2 Corinthians chapter 13. Paul says, This is the third
time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three
witnesses shall every word be established. I told you before
and foretell you as if I were present the second time. And
being absent now, I write to them which heretofore have sinned,
and to all other that if I come again I will not spare. Since
ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you it is not
weak, but is mighty in you. For though he was crucified through
weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are
weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God
toward you. Examine yourselves, whether ye
be in the faith. prove your own selves. Know ye
not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except
ye be reprobates, or unless ye be reprobates? But I trust that ye shall know
that we are not reprobates. Now I pray to God that ye do
no evil, not that we should appear approved, but that ye should
do that which is honest. though we be as reprobates. For
we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth. For we are glad when we are weak,
and ye are strong. And this also we wish, even your
perfection. Therefore I write these things,
being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according
to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, and
not to destruction. 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. Now, the apostle Paul was no different
than any other man who has been called by the Lord to declare
the Word of God in this way. Now, when I say he was no different,
I mean that to be qualified by the fact that he was a man just
like all men. He most definitely had a ministry
unlike that of any other. I believe that the Apostle Paul
was in fact the chiefest of the apostles among men. He was given gifts. He was given
insight. even to correct the other apostles
from time to time as we see in the case of Peter as he withstood
Peter and with the gospel. So Paul was a very favored man. Paul wasn't favored because of
the gifts he was given, but he was favored to be given the gifts
that he was. Now that's an important thing. And I think a lot of times that
people get the cart ahead of the horse in viewing the gifts
that a man has. And they think the Lord blesses
a man because he has certain gifts. But the reality of the
fact is that a man is blessed in the gifts that he is given.
not the vice versa. The Lord doesn't see anything
in men that is of any value at all. We're useless. Now, people don't like to think
about it in that way, but the fact of the matter is that we're
useless except the Lord should use us. And He can take anything
and use it unto His glory, Even such a one as the Apostle Paul.
Now, we look at the Apostle Paul as he was by the grace of God
as God made him, and well, we should. But Paul looked at himself
without those rose-colored glasses. He knew what he was. He knew. He said, I was a Pharisee of
the Pharisees. I was a self-righteous man. I
was zealous to do the works of God. I was going about doing
what I thought was the right thing. Buddy, I was ready to
put people to death for what I thought was righteous. But
he said, the Lord showed me what all of that was. He showed me
what I was. It showed me that I was nothing,
and that without Him I could do nothing. But by the grace
of God, the apostle Paul was raised up, given gifts, and given
a calling. And he went about to establish
that which the Lord gave for him to do. Now one of the things
that He gave for him to do was to establish a church in Corinth. And that's what he did. Now,
was that because he had great skills and abilities and people
skills and he had the ability to put on a program and gather
folks up? No. He said, I didn't do anything
among you but come preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That is the only thing that he
did. That is all that he was called to do. And I believe that
is all that anybody who is called to preach the gospel is called
to do. The Lord gives gifts of administrations and all of those
different things, but that does not have anything whatsoever
to do with preaching the gospel. That is a gift that is given
That's a calling that's given by the grace of God, and it cannot
be overturned. It can't be imitated, and there's
no substitute for it. And what can a man say about
it? What can he boast of? Nothing
whatsoever, because the Lord could use anybody. according
to the good pleasure of His will. And He does use anybody that
He sees fit to use. But He sends forth the Word of
God with power in the mouths of those whom He sends with it. Now, a man can stand up and say,
I'm a preacher all day long. That doesn't make him one. He
can go to school. He can learn the Bible. He can
quote a lot of stuff. And he can get him a job and
say, I'm a preacher. That doesn't make him one. A
church can hire a man. A church can appoint a man. A
church can do all sorts of things and say, well, he's our preacher.
That doesn't make him one. There's only one thing that causes
a man to be a preacher of the gospel, and that is the power
of God working in Him, both the will and the do of His own good
pleasure, giving Him a gift which He sets forth before men, and
that's just the way that it is. And He might not know anything
about anything, but the Lord uses that which He sees fit to
use. The Lord can raise up stones.
He doesn't need any kind of particular sort of individual. There is
no particular kind of individual that the Lord needs. He doesn't
need anybody because He made all things according to the good
pleasure of His will, and He raised up things to be just like
He wanted them to be. He said, If I wanted to, I could
cause the stones to cry out in praise unto the Lord. Scripture
says that the trees of the field shall clap their heads. I've
shared this with you before. I remember one time walking down
the road, just walking along, and the wind was blowing and
I looked up in the trees and the leaves were doing like that.
And that Scripture just popped into my mind, the trees and the
fields shall clap their hands. Because you see, when the Lord
sees fit to bring praise to His name, no man can overturn that. Nobody can do anything about
it. It's an unstoppable force. What a glorious thing that God
would see fit to do such things. What if He just left us alone
to our own selves? What if somehow or other the
Bible just dropped out of heaven and it fell down on the ground
and we came along? What would you do with it? Left to yourself. What would
it be? You can probably just leave it there and go on about
your business because you've got so many important things
to do. Don't we all have many important things to do? I mean,
isn't the things that we do so important? Huh? Whatever it is. I don't care what it is. Isn't
what you do so important? Isn't it? Oh, man, we've got
to do this. Well, do you? Well, we've got
to go over here. get in a car wreck on the way. Did you have to be over there?
Evidently not. See, we think things are important
that aren't really anything. Remember when Martha, a fine
hostess if there ever was one, and I don't say that facetiously.
I say that in admiration. She was very concerned about
serving the guests that had gathered in her house. So much so that
she became concerned with the fact that
Mary was not helping her do the thing that she knew needed to
be done and was a good thing to be done. So much so that she went to the
Lord, and she said, Look, I'm over here laboring to perform
this task, and there's Mary over there sitting down just listening
to what you've got to say, and we've got important things to
do. The Lord said, Martha, Martha,
thou art comforted about many things, but one thing is need
And Mary had chosen the better part. Now that was kind of a
humbling thing, wasn't it? And how often it is that the
Lord shows us just how important the things that we've got to
do are. Got to do it. I mean, we've got to do it now.
We can't put it off. It's got to be done now. Well, Paul says this is the third
time I'm coming to you. Now, I said all that basically
to point out the fact that the Lord is able to bring to pass
the things that He would bring to pass and to bring things to
our mind in such a way to show us what is the thing that we
need to be looking at. Now, you know what the thing
is that you need to be looking at. The disciples, when the Lord
went to pray and He left them there, He said, Watch with Me.
They knew what they needed to be doing, didn't they? When He
came back and He found them sleeping and He woke them up, they knew
that they needed to be doing something different than they
were doing, didn't they? It wasn't the fact that they didn't know.
It was the fact that they didn't do it. Now we know that the reason
they didn't do it was because of the weakness of the flesh.
The Lord said, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Now a lot of people take that to mean that the Lord was saying
to them, well, it's okay. It's okay. That's a good excuse for you.
But that's not what the Lord was doing at all. He was just
showing them how weak and unable to do anything that they really
were in the flesh. Because you see, the Spirit of
God works in the saints of God, but apart from the power of God
being applied to them, they just float along. Oh, what
a mercy and grace it is! You see, the blessing of God
is in the blessing of God. It's in the hearing of the Word
of God. When a man hears the Word of
God, I mean, the preaching of the Word goes out, but the blessing
is in the hearing of the Word. When God gives men ears to hear
it, you see, that's the blessed thing. I mean, we're glad that
there's preaching of the Word, but the thing that is evidence
of the blessing is when men hear the Word of God. And this is
what Paul is saying to these Corinthians. He said, this is
the third time I'm coming to you. Now, He came to them first
in the flesh, He came to them the second time when he wrote
to them the first epistle. And now he's writing to them
the second epistle and he says, this is the third time I'm coming.
He says, I'm coming. In the mouth of two or three
witnesses shall every word be established. I told you before,
I foretell you as if I were present the second time, and being absent
now, I write to them which heretofore have sinned, and to all other
that if I come again, I will not spare." Now, Paul had written
to the Corinthians about an egregious error in sin that was in their
midst. And by the grace of God, they
had those that were guilty by the operation of the Spirit of
God and the action of the church toward them, as Paul directed,
those errors were corrected to some extent. But there were still some things
going on in that church that were not as they should be. Now, that's always going to be
the case. There's always going to be those
things. Now, in their case, it was, I
believe, sins of the flesh, as he describes it here. Things
that are not things that are openly spoken of, but are nonetheless
things that God's people know. by the application of the Spirit
of God that these things are not proper. But because of the
weakness of the flesh and the indulgence of the flesh, those
things continued on to some degree. And so he said, I tell you that
if I come again, I am not going to spare you. Now what did he
mean by that? He meant he was going to rake
them over to the coals. Now Paul speaks as one that has
power because he does. He speaks first off as one that
has power because he was an apostle. Now the apostles did have power
in a measure and a fashion in which I don't believe any man
has today. The Lord gave them these words
directly from His mouth to speak the truth of God, to set it forth
before us. The foundation of the church,
the Scripture says, is based on the apostles. And so it is
that they had a power, they had gifts that are not given to all men. I don't believe are given in
the present time the gifts that were given to the apostles. I
think these things passed away when the apostles did it. They
weren't even passed from the apostles to the ones that were
under their care. And so he says, I come and I
am coming again with power, I will not spare. But you see, the greater
power that he knows that he comes with is that he does not come
with great swelling words, or he does not come in his own power,
or he does not come giving them his opinion. Now there are times
when we look at the Scriptures and we might Give our opinion. And that's just what it is. Every
man's opinion is worth the same thing. You know how much our
opinions are worth? See, we like to all think our
opinions are worth a lot. Well, my opinion is just as good
as yours. Well, it is. It is. Every one of our opinions is
as good as the next one, but you know how much they're worth?
Not a thing. It'll mean what your opinion
is. What difference does it make what your opinion about it is?
Now, I'm not saying you don't have opinions because you can't
help but have opinions. That's just part of being a human
being. But we must understand what our
opinions are and how much value they have. But you see, the Word
of God is not about opinion. Now, I might tell you what my
opinion of what the Word of God is, but you see, when God is
pleased to take His Word and apply it to the heart of a man
by the power of the Spirit of God, opinion goes out the window. It doesn't make any difference
whose opinion about it is. God is pleased to smite the heart
with the truth of His Word. And that's exactly what Paul
is talking about here. He said, I won't spare. Seek
ye a proof of Christ speaking in me? Isn't it amazing that
anybody would doubt you? You know, we'd all think, well,
if we'd have been there, we'd have known that Paul was speaking
from the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ said a
prophet is not without honor except in his own country. You know who an expert is? That's
somebody who comes in from outside that you don't know. That's the
fellow from New York. He would know something. Now
somebody from Brantford or Live Oak or something like that, they
wouldn't know anything. But you get somebody from Jacksonville,
why, but he probably knows something, you know. No, a prophet is not
without honor except in his own country and among his own people.
And these people knew Paul, and so after a while, they received
his word for a while, but then there came among them, and this
is the way of the flesh, to say, well, you know now, really and
truly, that's just Paul speaking. I mean, I've heard people say
that, even in the present time, when they read some of the things
that Paul said, and they don't like what he said, and they'll
say, oh, well, that was just Paul. When he said many things concerning things
that ought to be done in the church and shouldn't be done
in the church, and people say, oh, well, that was just Paul.
Well, maybe it was. But you see, Paul, if he spoke
by the power of God, it is the truth. Now, a man can't receive
it unless God gives him a mind to. But oh, think of this, what
a blessing it is when God gives a man a mind to receive the Word
of God as the Word of God. What a blessing it is. So it
says, "...since ye seek the proof of Christ speaking in me." Because
keep in mind now, Paul said that he wouldn't take another man's
line of things made ready to his hand. That is, Paul didn't
go out and go to another man where another apostle had started
to work and go in there and try to get things all going according
to the way he thought they ought to be going. He didn't do that. He said, I'm not going to another
place. He said, I'm going to establish
that which God has given me to do. I'm not trying to build on
another man's foundation. He said, You seek a proof of
Christ speaking in me, which to you it is not weak, but mighty
in you. He said, Here. Here is the proof
of whether or not I speak according to the Word of God, according
to the power of God, if you want a proof of whether or not I am
an apostle. Because you see, there were many
apostles, false apostles that were risen in those days. There
were many apostles. There were twelve. who went about,
some of them were killed pretty early on, but there were many
that went about preaching. He said, you won't prove that
I'm an apostle because there were many who rose up and said,
well, we are apostles. And usually what they would do
is say, oh, well, you can't believe what old Paul is saying over
here because, look, I can show you a better way. And there's
always people that are willing to listen to a guy with a better
way. You ever notice that? I mean, if a guy comes along
and he's got a secret or something, and he can show you something
that's a little better way, and old Paul, he didn't know anything
about that. And so there were many that had
sought to subvert the Corinthians through false doctrine. There
were many that had sought to subvert the Corinthians charisma through their abilities
or whatever, men that would draw off disciples after them, men
that loved to have the preeminence as diatrophies. It is not unusual
for men to love to have the preeminence. You get a bunch of preachers
together, usually one of them will try to have the preeminence. Is that of the Lord? It's of the flesh. That's the
way that it is. But you see, we need to be mindful
of that, that we be not drawn off in that fashion. Because there's always somebody
that knows more than the next guy. But it's not about what
we know. It's about the one we know. And
that's who Paul's coming in the name of, and he said, You seek
a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you is not weak,
but it is mighty in you." He said, the work of the Spirit
of God in you is evidence of the fact that those things that
I have spoken are true, that the Lord has applied these
things to your heart. And you have seen that those
things I have told you are true. For though he was crucified through
weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. For we also are
weak in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God
toward you." Now, as Christ was weak in the flesh, so are we. But you see, He was mighty in
the Spirit, even triumphing over death as He came forth from the
grave. And he says in this same way,
we don't have any power at all in the flesh. I mean, he told
them in another place, did he not? He said, in speech I am
contemptible. I mean, evidently Paul wasn't
much listened to. I mean, he put Epaphroditus to
sleep. He fell out the window, remember?
So he must have been not all that much of an orator. But he
said, that doesn't make any difference. It doesn't matter whether or
not a man is an orator, it matters whether or not he speaks by the
power of God. And so he said in the same fashion,
for we also are weak in him. We don't have any power of ourself,
but we do by the power of God towards you. And then he says
something, and here's where I wanted for us to think about. He said
some words that are very seldom ever set forth in today's climate
of preaching. You will hear a lot of preachers
on the radio and TV that are preaching a message to get folks
Be encouraged and be uplifted and be fired up and go off and
do great things. But I'm telling you this, the
only way that a man will ever do great things is if God does
great things in him. He won't do great things because
he got fired up. He'll do great things because
God constrained him to do it and he couldn't do anything else.
That's what Paul said. He said, the only reason I preach
is because I can't do anything else. See, that's how you know when
a man is called to preach is when he can't do anything else.
I don't mean he can't do anything else physically. Paul was a tent
maker. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about professionally. I'm talking about when a man
is constrained to it. When he eats and breathes it.
When he sleeps in it. When he dreams about it. when
it came happen. But by the grace of God, these things were laid upon Him. And what did He have to do with it? Nothing in the world. He
can't get rid of it. He can't add to it. He can't
even find it. He's like Samson. Sometimes he's
standing in between the pillars of the
temple and his hair is cut off and his eyes are put out. And
he's in a pitiful shape. But you see, if God is in it,
then it can't be overturned. And there was old Samson with
his hair cut off and his eyes put out, but yet God was still
there. When he brought Samson to the
place he wanted him to be, you see, he said, I'm going to use
Samson. He did, did he not? Even when Samson, I mean, if
you look at Samson, he was a pitiful case. He just wrote him off.
He said, hey, there's nothing to it. But you see, it's not
about the man. It's about the power of the one
who gives the Word. And so he says this, and these
ought to be serious words to every one of
God's children. Now, I say to every one of God's
children because the world's not going to pay any heed to
this. They're going to say, oh, you don't need to do that. Just
have a positive approach. Think good about yourself. That's
what you need to do. Well, you can do all things through
Christ that strengthens you. Haven't you heard that over and
over again? I mean, that's a blessed truth,
but I get sick of hearing it. People go out and we go, I run
a touchdown because I can do all things through Christ that
strengthen me. I won the MMA title because I
can do all things through Christ that strengthens me. And all
that kind of garbage has got nothing to do with none of that.
All that is just works of the flesh. Now to say, does God ordain
those things to come to pass? Absolutely. But it doesn't have
a thing in the world to do with what Paul is talking about when
he said, I can do all things through Christ. It strengthened
me because you see, Paul knew and understood this. First off,
a man cannot under any circumstances have any inkling of knowing what
it is that I can do all things through Christ which strengthens
me until he knows this, that without Christ I can do nothing. And here's what he said. Examine
yourself. whether you be in the faith.
What? Paul, be careful now. You'll
get people to doubt. You don't want people to doubt
their salvation. You don't want people to be questioning
and self-examining. What's the word they say? Introspection. Don't be introspective. Paul said, Be introspective. He said, Don't get your mind
clouded with the power of positive thinking. He said, Examine yourselves
to see if ye be in the faith. The back story to that is, just
because you say, I am a Christian, does not make it so. Everybody
is a Christian. Just about. The world is full of them, is
it not? Everybody is. Mostly, I mean around here at
least. You would be hard pressed to
gather up a hundred people. I bet you couldn't go out in
two hours and gather up fifty people that wouldn't say they
were a Christian. Now they'd probably say, well, I'm a believer. I'm not a very good Christian
or something, you know. I don't do what I should do.
I don't go to church and all that kind of stuff. But he said,
examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith. Prove your own
selves. See, we're looking for some proof.
He said you better be looking for some proof. Don't just take
somebody's word for it. Don't just assume that because
you come to church that you're in the faith. Don't just assume
because you didn't have anything else to
do today that was more important and you showed up. I mean, you know, when it's convenient
to walk in the things of God, everybody follows Christ when
it's convenient, don't they? I mean, the disciples, they was
right with Him when it was convenient. They were seeing the miracles.
They were listening to things He said and they were blessed
to walk along. But oh, when the heat got turned
up and the Lord was taken into custody,
it wasn't so convenient then, was it? He says, examine yourselves.
whether you be in the faith. Prove your own self. Know that
there are proofs as to whether or not you be in the faith. He's
fixing to say, what is the proof of whether or not you're in the
faith? You're not in the faith because you made a profession
of faith. Now that is the most common thing that we hear today
is, you are a Christian because you made a profession of faith.
I'm glad if you have made a profession of faith. But that does not make
you a Christian. And when I say a Christian, I
mean a true follower of Jesus Christ. One who's washed in the
blood of the Lamb. That doesn't make you one. Examine yourselves whether you
be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know ye
not? Now listen to this. Know ye not? Don't you know this? He says,
if you do this examination, don't you know this to be true? How
that Jesus Christ is in you unless you be a reprobate, cast away. So being in the faith doesn't
have anything to do with professing it. Now those that are in the faith
do profess it. But professing it doesn't put
them in the faith or make them be in the faith. Or because a
man makes a great profession doesn't mean that he is in the
faith. But here's the proof. And this doesn't have anything
to do at all with the power of men, does it? No, you're not. Your own selves. You know this,
don't you? You know this. I don't have to
tell you. He said. Don't you know this? How that Jesus Christ is in you
unless you be castaways. Unless you be those that are
not of the children of God. Jesus Christ is in you. Christ
in you. The hope of glory. Now, when a man examines himself, does he do so so that he can
correct the problem? Did he say, examine yourselves
and then correct the problem if you don't find what you're
looking for? No. Just like when he said, when you come to the
Lord's table, examine yourselves. He didn't say, examine yourselves
and see if you like what you find. But the examination is
that which the children of God, though they may not welcome it
in the flesh, they recognize the necessity of it in the Spirit
because they do not want to be found to be naked or to be clothed
in a It's not a wedding garment when
the Lord comes to gather His own. I mean, when they read that account of those, remember when
the Master made the feast and those that were invited didn't
come? And he said, ìWell, go out here into the highways and
compel men to come in.î And they went out and they gathered a
great multitude and they came in. And when the master of the
feast came in, he looked over the crowd there and he said,
ìWhatís that guy doing in here?î He said, ìCast him out. He doesnít
have on a wedding garment.î Now does that not cause the children
of God Paul, does that not cause us to say, Lord, don't let me
be that one? That's what he's saying here.
Examine yourselves. Know you not? You do know this. You know this is true. Know you
not how that Jesus Christ is in you unless you be reprobates? Now brethren, just as surely
as God is pleased to bless His Word in power, He is pleased
to dwell in His people. And we know that. How foolish
would it be to be in a frivolous condition? Now, you've all heard the term
preaching to the choir. And of course what that means
is that those that are hearing the thing or probably not the
ones that need to hear it. Well, that is not true in this
respect. The preaching of the gospel is
always preaching to the choir. We are preaching to those that
can hear. You see, we are preaching to those that are constrained
by the gospel or by the grace of God because the world will
pay no heed to it. And those in whom Christ does
not dwell will say there is no need to examine yourself because
you made a decision and you are in and everything is okay and
do not even trouble yourself about it. No, that is not what
he said here, is it? Examine yourself. And so I believe
this is a true thing that God's people are going to be examiners
of themselves. They're not satisfied with the
status quo. They're not pleased with what
they see. What is examination for? It's
to drive a man to Christ. It's to drive the children of
God to Christ because, you see, when we examine ourselves, we
don't see much of Christ in us, do we? Do you? I mean, if you
do see a lot of Him in you, need to be looking closer. In the
same way that we examine ourselves, the Scripture says, and so let
him eat of that bread and drink of that cup. We examine ourselves
with the purpose of driving us to the place where we understand
that we have nothing. Dear brethren, you see, that's
where the Word of God always brings us back, to the place
where He is strong as we are weak. And we are made strong
as we understand how weak we are. But when we get to thinking
that we have a little strength, well, we don't really need to
be concerned about paying heed to the Word of God. We don't
need to hear the Word of God. We hear enough preaching. We hear once or twice a month
or whatever. That's plenty. Know ye not your own selves how
that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobate? Does
not God give His people a hunger and a thirst for the truth of
God? Does He not give them a hunger and thirst for the fellowship
of the saints? Does He? Doesn't He? I mean, was John wrong with what
he said by this? Shall ye know that ye are my
disciples because ye have love one for the other? Know that Jesus Christ is in
you except you be reprobates, but I trust that you know that
we are not reprobates. Why? Because they knew and understood
that what Paul preached was that he preached Christ. Now you can always see more of
Christ in your brethren than you'll ever see in yourself,
but you're never told to examine your brethren, you're always
told to examine yourself. Isn't that an amazing thing?
Now see, the Lord is pleased to manifest the love of Christ
through the brethren, and we see it. But we look at ourselves and
we see so little of it, if any at all. But that's by design,
lest we be lifted up with pride. Now I pray to God that ye do
no evil, not that we should appear approved, but that ye should
do that which is honest, even though we be reprobate. So what
he said is, O that ye might follow in the way of Christ, knowing
that if you despise the way of Christ, Or if you neglect the
way of Christ, if you have no regard to the things of Christ,
then you are reprobates. But he said, don't do the things
that you know are the things that you are to do and will do
if Christ is in you. Don't do those things because
I have told you to do it. But he said, do them. as in an
honest fashion, that is, because the Spirit of Christ dwells in
you, even if I am a reprobate, he said. He says, you know that
I am not a reprobate. But he said, it doesn't make
a difference whether I am a reprobate or not. Examine yourself to see
if you be in the faith and then walk in those things that you
know to be walking in, even if I am a reprobate. What if I turn
out to have told you everything wrong? For we can do nothing
against the truth but for the truth. For we are glad when we
are weak and you are strong. In this also we wish even your
perfection. We know this, the truth cannot
be overturned. I don't care what anybody does,
if they burn all the Bibles or if they... I don't care what
they do. If the Muslims take over, and
the president is a Muslim, and the Congress is Muslim, and people
are worried all about these Muslims. I don't care about the Muslims!
Let the Muslims come! Christ is triumphant! The glory
of God shall not be diminished! Regardless of who he lets a little
puppet run around up here and say, Oh, look at all the power
I've got. Ask Nebuchadnezzar. about that. You see, the Most
High ruleth in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth, and there is none that can stay His hand. And the
greatest enemy of the gospel today is not the Muslims. It is not the homosexuals. It
is not the immorality of the country. The greatest enemy to
the gospel is those who preach something other than Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. I'm telling you, that is a greater
enemy of the gospel, because that's what Paul said. If they
preach any other gospel than that which has been brought to
you. You see, they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. All these
others are just clowns. They're just pawns in the working
of the world. Dear brethren, they are not the
danger to the people of God. The danger is that we grow complacent,
is that we think ourselves to be the followers of Christ because
we decided to be. No, you're not. How that Jesus
Christ is in you, except you be reprobates. For we are glad
when we are weak and ye are strong. And this also we wish, even your
perfection." You see, that's the desire of those who would
proclaim the Word of God, is that the people of God be built
up in the most holy faith. That they be found walking in
faithfulness. That they be found true. That
in the day of the Lord's appearing, that they will be those that
say, even so, come Lord Jesus. You see, that's the place that
we desire to see you, Paul said. Not as those that turn aside
and go off into all sorts of things or are caught up in the
ways of the world and get your priorities out of whack and get
to thinking that all the things you want to do are so important. May the Lord help us. and show
us what we are by nature and show us that our only hope, our
only help is found in Jesus Christ and that except we be reprobates,
He is in us working His will, both the will and the will of
His good pleasure. May the Lord help us and may we be found there.