that happens within us, but we have not arrived yet. We don't want to ever arrive until Jesus comes back, but we are just beginning that journey. So, there's a lot of problems that we're going to have to sort out and work out and God will help us during that process, right? But we have to be patient with people, we have to be patient sometimes, even with our own development. So, another thing that Paul says, and I really, really like this, and I want to hang out on this for a second, because I've experienced this a lot, and I bet a lot of you have experienced this as well. There was some tension between Paul and the people in this church, and there were some accusations, and there were some gossip, and there were some rumors. And so, Paul said this, he goes, "I'm going to come, and I'm going to address these things only if there are two or three eyewitness accounts of any accusations that may be brought to me." And so, have you guys ever been addressed by the ambiguous day? What I mean by that is someone comes up to you and they go, "Hey, Cory, they are saying this about you." And my thing is, well, who is they? Well, I don't want to say who they is. Well, what I've learned from the Bible is, if you're not going to tell me the name of my accusers, I have no obligation to tell you anything either. And so, what Paul is saying is, if someone comes up to you and they're like, "Hey, people are saying this, Paul." Paul's like, "Well, who? Well, we're not going to say who. Well, then I'm not going to try to explain myself to you." We're under no obligation to do that. This whole ambiguous day thing is just a bunch of garbage. You guys know this, and you've heard a little bit older. Whenever people come up to you and they go, "Hey, people are saying this." More than likely, the people are that person. They're just too cowardly to tell you that, right? And what Paul is basically saying is, "I'm not going to deal with that kind of garbage." Anyone else sick of middle school bull crap in here besides me? Anybody? A couple of us. Sorry, I just spoke like a middle schooler. I shouldn't have done that. But anyways, so Paul is saying, if they bring this ambiguous day, no, no, no. There has to be eyewitness. We have to put names to these accusations. So Paul had warned some people in the church. It's been three weeks, guys. Give me some grace. Paul had warned some people in the church who had knowingly sinned that if I have to come back again, I'm not going to be lenient. I'm not going to be easy on you guys. But many of those people in Corinth still were questioning Paul's authority to hold them into account. And so what was his proof of authority? Well, discipline was going to be Paul's proof. Now, what does that mean? That can mean a couple of things. The first thing is this, Paul had started all of these churches and he was the head authority over all these churches that he would go visit. And he had the authority given to him by God that if people were knowingly living in sin and in rebellion to the teachings of Jesus and to the teachings of the church, Paul had the authority to excommunicate them, to ask them to leave, right? So that could be one way that he would discipline these people who were questioning his authority. The second thing that Paul kind of brings up, and I don't want to say uses as a threat, but brings up is that he could call on God to deal with those rebellious people. And that's even a little bit scarier than excommunication. And we rarely speak of God or that side of God, right? We rarely talk of that. But what Paul says is that God is not weak in dealing with people who abuse grace, who abuse the truth, who are rebellious to his teachings. In fact, he says not only is he not weak in dealing with that, he is strong in dealing with that, that he's going to hold these people into account. So when we're in church, we don't talk about a God that holds us accountable and a God that hates evil. We don't talk about that a lot, typically because we don't want to deal with those things. So we say things like God is love, and God is love, and God is grace, and God is the friend that sticks closer than a brother, and he is a perfect heavenly father. He is all those things. But God is also pure righteousness, and he is all powerful, and he is all knowing. And Proverbs 6 lists out things that God hates, and God hates unrighteousness. And if we understand that God is all knowing and will hold all evil into an account, that knowledge should lead us into a proper fear of God. That God is going to deal with all evil, not just the Adolf Hitler's and Jeffrey Dommers of the world. He's going to deal with maybe some of us in this room who are gossipers, and slanderers, and people who lie and cheat and hurt other people that like, we're going to be held into account for that. And that should sober us up a little bit. And that should give us a proper understanding and fear and reverence of the fullness of God. So in our own ability, what Josh was talking about last weekend, without the grace of God that we're utterly powerless, our ability to be strong, our ability to live correctly, righteously, our ability to live in wisdom is, I put weak, but it's impossible. Apart from God, we cannot be wise, we cannot be righteous, we cannot be strong. But if we will submit to Jesus, who Jesus humbled himself, right, in order to display the power of God, if we humble ourselves, we also live with God in that power. That's what Paul says, right? Paul says, I'm weak, right? And I may appear weak to you, Paul says, but if I'm in Christ, I'm in the power of God. So God's power and God's authority flows down to those who submit themselves to God. I'm going to get a little charismatic for a second. If you were in this room and you genuinely give your life to Jesus Christ, there is an empowerment that the Holy Spirit gives us. When we are full of His Spirit, when we read the Word of God, obey the Word of God, and listen to the Spirit's conviction, we are empowered by God. That power flows into us as well. And there is a power that is common to all Christians. What I mean is, if you genuinely give your life to Jesus Christ and you're walking in a relationship with Him, we are given authority over things that are demonic and over things that are evil, that if you feel something evil in your home, you don't have to call me, and you don't have to go through all these different rituals that you see in movies. A bunch of that's just garbage, and it's not biblical, that we have the authority to just say, in the name of Jesus Christ, you're not welcome in this home, right? That this home belongs to the Lord, and you have that authority, you have that power. The Bible says that Christians have the power to be more than overcomers, right? That we can conquer our addictions, and we can conquer our lusts, and we can conquer the distractions in life because we have this common power of the Holy Spirit that should be in all of us. There is also a special and peculiar power in authority that is given to people in leadership. People like Paul had a peculiar power in authority given to him by God. It doesn't mean that God loves him more than anything like that, but God chose Paul to have a certain peculiar power, peculiar authority, that it should be respected and revered by the people that he led. And I'm not saying this because I'm a pastor because I've never felt like anyone's treated me irreverently here at this church, and we're a big church, but I feel like people respect my position and respect me as a person, but here's the thing. If we claim to be Christians, we are claiming to understand authority, and we are claiming to honor authority that God is our authority, but God has placed men and women over us that are to also be respected and held to a certain standard, and God honors that when we respect them. What that means is this, you may call me pastor and thank you. I'm humbled by that, but even if you're in East Tennessee and you bump into a southern Baptist pastor of a little church of 75 people somewhere out in rural Tennessee, he or she may not be your pastor, but if they have that title, there is a certain amount of respect as Christians that we are to have for them, because that is the man or woman of God, right? And God honors us when we honor the authority that he has placed on different people in this life. So that peculiar authority and that peculiar power also comes with a very peculiar responsibility. The Bible says that people who have been given that authority are also held to a very high standard, and if they abuse that power and authority, they are going to be judged more harshly, because God has trusted them with much, okay? That wasn't too charismatic, was it? That wasn't too bad. Okay, good, we're good. Let's move on to the next part. Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves, or do you yourselves not recognize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you fail the test? And I hope that you will recognize that we ourselves do not fail the test, but we pray to God that you do nothing wrong, not that we may appear to pass the test, but that you may do what is right, even though we appear to fail. I highlighted verse 8, "For we can't do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. We rejoice when we are weak and you are strong. We also pray that you become fully mature. This is why I am writing these things while absent, so that when I am there, I may not have to deal harshly with you and keeping with the authority the Lord gave me for building up and not tearing down." This is one of those passages that I find whenever I teach this, and someone online somewhere will watch this and they'll hear me say things like this and they just lose their ever-loving mind, and it's biblical and it's crazy. What Paul says is this, this is why people lose their mind. Paul says that we are to examine ourselves, that if we are to say what Paul is saying is, if one claims to be a Christian, there's a certain standard by which we are to put our lives up against to determine if we really are a Christian. Do you want to know what that standard is? It's this right here. That we are to take our actions, we are to take our speech, our thoughts, our aspirations, everything we do in life, we take that, we put it up against the standard of the Bible, and if it doesn't line up, that means that we're not what we say we are. We're to examine ourselves. It's like if you were to go, let's say you get accepted to an Ivy League school, let's use a local one, let's say it's Vanderbilt, right? You get accepted to Vanderbilt, you're going to be an English student at Vanderbilt, which means you're going to a lot of debt for an occupation that's not going to ever pay you back. That's what I did, right? So, let's say you start your English degree at Vanderbilt. You go in, your first class is a class on John Milton, right? Paradise Lost. You go into a John Milton class, your professor comes out, his name is Dr. So-and-so, right? And you go, "Hey, well, Dr. So-and-so, your PhD, where did you get your PhD from? Did you go to Vanderbilt as well? Is that where you got your PhD?" And if that professor goes, "Well, I have never been to college, but I'm a doctorate, right? I'm a PhD, but I've never been to college. I've never stepped foot in the university, except for this one right now where I'm right in front of you." We would all go back and go, "Well, wait a second. There is a certain standard, there are certain credentials by which we call someone a doctorate, right? That we call someone a professor or put a PhD suffix at the end of their name. There are certain things that have to be met for us to call them that name, right? And I think everyone in this room gets that. And so we understand that, but for some reason when it comes to our eternal soul and our faith, we can say whatever we want, but we don't think there's any standard by which we have to live. I'm going to go ahead and tell you, and you can argue with me all day long. It's absolutely crazy for one to say that they are a Christian, but cannot put their life up against the Word of God, and it stand up against it. It is absolutely crazy, and people say it all day long. Cory, are you saying we have to live a certain way? I'm not saying anything. I'm saying the Bible says that. The Word of God. But if we claim to be Christians but have never even picked this book up, that is audacious. Do you hear me? Audacious. It's just like if we walk around saying, "I'm a doctorate." Really, where'd you do your graduate work? Where'd you do your PhD work? Never did it. We can call ourselves that all day long, but if there are no credentials to back up the claim, you can call yourself a doctorate all day long, but it's not true. So if we claim Christianity, there will be visible evidence that lines up with biblical teaching, right? And again, people argue that like, and I just don't understand it. So another thing that Paul says is Paul says that there will be many people who are saved, but they fail to recognize that Jesus is in them. What does that mean? That means there are a lot of people who have genuinely given their lives to Jesus Christ, but they don't understand that they have the power to change. That God has given them the Holy Spirit and they have the ability to conquer those addictions and those lust problems or that anger or whatever the case may be. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who genuinely love Jesus, but they think that they're never going to be permanently changed. And that's not true. And Paul says, "Don't you recognize that Jesus is in you, that you can live an empowered life." But that takes humility, it takes self-examination. And when we are humble and when we examine ourselves and put ourselves up against the standard of the Bible, what God does with us in that humility is he puts us in a process called sanctification. And all that means is, is he puts us through a process of moving further away from evil, right? And selfishness in the ways of the world, and we grow closer to him. And over time, we start to conform more into the image of God. We start to think more like Jesus and act more like Jesus. We're not going to be perfect, but we move further away from evil and closer to perfection. That's what we do. Excuse me. And when we give our life to Jesus, we start that, but we have to want to keep moving down that process. So Paul wanted to assure the Corinthians if you take my life, right? And put it up against the words of Jesus, he says, "I pass the test." Now that's not Paul being arrogant or Paul saying that he's perfect. But he's saying, "I live my life by the principles that Jesus taught us. Through dedication, through prayer, I did not fail the test." And so he goes, "It looks like I fail sometimes because a lot of people hate me. And a lot of people speak bad about me and a lot of people criticize me." And what happens is this, we can be doing what is right. And sometimes, even though we are doing what is right, it looks like the truth is not winning. Do you guys understand what I'm saying? Paul, Josh was talking about Paul last weekend about the times when Paul would be, you know, stoned and beat up and they would think he was dead. They would drag him outside of the town and people would pray for him. And he would come up out of his unconsciousness. And I bet in those moments, Paul was like, do I, you know, these are the right life choices. Do I need to be doing this? This, it probably wasn't super fun at that point. It probably didn't seem like he was winning. But what we have to remember is if we are living in the truth, the truth always wins. This is what's beautiful about the book of Revelation. And you guys are going to hear me say this a lot for the next couple of months, six months or so as we're doing Revelation is, guys, it's going to get much worse before it gets much worse. That's what's going to happen. It's going to get bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And it's going to appear like the truth is not taking root. But we have to believe, because if we read spoiler alert and Revelation, like God and the people of God win. And we have to remember that. As bad and as chaotic as the world gets, as bad and chaotic as the United States of America gets, we have to remember that the truth wins. And if we live in the truth, we also are victorious. We have to remember that. And I love what Paul says. He goes, for we can't do anything against the truth. We can't do that. And that can mean three things. The first one is Paul is talking about himself. He's saying, because I'm a Christian, I can't do anything that contradicts the truth. Now, when I say he can't, he could choose to, but he's saying, listen, because I love Jesus, I can't possibly go against him. That's what he's saying. That's the first thing. The second thing is he's saying that anyone who claims to love Jesus, hear me, anyone who claims to live Jesus cannot live contradictory to the teachings of Jesus. We actually read this in the Gospel of John. Jesus says, if you love me, you'll keep my commands. Jesus says that. If you love me, you'll keep my commands. And that goes back to the argument is, if I say I'm a Christian, but I don't even know the commands of Jesus. How can I say I am following someone if I don't even know what direction they're walking? Right? And so, I can't do anything against the truth. That means that true Christians must live by the truth. The third thing that Paul probably means here is nothing can stand up to the truth. Do you know what I'm learning the older I get? Is people may say things that are untrue about me or the church or my family or whatever the case may be. If I can just be patient long enough, the truth always bubbles up to the surface. It always wins. The truth always wins, and we have to remember that. That the truth, nothing can come against the truth. The truth always is victorious. We also are supposed to mature in our faith. You know why I think so many of us like Paul, maybe it's just why I like Paul. Paul acknowledges that he's imperfect. Even in last chapter, again, that Josh talked about, Paul talks about the thorn in this side, and we don't know what that thorn is. We know that it was some kind of a weakness, some kind of a flaw that God did not remove from him, and it kept him humble. So Paul acknowledges all throughout the New Testament that he's weak. He also acknowledges, though, that if we rely on Jesus, even though we are weak, we can be made strong. And we can live in the strength of God. So he prays that the people in Corinth would mature, that they would mature in their faith. Because he knew that if they would mature in their faith, that they also could live in the power of God. And they could live in the grace of God. So we are all prone to fail. If left to our own devices, and again, I'm sure there's so many of you in this room that you've thought these things before. If left to our own devices, we are going to cheat, we are going to steal, we are going to stab people in the back. We're going to be selfish, we're going to be materialistic, we're going to be lost. But if we will lean on Jesus, if we will lean on His Word, if we will listen to the conviction of His Spirit, not only can we be saved, we can become better people. What do I mean by that? Go back to the analogy, right? If this wall represents evil, and that wall represents the perfection of Jesus Christ, that I'm not going to be perfect until I am at home permanently with Jesus, right? We all get that, but here's the thing. If I get saved and I start to move away from evil, I may get saved and I may slip up and sin every single day, right? But as I move closer to Jesus, I move further away from sin. So over time, I may only sin twice a week. And then over time, as I grow in my relationship with God, I may only sin once a month. Over time, man, there may only be a couple of times a year where I feel like I genuinely have to repent of something evil that I've done. Now listen, we're not perfect, but we're moving further away from evil, closer to Jesus, and we're becoming more God honoring people as we go. This is possible. Some of you will probably hear me say that and go, oh, that's impossible. It's totally possible. And I could bring up 5,000 people from this church that could come up here and give a testimony about how bad they used to be and how much closer to God they are now and how their lives honor God now. That we can move down that progression if we will humble ourselves and if we will seek to mature in our faith. So though Paul had to discipline people at times, Paul makes it clear that that wasn't the focus of his ministry. He says, God gave me a ministry not to tear people down, but to build people up. Now here's the thing with that. The only way to be built up is to ask for God to forgive us of the things that tear us down. Do you understand the reason why God hates sin? Listen to me. The reason why God hates sin is sin destroys people. That's why God hates it. That's why God doesn't want us to engage in it. Let's talk like adults here for a second. Sex is not a bad thing. I'll go ahead and tell you that. Sex is not a bad thing. God created sex to work in a certain way to where it is pleasurable. That it brings people closer together. That it's a beautiful thing within the confines of a marriage. It's beautiful. God also knows that sex outside of the confines of marriage tears people apart. It rips people apart. The over-sexualization of our culture has torn America apart. We're not the only place, but we're the best at it, if you will. There is no place on planet Earth that not only promotes but praises the kind of filth that comes out of the United States nowhere. Find a country that promotes and praises the kind of filth that the United States does. It's only us. It's only us. Here's the thing. We cannot be built up unless we address the things that are ripping us apart. This is why Paul has to bring discipline into it. This is why he has to call people to repentance and call people to obedience. Again, we cannot be built up if we constantly have things in our heart and in our mind that tear us apart. So let me ask you, we live in a very harsh society. I have grown to hate social media so much. I only have Facebook, and that's honestly, if we're going to be honest, it's because of marketplace. Let me tell you something. If I was a billionaire, I would buy the stupidest things on marketplace and I would just give it to people. I was on there the other day. I was on there the other day and I saw a six foot tall ET statue. It was 400 bucks. And I said, "Man, if I just had money to burn, I'd buy it. I'd stick it in Kyle's office. He couldn't get rid of it because he would feel guilty because it was a gift." And I would buy stuff like that all the time. So that's why I still have Facebook. Whenever I get on the home thing where you scroll down people's things and no offense to you if you're a friend of mine on Facebook, I hate Facebook so much because Facebook is either narcissism or tearing people down. It's either look at me or look at how bad everyone else is and I'm so sick of it. I'm tired of it. We live in a society that the only way we can feel elevated is by ripping others apart and I hate it. And that's not the way that Christians are supposed to be. Christians are supposed to lift people up. We're supposed to build others up. Now sometimes that means calling out sins, sometimes that means telling people you got a turn from what you're doing, but that is for their building up, not their tearing down. Last part, short part, but there's some good stuff in here. Finally, brothers and sisters rejoice. Become mature. Be encouraged. Be of the same mind. Be at peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints send you greetings. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Again, very short part, but there's some very important things in this. To conclude this whole letter, the whole book of 2 Corinthians, to conclude this whole thing. Paul encourages the Corinthians, and I would say us as well, to do five things. And what these five things are, it's part of a conditional promise. What that means is this, the Bible has a lot of these. The Bible will often say, if you will do this, if you will do this, God will do this. And what Paul is saying is this, if we will do these five things, the God of love and peace will be with us. But we have to live by these five principles, okay? Let me show you these five principles. The first one is, Paul tells us to rejoice. Now, what that means is that we are called, listen to this, we are commanded by the Word of God to live in thankfulness and enjoy. I'm going to be very honest with all of you in this room. Thankfulness I do okay with, right? I'm very thankful for what I have. I'm very appreciative for the home I live in, the car I drive, my wife, my children, the life that God has given me. I'm very thankful that I get to do what I'm doing right now. I'm very thankful and gracious. I show a lot of gratitude for that. I'll tell you where I struggle. I struggle with joy. I don't know if anyone else in this room is like this. I am naturally the guy that sees the bad things. I am naturally the one that struggles. I see the problems with systems and places and people and I'm that guy. And joy is sometimes an elusive fruit of the spirit for me. But we are commanded by God to put our mind into a place of joy. And that's something that we have to strive, that we have to work on, that I have to work on. Another thing Paul tells us to do is he says, become mature. That means that we have to grow, listen, that we are called to grow in our understanding of God and our obedience to God. Listen to me carefully. There's only one way to grow in our understanding of God and that's through the Word of God. That's it. That's it. If we do not read the Word of God, we cannot understand God anymore. This is the mind of God on paper for us. And this is the only way we can understand more who the true God is. And it's the only way that we can understand how to obey him. And we are to become mature. It's the only way we can become more mature. We are also called to be encouraged. And that also has to do with the Word of God. It is through the Word of God that we know the promises of God. That we understand that it doesn't matter how bad it gets. That Christ will come back and he will reward those who have given their life to him. That we understand that promise and that encourages us. We also remember the power of God and the Word of God shows us and tells us that the different kinds of empowerment that God gives us. We have gifts of the Holy Spirit like knowledge and wisdom and discernment and courageous faith that we are given these things to empower us. That we can be more than overcomers. That we have the Spirit that is the counselor and the comforter. We are reminded of those things and we should be encouraged by those things when we read the Word. Now the fourth thing is that we are to be of the same mind. That means that as Christians we have to get past the minor non-essential things of our faith and we need to unite on the majors. I believe this church does a very good job with that and not just this church. There are denominational churches in our city that do a wonderful job with that. I'm very good friends with Pastor Brady over at New Visions Baptist Church. Very good friends with David Young over at North Boulevard. That's a Church of Christ Church. We have minor differences. The three of us men but man we love each other. We root for each other's churches. I believe that we're very much on the same page and I believe you guys are good at that. We are also called to be at peace. Hey listen to me Christians. We live in a tense, hostile, aggressive world. In the Christian, I'm not talking about a Christian pastor or I'm talking about Christians. We should be the ones that step into these kinds of situations and not agitate and elevate the aggression. We should be the ones to calm everything down. Jesus even said in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the ones that come in and bring some order to the chaos, right? We are to be at peace with people as much as humanly possible. And Paul assures us that if we will live by these five principles that the God of love and peace will live with us, that He will be with us but we have to choose to live in these principles. Paul also tells us to greet each other with a holy kiss and this is cultural. Thank God, right? This is a cultural thing. This is not a direct command to all people that when you meet another believer you have to give them a kiss on the cheek or the lips. Again, thank you God. The only time I've ever really experienced anything like this, my in-laws are very Italian. My wife's maiden name is Dinafrio and I remember the first time going up to New York to meet all of her extended family and I was kissed by many grown men, which is different than what I was experiencing, right? And my Scottish home where I grew up in St. Louis, so very different. But it was just a cultural thing and it was just a, "Hey, you're part of the family." Now, even though you and I in America don't typically greet other people with a kiss, what Paul is expressing is that when you run into another Christian, it should be like running into a family member, even if you just met him for the first time. Let's say maybe you're in another state or even another country somewhere else in the world and you bump into another believer, there should be this instant connection, "Wow, you're part of the family," right? And then we should love each other. He clarifies there should be no improper motives. That's why he puts the word holy, right? That we're not supposed to just, "Hey, you're another believer. Let's make out." It's a holy kiss, right? That there's good intentions. Fine. Shouldn't have said that, should I have? Let's go on to the next slide. So, Paul ends this book of the Bible with what's called a benediction, which is a blessing, and it reflects the goodness of the triune God, the Father, the Son, the Spirit. He wanted the Corinthians. I love what Paul says. He says to live in the grace of Jesus, to live in the love of God, and to live in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And if we will apply the words of God to our life, that's what we live in. We live in grace, we live in love, we live in communion with God. If we will just give our lives to him, and if we will just obey his word, right, we get to live in those things. Okay. Let's go back to the beginning. The first thing is this. If you and I are to see change in our lives, if we are going to see a life that lives differently than what we are living right now, we must first want to change. We must have a desire to change. You don't have to lift your hands for this, but any of you who have beat smoking cigarettes, I used to smoke two packs a day. And I remember I got saved, and I still smoke for about six months after I got saved two packs a day. And any of you who have quit smoking cigarettes, you know that the only way to quit is you have to want to quit. It doesn't care. It can be all the nicotine gum and patches and therapy and, you know, all kinds of stuff. You can do all that stuff, but until you reach a place to where you just want to do this, I want to quit this. You'll never quit. It's the same thing with our spiritual development. Until it becomes a desire of ours, we're not going to see any change. Now, desire begins with humility. What do I mean by that? Humility means that we recognize that we need to change. You want to know the biggest lie that culture tells you right now that you're perfect just the way you are. If you're perfect just the way you are, there's no need for Jesus. There's no need for a Savior. Why do you need saving if there's nothing wrong with you? But the fact is that there is something wrong with us. We're not perfect. We need help and we need to acknowledge that. True desire will also produce action. If we truly want to change, we will do something about it. And so what do I mean by that? Here's the thing. When we put some effort into our desire to change, and spiritually, that means that we take time to pray. We take time to read the Word of God. We take time to serve God, to serve other people. When we do that, when we pray, when we read the Word of God, when life is not just about us, but it's about serving other people, the Holy Spirit starts to fill us up. And the more the Holy Spirit starts to fill us up, the more we start to experience change in our lives. This progression from evil to the perfection of God starts to accelerate. The more we pray, the more we dig into the Word, the more we serve and make life less about us. God continually fills us up with His Spirit and we see more change in our life. But all that starts with a desire I want to, putting in the time, putting in the effort. And now when we do that, we will start to mature. And part of maturing, maturation, means that we need to examine where we are, right? So to ensure confidence in our salvation, and people get so offended when I say stuff like that. But sometimes you'll ask someone, "Hey, are you confident in your salvation?" "Oh, I'm absolutely confident." What makes you confident? Have you compared how you're living to the Word of God? No, no, no, I've never read the Word of God, never done any of that. Then how can you have confidence that you stack up against something that you don't even know what it is? If you don't even know what the barometer is, how can you be confident in the direction you're walking when you don't even know which direction you're supposed to be walking? How can you do that? So this is why Paul says, "Examine yourself." And then you'll be confident about your relationship with the Lord. And we can mature in our relationship with the Lord. But in order to do that, we must take an inventory of how we're living, stack it up against the Word of God. The Bible tells me to live like this, am I living like this? But if we get into the Word of God and we realize that there's a lot of things that this book says don't do and we're doing it, or a lot of things it says for us to do, but we're not doing, that should trouble us, and it should cause us to want to change. So maturity begins by understanding that we're weak, that if I don't live by the principles of God, everything is going to fall apart. Is anyone else there with me? That's where I am in life. The older I get, I'm in my mid-40s, the more confident I become in the fact that I'm going to screw it up. Does that make sense? That apart from Christ, I'm going to fail. That apart from Christ, my marriage is going to fall apart. That apart from Christ, I cannot raise my children correctly. That apart from Christ, I can't do this, right? And now listen, that's not a bad thing. Let me tell you, that's actually very liberating to say that all of this is not contingent on my abilities. All of this is contingent on the ability of God. And that's when we start to mature, when we understand that we are weak, and the world tells you the exact opposite. You have all the power inside you. Apart from the Holy Spirit, that's a bold-faced lie. And this is why we are coming apart at the seams. But if we will humble ourselves and walk through the process, God will not only change us, we will start to talk more like Him, and think more like Him, and love people more like Him. And our lives become stronger, and our lives become God-honoring, and we mature. And here's the thing. The reason why I think so many people are afraid to get into this book, the reason why so many people are afraid to pick this thing up and read it, is because they are afraid that they will feel bad about themselves, that it will tear them down. There is not a word in that book that is meant to tear you down. It is all meant to build you back up. Now, that's not to say, listen, that's not to say that some of the information in here will not hurt you. It probably will, most definitely will. But listen, it's the same thing as this. If there is a big fire right here, I've used this analogy before, God has engineered us in such a way to where if I stick my arm in the fire, that's going to hurt. And that pain, none of us like pain, maybe some of you weirdos do, but we don't like pain, but the reason why we're engineered like that is the pain tells us that we need to get our arm out of the fire, because if we don't, we're going to lose the arm. Do you hear me? So in our spiritual life, we have things like shame and guilt. And in churches, we go, "Hey, let's pray against shame and guilt." No, no, no. Let's not pray against shame and guilt. Let's pray against sin and rebellion to God. And that will take care of the shame and guilt, right? The shame and guilt are the mechanism that helps us say, "Well, I need to change my life, or I'm going to lose it." Right? It's that mechanism that tells us when you get back on track. So when we break this book open and we read things that contradict how we're living, we don't need to be offended by that. We need to know that God calls out our sin to build us up. Why? Because He wants to be with us forever. But God cannot have unrighteousness in the presence of His righteousness. So He's got to remove those things from us that tear us down in order for us to be built up. If we're to be built up, we have to strive, we have to consciously try to live in joy, to live in thankfulness, to live in maturity, to live in the encouragement of the promises and power of the Word, to live in community with other Christians, to live at peace with God, at peace with each other. And this is the hardest one for some of us, at peace with ourselves, to understand that God loves us and we are valued. And this is how we grow and this is how we're built up. So I'm on this trip, right? We're gone for two weeks. And then we left the country, we were very far away and our hours were all messed up. And I remember I brought a little Bible, right? Same translation as this, but I just brought a real compact one and put it in my backpack. And so because our hours were all messed up and we were doing a lot of walking, we'd fall asleep at like eight o'clock at night and I'd wake up at like four in the morning. And so I'd wake up at like four in the morning. And I know what to do, so I'd always grab my Bible and I'd find like a local coffee shop or someplace I could sit and just read my Bible a little bit. And I didn't plan on doing this, but I would go into the coffee shop and I don't, you know, I know it was the Lord, but I just went right to the sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. I bet I have read the sermon on the Mount three, four hundred times since I've been a Christian. And that might be understating it, read it many, many times. And I love it. But I went back and I read it and I kept reading it. That's all I read, the two weeks I was there. Almost every day I would go, I'd get, you know, a cup of coffee somewhere, I'd break open my Bible and I'd read Matthew 5, 6, and 7. It doesn't even take that long to do. And I'd read through it. And I remember the thought that came permeating through my head is I would say, man, Jesus taught us things so simply. It is extraordinarily simple. This is not hard to understand. These things are very, very, very simple. I mean, like, where a little child could understand these things. And that's typically the way Jesus spoke to his followers was not like in this really, you know, weird kind of deep manner, but this very simplistic manner, where he would even say things to these people that would follow him, he would say, the kingdom of heaven is like a field where a man found a treasure and he sold everything he had so he could buy that field. And that's very short, but all that means is the kingdom of God, a relationship with God, being in heaven with God, that's so precious that we should be willing to get rid of everything else and pursue that. That's so simple. And so what I got to thinking about when I was on this trip, because man, I got all these stresses in my life, these questions, all these unanswered things. What do I do with this? And, you know, I got two teenage girls. How do I raise them correctly? How do I be a good husband? You know, will I ever get to retire one day? What about our, you know, 401k and our Roths and all this junk and all these things start to get into your mind, right? All these distractions and all these stresses. And then you come back to the United States and you're like, man, our former president almost gets killed on stage and we're such a complete mess in our culture and everything is so chaotic and all these things flood. But there is this simplicity in Matthew chapter six, right in the middle of the sermon of the Mount. Jesus says maybe the most important words in the entire Bible. Jesus looks at his disciples and he goes, seek first the kingdom of God. And everything else gets taken care of. Do you hear how simple that is? Listen, let's just talk like, again, like adults in this room. There's some of you who are so worried about your future. And I get it, man. I get it. I do. There's some of you who are so worried about the future of your children. There's some of you who are so worried about the health of your marriage. There's some of you who are so worried about the economy and the government. And there's so many things that we can be stressed out about. And we go, well, how are we going to fix our nation? How am I going to fix my marriage? How am I going to fix my economic situation? How are we going to fix my situation at work? How are we going to fix it? And I think what Jesus is looking at a lot of us saying, he's going, hey, seek first the kingdom. Seek me first. Listen, seek me first and your marriage is going to be okay. Seek me first, right? And you're going to be able to raise your kids the way I want. Seek me first. And I'll take care of you financially. Seek me first. I'll provide your basic needs, right? I'm there for you. If we would just seek him first. The problem with a lot of us is not all of these other distractions that we deal with. Man, listen, I hope you take this from the right perspective because I deal with it too. The problem with a lot of us in this room is that seeking God is not our first priority. And when it's not our first priority, everything else gets way out of whack. So, if we will humble ourselves, do you know what we lack greatly in the United States? We lack humility. We have a culture of such narcissism and arrogance. And we need to humble ourselves as a people and as a person. We need to humble ourselves. We need to repent of what we are doing wrong. We need to turn away from evil things. We have to have a desire to want to grow in our relationship with God. And we have to put effort into acquiring the knowledge of God and building that relationship with him. And if we will do that, if we will seek first Jesus above all other things, you'll be saved and you'll be confident in that salvation. You'll be empowered, God will give you the words in tough situations. He'll give you the wisdom to make the right choices. He'll show you what to do. He'll show you grace when you mess up because you're going to mess up. But God will show you grace in that. And at the end of this life, no matter how bad it all gets, and we're going to get into it, it's going to get bad. It's going to get worse before it gets worse. It's going to get bad. We have to hold on to the promise if we seek first the kingdom of God. Jesus said to his followers, "I'm going to leave and I'm going to go prepare a place for you." And you're going to be there with me forever if we will just seek his kingdom first. I think that's the question we need to end on today. Is the first, listen, is the first desire of my heart to know God more? Is the first desire of my heart to have a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ? And we have to be honest with that question. Okay? Did you buy your heads with me, please? [BLANK_AUDIO]