Alright brethren, let's turn
in our Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 13. We'll begin reading in verse
11. 2 Corinthians 13, 11. I think this will be the last
message in 2 Corinthians. I don't know where we'll go from
here. As much as I would like to just
keep going and go through Galatians, I'm at the moment feeling inclined
to go through one of the Gospels. I'm not sure which yet. So 2
Corinthians 13.11. Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect. be of good comfort,
be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and peace
shall be with you. Greet one another with a holy
kiss. All the saints salute you. The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion
of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen. This was, says there,
the second epistle to the Corinthians was written from Philippi, the
city of Macedonia. And it was written by Paul, but
he used Titus and Lucas to actually write it for him. Now, verse
11, he begins, he says, Finally, brethren, farewell. Farewell
means rejoice. It means be well. In Christ every
believer has much reason to rejoice. Have reason to rejoice in his
person because in his person we're accepted. We rejoice in
his righteousness by which we're justified. We rejoice in his
blood by which we're washed. We rejoice in his fullness from
which we receive grace for grace. We have much reason to rejoice.
He says in verse 11, be perfect. That means be restored. Mend
what is broken and be mature. There was all this division we've
been seeing through these two letters to the Corinthians. They
had all this division amongst them. And he's saying here, put
away all that division. You do so by counting your brethren
better than yourself. Always speak well of brethren.
Don't ever criticize them. Don't ever say a negative word
about your brethren, about anything about them. Consider your brethren
better than yourself and be united with one another in Christ. And
instead of seeking to know more about the division and more about
the rumors and the backbiting and all those things, he's saying
seek to grow in grace, to grow in the knowledge of Christ, Seek
to grow in the grace of Christ. Seek to grow in love toward Him
and toward brethren. Seek to grow in good works. We
have a lot to seek that are good things to seek for us not to
be seeking these things that are for no benefit. That's what
he's saying here. And then this is what he's saying.
Here's the sum of it. Verse 11. Be of good comfort.
Be of one mind. Live in peace. and the God of
love and peace shall be with you." Wherever God's people are
comforted by the gospel, wherever they're living in peace and they're
of one mind, the reason for that unity is because the God of love
and peace dwells amongst them. And that's what he's saying here.
If you can do these things, The God of love and peace will dwell
among you. He's the cause of them and wherever He's created
this love and this peace is because that's where the God of love
and peace is dwelling. Wherever you see division and
confusion and every evil work, the God of peace, He's withdrawn
Himself. He may be putting that congregation
through a trial like He did at Corinth. It doesn't mean He's
overthrown them or left them. It just means that He's not working
in them to keep them of one mind and keep them in peace. And He'll
come again and do so in His people once He's reached the end of
the trial. But where you see His people in harmony and love
and peace, the God of love and peace dwells there. He's the
cause of it. That's what He's saying here.
That's the reason for the unity. Verse 12, he says, greet one
another with a holy kiss. And that sums up everything he
just said. The kiss here is not what's important. It's not the important part of
the verse. He could have said a holy handshake or a holy hug
or a holy greeting. What he's referring to here is,
the point is, make sure all of this above that he just spoke
about is in your heart. Make sure that all of this is
done by God in a holy heart, sanctified by God, and that way
when you greet somebody, he won't be deceitful. You know, the opposite
of this is the kiss of Judas. Brother Scott mentioned this
in his message when I was in California. The opposite of love
and being of one mind and being at peace, you know, people will
still love you and they'll kiss you and they'll, oh brother,
brother, this, that, but in their heart there's all this confusion
and division and backbiting and just everything opposite of what
he said here. And so what he's saying here is when you greet
one another, it doesn't matter if you kiss them or if you hug
them or if you shake their hand or whatever. Make sure it's from
a sanctified heart, a true heart that's honest. and is of one
mind and of peace and love that he's speaking about here. And
then he says this, he says in verse 13, all the saints salute
you. Now that's important when a church
is in the division or a brother or sister individually, but especially
the whole church when there's this kind of division and trouble
that you see in Corinth. It's important to let them know
that you don't doubt them, and that you don't consider them
to be unbelievers. Paul never did that through the
whole thing. He did at times say, I wonder,
I stand in doubt, but through it all he called them brethren
and said, we hope better things of you and we're convinced of
better things of you. And so he let them know here,
all the saints and all the other churches are praying for you.
They're all with you and they're all for you. And that's important. because we don't have the power
to make a brother or sister stand. And when you salute the brethren
and you consider them to be saints with you, you're telling them
that you're trusting that Christ our Master is the only one that's
able to make them stand, just like He's the only one able to
make us stand. And it's like what Paul said in Romans 14.
You may have a brother that doesn't think he has to or thinks he
needs to eat certain things or observe certain days or whatever. That doesn't mean he's lost.
What would mean he's lost is if he told you that except you
do these things, you're going to be lost. Now that's saying,
that's when he's saying, I believe that if I don't do these things,
I can't be saved. That's trust in works. But as
long as he's doing those things simply because he believes in
his heart, this is what's faithful, this is what the Lord would have
him to do and he doesn't understand yet that he's free from those
things. Paul said, you salute him as a brother and receive
him as a brother and don't doubt him because Christ is able to
make him stand. And so he let them know here that all the saints
salute them as brethren. trust in Christ to make all this
division go away and make them stand as one. And that's important
to do. Now here's our text. Here's our
text. 2 Corinthians 13, 14. The grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ And the love of God and the communion
of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen. Now this is the Amen
of the Gospel right here. This is our salvation. Our triune God is our salvation. It's not one person in the Godhead
without the other person in the Godhead. All persons in the Godhead. We serve one God, we worship
one God. We don't worship three Gods,
we worship one God. We worship one God and three
persons. And all three persons in this
Godhead are responsible for our salvation. First of all, He says,
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was the grace of the Lord
Jesus. When we say grace, we usually
think of the grace of God. He is God. He is the second person
in the Trinity. He is the Son of God. And the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is what made Him come to where
we are and lay down His life to save His people, to make His
people righteous and redeem us from all iniquity. It was the
grace of our Lord that did that. Go back to 2 Corinthians 8, 2
Corinthians 8-9. This is the best verse on the
grace of our Lord Jesus in my opinion, 2 Corinthians 8-9. For
you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He
was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor. that ye through
his poverty might be rich. And you think about, this didn't
just begin when he came to this earth. The grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ is what made him become surety for his people
before this world was ever made. God, Ephesians 1 says, God chose
a people in Christ and blessed us with all spiritual blessings.
This is speaking of everybody God will save. He chose them
in Christ before the world was made. And because He chose them
in Christ and entrusted the whole work to Christ, and Christ became
their surety, that was blessing them with all spiritual blessings.
Because Christ shall not fail in any way, in any regard to
give His children all spiritual blessings. And when he entered
into surety ship, it's this. When we enter into surety ship,
you know, it's like you go and you cosign a loan for your child
or something like that. You young people get ready to
buy a car, for instance. You get mom or dad to go down
and cosign on the loan. It says that if you don't pay
it, they'll pay it. But Christ didn't enter suretyship
like that. It wasn't, if you don't pay,
I'll pay. He entered suretyship knowing
you wouldn't pay. None of His people would pay.
And He agreed to pay it all for His people. That's the suretyship
He agreed to do. And that's great grace knowing
that He's going to have to pay the debt of all His people. Knowing
what that debt would be. And He would have to bear separation
from God to satisfy divine justice. Knowing that, He said, I'll be
surety for them. A people that can't help him,
that can't add one thing, that can't pay, that are enemies of
his in their minds because of their depravity and yet he said,
I'll be their surety. That's grace, isn't it? That's
grace. Would you do that for somebody
that not only didn't love you but despised you? that you knew
would come into this world despising you and hating you, and that
you'd have to do everything for them to bring them to love you.
Would you do that for them? That's grace. That's grace. It was grace that caused Christ
to assume our nature, to come down and assume our nature. You
just imagine that stoop. When it says He was rich, brethren,
He was rich. He's God, equal with God, in
glory with God. had all things with God, self-sufficient,
needed nothing from anybody, the creator of all things, the
owner of all things, rich beyond imagination. And consider the
stoop. He came down and made himself
totally dependent upon God his Father, made himself to possess
nothing. The clothes on his back is all
he has. Do you realize our Lord throughout
this life, our Lord never did, He never gave anybody a dime. That was not how He blessed people,
by giving them money. He never gave a single person
in this world money to bless them. That ought to teach us
something about possessions not being where our blessings are.
He came down and made Himself absolutely poor to make us rich
in His grace, to give us the unsearchable riches of salvation. That's what He came for. And
that was great, great grace. Grace caused Him to live in obedience
to God as our representative all the days He walked this earth.
Do you ever sometimes grow weary? of walking and trying to be faithful
to God and trying to bear witness of the Lord. You know, you see
people that are unappreciative and it's like writing the bulletin,
for instance. I write the bulletin and I post
things online and sometimes it's easy to start thinking, is anybody
reading this? Is anybody really going to benefit
from this? Am I just wasting my time? Because
it takes a day to write and to prepare the bulletin. Writing
the articles, putting it together and all that, it takes a solid
day to do that and post it. And it's easy to, you don't ever
hear back from that, you know? So it's easy to start thinking,
is this all in vain? Is this all in vain? There's
always an extra stack of them back there when the service is
over with. I know you read them, I know you get them online, you
read them, whatever. But it's easy to start doubting,
you know what I mean? It's easy, and you do that in
your life as a believer. It's easy to think, is any of
this gonna be worthwhile? And we don't have anything in
our faith to really call it faith. I mean, it's so weak. But you
have to just keep pressing on because God has promised, if
you look at the clouds and all that, a farmer that pays attention
to the cloud, he would never sow his seed. But we have this
promise that if you sow in due time, you shall reap. And Christ
made Himself dependent and by His grace He never ceased doing
what is right and what was faithful to God as the representative
of His people. That means with all His people
in Him, everything Christ did in perfection, in perfect faith
to God, His people did it in Him. And He never wavered in
that faithfulness. We waver. We begin to doubt and
wonder, is any of this really worthwhile? He never did. He constantly always did that
which pleased the Father. That was grace toward His people.
And it was grace at last that made Him go to that cross and
lay down His life and bear the sin of His people so that He
might be made a curse and bear condemnation to put an end to
the condemnation of His people. Oh, what grace to... I don't
like suffering. I know you don't like suffering.
You think about we've all been through something lately with
Chloe and none of us wanted to see her suffer, especially her
mother and her father. That ought to tell you something
about what God our Father went through in the fact that His
Son had to suffer what He suffered to uphold God's justice and save
His people. That was a great sacrifice for
our God. Christ went there faithfully
by His grace to give grace to His people, to make us the righteousness
of God in Him. And not only that, now, in heaven,
right now, He continues to make intercession for His people,
to rule everything in this world, to bring the gospel to His people,
to send forth the Holy Spirit, to give life and bring all His
redeemed to hear and know Him because of this gospel. Brethren,
that's grace, to call all His people through this gospel. That's
the sovereign grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to do that. We don't always feel grace, but
I'm thankful our feelings don't have any impact on what grace
is and what grace does. He does this all by His grace.
We say with the Apostle Peter, we believe that through the grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved. Without the law, just
like all our Gentile brethren are saved without the law. We
are saved by grace. By His doing and by His dying.
And by His living. Alright, secondly here He speaks
of the love of God. The love of God, our Father. God our Father has a part in
our salvation just like God the Son. It's by His love that we're
saved. The love of God our Father is
eternal. That means it has no beginning
and it has no ending. You and I can't conceive of that
and we can't comprehend that because we live in time and everything
to us has a beginning and an ending. We don't know what it
is to be eternal. But the eternal God, His love
is eternal. It has no beginning and no ending.
He said this in Jeremiah 31. The Lord hath appeared of old
unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting
love. An everlasting love. Therefore,
with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. God's love is everlasting. Those He loves, He never ceases
to love. Ever. God's love is free, it's
undeserved, and it's sovereign. We don't merit God's love. We
do everything not to merit God's love, actually. We don't merit
God's love. God sovereignly chooses whom
He will, God loves whom He will, and He only loves in Christ. Only in Christ. And because these
things are so, that means God's love is effectual. Those He loves,
He saves. Let me ask you a question and
be very honest. I preached the whole message
and applied this question to about four or five different
things dealing with God's grace and love and all the different
aspects of our God. Let me just ask you this concerning
His love. If God's love, if He did not
save everybody He loves, why would there be any point of mentioning
God's love? What would be the point of even
mentioning God's love? A love that has the power to
save and yet does not exercise that power and save would be
no love at all. Am I right? That's so. But God has the power and so
He saves everyone He loves. That's so. That's so. We speak of God's love as being
saving love. God's love is manifested. Go
with me to 1 John 4.9. God's love is manifested. He hasn't left us without a way
to see His love. We see it. Love does. Love doesn't
just say, I love you and then leave you on your own. Love does.
Love saves. Watch this, 1 John 4, 9. And this was manifested, the
love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten
Son into the world that we might live through Him. That word might
is not what you say when you say, well, this might happen.
There's a possibility this might happen. That's not what it means
there. It means He sent His Son in the world so that we shall
live. Everybody He sent His Son for
shall live. And that's how God manifested
His love. He saves His people. That's how
He manifests it. So it's a manifested love. Go
to Romans 5. Not only is it a manifested love,
it's a commended love. It's a demonstrated love. That's what commended means.
He demonstrates His love for us. Romans 5, 8. God commended commendeth His
love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. That's how He demonstrated His
love. While we were sinners, while we were God-hating rebels. Do you see the demonstration
of love? Christ died for us. That's how God commanded or demonstrated
His love. And God's love... I should have
told you to stay there. Go back to 1 John 4 one more
time. John's love makes us love Him. I mean, God's love makes us love
Him. You see, this love is effectual.
It saves, it's demonstrated, it's manifest, and God's love
makes us love Him. Look at 1 John 4,19. We love
Him because He first loved us. That's what made us love Him.
He first loved us. See? This is a great love, isn't
it? So God's love is everlasting.
Nothing can change God's love, not even the sin of His people.
All God's people that He loved from eternity, we all sinned
in Adam in the garden. That did not change God's love
because His love is in Christ. Listen to the scripture. Lamentations
3.22, it's of the Lord's mercies that we're not consumed because
His compassions, His love fails not. It does not fail. So that's why when Adam sinned
in the garden, God didn't consume the whole human race by consuming
Adam. It's because he has love towards
somebody and his love fails not. I'm the Lord, I change not. Therefore,
you sons of Jacob are not consumed. We're all a bunch of sons of
Jacob. That's the worst derogatory dirty word you could call somebody.
You son of Jacob. That's what we are. We're all
sons of Jacob. sons of the supplanter, just
like Him. And yet God, because He does
not change and His love does not change, therefore we're not
consumed. So God's love is distinguishing love, which is inseparable love. Those He loves will never be
separated from His love. His love chose us. His love gave
us His Son. His love called us. His love
keeps us. And His love will bring us home
conformed to Christ. So His love, we can never be
separated from His love. Romans 8. Romans 8. Let's see
that. Now listen to this and use your
noggin now. Romans 8.38. If our love, if
we can't be separated from the love of God, then that means
everybody God loves is going to be saved. Am I right? That
just makes sense, don't it? If we can't be separated from
God's love, then everybody God loves shall be saved. Well, we
can't be separated from it because it's in Christ. Romans 8, 38.
Listen to this. I am persuaded that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is
in Christ Jesus our Lord. I love this. Listen to this.
Could we with ink the oceans fill? and were the skies of parchment
made, were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe
by trade. To write the love of God above
would drain the oceans dry, nor could the scroll contain the
whole, though stretched from sky to sky." That was a poet
that wrote that. That was good. Thirdly, the communion
of the Holy Ghost. The communion of the Holy Ghost.
God the Holy Spirit is the Holy Ghost. When you read the Holy
Ghost, we are talking about the third person in the Trinity.
God the Holy Spirit. He gives us a new heart in regeneration. Our Lord said we must be born
again. We must be born of the Holy Spirit.
All the things we have been talking about, you and I don't know these
things by nature. We can't believe these things
by nature. Cannot. We have to be born a
second time of the Holy Spirit of God. And you don't have anything
to do with that new birth. God, He made everything in His creation
to glorify Him in His salvation. You don't have a thing to do
with your first birth. That's of your father. And it's done
through your mother. And you don't have a thing to
do with it. This new birth of all God's people,
you don't have anything to do with it. It's done of God our
Father through the church, through the preaching of the gospel.
That's what she does. She preaches the gospel and through
this Christ sends forth the Holy Spirit of God and we're born
again. born of incorruptible seed, so
that that new man can't be corrupted. He's incorruptible. The old man
was born of corrupt seed and is corrupt from conception. But the new man is incorruptible,
born of the incorruptible seed, the preaching of Christ and Him
crucified. Go with me to 1 Peter 1, I'm
going to show you that. This is why we're so insistent
that men are saved through the preaching of the gospel. This
is the incorruptible seed, brethren. 1 Peter 1, look at what Paul
says. Verse 22, ìSeeing you have purified
your souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfain
love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure
heart fervently, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible, by the Word of God which liveth and abideth
forever.î Look down at verse 25, ìThe Word of the Lord endureth
forever, and this is the Word which by the Gospel is preached
unto you.î You see what we're saying? This incorruptible seed... Christ preaching the Word of
the Gospel through you through an earthen vessel like I'm doing
now and causing you to be born, causing that Word to be implanted
in you like in conception. And so that there's a new man
born now of the Word by incorruptible seed. And this is all by the
Holy Spirit. And through the gifts of the Holy Spirit like
love and faith and repentance, He gives us communion with the
Father and with the Son. with God our Father and our Lord
Jesus Christ. Notice there in 2 Corinthians
13, it says in verse 14, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you
all. That communion is not just a communion with the Holy Ghost,
it's a communion with God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It's actually all through the
Lord Jesus Christ and all God's people everywhere. Why do we
all believe the Gospel? Why do we believe the same Gospel?
Because we are all born of the same Spirit. We are taught, we
all preach the same Gospel because the Holy Spirit is giving all
His preachers the same Gospel to preach. Glorifying Christ. Christ said when the Spirits
come, He won't glorify Himself, He will glorify me, He will speak
of me. So we all preach Christ and crucify because we are all
preaching by the same Holy Spirit. And all God's people believe
the same Gospel because we are all born of the Holy Ghost. Now
there is a lot of people out there that don't believe our
Gospel. They are not born of the same Spirit we are. They
are not preaching the same Gospel. They are not preaching by the
same Spirit we are. John says they are preaching by the Spirit
of Antichrist that won't preach Christ fully. This is the Spirit. This is what He makes you do.
And so all His people are brought to believe on one Christ with
one faith. Go to Ephesians 2.18. I can show
you this is so. Ephesians 2.18. Look here. Ephesians 2.18, Through Christ
we both, Jew or Gentile, all believers, have access by one
Spirit unto the Father. We are all born of the same Spirit.
See that? Go with me now to Ephesians.
Let me see here where it's at. Ephesians 4. And look here in verse 1. He
says there at the end, "...worthy of the vocation wherewith you
are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering,
forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Because there is one
body, and one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of
your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
of all who is above all and through all and in you all." You see,
that's why it's so shameful for a body of believers to be divided
like they were at Corinth. Because that's not the work of
the Holy Spirit. When we start bickering with one another and
accusing one another and criticizing one another for anything, that
is not of the Holy Spirit. That's not the Holy Spirit. That's
of our sinful flesh. The Holy Spirit, where He works,
His people are not divided. His people are not divided. And
whenever you see a heresy, start in a church. There's a need for
it. The Lord said, it's needful for
heresies that they come so that those that are approved, those
in whom the Holy Spirit dwells in His teaching, that they may
be approved, manifest to be genuine believers because they're going
to be steady and firm, trusting Christ and they're going to be
led away with the error of the wicked. So you get two or three
people, two or three people that split off with a different doctrine,
changed their doctrine, That does not constitute a division
in Christ's church. There are two or three people
split off that are trying to make disciples after themselves.
But God's church is not divided. They're still won by the Holy
Spirit of God and they discern that that's a lie and they won't
follow it and they stay united by this communion of the Holy
Spirit. But the sad thing is that sometimes when two or three
split off, somehow, They lead away those that aren't approved. And those people hear them and
think, well, they're the ones preaching the truth. And when
the fact is, it's those that have not changed their doctrine.
It's those that have been preaching the same thing they've been preaching
from the beginning. I was looking through some old notes. And you
know I'm preaching the exact same gospel I preached in 1999. the first time I ever preached
in 1999. I'm preaching the same gospel.
I went back and looked at some of the early notes I preached
here. And I don't know how on earth y'all sat through some
of those messages. But I was preaching the same gospel. The
same gospel I'm preaching now. And I hope I've grown in it.
I hope I see more now than I saw then. That's growing in grace.
And I hope ten years from now I can look back and say, I don't
know how y'all were sitting through those messages. I hope I'm growing
more in grace. But God's people through the
Holy Spirit don't change our doctrine. We preach the same
message. The same message. So if men split
off and they write you and they say, hey, I used to preach that
but I'm changing my doctrine now. I'm preaching something
else. And that's what's happened. I've seen that happen. I read
the letter. That's not a division. That's
heresy coming about so that God can show those that He's made
approved. They can't be moved. They're
steady. They're set on that one gospel.
They won't be drawn away. Why? The Holy Spirit gives you
communion with God the Father and God the Son and you can't
be turned from Him. That's why. That's why. So get
this, brethren. This is our prayer for one another.
We want the Holy Spirit to abide upon us and we want Him to grant
us grace to walk and work together in sweet communion with our great
eternal triune God in Christ. We want to be in communion with
one another all our days. We want to be in harmony, in
peace with one another, knowing that God of peace and love dwells
in our midst. Don't you want that? Pray for
that. And just like Paul said to the
Ephesians, endeavor, strive to maintain this unity. I've said
this before to y'all and I say it to you individually a lot,
but I've traveled to a lot of churches. I preach on average
in 13, 14 churches a year. And I'm telling you, God has
given us something here that is a rare and precious thing.
a unity and a love and I want to guard that. I want to cherish
it and I want to guard it. I don't want anything to happen
to that. So pray God keep us united in love with Christ and
in communion with Him and pray that He make us endeavor to keep
that unity. If there is something that comes
up on the tip of your tongue that you want to say that if
it won't edify your brother, If it won't be for the glory
of God and the glory of Christ, don't say it. What's the point
of saying it? If there's even a thought in
your mind that it might come out and it might hurt the person
that it's said about, don't say it. And if you wouldn't say it
to the person's face, surely don't say it. Because that's
just being a coward, talking about somebody behind their back.
Strive to keep unity. So this is our salvation, brethren,
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father and
the communion of the Holy Spirit. I pray God, continue to keep
us. Won't you? Don't you? Amen. Alright, let's stand together. Father, we thank you for this
word. We pray now you bless it to our hearts. Truly make us
hear what you say. Lord, we need You. We need to
be taught by You. We can't enter into this. It
can't be powerful in our heart and make us heed it unless You
come in power and do so. And that's our prayer, Lord.
We want Your will to be done. Whatever our trial, whatever
it is in life that we're going through, what we want above all
is for Your will to be done. That's what is going to be done.
And the only way we'll have our petition is if our prayer is
this simple, Lord, Thy will be done. And that's what we pray. We thank You, Lord, for Your
grace and Your mercy in Christ, for Your love and for the communion
we have through the Holy Spirit. Forgive us our sins now in Christ's
name. Amen.